Thursday, 30-Oct-2003 7:14 AM

You have to have confidence, I keep telling myself. You know the material. It's all in your head. Just lace it with confidence. Doing adjustments in front of a supervisor is not easy. Doing it with a time restriction is even harder. The fact that I don't have big boobs doesn't help either. Hah, scrap that last one....even though for some that makes all the difference between a good and poor grade. I thought it may have been just myself overreacting with all those little panic attacks I had last week but I hear everyone is going through it. There are even tears involved and interstate-parent-calling. K said she just gets mad and strangles her boyfriend and shakes him about (ahh don't worry, she's an angel).

Anyways, for a good attempt at trying to update this with something interesting, I see I've failed. My mind's been elsewhere. Like on that exam I have in an hour. Hah, so I better bust a move and get ready :P

Monday, 27-Oct-2003 7:21 PM

Clinic Entrance Exam + Bad car days.

Damn daylight savings in October and losing an hour of sleep. Damn too cause I booked my Clinic Entrance Exam for 10am which is kind of like 9am, for the Sunday that just passed.

Man, talk about panic attacks! I passed though!! He said I did pretty good with my history taking and physical examination routine. My write up took pretty long though, I went over time. Ugh, hope I don't get marked down for that. I'm terrible and doing things like that fast. I just don't know what to write and I don't want to be one of those chiros that just walk in and out of a room and doesn't do much. Actually, I wouldn't mind, if that meant I knew everything and it all came to me within split seconds of being presented with the problem.

It seems the weekend that just passed wasn't the best for most people. Sunday after my exam, my sister and I went to get food at the shopping mall. When I drove up the parking lot ramp, I heard this grinding noise coming from under the bonnet and could smell rubber burning. Ahh...I wish I knew more about cars. It has something to do with the harmonic balancer. That's about all I know. Had to call road side assistance. Had to wait for them. They had to call another guy in to help them get the car out of the parking area. Then my sister and I waited in the rain for the tow truck guy to come. We got to ride in the tow truck though! It's a nice view up there :) He towed our car to the mechanics, which was closed. We just parked it outside and then waited for my sister's bf to pick us up! 3.5 hours down the drain.

This morning I called Salami and he told me he was in a car accident :( He was wanting to turn left and thought it was all clear but when he went, he saw a truck coming (going straight) and he had to swerve to avoid it and he hit another car doing so. No one was hurt but the lady came out and shouted at him. She was furious. Her whole family was in the car. Sigh...poor guy. He didn't sound too happy and I had only intended to talk for 5 minutes because I had to go to class, which made it sound so cold of me having to say goodbye. $1500 damage for each car. Eesh :( I worry about him all the time and I hate that I have no control over things like that.

Friday, 24-Oct-2003 6:24 PM

The days are going too fast.

Stress + Panic + Anxiety + Frustration. I probably won't update much in the next month or so. I am busy, busy, BUSY. This Sunday is my clinic entrance exam and I'm freaking out. I just want to calm down. I really just need to breathe and no matter how many times I tell myself to relax and take it easy, I can't seem to and I hyperventilate and everything makes me panic more. The days are just flying and I'm scared, damnit.

Breathe.....breathe.........breathe.

Wednesday, 22-Oct-2003 10:36 PM

The aching head speaks.

Ergh, headache. I needed to mail something today but was too lazy to walk to the mailbox so I decided to drive down the road. On my 1 minute drive, a bird flew right past my windscreen, another flew under the car and I also passed by a gang of birds attacking one of their kind! Poor lil bird :( I almost wanted to park the car and walk out (yeah check out the big ostrich coming to break up the scene) and give them birds a word or two.

Uni is getting tough. Oh god..I can't even keep count of how many exams I have. It's somewhere around 16 within 4 weeks. Strangely I've been going out more and wasting more time hanging out with friends etc. A few of them came over today with the intention of practicing but we got almost nothing done. Ugh, boys.

Sunday, 19-Oct-2003 6:10 PM

I'm curious - who's the regular visitor from Hawai'i?

Saturday, 18-Oct-2003 5:09 PM

I'm in my room trying to get some work done and I hear music coming from the study room. I have no idea what it is my sister is playing in there but it sounds like Gregorian chants or something. It's more dark and gloomy though and every once in a while, a woman's voice will pipe in (no, not my sister's :P) and it'll sound like someone squeezed the poor monk's nuts. I couldn't take it anymore. I went in there and just looked at her. 'Sorry' she says. 'Are you trying to find a cure for insomnia?' I ask her. 'It sounds like somebody died!'

She's quiet.

'Shit. It's from Narelle's wedding isn't it?'

'Yes.'

Friday, 17-Oct-2003 4:53 PM

Bark bark

I've been busy as hell and stressed out this week, what with my Clinic Entrance Exam in the way and being weeks and weeks behind on every subject. Scares the hell out of me.

Plus! It really doesn't help that my brother and his gf got a puppy! After dinner on Sunday night, they wanted me to go over to their place and collect the tea that was initially ours (we bought a huge bag of it) but they took when they moved out. I wasn't all that keen because it meant they had to drive past my place to get to theirs and then drive back to drop me home. But they really wanted me to so I went. I knew it was a puppy from the moment they opened the door. No one opens doors with so much caution. And there she was! Sneaking out from behind the coat rack...so cute! Tiny little bugger :D They brought her over the other day and she just loved me :D She would go to them when they called her and I just walked past and she ran after me =) Ahh it's nice to be loved.

The first pic was when my brother and his gf went downstairs. Poor little pup was looking for them through the stair bannisters. Oh how quickly homesickness wears out. She crawled into my lap after that and fell asleep (2nd pic). I took that opportunity to go crazy with the camera...had the flash on and everything and she didn't even notice :) Even when her eyes were open.

I've also lost my tuning fork. I need to get one before this clinic entrance exam thing damnit. Paid a fortune for it, used it once, now it goes missing. It actually got me to clean my room up for the first time in about 6 months. I did find an apple though.

Tuesday, 14-Oct-2003 1:11 AM

I can't help but stare at his picture on my desktop. Today I noticed that I've been kissing my finger and touching it against his photo from time to time. Gosh I miss him. I just want things to go back to normal.

Sunday, 12-Oct-2003 6:36 PM

You make me numb waiting.

Haircut may have been a baaaaad idea. There's this bit that keeps flicking into my face...grrr. So now I'm looking like a sailormoon dork with all these baby butterfly clips in my hair.

The past few days have been all over the place. My emotions running high, running low, feeling numb, confused, hurt, angry. I'm not sure what's going on and there are times where I feel I just don't want to know and maybe I should move on but I can't seem to. I think because I don't want to. I'm really scared to be honest. I'd like it if someone could just tell me what to do. I hate that there are no 'right' decisions, only choices that you make. I don't want to forever be wondering about what would have happened had I opted for the other choice. When I used to read those 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books, I'd use all my fingers as page markers so I could come back to those pages where we had to make a decision as to how we wanted our adventure/journey to go and turn to the other pages and see if I made the best choice. Pity I can't do that with life. Pity there's no remote control where I could hit rewind, or better yet, fast forward. I wish everything would just tie in together...right now I feel like some superior being has hit 'pause' on my brain and fast forward on the hourglass. I'm running out of time and no decisions have been made.

I went to the chiro on Friday and he was asking if I'd been feeling naseous, dizzy or having headaches. I said yes to all and he checked my neck out and found that my C1 was rotated really badly. We could feel the transverse process at the front of my neck! He said that's the worst rotation he's ever seen in all his years of practice. I kind of joked about it but he said if I'd waited longer, I would have passed out. I'm supposed to be a chiro soon and I can't even tell when there's something not right with my own body. Hmmmm.

Dinner last night with my uncle and cousins was pretty good. It was nice to get out of the house. Salami and I were supposed to 'talk' later that night but he didn't show up and I waited for like an hour and a half before deciding to call him and tell him I was going to sleep. He had been sleeping that whole time cause he came back really late from the baseball game. Ahh well. What can you do eh?

I'm undecided whether to go out for dinner again with my uncle and cousins. It's my uncle's last day in town so maybe it'd be good to go...plus it's my last day of freedom (heh) before uni starts up again. Well, it's either that or packet noodles for one.

Friday, 10-Oct-2003 1:11 PM

Time for a change. Gone for the chop.

Wednesday, 08-Oct-2003 10:34 AM

Feeling gutted =(

I don't know if I can deal with this. You're prolonging the agony. You're teasing my heart. I can't feel my hands because all the blood supply has rushed to my guts and I'm trying hard to hold down last night's dinner. And in half an hour I'm going to have to see my friends and act like I'm the normal, happy kid that they know me as.

I'm thinking now that it's best to go out with a robot. You can program them to love you forever, as long as their batteries are running. I forget that humans are temperamental.

Yet I'm thinking that someone else who's going through this experience right now and reading this is probably feeling slightly better knowing that it's happening to someone else too. Well, I hope it turns out for you, kid. I hope it turns out for me too.

Tuesday, 07-Oct-2003 11:18 PM

Not much to say today and yet my mind's racing with a million things to say. It hasn't been a good day. He surprised me with some news I never really thought possible. I wish these things didn't happen to people. Not me. Not now. Not again.

Tuesday, 07-Oct-2003 1:17 AM

Window Shopping

My feet have been killing me for the past few days. First the left, now the right. I know it's most likely from my being flat-footed/hyper-pronated but the thought of wearing orthotics for life just makes me cringe and I stupidly try and ignore it. I've been ignoring a lot of health-related things :( Sometimes I can't understand how I can promote chiropractic and say it's all about wellness care, lifetime care for your entire body etc and yet I can't make a dentist appointment just to keep my teeth in check. Sigh, I still have a fear of making those kinds of phonecalls. I had to pay my sister last time to call up for me =/ It's not that I'm scared to make the call. I'd do it for someone else but when it comes to it being for me, I just shy away from all responsibility for my health. Terrible! I must change!

The new Surivor series is kind of boring me. I'm glad they didn't throw in the token asian though, which seemed like what they did with the Australian version. That was excruciating to watch. That girl was craaazy. She called herself the 'She-Devil'.

My sister and I went to the shopping centre today. We walked around for one hour trying to find some good laksa. This meant walking from one building to another and back again. What's more ridiculous is that we found four places selling crappy looking laksa and I ended up eating McDonalds and she had some chicken schnitzel sandwich which looked like crap and fell apart as soon as she picked it up to eat. Later we got busted trying on big ugly sunglasses. The sales woman asked if we needed any help while I was in the middle of taking a picture of us and I had to turn and look at her with these huge white sunglasses that covered 2/3 of my face and say 'no, we're just looking thanks!'

Stopped by the petstore and took some pictures of the pups :) They're so funny looking :)

That one above is the same dog with the left part of his face squashed against the window :D

Ahaha! Puny dog!

I'm loving this new gym ball I got. It's a little too small to be using as a chair for my desk so right now it's balancing on three neurology books I borrowed from the library (specially borrowed to make a chair base, mind you!). It makes it good because I can't roll this baby around and I have to sit still with my legs down - something I'm incapable of =)

Monday, October 6, 2003 0:42 AM

5 years ago.

I used to always torture myself thinking about the past and how things should have turned out differently between the boy and I. I realise though that I don't even like who he is. I think he's just living in a 3 second world where he's permanently living the exciting part of every relationship...you know, the 'getting to know her' stage, the first dates and flirtation before getting bored and finding someone else that rocks his boat. I realise I wouldn't have come across Salami had the boy not stood his ground and said no to me countless times. I've always hated him for that. For not seeing what could be, if only he gave it a chance. I think he was too scared. Now, now I don't know whether to be grateful because I've moved on to torturing myself thinking about the future. Without him.

It scares me...because I can see myself alone. Back at square one. If only I could have a glimpse of what's to come in ten years. Is Salami there by my side? Am I sleeping alone, thinking once again about what could have been? I can imagine living overseas, but I just can't see myself physically packing up the boxes and going away. Nor can I see him coming over here. Is this pointless or what?

Saturday, 04-Oct-2003 11:02 PM

The week.

I'm HOME! Well I've been home for two days but I've been way too exhausted to write anything. The Uni Games was fun! Late nights, super early mornings. I think I averaged less than 6 hours sleep a night, which really made me pay when I got back because I almost fell asleep just driving locally. The place we stayed at was amazingly nice. We expected some crappy, small flat where most of us would have to sleep on the floor but it turned out to be this luxurious looking two level apartment with a brand new kitchen, entertainment area with dvd player and surround sound, three bedrooms, three toilets, two bathrooms (one ensuite in the main room) and spacious new lounge and dining (which could expand to seat 8).

We weren't all rostered in the same group so the only time all of us were together was at night. My first day was at touch football. The boys were nice enough to make us all sandwiches for the day. Touch football wasn't really organised. We had to pitch our own tent up which was set up in such a terrible position (ie facing the damn loudspeaker and against the wind) that we ended up having to get everyone to help lift it up and rotate it.

I was nervous starting. You don't get that much help from the final year students nor from the supervisor (who only graduated the year before and didn't seem to know all that much). I got to strap an ankle (thank goodness I read the poster we hung up inside the tent on strapping an hour before!) and also a finger and massage a guy who later asked if I did 'housecalls'. Eesh.

Day two was pretty quiet until around 3pm when all the athletes decided to pour into the tent we were working in. Lots of rub downs. I got this one hairy, stinky, sweaty athelete who wanted his legs rubbed down. I took forever to do it and when I had done his hamstrings, I asked him to turn over and he said sure, but then asked if he could watch the race that was about to start seeing as there were only two athletes from his university there, including himself. I know it's really unprofessional of me, but I kinda asked if I could watch the race after because this girl that had come in for treatment earlier was so sweet...we all tried to help her and it felt like she was our little kid. When I finished the rubdown, the guy gave me a 5 dollar tip! Hahha...I put the money in the moneybag thing (all goes back to the university) because the day before, I kept forgetting to charge the people. You know what else he left me? His leg hair. All over the back of my hands and in between my fingers. Mmmmmmm...tasty. I should have taken a pic of it :P

We went out that night to four different clubs. The first two were rather dead and the third we couldn't get into because it was some private party thing. The last one was pretty damn packed and we saw the rest of the chiro students there. One guy was so drunk, he kissed all of us, boys included. There were some girls there kissing each other and other girls, while guys were taking pictures of it. They ended up on top of some countertop kissing for 15 seconds straight to get a free drink. I found out later that they were lesbians. Eh. That's cheating:P

I had gone to get a drink with S at the bar and this guy was right there, staring at her. I happened to be in between the two of them and he just kept on trying to pick her up. She wouldn't let me go so I just had to stand there, looking like a complete idiot. He was such a sleazebag though.

Day three, with about 4.5 hours sleep, we headed up north for the Soccer. We had a shed to work in. The entire grounds stank like horseshit and it didn't help that, at times, you could smell a great bbq cooking a few feet away but when you went to breathe it in, the wind direction would change and you'd inhale manure instead. I got this asian kid in who had a badly swollen ankle. I thought he may have injured it playing soccer but he told me he jumped off a semitrailer the night before. I almost wanted to say 'well then you deserve it.' and not help him. I did a lot of soft tissue work on it and then was told by a senior student to gap it. Eeeeergh..I'm not fond of doing things like that when I know the patient is in pain but hey, he was pissing me off so I went for it. Twice.

Dinner wasn't always the best, but we made do.

Day four was at the frisbee finals. I've never even heard of such an event. It was an absolutely dead day. Too bad the beer taps weren't working! M had already left and T and I walked over to the venue. It took us much, much longer than we thought. We were the first ones there though..by well over an hour. Slackers:P I got this athelete who said he was a gym instructor and started giving me some technical terms about his problem, which kind of intimidated me but then I realised, all I had to do was throw in two chiro terms and he'd be clueless. It was funny because he was complaining of hip problem on one side and when I went to check his leg length, that hip was way higher than the other and we were both concluding that that must be the cause of the problem when we realised that the floor was sloping! Anyhow, I had to do a few other things on him and he kept saying 'I'm a really open guy. I'll take my shirt and shorts off if you want'. I got him to take both off but he seemed keen to take the underwear off too. I was a little stunned and told him to keep them on but I ended up having to slide my hands under his underwear to get to his glut muscles anyway =/ Although! I can't complain. He had a hairless butt and my fingers didn't get coated :P Bushpig came over from his venue (athletics) and we all left for home a couple of hours early.

So back home and only one day to rest! I went to M's clinic shift today because she's flown back home to Adelaide for the week. I saw ONE patient, which only counts as half a patient towards our patient numbers. What a joke. It was interesting though.We had a Chinese/Australian girl come in with her mother. I didn't realise just how hard it was to interact and treat kids. The intern asked her if there was anything else she'd like to tell him before they carried on with the treatment and she said no. Later when we left the room to get the supervisor to come in, her mom goes 'do you want to tell them what you just told me?' and she goes 'oh..just now when you pressed on my back, it really hurt. I've been sick all week and throwing up everyday. When you pressed on my back it felt like I was going to throw up.' Then WHY the hell would you say it was fine in the first place when we asked?! Ergh! KIDS. She kept shrugging too, when asked if certain movements were painful. Anyhow, the intern gave her exercises to do the other week and she was asked to show us how she was doing it and it was completely wrong. I could see the supervisor laughing and so to save myself from joining him, I had to look at the floor. It's just funny because it seems easy to us and I guess giving someone 5 instructions to do one exercise can be really confusing. I mean, really..you try this..it's good for all those people who sit a lot at a desk. Sit at the edge of a chair, back straight, feet flat on the ground, arms out beside you, turn the palms outwards, don't lift the shoulders up but turn them outwards, sternum up, keep the chin tucked in while still looking straight ahead (ie do not drop the head foward), deep breath in, then out. Repeat! See?! Isn't that easy!!?? Okay, so it's much more than five steps and she's only 12...but still! :P

Btw, this is terrible for your back!