Saturday, December 16, 2006

Take one down and pass it around

Holidays are finally here. Somehow ENT felt a lot longer than 2 weeks, perhaps because of the untoward incident.

ENT was a so-so posting; learnt quite a lot of new things, as usual, and otoscopy is less painful on the eyes and face than ophthalmoscopy, so that was good. Somehow the posting didn't seem as interesting as ophthalmology, and I was trying to figure out the reason why during the two weeks of posting but never found the answer. The NUH consultants are really nice (yes, even him) and were quite eager to teach during the times that I Was attached to their clinics. At least NUH is good in teaching for some departments, otherwise it would really be a total wreck. Haha. And of course in addition to the consultants there was that rather weird registrar, who also taught me a lot when I happened to be in his clinic, and though I didn't really spend much time with him he certainly left a long-lasting impression with his rather eccentric forthright-ness. Rather cute.

TTSH was comparatively not quite as good. The two consultants we had tutorials were nice and taught us quite a bit, though one of them gave us a stern talk before beginning his teaching (together with the oft-encountered bashing of another hospital - "I don't know what they teach you at Ann.You.H."). The clinics, however, were not particularly useful, since the consultants all have their clinics in the "private" area where assumedly students are not allowed entry (though we are allowed to sit in for private clinics in NUH, what's the difference?) and the "public" area where we attach ourselves is mostly run by MOs, with one registrar or senior MO that oversees all the others, but unfortunately also often disappears in the middle of clinic. The fault of not learning much also lies with me; I'm by nature not one to ask questions during clinic, mainly because I don't think of questions unless the doctor teaches me something, and certainly I'm not being taught anything when the MO doesn't talk to me. In a reverse fashion I guess the MO won't know what to tell me if I don't ask him anything. Stupid indian MO. Die.

And of course there was that incident that created a lot of unpleasantness for everyone. Certainly we were at fault and I don't blame the doctor(s) for being angry at us for breaking a rule that was clearly set down at the beginning of the posting. What's done is done, and it's a good lesson to learn from. I just didn't think it was particularly professional to let his/their anger at us influence the difficulty of the test he/they set, if I don't misinterpret the information we were presented. Oh well. None of us really want to think about it either.

4 short postings over, and I think in retrospect they were all enjoyable and enriching in their own ways. I'm actually quite glad we did Patho first because we got the pain of the write-ups out of the way early and the stress of realising I forgot all my Patho kind of pushed me to do more reading through the remaining 6 weeks of posting. Haha. And anaesthesia, ophthalmology and ENT each gave us valuable knowledge that is really indispensable to any general practice in the future, so I really don't think they should be removed from the M4 syllabus, and yet I hear the batch after us will no longer have short postings. That sucks, if it's true.


Going on to how I spent the first day of my hols, heh. Went out with Zf today since he's back in Singapore, and suggested that we have lunch at Basil Alcove. The weather was incredibly hot and we walked around a bit because Basil Alcove wasn't open for lunch yet when we arrived (and we walked rather excessively because I got a bit lost leading the way to Purvis St where Zf wanted to check out some other restaurant), so we ended up being rather sweaty and miserable when we got back.

Personally I thought the food at Basil Alcove was pretty good, and also very affordable. It's sad but value-for-money is a big plus in my book nowadays; if you can pay less for good food, why go somewhere where you have to pay through your nose? We each got a Mushroom and Bacon Aglio (pasta) and shared a Avocado Chicken with peach chunks. The pasta came in a nice large serving with a generous sprinkling of cheese gratings (another plus haha). A wee bit salty because of the bacon, but I guess that's inevitable when you're using bacon. Anyway I love bacon so it was okay for me. The chicken was good, I loved the avocado paste because I love avocado, and the peach chunks were sweet with a little bit of tang. I couldn't figure out why the tomato cubes were spicy, though. I was really stuffed at the end of the meal (no idea why but I seem to get full really easily nowadays) and it only came up to a little over 10 dollars per person. Sorry I'm so cheapo, maybe next time I go there I'll order something higher up on the menu. Zf thought the food was quite normal but I thought it was good, so we were arguing a little haha. Oh well. I'd definitely go there again, if it's not too crowded and I can get a seat inside (I don't like sitting outdoors and being tortured by the heat, smokers, and traffic pollution).

After lunch we went to Expo for this Nike sale where Zf bought shoes and a top. The sale wasn't really that great in terms of range of items being sold (mostly shoes, and not very nice ones at that) and prices (I thought they were still rather expensive). We went to get a drink after leaving the sale and I spotted some people in cosplay outfits, thus I realised that there must be some cosplay event going on today and got highly excited. Zf and I decided to go take a look, so we followed some cosplayers surreptitiously to the event venue and got a quick glance of various cosplayers dressed up as a whole variety of anime characters. How fun. I found out that you need to pay 12 dollars to enter the conference rooms where the event was held so we just lingered around the outside watching the cosplayers taking photos and then we left. I didn't recognise many anime characters except for the Bleach ones, and also some Trinity Blood ones.

I went home after that and feasted on anime; watched episode 1 of Death Note and really like it, and then watched 6 episodes of Monster. It's annoying that I have so many animes sitting on my computer and I haven't got around to watching them, so I am resolved to watch most of them before the 3 month-long madness that is O&G and Patho exam. And I'm now thoroughly addicted to Bleach so I eagerly anticipate the arrival of a new episode every Thursday haha. The Bount arc is getting tiresomely long, would they just end it already.

Avaris / 12/16/2006 11:31:00 PM

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