Sunday, September 30, 2007

Maculopapular nodular plaque with bullous pustules

Haven't posted in the longest time, attributable mainly to sheer laziness and preoccupation with and distraction by many other things, including drama, anime, reading, and studying (note the distinction between the last two).

My two-week Dermatology posting at the AnnEssSee just ended. Looking back, it was a pretty enjoyable posting - I always find myself enjoying these short postings in subspecialties like Ophthalmology, ENT, and Dermatology, because it's something fresh and new that we've never had much exposure to, and the posting gives you a nice in-a-nutshell idea of how these specialists approach the clinical problems they face when seeing patients. We're all doing Medicine, but every specialty has its own system of treating patients, so it's like learning something familiar and yet completely new, which is always fun. Tests, on the other hand, are not so fun.

Dermatologists are on the whole really nice and easygoing people who I must say lead quite enviable lives - working in the clinics only during office hours, not having to go on call, no work on weekends, lots of free samples of dermatological products, hassle-free documentation on the computer system without requiring notes in paper form (useful for all except those who can write faster than they can type). I liked sitting in the nice air-conditioned clinics and not having to sweat it out in the wards, and the private clinics were the best because of the array of free samples of dermatological products on the doctor's table (I palmed a few for my mother - they're free, anyway :P). The dermatologists also have the luxury of time to see patients at a slower pace, since they run morning clinics from 8 to 12, which is four long hours of clinic time for possibly 20-odd patients, sometimes less.

Overall the schedule was quite okay for me; I had quite a number of clinic postings where I saw a number of interesting conditions, in addition to the bread-and-butter ones like atopic dermatitis, acne, alopecia, and psoriasis. Some other people had excessive postings to the treatment room which was rather ridiculous, since you get to see treatments when you're attached to the clinic anyway; I saw enough important procedures that I didn't really need to go for my treatment room posting. My DSC clinic posting was on the first day, and really quite an eye-opener, to say the least.

Food options were also rather wide - we had Ajisen ramen at Square 2 one day, bak kut teh at Founder's on another day when we had a study break in the afternoon and so could leisurely walk over, and also visited Pek Kio market for lunch once; I was quite amazed by the very low prices of food at Pek Kio. Most of the other days we just ate at TeeTee which isn't too bad either, though boring.

The test was dreadfully stressful, not helped by the fact that during almost lecture we had the lecturer would give us advice about the test, things like "You must just keep talking, because if you don't talk we can't give you marks. Must learn to describe skin lesions!" etc, and making us all very tense. I ended up being rather flustered for my long case and viva because the stuff I had prepared well for (like psoriasis, erythroderma, genital discharge, ulcers etc) didn't match the stuff I was asked during the test. But oh well one of the testers was rather nice and encouraging and kept saying "Good" even when I stammered and made several fatal mistakes, so it wasn't all that bad. Just hope I can pass. On hindsight I really should have been more conscientious with my studying, I really don't think I took the posting very seriously, sigh.

I think the Derm posting also pressed all my vanity buttons, and now I keep thinking about moisturisers and sunblock and worrying about whether I'll get lentigenes when I get old haha.

Next up, Ortho at AnnYouH. There are indications my personal tutor will be S.N. I don't know whether that will be a good thing or bad thing, haha.

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Have been eating some interesting food over the past few weeks. There's a new Food Junction in Bugis Junction on the third storey, and it has quite a number of interesting food stalls - I suppose food courts nowadays are going in the direction of Food Republic and having higher quality food as well as some novelty food, with spiffy interior decoration to create a fine eating ambience, in exchange for slightly increased prices. I tried this stall that sold Omu Fried Rice - traditionally rice fried with tomato sauce moulded into a mound and covered with a glistening yellow omelette and drizzled with tomato sauce. It was pretty good stuff; I've been craving for Omu Fried Rice for a long time for some strange reason and I was quite happy to see a stall selling it. There's another stall that sells Taiwanese favourites like 卤肉贩 and 贡丸, I'll have to try that some day.

On the day we were posted to DSC clinic we had lunch at this coffeeshop behind the clinic, where there's this famous laksa stall (结霜桥叻沙) which is simply amazing; I don't usually take spicy stuff easily but the laksa was not too spicy even after I mixed in the mound of chilli paste, and it was so delicious that three out of four of us decided to get another bowl of laksa because one just wasn't enough (it's two dollars for one small bowl that is barely filling).

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Some drama gushings:

I finally finished watching Nodame Cantabile two weeks ago, and the ending was so wonderfully sweet, particularly the part where Chiaki runs up to Nodame from behind and embraces her. Awww. I cried buckets. And Chiaki's final performance with the Rising Star Orchestra was so beautiful. It was a most superb Jap drama series, quite different from the ones I've been watching these past few years mainly because I laughed so much while watching it. It's probably attributable to the fact that it originates from a manga series, as the hyperbolic expressions and reactions of the characters and the cartoonish graphics that occasionally appear are so ridiculously hilarious. Hana Kimi is also similarly funny, so I've been laughing a lot while watching drama lately.

I've been listening a lot to the Nodame Cantabile pieces, and somehow at the end of every classic piece I always expect a voice to say "And that was Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra" or somesuch. I'm too used to only listening to classical pieces on Symphony 92.4.

Hana Kimi is another drama that is leeching my time away. I'm starting to find a favourite character in Nakao; he's a relatively minor character and doesn't get much screen time to develop, but he kind of reminds me of myself lol. And the actor that plays him, Kimura Ryou, was oddly given a rather similar role in Nodame - I wonder if he's being typecast, but he's still very funny and creepily convincing in such roles haha.

A lovely quote segment from Hana Kimi episode 5, between Nakao and Ashiya on the beach:

中央：「そばにいれのがそれでいい。笑った顔が見えてのが、それで十分。やっぱきもいかなぁ。」
芦屋：「あっ？なんか分かれ気がするなぁ。俺もさぁ、好きって言うのとは違うんだけど、そばで笑った顔見えたいと思う人はいるからさぁ。」
中央：「それが好きって事だよ。」

Don't know if I transcribed it accurately; spoken Jap kind of eludes me in its slangs sometimes. This scene made me slightly teary though.


That's all for now. I shall try to post more regularly.

Avaris / 9/30/2007 04:24:00 PM

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