Exams over :)

It's surreal that exams are over now. It's been the talk for almost the whole year. Third year finals. It was BIG. I'm just glad that it's over.

The past few weeks have been non-stop work. Balancing SSM commitments and revision is a task really. I thought it would be a doze at first, but not when I'm expected to produce a good piece of work.

I'm just getting myself to enjoy the beautiful British weather now, and of course my exciting holiday in Denmark in a few hours time. Yipee =D

2 down, 1 to go!

OSCE's done!!!

Well, not the most jubilant moment just yet. There are certain things I could have done better. But nothing can change now. Will definitely reflect on them after exams and do better in future OSCEs. At least now I know how it's like to do an OSCE here. Not very much different from the ones we had back home, just that things have to be done quicker and more is expected out of us. Fair enough - 3rd year - we're supposed to be able to come up with sensible differential diagnoses (on the spot! in 5 minutes!).

Anyway, it's cramming time for the final written paper on Friday. Read read read...and it's annoying how the weather has been so beautiful when we're having exams. Hope it'll stay that way after exams. Lying on the grass, cup of tea, book...how nice :)

I can do it!

Oh revision!

Looking out of my window.
How I wish I could be out there in the SUN.

Positive thinking.

Countdown.
This time next week.
Tea & Danish pastries in Aarhus (by the harbour) =D

I can do it!

Being adult

In medical school, it is extremely easy to be overwhelmed by the ocean of information we need to browse through, most of which we do need to retain to be qualified. At this stage, it's about knowing a bit of everything, and probably everything about some things. Doing this can be extremely stressful.

What is adult learning?

Learning is lifelong; adult learning is about identifying your own learning issues or objectives, and setting feasible targets to achieve them.

words of wisdom from Dr P

It is very true indeed. No one really controls our learning these days. It's all about self-initiative. The keener you are (OR show) in the clinics, wards and theatres, the more you'll learn from your experience in clinical training.

I aspire to adapt to this concept of learning: having my own objectives in life. Another important thing I've learned only after 2 terms is that there needs to be at least ONE work-free day per week where the day has no association to Medicine. Having a break and not feeling guilty about it will make the learning week more efficient.

So for the new term --> work hard on weekdays, PLAY harder on weekends :)

Random thought of the day.

Easter Experience

Lent ends today and nope I didn't give anything up in particular. Will probably think of one for next year. Chocolate will be too difficult for sure, especially at the rate I'm going now. To be fair, it's fuel for exam revision :) Otherwise, I won't be on such a high dose (right!).

On a Tuesday evening, about 40 days ago, it was a happy day worth remembering. Lots of flour, eggs, sugar and milk...plus fruits, honey, golden syrup, double cream, nutella, etc were brought together to make it a Pancake Tuesday! Had a kitchen party at the halls - nothing else but pancakes. YUM! I remembered being TOO full, and Moira trying to make the biggest pancake of the night. Fun.

Pancake brings happiness!

If it wasn't for exam revision, it would have been a great holiday weekend. Like my lovely cousin Jin who's all tanned now after her amazing trip immersed in the Portugese and Spanish warmth, I'd probably be out and about in the fine spring weather we have now. I'm still amazed (and probably jealous) by the tan she's gotten. Nice! But not long from now, I will be enjoying my Danish pastries by the harbour.

So met up with Jin for a nice Sunday dinner in Putney by the river. We decided to head to The Real Greek for a change. It was a lovely walk from the tube station across the bridge. Enjoyed the view of the quiet town by the riverside with the sun setting past 8pm now.

Fancy Greek dinner

It's also Jin's birthday tomorrow. Happy Birthday Jin!

Got back to the halls tired - it must be postprandial sleepiness. But I must survive some revision at least. Probably going through more bones, muscles, nerves, and blood vessels (more than my liking) - which reminds me why Internal Medicine shall be my preferred option, for now at least.

Then, Greg popped into my room with a surprise!

He's gotten me a HUGE easter egg. How nice! Another reason why living in halls is so fun.

I shall enjoy my egg then!

Happy Easter

"No less than an excellent..."

says Dr P.

Had a meeting with my SSM supervisor before lunch today. She had a read through the first draft of my work and thought it was alright, but I seem to lack the X factor to really impress her just yet. She keeps hinting that there is still ample room for my analytical mind to feature in my write-up. At this moment, it's not yet an "excellent". In her records, only 2 out of 50 students over the past many years who've done SSMs with her had scored that top mark.

Pressure!

It is indeed very difficult to put more effort into my write-up in this period with the killer final exams coming up in less that 2 weeks now. Plus excellent or not, it won't count towards my final degree while exams count =S

Why bother then? Settle for a pass, good pass or very good? I wouldn't want that, would I? Difficult to say. There's always that inner drive to strive for excellence in everything I do, so I shall push my way through. How in the world am I going to do this --> I'm not sure. Let's pray hard and hope for the best.

Stress.

My dearest 5000 words.
Make them matter.

Daru meets London

The London Eye by night

Good old buddy Daru has finally arrived in the UK for his clinical elective. He's still the same hyper (in the good way) funny Japanese mate I know since I first became his 'working buddy' in IM a few years ago. Can't believe he's in his 5th year now! Time flies. Very soon he'll be a doctor. How exciting!

Somehow, he brings back memories of times in Brunei and it was just fun talking about all the fun things which happened in Kagawa. Memories of the little Kagawa trip we had back in 2007 :)

Good times.

So I gathered the people he knows from St George's and set up a dinner date to welcome him to London and UK. It feels like coming to London for the first time again when we brought him around to the landmarks of London. Sometimes, it's easy to forget how beautiful a place can be.

Dinner at Hare & Tortoise

(and satisfying my craving for salmon sashimi was just great!)

Salmon Box

Hope he'll enjoy his stay here in the UK. I'm sure he'll have fun in the wards and picking up all those clinical skills he's been keen to do all this while.

On that note, I should seriously concentrate on exam revision now. It scares me how close we are to the real thing!

Impossible is nothing.

Let's hope for the best!

Revision time :)

Sainsbury's basics
88p smoked salmon shavings
--> my new discovery, thanks to Lisa for her creative invention of smoked salmon and egg fried rice. Reinvented that tonight, adding in garlic and mushroom, and cooked with butter. Yum!

The other half of the packet had already been used to make my smoked salmon and mushroom omelette for my lunch yesterday. Good stuff :)

Finally produced and printed the first draft of my SSM. Hopefully there are not too many changes that I need to make when my dear Dr P sees it on Thursday. I expect some grilling of course! Will need to have a mental preparation of how to present those journal critically to her while I'm on my 280 bus ride to the hospital.

Set.

I should really crack on with revision now!

Fancy grocery shopping?

Yes?

There might be some Japanese traits in you! An international online survey conducted by ACNielsen ShopperTrends showed that 58% of Japanese do enjoy and are excited about shopping for groceries...and that's the highest percentage among those surveyed, with Hongkongers being the least enthusiastic.

Ironically, I do love grocery shopping. I reckon it is therapeutic! Not that I'm anyhow Japanese. It's just a really good mini-vacation away from work. That's probably why I don't seem to find it a chore. It's also a productive use of my time as what I end up buying will feed me and make me happy for the next few days at least. Plus, happy thoughts run through my mind when I look at those fresh produce and think what amazing dishes I can make out of them. Colourful packages too --> chocolates, fruits, biscuits, cakes etc. Yummy!

A food lover perhaps.

I've always loved going into bakeries as well, even when I don't even need anything from there. Just the smell of freshly-baked bread and pastries stimulate my amygdala and prefrontal cortex...Too medical perhaps. But yeah, you know what I mean =)

London's a great place to be when you enjoy food. There's such a huge repertoire of culinary specialists from different parts of the world who can simply tantalize your taste buds. Most of the times, it's a price too high to pay for students like myself. But well, sometimes digging out a couple more quids to taste the difference is worth it.

Food for thought.
Comfort food.
We are what we eat.

Craving

Saturday in Tooting

Sun's out, weather's warm --> lovely Saturday

Decided I should head down to read my journals in the sun.
*bask in the sun*


Tooting at 6.30pm


So made myself a fancy dinner tonight as a motivation.

Oven-baked chicken breast stuffed in green pepper

And now:
Write up, write up!

Work on Friday night

Didn't manage to get a good night sleep last night. Probably my sleep-wake cycle is really confused by my poor sleep hygiene over the past week. Oh well, what to do - trying to work at times I think best. *I think I might like night shifts better than morning/day work*

Anyway, it's a bright day coming up! Started my day with a nice lunch. It's one of my favourite easy meals - chicken with mushroom dark rice...easy and yummy!

My chicken with mushroom dark rice

Then I was all ready to meet Prof L. I must say that he's amazing! Took an hour of his Friday afternoon to answer my questions about my SSM when he is not even my tutor. Thanks to him, things are much clearer now =D

Prof L's explanation:
This will get me going with my SSM tonight
(Immunology looks fun, doesn't it?)

Managed to get a few things done while I was out and about today:
- hair cut in Chinatown
- bought a new travelling bag for my weekend travels and tennis tour --> Adidas =)
- pampered myself with a slice of blueberry cheese cake from Starbucks
- had good Thai dinner with the Brunei hall gang
- took down some travel notes in Waterstones for Aarhus
- last but not least --> week's supply of groceries from good old Sainsbury!

It's all good.

Strive

Will get a good warm shower now and start working on my report again. Seems endless. Let's do it! x

Chocolate fun!

Andy bought the flat a cake today =D It's a chocolate fudge one. Yummy! How fun. Love random days like that. The nurses are finishing their term tomorrow, so there are more reasons to celebrate.

Happy evening

I wonder whether I could well be overdosed with chocolate and tea --> things which get me going on with work.

1300 words for now, more to come later tonight I hope. I think I have lost my bet with Suba; guess I'm treating her a meal when I'm up in Bradford next month. Can't wait for exams and SSM to be done! <-- I think I've mentioned this line way too many times already.

On another note, I'm quite excited about meeting Prof L tomorrow as well in central to finally get my head around certain bits and pieces that I simply just don't understand about my Immunology project now. Then probably pop by to do some shopping and perhaps a nice Friday evening meal. London is bright and happy today.

Hope this is a sign of a great summer ahead.

Happy thoughts

Last lecture-day for the term

Just had 8 hours of lectures today! All the lecturers said the same thing at the start of their lectures: "I'm sorry I have to rush through this due to the time", "I usually teach this topic in more than 2 lectures", "Back in my days, we had a term of this", "You'll have to go back and read more about this", "I'll put them up on Moodle as time is running out". Medical education is evolving today. For the better or worse? Well I suppose some guidance is better than none. SDL works for me, so I'm not complaining much.

I'm basically fully saturated now having gone through such a diverse range of lectures today. Feels like there's so much I don't know for exams coming up real soon, now that it's April! Everyone in lecture today is really stressed out about it as well, talking about cramming and what to focus on. *No pressure* I believe I work best at my own pace, and I shall do so.

Glad I had that cup of tea at Moira's...and having non-medical conversation just gets life a bit more normal. It's funny how easy it is to slip back into talks about medical stuffs when you're around medical people. I guess that's probably due to the fact that we spend most of our life literally reading medical stuffs and living in a medical environment.

Lisa's got me more excited about going back home this summer. There's this plan of Andy and her coming over for a vacation. Just thinking about it - there's lots I want to do. It'll be amazing! That's a must-plan trip after my exams!

For now, I've got to get going with writing up. 750words down...much more to go!

Perseverance