Looking forward to Dec 2010

A few of my friends graduated on dec 5th this year. They were from the vet, med and dentistry faculties.



Myself, fong chin, huiyin (from malaysian medical royalty haha) and yu-tang and dae hoon.
The facade in the background is one of the few backdrops that look remotely victorian (or gothic?!) and hence alot of the new grads choose to take photographs against the backdrop. Most of the buildings in Melbourne uni are either very plain brick buildings or modern buildings of modest architectural design that don't really make a very nice backdrop.

Eefung and jun jia gowning up!!! Our graduation gown does not include the motar board. They safety pin the lapels onto your clothes, so I must remind myself not to wear a super nice, brand new top next time cos 4 holes are going to be pricked into it anyway.

yay!!! flowers from me! I'm sorry I know the flowers were a little troublesome for you to carry through the graduation ceremony. Very cumbersome stuff, but at least you have them so you can pose with them for pictures! My medicine friends hardly got any flowers. -__-''

Eefung's hard work.

Eefung offered to cook me meals for the 1+ week that I was having my university rotations and she had finished exams. So touched! Thanks for looking after me eefung during that time!! My friends were very jealous of the food you cooked for me you know. It was a zillion times better than the instant mee that I made for myself after you left. Your breakfast pastries were a treat!!!! Thank you so much. :))




My cereal. Not made my eefung hahaha. The sticks look like rabbit food right.

Plain bread, to go with.....

YUMMY CURRY!!!!

Very very good scones. So much nicer than miss marples which seems like sponge cake.

A noodley lunch!

Nice chocolate custard thingy. I'm on facebook early in the morning.

Super nice pastry. Thanks for waking up so early to make this, eefung!

Rice with chicken cutlet

Soba and fillet!! with super nice mushrooms and tomatos and cabbage:;))

Prob the best food i've eaten at kendall. :)) THANK YOU.

strawberry picking anyone?

It's late spring/summer now, and the straw berries and cherries are popping out and are ready for picking!!! We seized the opportunity and went to mornington peninsula to pick some fruit. It was great fun. The berries were as fresh as they could get, so firm, no bruises, and so sweet. I think the small ones are alot firmer than the large ones simply cos there's a smaller core. We bought chocolate sauce for dipping those buggers in them.


does anyone know why birds don't eat the strawberries though? it was an open field. i was thinking it could be the plastic bag which they place over the soil that stops the birds from landing nearby and eating the fruits, but eefung says the plastic bag probaly protects the strawberries from the soil (which also makes sense)

i did see some snails, and some strawberries that were half eaten that were still attached to the stalk. :) i can just imagine some marsupial entering the field in the middle of hte night and munching on the strawberry.





we had to wear plastic bags on our feet because it was muddy. gosh I'm very short. :(

headed off to ashcrombe maze after that. a beautiful 25acre garden that had zillions of flowers.

fairies in the woodlands! it was really really very beautiful.

tempting eh?

1st time ice skating.

I learnt that socks are a necessity to protect yourself from foot fungus and disgusting blisters.




blister on my right foot:




blister on my left foot.

one week later the blisters are still there. the skin is slowly sloughing off. my skin is really very delicate. which kinda sucks cos i can't wear ALOT of shoes that are pretty.

Kendall BBQ

So post exams, and we're going pretty crazy with the free time we have. We spend our days on our hospital rotations, and in the evening, we do things like watch movies at werribee cinema (poor quality) and bbq.

this bbq was pretty good, apart from the fact that 1.5h into the bbq the tray caught fire, burnt all the foil, skewers and killed the bbq. the leftover skewers were then stir fried the next day. har har.


thats anthony (my oral examiner and also a vet) trying to cover the fire with sand.





some fish that ton and szymon speared at wilson's prom!

did i say that there was a fire? that's ton btw.

the kebabs. skewered by me me me! and a few others. haha.

dennis, joanna and eva.

theres a running joke that ting is pregnant (has been for a year now). heres ton listening for baby sounds.

kelene and tracy!

i know i used to study mep and i'm supposed to be good at music but i failed miserably at playing anything worth listening to. we tried sight reading jay chou's song. i was the left hand, kel was the right. epic FAIL.

tadah! after a tiring day of standing during surgery. (AS IF). surgery rotation was pretty quiet. haha. one surgery a day if we were lucky haha.

surgery mates!!!! love you guys!

Camberwell market.

Oh gosh could werribee get any more boring. I actually have to blog to kill time.

ok so here's camberwell market with jiayuan. as usually i forgot to take pictures of me and my friends but here's pictures of this market where people sell old things and call them vintage. its a really small market. If i were more fashion conscious, I might have been able to unearth some rare good buys, but all i bought was an owl necklace that i presume was brand new because I dont' like wearing hand me downs. Though i did take an old dress from horace's sister since he was going to chuck it out anyway.





wallets, anyone?

cute cards.

to the rodeo, anyone?

Cherry eye.

I bought a cherry

with a weird tumourous growth today. look. its like a nipple on a cherry. i think it was supposed to have a twin.


it happened to be the best cherry.
so firm. so fleshy. but with a tumour. so i chucked it out.

Do baby pigs drink water?

Jan: do baby pigs drink water?
Dev: haha why.. why not.. of course they drink water (or something to taht effect)
Jan: or else i can't say they suffer from salt toxicity if there's no water!
everyone gets curious and starts laughing at the initial question and starts discussing
Jan: Nilhan! (who just had a son) do babies drink water?
Nilhan: Babies at 3 months drink water!
Jan: weird shifty eye look.. that's not much use.. 3 months in baby time.
Nilhan: So in pigs it's 3 weeks!
Sally Szymon Raul Jack myself dev horace champ and vic start laughing...

i'm screwed la.....

I really think i've lost my opportunity to graduate with a first class honours... i realy messed up my exam papers on mon and wed (dogs and cats and horses) shit la... what a waste... i def def cannot get a h1 for those 2 subjects. lets see if i'm right in a month's time. i don't think i can pull up my marks with the nexgt 6 papers which will end on 13nov fri.

i shall be the first scholar who doesn't cut the 2nd upper honours limit. hai. i'm always the first to do such things. can i be called a maverick?

Parental comfort.

I think my parents know I am feeling depressed. My father told me that he knew I would be alright for exams. Normally he says stuff that would make me heaps more discouraged. This was a refreshing change. Maybe they know I'm doomed already> i'm really unprepared. i dunno why Im still blogging when i should be mugging.

Escape Plan

i begin horse week tomorrow. I'm not excited. I am fearful. My plan is to run sidewards from the horse if it decides to kick. I hope I'm fast enough and won't trip over my own boots.

Irony

I watch grey's anatomy and yet I'm so lousy at surgery. hm. maybe I should just stop watching it and the inverse relationship will go in the opposite direction?

Balance

when you don't ask enough questions, they call you quiet.
when you ask more questions, they ask you to think before asking. or say that they won't spoonfeed me.

I don't think my questions were dumb/unintelligent. What's their problem.

how now brown cow?

Pig Tongue Soup

My friend Joanna cooked pig tongue soup today. There were 3 pig's tongues floating in the water, and I had never tried it before. I thought it looked pretty gross, but I bet it tasted better than what I had prepared for my own dinner (veges and minced chicken, suitable for the dogs at ICU ward, but I added oyster sauce)


The conversation w joanna and myself went something like this :

Jan: I've never tried pig tongue soup before. I think you're more asian than me. THe most exotic thing Ive tried is pig intestine... oh and i like pig kidney.

joanna: omg you eat pig kidney? that's so disgusting!! the kidney and the liver gets rid of all the toxins and it makes the shit of the body... and you eat it? that's so disgusting!

jan: HEY you eat pig's tongue ok! you can't judge!! you eat pig's tongue! that's worse!
joanna: that's not worse... pig's tongue is the start of the GIT tract... it doesn't make shit. Its just like pork.. muscle, just that it can move! your pig kidney and liver makes shit!

jan: no it doesn't! anyway after you boil it all the toxins go away.
joanna: doesn't work like that!

jan: you eat pig's tongue.. that's worse.




and I still think its worse. The pig's tongue were floating in the boiling water, w the torus pyloricus for all to see, and papillae floating in the water.

joanna added that you can't eat teh papillae. still don't understand why not. you're already eating the whole tongue!

Orhbiang party at Hanting's and Chai's house.

On the last day of school I trained all the way from Werribee to Clayton and then hopped into Jia's car, chips in tow, after a fearful 40minute wait at the train station (melbourne train stations are notorius for gang fights and beating up of poor innocent bystanders). Just thankful that the lighting there was alot brighter than other train stations and there were heaps of commuters around.



The theme was a very good theme: Orhbiang. No black or white clothing allowed. I regretted not dressing to the max as my wardrobe was extremely well equipped for this theme.



I only knew slightly less than half the crowd gg there and no thanks to jia mavis charmaine hahaha they didn't intro me to any of them so i was forced to put on a smile and pretend to be an extrovert (or maybe i am.. i don't feel like one) and pull up my confidence level and say hi to everyone! hahahhahha....

Everyone was dressed so much better than me!! In terms of the bright colours, etc. Our outfits made most photographs pop!



We spent the night either chatting or playing Rock band (for like 5 hours). THese meddies are extremely good at Rock band. I have this feeling that they gather every evening or so to practice.

Charmaine buried by baby pink balloons that added a whimsical effect to the house which was already very nice and well furnished with good taste!!!

Whee so colourful. I love Iris's "costume", esp her pink leggings which only cost $2.50 from cotton on!!

me, jia and hanting.. As you can see my outfit was only a bit more gaudy than ordinary. bleah.Should have put in more effort.

Mini disco ball.

The oven produced so much smoke while reheating the meatballs/chicken that the fire alarm went off!!

We left at 2am. Hopefully the ChaosCulprits think of an equally fantastic theme for the next party and hopefully I can go as well!

Nuggets

Something from the supermarket.

Fruit platter

Charm's and jia's and mavis's hard work!

I contributed doritos and dip. It was really nice!! Would have prepared somethign better but then I came from school all the way from Werribee i.e. from west to eaast so I didn't have much time.

I'm so slow.

I'm such a dumbass!!!!!!


Dr Tina asked us if we knew where a Wood's Lamp was kept in the clinic. Tom and Eben shook their heads. I heard her say "Wood Slab" and asked whata woodslab was. Then she looked at me quizzically and said, "oh its ok i'll get it myself you guys prob don't konw where it is." Something to thta effect.


When she left the room I asked tom and eben what a woodslab was and they said it was used to detect ring worm. I then realised she meant the wood's lamp, but assumed its nickname was the "woodslab".

When she returned to the room with the Wood's Lamp, I cheerily said "OH! I DIDN'T KNOW THAT WAS CALLED THE WOOD SLAB!"

*omg i'm so slow

anyway,dr tina then said, yeah its even got a label here, just in case people don't know.


And then it dawned on me. She had been saying wood's lamp all the time. My ears were playing tricks on me.


ogmomgomgogmog she must think I'm an idiot.






And then, I couldn't take blood from the jugular. I tried, but needed to redirect the needle ALOT and try twice to do it.... hai... and one of the referrel vets or was it a nurse? i still can't tell. anyway she was so bossy. she was trying to teach me how to feel the jugular, and i think i felt it, but she said, no you're not feeling it. ARGH anyway the point is that I am lousy at taking blood from veins. i think i'm stupid. I've done it countless times, ok lah.. maybe around 3 times from doggies and I still can't get it. I think next time when I do take blood I will try to put the needle in slowly, don't push it all the way down to the hub, and apply negative pressure all the way down so you konw when you hit the vein. Arhhhhghghghghhghghhgghghghghh i feel so lousy about myself.

Wow my mother knows myself better than I do and she knows the current situation better than I do even in Melbourne... amazing! Should listen to her more often.

Graffiti

This is Jacob's awesome portrait of a sick dog! He drew it on the Graffiti application on facebook, and the playback function shows the amazingness of this drawing in action. took him 2-3 hours...

He is now my graffiti shifu. not that i use that application very often anyway. I mostly use it to make garish looking happy birthday cards. I used to think i was artistic , now I highly doubt it.

python love!

OH WOW we ultrasounded a CARPET PYTHON with cardiomegaly today. you could actually see a bump where the heart is! something like when a snake eats a biggish animal and you see a bulge where the prey has lodged in its digestive tract. This is only the 2nd snake that Dayle had ultrasounded and she was so jumpy with the snake hahaha. Well the snake was nice and placid at first, but I don't think it liked us holding it belly side up for the ultrasound and after we put it in the bag to let the sedatives work (cos it was so wriggly and it couldn't be ultrasounded properly) it got into striking position. eeks. After 10 minutes, we opened the bag again to check if the snake was sedated and it wasn't. We tried getting it out and it immediately pointed its neck straight at me... It kept coming towards me.. I was so spooked... I don't konw if that's what it does when its planning to strike or if it just wanted to smell me but I don't like snakes looking at me dead in the eye and just stretching out towards me so I quickly backed off as fast as possible without sudden movements.. could just imagine getting kissed by the snake with fang marks to show.


and then half way through the ultrasound the sedatives finally kicked in and we managed to get a good image of its bulging heart.

Ag Animals.

We vaccinated 68 Brahman calves today.. they are quite cute. The lady was quite nice. I suck at manning the head bail. I let 3 calves escape out of 8 or so. HAHAHAHAHAHA. that means I only managed a less than 50% vaccination rate. hahahahaha. big woops. Thankfully I wasn't the only one who made the mistake. At the end of the day because we had to catch the calves that escaped (and thankfully MIke was there yarding the ones that escaped), they were quite traumatised, so Angus Campbell our young lecturer kinda told us to let him man the head bail instead hahahahaha. didn't trust us to not make the same mistake again. Pete however, volunteered and he's pretty good.


My first time vaccinating calves. And I'm about to graduate soon. Thats pretty sad. People who are studying vet science, please try to seek work experience in all sorts of animals ok??? Don't plan your work placements around your visits back to your home country unless u can be sure that your home country has as much to offer you....