lunar.soliloquy

Yup, still slaving away at assignments. Although a bit closer to finishing now. Had observed case history taking assessment yesterday which went all good despite the fact that I had to sit around for an hour before I got to see my patient. Not good for the nerves. Poor patient I got had been interviewed 4 times before me, too. Bet she was so over this "Hi I'm a year 3 med student" crap by the time I got to her even though she didn't show it, fortunately for me.

Today we were learning about sexual history taking and practising it on each other, which was pretty damn awkward. I dunno even where to start when your patient says "I think I'm pregnant" and you're supposed to ask about their sex life. God, I don't even know what the hell people do when they do that sort of thing. Especially when it comes to promiscuity. Sigh, why do these things have to even be real issues...

One thing about Auckland's train service: IF YOUR TRAIN IS DELAYED FOR MORE THAN 20 MINUTES NEVER EVER EVER GET ON THE FIRST ONE THAT COMES. Just wait for the next one, unless standing around a random train station in the middle of nowhere tickles your fancy for some reason. Yeah, they just kick you off in, say, Otahuhu and leave you to rot for like 30mins til the next train comes to take you to wherever you were supposed to be going. Guess its no issue if you're just going a short distance but I've had that happen to me twice in a row now on my way to Middlemore. So sad they don't even give passengers compensation for the 1 hour of their life they've just wasted on standing in the middle of nowhere and still demand tickets on the train that arrives an hour late. I heard even Starbucks gives you free coffee if they're too slow with your order or they spill your coffee over the NZ Herald you were reading. Sure, the train people will apologise anonymously over the irritating loudspeakers (which I swear are just automated recordings) but I guess they're not apologetic enough to actually do anything for these poor people who were foolish enough to put faith in Auckland's public transport system.

Recently I've been trying to get into some more mainstream music instead of listening to jpop and anime/game music all day. Guess it's just getting a bit old, and sometimes I actually do wish to listen to music with lyrics that I actually understand. For some reason I'm getting drawn towards pop/teen/girl music, namely Taylor Swift and Avril Lavigne. I guess I'm kinda liking the messages that come across in the lyrics and they do have really nice voices. Don't judge me for it, I'm just trying to find stuff I like and I don't really know many artists. I try to listen to the radio on occassion but I can't stand the majority of the stuff that comes on and some of it's just real heavy.

My thoughts seem all over the place tonight. Not really doing a very structured entry tonight unfortunately. Just can't be bothered trying to make everything flow nicely like I usually try to do. Sometimes I reckon I'd write more entries if I didn't worry so much about making it nice and easy to read but then again that's one of the fun things I find in keeping this blog. But when I'm tired and in a "can't be f**ked" mood like I am in now you're going to get something like this. I duno how many people actually read this blog, but my suspicions are that more people read this thing than the absence of comments suggests. Probably should be more careful about what I put on here, really.

Done for the night, turning in now.

So I'm finally underway with my Critical Review Article and by god, it feels good. Don't know why I always have to pick hard topics for myself (this will be yet my 3rd assignment related to stem cells) and why I don't just go do some clinical trial-based topic like everyone else. It would certianly save myself all the time digging around for stuff that we're not taught in class (eg. sox2, lin28, nanog and other [insert random combination of letters and numbers] genes etc. @@) but the sad thing is I actually find this stuff kinda interesting. I guess the idea of regenerating body organs is pretty awesome even though it seems it's going to be a while til we get to that stage. No, I'm not thinking of cloning people (although it would be tempting, lol jks) but the truth is there is quite a lot of potential in this field. Being able to transplant organs without being on immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of your life would be a pretty big step, keeping in mind the shortage of organ donors in the world.

Ah I duno what I'm doing rambling on about random med stuff, I guess I rarely get interested in my studies. Not that my interest in stem cells is huge (its complexity outweighs all the coolness of it, tbh) but it's certainly something that would be really really cool if it did get to the clinical setting. I'll leave the lab research to the PhD. MedSci's, though.

So it's been almost a month since I last posted here. Just goes to show that procrastination has no limits. Especially when combined with Starcraft 2 and the fact that my sister went and bought herself a $2700 computer and was out of the house (at work) most of the time I was on break. Now that I've done my league placements, completed the campaign on the hardest difficulty and done as many of those little achievement tasks as I could, hopefully things will start getting back on track. Sure do have a lot of things I need to be doing at this time of semester other than SC2, that's for sure.