mikorikawa

Well it feels like years since my last post. I wonder how long I'm going to be able to keep up this blogging before I get lazy again. I guess I start blogging when I start having too much time on my hands. Even though I've been on break for over 2 months (yay for uni holidays) I seem to have been able to keep myself busy with something. Well, time to get back into it! You'll see that I've given my blog a little clean-up so it looks more visually appealing (well to me anyway). I've changed the title to something a little more meaningful too, heh. I guess I get bored of things too quickly these days.

There's so much to catch up with on here I don't know where to start! Well first things first. I passed all my 5th year exams! Woohoo, bring on Trainee Intern year (and the money, $_$)! I start on Monday in Rotorua Hospital. Kind of nervous too, I guess. Being that one step above a medical student, harbouring that extra responsibility and all that. I worry about being able to contribute to the medical team and not being a burden like I'm used to being. Especially after all those weeks of holiday I'd convinced myself I'd earned. Even though I've been trying to do some study these last few days I still feel like I'm scraping the surface of the endless volume of information I should know after 5 years of medical school. What's worse is that we might have to sing a Waiata (Maori song) on orientation day. Someone save me.

On another note, interning in Rotorua means that I get to freeload off my parents for a WHOLE YEAR (for those of you who don't know, I spent my intermediate and high school years in Rotorua, and my parents never moved since i went to uni)! Hooray. I know for most Aucklanders this is probably just a given for most of their university life but it isn't for me. It's nice to not have to worry about chores, grocery shopping and cooking every single day. Sure, there'll be time that I'll have to do the odd dishes, vacuuming or gardening around the place but that's nothing compared to living away in an apartment. And all the money I'll save. One the downside I won't be able to see little mikorikawa as much. I'm sure both of us will be having a busy year anyway. I guess there's always skype and other communication modalities ot keep in touch.

So what have I been spending the past 2 months doing? Well for starters I've been doing a bit of random gaming. I finished Kingdom Hearts, Halo and Halo 2. Old games, I know. Just felt like playing other than the ol' Starcraft 2. I bought a month of RuneScape membership for lols. Gosh that game has changed. Trying to monetize everything now. Used to be such a good game, now its just like the rest of them, although it does hold a bit of nostalgia for me . I got pretty bored over the holiday. Mikorikawa had a log going on at that time so didn't get to spend much quality time with her. Ah well, that's life. Can't have everything I guess (but doesn't hurt to try).

  















We did however manage to watch some movies together! We watched some movies from the Avengers series (Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America) and going to re-watch the Avengers with all that backstory fresh in our minds! I quite like superhero movies. We also watched Wreck it Ralph! I don't usually enjoy kids' movies, but this one was an exception.

   



I also watched some anime. Of the ones I watched, Sword Art Online and Accel World stood out particularly in terms of storyline  Definitely some of the best anime I've ever seen, along with Fate Zero, Death Note and Code Geass. I also watched Highschool of the Dead which is a good series if you like lots of bloody graphic zombie violence ^_^

Sword Art Online!

Accel World!
And Blogger just crashed (and somehow saving a blank copy of this post), making me type out all of that text AGAIN. How annoying. Oh well hope that doesn't happen again. Now I've lost my train of thought. I just re-read my last blog post 3 months ago and remembered how I'd wanted to buy an iPhone 5. Well in the end I decided to save myself $300 and get a Samsung Galaxy S3. What can I say, its an excellent phone and not regretting the purchase one bit. It is a bit big but the huge screen size is really great when browsing the web and using maps, which I do so a bit when I'm out. And it's got NFC (which iPhone 5 doesn't) which I reckon is the way of the future. Apple will probably release their next iPhone with NFC as its main selling point, knowing them.

There was a whole lot more I wanted to add to this post but I'm just going to end it here while I'm ahead.


A New Year, a New Look

Posted on

Saturday, January 5, 2013

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Had a pretty laid back day on Saturday involving chores, window shopping and Starcraft. Unfortunately ice skating was cancelled which was kinda disappointing but what can one do. I guess I'll have to go one of these days with mikorikawa. Still have those GrabOne vouchers from some time ago to use. I spent a good deal of yesterday looking around for more tidy clothes for hospital wear but didn't have much success due to the difficulties of meeting my 3 criteria for buying clothes. Can't remember if I mentioned them before but they are:

a) affordable
b) good fit
c) looks nice

Guess it's pretty much common sense but you wouldn't believe how difficult it is to find clothing that meets all 3 of these criteria. First of all, my selection is already limited to about 20% of the stock since only a few styles come in my size (ie. small/28 inch pants/size 37 shirts). Even if there are stuffs that fit me chances are they fail either both or one of the other criteria. I did manage, however to find a black dress shirt at Hallensteins which I purchased. I still haven't entirely defined my sense of style for formal wear and still experimenting with colours and styles. Normally I just go with light coloured shirts and dark pants but it doesn't feel entirely "me" for some reason. Guess I never quite managed to find a style I liked even after looking for the past year and a bit. Damn me and my fussiness.

Yesterday, mikorikawa and I spent the day together which was really nice. Time with her is always quality time ^^. We did meet up with others at Giapo for the annual chocolate day event but after all that chocolate I don't think I'll do it again (since you can easily spend $15 at a place like Movenpick to get a gourmet dessert). Chocolate isn't really my thing tbh. A little can be nice but in all honesty, to me that stuff is just refrigerated nutella with random bits and pieces added in to make it look "special". I can easily mix together wasabi and nutella in my own kitchen, thank you very much. Instead of sticking around getting sick on chocolate we decided to grab a savoury snack instead - McDonald's fries with Burgerfuel aioli. The $1 large fries coupon with any McD's purchase isn't half bad for a mid-day snack, and goes really well with aioli. Burgerfuel has good aioli you can get for 50c, not sure if BK lets you buy it individually but I guess that could be another option.

Watched Despicable Me in the morning yesterday (yes, I hadn't watched it yet) which was really entertaining. I guess hearing that the second one was coming out soon made me feel I wanted to see the first one in case I ended up watching the second sometime. Nothing worse than spending money on a movie you don't understand because you don't have the continuity from the previous one (although some movies stand alone quite well, but this is rare in my experience). Haven't actually seen a movie in a long time. It's nice watching a movie after having not seen one in ages, for some reason. Guess I feel I can appreciate it more that way.

Today I attended the paediatric orientation at ACH which was kinda dull in the morning with all the random lectures (particulary the Maori health one that seemed kinda pointless). The afternoon was good since we got into smaller groups and practiced some clinical skills which we'd be using in our attachment. Seems like a lot to know so better start studying ASAP. There seem to be quite a few case histories that need to be handed in for this run, so probably try and knock them off early on to save time to prepare for the mini-CEX's at the end of the run. We got provided free morning and afternoon tea today, something rarely seen in Auckland Uni's medical school programme:


Not raising any objections here ^^ *nom*

Heh, sometimes I feel too old to be getting excited over free food. But I'm allowed to be, aren't I? =)

Probably try and do something productive today, and figure out a way to Waitakere Hospital for tomorrow *gulp* I get nervous before heading into uncharted territory. I try not to show it though. I'm a med student, I'm not allowed to dislike change, since it's inevitable that I'll be moving around hospitals and stuff. Harden up, this is med school, some people would say. Hopefully I don't get too lost tomorrow ><"

Good weekend, back to work today

Posted on

Monday, March 5, 2012

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Another month gone, and only 2 months before finals. That's pretty damn scary. I told myself I wouldn't fail anything this year, and I want to keep that promise to myself. I think those 9 weeks in Rotorua gave me a lot of self-reflection time to think about my life and what's important to me in this world. I realise that up til now I've really been skimming the surface of medicine and not truly engaging in it as well as I should have been. My lack of knowledge during many of my clinical attachments supports this. If only I took things a little more seriously maybe I wouldn't have to feel like this. But the past can't be changed, as I keep telling myself indefinitely. I did have a lot of fun earlier on this year, though. Hanging with kuroi_rose and the anime club, playing mtg and starcraft with the engineering group, and of course, cruising around Auckland with Pochama, Kurosei and Mikorikawa...I do miss doing all those things. *sigh*, priorities.

That isn't to say I haven't been having any fun lately, although 2 weeks of campus learning was a bit of a drag, I must say. I had my 21st birthday gathering last Friday which was a great night. It was really good seeing everybody after being away in Rotorua for so long, and made me appreciate what awesome people I have in my life. Although it was a pretty tiring night for me. At least all 25 people managed to fit in my apartment. It was also the first time since Mikorikawa and I were introduced to everyone as a couple. It was a new experience, being together in front of so many people. We also attended ice-skating yesterday together with friends. Going out with friends feels different now that I have Mikorikawa. I guess a lot of my attention is focused on her whereas before I'd go out of my way more to catch up with everyone else. Especially since she doesn't know many of my friends. It's sorta the same when I hang out with her friends, too, I feel. I don't want to distance myself from my friends just because I'm dating now, but sometimes I can't help it. I guess its one of those challenges that comes with being in a relationship.

At the moment I only have two things on my mind: study and spending time with Mikorikawa. Everything else seems unimportant. It's ridiculous to have such a one-tracked mind (or should I say, two-tracked) but I can't help but feel this way. I even feel like I'm wasting time writing this blog but I've been feeling so tired today from consecutive nights of poor sleep that nothing's going in. I don't know why but for some reason I've been getting real lousy sleep these past nights since coming back from Rotorua. Perhaps I should invest in some sleeping medications. It's getting to the point that entire days are going by with me feeling like rubbish throughout whereas usually I just lose the morning if I don't sleep well. Even taking a 2 hour nap didn't help. So annoying, having poor sleep ruin your day. Wish I could sleep like I could before. Enough ranting, I should probably stop wasting time and get on with something productive now.

Mikorikawa and I <3

Resolve

Posted on

Monday, September 19, 2011

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I suppose it's about time I wrote something here, since it's been about 2 months since my last post and circumstances have prevented me from keeping this thing updated.


My last few posts have been moderately suggestive of activity in my life that could not be disclosed due to the nature of this blog (ie. public). And what can I say, the 13th of June marks the day that I started dating mikorikawa ^^. I can't go into much detail about what's been going on these past 2 months but I can say that this has certainly been a new experience for me. Having a girlfriend has definitely opened my eyes to some of the flaws in my personality, heh. I'm still getting used to having someone; sometimes I do go about things as if I was single since it's just simply what I've been doing for so long. I've found I had to learn to re-evaluate previously familiar situations with this new context, otherwise I might end up being misinterpreted >< Such is the nature of this world, people do like to jump to conclusions rather quickly about such issues I find. Anyhow, it's a learning experience for me and I'm definitely going to do my best to make the most of it.

My mid-year break was largely spent studying and hanging out with mikorikawa and was possibly one of the most enjoyable 2 weeks of the year. 2 weeks of freedom, good company and moderate productivity; I can't recall the last time I felt so comfortable with my life and it goes without saying those two weeks went by very quickly. You might remember my post "My Type of Girl" from a while back, I honestly didn't think I'd find someone like her and I was quite prepared to enjoy single-dom for many, many more years. It's not that I didn't have confidence in myself as a person, but it was that my expectations were pretty damn specific. There really aren't many people who can understand me as a person and I've long accepted that reality. I just feel lucky to have mikorikawa since it's nice to be able to share your thoughts with someone who really understands and accepts you.

Uni's been pretty steady over the past few months although it has been hard for both of us since I've been down in Rotorua for most of the time doing Orthopaedics and now Medicine. Ortho was quite a relaxed and enjoyable run; it came to a surprise that that's the only ortho teaching we'll have in med school. I could do without the extra rheumatology, though, heh. Totally failed that station at the OSCE. Medicine has been really interesting and quite intellectually stimulating, although there's a hell of a lot to know and sometimes ward rounds go on for 6 hours! Lots to see and do, I'm already looking forward to doing medical runs as a House Officer xD you're always kept busy and there never seems to be a dull moment. I've grown to quite like Rotorua Hospital too, the close-knit and friendly environment really has grown on me. Pity that the city lifestyle has already gotten a fairly firm grip on me, I can't imagine myself working and living in a town like Rotorua in the long term. I can understand why so many people want to live in Auckland. There are just so many more opportunities. Even though I know as a medical practitioner you have the freedom to train anywhere in the country I don't think I could give up Auckland that easily. I find when you live in a town like Rotorua your social connections are far too restricted and you can't meet people who can really relate to you, simply because there are too few of those people there. Being different from most people I find this affects people like me a lot. So what if I don't want to join you drinking on Friday night. I'm not going to change myself just because the majority of the country places value in getting drunk and having a wild social life. Not that I mind being alone, I'd just rather not be if I had the choice.

I don't know how this rambling started, I guess I'm just trying to justify myself staying in Auckland since my parents keep nagging me to stay and live in Rotorua after I graduate. I really don't know where I'm going to end up in 3 years time but I do have a feeling I want to be in Auckland. Auckland has become my home. Going back "home" to Rotorua feels like leaving, and coming back to Auckland feels like coming back for real. Guess such feelings can't be helped when you're attached to a place you call your home.

Anyway I should be sleeping now, just finished skyping the dear one and gotta make it to the 8am ward round tomorrow.

Synchronicity

Posted on

Thursday, August 4, 2011

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Hi, I'm Jeff! Welcome to my blog, where I share random thoughts and things about my life. Enjoy :)