vacation

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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*throws revives, phoenix downs, defibrillators, 1-ups and zelda fairies at blog*

There, that should do it. Game references aside, this blog HAS been dead. I guess I shoulda made a better effort to keep it going while I was overseas but I guess I was on holiday mode, haha. And holiday mode = super lazy = no posts. It's funny how that works cos as soon as I got back to Auckland I was put into full-on work mode and that was that. I'm not very good at keeping my life in balance as you might have already figured out. I guess this year I want to take my studies more seriously than I have been (isn't that what I said last year? -__-). I wonder how I'll go this year. Hopefully I get to earn money next year $_$. Definitely a good motivation to pass this year, uhoho.

Vancouver was good. I guess the highlight of the city for me was the shopping ^^;. Stuff in NZ is pretty expensive. For example, it's not uncommon to see jeans priced at "2 for $100" and that's their special price. And half the time they don't even have my size (28) and even if they do they don't necessarily fit cos sizes here seem to be bigger for some reason. And not often do NZ shops have the styles I like, either. Not that I'm super fashion conscious but I don't think it's a crime to want to wear stuff you actually like. In Canada and the States it's easy to find jeans for like $25-$30 and even after conversion the prices are still really good. And they actually cater for my size and styles, too ^^. I guess I wouldn't go there just for shopping since the plane ticket there would be $2500-$3000 return, but if you're going there anyway, why not take advantage of the situation? Heh.

At the mall! Whee~


Daiso! And its $2! (not $3.50, what a rip...)

In terms of sight-seeing I don't think I've seen a lot of Vancouver's touristy places. We did go to the aquarium and Gastown (an old-town style area of the city which is pretty much half a tourist trap with Canadian gift shops everywhere) but apart from that we didn't go much elsewhere. Not unless you count Science World but that's mostly for kids so I didn't enjoy it as much as I used to. Catching up with family was nice too I guess, but it didn't seem to be the same as when I was a kid and played with the other kids and got spoiled by all the aunts and uncles.


Gastown. Forgot how it got its name...

Going to Hawaii was a nice experience. I wouldn't say it's the way I would normally spend a holiday since I guess I'm more like an indoors person, heh. Not to mention I would have the funds to afford that kind of holiday in the first place if I were to go on my own. The family time did have some value I suppose since I don't really get to spend time with my parents and even less with my aunt, uncle and grandma. It was nice to be able to see a part of the world you would never really get to see under normal circumstances. Hawaii is very much a tourist place. Especially Oahu. Man, that Waikiki place is such as tourist trap, its so silly. Everyone there is either a tourist or a person working in the tourism industry. And the markets are full of pushy salespeople who keep trying to sell you things you don't want. And when you try and walk away they'll like lower the price by a few dollars and expect you to buy it. Then if you till don't buy from them they act hurt and ask if it's too expensive for you or some shit. There are no supermarkets or anything like that either, so if you're hungry you either pick up some overpriced groceries from these hybrid dairy/tourist shop places called ABC stores which are located at a frequency of one per block (ABC = all blocks covered) or fork out $20 and go to one of the many restaurants there. To be honest, I didn't feel too comfortable there and I don't think my family was either, given we're kinda conservative when it comes to things like food. We went on a lot of tours, visited the cultural museum (they had a NZ section lololol) and Pearl Harbour.


A sea turtle! Now you don't see those in the wild every day.

Pearl Harbour~

Part of Pearl Harbour is still an active military base...

R.I.P. USS Arizona

I liked Kona a lot better. The accommodation was really nice, probably the nicest place I've stayed. And the whole environment was a much more relaxed, even though it's still a touristy place. We rented a car there and drove around for most of our time there. I guess a lot of the scenery did remind me a bit of New Zealand in some ways. A lot of empty space. Lots of beautiful views of the ocean and really spectacular sunsets during the evening. I guess for people who lived in the city for all their lives that kind of change in scenery is something you'll only ever get once in a while. For me, the city is still my place. I can't seem to appreciate nice views and scenery as much as other people do. Perhaps I don't see the value in such temporary experiences. I do like taking photos of stuff though, eheh.


Kona airport! Everything is outdoors. How cool is that? =P
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Sunset at Kona

Back to the real world...

I'm currently 4 weeks into my O&G attachment and it's busy as hell. Luckily I got a nice team that's pretty chill and lets us do heaps of stuff but the expectations from the uni are ridiculous. I'm talking about night shifts and weekends in particular (I wouldn't mind if I was being paid but we're NOT - we're PAYING to stay up 12 hours at night and do 24 hours during the weekend. Where's the logic in that?). And the fact that the uni can't get it's act together enough to realise that they scheduled two people to do the same Neopaeds seminar topic and made me do a THIRD seminar one to make up for the topic that got missed cos they fail in organising their shit. And more silly logbooks. Faar. So annoying. Apart from those small gripes I think O&G is actually a pretty nice run. The ward rounds are nice and short which gives you some time to do things in the morning and the clinics are good with lots of patients to see every week (although our team does have a lot of students which limits the learning opportunities somewhat). Unfortunately I do tend to get kicked out of gynae examinations half the time but that's to be expected of humans.

I finished presenting my second seminar and doing this week's web teaching today which is why I'm feeling a little more relaxed about things at the moment, especially with the weekend coming up. I still have that (totally unecessary and stupid) third seminar to get onto and OSCE stuff to prepare, but if I just focus on those over the next 2 weeks I think I'll be able to finish this run comfortably. Ah, I don't know why I chose to start 5th year with the 2 most difficult runs, oh god paeds is next ><

Anyhow I've spent far too much time writing this. I need to really catch up on sleep, gotta go for neonatal intensive care ward round tomorrow morning. Thanks for reading~

Wow, this blog is dead. Time to rez...

Posted on

Thursday, February 16, 2012

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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 :)