Two days left

Megs:

Wow! Less than 48 hours - for the time zone I'm in, at least - before 2010 is over, and the New Year arrives!!! I suppose I should really get posting about my adventure in Taiwan - namely, the OCAC (can't remember what that stands for) Expatriate Youth Study Tour, or as I prefer, Around Taiwan in 21 Days for Overseas Taiwanese Kids.

The trip was AMAZING. My eyes have really opened, in the sense that I got to know heaps of students around, above and below my age in a non-studious setting (well, it's called a Study Tour, but when you don't have exams it doesn't count), from all over the globe; from places I'd never even heard of until three weeks ago, when I met them.

I formed close friendships with people from Australia, South Africa, Singapore, Mauritius, and of course New Zealand. Of course, back in Auckland, where exists a very multicultural society, I know wonderful people from all of these places (except Mauritius, which was new to me) and over the last three weeks they helped me to regain confidence and emerge more from a shyness or shell that I had lately been conscious of forming. Everyone was open, friendly, quirky and fun. A few of the crew:

The Team I was assigned to was #12.

Our leader was (and IS) an awesome, wacky and sometimes (self-determinedly) awkward guy by the name of Edmond. Except he hates this name, so we called him Jeff, because apparently he looks like some Taiwanese singer also called Jeff. Jeff bought a stuffed monkey on this tour, for which I volunteered to be responsible. Ergo, Team 12 became the Monkey Team, with Monkey Numbers 1 - 15. We were very good at our Sound-Off! I was #7.

The 180 or so students on this year's tour went round Taiwan in five massive tour buses. We were on Bus E, aka the Easy Bus! Complete with TV and a Karaoke set, at which some of the boys were very good at. (Girls: mostly too shy to sing. Hum!)

This is Taiwan. It's shaped, by general agreement, as a kumara/sweet potato. Although I remember when I was 8 I was dissatisfied with this analogy with what seemed to be an obscure vegetable, so I insisted it looked like a chicken drumstick.

...Anyway! We travelled around the island in an anti-clockwise route around the coast. Every day was filled with lessons and activities that brought us closer to the culture and history of Taiwan: museums, factories, sightseeing. We baked kumara in the earth;

made paper;

went SHOPPING;

and many other things - attended two military schools for a day;





we also went bike riding past a beach and around a park; visited countless historical sites; had an international basketball tournamet (NZ won :D); visited Buddhist and other religious temples; climbed up a mountain that was inhabited by many monkeys; stayed at an animal resort; stayed at lovely hotels, stayed at not-so-lovely hotels, watched Taiwanese aboriginal dances and rituals, and a whole litany of other things - AND, if Facebook hasn't been spamming your News Feed enough already took about a million photos. Not possible to upload all of them, so here are some. :P

I'm amused and grateful towards everyone who said "Have fun!" to me before I left. Having fun doesn't even begin to cover it. Those 21 days were unforgettable, and as the (now very overrused) saying goes - Taiwan definitely touched my heart :)

Summer of 2010/11; Part 1

Wil:

While others are basking in the New Zealand sun, returning back to deliciously cooked home meals with their family after work at the end of the day, travelling the world, or just plain doing nothing, I'm here at university stuck in an isolated (albeit adequately lit with natural light) seminar room tapping away at my laptop for at least 7 hours a day and 5 days a week. But don't despair, it's not as dire as it sounds. Any job has its fill of gross paperwork and unsightly clerical work. And my work here doesn't completely consist of staring at a computer screen. I'll tell you more about the exciting events I have encountered so far, and what the future holds, later.

But first, so what exactly am I doing you might ask? Well, for those who didn't know, I'm currently undertaking a summer studentship at the School of Pharmacy. A studentship is a research job where you work under the supervision of a staff member at the university. The summer project was developed by, and is related to the supervisor and whatever research they're carrying out at the same time.

I am supervised by two lovely women who work here at the school. My primary supervisor is Dr Kirsten Lovelock who is a research fellow (she doesn't teach). My project relates directly to the area she is studying at the moment. She got her PhD in anthropology and is a very knowledgeable social scientist.

My secondary supervisor is Dr June Tordoff who is a senior lecturer in pharmacy. She is traiend as a pharmacist and works part time at Dunedin hospital doing drug information, which is basically like customer services for the pharmacy. She answers drug questions that come from anyone: local and distant pharmacists, doctors, students, patients etc.

My project is titled, "Access to medicines and health care in rural New Zealand: the role of the rural pharmacy and depot." Dr Lovelock has done a lot of work on rural health and I'm contributing by researching the contextual nature of health in rural settings and how the pharmacist contributes to the well-being of the community they serve.

Due to the lack of a fully coherent health care workforce in rural areas, health professionals already existing in such places often need to take up responsibilities which extend beyond their traditional roles of their discipline. I'll briefly look at the capacity of the rural pharmacy and the services they offer. For this part, I'll be interviewing rural pharmacists and depot operators. Depots are little shop thingies in remote, rural places were patients can leave prescriptions which will then be transferred to the affiliated pharmacy to be processed and filled, which are then returned to the depot where the patients can pick them up. Depots tend to be located in remote areas where a pharmacy wouldn't be financially viable, but the area still requires the services of a pharmacy. They are usually manned by a pharmacy technician or even just a lay retailer.

I'll also dip into looking at how the rural community perceives the rural pharmacy and their access to health care services. There's often discrepancies between the way the policy makers handle rural health care (or any other aspect in the whole of society, for that matter) and the reality of the situation faced by those who actually live in these settings and who are affected by the policies that are put in place. We'll be interviewing members of the community for this section.

So that's a long-ish summary of what i'll be doing in my summer. I have to write up a report on all of this. I've done about 10-ish pages so far and I feel like it's only about 1/6th there. Bah. So much work and i'm already half way through my studentship. I feel like this is going to take much longer than just 10 weeks.

This is just blog #1 in a series of blog posts that I'll hopefully churn out while my adventure unfolds over the summer. Expect lots more over the next week (or so. I'll probably procrastinate...) since i'm already half way through my studentship. I have plenty to say!

To my readers: if you want to continue talking about rural health in New Zealand (or even health in general), feel free to hit me up! Comment away. Let's partake in some healthy discussion.

This is just like me

Megs:

Hum hum, conumdrums.

I bet, hypothetically, if I ever wrote a really good book, or made a really good painting that surpassed anything I've ever done before, the final manuscript or piece would end up sitting in the corner of my room, or under my bed, because I wouldn't be able to think of a title/name with it that I didn't feel was rubbishy, or already taken.

This is just an observation.

What was that saying? A truly eloquent donkey would starve to death / die of dehydration if it was place equidistance from a pile of hay and a trough of water, if it was equally hungry and thirsty, because it wouldn't be able to decide. This is very a compelling thought, and really rather fail.

New Old Interests (NOI?): Drawing.

Megs:

Haha second post in a day; I'm quite sure this hasn't happened in a year! Which reminds me; Frivelocity just had its first birthday a few days ago. Yay! happy birthday, dear blog-thing!!

Anyhow, it is currently the same day, but later; just came back from a good stroll around the department store, visiting the same bookstore as yesterday, plus had some pseudo- but delicious Italian/Thai combination of lemon chicken and spaghetti at Good Man Caff'e (sic).

But I digress about food; right now I'm returning, again, to that state of mild fever for looking at art. Drawings. This was somewhat helped by all the books on Graphic design in Kinokuniya in Sydney, full of wondrous and beautiful and wild illustrations. Often of seemingly nothing in particular.

Drawing is something I abandon again and again, largely because of the lack of results the activity produces. It's not that I don't finsish any drawings or never improve, but over these three years, lined with exams, I rather think I've been shaped to pursue, as best as possible, hobbies that have to be slightly unusual, and/or productive. [They include and are not limited to:

~ Early '09: Juggling ((Not only is it entertaining, I decided this was productive because The Reader's Digest has referred to studies which show that this helps the brain store information different ways.)) I went from being un-co queen of klutzes to being able to juggle three well, and four not-so-well. Hooray!

~ Throughout '09: learning to solve puzzles such as crosswords and Sudoku. More brain training. I didn't get very good at either of these.

~ Late '09, Early '10: 'Energy' manipulating - similar to what energy healers/reiki practitioners work with, except this was purely experimental. This was very exciting and rather tingly, because it's unseen but felt forces at work. Or play.

~ Early-mid- '10: Writing poetry.

~ Late '10: Gymming (okay, so I've only been five times, but still.)

The viola doesn't count. I'm going to be blunt and say it stopped being a hobby and more of a chore about two years ago, despite being the one I stuck with for the longest (10 years?). I admire Music students for their perserverence and performances. And stylish dress sense, but that's a different thing. ]

Drawing, as a hobby, comes and goes. By drawing, I don't mean silly little doodles like in the sidebar to the left here, I mean drawings that take a long time to get "right". This thing that I do threads in and out of existence over weeks, maybe even months. It's like a faithful dog or sock or something that just keeps popping up (not that I would ever abandon a dog!). This is because I dislike my lack of personal "style", and because there's nothing I can really do with a drawing after I've drawn it.

The aspects of drawing(s) which define how I draw appear to make it very narrow:

- I love drawing people, much over drawing anything else: animals, still-life, landscape, etc.

- I like drawing women, over drawing men. Women are just more beautiful to look at.

- Intricate patterns and detailings mesmerise me, and I stare at them for ages, and try to commit them to memory.

- I like stylized pictures more than attempts at realism.

- I don't like spending a lot of time on precision - fluid, robust and fast etches for me; portraying the general 'feel' of an image, rather than reproducing what's there. (Otherwise I'd do photography).

- I revere colours, and all aspects of colours. How colours contrast; which colours grab one's attention; how people see the world through colour-deficient eyes. They taught us about hue, saturation and brightness in Part 1 Optometry this year; I've understood these for years and years.

- I am not inclined to draw if I don't think someone will, or should, look at it afterwards. This is why I used to draw so much when I frequented forums. People love digital art. Maybe this is attention-whoring, at its zenith. But it really makes it very fun.

- I flit through drawings styles a lot. This has frustrated me an equal amount, because only once have I only ever come close to capturing a signature way of rendering, and that was when I was 14 and drawing chibis.

***

In my search of a productive hobby I've rediscovered my fondness for drawing; and something exciting has come to light. Everything I've named above suggests that my love for drawing can go hand in hand with a specific genre - fashion illustrations.

And I'm not sure why I've never really noticed it before. I only really realised this after looking at the scores and scores of art in massive graphic design books in Sydney, and seeing that some of the artists work in fashion illustration.

Now I can't say I'm hooked - yet - but my interest is really piqued and I'm thinking about how I've ever drawn, how I've always drawn, and the types of pictures I've collected (online and from cuttings).

It turns out that a lot of fashion illustrators have blogs. Very exciting - this means I can follow a whole horde of them, and learn more about their way of drawing. More specifically, I am interested in knowing how the concepts are transmitted from the runway, to paper, to the interests of other bloggers.

I haven't drawn regularly in a very long time. Thinking about starting it up again.

Kinokuniya; Kaohsiung greetings

Megs:

Greetings, all, from the arid and smoky-brown city of Kaohsuing, Taiwan! Arrived at Taipei on Sunday at an hour at which I could have watched the dawn break through the airport windows while waiting for the plane down to Kaohsuing, but I was too absorbed in playing Pocket Frogs. (Brilliantly simple, stupidly repetitive, ridiculously addictive application on iTouch).

Now I'm not documenting my three-day adventure in Sydney for the same reason that I didn't blog while I was in Sydney (Best reason: I am going out soon); but it was lovely, and warm, dry, and involved a lot of walking and trawling through shops that line George Street, which is the Auckland equivalent of Queen Street, and Wildlife Worlds and Sydney Aquariums and Sydney Towers.

What I do have to rave about is the gigantic bookstore kinokuniya which is basically exemplary of would happen if an army, bigger than the population of China and India combined, came and seized the entire floor of a very large shopping building and claimed it as their own (and if the army is not of Chinese or Indians, but of books.) Like, foly hucker, was there a gigasmic forkload of books. Got quite, quite lost in there for a while.

I think I could live there forever and if I got hungry I could just eat a book. Books don't have much nutritional value but there are so many in there it would definitely make up for it.

Okay, I do have to go again, but at least I've posted this time. Will update!

Let's collect and recollect

Megs:

My dear Wil, I hope you realise one day that you are absolutely off your rocker, and in the meantime I will keep telling you politely, and with much applause. :D

I have a new interest (obsession?) with nothing to show for it. It is collecting things.

I admire absolutely any person who hoards, like a pack rat, paphernalia that all revolves around a certain subject of interest. It's like having a passion for collecting trophies and everything you gain is your reward. How efficient is that?! And in the end of it all you can rope off your room or your front door with a specially purchased velvet rope (scarlet) and charge people to come to your place and have a peek at your huge display of loot. Like in a museum! Think how rich you would get when you invite your friends round for tea.

Okay, so you shouldn't really charge visitors when you ask them over, but you get the idea. It's the display at the end. It's like being enthusiastic and artistic and a maniacal magpie all rolled into one.

I mean, people will look on your passion with interest, just because you will have so many things to show them! I shall shamelessly namedrop and say that my favourite collector will have to be Shirin, because of all the amazing stuff she's hoarded and the fact her room is like a Library of Pure Awesome (while still much, much neater than mine. My room is a puddle.)

Anyway, like I said, I have nothing to show for this new obsession for collecting things, because I don't actually adore any particular type of item enough to go and collect it. Eye - row - knee. But I still like thinking about collecting things. So I guess right now I'm collecting ideas for what to collect. Which isn't the same thing, because I have nothing to show for it.

Ideas, ideas, ideas:

- Not stamps. (Why do people collect stamps?! Someone enlighten me please, I don't get it. They don't even taste that great on the back.)

- Stockings, esp. those pretty patterned ones that make your legs look like they've been put through a printer. Although, it isn't really stocking season.

- Dolls. Not those creepy china ones, because they look like they're about to throttle you any second. Other dolls. Um... I'll come back to this one.

- Gothic Lolita Dresses . I like these very much. I have one already! There's something thrilling about all those frills, and ribbons, and bows, and things. These look a million dollars and cost around that much too, so I might make this a very long term one.

- Hats, eg animal hats, because they're so darn cute. Like my purple rabbit one!

- Books?

- Drawings by people (not art, exactly. It'd be more fun to just ask people randomly to draw me something, like a frog or something.)

I like how Shirin's basically made a shrine to Michael Jackson in her room. Or, rather, made her room a shrine to MJ. My Favourite Singer of All Time is Lily Allen, who is absolutely talented and lovely and beautiful, but I guess relatively speaking she's not as much of a legend as the Pop King, so it'd be kind of weird doing something similar...

Okay watch this space. I have to go rehearse with string quartet for wedding.

BOOYA

Wil:

Wow is it the end of the [academic] year already?! How time flies, as they say. This year has been magical like you wouldn't believe. I have many great things to report on, stories to tell, and lessons to leave - let us hope I don't get bored before I finish :P


I entered 2010 with bright brown eyes that sparkled enough enthusiasm to light a car on fire. Fresh (or not so fresh...) out of Health Sci, I bounced around with my new found freedom in my very own flat. I could finally cook my own meals, wash my own bedding, clean my own toilets and showers, and empty my own rubbish! I was drugged up on filthy delusion and I flailed my arms around in naive contentment.

Throughout semester one I fed myself the grey slurry that all pharmacy students are forced to swallow: biopharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical science, biochemistry, and physiology. While practical dispensing labs became the highlight of the year, cooking and cleaning and rubbish-emptying became the nuisances of daily living. While my tummy juiced the sciences for all they were worth, I sat through endless lab exit tests, end of module tests, term tests and lab prep material. One after the other, I became obese with knowledge. My brain swelled beyond its bony confines and oozed out of my nose and ears in the form of well structured and reasonable test answers.

Semester two fell out of nowhere like the iceberg out of Titanic. Being one greasy semester wiser and having survived a full TWO day community pharmacy placement, I felt like I truly knew what being a pharmacist was all about. While I rationed the motivational fuel that was my community placement, the looming disaster that were the FIVE end-of-semester exams constantly reared its horribly-disfigured-probably-due-to-surgery-gone-wrong head in my already emotionally unstable mind. While I tried, with varying degrees of success, to push that thought onto the back burner, I trudged day by day through the classes, tutorials, laboratory and workshops. The unforgiving 8am classes wiped all my faith in justice, while the history lectures evoked such fear (and boredom).
During this time of learning to be a good health professional, healthy researcher, and careful thinker (almost), I made some wonderful friends. Meet lithium and Prozac! haa jokes >.>
Actually, I have met some great monkies this year and I've formed friendships that I hope will be as everlasting as covalent bonds (i.e. permanent, but with the odd exception!). I've never played so much Buzz, Rock band, or Wii in my life! (nor have I ever had such an exclusively Asian bunch of friends...)

As doomsday drew closer, 5 exams felt like the blade of my guillotine. The nagging at the back of my head that felt like the annoyance of a mosquito bite grew into the piercing stab of a lumbar puncture. With my palms sweaty and my heart racing, my eyes flew over my lecture notes on the pharmacology and medicinal chemistry of adrenergic drugs and wondered where the hell non-selective beta adrenergic blockers were when you needed them?!
During the daytime, I fitfully induced insomnia with the joy of No Doz. However, the phenomenon known as tachyphylaxis foiled my dependence on the tiny aid of caffeine pills (and now whenever I read or say the word tachyphylaxis, all i hear is Wen Xin saying "TACHYPHYLAXIS!!" trying to imitate a Microsoft text-reader).

My first exam, PHCY219 (Microbiology and Immunology) brought me quiet confidence in my abilities. Studying turned out to be a good decision.
PHCY255 (Physical Pharmacy B) became my joke of the semester (or year, even). I could've done it with my hands behind my back! I could have smashed my face against the desk and even the bloody imprints left on my test paper would have been correct answers!
PHCY258 (Drug Action, i.e. biopharmaceutics ugly and unwanted sister) slashed the rainbow road that PHCY255 had paved for me. Fawcett (a lecturer for this paper) jack-hammered each and every beautifully laid brick. Brick dust (and questions on colorectal carcinoma monolayers) assulted my airways in a way that not even salbutamol could help me!
Drunk with despair, I entered the PHCY259 (Quality of Medicines) exam with standards as low as a cheap whore ready to earn some quick money. Surprisingly, I left that exam feeling mighty self-assured and powerful! It was truly a wonderful day and not even the fact that I spent hours and hours teaching my peers that one calculation question that never showed up in the exam could have brought me down! While the child in me skipped into the sunset and my grown-up self waddled off home like a duck, the giant hypodermic needle stuck in my spine shattered into a billion pieces and flooded my body like a really advanced case of metastases. Like the ultimate boss at the end of a video game quest, life had saved the worst for last. What cruel goddess would blend the subjects of epidemiology, history, health system, drug information and dispensing together to bake the vile cake that is PHYC263 (Pharmacy Practice)? Well, we know the answer to that one - she wears trendy leather boots!

I sat at my exam desk staring at a paper titled, "PHCY263 Principles of Pharmacy Practice." I made scared puppy sounds as the supervisors gave the pre-exam announcements. Looking around me, I swore I saw someone soil themself. "You may now begin" boomed from the speakers as the clock ticked past 9:30am. With hands that could pass as being from someone with Parkinson's, I turned over my exam paper and flicked to the epidemiology section. "It's basically a repeat of HEAL192 (epidemiology paper from last year)! This should be easy!" I thought to myself. My vision wandered sporadically over the words which dictated my doom while my eye muscles twitched in a manner that imitated some mal-diagnosed musculoskeletal disease. My heart stopped - WHAT LANGUAGE IS THIS IN?! My mind blanked in such a way that would make the world's best(?) underachiever proud.

Being the clever boy he was, Wil decided to make up award-worthy nonsense that he could throw up all over his exam paper. Why not calculate the Odds Ratio? Great idea! Wil jabbed away at his whimpering calculator with a finger that could bore holes through the earth all the way to China (or London, actually). With a Cheshire grin, Wil scribbed down that interpretation of his calculated odds ratio and kissed his pen with passion. He was on a roll! Suddenly, Wil's eyes settled on a rather unnerving piece of information given in the study data - the adjusted ODDS RATIO. They had already given you the odds ratio for the study! Weeping, Wil drew thick blue lines over his calculation, invalidating about 5 minutes worth of work. A sad smiley face accompanied these crosses.

Two hours of this torture finally signalled the end of the exam, the semester, and the year. I still believe that 2 hours was much too short for this exam. It was like trying to push a baby out after just 6 months. My exam script would have been VERY messy to mark. Like a post-labour mother, I gave a tired sigh as sweat dripped off my forehead and my muscles relaxed in unison, leaving my body as a thankful puddle on the exam venue floor.

Pharmacy 2nd year 2010 had finally ended for a very happy Wil. He frolicked among the shattered beer bottle glass that littered Dunedin streets as he celebrated having arrived half way through his undergraduate degree. Only two more years to go, he pondered. What would he do with his summer? Little did he know that it would be filled with iron-fisted, headache-inducing slave labour, originating from the depths of literature searching and 9 to 5 work days. Buuuuuuut, that's a blog post for another frivolous day ;)


Mission Complete!

SUMMERSUMMERSUMMER

Megs:

OMG so this year has come full circle and I am free from the craziest semester I've ever had at uni (granted, I've only had four). YAY YAY YAY YAY. Now I have time to plan a million things-to-do-but-probably-won't-due-to-laziness. But I will do that later, because right now I have all the time in the world to do absolutely nothing :D :D

I guess it's a good time to be reflecting on what I've learnt this year, in Part I Optometry at Auckland Uni, and about Life In General. In no particular order, they include:

- How a colour deficient person sees the world
(there are some cool simulations on the internet. This one's pretty fun:
http://www.colblindor.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/)

- That there are more colour deficient people around than you realize, but they only happen to tell you that they are when you tell them you study eyeballs

- That Magnum Gold is really rather sickly sweet, ugh (I learnt this yesterday). And that there ads for it everywhere in the city, like massive billboards that shout "COME GET YOUR ARTIFICIALLY COLOURED ICE CREAM", and that I am a consumer who falls prey to these billboards.

- That Optom Class of '13 class is full of quirky and kooky and damn awesome people, and I love just about all of them

- That I like perfume. I want lots of it.

- That you CAN wing tests and do very well on minimal study. But you can fail too. Whoops.

- That getting Bs and Cs is okay.
You once said to me, "I believe [the grading system] proves work ethic and ability, otherwise there would be no point in having A, B, Cs..." That is true, I agree with you. Getting straight As feels good and looks nice on a transcript of grades. But I think it becomes counterproductive and narrow when it becomes the only goal of one's existence. Having really limited time for revision because of AYO was a nightmare this year, but getting grades that are lower because of that was taught me that it's not the end of the world. Overall (note the OVERALL, haha) I worked hard this year, and I will continue to work hard next year, so I won't beat myself up about grades any longer. It's a freedom that I always had the freedom to give myself.

- That writing stories/poetry/on people's faces is more fun than a lot of things. And far more productive.

- That "you're not dreaming big enough until someone is laughing at you." Kudos, Marianne.

Huzzay!

*

News from home:

So I have a crooked rabbit. Leo's been suffering from head tilt since the last day of uni, and it makes him look like his head's at a 90 degree angle. It got so bad that he was unable to walk for about three weeks and the vet even suggested euthanasia. And I had to look after him continually while revising for exams. Anyway, this semester had the worst exam season ever, so I'm damn grateful to Renee, who really listened. :] Plus I found loads of support and advice on a forum for rabbit owners going through the same thing. So thanks to everyone from On The Wonk :) Funny how strangers on the other side of the world can make all the difference!!

I'm going back to Taiwan these holidays - going on that 3-week tour around the island that's meant for Taiwanese kids who grew up overseas. Excite! Yee!
Oh and I was talking to someone about it who went last year, and apparently lots of Taiwanese people live in South Africa because there were lots of SA Tw people on the tour. Who would've thought!! Dad says it's because years ago, people who could gap the country did so at the first opportunity, regardless of where it was. I find that quite interesting.

Burble, burble.

Musical era - fin

Megs:

I've been feeling so ridiculously sentimental that I can hardly believe it.

AYO's pretty much over now - Concert at the Town Hall on Saturday was EFFING FANTASTIC. Good turn-out in terms of audience; the Stalls and the Circle all was fairly full, which was a really nice change to the "crowds" of about 30 that came to the concerts in Tauranga and Hamilton!

This programme has been so insanely demanding: AYO camp on the last weekend of the holidays, then over the last three weeks we've had a tour every weekend somewhere in the North Island, and then there was the concert on Saturday. And in between each of these weekends I've had a test, and this week I have three. *spaaaaaz*

It's partly why I'm quitting next year; I don't think I'll be able to keep up. Also, so many friends are leaving again, that next year the orchestra's going to be very, very different. (Again!)

Anyway, here's the poster for the last programme I played in!!


I miss heaps of people in AYO already :(

In fact I had so much fun on Saturday that I was feeling pretty damn crap about leaving! But it's just not going to be the same next year. I think it's probably like how people felt about leaving high school. I've never properly missed any school I went to; but I have been in an orchestra for longer than I've attended any one institution, so maybe this is why.

I'm also going to miss the music - not just the way that the sound an orchestra makes can be so evocative and paint such vivid pictures in one's mind, but the all the work that's put into making the music up to that standard. In particular, I love listening to piano concertos, and listening to the soloist play while we rehearse is just so fun. And to me, they're one of the most beautiful things in the world when they're played by the right soloist! [You know which one :)]

Good news - we are playing again this Thursday at 8.30pm in the city again, this time in Victoria Park Market (...or somewhere in Wellesley Street), because some graffiti artists want to promote us, or use our music to promote them, or something. :D hooray! so it's not completely over just yet!

Promotional video for this event (you can see me at 0.11!)

http://vimeo.com/15815835

I now have this urge to rummage through all my old emails from AYO Weekly and reminisce.

I think I've been doing that a lot this year - missing and reminiscing and emoing about the past. I must be getting old! Time to retire!

It only takes one to ruin the whole thing

Wil:

Disclaimer: the following post is not intended as an organised attack on any individuals or any organisation. It is simply my reaction in which i'm entitled to voice. The opinions described below are purely my own.
-------------------

I was reading an article the other day and it thoroughly pissed me off.

http://www.pharmacy-today.co.nz/article?objId=d603f9f2-956a-4fbd-9ca8-3d74887d4b90

"A pharmacist who reported his local GP’s prescribing errors to the Medical Council says he was unsupported by the organisation and would think very carefully before reporting his concerns about a prescriber’s behaviour again."

"But, before the doctor was suspended, the pharmacist says he received threatening phone calls from the doctor who had been forwarded his letter of complaint by the council."

"He says the doctor told his patients it was him (the pharmacist) who had reported him to the authorities and, subsequently, they boycotted his shop, resulting in an estimated loss of thousands of dollars."

Now, while I do not know the entire nature of the complaint, this is NOT the type of behaviour anyone would expect from a doctor in any country and in any situation. This is absolutely appalling and if I ever have the misfortune to encounter such an inexcusable health professional I would make it very clear to them the damage that they are doing to the image of doctors and New Zealand health professionals as a whole. Not only was he partaking in illegal activies, but he confront the pharmacist in a most irresponsible and malicious manner.

I would be very interested in hearing what the Medical Council would have to say about this type of behaviour.
The pharmacist stated that, "he was unsupported by the organisation" and while a possibility exists that his words may be tightly biased and unrepresentative of the true handling of the case,
the fact that the Medical Council's management of the case has placed this sort of impression upon him is truly disappointing.

It makes me incredibly sad that, in a world painfully troubled by terrors inflicted by the corrupt, not even health professionals, presumed by the public as some of the most humble, caring, and altruistic people in society, can escape the ill nature of humanity. For me, the image of health professionals will be severely tainted eternally.

Rambling about scrambling

Megs:

I love playing with anagrams. It's possibly one of the most frivolous and useless past-times there are, unless one is in an Anagram-thinking-about Tournament, or like some top secret government dept and has to crack codes that mad international criminal masterminds set (because as we all know, of course, mad criminal masterminds always leave a hint as to how to clean up the mess they're making. Dan Brown evidently thinks so.) I like the game Word Challenge on Facebook and I like wordplay in general.

Recently I've been thinking about what kind of pseudonym I would use, if I was going to write a novel and have it published. Almost needless to say, I'd like it to be something (somewhat) meaningful, and to do with my name. Yesterday Hannah suggested something like Margaret Willie, which is fantastic, but no, merci.

Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that my name in full is a cow to rescramble. The only decent thing I've been able to come up with after much juggling in my head is Anna G Hemingway. And I wouldn't use this as a pen name, because I'd feel like I was insulting Ernest Hemingway by associating his name with far inferior writing.

Another name, albeit with a ludicrous sense of humour, would be Angina G Wheyman, but I think I'd have to be really drunk, or depressed, or both, to submit anything under that name.

I'm leaving to go watch NYSO soon. Will update!

Capping the pathway to a Cap

Wil:

So it has finally happened. The University of Otago has implemented changes which will limit entry into pretty much all undergraduate courses from 2011 onwards. This decision would have been due to a combination of factors, of the most important being reduced government funding and an increase in student enrolments. Funding from the government subsidises a large percentage of the course fee for domestic students (i.e. what you pay for your papers is only a fraction of the total cost of it).

Students leaving high school and intending to enroll into the university will have been divided into one of two categories - Preferential Entry or Competitive Entry.
If a student has achieved NCEA Level 2 with Merit or Excellence endorsement they would have gained Preferential Entry. This then guarantees a place at the university provided that University Entrace is gained at NCEA Level 3.

Those who weren't successful at gaining Preferential Entry are placed in Competitive Entry. Students in this category will be assessed and ranked according to their academic performance and other relevant criteria and will be offered places in order of priority, subject to the availability of places in their nominated programmes.
There are more details regarding Competitive Entry but let's just leave it at that.

Other ways of gaining Preferential Entry are securing a place at a University of Otago Residential Hall, or earning a University of Otago Scholarship. The basis of these "alternatives" is that any student who has gained a place in Preferential Entry by either of these means would have been subjected to a selection process already and thus deserving of a place at the university. There are obvious flaws to these methods of admission.

So those are the new admission changes for 2011 in a nut shell.

A couple of months back before any details were released, when I first heard about the introduction of limited entry into previously open entry courses I was a bit horrified. I thought back to my time in high school doing NCEA Level 3. My results were something uninspiring. Out of the 36 or so achievement standards I was entered for, I only managed to get about 3 or so Excellence grades. If limited entry prerequisites were introduced back when I was about to enter university, with my mediocre grade I would have felt like I was staring at a 20 metre tall brick wall with a couple of sticks and string to make a ladder out of.

My argument is that if they were to introduce any sort of academic prerequisites at university, it should be at the end of the first year. The logic behind it is that high school is about as different from university as watermelon is from a grape. Sure they're both education (or fruit) but that's where the similarities stop. The way education is taught, marked, proposed, and implemented at university is so much more than high school (and that silly NCEA nonsense). Essentially, some people who don't do as well under NCEA can do exceptionally well at university.
Take for example, me. No matter how hard I tried under the NCEA system all I could get was a couple of silly Excellence grades which I could count all out with one hand. Now compare that to now (prepare for some shameless gloating) where I've managed to maintain an A+ (> 90%) average over my 1.5 years at university so far. Obviously there will be some confounding factors but the story here is that sucky grades in high school does not correlate to sucky grades at university. Hence my argument of introducing limited entry into second year, as opposed to first year of university.

So I was ready to fling out my opinion on what i've just said above to anyone who was prepared to listen until I read the media release from the university on the details of the Preferential entry/Competitive entry admissions system for 2011.

I have one thing to say about this introduced limited admissions system: how tame.

Now thinking about it, it might be a bit unfair of me to say that seeing as I secured both a place in a residential hall and a University of Otago scholarship for my first year, so I would've gotten Preferential entry anyway.

However, any high school student who has half a brain to invest in their future well-being could get a merit endorsement at NCEA Level 2 (Well at my school that was the case, and my high school wasn't the flashest, to be honest).
For the record, I got NCEA Level 2 endorsed with Excellence (just!).


Anyway, what i'm REALLY interested in is how this new limited entry admissions system will affect numbers in first year courses. The one course that I will purposely refer to is Health Sciences First Year (or First Year Health Sciences, whatever). HSFY is the first year course that will lead into Dentistry, Medical Laboratory Science, Medicine, Pharmacy and Physiotherapy.
This year I believe there is about 1800 students in HSFY with at minimum about 50% of them competing to get into Medicine. Needless to say, competition is cut-throat and people go nuts during this first year. I digress!

HSFY has previously been open entry (provided you had University Entrance) and the university was quite happy with that because imagine the amount of dosh all these kids were bringing in (~$5400.00/student x 1800 students = $9720000.00; or $9.72 million).
Anyway, I'm going to try to find out next year how much the HSFY cohort will have been cut down as a result of this limited entry. It shall be interesting, no?

Note that this does not make it easier or harder for those who get into HSFY to get into dent/medlab/med/pharm/physio. This is because even without restriction of entry in HSFY, those who would have been caught out by the limited entry admissions requirements would have dropped out after the first semester (or first month). In either case, only the "real" competition makes it to the end of second semester.
Hmmm I should practice caution here but I think I remember hearing that up to 400 people dropped out of HSFY after first semester last year when I was doing the course.


Anyway, so I guess the other obvious questions have to be asked:

- Will these limited entry methods stop douches from entering uni and wasting the country's money on silly little degrees like a BA in eating chalk?
- What will happen to the people who unfortunately miss out on a place at uni, but genuinely want to have a go at university?
- Why has the university only brought this in now? (in my opinion, restrictions should have been brought in ages ago regardless of funding status. But that's another story!)


Stay tuned!



----

Disclaimer: All comments made in this post (and in the whole blog anyway) is the opinion of the author and does not represent that of the University of Otago and its admissions committee.
The author has endeavored to present as much correct information as possible but there's a likely chance that something in there is made up. Amendments may be made at any time without notice. By reading this you can't hold me legally to anything. Ha!

Worth Noting

Megs:

Haha, now I'm reciprocating by blogging you this while you're at your ball. Hope Chicago's awesome.

This week's been oddly fulfilling. Saturday - July 31st; day of the Eye Ball, aka the Optometry Ball 2010, the Horror-Opter. I'd been looking forward to this for a month!

But what was most memorable about that day wasn't the ball at all - it was earlier, at the Hospice. It was the first time I'd really felt affected, really involved, or moved or however you would describe it. Obviously, I've seen and met many patients over the last year and a half and heard recounts of incredible struggle during my volunteering shifts. But at the end of every shift I guess I'd leave everything behind at the Hospice when I went home.

I have wondered about that, and about myself; I've questioned my own (in?)sensitivity, and why it seems to take a heck a stimulus to evoke a passionate emotion in me. With the exception of Hadashi no gen (and I don't even know why - my classmates didn't find it very emotional), I can honestly say that I've never cried while watching a film or reading a book. When I see something tragic in the news, or hear of someone's passing away - I am sorry; pensive, but not really upset. Trying to maintain a "stoic" image isn't something I have any particular interest in, so I don't see a point in having a front. It's just the way I am, I guess.

But I digress about the previous Saturday. Maybe it's because of the fact that, apart from making sure that the counter-tops sparkle and making tea/coffee, all I really do is lend an ear to patients to hear about their day; and last week, as I was bustling along the corridor near the end of my shift, I was quite evidently 'spotted' by some nurses and other staff. They asked me if I spoke Chinese, and I said I did. What transpired was that someone in one of the wards was having trouble communicating the patient's needs to the nurses and the doctor in English and they needed a translator.

My quick visit to said ward made me feel this terrible sadness. I think it was the joint effect of seeing the patient's condition, seeing her husband's devotion to her, and how, despite being present in such a caring environment, they were still struggling and experiencing isolation, a kind that only a language barrier can bring. The husband had such an expression of gratitude on his face when I told him I was able briefly bridge for them this gap. His thanks was far more than I deserved; all I did was a quick rattle-off to the nurse of what had been troubling the patient for the last three days. It took about five minutes. I went home.

It's like this. You might do something small for another person and to you, "it's little, oh it's nothing". But someone else it's very obvious that they needed this help. And of course, more often than not, people can feel pleased with themselves if they know that the "helped someone". There's nothing wrong with that. But simply, it's just so so so different to having this chord, this need, struck in you. It's a stricken feeling and I'm finding it difficult to articulate. Like... 'you know you did something good + they needed your help + something personal just happened + you don't deserve such huge thanks + you need to be doing so much more.'

Had I just unwittingly stumbled on the experience of the "humanistic reward" that medical schools bleat on about? I dunno. But I had to assuage/act on/do something about that feeling. I returned three hours later and got the patient's husband help me make a bi-lingual chart so he could point to a sentence and tell the doctor or nurse how his wife was feeling and what she was needing. It's been a week and I hope it's helped them somewhat.

Insert-Optometry-Ball-description-here... or I think I'll do it in a later post, if I can be bothered.

Midnight! Good night.

Something a bit more serious and less frivolous

Wil:

I'm quite interested in joining the Matagouri club. It's an association/organisation/thing which promotes and encourages health professionals moving into rural practice because we all know the lack of health professionals in rural areas. They do things like visit rural towns and schools to give presentations and demonstrations to students. Essentially, we're opening their eyes to opportunities in the health professions and hope they'll persue an idea we throw at them. I think it'll be a good area to extend myself even though i'm not particularly fond of living in rural areas because I do love the big city, but I think the disparity of health care availability between urban and rural areas is one of the more trivial issues (but still important) that we can solve compared to other health service discrepencies (such as disparities of health between ethnic groups/SES groups). It's a good first step for me in thoroughly exploring the health care system and its accessibility from those who need it.

Speaking of accessibility of health care, it's one of the themes we've been learning in our 'New Zealand Health System' module in our 263 paper (Pharmacy Practice). Growing up in a relatively financially stable family, health care accessibility and availability was never really an issue for me. So when I was studying about the difficulties low socioeconomic status (SES) families have with obtaining health care in New Zealand I wasn't able to completely relate, however, I was able to sympathise.
It wasn't until I did my community placement in Auckland that I was exposed first hand to these issues that my lecturer talked about. Northcote itself has quite a large population of low SES families and during my placement I observed a considerable number of patients who would first ask the pharmacist for the full price of their prescription before putting it in to be processed. After being told the price, you could see the patients trying to decide in their head whether or not their prescription was absolutely necessary to their health in order to avoid "unnecessary" spending. On one occassion we had someone opting for only 2 out of the 3 medications they were prescribed because they simply couldn't afford to pay for all three.

I know there are things such as Community Services Cards which help patients with paying for medications, but in these cases I wasn't sure what the circumstances were.

After observing these incidents it really did get me thinking about how some people have it unfortunately hard. It makes me more appreciative of my own living situations and the benefits I have when I require health care.

This reminds me of an article I had to read which described the state of health care in the US. There are medical centres in the US which are run by voluntary doctors and offer free health care. However, because the medical centres are not-for-profit their resources are limited, much more so than your average medical practice. Undoubtedly, these medical centres get swamped with people who need health care but can't afford it because health care in US is so expensive. Basically, if you don't have health insurance then you either fork out hundreds for health services or don't get it at all. Health insurance premiums are in their hundreds anyway. So in all cases, people with lower incomes lose out.
Back to the article, so people come from far and wide to visit these medical centres hoping to get a free appointment. Because the medical centre can only see such a limited number of people the only fair way of deciding who gets access to health services is via a raffle-like process. Patients are given a number and the centre randomly picks out numbers. If your number is chosen then you get a free appointment with a doctor. All the others miss out.
The fact that it has come to this stage, where the availability of health care for patients is based literally entirely on luck, in this day and age and in a developed country such as the US is such an immense step backwards.

When I finally become a pharmacist, I think I will be most happy to have patients being able to freely walk into my pharmacy and ask for health information without having to make an appointment or pay for a consultation.

A-pack-a-day habit...

Wil:

I've resorted to my pack-a-day habit (almost). What i'm talking about are crackers. I basically eat no proper meal during the day, but instead snack on crackers throughout the day. As a budding health professional, it's almost hypocritical of me to be living this sort of under-nutritious lifestyle but seriously, cooking takes an unnecessary large amount of time out of my day. Also, the state of our kitchen due to my somewhat unharmonious flatmates tends to discourage me from setting foot in there.

As with everyone else, I'm finding it much more harder to get stuck into my work this semester compared to the previous semester. The enthusiasm I obtained earlier in the year from the "omg i'm finally studying pharmacy - my dream career (almost..)" has finally started to wear off and now i'm just here staring at hundreds of antibiotics, the concepts of micromeritics (study of small particles), and weighing out 20 capsules and their shells individually in order to test their quality and uniformity of mass.
Anyway, where i'm going with this is that it's now taking me ages to get one lecture done. It doesn't help that I'm procrastinating every 2nd minute.

Ball is coming up. Theme is Chicago, as you are aware off. Not going to do anything for it. I'm just going to dress like a normal person going to a ball. Nothing fancy.



Ooh i have something else to talk about. But i'll start that in a new post.

Fancy-ful

Megs:

I am going through several fanciful affairs at the moment, albeit (thankfully? unfortunately? haha) not with males, but with these:

- Snowboarding. Pure awesome.

- The upcoming Optometry Ball - have been focusing on making the costume for about a month, and I daresay it's finished. Not going to reveal too much about what it's like - but it's been incredibly fun, preparing a GothLoli haunted marionette outfit.

- The idea of playing the accordion. It reminds me of Parisian streets, or that scene from Lady in the Tramp, or both.

- Deciding what to do for a day on a whim.

Hmm. Might put more later.

On Learning, and then some

Megs:

How easy it is - to tell oneself: "Alright, now I am going to sit down, and start poring over all of last semester's worth of notes for optom171A [Structure and function of the visual system]," read about 6 pages worth of lecture handouts, absorb about 2, and get distracted.

Productively, though, I made up some songs as mnemonics to help remember some of the stuff. Aren't they great? I wonder how fast a textbook would sell, if it was written not by some old guy with a million letters denoting his qualifications after his name, (eg. Dr. S. Ape Sapiens, PhD, MBCHB, S-thingPsych ABCDEFG)** - but by a [well-achieving] student who could communicate in effective slang exactly in what sort of cheeky ways we could learn/memorise/remember half the crap we're meant to know, before and after exams.

Maybe it's a terrible way to learn things, but at least (some of it) works. I still remember one I learnt last year for the paper POPHLTH111 (Epidemiology to you):

C T I E B C E C. It stood for Can Tim Isolate Everyone, Because Chris Eats Children.

And it was supposed to stand for all the things you have to consider before the implementation of health policies. I remember T stood for "Time", E stood for "Ethics", B stood for "Benefits", and one of the Cs stood for "Cost". I haven't thought about this in a year so I'll try and remember what the others stood for later.

I know of cruder mnemonics, such as the one for remembering the twelve cranial nerves.
The letters are O O O T T A F A V G V. Some of them are rude! And, "because classy sophisticates like us shouldn't stain our lips with cursing," you can look them up yourself xP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mnemonics_for_the_cranial_nerves

Hmmm I have to go, lecture in 47 minutes and I'm still at home. I'll post an update of what I've been up to in the holidays/my current interests-and-hobbies later, I guess.

**NB: I have huge respect for these people. Really. In fact had we but world enough, and time I would probably want to study a million things too. I don't know how people with a million degrees do it!

Hoorayendofexams

Megs:

Here are some of the best feelings in the whole entire world:

1. Going for a pee after holding it in the whole night because it's too cold to leave the bed. (In the toilet in the morning, that is.) - Kudos to my friend Chris, who told me with much conviction this has to be the best feeling there is.
2. That scarily happy high feeling after you finish your last exam and knowing you are on a break and you don't have any uni to bother you for the next month and a bit and you are so happy you could scream!!!

I'm sure there are several other best feelings but whatever; I'm kind of on #2, although I'm quite sleepy at the moment, so I'm not really all that high. I have never studied around the clock for two weeks solid in the time leading up to exams! Stupid crazy things happen to you when they shove all of them together - Thursday am, pm then Friday am. My last exam was Stats, so I guess you could call this the aftermath! Ahar har har.

There isn't much to discuss about mine, except that Physics sucked for everyone, Medsci didn't, and Stats was a cinch. Pretty much sums up S1 2010. No paper I did this semester will really be relevant in my career. (Cheers to my mother for pointing that out). Someone from my class told us that his mate, who is an older Optom student, failed Physics, and passed Mechanisms of Disease with an A, and begged the Optom department to let him into 2nd year, so they were like "meh okay". Hooray! There is hope for all of us yet. And I understands statsy jargon now, which I suppose is of quite some benefit. Yee!

Nothing else is new that I haven't told you. If there is anything that is a bit different in my life that is worthy of putting on this blog is that I am put off pork and feel sick after eating it. The taste and smell makes my stomach turn. One more step towards vegetarianism becoming a rabbit.

Well now that I'm sitting here I might as well think about my to-do list for these holidays.

- Get Restricted driver's license (so slack; I probably won't get this done til Christmas)
- Finish watching Tess of the d'Urbervilles
- Finish 31 paintings of Kuan Ying
- Design dress/costume for the Eye Ball (another Ahar har har). Since the theme for the Optometry ball for 2010 is Horror, so I'll have to come up with something freaky and crazy. Lady Gaga will probably be good inspiration :D

Hum. I'm incredibly sleepy. You spiked the pizza at lunch didn't you? :P Hope you're having fun at work.

PS. Isn't it incredible that I am counting down the days til July 2nd, not because that it'll be my birthday, but because my TXT2000 will renew then? How things have changed. Ahaha. I need to get Txt4k.

Back in Auckland once again!

Wil:

Well... and so i'm back in the wonderful land of Auck. Woo! I'm very happy to be so.

I am sooooo ridiculously tired. Our flight was delayed 1.5 hours because they'd lost a screw somewhere behind some panel and had to call in the engineers to come find it -_-
In the end they couldn't find it and just told everyone we're going to fly anyway. Ha!

So yeah, semester 1 has come to an end. I'm quite relieved! I didn't think I could work harder than I did last year in Health Sci but I certainly proved myself wrong! Whether or not my results will reflect that will be another story. Let's discuss each exam:

1. PHCY256 (Biopharmaceutical chemistry): I think those fortnightly 'End of Module Tests' (EMOTs) actually were good things after all. I certainly didn't have to study nearly as hard as the other papers for 256 as I had studied the subject to quite a reasonable depth by the time study leave came about. Woo! I guess that's one of the main objectives of the EOMTs.
The questions were quite predictable and I was able to answer all questions with a relatively high level of confidence (except one question about Thin Layer Chromatography *yikes* I never liked TLCs...)

2. PHCY231 (Biochemistry): Despite having only had 17 lectures in the entire semester for this paper I felt there was an awful lot to learn (or more like memorise!). But what do you expect of biochem? Anabolic pathways, catabolic pathways, drug detoxification, inhibition of regulatory enzymes, activation of regulatory enzymes, influences of hormones etc etc Just a whole lot of memorising! For only a 7 point paper I felt that I spent too much time studying.
Being such a small paper overall it wasn't hard to predict (almost bordering on being psychic) what was going to be in the exam - there wasn't a lot to choose from! As long as you had all the pathways memorised then you were fine - and I was! I'm hoping for a good mark in 231 too!

3. PHCY254 (Physical Pharmacy A): Okay this is where it starts to go down hill (just a tiny bit mind you). The format for this years exam changed a little bit from previous years and the questions were a lot less predictable. Fortunately, I enjoy physical pharmacy as a subject in its own right and enjoyed studying for it. I'm just a bit bummed that it might not have been my best exam! I'm glad this exam didn't ask questions on very specific points that I hadn't fully studied.

4. PHCY251 (Physiology for Health Sciences): 32 multiple choice questions and 10 mini essays. Studied squat for it and still managed to successfully wing through most of the questions. Huzzah!
It's suffice to say that if I get anything higher than a B+ then i'll be quite happy!
But I do have to say that some of those mini essay questions were horribly written. Also, some sub-questions (of the bigger overall essay question) were allocated a big mark (>5) but you could only write very little on it (i.e. just a bit more than a sentence or small paragraph). So depending on the question it was either very easy to get marks, or very easy to lose them.


Ah well I can't wait to get my results back.

It's sort of time to relax now that holidays have arrived but I still need to do my community placement! As you know, that's sorta playing on my nerves a bit. Getting a bit anxious...

Oh! and we also have a group assignment to do for our NZ Health System module! Which reminds me - I need to email out information to my group partners!

Ugh it's late. Normally I would be in bed by now. I really hope my suprachiasmatic nuclei forgoes my temporarily adopted need to wake up at 6:30am every morning and let me sleep in for once! I don't think it has received the message that exams are over...


Blah

I love cheese. Nom.


I'll ttyl. Come visit me once you're done with exams.

And so ends Semester 1, 2010

Megs:

Well, like, what the heck? It's June already. This is officially my last month of being a teen! And I haven't achieved a whole list of things! But it's okay, I can do it in the holidays.

Here's something sciencey, I guess. Rabbits do not change sex. This is something that Marianne seems to be wholeheartedly convinced about. Rabbits are mammals! Mammals do not change sex, unless they're like the Man Who Gave Birth, except the Man Who Gave Birth was a woman to begin with. And this is something I saw on 20/20 sometime last year, and I'd noticed that he and his wife seemed very hurt by the fact that some people said it was no miracle that he gave birth to a baby. But since he used to be a woman, it was still biologically possible, so I would not have called it a miracle, regardless of how much he claims that it's a miracle because he's a male. It's like having a toaster and altering it so that it has a television screen and marvelling at the fact that it can still make toast. Anyway, rabbits do not change sex, Marianne, so there.

Animals that do change sex are salmon, and some other fish.

Here are some Semester One achievements. I've bought an Optom T-shirt, which is the wrong sex and like a size too big, but it's purple. I've written and finished 25 poems. I've attended for the first time a poetry reading evening and found out that I freaking love listening to them (but I guess it does depend on the writer/performer). I've sat 4 tests, have gotten marks I'm generally pleased with and have also gotten my lowest test score EVER, in physics, which I thought I didn't suck at at the beginning of the year, but apparently do, which is a new type of thrilling. I may have brought the class average down! Woopee. I feel as though I ought to frame the test paper on my wall :D
I have watched the first two episodes of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and the first half of Great Expectations (the 1946 adaptation). Hmmm, have noticed a real pattern of not finishing the things I begin to watch. Kind of reflective of a lot of projects I do. Sigh.

Woo, wall of text. Huzzay!
Tomorrow begins the mad scramble to learn physics from scratch in two weeks.

Wish me luck.
x

Random post 1

Wil:

Pharmacy Council of New Zealand Code of Ethics

Principle 1: Autonomy

1.3 Medicines and therapies not prescribed by another provider

Where the patient is seeking to purchase, from the pharmacist or from other personnel for whom he or she has responsibility, any medicine, complementary therapy, herbal remedy or other healthcare product not prescribed by another healthcare provider, the pharmacist must ensure that the patient is provided with credible, understandable information about its safe and effective use, expected outcomes of therapy within the limitations of available information, what to do if side effects occur, storage and disposal requirements, and any significant risk of therapy or insufficiency of evidence about efficacy of the therapy, to allow the patient to make an informed choice.

--

Hazaa!

Cardiac Output

Megs:

If most of your cardiac output goes into your kidney

doesn't that make the phrase "I'll carry your words/voice/face in my heart" seem kind of weird?

Ha.

That's just great! Legs on yer face.

Megs:

HA I found this incredibly funny.

So I was poking around on Wikipedia to do some background reading for Medsci203 (freaking love this paper!), and I looked up Toll-like receptors. Toll-like receptors are a class of protein that help out in the innate immune system that bind to foreign molecules, to activate responses when it's needed.

Anyway, Toll-like receptors have a wishy washy name (imagine if someone was called Mary-like or Sophie-like, or Loubie-loo-like) because they are really similar to what's coded by the Toll gene, which is found in Drosophila (flies).

And the Toll gene was called the Toll gene, because when the scientists were mucking about with this gene, the larvae that were made with the whacked gene looked really weird.

And when the scientists found this out they were so excited they started shouting in German. Alright, they probably spoke German in the first place but they started shouting all the same - "Das ist ja toll!" - which means "That's just great!"

And that is why, as is implied on Wikipedia, the Toll gene is called the Toll gene. So really it's called the Great gene, because it's just great. And fly-babies look strange when it's mutated.

Here's the link!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_%28gene%29

Now I couldn't find any pictures with weird looking fly babies (which probably all look like rice anyway), so instead of that, here is a picture of a fly with legs on its face where its antennae should be (the one on the right).



Edit** - this picture is totally-like unrelated to Toll-like receptors, I just thought it was cool. :D

Hinga dinga dingum

Megs:

This is just another note before the holidays once again slip away into memory (again, where'd they go? Honestly.)

Here are some fun things that were achieved. You know most of this, but one day I won't because I'll get Alzhiemer's or schizophrenia, or something, so I'm putting this down:

-Signed on with Trademe and bought things; namely the book Touched With Fire that we studied poetry out of in English at high school, because I've missed reading what was in them, and also won a bid at 6pm today for Memoirs of a Geisha (the novel, not the movie) because reading it did something to my head that just enabled me to ramble on paper better and a bit more creatively. Exciting times, yes.

-Watched the entire series of Death Note from start to finish. Turns out I had watched most of the second season, I just thought I hadn't because nothing happens for a good fraction of it and partly also because I didn't remember listening through the intro-music very often; but that was only because I very much dislike the screamo at the beginning. But that aside, it's about as good as anime gets.

-(Probably) drove parents crazy by playing the same bars on piano over and over. I practised more on the thing than I did viola over these two weeks. Need to practise the latter.

-went to anatomy museum to look at dead things

-finally figured out algorithm for last pattern on Rubik's cube which was annoying me because I couldn't solve it, but yay for that now

-got new clothes despite needing to get rid of clothes

-did a crap job of studying

-then realised this weekend that am turning into a bit of a social recluse, but what can you do. Yay, bussing starts again tomorrow.

Would like:
New hobbies
More money to pay for new hobbies
A holiday

Go Shawty

It's yer Birthday!
Do you know, the first time I heard that song by 50c I thought he was saying "It's Shiver day". Yes, yes, I was 12, leave me alone.

Happy Birthday Wil!
I hope you have lots of cake and chips that you make your flatmates retrieve for you. :D

<3

Know what's cornier? Your cornea

Megs:

That's actually a very good idea!

I think I've been spinning in the opposite direction since last year ended. I've basically been coming home and flopping on the couch reading a novel or playing with my sister's NDS. And then watching Spongebob. And then finding some other reason to not study. Which is such a bad thing to do! These are high school habits that I've reverted to! (Looking back, it's no wonder I did so shoddily in Level 3 Calculus.)

But it's only because the papers haven't been insanely intense. The "jump up" from last year has just been a little step up. It's making me lazy!

Part I of BOptom goes like this:

• OPTOM171A Visual Science: Structure and Function of the eye. Really as the long name suggests. Just going looking at different parts of the eye in great detail, like the cornier cornea, sclera, eyelid, lens, etc etc etc. It's kind of bizarre how much time one can spend learning about a part of your body that's so puny that you could lose it if you put a pin on it (ha!!! Yay puns!). Today we looked at the Aqueous Humour. There was no humour involved at all (sorry!). I guess I like the content, it's just that the lectures are really tedious.

• OPTOM161 Optics of Lenses and Lens Systems. This is the physicsy paper! It's been really really straightforward so far. I guess I've always found Light and Waves of physics more enjoyable than any other part for some reason. Possibly because ray pathways are easy to visualise, and also the maths involved is very simple. This paper takes me back to Form 3 Science concepts, and Form 5 Physics equations. Snell's Law anyone?
  

Ha it's kind of funny how these papers are OPTOM1xx. When Renee and I were wandering around Grafton we went into an elevator full of third year Optom students who looked at us and said, "Oh... First years." I was quick to reply, "Actually we're Part II!" And then they said, "No, you're Part I. We're Part II. You guys are still first years to us!" Ha. I felt like a noob.

But yes, they were indeed Part II students. It was a very humbling experience. :P

• MEDSCI203 Mechanisms of Disease.Not like Medsci142 last year; this paper's been looking at microscopic ways we cope with pathogens. It's really all about how cells and bacteria fight each other, with all these rules and stuff. It's a bit like Lord of the Rings.
  

• STATS101G Statistics. Super easy; the concepts are all just common sense and all of the questions in the tests and exam will be multi-choice questions. Today we looked at Normal Distributions. We don't even have to calculate the areas under the graph like we did in Form 6, apparently Excel does all that for us.
  

So yes, that is a summary of what I'm doing with my life this semester. It's nowhere near as hardout as yours. I'm turning into a slacker.

AYO isn't much of a big commitment, especially right now. The programme's been divided into different pieces and I'm only playing in one of them. So it's about 45 minutes of rehearsing every week. Concert tomorrow at the town hall.

The animals are probably good. Haven't been out to the backyard in a bit. Nobody tidies it and it's such a mess that I'm getting tired of going. I think Leo's bored to be honest. Still loves his towels. We're not leaving food for him overnight because he craps everywhere inside at night, so now he gets dinner at lunchtime so he does his business outside in the afternoon.

Rah.

Linctuses and aromatics

Wil:

Greetings from the land of Otago!

Wow. Yes, I haven't posted in a very long time. I've been a very busy pharmer. I'm not entirely sure if anyone in the whole course takes studying as seriously as I do. People seem to have difficulty understanding the concept that some people like to study every day. Hmm possibly not to my extent..

Anyway, short recap of my papers and what we are currently studying in them. You should do the same, Megs! :

• PHCY251 (physiology): At the moment we're recapping the nervous system. This whole paper will be recapping everything we did in HUBS191 AND HUBS192 which is why i'm finding this incredibly boring and time consuming. Anterolateral pathway!
  
  
• PHCY231 (biochemistry): I'm rather enjoying biochemistry at the moment! We're covering nitrogen metabolism. I really like how terms like 'oxaloacetate' and 'alpha-ketoglutarate' just roll off the tongue.
  
  
• PHCY254 (physical pharmacy A): Last time we talked about Colligative Properties of solutions (which we talked about earlier :P), and how we're doing studying weak electrolytes. I really do not enjoy weak acids and bases. They always somehow manage to expand this seemingly straightforward and definite topic into something rather convoluted.
  In todays lab we played with various solvents like octan-1-ol. My lab coat still has a lingering smell...
  
  
• PHCY256 (biopharmaceutical chemistry): Don't let its name fool you. It's only really organic chemistry and then some. We finished stereochemistry and are now learning about acid-base chemistry. People sure like to come up with some crazy theories about very little things that we can't see... >.>
  
  
• PHCY263 (principles of pharmacy practice): Our group presentation is coming along nicely. We have to present a scientific paper about a psychology study done with children. It shows how people (in general) adapt their speech style depending on their conversational partner. For example, a male might speak to another male in one way, but differently to a female. It also covers how females tend to converse in order to maintain relationships, using language features such as compliments and mitigated questions. Boys, however, use speech to assert dominance. They tend to use more threats, insults, expressions of opinion, and direct commands.
  In lectures, we're just getting talks about "good communicatoin", being active listeners and learning to shape well-rounded questions to optimise response information. It's rather boring really. Who doesn't know how to communicate properly when required?
  Ooh, in our next Dispensing lab we get to make a linctus. A linctus is also known as 'cough syrup'. The active ingredient will be codeine phosphate!
  

Yup, so that's me.

It is getting very cold here. You can definitely tell that the wind coming up as been by the Antarctic. The air gets real chilled down and on your walk to lecture your face goes numb.
Note to self: Don't live so far away next year...

I really hope your 'good luck' points go up within the next few days. It would suck if your streak of "bad luck" continued. As I said, it's probably just a transient glitch in the cosmos. Maybe mercury is in retrograde...

How is AYO going? I could never be committed to something so big like that while at uni. Again, maybe it has something to do with the amount of study I do... *priorities*

How is your rabbit? How is he enjoying roaming the jungle that is your backyard everyday? How is your mysterious little fish pond that you have out back?

I really should get to bed now and stop with this frivelocity. I'm going to be too tired again tomorrow. I have 5 lectures in a row again and they're all in different places. Going to be doing a bit of running.

I'll chat with you later!


Mission Complete!

Yay official usernames / Day of Bad Luck

Megs:

Ha about time; I finally bothered to look for the setting on Blogger where you enable other authors to post in the blog. So yay! Now my posts will actually be credited to me, as megniscus, and Wil's posts will be under his username which will be whatever he decides on later. It just feels more formal that way :D

-

awelifgakwuefawfe

Today has been a day of such exceptionally bad luck!

I honestly feel like the universe just surprised me by showing me the hard way how bad a day can be, but obviously when you remove the extreme cases of natural disasters or road traffic injuries or like suddenly finding out you urgently need an organ donor but there's a year long waiting list. Anyway it's been such an amazing day crap-wise that I have to put this down.

This morning I received a text from Tim saying he'll be in uni at 9am, and since I'm selling my text books to him I said that 9am was perfect for me - I figured I would have an extra hour to walk to Grafton after I gave him the book. Strike 1.

7.50am: Imagine leaving the house on time and thinking YAY I'm in time for the bus for once, then getting to the bus stop and realizing you've left your ID card and your Grafton access card behind. These used to be kept in my wallet but are now attached to the convenient pulley you can hang on your pants. Convenient my ass. Strike 2!

7.55am: So I go home to get those, but I know I've missed the bus. I attempt to sit down on a chair but knock it over. (FML moment)

I manage to get a lift to Sunnynook again but guess what, the bus that requires least walking to the campus (Bus #881) after you get off is delayed.

At this time I also realize that my cell phone has only a half-charged battery. Why? Why? I charged it last night!

I see the 900X come and go. I could catch this bus, but go against catching this bus because it requires some walking to the campus. I didn't know it yet, but strike 3.

8.31am: The 881 gets to the bus stop, only it isn't a bus, it's like tin of sardines, except not with sardines, but people. It was similar to something you would see if you were trying to board a train in Japan (I find it quite funny how the station staff have to push the people in so the doors can shut). I'm pretty certain it's the biggest crammage that's happened to students so far this year.

BUT ANYWAY they couldn't let any more people on the bus so I quickly took the Northern Express.

On the bus I'm thinking, "I should have known that today I would end up catching the bus that requires the longest walking distance to City Campus...!"

9am-ish: The bus does its thing and is nearing Britomart station when I get a text from Renee saying, "Where are you? Is our lab going to be in the Anatomy Museum today?"

... at which point the word FUCK runs through my mind with the lovely dawning of realization that the lab starts at 9, NOT at 10am like all the Grafton labs were last year.

9.08am: I decide against running up to the City campus and risking winding myself (which takes 12 minutes if I sprint up the massive hill). Plus anyway, running to Grafton from City campus would take another 20 minutes. It'd make me roughly 30 minutes late to lab. I wait for the Link bus, which comes, and I figured it would get me to the hospital in roughly 15-20 minutes. Strike 4.

9.09-9.45am: The bus takes me on this big useless loop through Ponsonby. It gets to City campus.
Now I realize that I should have sprinted up the hill (12 minutes) and caught the Link bus from the city to Grafton (3-ish minutes without traffic).

9.55am: The bus stops by the Hospital, where I was due an hour ago.
(PS, your text about telling me to think about waking up an hour earlier? Funny's older cousin, but not Funny. But it's okay, I can appreciate the irony now. :P)

Woo! I'd never been this late to a lab session.

-

But today wasn't only a day of bad luck for me it seemed - this one girl came running up to the Link bus because she had to go to the City campus, but she was 20c short of the bus fare. And even though I gave her 20c she missed the Link (and 15 minutes of her next lecture) anyway.

-

So I was meant to go practise driving today, but I told my mother I should stay at home because with my luck/smarty-points for the day, strike 5 would probably involve me hitting a Rolls Royce or a small child on the road. So I stayed in.

Rotten cherry on top? Just now after finishing watching Spongebob, I pointed the remote at the TV to turn it off and walked into the arm of the sofa. I was carrying my friend's novel in my other hand and managed to squish the front cover in half and the first couple of pages. Strike 5.

Call me superstitious, but I think I was right not to go driving.

**

Silver lining - the lab demonstrator wasn't pissed, she just asked me with an amused expression where I lived. Also, since today was the first lab I'd only missed out on all that Introductory-mumbo jumbo. Still probably learnt more bones of the skull than heaps of other people in my class today, who just scribbled down the names of everything and pretended to be finished so they could wander around the museum. But I don't blame them.

The Anatomy Museum is beautiful, by the way. I don't have photos and I don't think we're allowed cameras, sorry :P You can have this link instead.

http://www.medicalresearch.co.nz/

I'm not sure the extent to which we're disallowed from describing the things that are on display (because it is human tissue, and because Med students have to treat cadaver-dissection as a sensitive subject, and because I missed the Intro), but I will say that gallbladder stones look as if you could push them on Crystal Mountain and get a decent price for them. :D

At least I made new mates in Optom today...yay!

Sigh. So that's my day. It was kind of entertaining in a very bizarrely crap way.

PS. Still have to find out why cell phone wasn't charged. But I looked in my room after I got home and the other end of the charger wasn't plugged in. Someone had removed it!!

PSS. Also, I didn't find Tim because I was in Ponsonby, so I'd uselessly lugged a fat textbook around town for the day.

Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring

Megs:
Banana phone! It's a song. I like it. :D



I made a phone call today!

A brief explanation for those who don't know, and which you don't have to read, before I get to the mundane thing I did today:

If I have a weakness, it's falling over my own tongue when I have to make a phone call.

It ONLY happens when it's me who's making the phone call (I have no problem picking up), and when the subject matter is the arrangement of some important business, as opposed to chatting.

It's a bit annoying. I have to leave the room so I'm alone when I call. And when I get through I stumble and forget what to say. So I write things down in the order I want to say them and read off the piece of paper when I'm talking.

Forget about leaving a message via Voicemail. Generally, I just hang up when the recorded message about "please leave a message" starts playing.

Apparently it's called telephobia! It's silly and irrational but I'm getting over it gradually.

-end explanation-

So today I had to arrange for City Mission to come to my house to pick up clothes. For those who don't know, the Auckland City Mission clothes the homeless (they came last Tuesday but picked up nothing because I hadn't sorted out the clothes yet. This is because Marianne arranged everything with them and either she forgot to tell me, or she told me and I forgot about it altogether. I really really think it's the first and not the latter, but the fact that I don't remember her telling me makes a pretty flimsy argument. LOL).

Which means I had to make a phone call. And since I'm trying to go through this whole second puberty thing (reference to previous blog post) I decided I would start using the phone without having to rely on a script. And wouldn't you know it, they put me on voicemail.

So I organised in my head the 4 points I would say to them:

1. Hi, I would like to donate some clothes

2. My address is... (I nearly put that in but then realised that strange pedos lurk on the internet and it would be unsafe especially since I'm going through 2nd puberty.)

3. I would like to apologise for the mix-up last week when you came to my house but there was nothing to pick up

4. If you need to contact me my phone numbers are ###-####

So I said all of that, and I was pretty pleased with it, except I remembered afterward that I hadn't left my name.

Sigh.

I guess it's better than saying "Amen" at the end. I know someone's done it in their hurry to finish talking.

*

Other interesting things of the day:

-My bus whacking into another bus this morning
-Finding out I was on the wrong campus for the library book I wanted
-Fire alarm going off in Grafton campus
-Hanging with buddies who are now in Med
-Learning the names of the muscles surrounding the femur with Olive (More on this later!)
-Going for a drive for the first time in 7 months

Yay!

Blah, I haven't done my hour long practice for viola today! awefhalwebiuafwe Must do now.