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!