That's a whole lot of moo

And that doesn't refer to the "bull" below. Went with my family to the "Green Parrot" tonight. It's this legendary old dinner that's about 70 years old, and still serves up classics like steak and chips, fried fish and chips and pork chops and chips. It was seriously old school. Or is the term now retro, I can never tell? So I ordered a T-bone steak, and I swear that honestly was the biggest piece of cow that I have ever seen on a plate. We reckoned it weighed about 1.5kg, and at least .5kg is still sitting in the fridge. It was really tasty but, man- you can only eat so much meat without feeling sick (There I said it). But now to reverse back to Thursday.

Thursday was a good day- although long. Had tutorials from 11 till 4 solid (Late start was good though =) ). Also got to drive out to Kenepuru with my med friend Tom (as opposed to church friend Tom, not because I classify my friends by location). This was cool, because I've recently started praying for my med group. I guess I got myself into such a twist over sharing, seeing people come to the Lord, and everything else, I lost sight of the fact that specific prayer is effective, and lets God do the work rather than me. Nothing "magic" happened, or even worthy of a mention in church. I just had the priviledge of getting to know Tom better through conversation over a 30 minute drive. I also had the priviledge of dinner with Colleen on Thursday night. Good food, good conversation, good times. Pity I had to go learn what the sounds in the stephoscope meant later that night though- I was very tired.

Friday, I did get to try apply what I had learnt the previous night though, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. I also sat through a VERY long X-Ray meeting.I saw so much pneumonia I think I could nearly diagnose by sight. Just kidding, but it was very long. Part of this is because I don't take that well to general medicine, which is heart, lungs, kidneys, gut etc. Basically the stuff you mainly cure by drugs. Don't particularly know why, maybe because there are so many variables to work through- although this doesn't hold too well cos I enjoy psych. Perhaps its because I don't know enough about general medicine, and diagnosing its problems. In light of this, I've decided to go hard and learn heaps about the areas. Like I spent a few hours on Saturday afternoon learning about heart failure (Gus, I hear you groan). This is really common- apparently 20-30% of inpatients over 70 have this condition. It's where your heart doesn't pump sufficient blood to your vital organs and you suffer because of it. it is irreversible but you can do quite well with treatment. Not nice at all. Another area of "medicine" that seems to be preoccupying my mind at the moment is God.

That may sound kind of odd to many of you, but hear me out. What I've noticed is that the way I approach medicine is influenced by my belief in God (ie abortion, euthanasia etc). But are my beliefs in God affected by my medicine? I would say yes, but I don't exactly know how to describe it yet. I mean, surely some of the thought patterns, ideals, practices seen in medicine differ me from "joe average" Christian. And not in a unique "I'm so special" way either. Just differences so that I can be aware of the limitations of the way I think and how I approach God so I can begin to identify what other types of people I should apporach to get good Christian thought, answers and wisdom.

After all that medicine speak, I probably should mention that I had a great time hanging out with Jacqui and Jess during Friday evening. Saw "Motorcycle diaries" on Friday night, (which may or may not have something to do with the above paragraph), saw the AB's eat the Lions in the wind and the rain, and walked around the Holbein to Hockney sketches at Te Papa after church. All in all, a very fulfilling weekend.

Oh yeah, I have another 2 days until my next class :)

|

It would seem like a galaxy far far away...
Or you could at least ask what planet Gus and I were on when we came up with this. With apologies to Annette, Winston, Don, Gerry, Hayden, George and anyone else we may have picked on. The views expressed in this post are entirely in jest and does not reflect the true views of the owner. Just a couple of med geeks having way too much spare time and not enough spare sanity.

Angus:
They're not the boss of me! I hate them all! Gaah! I'm going out and never coming back!

Bing:
Yes, throw your toys. Soon your journey to the darkside will be complete. Opps, wrong genre.

Angus:
I will become more... furious... than any other Jedi!

Bing:
The true secret to passing medical school.

Angus:
Lightsabers in volcanoes? The ability to go "nnnnooooo!"?

Bing:
Through a ventilator none the less.

Bing:
Mysterious powers, self regulation, odd looking mentors, such is the way of a medical professional.

Bing:
Or “Medi”, as they shall be now known.

Angus:
It seems the upcoming election will throw the Health System on the Inner Rim into chaos, sir!

Bing:
I'm picking the health minister (who's also the evil bureaucratic overlord) to start a civil war by duping the National supporters, then taking control through "subversive means".

Bing:
And the health system shall be under her tyrannical rule for 20 years as she makes it into a political empire.

Angus:
Constructing a massive "Bee Star" in Wellington, with the power to destroy any hospital!

Bing:
With an army of locums (who are incidently clones) at her disposal to drain the system of any useable resource.

Bing:
not to mention the elite "business consultants".

Angus:
Luckily, Angusin Skywalker is on hand to chat up Natal.... er... pout unconvincingly at the camera!

Bing:
and stare through his hood one moment, then arrogantly move through patient space with ease.

Angus:
...flipping out and slaughtering an ENTIRE waiting room just because some guy lost a locum army! I can only conclude that I have Real Ultimate Power.

Bing:
Luckily, unbeknown to him, Angusin managed to have a couple of kids, who came back to free NZ from the evils of the "King-dom" when they finally got round to growing up 30 years earlier.

Angus:
Little blighters, immigrating like that. I knew I should've cloned Winston Peters when I had the chance!

Bing:
could be worse, you could have been defeated by the "dashing" Don Brash, and his Wookie "Gerry". Hey that scarily works!

Angus:
Don Brash slaps MilnationalFalcon: "This hunk of junk is the fastest thing this side of the Kessel run!"

Bing:
Gerry goes "Garraragh".

Bing:
It's his post as the white Maori spokesperson that does it.


Now you may not call it art, you may not even call it a post, but that actually was quite fun. But will I regret this in the morning?

|

God, I need a win…
It’s funny how sometimes you just need a win. You know, something to go your way, a problem solved, a small success. Well, I prayed for a ‘win’ this morning. Dunno why, but I just felt like I needed one. Well this afternoon I was taking my chem tute with Indrika, and she was really struggling with something called Hess’ law (For those of you who aren’t Dave P, it’s to do with energy from reactions). It’s quite mathsy and requires you to be able to manipulate chemical and mathematical formula. However, as we walked through the problem she went from having no idea, to having some weird “logic”, and then managing to get her head around the problem. Finally she was sprinting through the problems, and (hopefully) won’t look back.

I’m not sure what happened, or how it happened, but flippin’ fantastic that she got it. So yay that was my win for the day.

|

A series of not very nice things
Wow, I have not blogged at all recently (Not-nice-thing(s) (NNT) #1). This relates to stuff I haven’t really blogged about. Things like study. And a psychiatric long case and 10 mental state exams- the art of psychoanalysis (NNT #2). And a 2am effort to finish afore mentioned long case and mental state exams. I thought I really missed the thrill of handing in an assignment and having a free weekend. I was wrong. I actually did enjoy the assignment though, and got a lot out of it. Lesson for next time though, don’t leave the write up till the last moment, even though you get a really good thorough history and you know exactly what you’re going to write. Also don’t think about it too much afterwards because you’ll end up finding mistakes in your argument (NNT#3)- although there have been some good lessons from this.

Just in case I hadn’t had enough psych this weekend really has been coping with other people’s stress (NNT#4). I won’t go into detail out of respect for my friends, but it just seemed like everyone was/is having a bit of a crash at the moment. Or maybe God’s doing something, I don’t know. But I know that there are people just carrying a bit of stuff at the moment, which hurts me a lot. I’ve never really understood why, but the main reason I do the whole doctoring thing is because I saw people hurting and I hurt enough for them to want to do something about it. I also know that running off this one value can be quite detrimental to yours truly (NNT #5), but hey, sometimes it has to be done.

Especially when you have a whole 30 minutes of a new internal medicine run on Monday =).

But on reflection, a lot of good came out of the weekend. I learnt that I really shouldn’t be slacking on my quiet times, because knowing God and his Word can be really helpful (NNT #6). I also got to see ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ as a ‘chill’ movie later that night. Good, although I was quiet surprised at some of the sexual content in it. Quiet open for 1961 I thought. Hmm, shows what I know. Irene, Tom and I went and watched fireworks from Petone beach on Saturday night. That was enjoyable and some of those explosions were very, very cool. Watching ‘Ladykillers’ afterwards wasn’t the greatest move in the world, but a nice way to relax nonetheless. But hey, that stress thing came up again, and I ended sleeping in till 10am. Like when church starts (NNT #7). Opps.

Worship was good, cell group was challenging, and again I learnt a lot about dealing with people (NNT #8). The best laid plans of mice and men huh =). I was actually glad to go out to my parent’s place for tea that night. It was just…. homely.

Oh and a big shout out to Norm Hewitt, ex-rugby player turned ballroom dancer, who won “Dancing with the Stars” last night. Ha ha no you won’t catch me on a dance floor just yet, but inspirational none the least. And also to Michael Campbell who won the US Open Golf Tournament today. 10 years of trying of ups and downs, trying to achieve something bigger than himself. That was another stirring performance that makes you go “yeah, I’m willing to try harder in the areas that I’ve been placed in at the moment.”

Although, speaking of dance floors, Kings Ball, which is on the 13th of August right? I was hoping to go down to Dunedin for this. But an opportunity to go to Australia for a Christian medical students leader weekend has arisen on the same weekend (NNT #9 as I wanted to do both). I don’t know which to go to at the moment, but I am praying about it.
Seeing the net is slow at the moment, I guess I’ll keep typing. Actually why the net is so slow at the moment is an interesting story. In NZ the phone network runs in a giant circuit around the country, so that if one bit of the network ever goes down, the national network is not affected. However, today two places went down. One in a million chance according to Telecom. A power crew drilled through the cable while putting up a power pole in the Taranaki, and the line was mysteriously severed over a rail bridge in the Rimutaka Ranges. The practical effect of this is that EVERYONE is now on the net, which is making it VERY slow. Gahhh.

Although, without the net, it is amazing what you can achieve. Like today, I got some reading done; I reorganised my life so I know what to focus on over the next couple of weeks; my room got cleaned- although it still looks messy having no idea how some people do it; my psych notes were ceremoniously put away; my washing got done (and dry!); I have listened to Chuck Swindoll talk about demons not being a euphemism for psychiatric illness and the “Love Actually” soundtrack twice. Oh, and Billy Joel, “Innocent Man” once.

I haven’t told you about that have I? This album actually was the album of my childhood. I used to love it when I was 3- it has such great hits as “Uptown girl” (with original twang, unlike the Westlife version), “The Longest Time”, and “Tell Her About It”. Yes, it is very eighties, all the guys on the cover have their square rayban’s, leather or denim jackets and a couple of mullets. But it is so cool. I haven’t heard some of these songs for ages. Wow! And the best bit? It was $10 from Christchurch Airport CD store! Gold, I tell you, gold.

Hey, thanks to the net being so slow, I’ve just realised that a lot of my NNT’s have actually been really good learning experiences.

Yay, the blogger window finally came up. This is were I shall depart. Until hopefully a closer next time.

|

Geek

I would love to be able to write amazingly honest blogs about my spiritual life, and how much I've struggled this week. How my thesis had really gotten me down, and how many times I re-wrote my stats assignment before finally handing it in. How much this cost my spiritual life. How tired I was on Friday night after doing a 9:30-12:30 at the psych hospital and then the afternoon CATT team prior to finishing my assignment the night before. How this tiredness made me do some dumb stuff in front of God, and how I had this amazing time this morning clearing it up. I could even comment on how I've noticed that when I don't listen to worship music and use it to "worship" how crap my mood gets.

However, I don't really want to talk about any of that, because tonight I saw Star Wars III. Why does this take presidence over my spiritual life? Well it doesn't really, I'd rather just talk about Star Wars and keep my spiritual life, well mine . You have no idea how long I have been hanging out to see this movie. I have honestly been a SW geek since I was about 6- I was sick, lying on the couch and Dad went and got "Return of the Jedi" out on video (yes, showing my age with the old VHS). Ever since then Star Wars has always been a huge attraction to me. I have made SW models out of lego, read more SW novels than you could shake a stick at, and thoroughly enjoyed several computer games based on the SW universe. I never got into star trek, or much other sci fi, but SW was the tops. Despite the somewhat unsatisfactory feelings from the last two movies, I probably have stayed truer to SW than anything else from my childhood. That i have a miniature X-Wing and TIE fighter on my stereo probably speaks to that. In short, I am a SW geek. Admittedly, I've never tried dressing as a stormtrooper or anything "too weird".

So my verdict on the movie? The criticisms about the dialogue between Anakin and Padme were very justified, and some of the physics was a little whacked, but other than that I was very satisfied. The opening scene was amazing, the light-sabre duels were awesome, the Emperor was sleazly tempting, Anakin's psychosis was disturbingly real, and it seemed to tie things up very well. It disturbed me how dark it was, yet incredibly enjoyable at the same time. It easily surpasses Empire in terms of which "dark movie" is better- maybe because it looked so much prettier, or maybe the fights were so much more intense, but man, I am buzzing off that film. And I didn't go see it alone either. My mate David (yes another one) was keen to go to prevent me being Mr no-mates for the second week in a row.

So that I think, are my thoughts on that.

|

Strange confessions

I think Canterbury's growing on me. That's weird seeing how much I like having hills around me and I have generally disliked Christchurch (Chch) as a city over the years. But last years trip up at Easter, and Dave H's 21st have given me a few positive experiences to dwell on.

Ok, so it was wet, freezing and generally unpleasant upon arrival at Chch airport on Saturday afternoon. Well- it was pretty bad all over the country. The drive to Ashburton with Dave, his sister Amy and his friend Sam (with a red mullet- not to be confused with Sam B- who can be a red herring, but never a mullet). Meeting all of Dave's family was pretty overwhelming, there were so many of them. Ended up talking to his uncle Doug about transfering music to computers. Dave's family also has the cutest dog, Chester. It was very demanding of attention and had some awesome puppy dog eyes.

After a few hours, including sitting on Dave's back porch with him and Kirsten pulling apart sacking for his grass skirt, the troops from dunedin arrived. It was really good to see everyone again. Quite familiar- even those people who I didn't really know that well in Dunedin. The party went well- held in a playcentre (kindergarten) which was very different. Of all the places I'd been to for a party, a site with a 2 foot high sink was definitely a novelty. Didn't actually meet too many new people, kinda busy catching up with everyone else. It was a lot of fun and there was so much food. And if anyone dares pull that "When's the wedding" stunt with Nicola and I again, I actually will come down to Dunedin and lay down some smack =P!


After little sleep and much rugby, Josh, Justin, myself and (later) Nicola, went to Ashburton Baptist Church. It was pretty full, although apparently it was only half full. I reckon there was about 200 people there. Such a good message too- about a plant's natural desire to grow leaves versus the vinedressers desire for fruit, and how this related to our relationship with God. OK, so I thought it all seemed a bit 'folksy', as church can be sometimes, but it was still good, and I appreciated a change. We then returned to the Hawke's place for a hangi- basically more food. Hangi is one of those great NZ methods of cooking which leaves meat and veges so tender. I honestly couldn't get any more down. After much food by all, I managed to catch a ride up to Christchurch with a couple of Dave's cousins, Debbie and Courtney.

This was kinda higgledy-piggledy, as I thought that everyone else was leaving Sunday night. So i ended up calling Ekta, and managed to book a space on her couch. When we pulled up to Ekta's place I was taken aback. It was... a town house. I did have the right address, and yes, Ekta's place was flash- very new, and furnished. She told me the story about how God fully blessed her and her flatmates (Ingrid and Fern) with the place. It was kinda funny as all three of them are med students, and the discussion quickly digressed to one topic: "How's med going?" I think Penny was disgusted to hear our conversation when she walked in. But hey, while it lasted it was good. And it was good to see Ekta, Ingrid and Penny again. We also saw her malawi photos, which were amazing. As the Med students were going to their friend Karen's birthday for a girlie night, and Penny was going home for tea with her Grandmother, I ended up going into town to see a movie (by myself). I intended to see Star Wars, but due to a lack of showings on a Sunday night at convinient times, I ended up going to see "Bride and Prejudice". Yes, I went to a chick flick by myself on a Sunday night. And you know what's else- I enjoyed it. I think it actually made me want to read Jane Austen more. Ok, and the Bollywood aspect was a bit of light hearted fun. After the movie I caught back up with Penny, and we went out to Summner for a walk and the Port Hills for a drive. It was cool to catch up. I've always enjoyed our long talks- they can be quiet deep at times.

Back to reality, and school work. I spent all day today printing off my thesis corrections. I skipped 3 lectures (although 2 were apparently doozies) and spent 6 hours printing off the nine pages required to finish it off. Argggggghhh! But gladly, that is now sent off, and my stats assignment is nearly done. Yay. now I have to focus myself for my psych stuff due next week- haha roll on next Friday!

|

It's too late to blog
Well even the best intentions go out the window sometimes. Call me uncommitted, call me busy, if you want you could actually call me on my phone. Well, that would go beyond the call of duty.


Tomorrow, I promise.

|