Dude, this thing still works!?Wow, bloglines will sure be showing its value this week. Can't be too many people who check manually now huh? But yay, I'm on holiday. Well study break as I've got 2 weeks until pathology and I've barely touched the thing. Which is a bit annoying, because there's nothing like spending one's holidays at the desk, wearing holes into the carpet as you roll back and forth on your chair.
So shall I fill you in?
I spent the past 5 weeks doing the busiest run of the year- general medicine. Just so much to learn, and so little time. I did learn heaps though, especially about cardiology (hearts), renal (kidneys) and oncology (cancer). I also found respiratory useful to go back over (OK, and re-learn). My knowledge on neurology (brain stuff- like strokes) and the GI (gut) systems was also greatly improved. I now just hope I retain it. Still I got a 'PD' (potential distinction, a good mark in any other words) for my OSCEs (where you play doctor with a patient and get assessed on it), and passed everything else comfortably, so was pretty happy. Wish we had more time on that though.
Had a weekend holiday- well actually the past week and a bit has been a bit more social with Abbey coming over and what. So good to see her. It was amazing how easy it was to just pick up the conversations again. Pity I didn't get to do more with her. An additional benefit was hanging out with Dave and Sam again. Not that we haven't been, but actually hanging out. Asking the hard questions, asking the dumb questions. Kinda like old times, but adapted for a new environment. Speaking of adaptation, see the
movie,its really good. But yeah, having 3 meals and a church service together was pretty cool.
Additional highlights of the past week have included:
Napoleon Dynamite. First in chronological order, rather than importance (although some may disagree). Gosh! I was expecting a LoTR spectacular from the way Carmi had been talking about it, so I was mildly disappointed. Although the "Canned heat" scene had me in stitches with laughter. Definitely some mad skills there.
Going to Pete's 35th birthday, followed by a more indepth "Dunedin life group" than usual. With the usual amount of silliness of course. And Jacqui!
Successfully going shoe shopping! And only an hour and a half (and about 30 different pairs of shoes haha). Glad it worked though, my other ones had no soles left.
Seeing my grandparents. In a stroke of good fortune, I also caught up with my aunt, uncle and cousin Sarah. Good times. Good times.
In a stroke of slightly odder proportions, I got invited by Colleen to her friend Maria's house for tea while at my Grandparent's place. Funny thing was Maria lives just down the road from my aunt and uncle who were visiting my grandparents. So I followed my uncle as he drove back to town. Definitely fun pulling up to them continually at the lights and waving and making funny faces.
Colleen and Maria claimed to have gone "Martha Stewart". Beef casserole, roast veges and apple pie, YUM! Great company,great food and a surprisingly entertaining film. Casanova probably didn't rate very highly on my to see list, but it did it's job. And a few valuable lines to use on the fairer sex next time I'm in the mood. No, not really- sheesh! We also watched the rugby (Go the ABs). There was a column in the paper last week about how women watch rugby. The columnist seemed to spend most of her time discussing the physical attractiveness or gossip regarding the players i.e. your stereotypical woman watching rugby. From my experience, it wasn't anything like that. However, I did learn that Ritchie McCaw didn't seem to be the type of guy to go for any woman who threw herself at him. So it wasn't totally rugby focused, but another stereotype debunked perhaps?
As mentioned above I went with Dave and Sam to Sam's church, Wellington Central Baptist. It was very different to what I was used to, but strangely not at the same time. The speaker shared how she felt about the current Lebanon situation, and shared a prayer about how powerless someone felt watching it on TV, and how she was not even able to have the faith that a prayer for help would be answered. It was quite an interesting viewpoint. It was also cool seeing some of the Stillwaters people there. Haven't really been able to get along as much as I'd like, so it was good to see them again.
I hung out with Kerry from church in the afternoon. We watched old Charlie Chaplin movies. It was fun, although I was a bit tired after a rather busy weekend. The weekend finished off with tea at my parent's place, and now I'm a day down into my "holidays". My room is now sparkling, I've made my study timetable, brought some new pens and ripped some new CDs. Now that I've used up the standard ways to procrastinate, I guess the real work starts here. (Well actually about 5 hours ago- but what's that between friends ;) ).
Night.
