Christmas

Some friends' and my Christmas dinner! Snuggled in Kiet's room and enjoying this famous Malaysian delicacy while watching it snowed outside the cold dark night...

No la, nothing outside, just some singing cicak.

But, thank you Kiet for this scrumptous meal and his fried onion spread! :)

Under the knife!

Writing this post at 11.53am on 1st July 2009, so I've no idea which block we were in, but I remembered that we had a hospital attachment, and my group was lucky enough to sneak into the operation theatre, hiak hiak hiak...

Before entering the theatre. *scissors*

My group member Ling. (eh your mask tercabut la)

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We were told to wear operation cloth before entering. The surgeons wore green ones, while the helpers and *ehem* keh poh chis wore purple ones. Easily distinguished.

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"You DON'T come in and out of the theatre ok? We emphasised on absolute sterility, so only 1 of you can be inside at any 1 time." We nodded, but somehow, all of us were inside later on...!

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During the operation. There was a woman with a tumour at the right side of her cerebellum, so the surgeons needed various angle of her brain scan, like a map that shows the way into this little tumour.

Some views of the theatre. All the equipments were so damn expensive that their total cost might exceed the cost of a Perodua Kancil. The cost is equivalent, not the quality :)

The operation started at 11 something in the morning, after they properly anaesthetised and secured the patient. It was a pretty major and invasive operation- they had to first shave off half of the patient's hair, mark and cut open the affected scalp area, and expose the part of the skull. Since cerebellum is under the skull, they had to drill a hole to access to the tumour.

There was 2 types of surgery drills: big and small. The big one was for rough drill, while the small drills delicately around the intended area to get to the tumour.

So they were like grabbed the drill and "weeeeee~~~" drilled into the skull while the debris of the bone were flying everywhere like snowflakes!

One thing I had respect for the surgeons was they carried out the operation for 6 hours without stopping. By the time he said: "You guys may leave now. Leave! Before I change my mind!", it was already 4 something in the afternoon, and they had just finished clearing up the tumour.

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Being a surgeon is my dream, but maybe not brain surgeon... made me thought of form 3 Kemahiran Hidup class, haha.

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Why there isn't a movie theatre in Kelantan?!

Damn I like this place

Went to Tanjong Sepat with family. Was a fishing village in Selangor. Did not expect much but turned out that it is a pleasant place. By the time we reached there, it was already 3 p.m., so we went to Haw Yew Heng dumpling shop.

Looking for a place to sit down, chat and relax? Here.

Then went to a house that made and sold fish cakes and fish balls. Pretty typical like in other fishing village, think there are houses like this in Morib, if not wrong.

Later went to a so- called Couples’ Bridge (情人桥), which was actually a shaky log bridge at the site where fishing boats anchored. Man it was relaxing, haha.

情人桥.


Mangroves.

Fishing boats.

Look at the size of these fish… They should be swimming in the sea la, sigh.

Like this place a lot. Felt very inhabitable and comfortable. Geez sounds like a retiring old fart, haha.

Counting down for the next holiday already, haha.

WILL.I.AM. is Moto Moto!

Went to The Curve with Shyan and Mohan. Watched this.

Not bad gar... I mean very entertaining! Haha. Performs best on high stress people. One and half hour of laughter for RM 6, worth it. By the way, WILL.I.AM. is Moto Moto, the buffy hippo. No wonder it sounded so familiar.

After that since Shyan said he wants to buy some clothes, we walked around the mall.

Christmas is around the corner. Did they use this last year?

A forlorn christmas tree. If not because of the celebration, it is just another abandoned fake tree.

Quite a store. Found that shops in The Curve are a little unorganised, like shattered here and there. For forgetful people like me, the moment I stepped out of one shop, I would forget which shop I have stepped into before this, since most of the shops are not situated side to side, so you have to actually go and look for those shops.

Then we crossed the road and went to Ikano Power Centre.

Cold Storage. See the sign? I see this 20 minutes ago, haha.

Shyan just laughed uncontrollably when he sees this name, so I just entertain him by thinking that this is very funny, too.

Then we went to IKEA, which is situated just beside Ikano. When Shyan heard that I have never been there before, he was like: "What?! Out la you!"

2 mad people from nowhere. I do not know them. Haha.

Feel something out of this huge poster? I do. Always wish to pour some love to my younger sister, which does not exist.

Never know that there is such a nice cosy pet shop in KL. The Pet Safari.

The entrance.

Somehow I just do not understand why would somebody buy some snakes and rear it. I would kill them if I see them on the street.

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Somebody said he wants to buy clothes, in the end myself bought 1. But the best thing is, I finally bought this:

My very own Stephen King novel! Previously I used to steal my brother's, now finally wholly own by me! Hehe so happy :)

Hmm, what's next? Bolt?

Light outing

Yeah! Came back from Dullsville, going to enjoy a 10- days holiday! (Ang, you laughing again? =.=)

Woohoo~

Went to Leisure Mall in Taman Segar to watch a random movie with Ang and Mohan. So random until we watched this:


The initial reason of watching was because for the time from the point we bought the tickets until the show time, this one was the shortest.

By the time we stepped out from the cinema, my yawning mind still tried to think of the purpose of this movie. I got it:

Samuel Hong still can fight/ Ho yi da dak (Cantonese).

After the movie we chatted a little at A&W.

By the way, cut your hair la, Ang. Looked like a bird nest, almost. Haha.

Birthday~

Celebrated Hui's birthday lo. At KFC.

Fourth from the left, front row.

We were so noisy until a nosy man came up and shouted:
"Silent! This is a public place, not a private place, so please be silent, ok?"

I give you the finger, black skin!

So pathetic... made a little noise on a birthday party and got scolded. He's lucky we did not get crazy and play some creamy game, or else he might get so angry until he has a heart attack.

Anyway, happy birthday Hui! :)

Dobi

Been raining quite often here for the past 2 weeks, and un- dried clothes in our hostel started to give out funny smell.

All of my clothes have been worn and not cleaned yet, not even a single clean underwear.

And exam is 12 more days to go!

Thanks to my smart roommate, I decided to give the Kedai Dobi just outside my campus a try. It just took a full day to turn my 1- week clothes into clean ones.

RM 8 = cleaned + folded clothes

Hmm overall the service provided is satisfactory, just that the price stung a little.

Oh my god I started to feel lazy already! =.=

Birthday

Celebrated birthday for 2 friends, Cher and Shin.

Happy birthday ya! :)

Community placement

Finally, today we went for the oh- so- looked- forward community placement, which will be organised by every small group discussion of first year medical student. My group went to Yayasan Orang Kurang Upaya Kelantan or YOKUK. Our schedule:

9 am - Arriving YOKUK/ Watch introductory videos by YOKUK
10 am - Performance by us/ Games
11 am - Birthday celebration
12 pm - Lunch
2 pm - Interview with OKU
4 pm - Back

Basically it went well. After we performed by singing I Have A Dream, Kenneth said: "Did you see the look on those kids' face? As if they're forced to listen to us!" Well at least they did not close their ears la, so we assume we done great, haha.

The birthday cake, after some AEIOU games. It's specially for kids borned in November.

Hey Kiet, look, his phone is even better than yours. Hmm.

This guy was the only chinese in YOKUK. He looked perfectly fine, just that he had some problem in speaking.

Isabelle. Occupational therapist from Spain. She came all the way from Spain to Kelantan. So noble. Felt so small beside her, haha.

When we were tidying up the premis, all of the chinese in our group did this... Hmm whose idea was this? =.=

After the morning session we had a 2 hour break, and we had our lunch just across the road. As usual, only 2 or 3 stalls were opened in a huge food court. Maybe they left the empty spaces for cat- rearing.

After lunch, we paid a visit to the therapy room, specially designed and equipped with items to aid recovery of the impaired.

These light- emitting optic fibres was aimed to help those visually- impaired and also incapable in sensory touch, if not wrong.

Optic fibres. Safe for the children.

Eh wake up lo, we got work to do.

After the visit, we resumed our activities for the afternoon session, which is interview with the impaired.

The first client my friends and I interviewed. He was actually fine, just light effect from cerebral palsy, which costed some of his speaking abilities. Well he looked ok though, having a wife and a decent job now, in this organization. What surprised me was that he studied electrical engineering last time, before he got infected. He deserved better I guess.

The second and third we interviewed. Honestly, I did not see any problems on the man, and he did not want to tell. Speaking disabilities for the woman. They did sewing work here to earn some living. By the way, the man is looking for his partner, he is perfectly alright actually, so anyone interested can contact me ya, haha.

Went back at 4.30 p.m.. Basically most of the disabled are still quite capable, so I think they deserve a decent job, according to their limits.

Soup

Today a friend cooked a bowl of seaweed soup and shared with me.

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That's all.

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Yaya whatever.

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Anyway thanks ya, kawan. :)

Compensation

Today we had our pratical on method to separate plasma protein by electrophoresis, that is using electricity to separate components of plasma protein in blood based on their different electrical charges. There were 24 groups of students in total, so first 12 groups did it first for today.

When we settled down and turned towards the scientist, he explained the method, and later he said:

"The fact is, we only provided 9 sets of materials. So you guys share among... "

How could this happen laaa?! So disappointing!

But I managed to get 1 set, heheh.

Left: Chun's agar plate. Right: my agar plate.

The above were the result of the separation. Notice that my separation column was shifted lower compared to Chun's.

This is because when I applied the plasma protein onto the agar plate, the plasmas were accidentally applied lower than the expected margin. Thus the plasmas diffused all along the way until they 'collided' with the printed numbers.

Since the resources were so scarce and everyone in my group was staring at me when I was doing the experiment, I was so anxious that it could not make it and that the plamas would diffuse out of the plate.

Luckily the plate was made to be much longer that needed. To compensate careless mistakes made by people like me, haha.

No matter what we do, we should consider also the compensatory action, in case mistakes occur. Isn't that wonderful?

Clock 2

But, what I really want to blog about is the Blue Bear clock. It was given by the students in my favourite class, 6B before I left the school. Honestly, this was one of the most practical present I ever received, especially when I am studying here.

For the past few months, this clock worked well. When it screamed, all 4 of us in the hostel room would jump and be wide awake.

But then, since I came back from Raya breaks, I found that this did not always happen anymore.

When I set my alarm for 7 am, I would find this clock beside me when I awake and it read 8.30 am.

That happened yesterday evening, when I plan to wake up from nap and jog at 6 pm, I found myself started to jog at 7 pm. But luckily, my friends Han, Ying, Jie and Xin were jogging too. So I decided to join them.

But I was actually on training, for the coming annual sports day. And my friends were jogging for leisure purpose, haha.

So I decided to jog myself after they went back to their hostels. Then, when we were about to part, Jie said:

"Since I am cycling, I accompany you 1 round la. You jog, I cycle."

So we were like run- cycling for a round. This was actually quite a good method of training, haha. Now I know why dogs run so fast, duh.

Anyhow, Jie, thanks for accompanying me ya!

Strike to win!

Clock

Another precious sunny day.

Blue bear.

After finished sixth form, I was in a primary school in Kajang, in which I spent 6 months of my darkest life there as a temporary teacher, haha.

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Everyday I woke up around 5.45 am and started to shudder at the thought of spending another day teaching those kids. During a normal Thursday, which was the heaviest day, what I did is:

7.10 am - Awoke from my slumber, grabbed the 六年级地方研究 textbook, teachers' guide and a rotan, sometimes a teaching aid (pictures, models etc.) and walked into class 6A.

8.10 am - Barely alive from answering those kids' bombarding questions like "How did the universe form?" and "Was humans from monkeys?" and slumped into my desk and started marking Bahasa Melayu exercise books. Think it's fun? Think twice.

Rare.

Always.

And you have to do it one by one, no matter how many wrongs, you have to pin it out and make sure that they do correction after returning the books to them.

10.00 am - The time when my adrenaline rush peaked and I felt like running away. Usually I would equip myself with some strings and tapes, and of course, the magical rotan. Then I would duly walk into class 4H (4Hantu?).

Then it followed with an hour of zoo- keeping and monkey- catching that pushed your mental endurance to the limits. Yes I was teaching Bahasa Melayu, but I would spend half of the time disciplining them. This was the toughest class to be controlled. Not only they were academically weak but also, disciplinary loose.

There was just too much to be disclosed. When I was teaching this class, there was never a day that I did not count down to the day I can finally enter university and leave this mess.

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11.00 am - By this point I would not have much difference from a 死鱼 (sei yu).

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But it did not stop there, I have to quickly jog back to my desk, grab 四年级地方研究 textbook and enter 4C. Then started asking: "How is your project going on? Any problem?" Then some kids would come up and feeding me with their ugly but diligent paintings and asked: "老师这样可以吗?" Then later on I had to tell them to settle down and start my lesson or else they would explode and scatter here and there...

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Imagine doing these while you were exhausted!

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12.00 pm - 5C 生活技能. I could only relax a little by this point, since the kids in this class was quite obedient and hardworking. But if you bring them to the working room, you would be shouting until you were so tired you crawled out of the school at the end of the day.

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Then the bell rang at 1pm. The most beautiful sound in the world.

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That was basically what I did in a normal Thursday.

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5 days in a week.

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6 months.

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Of suffering!

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Not entirely, though.

Ponteng

As a first year medical student, all of us are required to organise and visit a charity establishment nearby Kelantan. We need to plan activities to be carried out at that establishment of our choice and spend not more than RM 400. Some previous visits done activities like gotong- royong and sukaneka.

Contohnya.

So exciting.

Anyway, my group decided to go to Yayasan Orang Kurang Upaya Kelantan (YOKUK). As there was a period of free time right after the first lecture in the morning, me and 2 of the other group leaders drove to Padang Tembak to get approval and discuss details of the one- day- activity with the person in charge there, Puan Habibah.

After the first lecture ended, we went out around 10am, headed into some wrong directions, twisting and turning then finally reached YOKUK. The meeting went well and everyone was happy and anticipating.

We came back to lecture hall at 12pm.

Obviously, we missed Mr. Vitamin's lecture. So disappointing. By the time we reached lecture hall, the lecture just ended and people were walking around doing things.

It was like we woke up from a coma. Everything seemed unchanged, but changes actually took place, that is we missed Mr. Vitamin's lecture!

But I think it was for a good cause. For charity sake. And this was my first time missing lecture.

But why Mr. Vitamin's?!

Freshmen ball night

What a night!

Went to a ball night in Renaissance hotel. This event was actually to celebrate the success of moon cake festival, but it later turned out to be something like a course/ batch night. Most of the chinese freshmen turned up.

The ladies were in their best dress and put on full make up.

The guys were in their best attire, only that we need not to make up. Guys rock, haha!

Been there at around 8pm, then later started to dine at 6 floors above the ground. While the dishes were being served, some of our friends went up and sang. Funny, the dishes did not taste as good as it looked like anymore... But we really had a good time, heheh!

We are the freshmen!

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After the dinner came the climax. The soft music was on, and the couples held and hugged each other and swayed soothingly. Some were lowering and snuggling their heads into their partners' chest, some were closing their eyes and dance to the music ecstatically, some whispered softly into their partners' ears...

The mood was really there and we were enjoying every moment.

Actually, I did not really put in much expectation for this ball night, considering the social background of the locals and of the students at general.

Before the ball starts. Left to right: Sum, Sheng and me.

But it turned out to be another success. It was really amazing.

My friends/ roommates. Left to right: me, Hai and Sheng.

Haha, funny, I might not have another chance to see my friends dancing like that. So this was really something to be engraved into our minds.

Left to right: me, Hwa and Xin.

Let us cheers and pray for the continuous unity and friendship among the 1st year chinese!

Food hunt

Saturday. Like other day. Maybe a little different.

Skull. Only study it 1 month after the lecture by Prof. M. U.. You can run, But you cannot hide.

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Going to organise our annual Buddhist society seniors' fairwell night at 8th January next year. As the coordinator, I had to go hunt for food with my committees for that night. So we decided to find the Kota Bharu Buddhists Association (K. B. A.).

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Had lunch at a chinese shop near K. B.. Very nice, too bad in small portion.

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The chairman of K. B. A. was very helpful. She understood our situation, that is lack of organising funds. So she said she will work something out and we agree to pay her what we can afford. Very nice people. But do not ever take advantage on nice people, remember. Thanks again, Sister Bi!

Back to campus at 3.30 pm.

Had drama practice at night. Not really practice, just some introduction of our roles and done some trials on our intonations.

Birthday deeds

Somebody's birthday again. Edwin.

Actually Edwin's birthday is on 24th Oct, and Li's birthday is on 25th Oct, so we planned to celebrate both of their birthday this morning. But Li absent, so we switched to plan B, by wasting a birthday cake on Edwin. Haha.

This time was at Murni cafeteria.

Beautiful cake. Creamy and innocent...

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After blowing the candles and using his mouth to siphon out the candles...

... lack- of- entertainment symdrome. A happy victim.

Anyway, happy birthday to Edwin and Li!