Does it LOOK like I can speak Chinese!? Oh, wait...

Things I have learnt from my time in Kenya and Tanzania

2012-01-16T18:59:00.020+11:00

Wise lessons from a land far away

I want a pet cheetah. No, I want two pet cheetahs... and a baby elephant... and a zebra foal
Popping your head up through the roof of a jeep with the cold morning wind smashing flush against your numb face whilst the driver fangs it at about 100km/hr down a lonely Serengeti trail could possibly be the best thing ever
Don't buy drinks when baboons are around
Lions spend about 90% of their day sleeping or lying around. They are my true idols
I don't think I could ever enjoy a zoo anymore
Passionfruit Fanta. It needs to come to Australia, now!
Don't be a female in the Maasai clan, unless you like having to do everything (including build the house) whilst the man sleeps around and does basically nothing
Be a man in the Maasai clan if you like sleeping around with several wives and doing basically nothing
Hotel safe lockers aren't always safe
End-of-med-school trip (med schoolies?): Thailand? Bali? Fiji? Vietnam? Hell no. ZANZIBAR!
The dish that Jack Black was referring to is clearly a Zanzibar seafood pizza from the night market
I like camping in tents, but clearly not for 20 days
My name is "China" according to every tout in Tanzania. If not, then apparently my name is "Japan"
This tends to happen a lot:
"Raffiki (my friend), where are you from?"
"I'm from Australia."
"Really? You don't look like it."
(In my head): No shit, genius
Diamox is the greatest drug ever. Pity that it forces you to take a piss on the side of a mountain about 17 times a day
Life's biggest dilemma: Stay in your warm sleeping bag for the next four hours holding off the biggest urge to go pee, or cut your losses and go outside your tent and into the subzero temperatures to answer the call
My knees clearly don't like racing downhill for three straight hours
In order to distance myself from them, my Australian accent turns extra bogan whenever a large group of loud, obnoxious Chinese mainlanders annoy all the Africans at the airport (and yes, it's ok for me to say this!)
I will probably come down with malaria at some point within the next six weeks
Larium anti-malarials give you crazy dreams, such as the one where you wake up in the middle of the night panicking and trying to find your way out of your dark tent, because you think you are trapped in a hot air balloon and the pilot is lighting the fire under you....
Irishmen don't tan well. Actually, they just don't tan at all
Carabiners and bandanas - the greatest travel accessories ever
When I don't shave for five weeks, my face looks like it just came off the set of a really bad 1970s D-grade porn movie
Never be away from the internet again when uni results are released
Tanzania could be the greatest all-rounder of a destination: world-class beaches, unrivaled wildlife, unique people, crazy adventure, and most importantly, excellent beer!
Not getting phone reception for five weeks is actually pretty awesome
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is the best novel I've read in ages. Admittedly, yes, I don't read much anymore except for medical journals (abstracts only!), newspaper sports sections and whatever words pop up on the screen of the playstation game that's on
Five hours of flying is made all the better when you're served by an oh-my-god-you're-the-most-beautiful-thing-on-this-planet stewardess. It is made even better when the next, torturous 15 hour flight sees you being looked after by a you're-so-hot-I-love-you-even-though-we've-just-known-each-other-for-3.6-seconds stewardess
People need to stop listening to the negative media and go to Africa more. Just avoid those ones with the civil wars and genocide...
They really do say Hakuna Matata a lot!
If you have a roof over your head, food on the table, and a job, then you have nothing to complain about. If you wish to complain, then I dare you to do it in front of these African children....
Africans (well, Kenyans and Tanzanians at least) are the friendliest people I've come across

Med student types (in a hospital)

2011-08-14T20:59:00.004+10:00

Courtesy of an urge to procrastinate...

YEAR 3B MEDICAL STUDENT TYPES

The anti-proactive student - There are some med students that are more interested in their learning than a 12 year old boy in a sex education class run by a hot blonde teacher. These students attend all their ward rounds, take histories and examine about four different patients, and generally don't get home until the sun has gone down. You are the exact opposite of these students. You do take a history and perform an examination, but only to one patient... and only once per week... and only at the end of the week. And the only reason why you do it, is to satisfy the burning guilt within. You successfully convince yourself that you've had a productive week of learning!

The choker - Some people are born to be cool and calm when things get pressure-cooker hot. You, unfortunately weren't. You know the anatomy of the heart and lungs back-to-front. You know every possible sign and symptom accompanying every single disease of either organ. You can perform a cardiac and respiratory exam in your sleep. Yet, come morning ward rounds, in front of seven other people your senior, the consultant's simple question to you of "what are the signs of COPD?", can only be met with stuttering, nervous sweating, an eight-fold increase in your heart rate, and retrospective regret as to how stupid you were.

Mr/Ms Stabber - You're legally allowed to jab needles into people and by God, you're not going to let this once in a lifetime opportunity pass by. Whilst half of your med student colleagues are still trying their third cannula on one of those fake arms in the practice lab, you've lined up your 25th cannulation on a real life patient, and it's not even lunchtime yet. And what's on for the afternoon? Why, the 16 patients you've pre-organised to take blood off. The pathology nurse either loves you, or is about two days away from taking out a restraining order out on you.

Mr/Ms Stabbee - You know trypanophobia? You most certainly don't have it! You're probably the above type, stabbing away at unsuspecting patients just as they wake up. But your needle fetish doesn't stop there. When you hear your fellow med student colleague across the room complaining about not being able to cannulate anyone, you're quick to offer your own arm for practice. Wow, did your shirt just roll its sleeves up in anticipation by itself? That's amazing!

The specialist - Third year is all about being exposed to as many different disciplines of medicine as possible. Not for you. You already know you're going to be the world's best intensivist, so screw the dialysis or rehab rotation. You're pretty sure that "ICU/CCU" is written down under your name on the timetable for every week. That place is your turf, and any other student that's going to be there is about to meet your fist. Not only do you know every nurse there, but you even know what times they start and finish everyday. Creepy much?

Theatre junkie - Let's face it. Surgery is where it's at. Nothing says medicine more than a race against time to plug up that fountain of blood coming out of the poor seven year old kid. Surgeons get to do all the cool stuff. Whilst most of the medical lackeys are boringly ordering their fourth bag of saline for the day, the surgeons get to be the extensions of the hands of God. You want into this! That's why your second home is the theatre. Whilst most others find standing in the corner of the operating room for about three hours as exciting as a party run by the Jane Austen appreciation society, to you it's the greatest way to learn. Either that, or you're just trying to get out of being on the wards where you'll actually have to do stuff. Well played.

Pen stealer - Pens are cheap inventions that are slowly being out-phased by keyboards and touch screens. In hospital, however, the pen is more important than your eventual medical degree. You need one. Informed consent that's not recorded down in some sort of note form never holds up in court. Unfortunately for you, the reg/consultant has asked to borrow your pen. This being the 11th time it's happened, you know you're never going to see that pen again. But hey, it's all part of the game. Some doctor steals your pen? You just steal one off the nurses station. Feeling particularly mean? Steal one off your fellow medical student

The early bird - you like worms. Don't get the joke? Then you're obviously slow. Good luck passing this year. Anyway, you're the one that rocks up to every ward round in the morning. You're so keen, you'd be there even if the rounds started at 4am. The problem is, every time the ward rounds are finished, you're left wondering why you even showed up. You had no idea what was going on, you didn't learn anything and just about the only constructive thing you did was attempt to fetch bed 112's drug chart, only to find that it's nowhere to be found, and hence you now look like a bumbling failure by not being able to complete the one simple menial task the doctor asked you. But that's ok because I'm sure you'll learn something useful on tomorrow morning's round...

Eponyms anonymous - You somehow know the fancy names for seemingly every disease known to humankind. Charcot's disease, Dressler's syndrome, Whipple's procedure, Friedrich's ataxia. You might know what they are, but not even the registrar has any idea what the hell you're going on about. Berger's disease. Um... you get that from... um, too many burgers?

The articulately challenged - Half the reason why doctors are smart is because they sound smart. What with all the big fancy words that they use, the normal Mr and Mrs Joe Blogs is sure to think that they're in good hands. Having the ability to reel off long medical terms with precision and ease is such an important skill to learn. Terms such as "choledocholithiasis", or "spondyloarthropathy" or "endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography" should roll off your tongue like the tagline in a Broadway musical being sung for the 35th straight night. Unfortunately for you, when you say those words, it sounds more like a tone-deaf 70 year old with laryngeal cancer singing Rebecca Black's Friday song. Good luck trying to pronounce 'pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis' (I didn't make that word up. Google it).

The tie-wearer - All doctors wear ties. Correction, all doctors over 40 wear ties. Infection control is usually a rather large annoyance. I mean, who the hell washes their hands five times in total when seeing one patient?! But they are good for one thing - they don't want you wearing ties. Washing hands a bajillion times becomes moot when your tie dangles in front of your next patient's face and passes on some flesh-eating bacteria to them. This is, of course, until some smartarse researcher disproves this with some quadruple-blinded randomised trial. But who cares? That's not going to stop you from donning one of those neck-stranglers. The older consultants wear ties, and you want to look like one. Hell, you've even gone one better and donned a bow tie.

The model - You've seen the folly of wearing a tie. It's not so much that it poses an infection risk. It's because by wearing one, you don't get to look coooooool. Nothing oozes cool more than a skinny, figure-hugging $200 brand name open-collared shirt, rolled neatly to just below your elbows and slim trousers (that shows off your ass) with matching belt and shoes. You've even considered strutting through the hospital with a pair of sunglasses on. The corridor of the Gen Med ward is your giant catwalk and your name tag reads Dr. Zoolander. For you, being a doctor means you should look good. Actually, no. For you, being a doctor means you should look smokin' code red on-fire hot.

The lunch scabber - You're a poor student that's swimming in the proverbial shit-pool of financial debt. You could go get a job, but that would require working, and you'd rather be caught with your pants down in the corner of your bedroom than work for minimum wage behind a greasy counter with colleagues that are half your age. That leaves one major problem, however. How are you going to pay for your day-to-day food? Simple! The lunchtime medical conference always has a free lunch. What's that?? FREE LUNCH! Absolutely! Hang on, the catch is that you have to sit through a boring lecture? Absolutely not, at least not for you. After you're done scoffing down the free food like a hypermetabolic ADHD kid with a sugar-eating disorder, you switch on your elite secret agent mode. Peeking around each corridor as you go, you sneak your way out of the hospital leaving no trace of your presence. So diligent is your strategy, that should you be spotted mid-escape by the man who is running the medical conference, you even have a contingency plan: run for your friggin' life.

Grey's anatomist - You're so deeply disappointed about how working in a hospital has turned out. Where's all the incest between doctors? Why hasn't the intern slept with all his medical students yet? How come I haven't slept with all the interns yet? You've gotten into this doctor gig for one reason only - to live out the Grey's Anatomy dream. Unfortunately for you, real hospitals aren't like that. What, you mean we actually have to look after the patients?! But hell, that's not going to stop you. Whilst the three others at your lunchtime table are keen to discuss how ulcerative colitis may lead to colorectal cancer, all you want to do is stir some shit up. Have you checked out Dr. X's ass? It's almost as hot as last week's "hot doctor of the week". Want me to set you up with that new hot surg intern? Perhaps I can slip him your number if you like. You don't want me to? Oh, too bad, I've already done it.

Checklist lover.... or hater - Everyone hates that logbook. That stupid list of things-to-get-signed-off is staring at you. Put your ear to it. No, really, put that book right up to your ear. Can you hear that? It's laughing at you. It's mocking you for the amount of work you have left to do. There's only two months left, and the only thing you've gotten signed off is one of the injections (and even then, you screwed it up somehow). Much to your disgust, you're forced to actually show up on the ward and do stuff. You've taken a cardiac history, and by 'cardiac' I mean the patient had a heart attack 14 years ago, and by 'history' you simply asked whether it hurt a bit. That's not going to stop you from asking the intern or 5th year student, who is at the other end of the hospital, if you can get that signed off from the book. The funny bit is, they'll usually do it.

The Benchmark - There is always one in every group. He or she is the best medical student of the cohort, leaps and bounds above the rest. You are this person. You're the only one that knows about alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency and its link with COPD. You're the only one who knows every side effect from the use of sulfamethoxazole, whilst everyone else is still wikipedia-ing what it actually is. You're the only one who can perform a full neuro exam in 49 seconds flat. All the other students respect and admire you, and use you as the gold standard of progress. If you don't know it, then sure as hell we won't!

The commoner - *PA announcement chimes* Code Blue. Student Common Room. Code Blue. Student Common Room. What?! Since when was the student common room an actual ward? Oh that's right. Since you decided to spend 97.5% of your time there!! Why would you ever come out of the common room? There's food, comfy couches, and no consultant can ever embarrass you when you're in the common room!

The one who owns that little colourful Oxford Handbook of Medicine - ... Basically, everyone.

Alright, back to work :( :(

Shopping 101

2011-01-14T15:57:00.000+11:00

Writing blogs was once cool. That was about seven years ago. Now there are much cooler things to do on the internet, such as facebook stalking exes, watching entire seasons of pirated TV shows in one sitting, or tipping off one's significant other after planting fake extramarital cybersex chat messages into unsuspecting victims' computers to teach them a lesson for not password protecting their wireless network. Call me uncool, but I choose to blog. And by 'blog' I mean totally neglect this thing until someone tells me to update it.

Of course, it helps that right now I am so bored I have half a mind to cut my toenails by biting them off with my teeth. Sure, I could do more productive things such as clean my room or save the world, but that requires the lifting of my eyelids, and that's the kind of energy that I would rather not spend during these last few days of holiday freedom.

Speaking of holidays, I was overseas this time around, chiefly for my cousin's wedding, and catching up with the cousins, but also to go completely ape-shit in KL and throw all my eighteen credit cards at the various shopping centres in a mad 28-days-later-rage-virus type frenzy of shopping.

I'm not a shopper. I rarely look forward to the day out at a shopping centre. For me, it usually just becomes an exercise of frustration of not being able to buy the shit you want either because it is about 300% more expensive than what you're prepared to pay, or they have about 73 shirts in size XL, but not in S or M. It's not that shopping isn't good or fun. A good dose of retail therapy can certainly cure all, but spending an entire day walking around the shops with nothing to show for it is as productive as convincing an Israeli and a Palestinian to hold hands and skip through an open meadow together singing Randy Newman's "You've Got a Friend In Me". In most cases, I usually end up having more fun in shopping centres working out the best way to fortify the building in the event of an eventual zombie apocalypse like the movies and video games have been warning us repeatedly, rather than the actual shopping itself.

So anyway, I was in KL and bought close to 10kg worth of shopping.

You see, when it comes to shopping in general, I usually wait for that roughly four-yearly trip to KL before I go nuts and take advantage of a ridiculously awesome exchange rate. I intended to buy quite a lot, but "a lot" was supposed to be about one third of what I actually bought all up. But as the greatest man to have ever lived, Ron Burgundy, once said, "Boy, that escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast!" And that got me thinking. How did I end up buying so much, that even chronic shopaholic I-only-shop-at-Prada girls would be impressed? Simple. I happened to have stumbled over the most efficient way of shopping, and now I share it with you.

1) By far the most important rule to efficient shopping is GO BY YOURSELF. None of this 'but I need a second opinion on this dress' business. Mirrors were invented for a reason, and no one gives a better unbiased second opinion than a reversed image of yourself, you sexy mofo. Having other people shop with you only slows you down. If you must shop as a couple, then treat your shopping centre excursion like a swingers party and go your own ways for a few hours.

2) If the object of your desire is selling for a good deal, then it's probably the best deal around. Sure, there are about eight other multi-level shopping centres on the same stretch of 300m road, but none of those centres will have a better deal. How do you know this? Well that's because once you've bought the item, you're never going to look at the price of that same item in another shop anymore, aren't you? ... AREN'T you!....

3) The trip back to your car or hotel room is your last and only one. No trips to and from to drop off shopping bags are allowed. You're wasting time, and besides, the extra weight of shopping bags is good exercise you silly fat oompa.

4) Once you've bought something, keep it inside that ninth shopping bag of yours and forget about it. Trying to remember what you've already bought when buying future goods only brings hesitation. Hesitation is not your friend. It wastes valuable shopping time. Buy first, ask questions later.

5) Do not look at your receipts until all your shopping is done. In much the same way, do not try to memorise and keep a running tally of how much money you have spent. No one needs to know how much damage your bank account has sustained. Especially not you.

6) Use a credit card. You might pay extra fees, but at least it doesn't feel as bad as using your own money.

7) Buying multiple goods requires constant opening and closing of your wallet, and repeated retrieving and replacing of your credit card inside it. Wallets are subject to much wear and tear when used in this fashion, and will eventually tear like mine did. You are now faced with a difficult decision: Do you stop your shopping to make quick, temporary, DIY repairs to your wallet, or do you discard it altogether and hope your pockets make a serviceable replacement? The answer is neither. You buy yourself a new wallet, and soldier on.

Follow these golden rules, and you too can enjoy the joys of excessive goods, and excessive debt. Remember now, excessive = happiness :D

I like it on...

2010-10-06T23:25:00.000+11:00

*gets onto soapbox*

Yes, I know that it's a fun little harmless game, and that it's sparking a lot of interest and attention into what it's supposed to highlight. But I hope that you girls are making that fleeting split second of turning millions of guys horny worth it, and are actually donating.

Same goes with all you guys next month in Movember. Gonna grow the mo? Then donate some money.

Oh, and if you are going to say that, "Yeh, but it raises awareness", true... but then that's kinda like telling everyone that there's rubbish on the ground, but instead of picking it up yourself, you stand there waiting for someone else to do it.

Donate.

By the way, I like it when "it" can pay for my dinner ... I'm getting kinda poor :P

Exam... again...

2010-09-13T21:10:00.000+10:00

One day I will write in this blog when I am not procrastinating for an exam. PS. making flow charts is fun!

The unwritten rules of life

2010-08-02T20:39:00.000+10:00

- Whoever eats the last chip/biscuit/lolly must throw away the package. I'm sorry that fat Freddy ate nine of the Tim Tams and only left you the last one. Rules are rules. The bin is over there.
- Racist remarks are only acceptable if they are directed toward your own race. This is why I have remarked, "bloody Asian" a million times, and I still haven't been sliced into three by a machete-wielding ninja loitering around Box Hill station. This is called 'sending up' your own race. Note however, that I cannot call someone using the dreaded N word that rhymes with "bigger", for my skin is not inclined in that way. If I did that, I would deservedly receive a cap in my ass.
- Calls for shotgun can only be yelled when the car is in view. You must also be outside in order to make a valid shotgun call. In the case of a tie, the driver chooses who rides shotgun. Also, shotgun calls are only valid for the length of that single trip. Return trips require another shotgun call. Shotgun rules are sacred. Even the rules of the Bible take a backseat to these rules. (Get it? Backseat! Ha!)
- No talking allowed in the public bathroom. This one mainly applies to males. Pissing in a public toilet requires the speed and efficiency of a crack SAS unit on a snatch and grab mission. Go in, head straight for the far urinal, zip down, shoot down the urinal cake, zip up, wash hands, get out. Why? This should explain why.
- If there are more women in the building, then the toilet seat must be left down after use at all times. However, if there are more males present, the seat must be left up. To clarify, the seat is not always down. I know you women complain about "having to touch the toilet seat to put it down", but did you ever stop to think that we men have to touch it as well to lift the damn thing up? And none of this, "at least you don't have to sit on the seat when you go to pee" business. You should have thought of that when you decided not to let the Y chromosome in.
- When washing the dishes, they must be rinsed. Leaving the dishes on the rack covered in soapy water defeats the entire purpose of cleaning it in the first place. If my year 11 chemistry tells me correctly, soap/detergent doesn't clean shit... it just helps it slide off the plate. So if the plate dries with the soapy gunk on it, it'll dry with the shitty food germs still on it. Cleaning fail.
- Whilst on the subject of all things kitchen and cleaning, tea towels that drop onto the floor do not magically clean themselves when placed back onto the bench/oven rail/cupboard handle. Put it in the laundry and get a new one. Kitchen cleaning nazi has spoken!
- When wearing a shirt with a collar, the collar must not be worn up. For f@#k's sake, we don't live in the year 2002 anymore.
- Whiskey that is at least 12 years old is not for mixing. If I ever see you pouring coke into a 12yo Chivas or a Johnnie Walker Blue, I will pick up that drink and splash it onto your face (then promptly steal the bottle of scotch and run away). This rule does not apply if you are a rich bastard, and a $500 bottle of scotch is the equivalent of a bottle of water for us mere mortals. In that case, go nuts and do whatever you want with that bottle of liquid happiness. May I suggest buying 50 bottles of it and pouring it into your golden tub for a nice, relaxing bath.
- When someone has graciously stopped and let you merge into the slow, heavy traffic, an obligatory courteous wave of thanks is in order. You are the reason why road rage exists if you don't acknowledge this act of kindness ... you ungrateful son of a bitch!
- Last one in is a rotten egg.
- If you are the last customer/s in a restaurant/cafe, you must leave as soon as possible. Hospitality workers have lives too, you know. No one wants to be held back at work because you like to take 97 minutes to drink one latte. Also, if the staff begin to put the tables and chairs up around you, they're basically saying "Get the f*#k out!"
- For all men, no crying allowed in front of your fellow males. I cannot stress the importance of this rule. The world exists only because of the collective level of testosterone that exists at any given time. It is a positive feedback loop whereby one acknowledges the manliness in a fellow male, and reciprocates by being even more manly - usually by a single incomprehensible grunt, or a silent nod of the head. This loop ensures adequate global testosterone levels which physically enables the world to spin in its orbit around the sun. Without it, we are doomed. Crying in front of other males is only allowed in special circumstances, that being at funerals and on the footy field. Crying alone is fine. Likewise, so long as she doesn't mind emotional types, crying in front of females is also ok. Just don't let her tell your friends.
- There are two types of escalators: ones at the shopping centre, and ones at train stations. If on the former, you may block people from walking up without condemnation. If at a train station however, stand to the left and let people walk up on the right side. For every person that stands to the right and therefore blocks the people wanting to rush up the escalators, one person gets fired from their job for being 13 seconds late. This person then can't find another job and their mortgage repayments fall behind significantly. Subsequently, their house is lost and the rest of their family is left out on the streets. The eldest daughter must help out with the family's plight and so abandons her dream of becoming a world-class doctor (of which she would've been and would've found the cure to cancer) and instead commences her new life on King St, working three strip bars per evening. This human tragedy could have been avoided if only you stood to the left.....
- No dancing to Justin Bieber. Her music sucks.

Things I have learnt so far this year

2010-06-21T21:28:00.002+10:00

Almost the halfway point of the year.

Random stuff that I've learnt so far:

- Living away from home is fun

- Living away from home means doing your own laundry - not fun

- Med school is like high school all over again, except this time we give a shit

- Some people are just pure evil

- It is possible to feel like you're sixteen years old again

- McDonald's burgers are now small enough to eat five in one go

- Mountain Dew was surely invented by God himself

- If I could have two wives they would be large size KFC popcorn chicken, and large size HJ's onion rings

- You get drunk a lot quicker when you're already stressed or emotional

- It is best that you don't zone out three times, when you're driving in the foggy dark for ninety minutes

- My new goal in life is to get rid of every bus lane in the state

- Costco supports obesity

- Regular exercise isn't so bad after all

- I like squash

- You can survive on a regular bedtime of 2am

- Italian football/soccer players are still actors

- A vuvuzela is more annoying than eight little two year olds screaming for mummy in high-pitched squeals whilst you have a headache

- A Geelong vs Hawks grand final rematch is still on the cards

- Kingston is a delicious motherf*#king biscuit
- Condensed milk in a tube is just asking for sweet, sweet trouble

- I get withdrawal from not having mum's chicken soup

- My eyesight is getting shit

- I don't miss full-time work

- I miss full-time work income

- I hate the tax office

- Foxtel IQ will be the reason why every kid will grow up fat and lonely

- I no longer know what the fuck I am doing with computers anymore. (Seriously, wtf is OneNote?)

- I really should stop dropping the F-bomb

- "Cunt rash" is the biggest insult ever invented short of "you were an accident"

- UFC is awesome, even though it looks like men in weird sexual positions beating the living shit out of each other

- iPhones will one day rule the world, Matrix-style

- Rugging up in multiple layers and a beanie is completely offset by wearing thongs

- My black beanie automatically makes me a burglar/robber according to everyone else

- I am still really shit at noticing things, like when someone cuts/colours their hair

- When it comes to friends, quality > quantity

- My friends are awesome

Prochaska and DiClemente's Stages of Change: Exam edition

2010-06-09T20:25:00.001+10:00

Pre-contemplation
This stage commences the moment the academic year begins (or following a previous exam during the year). The thought of the next exam is far from your mind. You have more important things to think about, such as what's for dinner tonight, or how many bottles of opened wine did I leave under my bed, and surely Justin Bieber doesn't have testicles. At this stage, exams are four months away, which is like, next year!

Contemplation
With each passing week, the lecture notes and other random pieces of paper pile up on the desk. You look at it, and then think about how awesome it would be to set it on fire right about now. Unfortunately, the arsonist within you is overcome by that voice in the back of your head (usually dad) that keeps asking, "so, have you been studying?" Have I been studying?! Where do you think I am? A university?? ... oh wait, shit! Yep, it's about this time where you start thinking about opening the books and spending some quality time with it. Of course, you're only thinking about it. At this stage, you're still pissing away every weekend, and watching pirated movies, three films at a time.

Preparation
Alright, enough f*#king around. It's time to do something about this exam. You're driven, not so much by the thought of failing the exam, but rather by the fact that a fail means a repeat, and a repeat means another year without an income, and another year without an income means another year leeching off other peoples' money through Centrelink. Hey, that doesn't so bad actually. Anyway, it's about this time that you get your arse into gear. The TV goes off, the computer games get shelved, and you tell your friends that you will be AWOL for the next few ~~weeks~~ days. But that's ok. You will make new friends. Those friends are called Caffeine, Cocoa, Guarana, Taurine, and Benzodiazepine. Also, it's about this time that you actually decide to go buy a pen.

Action
Right, it's time to knuckle down. You close the curtains, isolate yourself from the outside world and let your nerd-like instincts kick in. Pharmacology? You've learnt more about drugs during year 9 (out the back of school). Neurophysiology? More like grade 3 math. Anatomy? Home economics. You are a highly-trained, finely-tuned studying monster. An SAS soldier might be able to shoot you in the head 3km away with a pistol, but he can't draw a brachial plexus in 13 seconds flat like you can.

Maintenance
You've got your study on, and there's no turning back. What's that? Your boyfriend is calling? Tell him you have a new man, and that man is the pharmacist downstairs who is about to teach you three lectures worth of pharmacology in three minutes. What about cleaning? Pfft, everybody knows that houses clean themselves within two weeks of an exam. There is nothing that's going to take you out of your hypnotic, studious state of mind. You are in the zone. You are Michael Jordan winning six NBA championships. Muhammed Ali in the ring. Tiger Woods completing all the holes with a record score (pun intended). Of course, this would ideally continue on until exam time, at which point you will have reached the stage of Termination, but in reality, it never does. Inevitably, you will...

Relapse
So the study period has begun and you have come flying off the blocks like Usain Bolt on a concoction of steroids, ketamine, and methamphetamines. Who knows? For you, that might actually be literal. Either way, you failed to realise one thing. This whole studying business is a marathon, not a sprint... unless you're starting the night before, in which case ha! you're fucked! If there's one thing you should've learnt from primary school, it's that the tortoise always win, not the rabbit... stupid dumbarse rabbit. Throughout the course of studying, you will be tempted by various distractors to throw you off your newfound love for all things academic. Girlfriends, alcohol, strange urges to get on a plane that's going to another country. Whatever it may be, it just makes things all the more difficult. You will crack, and all of a sudden you will find yourself waking up next to three finished bottles of wine, twelve empty beer bottles, and thirty minutes to go before the exam starts.

It doesn't help that you will at some point (usually a week before exams), freak out and stress yourself to a state of catatonia and near-death. You think you will fail, based solely on the fact that the dude sitting on the other table knows that there are two eyes in the human body, whereas you thought there was only one. Don't worry, however, because it's a known fact that almost everyone will get to this state. I say 'almost' because there will be an inevitable few that will stay calm and collected. These are the ones that think they know everything. It is these people who will end up failing simply because it is not humanly possible to know everything. Hence, they are liars, and know nothing.

All that stress is usually followed by apathy. You are over it. Who gives a toss about this exam anymore? As a result you end up ceasing all study, and instead, engage in completely pointless exercises of procrastination such as writing practically useless blogs the night before an exam. :D

Tips for an OSCE

2010-05-27T21:42:00.001+10:00

An "OSCE" is a fancy way of saying a "clinical exam" to those of you who are wondering... and that's directed to the med students, too. If you are one of them, and you still haven't realised this ... good luck. You'll need it.

Three and a half years ago as I fudged my way through my final physio clinical exam, I promised myself I would never go through another one of these ever again. Well, that worked out well didn't it...

Anyway, I see people starting to freak out about the OSCEs. I've picked up the odd tip and hint along the way, and it's only fair that I share them:

- When you feel like you're running out of time, and your eight minutes is almost up, you've probably still got seven and a half minutes left.
- If you are unsure as to how to do that particular knee test, just make something up, and explain that it is "a variation of that test" ... Chances are, it probably is.
- When assessing the sim patient's gait, look at their legs. Assessing someone's ability to walk by looking at their face is akin to a deaf person reviewing a rock concert.
- When getting someone to stand on one leg or close their eyes with their feet together, make sure you are standing close enough to catch them. No one likes a patient that has fallen down. It usually ends up with an unnecessary hip operation, an angry patient, and a court hearing.
- Saying "good" or "awesome" as a filling-in response when the patient says "my dad died of cancer" doesn't really make you look compassionate.
- If you haven't washed your hands in the last 30 seconds, it's time to do it again.
- Asking the patient to take off their pants without explaining to them why they need to is slightly awkward, and probably sexually unwanted.
- The sim patient will be wearing a fake arm. The needle goes here.
- The rubbish bin is usually a plastic bag. The needle does not go here.
- If you are asked to do an MMSE, the sim patient will probably pretend to act agitated and aggressive. If he/she decides to pull out a knife on you, stop and call for help. Continuing with the MMSE usually ends up in murder. No one likes a dead med student. It gets messy.
- If you can't elicit a reflex, just say "there is no evidence of an increased reflex". It's a bit like saying the food is "caramelised" rather than "burnt"
- Bring a watch that can keep track of the seconds for when you measure heart rates. Counting to thirty in your head is not really reliable, unless you are an actual clock.
- You can fake your way through using an opthalmoscope. Just learn how to turn it on ... that bit you can't fake.
- An otoscope is for the ear, not the eye.

If you are freaking out, take a deep breath, and calm down. You know your stuff, so don't panic. You're not going to be perfect, and you'll probably forget things or make one or two mistakes. Everyone will. I plan on making three per station. You'll still pass. Remember, you're the one in charge, not the examiner or the patient. You have the control. You're the boss. Walk into the room and be one. Destroy that station.

Medical Ethics in one minute, not one day

2010-04-30T13:33:00.000+10:00

- Ask the patient if it's ok before you stick a camera up their arse. It also kinda helps if you tell them why you have to do it.
- Make sure the patient can rationally decide for themselves without coercing their decision-making process. Coercing is bad. Paedophiles coerce little children. Do I really need to say more?
- If jabbing someone with a needle for the purpose of research, it only works if the said needle doesn't contain a flesh eating virus disguised as 'a potentially new drug treatment'

- Try and make the patient walk out of your room feeling better. That's kinda the whole point of this medicine thing..... in case you haven't yet figured out why you're here.
- You're holding a mini ninja blade otherwise known as a scalpel. Note that it is not a killing tool.
- When the patient walks out of the room, don't tell the world about their rapidly growing list of STIs. It may be amusing to you, but probably not as amusing as it is for their lawyer.

The end.

Weekend.

Medical Law

2010-04-16T10:55:00.001+10:00

Friday morning again. Law all over again. Hardly anyone's paid attention again. About half of the class has turned up to the tute. You know what? I've actually taken quite a bit away from these law sessions (seriously!!!) So, it's time to revise. Let's revise the key issues regarding medical law, and the best way to stop them from threatening your career.

By the way, a disclaimer: If you are reading this years after it has been posted, and you are the legal practitioner of a client who is currently suing me for something, then please note that all this is not to be taken seriously. I repeat: I AM JUST JOKING! Also, if you are a medical student reading this, and you do decide to take this seriously, YOU DESERVE TO HAVE SOMEONE SUE THE PANTS OFF YOU, YOU DOUCHE. AND IF YOU ARE READING THIS WHILE CLASS IS GOING ON, THEN STOP READING AND START LISTENING!

Key Medical Issues

Mistaking Left vs Right

We've all done it - mistake the left for the right or the right for the left. Hell, I did it during my driving test all those years ago. If I can turn left when some guy asks me to go right, imagine what I could do with an orthopaedic drill, a bone chisel, and a human body that's been anaesthetised! Such a tragedy can be easily avoided with a thick, black permanent marker. When that poor sucker that's going under the knife walks in, don't shake hands or say hi to him/her. There are more important things to be done first. Get the marker out and draw a giant star on whichever leg needs to be operated on. You can even be creative and draw or write something on there. "Say goodbye to this leg" is not recommended.

Confidentiality

What goes on in the consult room, stays in the consult room. You wouldn't want your doctor disclosing your current STI track record would you? Confidentiality is like the house sewerage pipes - break it, and you're in deep shit. You can omit names, but the world is tiny. If you mention "a 56 year old female", chances are, some guy 400 metres away will hear you and know exactly who you're talking about. Avoiding this is pretty simple - just shut the hell up in public. But what about those "secure" medical records? They always ends up in the wrong hands. So what do you do? Do what the crims do. Burn the evidence. At the end of every consult, take those notes you've been writing diligently and burn them in front of your patient's eyes. Nothing says "it's OK. Your secret's safe with me" better than burning paper.

Medical Negligence

Negligence is the technical legal term for "a huge cock-up". There are endless ways of achieving this. Such ways include administering the wrong drug, letting the patient fall and fracture a hip when you get them out of bed, injecting into a vein when you're not supposed to, and somehow causing someone to go blind when you're inserting a scope up their rectum. Best way to avoid such cock-ups? Five words: Let the nurses do it. Face it, future and current doctors. You might be there to make the decisions and boss people around, but when it comes to "hands on" work, you have as much dexterity as a seven month old baby. The nurses completely own you on most procedural work, so just admit your shortfalls and let them do it. It's not being lazy, it's called "doing what's best for your patient". The plus side is, if something goes wrong, the lawyers won't be coming after you. Win!

Relationships with clients

Falling in love with your patient is a huge no-no. No matter how hot your patient is, no girl is worth your medical career. (Exceptions to this rule can be found here, here, and here.) It's hard to avoid such feelings though. You're stuck in a small room all day, and you meet so many people. And with all that stress you're exposed to, it's hard to keep those emotions in check. You need reminders. And what better reminder than a picture of your significant other. Plaster her picture everywhere in your consult room, but that picture shouldn't be one of her smiling or else it's like she's saying "go on, I approve of your infidelity!" No, those pictures should have her looking at you with an angry "if you cheat on me, I'm going to take away most of your money" face. That should be enough to stop you from cheating on her.

Sexual assault

The sexual assault lawsuit is complicated. Well, for males at least. When a male doctor does something unlawful with a female patient, then that lady will rightfully see it as sexual assault. Yet when a female doctor does something unlawful with a male patient, then that guy will usually see it as a fantasy coming true. Regardless of such gender differences, sexual assault is indeed a very serious issue. There is, however, one major problem with tackling this subject. You see, there is just no way around it. I don't know about you, but you can give me all the warning you want. It still won't make a finger up the anus, a poke of my breast, or an alarmingly-thicker-than-the-hole-it's-supposed-to-go-into sized tube up the urethra any less traumatic. Face it, men. There is one absolute with becoming a doctor in today's litigation happy Western society: You are eventually going to get sued for sexual assault at some time. It doesn't matter how innocent you are, it will still happen. So what do we do? Simple! Get to know your medical board! It's the board that decides whether to pass your case up to the courts, so act early and neutralise it before it gets there! Humans are a very subjective species. Medical boards are full of humans. Logic thus says, medical boards are subjective. Use it to your advantage. Find someone, who knows someone's friend, who knows someone's aunty, who knows someone's brother, who knows someone's cousin, who knows someone's best friend, who knows someone on the board. Then buy him wine, or her some flowers. Nothing influences passing judgement on someone more than "Hey I know that guy! He's alright!"

Informed Consent

It is not enough to simply ask the patient, "Is it OK for me to go ahead?" You must ensure that the patient has been disclosed all the relevant information and results regarding the tests that led you to the proposed management, as well as details regarding the actual proposed management. You must inform them of the potential benefits of this management, as well as the potential risks involved. Following this, you must then tell them of the probabilities that the aforementioned benefits and risks would occur. You must then ensure that they are aware of all other treatment options that are available to them. Whilst giving all this information, you must ensure that you haven't coerced them into making a decision, and that their final choice is not confounded and is free from bias. Somewhere along the line you must make sure that they are still with you, and haven't gone insane with information overload. If they are still there, you must then ensure that the patient is competent to make the decision themselves. This may involve various tests of mental and psychological stability. Should they not be competent enough to make an informed decision, their next-of-kin, or court-appointed "decision-maker" needs to be soughted. Once an informed decision is made, and consent is gained, you must then obtain written documentation as evidence that the consent process is completed. This often requires you to find a pen of some sort and the patient to read about seven pages of size 4 font writing. Good luck to you if the patient doesn't read English. Once all this has been completed, it is likely about 2:21am in the early morning, and the practice has been closed for the past five hours.

Basically, what I'm saying is, learn to become a 24 hour doctor in order to accommodate all the informed consent requirements.

Med student types (in a lecture theatre)

2010-04-09T10:59:00.000+10:00

It's Friday morning, and I'm sitting at the back of the lecture theatre. I always feel bad whenever I don't listen in to lectures. But from this back row, I can see pretty much everyone else's laptop screens, and all but about six people are obviously not listening. I feel quite good now. Anyway, there's just no way I can tune in, so in order to keep awake I present to you:

Med Student Personalities in a Lecture Theatre

Facebook Stalker - Systematic reviews show that 120% of students with a laptop in any lecture will end up on Facebook at some point. Chances are, you are part of this group. You like to update your status about just how bored you are with the lecture. Not content with that, you will also talk to the person sitting next to you with Facebook chat, to express how bored you are. Congratulations! You may have just found the most efficient way of communicating with someone 30cm away from you: By relaying the message through some IT office halfway around the world.

The Gamer - You might be playing solitaire. Perhaps it's Farmville. Maybe it's a flash game on some website. Whatever the game, you pale in comparison to the people who are playing counter-strike against each other from opposite sides of the lecture theatre.

Rubber Neck - Sleep is for the weak! That's your motto. It got you into med and by Jebus, it's gonna get you through the course. Of course you have to sleep at some point in time, and what better time than during a lecture. Dim lights. Monotonic voice. The soothing sounds of laptop keyboards typing away. You don't need a pillow. Your neck was made flexible for a reason. Everyone else is laughing at you everytime your head flings forward or to the side, and then snaps back like a rubber band. But that's OK... just don't drool as well.

Arm Stretcher - You just can't stop stretching that right arm of yours. Every three slides you feel the urge to stick that right hand up, and ask a question to the lecturer. Don't worry about the fact that your question will be answered on the next slide anyway, or that all your questions will eventually need a combined total of 18 minutes to answer, just make sure you get to stretch that right arm. Cramps are never a fun thing to have.

The Rager - No I am not referring to raging lesbians, I am talking about the ones that get worked up into an angry fit of rage. You are forever linked to the preceding med type. When that arm goes up, somewhere, in some corner of the theatre (usually the back corner) the sound of a fist smashing against a laptop can be heard. That fist is likely yours. You hate people that waste your time, and believe that learning is best done with your mouth shut and your ears open. (Open eyes, and conscious state are optional)

Multi-Tasker - You are quite talented. Your eyes can concentrate on your laptop screen as you power through your next tute or PBL presentation, whilst your ears are expertly trained into the voice of a lecturer like a dog. Of course, you're brain is a bit retarded and can only take one thing at a time, so either your tute answers are gonna suck or that lecture just went straight out the other ear. That's alright though. The important thing is, you believe you got both things done at the same time. And that's efficiency.

Chronic Latecomer - Oops, you slept in again! You've done it five times this week already, and it's only Tuesday! Mathematically impossible, but you have a knack of finding a way to do this!! You only have one choice: skip breakfast. Um, WRONG! Bring your breakfast to the lecture. Nothing says professionalism and class than a bowl of weet-bix in the back row. Next time you might consider upping the ante by bringing in a sandwich press.

Ninja - The number of 'ninjas' tends to fluctuate, with a significantly higher proportion seen the closer it gets to Friday afternoon. You are undoubtedly the smartest of the entire student cohort. You are so smart, in fact, that you can attend the lecture from the comfort of your own car seat, whilst driving back to Melbourne.

Copycat - You type out *everything* on the slides that are presented even though it will be made available later on the web. Your excuse is usually "it helps to keep me awake". You, my friend, need to discover the joys of caffeine, which leads me to...

The Addict - To you, having four lectures in a row after lunch amounts to torture by forcible watching of Grey's Anatomy. There is no way you can last the next 59 minutes and 59 seconds of the first lecture, let alone the next three ones. Your only saviour? A coffee. Really struggling? Then only a Mother will do - $3 worth of guaranteed consciousness, at the expense of getting diabetes later on in life. You never sit in on an afternoon lecture without one by your side. No food or drinks allowed in the lecture theatre? That's OK, a can of Mother is in its own category of consumable goods.

The Territorial Marker - Sure you may not have urinated on that seat like a canine, but hell hath no fury on the poor unfortunate soul that decides to sit on your chair. Yes, you could've sat on any of the one hundred and fifty other seats in the lecture theatre, but that would go against everything you stand for. There is something about this particular seat. It might be the balanced mood lighting, or perhaps it's a Feng-Shui thing. Either way, you have an obsessive compulsive disorder.

Chair Squeaker - You just can't sit still for more than five minutes without shifting positions. Either that or you have haemorrhoids. Your frequent ass-shifting causes your chair to squeak like a tortured duck. You are quite funny when there's a group of you doing it at the same time.

Old Schooler - You are a technological dimwit that can't get your head around having to click on the "start" button to shut a computer down. You don't care that every student was given free laptops by the faculty. That's not how you roll. For you, when it comes to note-taking, only a pen and paper will do. In fact, if you had your way, we'd all be writing with a quill and black ink, which coincidentally would make for some awesome cross-lecture-theatre ink fights.

Model Student - You are sitting in the lecture, listening in intently, and taking due and diligent notes for the entire 60 minutes ........... hahaha! I lie. Such a thing doesn't exist.

The Meaning of Life...

2010-04-06T17:33:00.001+10:00

... is like doing one of those frustrating cryptic crosswords. You know there's an answer. It's just that a) it requires too much thinking to work it out, b) you're never really sure if you've got the right answer, and c) when you find that answer and tell others about it, people think you need to go out and get laid a bit more. Unlike a crossword though, the meaning of life usually doesn't have one single correct answer. So trying to explain it would be as productive as finding the corner of a circle. It would also inevitably end up in one of those philosophical arguments where fancy words such as "absurdism", "utilitarianism" and "post-modernism" get thrown around by people, whilst I just smile and nod and do my best to feign that I have an IQ with three figures in it.

I'm sure there's several variations to whatever it means. I've heard people say that the meaning of life is to do whatever is good for others. Fair enough, but then what if that other person is the second coming of Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Napoleon, and the Cookie Monster combined? Another version of it is simply to live, and keep populating the world. A very pragmatic approach, yes, but then anyone who adopts this version comes across as a horny rabbit on heat that just wants to bonk anything that moves. My favourite is probably the "to love and be loved" purpose to life. Everyone wants to be loved. I like to be loved. Love me. Cuddle me. Hold me. Hold me. Never let me go until you've told me. Told me. What I want to know and then just hold me. Hold me. Make me tell you that I'm in love with you...... No wait, those are just lyrics to a song.

Anyway, the point of all this is to say that for the first time in my life, I feel like I may have found my meaning and purpose, whatever that may be. Hooray!

Just don't ask me to explain what it is, 'coz I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to start.

Happy Easter

2010-03-31T22:01:00.001+11:00

Easter is a magical time of the year. Somewhere near the North Pole, in his giant mansion made from the slave labour of three hundred underpaid elves, an overweight man enters a secret room with a secret machine. He walks into this machine, and upon exiting he is immediately about five feet shorter, his ears about three times as long, and that white beard of his is now all over his body. Yep, Santa Claus has morphed into the Easter Bunny. Back at his "toy factory" the elf slaves, in all their orange-faced glory, remove their cute little pointy elvish hats to reveal their thick, curly green hair. Yes that's right, the elves are in fact the Oompa Loompas, toy makers for six months of the year, chocolate bees for the other six. The entire clan was won by Santa off an inebriated Willy Wonka, in a game of high stakes texas poker that marked the epic downfall of an entire chocolate empire. In a last-ditched effort to salvage his pint-sized orange-coloured workers, Willy put his entire factory on the line in one last bet. He thought he had won, but someone forgot to tell the intoxicated chocolate king that having five cards of the same colour isn't actually a legitimate winning hand. With the Oompa Loompas and the plans for a chocolate empire now in the hands of Santa, the fat jolly man in a red suit decided to branch out.

And that's how the Easter Bunny was born.

For most, this is what Easter is all about - stuffing ourselves full with the goodness of milk chocolate, then running around the block a couple of times everyday because you feel guilty. You eventually get over it within about eight days, and accept the fact that you're always going to be a fat person simply because you live in a country full of fatties, you fatty fatty boomba.

Of course, there's the original reason behind having an Easter in the first place, which is the religious aspect to it. Christians celebrate this time of year in honour of a man who gets nailed to a cross. I'm supposedly one of them. I say 'supposedly' because most wouldn't think me as one... must be all the swearing, insulting, and violent tendencies that I have. Actually, I now realise why Christians are looked upon with an eye of oddity. Think about it. We celebrate an innocent person dying a painful and excruciating death. Somewhere along the line, logic and religion obviously had a falling out. Obviously the concept is not as simple as that, and to explain it now would put me at risk of looking like a man wearing a white shirt, and black tie, and knocking on your door with a thick book in one hand. (Speaking of which, someone's gotta teach those guys how to understand when a person just doesn't want to hear it right now so please let me go back to my lunch which is now cold because of you!! ... apologies to any Mormons)

In a nutshell, for us odd religious types, it's about appreciating when one gives up something for the benefit of others. And hey, religious or not, that stuff happens everywhere. Just look at all the people lining up to give blood at the Red Cross, or the people calling in on Good Friday to donate to the Royal Children's Hospital, or the people risking their lives as part of Medecins Sans Frontieres. Hey, us humans aren't so bad at all!!!

Whether you believe in the religious god, or the chocolate god...

Happy Easter!

Also ....

It's good to be home for the next entire week. Mmmmmmm, my own bed. :D

MED SCHOOL!

2010-03-23T19:44:00.002+11:00

So at some point in time, between now and the last post, I quit my honest day job as a full-time ~~torturer~~ physio and woke up in Egypt. Then I found myself travelling through Jordan and Syria, doing my best Lawrence of Arabia meets Moses impersonation, before realising that I had reached Turkey, where no one can really work out whether they're Middle Eastern, European or Asian. Filled with hummus, and more bread than the stomach of a fat baker with an eating disorder, I came home, bummed around for a bit, then found myself in med school. Hooray!

How the hell did I end up here? I stand by the idea that I bullshitted my way into here ... literally. That GAMSAT result was pretty average for the science and humanities questions. The overall score was brought up by a decently high score on that essay section aka. how-long-can-you-write-for-without-your-hand-exploding section. Two essays worth of prime grade A bullshit in sixty minutes, and voila! here's your invitation to an interview. Of course, the rest is history. I'm sure the bullshitting resurfaced again for those ten or so mini-interviews I had to do. All I remember from that day, was explaining to one of the interviewers that it was ok for some lady to breastfeed a baby that was not hers. I don't know about you, but if I knew my doctor said that, I'd be hightailing it for the exit door even if I was bleeding profusely from all four of my limbs at the time.

So here I am, in what is one of the happiest stretches of my life, living in a house with eight other insane people doing the same med course with me. I say insane with great affection, but quite frankly, we're all exactly that - insane. The mere acceptance into med school has given me the greatest sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, and I have never been more excited about the future than I am now. Yet if you just pause for a second and take a closer look, I, along with the eight others under this roof and seventy or so others in the entire cohort, can be described in two words:

F*#@ing NUTS!!!

Don't get me wrong. There's plenty of good to be had here. But the logic of the here and now is as goes....

- Hi there. Would you like to give up your steady income and embark on a journey of poverty for the next half a decade or so?

- Would you like to be part of a university course that will destroy all the other aspects of your life?

- Would you like to go through another life of exams that cause you to freak out just because everyone else is freaking out too, even if the exam is about as worthless as a five cent coin in the pocket of a man walking into a Ferrari dealership?

- Would you like to go through another decade or so of scrutiny, judgement, inferiority to superiors, and more stress than a blind snail without its shell crossing ten lanes of peak-hour freeway?

- Would you like to be rewarded for your efforts on completing this course with a job that requires you to develop the sleeping patterns of a retarded, narcoleptic owl?

- Would you like to earn a job that promises great pay, only for you to realise in twenty years that, for the time, effort, and stress you put in, you'd get paid more by working the corporate ladder at Ernst and Young or working St. Kilda's streets?

- Would you like to have a career where innocently misreading '6.0' for '60' means you accidentally killed the poor little seven year old girl in bed 2A because you gave her ten times the amount of painkillers, and as a result you have to explain to her parents that their daughter is dead not because of your idiocy, but rather because your optometrist is crap? (or in my case, because I refuse to go see one in the first place!)

If, like me, you answered 'yes' to all of the above, you are probably here with me in Gippsland, doing the same uni course, procrastinating from the same exam that's going on tomorrow.

Yet the fact that you haven't snapped and decided to quit already means that, like me, you actually quite liked saying 'yes' to all of the above .......... you crazy weirdo.

To that girl who said Pink is "one of the most influential artists ever"

2009-08-09T23:23:00.002+10:00

No.

Try:
- Elvis Presley
- The Beatles
- Michael Jackson
- Nirvana

Oh, and she did not create that song she performed at her Funhouse gig. I do believe you will find that Bohemian Rhapsody was created by Queen, and that someone should force you to sleep in an ice bath that is outside on top of a wind-exposed mountain somewhere on a freezing winter night for being such an ignorant douchebag.

The perpetual life cycle

2009-08-02T20:01:00.001+10:00

Friday afternoons are a blessing, whilst Monday mornings are the equivalent of starting Groundhog Day with a kick in the testicles from pointy steel-capped boots laced with acid. At least, that's what all those Monday morning and Friday afternoon facebook status updates indicate. Yet even when the long awaited weekend arrives, the back of our minds are always transfixed on why it finishes too quickly. Essentially, life is the perpetual cycle of complaining about how quick it takes for two days to come and go, and then whinging about how slow it takes for the other five to pass by. Most people dream of the opposite, a two day working week followed by a five day weekend bender of chocolate and debauchery.

With the exception of those as socially inept as a 15 year old emo at a school social playing Pussycat Dolls, Brittany Spears, and Pink tracks all night, we go out on weekends and do the stuff we want to do. Watch the football, go out clubbing, play video games, kick out street lights of an entire neighbourhood and steal candy from babies. These are all the things that are exciting to us, and as the most used cliche ever tells us, time flies when you're having fun. In this way, the feeling that Saturdays and Sundays go by too quickly is our own damn fault, in which case we have no reason to bitch about it, or else we'd be bitching about ourselves, and all that does is compromise the very principle behind "bitching" - I am right, you are wrong, so go sit on that pointy fence over there and quietly rotate.

On the other hand, weekdays are not our fault, not unless you get a kick out of smashing your head repeatedly against the brick wall of boredom and repetition. The humble bread-winning day job is a necessity that, when you think about it, makes life five-sevenths shyte! Of course there are jobs that are an exception to this rule such as being Megan Fox's underwear, or being the ruler of the entire world. But even careers that we aspire to take, and the jobs we dream of doing tend to have its novelty fizzle away into a vacuous black hole of tedium. If time flies by when you're having fun, then time .... stagnates when ... um ... when it's boring and repetitive. Yeah I'm sure that's a saying of some sort.

That's where that wish for a longer weekend ends up sucking. Aside from completely melting an entire global economy, one that has been used to the five day working week since monkeys figured out how to use spears instead of bananas to throw at each other, the longer weekend just ends up being the new weekday. Sooner than later, you run out of fun things to do and all that free time ends up boring and repetitive. Eventually, you look forward to going back to work because it's the thing that doesn't consume your life.

Having to slave away for five-sevenths of the week is awesome because it makes the weekend all the more significant and special.

Actually no, screw that, I want a two day working week.

You're only 20 and that makes me sad

2009-07-27T18:41:00.000+10:00

When some punk year 8 kid used to be a smartarse towards you, you could do anything to him short of picking him up by his collar and pounding him repeatedly over the top of his head with the spine of his maths textbook whilst taunting, "know your algebra, bitch!". That was because once upon a time, back at school, being three or four years older than someone came with a satisfying sense of authority. Perhaps it was the environment of a school setting, which lends itself to a system where age correlates with hierarchy and rank, or perhaps I was madly drunk on the absolute power that came with a tiny prefect badge and the stripes of a year 12 uniform. Whatever the case, it unfortunately never carried over into the real adult world. Instead, the feeling of authority and invincibility inherent with being surrounded by younger people is irrevocably replaced by the thought that you're becoming an old fart that is finding more and more about the world to whine and moan about.

Being 24 and quickly approaching 25 certainly doesn't make you old at all, but relativity can be a pain in the lower cheeks. When you go to a 21st birthday party where practically everyone is 19 or 20, it strangely makes you feel a lot more ... mature. When people are asking what you do at uni when you graduated almost three years ago, something definitely doesn't sit right within you. When the others talk about what they've been doing on their holidays you think to yourself, "holidays? wtf is that?!"

Likewise, they also make your liver feel much older. I like to think that I can hold my drink (for a skinny Asian guy). Except for that one time a couple of years ago on my birthday, I've never had to enlist the assistance of my friends to drag me to my front door whilst in a state of lifeless dystonia and apparent death. At the same time, I can't exactly drink a football team to alcohol school either. But when you see teens cringing agonisingly everytime they down a shot of what can only be described as blue death mixed with whatever the closest bottle is, whilst you happily shot it away with a straight expressionless demeanour that says, "meh, I've had worse", you feel strangely older than you actually are. Granted yes, I wasn't exactly sober by the end of the night, and I ended up being one of the early sleepers, clocking out at the toddler bedtime of 3am. But I put that down to chronic fatigue brought about by three straight weeks of staying up 'til about 2 in the morning watching insane nutjobs on the TV cycle around France.

Maybe I need to get some more friends that are older. No wait, maybe I just need to get some more friends, full stop.

On a slight tangent, isn't it funny how being 21 automatically makes you super cool? As arbitrary as it is, it's the magical number that officially qualifies you as an adult. Welcome. Join the club. Bring a plate of food. But if you're 20, you're immediately one of "them". I don't care if you're smarter or more mature than I am, you're still not 21 and you haven't earnt your wings yet. It's the same as when you turn 18. One day, at 11:59pm you're not allowed to drive by yourself and you are deemed too innocent to be sullied by the evils of alcohol, but when that clock ticks past midnight, all of a sudden it's all ok. Likewise, that one single second can make all the difference between being on the right side of the law and having your name share the same sentence with the word 'paedophile'.

Nerds dressing up

2009-07-22T21:27:00.010+10:00

I'm a bit of a nerd. Even though I haven't been lured into playing World of Warcraft and forgetting to feed three kids because of it, I will not deny the fact that I'm a bit nerdish. The acronym 'lol' has weasled its way into my daily, everyday speech. I watch Stargate and then proceed to buy the entire 10 seasons on DVD. I take offence when people tell me to buy a Mac instead of a PC. And I tend to play videogames when I come home from work instead of watching ~~crap~~ ~~vomit~~ Grey's Anatomy.

I am also a coward. You won't catch me proudly displaying my nerdish tendencies. Why else would I live in denial and refuse to get my eyesight checked? For you see, the world can be divided into two groups. Most are a bit of both, to varying degrees, but at the end of the day, you're on one side or the other. In the blue corner we have the aforementioned nerds, wearing their out-of-date glasses, debating with each other on which is the better weapon between Star Wars' light sabres and Star Trek's phasers (oh c'mon no contest, light sabres win on its ability to decapitate limbs), solving squiggly calculus lines, and laughing uncontrollably at the word 'roflcopter'. In the red corner we have the jocks, lifting 100kg at the gym every second night before kissing their guns in front of the mirror, starting fights on the ground every weekend because they haven't touched the ball and are getting bored because of it, drawing penises on the blackboard before the teacher comes in because it's so damn funny, and chugging beer to help offset the water shortages.

If the world broke out into a massive war between the two sides, the jocks would burn all the villages and have their way with all the women before the nerds could even learn how to take the safety off the rifle. It's for that reason that I would happily feign disdain for my nerdy brethren, when the cool kids come by with their super hot girlfriends. I'd tell them that the kid over there with the glasses not only likes Star Wars, but can also recite the entire script word for word, before happily standing there watching the jocks pound the living crap out of the guy. Some people, however, choose to express their inner nerd, and to those people ... much respect. Good on you for sacrificing yourselves for the good of all us cowardly nerds.

And nothing says "NEEEEEEEEEEEERD!" *points finger at person* than those enthusiastic fans who go to movie premieres, book launches and sci-fi conventions in costumes. They have no shame. For them, shame is forgetting the colour of Luke Skywalker's light sabre. They won't get offended by what others say of them. They'll only get pissed off if you call them "that Asian girl Harry Potter kisses" instead of Hermione. If there's something remotely popular in a sci-fi or fantasy culture kind of way, you can always count on a brave few showing up proudly in a costume they spent six months preparing, or paying $300 for.

More power to them!

I thought I'd find a relevant picture to post up just for the hell of it. As I was searching, I came across this (from all4humor.com)

Classic!

How to flip the middle finger up at your loyal audience

2009-07-16T23:40:00.000+10:00

1) Base your new reality TV show around an activity that everyone can take part in, as opposed to one that requires contestants to dance around monkeys, sing like broken records, or lose the equivalent weight of a Mac truck through dangerous exercise methods. Borrow a proven concept originating from overseas TV to maximise chances of success.

2) Give the show a sense of credibility by rewarding skill, as opposed to popularity. Borrow the services of several renowned professionals in the field to adjudicate and decipher the eventual winner. Ensure the show is not a popularity contest by scrapping the laughable revenue raising exercise of viewer SMS voting that plagues other reality gimmicks.

3) Bake the new show for a few weeks in front of live national audiences.

4) Watch as viewers, even those not traditionally fond of reality TV, praise the show for its format being conducive to honesty and integrity, unlike pretty much every other "judging" based reality show.

5) With one week remaining, make a decision as to who would sell the best cookbook (the final prize) and thus rake in the most revenue for producers. Designate her "the chosen one".

6) Criticise someone for making food too basic to be worthy of final week competition, then reward the chosen one for making uncreative lamb and potatoes later on.

7) Punish the chosen one for completely botching a pie, by eliminating another competitor who at least competently finishes his.

8) Allow the chosen one to leave a fish raw, and eliminate another contestant, one whom the public believes should've deserved to be the eventual winner (based on apparent skill, and not just popularity).

9) Lay down a challenge which will primarily be judged on presentation and whether it can be "licked straight off the page." Then, to contradict yourself, proceed to save the chosen one who didn't even finish creating her dishes, and eliminate some other guy who managed to at least complete the task and plate up with some form of presentation. It doesn't matter who, just someone else. He is not the chosen one, and therefore expendable. To at least attempt gaining some semblence of popularity, make the expendable one the least liked one amongst public sentiment, despite the fact that he has been the most consistent performer, and easily one of the top two.

10) Bring in apparent cookbook extraordinaire Donna Hay to help judge the aforementioned presentation challenge. Allow her to show obvious premeditated agenda through use of overtly contrasting body language towards the chosen one and the expendable one throughout the episode.

11) Let the chosen one cry and sob in front of the cameras, and continuously mention something vague about family and cooking being her life. Allow judges to take in that emotional drivel and influence outcome. It will make them look human, and that can't be a bad thing in objective decision-making.

12) Disregard the fact that the chosen one, despite being able to cook some tasty homestyle food, really wouldn't cut it as a professional, commercial chef because she has nervous breakdowns, cannot handle pressure, shakes like crazy, is ridiculously messy, has no concept of time management, sweats more than an obese man running, cycling and swimming at the same time (and allows the sweat to drip into her food!), sabotages her own confidence by continuously muttering to herself that she's going to lose, and does not think laterally enough in her creations when compared to her competitors.

13) Sit back and watch as once loyal viewers vent frustration at the show at the water cooler and in online forums, for slapping them in the face and assuming they have no intelligence. Allow them to realise that they have been duped into believing the show was about the best amateur chef, rather than the one that the public can most relate to and will be most suited to making a sellable cookbook.

14) Consider changing the title of the show from Masterchef to Mediocrechef or Mastercookbook.

15) Make sure next season's chosen one will be in the demographic that makes up most of channel 10's audience (adults at the younger end of the scale). These are the intelligent ones that appreciate legitimacy and credibility over being smashed on the head with disguised petty drama and political influence, as opposed to the middle-aged housewives of the country that relate to the current chosen one because "yay! Go Julie because of I likes you and you have kids, and cry and make me cry and make hubby cry, and make kids want to cook for me, and such, and therefore you are Masterchef extraordinaire."

*Flicks back to the Lifestyle Food channel to watch the proper and original UK version of Masterchef*

Transformers 2 ...

2009-06-27T01:37:00.004+10:00

... had horrible acting
... had campy dialogue
... had near-non-existent character development (including the Transformers)
... had a sketchy, disjointed plotline like the first movie
... had too much comic relief (but at least a better attempt than the first)
... overplayed the sex appeal card

The movie was essentially nothing but two and a half hours of CGI robots bashing the shit through each other in utterly confusing fight scenes.

And I loved every single freaking minute of it. :)

No KFC Noooo!!

2009-06-16T23:35:00.002+10:00

So a couple of years ago, perhaps over a decade, every kid in the western world decides to fatten up like oompaloopas and all of a sudden we have an obesity pandemic. Problem at hand needs solving and being humans, we like to take the easiest way out. Bugger the effort of exercising. Let's just blame someone!

The first in line to suffer the wrath of bubble-wrap politics were fast-food restaurants. Fair enough too, for walking into a McDonald's used to automatically equate to an extra five minutes of your life lost. However, under immense pressure from health experts, family groups, and cows, McDonald's changed its ways. Healthy was the new cool, and ordering an apple from Maccas became the new thing. It's a pity that people who do order this said apple are met with glares of bemusement and genuine calls of "wtf?!". The 6 year old kid working the counter obviously has no idea what an apple is judging by his face. "App...Appel?"

Anyway, all of society's other notoriously unhealthy, saturated-fat havens caved in likewise. Except for one.

KFC ... Mmmmmm. All-star boxes and ultimate burger meals would remain soaked in sodium and drenched in palm oil. "Bugger what the others say! We're keeping our recipe the same. If you die of heart failure it's your own damn fault!" And that was quite a real prospect too, since consuming palm oil is the equivalent of clamping your main artery at three different points with metal clothes pegs.

But alas, those days are over since KFC (in Australia) have finally buckled, and will now use healthy oil. No palm oil?! Palm oil was the secret recipe Colonel Sanders conjured up when he wasn't funding the KKK (probably a rumour but eh ...). Not only that, but there's now going to be less salt!

I used to love you KFC .... *sniff*

Supermarket fuel vouchers

2009-06-14T23:04:00.006+10:00

You step into the supermarket with a few coins and the intention of buying a cold drink. It's a pretty simple task, which should take just a few minutes. Unfortunately, supermarkets are bastards at tempting you. When you step inside, you're bombarded with specials and hot deals at every turn. Buy two chocolate bars and save 50 cents. Take a dollar off these freshly made bread rolls which expired yesterday. Buy one and get one free whole energy drink and you don't have to sleep tonight. Buy this beef we overweighed, and you can take this free recipe so you can impress your girlfriend and hide the fact that your only culinary skill involves a microwave, and a fork.

Perhaps the most cunning little supermarket trick is the fuel voucher. The golden number is thirty. Thirty bucks spent and you're on your way to petrol savings heaven! Four cents a litre off your next fill-up? Yes please! You'll save a good dollar or two at your next trip to the pump, and as daddy first taught you when a five cent coin first felt like a pot of leprechaun gold, it all adds up.

There is one problem however. When you go into the supermarket with that one single drink in mind, you end up buying all this other stuff. So you buy an extra thing or two and now the supermarket run will cost you about $10. No matter, you have a credit card to make up for the feeble few coins you have in your pocket. But oh no, cheap Berocca ... and cheap baked beans. Now the cost balloons up to $24. But that's ok because the stuff that you're buying is stuff that you need. If you don't buy it now then you'll just end up getting it some other time.

Now the real problem starts. $24?! Oh man, I'm so close to that $30 mark. I just have to get that voucher. So now you find yourself going up and down each aisle looking for useless crap to make up the remaining six bucks. You find things that are totally unnecessary and you try to justify its necessity and/or usefulness.

Hey, this chocolate milk is on special, and I need calcium. Who cares if it expires today? I can drink the whole two litres in the next minute, fill up on a week's worth of calcium and save a few cents on my petrol! Mmmm my bones feel stronger just thinking about it.

The really silly part of it is when you're lining up to pay for the petrol a few days later. You hand over that fuel voucher to the overworked store attendant, and you read the receipt given back to you that shows the enormous saving of $1.64.

And you actually believe that you've saved money from the whole exercise.

Winter camping

2009-06-09T23:02:00.005+10:00

Two schools of thought fuel the desire to go camping. There is the 'going back to basics' idea that is deeply flawed since setting up a tent requires a postgraduate university degree. Gone are the days of a pole, some pegs and a piece of cloth you cut out from your spare room curtain. Now there are awnings, waterproof shells that cannot touch the inner shell and voyeur peek holes. Then there is the 'going outdoors' notion that is silly, since setting up the aforementioned tent provides a makeshift 'indoors' that contradicts the whole point of the exercise. You essentially leave the indoors to become one with the outdoors by making a fake indoors to which you still think you are outdoors. Confused? Good.

The really adventurous souls are the ones that decide to camp it out in the cold of winter. It is essentially the substitution of warm blankets, lamb roast, and Friday night football on the TV for stiff, hard nipples, perpetually moist buttocks, and influenza. It is a substitution that is, despite sane logic, quite appealing.

There will always be the healthy chunk of the population that make the pilgrimage to camp insane-o at some point in the winter. The ones with the marbles still present will drive their car and pitch tent just outside, using General Motors as emergency warmth and shelter. The ones with an undiscovered brain aneurysm will hardcore it up and go overnight hiking, pitching their tent in 3 degrees darkness after refusing to stop while the sun is still up. Of course, these are the people that Bear Grylls wholeheartedly applauds.

What both groups have in common, besides being likely fans of this show, is that unexplainable urge to forego all things comfortable, and make life as freaking miserable for themselves as possible for a few days. Of course, you could just sit through a couple of Grey's Anatomy DVDs and that would achieve the same result.

Wilsons Prom was awesome!

Checklist for the weekend shenanigans

2009-06-04T23:30:00.000+10:00

Energy drink to last 3 hour drive at night after full work day - check

2,356,323 layers of clothes - check

Alcohol to warm the body up even though it does the exact opposite - check

Watch a few Man vs Wild clips - check

Switch sanity off - check

24 hour Kmart

2009-05-31T23:29:00.007+10:00

There are certain inevitabilities that come with the passing of the night. As the moon floats higher and the alcohol flows in quicker than the bladder can expel it, you can count on a few things to occur. Nightclubs and bars in the CBD will continue to select, serve and expel patrons, and someone will get stabbed. Rival gangs will call for backup before a skirmish ensues, and someone will get stabbed. 24 hour McDonalds will continue to accommodate drunken folk who have nauseating stomachs that only the healthy and nutritious grease of a Big Mac can cure ... and someone will get stabbed. But the most mind-boggling certainty is that people actually go to the 24 hour Kmart at 3am.

I would have loved to have been in that meeting where they decided to turn the store into a 24 hour one.

Regional Manager: Your outlet is underperforming. We may have to close it down unless we find some way to rectify this.
Store Manager: Any ideas guys?
Employee who is having an affair with store manager: Um... how about we make it a 24 hour Kmart?
Elderly woman who has been working there all her life: That's a great idea! More time for people to come and shop.
Part-timer still finishing off his 14 year uni degree: Yeah!
11 year old supervisor: Nice one!
Male employee who always detours through the lingerie section: Yeh!!
Store manager: Yeh good idea Katie!
Only sane employee who is sitting in the corner of the room: errr...wtf?!

Honestly, I cannot see the concept of a 24 hour budget department store successfully passing through a meeting of people with IQs higher than 7. But it did, and you know what? It actually works! People actually go there at 3am in the morning.

I can see the usefulness of a 24 hour McDonalds. The aforementioned drunken munchies spreads through the night and is more deadly than the swine, cow and bird flu put together. For that same reason, 24 hour supermarkets are valid and useful. But Kmart?! The only reasons I can think of for going to a Kmart in the wee hours of the morning is that it's a stinking hot night, and you want to leech off the store's airconditioning because you live in a cheap rental house with airconditioning that doesn't work, or has killed someone through legionnaires disease. Or perhaps the barely coherent girl you picked up from that seedy pub has stripped down to her underwear, and you are halfway through dropping your pants before you realise that you are in dire need of rubber protection. Apparently, though, there are people that want to buy boots or a board game at 3am in the morning who can't wait until the next day.

So anyway, I'll be going to 24 hour Kmart this Thursday.

Many things can happen in 177 days

2009-05-29T20:33:00.001+10:00

A minority president can finally be king of the world. A couple of Ameri, er I mean Mexicans can decide to make love with some pigs and create a new deadly global pandemic called overblown mass hysteria. Not that the swine flu was created that way. Well, at least I assume that wasn't the case. But for some reason that obviously needs addressing through professional psychological help, that was my first thought upon hearing its official name - some sick freak got a little too curious, and now the world's face mask company executives have booked a holiday to Bora Bora, the Cayman Islands, and a night in that one hotel on the corner of the hairpin at the Monaco Grand Prix. 177 days is also plenty of time to be given free fat $900 cheques in the mail, and for Wilson to finally have the balls to get House some help. It's also enough time for me to realise that Cuddy just may be the hottest 40+ year old ever. Evidently, 177 days is not long enough for news to surface of a group of rugby players masturbating in front of each other in a room of small, or intimate shall we say, dimensions with some impressionable girl in there as the ticking bomb of perilous scandal. Group sex is one thing... but honestly, what the FUCK!? Isn't wet towel slapping each other's naked butts in the showers of the lockerooms after a long game out in the cold gay enough for you guys? Oh, and 177 days is also evidently not long enough to find Osama Bin Laden .... or Wally/Waldo for that matter... especially on that damn page where everyone is in red and white. Argh!

I also forgot this thing for 177 days. Oops.

I promise to update this again soon

2008-12-04T23:55:00.000+11:00

I promise to update this again soon
I promise to update this again soon
I promise to update this again soon
I promise to update this again soon
I promise to update this again soon
I promise to update this again soon
I promise to update this again soon
I promise to update this again soon
I promise to update this again soon
I promise to update this again soon
*chalk snaps*

At the request of Joan...

2008-07-21T22:50:00.004+10:00

There once was a girl named Joan Wee. She just bought herself a shiny, expensive necklace made of diamonds. The pen which so elegantly painted her artistic signature had barely left the receipt, when a giant thieving monkey came away and stole the necklace from her. How the monkey ended up in the store, I don't know. Anyways, she never recovered it. So to ease her anguish, she decided to drown her sorrows that night at Hyde Bar. 34 shots of Bacardi 151 later, and whilst being piggy-backed by her caring boyfriend, her stomach could contain no more. Out came the hor fun she ate for dinner that night, some of it onto the damp and puddled ground, some in her boyfriend's hair, and some of it into the box of pizza shapes her friend was holding. What a crazy drunk Joan is.

The Other Tibet

2008-04-18T20:02:00.008+10:00

I know that Tibet's spotlight is a good thing. At the very least, now the most ignorant of people are aware that something's not right over there. Now they can happily shake their fists north towards China and take out their hate on the nearest Chinese person. They don't have to look far. There's one of us at every corner! :D

Though the one bad thing is that it's taken away any chance of Zimbabwe getting prime time news feed. And quite frankly, as bad as things might be in Tibet, point for point, the poor Zimbabweans (that how you call them?) have it much worse. Go Google Zimbabwe's recent history, or even Wikipedia it. I'm sure Wiki's misfacts can't be too far from the real truth. Hell, Mugabe's record is really that bad. Case in point: their inflation is 165,000% WHAT...THE...?!?! So how do you fix it? Why, you just create a 10 million dollar note. Problem solved! Stupid Mugabe... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7351086.stm

But its this article that just makes me plain mad... Courtesy of The Age, which I think was courtesy of the Guardian newspaper in the UK. http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/mugabes-men-take-their-revenge/2008/04/16/1208025282807.html.

Mugabe's men take their revenge
Chris Mcgreal, April 17 '08

IT IS called Operation Makavhoterapapi — Shona for "Where did you put your cross?" — and it descended on 15-year-old Privilege Chikwana as she was doing her homework.

Privilege was too young to have voted in Zimbabwe's still unresolved election but her mother did, and the men at the door suspected she voted the wrong way. So they took the child back to a school in Chiwaka village, where Zanu-PF activists were holding opposition supporters prisoner, and started beating her.

"They beat her on the buttocks with wooden rods, beat her and beat her because they said she was hiding me. Men were doing this," Privilege's mother, Faustina Chikwana, said. "When I heard they had taken her to the school, I went straight there. There was a big group of Zanu-PF, about 100. They had drums. They were singing. They grabbed me and they had a list of where we voted. That's when it started."

Mrs Chikwana and her daughter are now in a Harare hospital hardly able to move because of the injuries inflicted as a wave of state-sponsored terror sweeps rural Zimbabwe.

It is punishing voters for supporting the opposition and aims to ensure that, if there is a run-off presidential election, they do not repeat their mistake.

Also in the same hospital are others who have survived the beatings and burnings. They include Mike Mavhura, whose hands are swollen, bloodied and seared after burning grass was piled on him and his arms were broken in several places.

Down the corridor is Daniel Muchuchuti, a 62-year-old retired major from the Zimbabwean army and village head, who has broken ribs.

On the floor below is Linus Mubwanda, whose brother Tapiwa, a Movement for Democratic Change district chairman, was beaten to death in front of him.

They are from diverse parts of rural Zimbabwe and they are a fraction of the many hundreds of people the opposition says have been assaulted as gangs of armed Zanu-PF supporters under military leadership move through the countryside, using polling station returns to identify villages where support for the opposition was strong.

Many hundreds more have been forced from their homes. War veterans burned the houses of 30 families in Centenary. Those who have tried to report the attacks to the police have sometimes themselves been arrested.

Mrs Chikwana, 38, says she is not an opposition activist and that her vote is her secret. But not secret enough. There were two polling stations in Chiwaka. One raised suspicions. Zanu-PF told people that they should vote there.

"When they were beating me, they wanted to know why I didn't go to their polling station. They said to me: 'If you vote in the other place, it's secret and that means you voted for the opposition.'

"They said they knew how people voted in that polling station from the figures and it wasn't for Zanu-PF," she said.

"They said we must vote for Zanu-PF. If you don't vote Zanu-PF you must go away. They said we were selling the country to the whites."

Few people have been killed in the beatings. It would appear that Zanu-PF has learned that deaths attract attention. But there has been at least one killing. Tapiwa Mubwanda was the MDC district chairman of a village in the north of the country. He was bludgeoned to death on Saturday as his brother was beaten next to him.

"They said it was to teach us how to vote," said Linus, 58. "They said: 'It's your own fault, voting for the opposition. That's why we are doing all these things to you. When we have the run-off, you will know how to vote'."

Cautious optimism

2008-04-04T20:04:00.002+11:00

Yay! China says that they'll re-open Lhasa, Tibet to foreigners on May 1. Why they decide to do this one night after I start looking up alternatives to Tibet I don't know. Seems like China is just way too good at pissing people off. Of course, this in no way means that I'll still be able to go there. And further to that, even if I were to go, this doesn't assure me that some passionate group of resentful Tibetans won't see my Chinese face as the perfect reason to dismantle it fist by fist, no matter how cantankerously stubborn they are towards my cries of "I'm not a Han, I'm not a Han!!" If only they knew how empathic this Chinese boy is towards their dilemma, they'd welcome me with open arms and hopefully lots of (good) food. But hey, at least things are looking on the up.

And my hip hurts for no apparent reason. Don't give me this "but you're a physio, so do something about it" crap. Until you find some cardiac surgeon that's able to perform his own bypass surgery, then come back and say it.

Marching on

2008-03-30T17:41:00.004+11:00

March ended up pretty mundane and boring. Ever since the weekend away on the beach in Torquay, it's been work, eat, sleep, rinse and repeat. Throw in the occasional drink and a couple of easter bunny chocolates, along with the obligatory church services and that's been the past few weeks in summary. Probably never realised this until one night catching up with Cze-Hui, the conversation revolved around what's been happening in her life the past few weeks. Then when asked what's news with me, I struggled to think of anything newsworthy to report back.

I guess there is one thing: I have a PS3. Ha! How hilarious is that. Well technically it's Julius' but I'll claim it as my own little baby. It came as his birthday gift, the idea concocted by his girlfriend, and the willingness to fund this grand scheme by several people. It's funny how whenever you think of gifts to give to family members, you always think, "what could I use/want/need that I can pass off as a present for Mum/Dad/Julius". Voila! Hello, PS3.

And it looks like the Tibet part of my forthcoming adventure looks to be in jeopardy. Intrepid's cancelled the tour I'm doing up until June. I don't see how anything will die down until the Olympics in August which leaves two months before I set off for problems to ease. Needless to say, it's not something worth betting on. I feel for Tibet. I want the separatist movement, as the Chinese so dramatically put it, to succeed and force China to give them back independence. Yet the selfish me wants the PLA to hurry up and accomplish the more likely scenario of crushing the rebellion, so things settle down and I can go. Assuming the latter takes place, I guess going there is still risky. After all, I am Chinese. I should probably first get a custom-made T-shirt to wear whilst in Tibet which reads "I am not Chinese so please don't beat me up."

At least Nepal looks stable. But then their elections are coming up I think... Crap...

Bad timing

2008-03-17T13:38:00.001+11:00

So barely a week after I book tickets for my trip, Tibet's capital decides to descend into a state of semi-anarchy.

Wonderful...

The great bowling divide

2008-03-16T18:25:00.001+11:00

The lawn bowls league used to be a harmonious gathering of friends, both retired and non-retired. Then one day a young lady, in stark contrast to the old lawn bowler stereotype, wanted to play. Unfortunately for her she had to tackle the progressively filling schedule of work and uni. The only day she could play was on Saturday. Therein lay the problem for her, since Saturday was gentlemens' day where only the males could play competition bowling that day. Not that it was discrimination of any sort since the ladies had their day too. Tuesday was ladies' day where only the women played.

Despite this the young lady cried, "SEXUAL DISCRIMINATION AND INEQUALITY!!" The older women jumped on board, seemingly united by this one young voice who had the confidence to bring her opinions forward and make them be known. She took the league to court. Their main argument: males and females are equal in skill in the game of lawn bowls. Hence, the ladies should be allowed to compete with the men. Much to-ing and fro-ing later, the women were victorious and were officially allowed to play on Saturday against the blokes, much to the antipathy of the males.

"Well alright then" said all the blokes. If we can't have our day, the ladies can't have their's. So they went to the courts to argue that they should be allowed to play on Tuesday - Ladies' day. The judge ruled in their favour, and blokes began to play competition bowling on Tuesday against the ladies.

The blokes then proceeded to massacre the ladies on the scoresheets every Tuesday. Outraged by the turn of events, the ladies threw up their arms and shouted, "SEXUAL DISCRIMINATION AND INEQUALITY!!" So back to the courts they went where they argued and whined to the judge like petty little 12 year old girls, saying that it's not fair the males could play with them because of their physical advantage.

But then the judge stopped and thought, "Hang on. Didn't you girls argue that you wanted to play Saturdays because you're just as good as the men?" With that, the case became a no contest, and males around the bowling clubs state-wide felt a sense of both justice and satisfaction from knowing that they had shafted the evil elderly (plus one young lass) feminists.

Q: What's the definition of irony?
A: Extreme (as opposed to the normal, mild) Feminism - They preach equality like it were more important than the Bible and the Qu'ran rolled into one. Yet what they actually want is usually unfair for males.

Another thought: what's with all the Michael Jackson remakes on the radio these days?

Booked

2008-03-07T22:05:00.003+11:00

So it's all settled then.

On the night of October the 3rd I go to the airport, likely dragging along some poor member of the family who has to then make the hour drive home at about midnight. As the clock ticks over to the 4th, the Singapore airlines plane jets off to Singapore (you don't say!?). Upon arrival I bludge for three hours in transit at Changi. Hopefully the first flight isn't delayed because if I miss the connecting flight this whole trip is screwed. Anyway, at some time in the morning I drag myself up to another plane which takes me to Kathmandu. I arrive in the afternoon and spend the first day there by myself in one big jet-lagged ball of mess.

On the 5th I join up with the rest of the small group at some hotel, and for the next three weeks I trek through the Himalayas around the Annapurna massifs with the company of these complete total strangers, who will be all good people...hopefully.

On the 26th I arrive back at Kathmandu and join up with another small group. We then take a plane to Lhasa, Tibet and work our way south-west back towards Nepal, stopping along Everest on the way. The key word being along not on. I ain't crazy.

On the 9th of November we arrive back at Kathmandu where I spend the next two days by myself, with my friend Lonely Planet.

On the 11th of November I fly back to Singapore, where I transit for another few hours whilst wishing I could just go home, for six weeks away from your own bed, and your own pillow is a crime against humanity.

I get home on the 12th provided I am still alive.

Annoying patients/clients

2008-03-05T22:17:00.004+11:00

Just because you're allocated 40 minutes for your assessment doesn't mean I have to give you 40 minutes. If all it takes is 30 minutes then that's all it takes! It's like going under the knife for a triple bypass operation that's allocated three hours, but all it takes is two and a half hours, and I wake up to tell the surgeon, "hey, hey! I'm given three hours here, so unstitch me and keep operating buddy."

In the same vein, I don't try to bargain with the surgeon to take 17% off the price because it took a shorter time. What are we? Roadside market health practitioners?!

Silly people.

Apparently this blog has a lot to do with sex

2008-02-24T19:03:00.000+11:00

That counter on the left side of this page is pretty neat. It tells me that people actually read this shite. I feel both a sense of love and popularity, mixed in with genuine bewilderment as to why you people actually come back to hear me go on about whatever random crap is in my head at the current time. But that's not the neat thing about it. It actually tracks down what page referred the user onto my humble online abode. For most visits, there is "no referring link", because you have it either bookmarked (awww!) or you keep manually typing in the web address into the URL line, in which case, learn how to bookmark pages you idiot! But then some people have clicked on a link from another page, almost inevitably some random stranger halfway across the world, and almost always from the Google search engine. Not only does it tell me that it's from Google, but it even tells me what terms the person put into the search engine which caused this blog to pop up high on the Google results list. So what words have people put into the search engine to lead them here?

Predictably, when people type in MacGyver, drinking straw, paper clip, or combinations of those words, this blog seems to appear high up on Google's results list. Ok, understandable since that's just the freakin' title of this whole thing.

But then...

Piss straw drinking - ok, that's quite a weird fetish. Whatever floats your boat, sir.
how to build a car out of string, straw and rubber band - Hmmm... someone takes MacGyver a little too seriously
me strangle her - errr.....so I might have had a murderer come across this blog?
crazy, solo acting, nuts, I like nuts - I don't think I've mentioned anthing in this blog about my unrelenting lust for all things nuts
i have a crush on physio - so apparently someone has called their child "Physio"... those parents should be shot
sex and paperclips - woah! Ok, so the guy that's handcuffed to the bed uses the paperclips to unlock himself? 'coz if not I'm struggling to see how paperclips are used in a night of horizontal tango dancing.

But the best one so far...

controlling orgasm rubberband - I'm sorry, mate, but that CANNOT be fun for little Johnny living downstairs

More to the point, why is my blog associated with paperclip sex and rubberband contraception?

How to spend your week's pay in less than an hour

2008-02-21T19:56:00.002+11:00

Anaconda, the outdoor equipment and clothes shop, is pure evil! It will sneak up on you in the form of a radio ad, and a brother with a pamphlet, tempting you with its "20% off everything" sale for just one day (today). Then it dangles the proverbial carrot in front of you with its wide stock of practically everything you need before you head off on your adventure, in my case a trip that won't even be 'til October!

Then 50 minutes later, you're about $500 poorer :(

A couple of fleece jumpers, a pair of trousers, a good pair of trekking boots, and a sleeping bag that'll actually keep me warm for once.

And I haven't even bought a proper backpack, since the shoddy one I have now has a busted zipper and won't be big enough. I might end up spending more on stuff than the price of the three week trek around the himalayas.

That day

2008-02-19T23:47:00.000+11:00

As I stuffed my face full of chicken, I caught the back end of a movie on cable tonight - United 93...or Flight 93. I can't remember the exact name now. You remember the infamous 9/11 and that fourth plane that never reached its target? Well that's what this movie was about - that plane, the subsequent hijacking, and the revolt of the passengers to arrest control of the plane and bring the hijacker terrorists down. Heard good things about the movie but I didn't see enough if it to commit to any judgements. I did catch it in time to see the climactic bit though - a *spoiler alert* gung-ho charge up the plane aisle by the desperate passengers, armed with one of those big, heavy food carts, multiple cans of soft drink, a couple of pots full of boiling hot water, and a fire hydrant. MacGyver would've been proud. Assuming the movie was factual, it was a sombre display of both desperation and heroism.

Hard to believe the whole thing was almost a decade ago. But even now, when pictures of the towers begin to crumble down, that oh so surrealistic cringe inside still happens a little. So many points are made about why so much emphasis is placed on this event, when scores more people die around the world for equally needless, yet tragically more preventable things. Yet this is the event that we all relate with more. It's certainly one of those "what were you doing when...?" moments. I was one of those that didn't catch the event before going to bed. I remember waking up to Dad urging me out of bed with apocalyptic predictions of "World War 3 might be happening". Then I trudged down to the living room half asleep thinking he was an idiot, and the first thing I see on the screen is a replay of the plane crashing into the building, followed by the thought of What...the...f$*k?! Then at school later on that day, the overflowing surrealism in everyone was apparent. I honestly can't remember anything funny, or anyone laughing at all that day. There was one topic of discussion, and only one. I along with a couple of others brought a little radio to school and at lunch would stick the headphones in and listen to the news to hear what's going on. It was just about the only time I'd voluntarily tuned in to an AM station. The school principle went on about the possibility of some students eventually going to war, and the apparent crying of a couple of year 7 boys later on that day. Apparently at our sister school, tears were flowing like fountains there.

As someone said either on the radio or the TV that day, "go home, just go home. Hug your kids. Hug your wife or husband. Hug your family."

The necessary apology that we didn't necessarily have to make

2008-02-14T13:58:00.005+11:00

Confused? Bear with me. Because this entire issue has the "white" versus "black" division at its core, I shall now put on my stereotypical rice paddy hat, and wear very yellow clothes to symbolize my Asian "yellow"ness. Now I am just a bystander with a relatively unbiased stance towards the conflicting factions! Just call me Mr. United Nations :D

So Australia, through Prime Minister The Ruddstar!, has finally apologized to the stolen generation of our indigenous Aboriginals. What happened back then was wrong. Hindsight is certainly a pain in the arse. Taking kids away to help them is one thing. But if anyone who doesn't acknowledge that a very large number of indigenous Aussies were wrongfully kept away from their families should be kicked in the testicles...or the female equivalent...if there is any. What happened should be acknowledged by all. And to say that we're sorry is a necessary thing. But we shouldn't have to actually say it. As tired and worn-out this phrase is, actions truly speak louder than words.

Personally, I don't think that today's white Australia should be compelled to apologize. But the reality is: it needed to be said. It's easy for me to sit here and write down my opinions to people who don't really give a shite. It's easy for white people to forehand and backhand opposing arguments to each other. It's another thing to actually be one of the stolen generation. And I dunno about you, but if I were taken away from my Mum and Dad at three, only to be reunited thirty years later without the ability to talk to them, then I would probably want an apology too. But I'd want it just for closure. I'd want it so I can move on.

The cold reality is that before any other progress is made between "black" and "white" Australia, this hurdle needs to be jumped. Now that it has been, it'll be interesting to see what happens. Black and white have never been so joined together than it was yesterday, and that was a very welcoming site. Just how long it stays that way will be interesting to see.

Let's just put aside the power of symbolism, a power that was most evident yesterday. When you take that away, saying "sorry" was all just show. The Prime Minister formally says sorry, followed by the Opposition Leader. The parliament and its onlookers stand and give a rapturous applause. People around the country gather together and hug each other. Kisses are given to each other, rain finally falls, and Connex finally decides to run trains on time. The world is put right. So tell me then, in a practical sense what exactly has changed? Nothing. The smart and intellectual John Howard was correct when he believed that actually doing something to improve Aboriginal circumstances is a gazillion times better than just muttering out a relatively hollow 'sorry'. The stupid, idiot Howard made the mistake in failing to see that a stronger unity was required for this to happen, and the only thing that would unite black and white sufficiently, would be the aforementioned 'sorry'.

As glad as I am that we are finally more united and we can finally move on, I must admit that I did shake my head in disappointment a little for the Aussie in the "white" corner. Why?

It's a crude and very extreme comparison, but what about the French people of today when they come across a German citizen. Do they blame them for the sins of some of their Nazi fathers? Do they demand an apology? Is the French government demanding an apology from their German counterparts? (I stand corrected if Germany has actually done this...Edit: An apology was made to the Jewish people so I will stand corrected...not quite the French, but the Holocaust is even higher on the shock list than just invading France!) What about the people of Darwin that were bombed by the Japanese? Australia never asks for an apology from the Japanese people of today. We even welcome them with open arms to our shores... we just ask politely not to kill the whales! (And failing that we send a bunch of hippies to endanger their lives hehehe) I fail to see why today's white Australia should bear the humility of apologizing for yesterday's white Australia. The more important thing should be that today's generation be empathetic to those who have suffered, and should do everything within their power to practically help out their fellow indigenous citizens. In the ideal world, but not in reality unfortunately, that's the most efficient solution to be had here. The building isn't going to build itself if we just say stuff to it.

Edit: This probably says it better: "I have decided to move to America at the end of this year. I'm of Jewish Heritage. My family survived the Holocaust. Yet instead of suing an entire country, we decided to simply just forgive our enemies and move on with our lives. Neville Austin, you may have been stolen, but we were hunted down, caged and murdered. "

The other potential problem with this sorry business is this. On one hand, this apology will bring people together and will thus make way for a desperately needed practical solution. On the other hand however, it just reinforces the "blacks" vs "whites" divide. The majority of white Australians, especially the youth, want to say sorry for things they as individuals didn't do. They feel compelled to apologize because they're "white" and thus represent the wrongs of those individuals before them. The race card is being played and because of that, the current hand on the table looks all the more different. If race and colour had nothing to do with this, this would be a non-issue. Think of this - a white four year old boy is taken from his 22 year old mother and father. They are not looking after their kid. They don't feed him. They don't seek any medical attention for him. They just don't care. Perhaps they even physically or sexually abuse him. (And this is in no way a generalisation of the Aboriginal community). The welfare officers come and take the child away. All of a sudden, many of us are applauding this. "She shouldn't have a child at such a young age." "She's despicable, how could you possibly treat a child like that?!" Now change this hypothetical a little and let's pretend that this family were Aboriginal. I tell you... the race card is like having the royal flush in one card. We should be aiming for a world where "black" and "white" are outdated terms. It's a funny situation this, because it's both helping this, yet it's also making it worse. In the end, the blacks will be closer to the whites that want to say sorry, but they'll be further divided from the whites that think we shouldn't apologize.

Another point. Going back onto this whole thing being a "show". Case in point - "We are sorry for taking away your children from you"... yet 300 metres down the road the exact thing is still happening. See http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23195827-5001021,00.html It's like saying, "Hey I'm sorry for calling you a 'wanker', you wanker."

Finally something that really annoyed me about what happened. And no, contrary to what some of you may think, I am not a narrow-sighted voter that just votes Liberal 'for the hell of it'. The opposition leader Brendan Nelson had a chance to make his apology speech, but many of the public and even politicians turned their backs on him immediately (I didn't see it live so I'm counting on various news reports). Firstly, his speech was inappropriate. But was it correct? Yes. For a large majority of people, it was a case of "we all thought it, he just said it". The sad truth was that white Australia back then actually did have good intentions. And indeed, it was not all bad news. Some of those taken believe they probably wouldn't be alive today had they not been taken. (See http://www.abc.net.au/alicesprings/stories/s2160407.htm) But this wasn't the case for everyone, and regardless, they shouldn't have been kept away from their families. Once again, hindsight's a bitch. Having said that, bringing up the details of all that bad history yesterday was really poor timing. Yet it's ironic how people mocked Nelson and were irate at him for bringing up the past, yet these very same people are the ones that immaturely turned their backs on him, seemingly because of his party's past views on the issue. The word 'juvenile' springs to mind. Did I ever mention that I hate hypocrisy!? Also, how come the failings of previous Labor governments to apologize (remember, they never apologized either) didn't go unpunished? On principle, people should have turned their backs on them too!

I guess too many of us follow whatever seems to be popular and never actually think for ourselves.

In a nutshell, the nation should acknowledge the wrongs of the past towards the large number of those affected. Everything practical should be done to right this wrong. (Not individual compensations though...that's an entirely different matter). Strategies should be put in place to work with the Aboriginal community (anything without their opinions/consent/approval is pointless) to work on all facets of their community that need improving, whilst respecting all their cultural wishes and desires.

Learn from the past and move on.

Sorry for making this too long. :P

Welcoming the new year...in February...and halfway through it too

2008-02-13T17:30:00.001+11:00

Not that anyone reads this thing anymore since it's gone without an update for a couple of months. But hey, I'm sure there's enough random people stumbling upon this mess of a blog to warrant reading the first five lines before moving on.

New Year's reso - I will write in this thing more often because it...it......well, it doesn't benefit me in anyway. Oh well, who says you need a reason to do things?

After almost four weeks away on a refreshing reunion to Malaysia and an eye-opening trip to China, I've returned to work only to be looking up information on the next trip. That being the trek into the Himalayas, of which I have been harping on about since about the age of three months old. Why am I doing it? Perhaps it's the travel bug flowing through the veins, perhaps it's work not stimulating the adrenaline enough, or perhaps it's a lack of actual work to do giving me extra time to burn on the internet. Revisiting every website you've ever been to since you got the internet ten years ago only gets you so far.

Will promise to write in this thing a little more often... especially if I get free time at work like now. :D

Why Mum is awesome

2007-10-18T18:28:00.000+10:00

Quote Mother:

"...with the Liberals we're going to have the gap between the rich and poor get bigger. But then with Labor, they're like communists."

Nobel PEACE?!? Prize

2007-10-16T02:07:00.000+10:00

What if the timestamp says that I'm up past 2am? A 1pm start tomorrow allows me this unproductive luxury. :) Not much to report except for an unpredictable open day over the weekend. Why we held an open day four months after our new practice opened, I'll never know. Regardless, more people came than I expected and all I really did was help out with Pilates classes. I must say though, doing it in front of the watchful eyes of other physios and exercise physiologists, considering I've never really done it in front of other professionals, was a little nerve-wracking. Ok, so I wasn't exactly as nervous as an Asian on an episode of Border Security, but it was still a little out of the cosy comfort zone.

I might be a little late in finding this out, but did you know Al Gore won this year's Nobel Peace Prize? Did you also know that Al Gore has now sullied the good credibility of the Nobel Peace Prize? Don't get me wrong. Allow me to disclaim once again that global warming is a real and true issue in the world, whatever the cause whether it be due to human fault or the cyclical nature of our big brown Earth. And yes, just to be on the safe side we should all take the necessary steps to "go green". But once again, the unstoppable juggernaut that is the "oh my God we're all gonna die unless you hold all your farts in!" train of climate change scaremongering, has infected another part of society - this time, a significant legacy of the world.

The last time I checked, the Nobel Peace Prize was justly called because it's for PEACE!!! As far as I'm aware, past winners were righteous recipients because of their efforts to further peace and unite the world, or promote human rights, whether it be directly or indirectly. How Al Gore's endless, obsessive, and fanatical (but arguably necessary) push to cram man-made climate change down our choking plural forms of the oesophagus won him this award is beyond me.

Past winners of the Nobel Peace Prize:
Martin Luther King
Kofi Annan
Nelson Mandela
Mother Teresa
... Al Gore

*shakes his head*

(Mind you, if you read Jeremy Clarkson, he puts up an interesting argument as to why Mandela doesn't deserve it.)

Having said all that, don't forget to switch off your lights everyone.

Good War, Bad War

2007-10-09T21:12:00.000+10:00

God damn some people are ignorant, uneducated idiots and they piss me off. Just reading about the death of the Aussie soldiers in the online newspapers, and the subsequent comments made by people. It's pretty shameful that people are using the incident as a forum and a means to promote the need to "bring our troops home!" and to have a go at the PM saying "I hope you can sleep well at night John Howard". We're not there to invade the country or supposedly steal their resources. We're there as part of a NATO alliance to rebuild the country from the desolate shambles that a certain Taliban left it in. Specifically, the Aussies are there primarily to rebuild their infrastructure. Unlike Iraq, there is a general consensus among the Afghan people of a welcoming attitude to help them "rebuild".

Afghanistan is not Iraq. F*#kin extreme lefties piss me off. Be a lefty, but don't an idiotic one. I think it's left...left is the hippy side yeah? :P

*steps off high-horse*

Don't taze me!

2007-10-04T10:51:00.000+10:00

So almost three months, about six goes at getting a new computer fixed, and eventually a second new computer later, this blog finally gets some loving attention. Not that I forgot about it, I just couldn't be arsed. Instead my spare time on a computer (when I had a damn computer) was best spent on more important things - perving at other people's photos on Facebook. Productive? No. Borderline disturbing? Yes. Now that Facebook has turned into another haven for emos and identity thieves (MySpace) it was time I set aside the voyeuristic tendencies to finally jot down something mildly notable in this thing.

My English teacher always said that when you have a giant mess of ideas to put to paper but don't know where to start, point forming was the best strategy to undertake the task. Mind you, that English teacher was a bit of a tool and, I suspect, a closet paedophile. Even so, I will take heed of his recommendations to summarise the last few months. Come to think of it, I think I did the same thing the last time I had a long lay-off between entries. Oh well, interesting things lately have been:
- Played for the old school's musical in the pit - had a piece of the set (wind chime thingy) fly off down into the pit and into my testicles
- A near run-in with a director at work
- A birthday that was...err...
- Got tickets to Muse and The Killers for November :D
- Also seeing Phantom of the Opera in a few weeks
- The Bourne Ultimatum has to be the best action-thriller ever made

Hooray, this thing is now on par.

Friday the 13th

2007-07-14T00:47:00.000+10:00

So this morning I get up late as usual, scoff down the food whilst changing and showering at the same time. All is a normal day. Little did I realise that today is Friday the 13th, and by the laws of the supernatural, I really should just shut my door and hide in the closet for fear of giant hairy spiders entering my mouth without me knowing (don't you dare attempt to make my greatest fear come to life).

Excuse me whilst I bitch and whine in this post like a spoilt brat about my latest run of bad luck, when there's a poor kid living in Africa with only three slices of bread to last the week.

So on this day of unholy and evil days, a couple of things go wrong for me. The new car is starting to make a noise. Something's happening to it methinks. There's a quiet, high-pitched squeal to the engine sound now which I noticed this morning. It still runs ok, but watch this space. Then two hours later whilst I'm slaving away at work to earn the tax office their money, my brother tells me that my computer has broken down...again. I only just got the damn thing back two weeks ago from getting it fixed from whatever the hell went wrong with it the first time round. I haven't even had the computer for a month yet! I don't think anyone knows what the hell is wrong with it now. And it looks like I'll have to wait 'til Thursday for someone to come round to even have a look at it. He'll most likely take it away and I'll most likely get it back in another week. Anyone got a hobby I can take up for the next two weeks?

Then there's the computers going down at work whilst writing a letter, and the patient that accidentally coughed in my face.

Meh I'll stop.

By the way, continuing on the Transformers theme of late, check out the following video. Kudos to either Cindy, Deb or Max who told me about this one. Sorry, I forget who.

2007-07-14T00:46:00.001+10:00

Transformers review

2007-06-29T23:53:00.000+10:00

No I'm not going to spoil anything so don't worry.

Instead of going home on my half-day today I went to the cinemas...by myself...in work clothes. Before you laugh, it was the middle of a working day in the middle of a working week when everyone else is working! (or at uni). At least that's what I tell myself to ease the pain of being a loner and help me sleep at night. :P So anyway, with the cinemas being 200m away from where I had to be in Glen Waverley this morning, I thought...why not? Convenience is a nice word in the dictionary.

So I ended up watching Transformers. Oh yes, that's right. It was time to nourish the nerd within yet again, and what better way than to feed it generous helpings of big F-ing robots in digital graphics, shooting up anything remotely resembling an object. And how sweeter it is when those robots are the very same ones that you loved to watch back before you even knew how to do math. I think I shot myself in the foot a little by watching all the trailers for this movie beforehand. Nonetheless I will confess to shaking in anticipation as I sat there watching the first transformer, well... transform, and then again when Optimus Prime rolled up en queue for his first appearance, and then once more during the climactic battle. At least I kept my mouth shut in that early-afternoon quarter-filled cinema, unlike the other nerds in the cinema that were audibly gasping as Prime transformed for the first time. If you have no idea who or what the hell I'm talking about, then you're most likely NOT a nerd. Congratulations. I had some dude sitting to my left. He was pumping his fists in the air a few times during the movie because he was so excited. I wanted to slap him like something chronic. Regardless, he didn't wreck what was otherwise a pretty sweet movie experience.

Like 300, this movie delivers where it needs to deliver. Acting was good but nothing spectacular and the human characters were mere props in the end. In terms of storyline, whilst it was essentially nothing more than what you'd expect it did surprise a little. Whilst by no means will this ever appear on an English class syllabus, it did have its little complexities. The developing relationship between the boy and Bumblebee was brilliantly put together. The real stars however were the dudes in the graphics studios rendering the Transformers themselves. You know the digital graphics are good when halfway through the movie you totally forget that the robots are basically just a bunch of pixels, albeit LOTS of pixels. That's what happened with this. This movie pretty much rewrites the book on how to seamlessly blend artificial graphics with real-life objects, environments and actors. And then there's the sound...yikes. When the smashing and bruising occurs, you'll know about it, and you won't look away.

A couple of tiny little gripes. More just me being a tightarse than anything else. It took a little while for it to get going, though that was probably just 'coz I wanted the smashing and shooting to begin asap. The movie certainly didn't feel like it dragged. And with the storyline, there was very little closure. But you'd expect nothing else from a movie that already has the second and third sequels signed up. I guess the only real gripe about the movie was that it was another case of "America is the World!" Meh, Hollywood... at least the Aussie actress got to keep her accent in the movie.

So long as you get over the implausibilities of some of the things that happened (look ma! I'm a giant robot that can tower over the neighbourhood so quietly that not a single soul is stirring) and the odd bits of humour that was mixed in (I can see die-hard fans writing death letters to the director yelling "how dare you try to put humour in our beloved robots")... then sit back and enjoy being a kid all over again :D

Out of 10...give it an 8.5. Can't wait for the sequel... apparently they might make an entire aircraft carrier transform :0

Sex, cough medicine and rock and roll!

2007-06-26T18:24:00.000+10:00

Blogging at work...how bored am I? Ok so the sex bit of the title is somewhat of a lie. But this cough is still here. It's starting to piss me off more than Michael Moore proclaiming to the world that his new movie is not meant to be political despite choosing to have its premiere in Washington DC - the political heart of the US. I am this close to skolling an entire bottle of cough suppressant in one go and saying to my throat "ha! try to cough now bitch!"

Oh, remember that judge who tried to sue a Korean couple in the US for fifty-something million dollars because of an (alleged) missing pair of pants at the dry cleaners? If not, read an earlier entry, it's somewhere there. Well he lost, AND he has to pay the defendants' trial fees, which might also include all their legal fees too. There IS a god!!! http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2528824020070625

In another little rant, I've been seeing more and more ads for the Live Earth concerts around the world that's coming up soon. I have but one simple question: Why? Seriously...why? What's the goal? Is it to "engage people on a mass scale to combat our climate crisis" as the official description of the event states? Ok, that's a fair enough statement, but how in this increasingly brown world are these freaking concerts going to do that?! The words "raising awareness man" in hippy voices have been heard around the wire, but c'mon. Raising awareness?! We already know about freaking global warming. What's the point of shoving it further down our throats through the power of sex, drugs and rock and/or roll? Gimme a break. Sure, ok they're going to showcase some of the most technologically advanced equipment that is easy on the environment during the shows. But unless I run mega concerts for a living, that's about as useful as a condom in a lesbian relationship. I fail to see any practical benefit from this sham. As far as I'm concerned, any credibility to this event went down the drain when they announced that each ticket was to cost $99. Fair enough, expenses need to be paid but that doesn't justify the price...unless of course, a profit is to be made. Hmmmm. And please don't tell me that all the artists are in it because they 'care about the world'. If by "world" you mean "public relations" then yes that seems more plausible. I wonder how many of those artists involved whore themselves off to ads for SUVs. And how many of them would be flying around in private jets? Hmmm. I'm not as pissed off as this rant may make me seem. I'm just a little bewildered as to how such a thing has gained so much popularity. The premise behind the event is good. We do need to get off our arses and do something collectively as a whole about it, at the very least in case global warming is happening. (Remember now, it probably is true but no one can be 100% sure yet) But please, give me practical solutions, not hypocritical preaching.

Colds, cousins and crappy computers

2007-06-23T13:01:00.000+10:00

When you buy something for over three grand, you expect it to work completely fine. Actually, no let me rephrase that. When you buy something for over three grand you hope that it works completely fine but you expect it to have something wrong with it. Such was the case unfornately for my new computer which came last week. Worked like a dream until it died all of a sudden. Long story short, the warranty guy that came over to have a look at it suggested that since it's such a new and uber computer, I should take it back to the place I bought it from, even though it's in NSW. So as I speak the computer is somewhere between Melbourne and Shitown (Sydney). Oh well, thems the way things go unfortunately. I don't blame the place I got it from. Them screwing up the computer doesn't explain why they have a reputable name amongst the geeky internet forum fraternity. I put this one down to simply "stupid F-ing computers $@#!!!!". The guys in NSW have actually been pretty helpful so far about it all and might even give me a free game for all the troubles caused. Either way, I guess that'll learn me for researching stuff too much. That's what you get for spending ages finding a place with a good name and relatively cheaper prices. So I shall be without a computer for at least a week. Such is the withdrawal I'm having from it already that I'm at work right now using the computers here despite the fact I could've left about 15 minutes ago.

Also had a nasty cold. It's pretty much over now but the dry raspy cough lingers on. Even downing an entire bottle of Benadryl hasn't gotten rid of it. I've narrowed down the list of possible people who passed it on to me to about three people - three of my patients specifically. I'm still seeing two of those three so they will get extra punishment from my thumbs and elbows.

The other interesting note to current life was the visiting of my cousin Lina. Lovely girl who I haven't seen for about six years. She was down from the Australian state of New Zealand with her fiance. 'Twas good to catch up with her. Coupled with my other lovely cousin Caroline who came back for a visit a month ago, it's been a period of reunions lately. I knew they'd all come crawling to Australia. Malaysia is too humid and New Zealand is overrun with Lord of the Rings nuts...they'll all end up living in Australia...just you wait. I just need to make sure that I implant an image in their heads of Sydney being the country's anus and Melbourne being the nation's true capital before they decide to live here :P

So that's life at the moment. I'm a nerdy leper without a computer that's being visited by his cousins.

I actually came on to write about something on my mind but now I forget. Screw it. Next time.

I'm 'Strayan!

2007-06-09T23:08:00.000+10:00

After about 18 years of leeching off this country, sucking it dry and milking it for all it's worth, I can now finally do it without the scorn of xenophobic monkeys frowning at my yellow-ness. For as of Friday night I am (at long freaking last) an Australian citizen. Why it's taken this long is a looooooong story, the likes of which a trilogy can be made out of it. And for the purposes of sanity, I can't be arsed describing it. Just be glad in the knowledge that there is now no reason whatsoever to question my loyalties and suspect me as some sort of Chinese spy, waiting for the order from my superiors back in my ancestral land of China to commence Operation One Earth, One China.

The citizenship ceremony is pretty black and white. Speeches by the Mayor, various parliamentary figures subliminally telling us to "Vote Labor/Liberal", and a native Aboriginal who ended up being absent. Then, in separate groups we'd go up and recite the pledge, before receiving a certificate, a badge and a little plant...I got a shitty plant. Not happy Australia! The night is then capped off with the anthem followed by a chowfest of sandwiches and pies in the foyer. All in all, whilst an experience for sure, ten hours of work beforehand takes its toll. I also felt sorry for the emcee that had to call out all of our predominantely Chinese/Indian names. Certainly a candidate for the 'toughest job ever'.

In other sadder news, I'm sure everyone's heard about that train crash last week. Two little girls and their mother that died in the crash (the one in the news) came from my church/parish/primary school. I was at church tonight and was listening to the priest talk about it, and how the poor unfortunate father was now left to pick up the pieces. It was a subtly surreal service actually. The priest talked about how the school was coping, and how the kids were told of it. Imagine being the teacher telling the class that one of their classmates died. In the words of the priest, "don't ever let anyone tell you that teachers don't earn their pay." Such a sad thing. By the sounds of it though, everyone is banding together and lending support to one another, not just within the broken school community either. Apparently offers of help for the parish have come from the police, the CFA, local churches in the area (that aren't necessarily Catholic) and the council. At least there's something to smile about out of all this.

Why the movie Antz is the biggest load of horse baloney

2007-05-27T19:40:00.000+10:00

So I was about to switch off the lights to go to sleep two nights ago, when I glanced over to the heating vent next to the bedside table. And what did I see? A FREAKING COLONY OF ANTS LAYING EGGS IN MY BEDROOM! Yeah that's right...freaked me out completely. I felt like I was in some horror movie for a second. They were laying the eggs on the piece of board I have placed over part of the heating vent (to prevent the bedside table which partly lies over it from overheating). The heated piece of board must've provided a perfect ground for breeding...either that or they seriously got lost on the way to their home underground. Actually, just having images of it in my head right now is freaking me out....uhhhhh. *shiver* Despite their numbers though, they were no match for the superhero duo that is the Ting brothers. Julius, armed with his atomic insect spray, and me, wielding my nuclear-powered vacuum cleaner showed those ants the meaning of "get the f*#k out of our house!". It did cost me a good night's sleep unfortunately. After clearing the ants, which thankfully were mainly localised to the piece of board rather than being stuck in the carpet, I surfaced sprayed the crap out of the vent surface and the window sill where they came out of... at least it looked like they came from the window sill. They better have 'coz if they came from within our heating ducts we're screwed! Anyway, as a result of the bedroom's impromptu fumigation, I had to put up with sleeping on the couch.

So yeah, fun times.

It's been an eventful last few weeks. People have been busy, people have been drunk, and people have been hurt. I hope you two are fine. As for me, I would fit under the first category. Four days worth of an educational seminar fries the brain more than what you'd initially think. And here I was thinking that it'd be a cruisy Thurs-Sunday. At least I'm now the wiser physio and I'll be able to go back to work next week and tell my patients to forget everything I told them. That, my friends, is a sign of professional progress. To the physios that read this, I was at the Part A McKenzie course. I can certainly tell you that, no it isn't just all extensions :P

Ice Hockey = Legal fighting = FUN!

2007-05-17T19:45:00.000+10:00

Hooray for YouTube! Why? Because of it, I found one of the most exciting moments in sports history that I've ever seen.

The best sport that Australia never really takes part in (due to the inherent lack of water, let alone ice!) is ice hockey. Nonetheless, if you're lucky to have cable tv, it's one of the best games to ever watch because it's probably the fastest-paced sport that exists, and fights are legal! The following is a brawl that happened ten years ago. Things you need to know before you watch it:

- Fights are, contrary to belief, rare.
- If a fight breaks out it's 99% of the time just a one-on-one fight. And most of the time, the fights are clumsy ie. the two people wrestle and grapple each other to the ground/ice as opposed to full-on face punches... After all, taking a close-fisted swipe to the head of another guy wearing a helmet...that'd hurt you more than him!
- Goalies almost NEVER fight.
- The Detroit Red Wings (the guys in the white and red uniform, and the team which I go for) and the Colorado Avalache built a HUGE rivalry over the late 90s.
- One year before this brawl, a Detroit player was taken down with a cheap shot by a Colorado player. It caused a broken jaw and orbital bone, and forced the Detroit player out for about a year. The cheap Colorado player in question (Lemieux) is the one that gets blindsided in the video by a different Detroit player (McCarty). If you watch all the replays you'll realise that McCarty uses the first fight that breaks out as a cheap excuse to go after his man Lemieux. Oh how revenge is sweet, especially when it's one year overdue!

Anyways, the video is after this post. The quality is a bit dodgy but it'll do.

The best bit is when the Colorado goalie skates out to rescue Lemieux but he himself is intercepted at full-speed by another Detroit player...watch the replay of it. The game itself turned out to be the definition of irony. The three main Detroit players fighting (with the exception of the goalie) were McCarty, Shanahan and Larionov....

The game went into overtime and was eventually won by Detroit. The scorer? McCarty. The assists to the goal? Shanahan and Larionov

2007-05-17T19:44:00.001+10:00

New Car!

2007-05-14T16:51:00.000+10:00

Presenting the newest member of the clan:

Went and picked her up on Saturday. I haven't thought of a name for her yet. The SSA licence plate makes it hard...what name can you make out of SSA? Anywho, the car runs well. It has the feel of a new car even though it's 53,000kms old. So all in all, here sits one pleased owner. Now I just have to hope it doesn't follow the suit of most other Fords I know and break down without warning. Today being the usual day off, I took the liberty to retrieve the contents of my old written-off car, namely my little smiley face thingy I hang off the rear-view mirror. Hopefully that isn't the thing which cursed my old car. I just realised... Out of the four cars we collectively have as a family, three of them are now silver in colour. And the other is just plain white. How boring are we?!

The Lawyer (and not just a lawyer but a freakin' judge!) from Hell

2007-05-05T00:22:00.000+10:00

I'm sorry Bob, Emily, Fi or any other lawyer/law student reading this. But the following is undeniable proof that within your ranks, are the scumiest of scums!

I direct you to:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/LAW/05/03/missing.pants.ap/

I actually like this version better despite their slight inaccuracy with the figures (the lawsuit is for $65mil not $67mil). It explains what he's sueing for in better detail: http://madconomist.com/the-67-million-pants-washington-d-c-lawyer-sues-dry-cleaners-for-lost-trousers

Just as was described in the second article, it's people like these that cause so many problems in the world. It's "why teachers won't put an arm around a crying child, and doctors order unnecessary tests." We live in a culture of fear - fear that some vaginahead will financially rape us. Seriously, even I get scared at work. The number of warnings and disclaimers I explain to my patients, the number of times I have to ask permission from them to do something...it takes up so much time, before you know it I have only two minutes to actually DO something to them.

Official

2007-05-02T20:53:00.000+10:00

Yeh it's officially dead. Got the word yesterday. At least now I can go search for some cars. My cousin has, in the meantime, graciously given me his car to borrow for a few weeks so things aren't being such a nuisance and inconvenience as it initially looked like it was going to be. Granted the car is almost dead. A few kms after driving it from his house the rear view mirror decides to just fall off. Hmmmm.... Right now it's being held up by string attached to the E-tag. Hooray for citylink!

My Baby! My poor Babyyyyyyyy!

2007-04-26T21:22:00.000+10:00

Well, the car has been sent from the Mt. Waverley centre to the Altona Centre. And, according to the dude at AAMI, the Altona centre is the automobile equivalent of Dr Nitschke's Euthanasia clinic. All cars that are deemed to be a probable write-off after assessment are sent to Altona for a secondary assessment to ensure that it really is unsalvageable. And statistically speaking, if your car is sent there, 90% of the time they will scrap it.

The official word won't come until at least Monday. Looks like my poor baby will die the slow death like the unfortunate kangaroo that hit it. :(

Vote 1 for Kangaroo Meat

2007-04-25T23:54:00.000+10:00

If I tell this story one more time to someone, even I would call myself an attention seeker that's just trying to score empathy votes from as many people as possible. So instead of repeating the same old stuff, let me put it in a different way. Hence I present to you...

Terence's Guide to Losing $2500...Guaranteed!

Step 1: Have multiple claims made to your car insurance company over previous years to ensure skyrocketing prices for your annual premiums.

Step 2: Instead of fork out the $1500 or so premium, take the option (and by option I mean "gamble") to pay a ridiculously high excess fee should an accident ever happen, in order to cut the annual premium in half.

Step 3: Drive along Churchill Park Dve around the late afternoon/early evening time when the sun is going down. Telepathically will a large kangaroo to hop out onto the road right in front of your car from behind a large bush/shrub so that you have no time to brake or swerve. Ensure you are driving at 70km/h to maximise impact and damage to the car. Results are best given when your entire left-front is shot to pieces and your windshield is caved in.

Step 4: Ensure you survive so you can experience your new found loss of financial health. Having an intact windshield to prevent a flying kangaroo from entering the car and decapitating your head is recommended.

Step 5: After towage is complete, liaise with insurance company to determine that you have three excesses to pay. 1) The $500 standard excess, 2) the $400 "you're under 25 years old so you must be a shit driver" excess, and 3) the aforementioned "gamble" excess fee of $1550. Get a calculator and total the fee to which it will be $2450.

Step 6: Curse that f&#king kangaroo.

Looks like I'll be putting off that computer for a bit. And my monthly paycheck for this April will now be known as the "insurance paycheck". Oh well, money aside, I'm still alive which is all that matters as they say. I went through that whole shock phase of sitting in your car for a good 60 seconds trying to fathom what the F*$K just happened, and I'm over the "thank God I'm still alive" phase. Now I'm just into the pissed off "bloody hell this is going to cost me an arm and a leg, why do I have such shit luck with cars?! *whinge whinge whinge*" stage

A couple of thoughts:
- Gotta love the hippie-looking couple that checked on the kangaroo before me. Way to prioritise guys! And no I didn't kill a tree too.
- Any second later and the kangaroo would've directly hit the side of my car. With me going at 60-70km/h......
- Had I been going at the speed limit (as opposed to being going 10 under due to traffic) I would've been long ahead before the kangaroo hopped onto the road to hit me. And they say speed is supposed to bad...
- Fark, how scary was that?!
- Watching a dying kangaroo die a slow and painful death is not fun :(

I'll find out tomorrow whether or not the car is a write off. I hope not. One, because I love my car! and two, despite being two and a half grand out of pocket no matter what happens now, the new car that I can buy with the money left over will be shite...at least not as good as the '96 Lancer I had.

Wait and see... Either way, here comes at least two weeks of juggling cars with the rest of the family.

Madness?! This...is.....SPARTAAAAA!!! front kick some dude into bottomless pit

2007-04-19T01:28:00.000+10:00

Hooray for the power of coincidence in giving me - the monitor-less one - a free computer monitor from one of Dad's clients who wanted to throw it away despite it not ever being used!

One of the most frustrating things one can endure is to feel tired and sluggish throughout the entire day, but when it comes to bedtime, the body refuses to shut down. Argh! And it doesn't help that I have to be up in less than six hours. Oh well, instead of lie there I figured I'd get up, have a drink (juice, not alcohol...I'm not an alco) and write some sort of crap in this thing.

The week so far has been pretty boring. Nothing special... and quiet at work. Went and saw 300 the other day. Fantastic movie but only if you're of the ike that lusts for copious amounts of Hollywood blood, and hence don't mind senseless violence. As one reviewer wrote which I randomly read at work the other day "300 is rated R for 'RAAAAAR!!'" If you're looking for plot, don't expect much. The story which most of you would know is based on an actual historical battle goes something like this: (and if you haven't seen the movie and don't want it to be spoilt, believe me, there's not much in the plot that can be given away)

- Persians threaten Sparta (and the rest of Greece)
- Spartan king is pissed off
- 300 uber Spartan warriors led by the king take the Persian army to Paintown
- Blood is generously spilt throughout the movie

I'm gonna have to buy the DVD and tally up the number of confirmed kills in the movie just as Julius and I did for the Rambo trilogy. I suspect this movie will hold the new record. This is the ultimate movie that doesn't require thinking. Simple story with plenty of 'don't ask questions, just kill something' action, and perhaps one of the coolest quotes in cinema lately. Can't wait for the DVD so I can repeatedly watch the battle scenes over and over again...I won't have to fast forward much. :)

Time for bed, take two.

Dead computer

2007-04-14T15:11:00.000+10:00

Woo! My computer has officially died. Well, the screen has at least. The computer itself is currently the electronical equivalent of an old lady who has had thirteen surgeries done, and is now in intensive care hooked up to 15 drips and drains and requiring three nurses alone to maintain what little life is left. I'm in the process of finding a new computer and I've thought to myself, you know what? I've suffered on Windows 98 for the past 6-7 years...I've had to put up with not watching half the stuff that's available on the net. I'm gonna go get myself a beast of a computer. Granted my ever-fluctuating bank account is not pleased (just paid the Government back the bloody GST the other day...not happy). So in my computerlessness I've had to leech off my dad's computer which he doesn't use for his work about 18 minutes out of a 24 hour day. Or, of course, I get to use the one at work, which is pretty shoddy.

I have no idea where I'm going with this one.

Oh, some of you may know that I have NO intention of EVER owning a MySpace out of principle. 'But you have a blog you double-standard setting Asian man!', I hear you say? Yes, but you see, whereas the purpose of my blog is to show off my extremely uninteresting life despite having very anti-voyeuristic principles, MySpace is nothing but a glorified way of showing off how many friends you have. The more friends people see that you have, the better looking you are. It's simple physics.

Having said all that though, I have a facebook which I signed up to a while ago out of a need to quench my horrible thirst for something to do but then sorta neglected. But in my recent run of large breaks at work, I've been rummaging around it and you know what? Despite MySpace having the capacity to stick videos and stuff on it, Facebook shits all over it. It's just more fun than a MySpace, especially if you're a photos whore.

Unfortunately though, by having the same friends mechanism that MySpace has, a Facebook practically forces me to rape and pillage those aforementioned principles....Let it be known though, that I don't use it TO SHOW OFF HOW MANY FRIENDS I have...

But go ahead and be my friend :)

And I still refuse to use MySpace >:(

The Sounds of Springvale

2007-04-08T10:48:00.000+10:00

SPRINGVALE! Some say it is full of drug addicts, others say vampires come out at night to steal the non-Asian babies. Whatever the stigma surrounding the infamous suburb, events of last night didn't help to extinguish these perceptions to those who were there to witness it. I speak of a night out at a restaurant with my family and brother's girlfriend. 'Twas a good dinner. Decent crab and crownies for only $4!! But the night ended on quite a sour note, and one which goes to show you that drinking yourself to kingdom come at a pub/club/bar is one thing, but doing it at a family restaurant is practically criminal.

They say Asians can't hold their drink (except my brother and myself...although these days I can't drink as much as I used to...I'm getting old). Last night only served to demonstrate this. To cut to the chase, what happened was a direct result of two large Asian families (one Chinese and one Vietnamese I think) and lots of alcohol...I'm talking about plastic bags full of bottles, and drinking scotch out of glasses usually used for wine. One by one, dish by dish, they all got louder and louder. At some point near the end of the night as we were having our dessert, one of the men from (I think the) Viet family started getting touchy with another random guy. I had my back turned so I wasn't too sure about what happened. The Viet family started to leave, the women of the party obviously realising it was time to shut up shop. Unfortunately though, they had to pass the other big drunk Asian family in question. Something was said by a man from this family to the original Viet dude, something like "why did you (something) my son twice?!", we think in relation to something that happened earlier in the night.

From here, things escalated like crazy. A quick shove was met with a retaliatory punch and before long the men of both families were at it or at least trying to hold each other back, right in the centre of the crowded restaurant. There was one thing that absolutely blew my mind away. One man walked straight into the scuffle, his arm wound up, and he unleashed the biggest haymaker I've ever seen in real life on the unsuspecting dude that had his face turned the other way. I don't know what was more astounding - seeing that fist connect with the other guy's face or hearing it crunch against the bone...it was almost like hearing a sound effect from a movie, I kid you not! As a result there was a red and bloodied white tablecloth where it happened.

I've seen a few full-on brawls before, as I'm sure most people have. But what made this one a little scarier was the proximity. Our table was unfortunately backed up to a wall, right between the tables of the two families in question and as the fight broke out literally a metre or two away from us, we had no choice but to stay put instead of flee. Mum and Dad's friends who, by pure coincidence were also there that night had it worse. By even purer coincidence, they were at the table next to us. And by even more purer coincidence, their's was the table that ended up bloodied. But thankfully they managed to scamper away at the last second. As for us, Julius and I shoved Mum and Sam (Julius' gf) behind us like the protective men of the group we are :P (I'm sure Dad would've done the same but he was stuck at the very back hehe). You should've seen me. I was all Jet Li on their arses...well not really. My first instinct was to grap my bottle of beer a) to use as a potential weapon and b) so I could save the rest of the beer left in there...and not necessarily in that order. :P

Eventually it died down and we spilled out into the street. But just as it seemed to be over, one man walks right up to another, wine bottle in hand, and proceeds to bludgeon him over the back of the head with it. Once again, for some reason my family just had to be the one coincidentally right next to it as it happened... seriously, bad positioning and bad timing by our part last night. So proceeded act two of the show, an act that ended with the arrival of the police.

So there you go. Dinner and a show. What was funny about it was the looks of the faces on the staff. I did not see one astounded face at all! It was almost as if this sort of thing occurs on a weekly basis. The chef/cook at the front of the restaurant cutting the duck didn't look up at all. He just happily kept cutting the duck with his cleaver...but then again, he probably realised Meh I have a freakin' butcher's cleaver so if they mess with me they're fucked.

Though I really shouldn't be making humour out of it. It was indeed quite sad. Sad because we aren't talking about two gangs fighting, but rather grown adult men. Sad because it was a family restaurant with families around. Sad because people ended up fleeing the restaurant without paying, although some families went back later to pay which was good of them. Sad because, inbetween trying to hold their respective husbands back, even the women ended up fighting each other, albeit more verbally than with flying fists.

But what was saddest of all, was that both families had children. And I'm talking about babies and kids barely old enough to be at school. Two, maybe three of the kids were bawling their eyes out as the fight happened in the restaurant. One boy was stuck in the corner by himself, with no one attending to him for a minute. Of all the crimes you could commit to your children or grandchildren... engaging in a bloody, drunken, and public fight in front of their eyes........

Needles are for pussies. Blades are for men.

2007-03-21T23:48:00.000+11:00

So I have this large red bump on my shin. It kinda started about two days ago and I thought it was just one of those really bad pimples that got lost and took a wrong turn to end up near my ankles rather than on my face. Two days later and the thing has blown up like buggery. It's red and raised and bloody sore to touch. This afternoon it felt like it was throbbing when I was on my feet. That was the cue for me to suck in my stoic manlihood and to commit the one mortal sin for any man who wants to keep his ego - visit the doctor for something other than a heart attack, a fracture or to just get an unnecessary doctor's certificate to validate your sickie.

All you really need to know about the consultation is that it involved a sharp blade, and me trying desperately hard to keep still as I wince and scream something along the lines of "f*#kity f#@kin f#*k!!!" - that's without making an audible sound though. I think what made it worse was the fact that I saw the blade beforehand, so as I had my eyes closed I could still conjure up an image of this sharp little metal thing digging into the soft, bleeding skin all in vivid slow-motion. Anywho, it turns out that it's an infection, most likely from an insect bite of some sort which would explain the tiny little white dot in the centre of the area. I had the choice of antibiotics or antibiotics plus getting rid of whatever is in that raised bump. Injections and needles don't scare me so I figured this wouldn't be so bad. Well... let me give you a piece of advice. If a part of your skin is raised, red, warm and most importantly, painful to touch with even just a fingertip, then chances are a blade that the doctor not only inserts through your skin but also slides across it, will have you in more pain than listening to a hippy singing an opera with lyrics that repeat the words 'hug me a tree' eleven times over. And if you thought that was fun, having the doctor squeeze the pus out of it after making the little incision will bring you so close to elbowing her in the face, only to be stopped by the thought that hitting her will a) quite possibly cut your leg even more accidentally and b) leave you open to being sued. Oh, and did I mention that this was without a local anaesthetic?

That's right everyone, I AM ALL THAT IS MAN!

Silly people

2007-03-14T23:58:00.000+11:00

The following people need multiple slaps to the face and a good re-thinking of their lives:

- Pre-teens and barely-teens wearing mini skirts and tops so small they are practically walking, talking porno films, when it's ridiculously cold outside and they're waiting in a long cue to get into a pub or club. Then they ask the closest male friend if they can borrow their jacket or coat. Ha! If they asked me for mine I'd burn it with a lighter right in front of them just to see their priceless faces.
- Most people living in Frankston.
- Fully sick bros that wind down their windows and pump the bass as they cruise down Chaps, when their bass is really, really horrible. If you're gonna do it, at least get a subwoofer you idiots.
- That lady that sued some person because she tripped over their stairs whilst trespassing through their property. Maybe I should sue her for breathing in air and causing more carbon dioxide which contributes to global warming, and hence makes me anxious that the apocalypse is drawing nearer, thus giving me eczema.
- All judges of performing arts reality shows. ie. Australian Idol, So You Can Dance, Australia's Got Talent etc.
- Everyone who participates in those shows.
- The people behind all those penis erection/impotence/premature ejaculation problem ads. Someone should rip their testicles off and go, "look who has a problem now ma boy!?"
- The lady that complained about having to wait because I was only five minutes behind schedule at the clinic. Here's a tip love: NEVER piss off a physiotherapist who is about to give you pain.
- The people behind making those Bratz dolls. Why don't you just make colouring books for 2nd grader girls that make a nice "IT'S OK TO BE A SLUT WHORE" message when you colour it in? It'll save you the plastic and the material for the clothing.

Please Mr. Employer, I want some more

2007-03-08T19:48:00.001+11:00

Woo! First ever career paycheck came the other day. Despite only doing part-time hours at the moment it's still quite a chunky piece of dosh - more than I'm ever used to. No doubt the dark tax overlord from the evil ATO empire will take a huge chunk out of it to fuel the war machines of his superior (Johnny boy Howard), and unfortunately fund the inevitable compensations the government will have to pay to whining hippies at the G20 that were physically scarred from having cops standing within a ten metre radius from them. Actually, I really should work out exactly how this tax thing works. For all I care GST could stand for Good Sex Therapy and Wine Tax could be calculated via breathalyzers - the drunker you get the more you pay. My simple understanding of tax is still at the old Sim City computer game stage. You lower taxes and people come into the city. You raise them to some ungodly figure and the people will riot the local streets leaving the one lone fire truck to cover the entire city that is now on fire. Also, a hurricane tends to mysteriously happen when taxes are up. Oh well, back in reality, all will be good so long as I get to keep most of my (hard-earned?) cash.

And speaking of computer games, I have temporarily returned to my former state - a geeky year 8 and 9 kid sitting in front of a playstation for hours on end, playing a Final Fantasy game. Back then I used to stay up til about 2am playing the damn thing. Last Tuesday night I stayed up to 3am playing Final Fantasy XII...and I had to work the next day! Needless to say the immature little boy inside me has been well-nourished, and will be until this game is done. Apparently this one is supposed to take 70 hours to finish...

Hmmm, no wonder I don't have a girlfriend.

And finally, one piece of advice. If you're out for a jog and a pedestrian is coming your way on the footpath, don't give in to the game of chicken. Conversely if you see a runner coming towards you, do the right thing and step aside for him/her. I say this because during one of my rare runs today, I tweaked my ankle a little after rolling it as I stepped off the paved path and onto a small divot in the grass. If you were the walker and you were the one that stepped into it, it wouldn't have been so bad. The pedestrian was some pre-pubescent 15 year old girl talking on the phone, most probably telling her best friend Jane how she lost her virginity last night to her distant 4th cousin. Bah, I'm just being a whining little bitch. My ankle's good.

Remember now, 24 owns every other TV show, and House is not far off, unlike Grey's Anatomy aka. The O.C. in a hospital aka. That show where all they do is have sex with each other in the dark pharmaceuticals room, which is so unlike real life because if you tried it you'd accidentally knock over a bottle of pills and smash the glass which would then cut your feet open, which would then bleed profusely causing the female to be put off having sex with you because she is scared you have HIV and remember, she's a doctor so she knows not to mess with that shit, so she goes and gets some tegaderm to patch you up then you go to try it again, only this time you use the physiotherapists' room because you know all the physios are downstairs having a coffee break for the ninth time that morning so the chances of you getting caught are slim, but just as you're about to score the episode is up and you'll have to wait 'til next week.

Graduate (Private Practice) Physiotherapy 101

2007-03-01T19:24:00.000+11:00

- Confidence is everything and clinical problem-solving and skills, whilst obviously very important, are overrated. Had one of the partners come in today so I could sit in with him and see how he does things. All part of the learning experience I guess, and boy did I learn stuff off him today! I learnt more in two hours with him than all of uni. Come across confident, and the patient will be confident.
- If confidence is everything, trust is...well, everything too I guess. Objective number one when seeing a new patient - build the trust and the rapport, and don't come across as either a) a bumbling fool or b) a weird-arse psycho that is only doing physio so he can order women to take off their tops, and everything else will fall into place. Once again, a lesson learnt off the boss. Although upon hearing that he's coming to see patients with me, the other physios were worried that I'd be "corrupted at too early a stage in my career" by his...err...unorthodox ways. But I'm glad I saw him in action today, which leads me to the next point...
- Letting your boss see patients with you is neither clever nor smart when it comes to boosting your confidence, and keeping your job secure. You feel stupid when he asks you questions that you don't know the answer to. As a result, you feel like you will be fired tomorrow.
- Sometimes a patient will be a right old cockhead. They will call up the next day and blame you for giving them a new injury despite the fact that what you did was quite harmless and despite prior warnings to expect post-treatment soreness. They will cause a fuss that forces other physios to see her as well, and ultimately your boss. In times like these, it is often therapeutic to your own confidence if you 'debrief' with other members of staff who have come in contact with this patient. Patients like these will make you feel inferior and, as is the case here when the boss is involved, will make you feel like the boss has a lower respect of your abilities, no matter how much he says otherwise. It is therefore imperative that you assure yourself that you did nothing wrong (so long as you didn't!) and that you pretend the patient is a giant inflatable douche. Try not to laugh when you imagine this the next time you see the patient.
- Patients like the one mentioned above usually come from Frankston
- Chiropractors are usually thought of unfavourably by many patients that see you. Nine manipulations of your disc bulge without any exercise prescription or self-management tips usually does more harm than good. Also, the chiropractic practice of ordering x-rays upon x-rays for everything to do with the spine seems to be pissing off the radiographer fraternity.
- Patients may see you one morning, only get minimal improvement, then see the chiropractor the next day and get complete pain recovery, and subsequently cancel your appointment. In times likes these, feel happy that your patient is better especially if your patient is really nice. However, be prepared to see her again especially if SHE WAS GIVEN A FREAKIN' BACK MANIPULATION DESPITE HAVING A LIKELY ACUTE DISC BULGE. I mean, faaaark, some chiros are good, but ones that do this should be shot dead. It's like hammering your already-fractured forearm with a mallet. Your pain might disappear for a short-time, but in the long-term you've made it worse!!! But then again, I'm sure they know this, because it means they'll keep coming back again and again which translates into $$$.
- Be good to your admin staff. They know more than you.
- Be sure to exit the building quickly when you set the alarm at closing time. Having the alarm go off will freak you out. Ensure that you put the blame squarely on the receptionist in times like these.

The Apple Tree

2007-02-27T22:43:00.000+11:00

I've come across this little analogy about three or four times now:

Girls are like apples on trees.
The best ones are at the top.
The boys dont want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt.
Instead, they get the rotten apples from the ground that arent as good, but easy.
So the apples up top think something is wrong with them when in reality they're amazing.
They just have to wait for the right boy to come along, the one who's brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree.

Boys that are too scared to climb to the top of the tree!? Ha! That's as far-fetched as the straight man denying a request to sleep with Maria Sharapova or the girl that knows the offside rule in soccer. So let me tell you boys and girls how it should really go:

Girls are like apples on trees.
The best ones look like they are at the top.
The boys see these good-looking apples on the top, and decide to reach for it.
Upon reaching the top apples they take a bite, but deep inside the apples are disgusting and they make the boy feel sick.
So the apples up top which were initially so amazing, actually leave a bad-taste (ie. are self-obsessed, inconsiderate, thoughtless, insensitive she-devils who like to tinker with the boy's emotions until she's drained him completely before leaving him out to dry).
Filled with hurt and sadness, the boy ends up falling off the ladder. And since he went all the way to the top, he falls down so hard that the resulting violent forces hitting his chest lacerate the skin, split the underlying subcutaneous tissue, tear through the muscle underneath, crack through his rock-hard sternum and ribs.......and breaks his heart.

Meanwhile the so-called rotten apples on the ground aren't actually rotten. They've just been so ripe for so long. It's just that the boys were too busy trying to get the ones from the top.

Then there are the apples from the market......

The company golf game

2007-02-25T21:23:00.000+11:00

There are only three certainties in life: Death, taxes, and the uncontrollable urge to kick the arse of every hardcore hippy in the world and tell them to do something useful with their lives. Now there is a fourth one: Every golf ball that is hit by me off the tee will slice horribly to the right side of the fairway and into the trees. My golf game wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for this... oh, and the odd occasion where I swing, take my eyes off the ball for a split second and muff the shot...not to mention, my inability to pitch the ball over short distances. Hey, I'm pretty decent at putting! But all in all, I was quite happy with the way I played for a person who never plays golf, bar two goes on a driving range at least six years ago and the odd pitch and putt outing during high school. And no, mini-golf doesn't count. It helps when your boss is on your team and demonstrates the same golfing deficiencies as you. It also helps when another member of your team actually has a vague idea of the concept of "straight" and can actually place the ball in a position where the next shot doesn't require bending around about four trees. After the nine holes though, our team finished just five over par and came second. Not bad. (The rules were that all team members hit from the same spot and you all take the next shot from the best position the ball is in). Oh and the other thing I discovered about golf: it's bloody tiring! Even only after nine holes we were all wrecked. And we're talking about a bunch of physios here which means we're all pretty fit. Well, we should be at least. Anyway, 'twas a fun day and it was good to meet other people from the company which I'll hardly see since they work in other locations.

Why I'm enjoying my job

2007-02-20T23:47:00.001+11:00

Is it because:
- the hours I work enable me to drive during off-peak times, and even when I have to go during the morning rush, I'm going away from the city and hence the traffic?
- during my first week as I build a patient caseload from scratch, I haven't had many patients so all I've ended up doing is sitting there reading stuff and getting paid for it?
- whenever I don't have a patient, I can just hop over the road to the shopping centre and grab a milkshake?
- I get a little consultation room all to myself which makes me feel all professional-like?
- the people I work with, both the physios and the admin staff, are all pretty cool?
- I get weekly tutes, which is pretty sweet for a new graduate working in a private practice?
- so far, starting out as a private practice physio isn't as daunting as I first thought it would be?

The answer is...no.

The reason why I'm enjoying my job is because, on stinkin' hot and humid days like today, I don't have to suffocate like most nine-to-fivers who wear a business shirt and neck tie. Instead, I get to wear comfy open neck polo shirts that allow my body to breathe.

Having said all that, I'm over work already and I wish I were on holidays once again. And I'm only doing 25 hours/week for now.

The perks of being Chinese

2007-02-18T00:30:00.000+11:00

You get TWO New Years!! Take that Western Society, with your skilled drivers, non-angry-sounding language, wide eyes, and superior forms of going to the toilet.

Xin Nian Kuai Le!
or
Gong Xi Fa Cai!
or
Kung Hei Fat Choi!
or
Happy Freakin' Chinese New Year you Pigs!

Maybe I'm just high on an overdose of vitamin C tablets to counter this damn cold.

I can see Japan from all the way up here

2007-02-15T19:18:00.000+11:00

So I've started work. After all these years of school and uni I'm actually starting a career. The novelty of it hasn't worn off yet. For the most part though, "work" is just code for sitting around doing nothing. I'm still in the process of building up my own caseload of patients. So far seven unfortunate beings plus a class of hydrotherapy patients belong to me!

Anyway, onto yet another rant. I seem to be quite the angry person lately.

You know, I love being (pseudo) Australian. I wouldn't leave this country except maybe to live in Hawai'i. Retirement perhaps. But anyway, as much as we rock as a country and as a people, man, there are some tools out there. I base it on public comments left in Australian newpapers and forums online in relation to that explosion on the Japanese whaling ship, leaving one man missing. The general consensus as you'd probably gather is that the majority frown upon the practice of whaling. Fair enough. I'm in agreement. But some of the arguments, and moreso the emotional remarks are astounding. There's no compassion to the missing man with many even dismissing him saying he deserves it. Some of the comments are pretty racist as well. There aren't any direct swipes at the Japanese, but if you read between the lines you can see the implication plain and clear.

But the one thing that really pisses me off about it is how so many of us are sitting on this high-horse looking down on other countries/cultures with ignorant distaste and a narrow-minded belief of the superiority of the Australian way, or perhaps the Western culture in general. C'mon people, if you're going to say that killing the minke whales is wrong, give me arguments that aren't hypocritical or set double standards. How dare we call the Japanese "wrong" and label them all sorts of colourful adjectives when we go home and eat a souvlaki made of kangaroo, which for all intents and purposes has all the same rights as the minke whales. If the minke whales were endangered, ok that's a different thing altogether. But they are not. It'd be hilarious if the Japanese population had a soft spot for kangaroos and had a reciprocal dislike of our kangaroo hunting. It also parallels the Muslim people not eating pork. Many a typical Australian family sit at home eating a nice dinner of roast pork. Yet the Islamic community aren't up in arms tying themselves to pig-killing factories. Why? Because they respect our decision to kill the little oinkies. Contrary to belief, we are not the superior race. We are not the superior culture. We are just different. How dare we look upon this practice of whaling, when we use such flawed arguments and thought-processes that we don't even pass. And how sad it is that we use it as an avenue to mistakingly present our culture as the superior one.

For the record, I hope they do stop hunting the minke whales...because I reckon they're such cool, graceful dudes!!!!

Airports, the end of a holiday, and why some people just need to remove themselves from existence

2007-02-11T01:35:00.000+11:00

Went to pick up the folks from the airport. Ended up sitting there for two hours due to a busted baggage transfer which saw our box of asian goodies and our new wok end up in Perth somehow. Anyway, as I sat there I realised something. The airport is the perfect analogy for contrast. Think about it. Downstairs at the international arrivals terminal are hugs, kisses and broad smiling faces of happiness and joy, as people welcome a close friend or family member. But directly above in the international departures lounge you get the sad faces and the flowing tears from the ones who have to stand there, watching their loved one off for the last time in potentially years as they walk through the double doors. (Ah, the double doors. For those who have never been overseas and hence through those double doors, you're missing out! Behind those doors is a land of rainbow-flavoured chocolate, alcoholic waterfalls and pixies that sing to you as you wait for your plane!) I guess you could take it a step further and say that just a few metres inside the arrivals lobby, are faces of frustration and anger as customs officers confiscate the food you've brought back from whichever part of the globe you just came from. Ah well, just a thought I had. The house dynamic has already changed with the return of Mum and Dad. TV and stereo volumes have lowered, questions are being repeated followed by answers of frustration from Julius and me and I no longer walk past the kitchen looking at what needs to be cleaned. 'Twas good to catch up with Mum on what's going on with the relatives back in the land formerly known as 'home'. Looks like I'll be back there at the end of the year for the first time in three or four years.

So now I sit here in the twilight of my long summer holidays - the last of which extends beyond more than a month for perhaps years or even decades to come. I start work this coming week which will be interesting. The last week or so I've been filled with excitement one minute, but then depressed at the thought of an ending holiday the next. I've already had some tutorials with the other graduates in the company, to shake off the rust from our soon-to-be-stuffed therapist hands and to discover that filling in forms and dealing with TAC, Workcover, Medicare, and the Department of Veteran's Affairs is like trying to teach a rabbit or a George Bush to find a cure for stupidity. Where it says "length of expected treatment" I'll just write down 12 weeks for every diagnosis, and when Workcover rings up and asks why such a long period of time I'll just say "'Coz I like the number 12".

Oh, and a rant:
A mate has had the unpleasantness of dealing with a dodgy person recently. This person, whom for our purposes I shall call "Captain F&#khead", had his daughter ram the car of my friend. It's been a month now and he's pulled all these dodgy strings to avoid paying up. Now he's stating that my friend's car was already damaged before the accident (which it wasn't) and that he shouldn't have to pay for anything. He's willing to go to court for it despite the fact that 1) It was clearly his daughter's fault and 2) He wasn't even in the accident to begin with so what the hell does he know?! Well, he knows a lot by the sounds of it. From what I've been told this guy knows what he's doing and he's been one step ahead of my mate. But that's beside the point. The point is, someone needs to chop his penis off and tell him "that's what you get for being a bad man!" My friend is considering whether or not going to court is worth it. By the sounds of it, there's a realistic chance that Captain F&#khead will win, in which case my friend will lose money through legal fees. Even if the court ruling were favourable, it might only be enough to pay the legal fees in which case, there's nothing to gain from it. Well there is something to gain! It's the principle of the matter, as cliche as that is. Yeh I know it's easy for me to say this, when I'm not the one going through the distress that my mate has to go through. Put me in the same position and I might end up letting it go. But if the chance of winning is extremely good, then theoretically, you should go for it. Now I'm usually one to frown upon going to court and sueing others, because it's usually by people who trip over their own front doorstep then sue God for it for creating the world. But in this case, Captain F&#khead needs to be taught a lesson - he needs to be taught that you can't just run over people and cheat the system of morality and ethics. That is the thing about sueing others which I agree with.

Muse concert pics

2007-02-02T22:22:00.000+11:00

Courtesy of Deb. Ten points for bringing your camera along ;)

Putting the MUSE in music...ok that was a bad heading, I'm sorry

2007-02-01T18:01:00.000+11:00

So I went to see Muse last night. If I were gay, and weren't part of a religion that's not exactly gay-friendly, and didn't have a mum and dad that would probably disapprove of me being gay, and if homosexual marriages were legal (is it? I can't remember now), then I would marry Matt Bellamy (the lead singer). People fall in love and marry others for certain reasons. Some marry because of the intellect they see in their partner. Others for their sense of humour. Still more for their kind-heartedness. Shallow ones would marry because of their money. And some are simply entranced by the natural beauty of the other.

I'd marry Matt because he belts out songs with mind-bending natural, and synthesised vocals, that includes a phenomenal falsetto, all while he creates alien sounds out of the ten million strings, knobs and buttons on his custom made guitar with a little computer screen on it, whilst jumping around like a mad man on nodos but still being able to hold down smooth vocals, before quickly moving to the piano to effortlessly key out a note-a-millisecond Russian-influenced cadenza, then returning to the front to finish off the song by singing a note about three octaves higher than what is considered normal, and finally looking at all of us between songs as if to say in a monotonous, hynotic tone, "We are Muse. You bunch up to one another's sweaty bodies and gasp for air because you love us. Here comes another song that will blow your mind away...again"...

*Take deep breath*

To cut to the chase, last night was the best gig I've seen, period! Oh wait, that's American. Let's try that again.

To cut to the chase, last night was the best gig I've seen, full stop! And I know it's hard to compare between, say Missy Higgins for example, because whereas Missy is a smooth, delicate, newly-ripe peach, Muse is a spiky pineapple-type fruit that's come from the planet Neptune and would immediately come to life the moment you touch it and eat your hand off. But still, I make the statement without hesitation. Yeah, call me biased because I only just recently went to the gig. And call me biased because I love every single track on the new album. But believe me, if you didn't know Muse at all, and you came to the concert, you'd be darn impressed...so long as you like music at four times the health and safety recommended decibel levels. But honestly, my satisfaction of the gig went so far as to have all the songs I was hoping they'd play over the span of four entire albums. Seriously, how often does that happen in a gig that needs to cover four albums? I said, "If they only play two tracks from the second album I hope they play Citizen Erased and Plug in Baby" and what happens? They play just Citizen Erased and Plug in Baby off the second album. Telepathic coolness right there :)

Insane night, worth the $82.50 plus postage and handling, and the slight ringing in my left ear.

Happy Invas ... err, Australia Day!

2007-01-26T22:45:00.000+11:00

Mum and Dad are overseas leaving the house under the capable, yet irresponsible hands of the Ting brothers. So what's the first thing you do in a situation like this? Why, invite everyone else over of course. As I discovered today, cleaning up after a BBQ for nine people by yourself will never make the list of 'favourite hobbies'. It is, nonetheless, worth the effort. Nothing beats having your mates around for a meat and grog fest with the token salad to please the conscience and fool yourself into believing that the meal is actually healthy in some way.

With Australia Day comes Triple J's Hottest 100 - perhaps the only time of the year when Justin Timberlake fans tune into the station and call themselves "cool" for it. Was so close in predicting the number one. My trifecta for the list this year was Eskimo Joe's Black Fingernails, Red Wine, Gnarls Barkley's Crazy and Hilltop Hoods' The Hard Road. They came second, sixth and third respectively. Anyways, since I'm in the mood, if I had a top 20 for the year 2006, the list would be thus:

20) Eskimo Joe - Black Fingernails, Red Wine
19) Foo Fighters - Everlong (off the acoustic live CD)
18) Red Hot Chili Peppers - Dani California
17) Basement Jaxx - Take Me Back To Your House
16) Little Birdy - Come On Come On
15) Evanescence - Lithium
14) Hilltop Hoods - The Hard Road
13) The Living End - Wake Up
12) Basement Jaxx - Hush Boy
11) Lily Allen - LDN
10) Chris Cornell - You Know My Name
9) Muse - Supermassive Black Hole
8) My Chemical Romance - Welcome To The Black Parade
7) 30 Seconds to Mars - The Kill
6) The Killers - When You Were Young
5) Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
4) The Killers - Bones
3) Lily Allen - Littlest Things
2) Muse - City of Delusion
1) Muse - Knights of Cydonia

Why gyms are evil and should be banished

2007-01-23T21:15:00.000+11:00

The number one new year's resolution on the lists of most people would be to exercise more often. Reasons for doing so may vary, whether it be to raise the self-esteem, or perhaps lose the flab around the waist so that the next time Brad Pitt comes into town he will be mesmerised by the size of your assets rather than the excessive love handles and be compelled to leave Angelina Lips Jolie for little known you. Whatever the reason, I would venture to say that gyms around the world experience a boost around this time of year. Now I'll admit, the exercise thing has been my resolution too. In fact it was my resolution last year. And the last. And the last one before that. It wasn't the next one before, but I'm sure it was also part of the resolution of the next preceding year. What are we up to, year 11? No matter. The difference between everyone else and me is that it takes on average three days for people to give up whereas it only takes me 16.7 seconds. But not this year. In fact, I'd be exercising right now if it weren't for the surgery I had...ok, that's just an excuse but soon I will get off my arse. But success is assured this time round for I have a secret weapon. It's called a gym, or a human sweat factory. And I'm going to join one.

Or so I thought.

You see I've come to realise that the gym is like going to Hungry Jack's to buy a whopper for $49. Yes, it's the culinary equivalent of your taste buds having an orgasm but it still costs bloody $49! We buy whoppers because they only cost about $4, not $49! You could make your own burger at home that would produce the desired results that would only suck maybe $2.50 out of your bank account for ingredients and perhaps the gas to fire the grill. Sure you have to make it, but at least you have $46 to spend at your leisure. Perhaps use it to buy a pair of shoes, or be saint and donate it to charity. You might even put it towards repaying the Mafia before they kill you. Either way, you didn't waste all that money!

Which brings me back to the gym. I have heard some bad things about gyms. Even Fitness First made bad headlines on Today Tonight. Granted, that show is about as journalistically honest and genuine as Kim Jong il saying that the North Korean missiles he fired were full of love and rainbows and not nuclear material. Even so, I wanted to find out so I went to a gym last week. I won't say which in case they somehow stumble onto this and sue me for enough money to buy three extra treadmills. Anyhow, I realised that the gym is one big con. How much would you pay for a year's worth of a gym membership? $900? Well if not, too bad son because after visiting this place and calling up others, that's how much you'll part with after paying joining fees and weekly fees, and we're talking about the bare minimum here (and remember, I'm not a student no more on student prices). I love how the guy who interviewed me gave me the price for "my plan" and then showed the prices of other plans, all of which were more expensive. Hmmmmm. Oh, don't get me wrong. This guy was nice and everything but he might as well lose that shirt and tie and wear a t-shirt saying "I'm a salesman selling you empty promises". He even did the whole, "now ordinarily you'd pay this much, but since you haven't been working long I can give it to you for this much" as well as the "I'll speak to my manager to see how long of a cooling off period we can give before you decide..." (aka. "you're so important to us even the manager will take interest in you.") Pure salesman. Not that there's anything that wrong with it. You've gotta market your product somehow. But it just seemed...fake. I was reminded of it today when, walking through Chaddy with a friend who shall remain nameless in case she is so committed to never doing a myspace or blog that she doesn't want her name to even be on one, even though she better visit this blog after I told her I have one and she better put a comment on it... her name starts with C and ends in Hui. Anyway what was the point of that? Oh yeah, walking through Chaddy today we passed a Fitness First stall. See?? Nothing but evil salesmen! The last time I checked, you go to a shopping centre to buy clothes, food and overpriced designer underwear, not join a gym!

But back to the price thing. $900 for a year is not ridiculously expensive. But like that $49 whopper, there's the alternative. Buy your own gym set if you're that serious about it. Even if you bought an uber multi-thousand dollar set, you'll save in the long run. If you're cheap, buy a gym ball and a set of free weights and go chase the cars around the block every third day and that will do the trick. If you really wanted to join a gym, go to one where there's no services and no joining fees like the Monash Uni one which is about $650 for an annual pass. Half the reason why commercial gyms are so expensive is because of the services. You get the TV in front of the treadmill, the personal trainer to scream like a boot camp motivator, the"personalised" program, the newsletter, the company of other people that were also duped and the fake TLC. But is it worth that much?? If yes, then....well, you're either an idiot or on an annual salary of $100k...you lucky bastard.

I want to be a bar reviewer

2007-01-20T23:49:00.000+11:00

Yesterday I went walking for a good 12 hours to, throughout and from the city. I'd like to sit here and show off by telling you that it was 12 hours non-stop walking without the use of public transport, but it wasn't. Nonetheless, I would not be surprised if I had clocked up enough pedometer mileage to walk from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia to Melbourne, Florida, USA. As a result of such a ridiculous decision in passing what would otherwise have been a boring Friday afternoon, I now have quite possibly the worst case of DOMS (muscle soreness) known to mankind. My manly pride compels me to suck it up and battle on, which is no doubt the reason why I made the even worse decision to walk through the city again today with Mum to go shopping. Of all the lower limb muscles that are royally screwed, it's the left hamstrings and left calves which are being a bitch. For all you physios that might read this, you'll understand why I wince everytime I try to fully extend my leg, or during the late swing phase or when I try to push off.

So what the hell was I doing anyway? Well the initial plan was to go into the city late afternoon to be Nick's wingman. But then I decided, why stay at home reading a book, when you can go into the city and do it there? And why not visit all those bars you've wanted to go to - albeit as a loner. Actually as I discovered, you'd be surprised at the large number of loners that drop into bars in the middle of the day for a drink. I just ended up being another one of them. Granted you can't really judge a bar until you've also taken into account the music and the crowd that go there at night. But eh, next time. All pictures are taken by me. And by "me" I mean I hawked them off other websites.

Workshop
If you ever one day think "geez, lets go have a drink and a bite at an old converted motorcycle garage", then go here. I would've missed the small garage door entrance if it weren't for Porter who was with me at the time for lunch. This place meets the Porter seal of approval, which means Joe Strummer and Billy Bragg would approve. A pity about there being only a pale ale on tap, but otherwise a pretty cool place indeed with a decent sandwich. Hell, they even made eggplant taste good. Summary: A testament to elbow grease and hard work.

Word
Walking off the wet street with dirty wet shoes made me feel half guilty for defiling the polished wooden floors. I'll definitely be coming to this classy mahogany place when winter comes by. Come in early to grab the seats around the fireplace and you'll be set for the rest of the evening. Candles on every table and comfy seats with equally comfy cushions make for a cosy watering hole that'd be sublime once outside temperatures dip below the tens. Summary: A perfect cold nighter.

Purple Emerald
Otherwise known as 'that bar we always pass when walking out of the usual parking lot but never go into'. Figured I should go see it one day. 'Tis alright. Reminds me of Spleen (where I had my birthday) with all the chilled out couches. But I'd much rather Spleen since it has a more homely feel to it, probably coz it's such a small place and the couches and seats are huddled together. Summary: When you can't be arsed walking far from the car for a drink.

Phoenix
This was the place all the Herald Sun journalists used to have their drinks so I half expected it to be like the newspaper - cheap, nasty and devoid of any sense of unbiased journalism. So you can imagine the irony upon walking into the place to see some dude reading The Age. I was quite impressed with the place, with its multi-level setup. I went to the downstairs bit where there was not a soul save for my book, and some classy empty couches. Summary: Elegant, yet casual drinking.

Madame Brussels
If any of you have visited Croft Institute you'd understand the legitimate fear for your life, firstly in walking down the darkest and narrowest lane in the CBD to get to the place, and secondly upon walking inside to see that you were essentially in your year 11 chemistry lab. Yes the place had a uniqueness, unrivalled by any other in the city, except for that ice bar which I haven't been to. Well now you can put this place down under the same heading. Forget that the namesake was a once infamous brothel owner. When the lift door opens to the third floor of the building the first thing that would probably hit you is the setting to Alice in Wonderland. I mean, what were they inserting into their veins when they decided to lay astro-turf inside this small room?? Ah well, it paid off. Go outside to the largeish balcony and you'll likely see two fat men in a small swimming pool. Yes, a swimming pool. And the barman will even walk by to serve you your drink as you sully the clearness of the water. Summary: Drinking in a fairy tale.

Double Happiness
I must admit this was a bit of a disappointment. Going by what I've read, seen and heard, I was expecting this Communist China themed bar to be full of wooden tables and stools, have walls plastered with pictures of Chairman how now brown Mao, and have old Chinese propoganda music in the background with lyrics that roughly translate to "China is growing! Destroy the blond-haired wide-eyes". What I got were two Aussie blokes serving me Beerlao in an otherwise standard bar that's only lightly themed and quite tiny. Summary: Still yet to find something communist that works.

6 Links
Probably the most futuristic looking bar I've been to, to date. Think dimly lit room with brightly coloured lights and seating that make saying "funky" totally acceptable once again. $4 spirits and cowboys during a 5-8pm happy hour!? If that's the future, I'm in! Summary: Dude, I drank with a jedi last night!Yeh, I need more friends.

I hear one of the horsemen coming

2007-01-18T11:53:00.000+11:00

A frightening and insane number of bushfires rolling through the regional area. Power throughout most of the state cut-off. Traffic lights out in half the city. 42 degree heat melting everyone's skin. Pregnant ladies stuck in lifts with the hot sun beaming through the glass windows. Distraught callers phoning in distressed about how the folks in the nursing homes might die. Angry callers wondering why we weren't given prior warning. All we need now is a plague, or a giant asteroid, or a mushroom cloud. Sitting around the radio eating dinner with Mum two days ago during the blackout listening to 774, the feeling you get from it was that it was difficult to decide which was more of an emergency here - the fires themselves or the blackouts. At least it was relatively short lived and things are back to normal - we have electricity back, and the fires continue to roll through the bush like a bad case of cooties. Winter will eventually come, and with it the respite from the fires. But kids, we're in trouble. I'm sorry, but we really are. Continue at this rate and by the summer of 2015 we'll be having days of 1500 degree heat and will be suffering from oxygen deprivation because the trees have all been burnt down. Smoke will become the new air and being a fireman will become the new highest-paying job.

I hate to say it. I really do. I feel so dirty about saying this it makes me want to soak my tongue in concentrated hydrochloric acid for 24 hours...

The hippies are right about this one.

I need a new computer

2007-01-14T20:23:00.001+11:00

A decade ago I knew EVERYTHING about computers. Well, at least everything that a pre-pubescent teen could know about. Not anymore. Today, I sit here typing on my uber Windows 98 computer - the one which my dad and brother decided to give me once they bought better computers for themselves...how generous. You know your computer is out of date when Microsoft goes "we will not be producing anymore updates for Windows 98". You also know it's out of date when you can't play two thirds of the videos on the internet because it uses a Windows Media Player that's too advanced for your ageing box of wires and electronics. Furthermore, you know it's time to get a new computer when it comes up with an error screen, in response to pressing a key to get rid of the previous error screen, which in turn was also in response to get rid of the previous error screen, and the result is that it doesn't even respond when you ask it to reboot itself.

And so I've decided to browse through some computers. I'm not sure I'll buy it just yet though. I might work for a bit so that I won't go into debt so early. The cost of this BEAST of a laptop computer I want complete with a processor that can process quicker than a speed camera can calculate the speed of my brother driving on the freeway, a video card that makes Finding Nemo look outdated, and RAM that enables the computer to multi-task better than any female in the world, is ~$5.5k :( Alternatively I can get one at half the price but then I won't be able to fulfil my role as a stay-at-home geek that wastes his life away playing computer games. So the options are:

1) Buy a cheaper one and thus not be able to play computer games. Hence I'll get out more, spending more spare boredom time exercising or going out with friends. My social life will be healthy and I'll give myself a better chance of finding a special lady friend. I'll also save up to $3k which I could use to invest in a corporate logging company but also donate to a fund that's saving an endangered species of snail to please my guilty conscience.
2) Buy this beast of a computer and watch as my posture becomes worse, my health deteriorate, my social life die, and respond to my depressing loneliness by befriending four "online girlfriends" simultaneously - two from Canada, one from Sweden, and one who is actually a 67 year old male paedophile that I ignorantly believe to be a "hot, sexy 24 year old 5'9 brunette with size C breasts"

Hmmm....I'll take option 2!!!

Melbourne is to fine wine as Sydney is to overpriced sewerage water

2007-01-11T19:02:00.000+11:00

The cousins have moved on, Julius has gone to Sydney and the folks are back to work. That leaves a somewhat bored Terence at home to flick through channels and cook up lunches consisting of unsavoury and most likely rotten bits of food lying around the place. Today's special was fried rice consisting of spam that's been sitting in the fridge for the past three weeks. Mmmmmm.

Two days ago my cousins went around the city. Rather than stay at home holding cans of insect spray as I go on a cockroach patrol, I joined them for shits and giggles. Never in my own city have I felt like such a tourist. But after going around on the tourist shuttle I was reminded of one thing. Our city kicks arse. In fact, I'd be 100% sure I would never live anywhere else if it weren't for the fact that every spring the pollen decides to declare war on my nostrils, tear ducts and throat. Sure, I can think of other cities around the world which beats Melbourne in certain areas. But overall, we're a nicely rounded place that's exceptional in pretty much every aspect of a city...except maybe our public transport system which could be better. Which leads me to the next thing.

Melbourne is a fantastic place to live - often voted number one most livable city (along with Vancouver and I think Vienna). Sydney is different. It is a squat toilet. Granted, yes, it's been almost a decade since I visited Sydney. But there's a good reason why it's been almost a decade - it's a squat toilet. Quite frankly I would rather take a crap in the comfort of my own home without the need to sustain an adequate quadriceps contraction. Ok, if you asked me to go to Sydney with you I'd happily come along. I'd go there for their beaches, the harbour and circular quay. Then for the rest of the trip I would incessantly whine and bitch to you saying that the city is an overrated part of the world, with a success and fame that is attributable to the idiocy of all the Americans and South-East Asians who believe that it's the capital of Australia.

Let's analyse...

Live entertainment, music and comedy? Sydney has their opera house. But the last time I checked you can only have a few gigs at a time there. I'd rather have our luxury of finding a gig every second building along the little lanes. Oh, and we have the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

And what about gambling? Star City Casino? Hah! A pokies room compared to Crown. Where is the inaugural $5 million Aussie poker championship being held at again? Oh that's right, at Crown.

Fashion, design, visual arts.... advantage us.

Sport... Sydney has the SCG, the golden slipper and the 2000 Olympics. We have the MCG and the Melbourne Cup (which is devoted an entire public holiday). No contest. By the way, we had the Olympics 44 years before you. Oh, there's also the F1 Grand Prix, the MotoGP, and the Australian Open Tennis. And at least the AFL is uniquely our own and not something taken out of England like, oh perhaps...rugby.

Food? Ok, bit of a tie perhaps. But then again Lygon St. makes Sydney's equivalent look foolish. And the Chinatowns? Well there's a reason why our Flower Drum is argued by some to be the best Chinese Restaurant outside of China. A 3 month waiting list can't go wrong!

Aesthetically our city looks unique, with our tram lines and old school Victorian buildings. Sydney tries to find its own niche, only to find itself riding on the trump card that is their natural harbour to make it look different to every other Vanilla city in the world.

And infrastructure. Oh man, at least in Melbourne we can turn left or right when we want to!

What else... Centrepoint Tower? Rialto beats you.

Haymarkets? Queen Vic Market...

Central Station? Flinders St. Station...

Gardens? Hello!... "Victoria - The Garden State"

I'll give Sydney a few things. Their beaches and The Rocks beats our equivalents. But then if I wanted that I'd go to Queensland. And their harbour trumps anything we can muster. The Opera House? Well there's a reason why the original architect - a European dude - left the project halfway through its construction, and refuses to visit it even today. It's because the Sydneysiders pissed him off too much, like all typical Sydneysiders.

But there's one thing that would've made Sydney our bitch. Named after one of the original inhabitants John Batman, our city used to be called BATMANIA!!! With that name this debate wouldn't even take place.

It's all about perspective

2007-01-07T21:50:00.000+11:00

So my cousins have been around the past few days. Firstly the cousins I haven't seen for 14 years came down last week. Then the cousins I haven't seen for three or four years came just a few days ago. The latter set of relatives have taken hold of the house reducing me to a stiff-backed battler that's sleeping on an air mattress in the lounge room. Not that I don't mind letting them borrow my bed. It's just that two days prior notice from Mum doesn't quite pass off as ample warning. They've been around a bit already. They've done the shopping thing whilst I played bad cousin and sat on my arse at home watching the cricket. As a side note, how cool (winning the Ashes 5-0) yet sad (Warne, McGrath and Langer) was it? Anyway, we took 'em out for dinner and to Crown for a bit too. Walking through the poker room without joining in a game required quite a bit of self-control. Think Michael Schumacher or Fernando Alonso driving an F1 car through a 40km/h school zone, then put me in that picture and you've got an idea of how tempted I was. We travelled with them along the Great Ocean Rd. yesterday to Warrnambool to stay the night, before returning home today...although my cousins went on by themselves to the Grampians. Seeing as I was in her neighbourhood, I figured I'd message Jacqui to see if she wanted to catch up that night. But her telepathic powers are obviously not up to scratch as she returned to Melbourne yesterday! (Or maybe her powers are so good, she knew I was coming so left ahead of schedule...hmmmmm)

Anyways, with driving along the Great Ocean Rd. came the token visits to the touristy coastal landmarks, amongst others - the twelve apostles, otherwise known as "a couple of giant rocks sticking out of the ocean that tourists spend six hours driving from the city to see". I also affectionately call it "that place with all those damn freaking FLIES!"

But despite this being either the sixth or sixtieth time I've come to see them, it still fills me with a sense of awe. Most of you probably already know that I go through more digital camera memory than an arts student going through cheap vending machine-dispensed condoms. I take pictures of anything remotely photogenic. Whereas my kiddy days were spent pleading with Mum and Dad to take me to the go-karts or the wooden maze, these days I'd rather adventure through many different places, visiting as many geographical sightseeing wonders as I can.

So how do a couple of rocks seen multiple times still interest me? Well, it's all about the perspective. Seeing something this large and grand puts me in my place. It makes me realise that hey, you're nothing but a tiny little atom of a grain of sand in this speck of the solar system, in this little corner of the universe. Whatever little worry or stress you have seems like nothing in the grand scheme of things. Yes, it does make me sound like a little pansy, or even worse - a hippy. But that's what it does. It's part of the reason why I feel like travelling and visiting places like the Himalayas or the Pyramids or the Grand Canyon.

Viva la resolution!

2007-01-02T21:04:00.000+11:00

Happy New Year! May the onset of this new year bring you the enthusiasm of renewed ambitions and the hope of more success before the reality of it doing the complete opposite sets in! My new year's resolutions are thus:

- Exercise more often, jogging at least twice a week as opposed to twice per year so that I can one day outrun a three year old kid.
- Play less dangerous driving games such as tap the brakes in front of the tailgater or overtake the speeding mac truck on this freeway bend or my personal favourite, how many times can you change lanes in 100 metres?
- Read more books in the hope that my English skills will become superior enough that I need not use random analogies when explaining things or so that my arsenal of cuss words extends beyond just the F-bomb.
- On that subject, use swear words less and replace them with smart, witty remarks such as "go home and drink your tea you English excuse for a batter" or "oh dear, it appears that my little toe has unintentionally stubbed the edge of the door and is now bleeding profusely".
- Actually eat a piece of fruit at least once per day...ok, maybe that's asking too much. Eat a piece of fruit at least once per week so that my body will one day experience the magical feeling of "being regular".
- For exercise reasons, eat less drive-in Hungry Jack's food and eat more take-away Hungry Jack's food.
- Play less PS2 and get out more in the hopes of making less imaginary friends, and perhaps more real ones.
- Clean my desk more often so that I will not break my record of finding a notice dating back four years ago buried underneath everything else.
- Use the spare change and not the notes when paying for things so that the amount I have in coins sitting on my desk will not be more than the total amount in my bank account.

My predictions for the year 2007:

- St. Kilda will finally win the flag after West Coast forfeit just before the Grand Final in Melbourne. This is due to the stupidity of their entire roster getting arrested after forgetting that all Victorian booze buses also now test for drugs. After being reported missing, Ben Cousins' car is also mysteriously found about 50 metres before the bus.
- Richard Branson will have built his spaceship by the end of the year and retreat, with his kids, to his secret society stationed on the far side of the moon.
- After pulling out of Iraq, George Bush will then set his sights on Kim Jong il and North Korea, with the reason that "this time there definitely are weapons of mass destruction there!"
- In a massive swing of opinion polls, John Howard will have a 95% approval rating by the year's end due to the combination of his decision to pull the troops out of Iraq and the civil war within Labor in which the five party leaders they go through during the year all end up killed by gunfire sprayed at each other.
- A breakthrough in science allows the first ever scheduled construction of a nuclear fusion reactor. Hippies around the world become divided as even though it is a clean, renewable energy source, it still contains the word "nuclear".
- By October we will be in stage 47 water restrictions whereby each family must have 10 buckets sitting outside when it finally rains, and then they must travel to their local dam and put that water in it once the rain is finished. You may also only drink just one glass of water X times per month. X being the number of letters in your surname. Authorities will forego issuing warnings but rather go straight to issuing on-the-spot sentences of death by simulated dehydration to any offenders.

In seriousness, let's all pray/hope/wish/dance that we get a decent amount of rain this year. :(

MacGyver the great!

2006-12-31T01:15:00.000+11:00

Remember the show MacGyver on channel 7?! Julius and I loved it so much when we were little but I can't remember much of it now. So for a lack of anything better do I decided to wikipedia it.

And oh man the stuff he used to do on that show boggles the mind. If you never watched it, MacGyver was this ex-secret agent with an insanely brilliant scientific mind best known for his ability to get out of seemingly life-and-death situations using the most common of items. Check out this not so long ago MasterCard ad aired in the US that resurrected the character to get what I mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMmir2A-4k (How the hell can nasal spray and a turkey baster help you repair and hotwire a truck?! :P). And what else did he do? Take, for instance, these little beauties...

MacGyver plugs a sulfuric acid leak with chocolate. He states that chocolate contains lactose and sucrose which are disaccharides. The acid reacts with the sugars to form elemental carbon and a thick gummy residue
In order to fake a handprint for electronic scanning, MacGyver scrapes some plaster dust off the wall, then spreads it liberally over the entire scanner, where some of it sticks to the sweat of the previous user's hand. He gently blows away the excess, covers the sensor plate with his jacket, and presses down lightly with his fingers
In setting a trap, MacGyver recharges a lead-acid battery with wine. He unseals the battery and pours wine in, which replaces the missing distilled water. This gives the battery a small charge which is what he needs for his trap
While being pursued by dirty CIA operatives at a strip club, MacGyver loads a confetti cannon with make-up powder and fires it at them as they enter a door, thus blinding the enemies with powder
In order to save Pete Thornton who is poisoned with bitter almond odor prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide), MacGyver takes sodium thiosulfate as antidote from a nearby photo shop's printing machine that uses it as a photographic fixing agent

HAHAHA! Absolute gold! Two of his most used items - the Swiss Army knife and his duct tape - are nicknamed after him. Apparently in Malaysia the Swiss Army knife is commonly called "Pisau MacGyver" and in Norway they jokingly call duct tape "MacGyver-tape".

Ok, now I'll go to bed.

A Bond that's believable

2006-12-29T20:55:00.000+11:00

A Friday night out with the parents - that's something which is rare these days isn't it? Julius is out at his mate's place getting slaughtered at the poker table and sussing out whether or not his mates are crap enough that I should join him next time to clean them up (why do people think I'm good? I'm no way near that good...I just say "I'll kick your arse" all the time to sledge you :P) Meanwhile, Mum and Dad want to watch the new Bond movie tonight. Since I have nothing better to do, and since this will be the second time in three days that they'll pay for me to see a movie I've decided to join them. This is despite the fact that I've already seen Casino Royale...twice. First in the cinemas, second at a mate's place on her computer.

And so the questions are:
Best Bond movie? You bet
Is Daniel Craig the best of the Bonds? Way too early to tell. If they continue making good Bond films for him, even Sean Connery the Scottish stud with a speech impedement (I heard Scottish people hate his accent) will be given a run for his money.

It's not to say that the movie was flawless. The abrupt way the romance developed was a bit iffy for my liking. But other than that, the film was five star spy action at its (second) best...Jason Bourne still holds the number one for me :P The one thing that's plagued the last few Bonds were how everything was just so unrealistic. As good as the movies have always been, to believe in the way he manages to take down an entire Stealth boat almost single-handedly or in the concept of a car that can become invisible...makes for good cinema that's for sure but it kinda makes 007 a little too fictional. Just as most things Jason Bourne did was fathomable and believable, this new Bond was also quite the same. Even the way he storms through that consulate. An unbelievable concept yes, but the clumsy way it was done made it realistic. The other thing about this new Bond which turns him from cool to uber-cool is that he's a lot darker now. As in...he has a much darker character, not that he's a black man...although a Black British Bond would be quite interesting...though it wouldn't work...not that it's the black issue or anything!...it's just that the Bond character is synonymous with a white guy...it's kinda like saying Michael Jordan was a white German guy. Anyway, the new Bond comes across more aggressive and rough around the edges. For once you really wouldn't want to f*#k around with him.

In other news, just as last night confirmed, going to the Knox Tavern is officially the cheapest way to drink in the area. That's if $10 goon per litre is your thing... talk about class you girls...and Porter.

Waaaaaaaarney...

2006-12-27T23:55:00.000+11:00

Christmas is over and the sun that is the year 2006 is but a thin edge of the blurred orange ball barely peeking over the horizon. Christmas turned out fun. Had a whole load of relatives come over to our house to celebrate, some of whom I haven't seen for a year. The day went by pretty quickly actually which is always a decent indicator of how much fun you're having. As someone sent me that day in an sms, 'great food, great company' is all you need to make it a worthwhile shindig. I did, however, make the somewhat regrettable decision of having a few drinks that day. Convention would have one avoiding alcohol for the few days following an injury (or a big knife stuck into you), so a full week's grace made drinking more plausible. To be at the stage where medications are no longer needed was also a good sign. In the end I had only a few glasses, enough to join the rest of the party. But alas the last two days have been a bit of a bitch. The pain, especially at the line of the incision site, has regressed to the point where I wake up and reach over for the water and the pain-killers like a fat kid reaching for cake. Perhaps it wasn't the alcohol but rather something I ate that set off an allergic reaction. Either way, not much I can do now and besides, it's still a gazillion times better than this time last week.

So the post-Christmas Terence has been the couch potato Terence. It feels like all I've done is watch the cricket whilst stuffing my face full of Christmas dessert leftovers. Speaking of cricket, can you write a better script for Warney?!? Now all he needs to truly make it of the 'fairy tale' standard is to score a century tomorrow. The guy's a champ and a legend. Say what you want about some of his off-field antics but you tell me someone in the world of sports that has been given more scrutiny on his private life than him. What's private should stay that way. Give him credit where credit's due and I'm sure that, with retrospect, time will look upon him as either level with or just under the ilk of Bradman. The unique thing about him is that everytime he bowled you were almost expecting a wicket. It's sad to see him go, but he deserves to go out on top.

Also went and saw Happy Feet today with Mum and Dad. Decent movie... the best way to describe it is an animated penguin musical. Nice feel good story with good animations (although Pixar still owns). The story did drag a little though.... a 7/10.

Tonight's blog brought to you by sheer, utter boredom.

Santa Christ

2006-12-24T00:11:00.000+11:00

Before going on, an update: the pain is much less now and I'm taking less and less medications. Still quite uncomfortable at times unfortunately.

I had a conversation the other day with a friend. At the risk of sounding like I'm making this person up and feeding you all the false image that I actually do have friends that aren't of the imaginary kind, I shall keep him/her nameless. Why? Because you would probably call him/her cheap. And why is that? Because he/she isn't buying any Christmas presents this year. To quote this person in a very loose way - so loose that it shouldn't be a quote per se... Actually no... To paraphrase this person, the whole buying presents deal demeans the meaning of Christmas. You know what? Good on him/her. I agree 99%. (The other 1% went out and bought presents for the family last week.)

Without me pulling out the bible and the cross, let's get the facts here. Christmas is Jesus' birthday. We should for all intents and purposes not be eating turkey but rather giant cross-shaped birthday cakes with 2006 candles on them and getting either the first born of the family or the one that looks the most "Jesus-like" to blow out the candles for Him. We could then all sing the Happy Birthday song, either with a 45-pipe organ accompaniment if you're a Catholic like me, or with a 32-piece contemporary rock band which includes five synths, two drum kits and a castanet if you're a more new-age Christian. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

But what about all those who don't believe in Jesus? They wouldn't do all of the above because they'd probably feel weird. And obviously they didn't, because somewhere along the line whilst the others were stuffing their faces full of holy cake, they transformed Jesus. They made him into a fat man in a red suit who, seeing the need to put his rolls of insulatory flubber to good use, chose to live on a land full of cold ice. They then had the brilliant idea of brainwashing all the kids into believing that this heavy man could deliver gifts to everyone all in a single night with the help of changing time zones and flying deer - lots of them to counter the argument of the geeky kids that it is not realistically possible to pull the weight of a giant lardo with just a single deer. One flaw in their creation, however, is evident with the changing of the times. They obviously didn't take on board the fact that in the society of our present time, a big fat man who 'sees you when you are sleeping', and 'knows when you're awake', and who is 'gonna find out who's naughty and nice' is, in all forms of interpretation, actually a paedophile. To add to this heinous personality, when little Jimmy sees 'mummy kissing Santa Claus', he also becomes a home-wrecking man whore.

Flaws aside however, such creations were made with the best of intentions. Santa and his reindeer are not evil anti-Christian figures spearheading the assault by Satan and his minions. They were created as symbols of happiness and joy, which is what the birth of Jesus brought about......before we all duly executed him. Giving presents is supposed to be an act of kindness, an act of friendship, and ultimately, an exercise in loving thy neighbour. There isn't anything wrong with it at all.

However, it does become wrong when we forget the real reason why we have this festive time. It pains me to see many secular types that celebrate Christmas (not including those of different beliefs eg. Hannukah) that want to "de-religionise" the whole concept. Christmas is a time of celebration - a time for opening presents, thinking of those less fortunate and making it happier for them through donations of sorts, putting up trees and lights, roasting turkeys, and sending Christmas cards to relatives in Uzbekistan. However, whether you believe in Christ or not, always remember that the reason why we have Christmas is because of the birth of a boy named Jesus.

Merry Christmas everyone. :D

A day at the surgeon's

2006-12-20T23:29:00.000+11:00

If only you could see me over the past two days. I'm unable to get up from the bed or the chair without either pulling myself up or doing this weird rolling technique I have now perfected which brings me down to my knees on the floor before i push myself up. Even sitting down or getting into bed has become more difficult than persuading a strict Jew to celebrate Christmas. When I drop something on the floor it usually follows with a "heeeelp!" I can't even blow my nose without the resultant pressure build-up filtering down to my groin region and spiking the pain receptors. And going to the toilet for a number 2? Let's not even go there. Yes, you'd laugh your arse off but then you'd go home overcome with the guilt of how unempathetic of a bastard you are. And if you didn't? Then I wish five diseases upon your children, and your children's children!

So as you could imagine yesterday was fun. Good old Dad drives me to this hospital at the ripe time of 7am whereupon I meet a couple of nurses, the anaesthetist and the sadis...err, surgeon. It's funny how after two years of clinics at various hospitals, you gain a different view of how the place runs from a patient perspective. Last time I went to the big building with the big red cross on it (for my wisdom teeth) I had no clue what the hell was going on. This time round I knew exactly what was going on. Furthermore I actually feel sorry for what those patients go through. The amount of crap that's repeatedly asked to the patients by various staff. Next time I go to hospital I shall wear a custom-made T-shirt that says "No I am not on any medications, I do not smoke, have loose teeth, crowns or caps and I'm fully aware that I'm having a right inguinal hernia repair being done" Besides that though, everyone was extremely nice. I guess that's what you get from a private hospital. Why can't they all be nice in the public hospital system? :(

So anyway, I get there at 7am and then go see the day unit nurse looking after me. I lie back and chill out to the sounds of silence in my fashionably sexy standard issue rear-exposing hospital gown. Knowing how many patients I've seen with their arse exposed I make sure the lower bit is tied properly. Then I realise at how stupid that is since everyone's going to see my little tacker anyway. The anaesthetist, along with the cute medical student tagging along with her, then comes in to ask more of the standard questions. Somewhere along the line she asks what I do for a living and upon telling her that I'm a newly born physiotherapist, we have a good old yarn about medical-related stuff, amongst others - if extensive knowledge of anatomy should make me calm or more nervous, of which I decided the former. She leaves and I'm finally wheeled down into the prep room upon which the (HOT!) surgeon's nurse and assistant come to talk to me, and decide that I need to have a cap in order to look more like them. Then Mr. Surgeon himself comes in to greet me upon which he asks "so which side is it again?" I can imagine any other person thinking "OH MY GOD you can't be seroius!" but with the benefit of working in health care I laugh at him with the knowledge that it's the one error that probably everyone does at some point in their career. He then comes over with a pen to mark the right side...what a clown! Still more lying down and at this point, I really am not nervous. Eventually I get wheeled into the the op room. Another little conversation with Ms. Anaesthetist and she invites her medical student to watch the surgery to which I realise that this cute medical student, of which by similar age puts me in the category 'you have an extremely slightly more than an impossible chance with her', is now probably going to see my penis...................... ANYWAY, the very last thing I remember is turning my head to the anaesthetist whom, after inserting an IV into me, injects this liquid into it. "Today's special is a cocktail of maxolon, (some other drug I can't remember), and fentanyl" she goes, to which I reply "ohhh you sold me at fentanyl".

The next thing I remember is waking up somewhere drowsier than Bob when you call him before midday, and with the dullest of aches in my right groin. So what's my first reaction? Look down to see if my crown jewels are intact? Well I wanted to, but I was so out of it I couldn't move my arms. The nurse was right at my side when I woke up and asked how I felt. I think I said "I'm tiiiiiirrrrrrrre..." through the giant Hudson mask before I conk out again. Sometime later I re-wake with the same nurse there asking how the pain was. I've lost count of how many times I've asked patients to rate their pain on a scale of 0 to 10. Finally someone was asking me!!!!! And you know what? It's actually hard to pick out a number.

Eventually I'm taken off oxygen and I'm wheeled back to the day unit whereupon I sleep for the next four hours, periodically waking up to the sounds of nurses checking on me and the other people, and the annoying squeeze of the blood pressure cuff routinely cutting off circulation to my right arm to check my pressure.

I finally get discharged by around 3pm, and upon getting home, I go to sleep. I think I slept 80% of that day... who needs sleeping pills when you can get someone to inject GA into you :P

So almost two days later and the pain isn't any better. It's actually been worse today but that's expected since all I've been able to rely on today are the oral pain-killers and NSAIDs I've been taking. Once again most of the day was spent sleeping.

Tomorrow I shall aim to get out of bed in under 60 seconds :D

MOOOOOOOOloolaba!

2006-12-18T20:30:00.000+11:00

Before I go on about the Queensland trip, here's a bit of advice: DO NOT go to a graduation ceremony without an iPod. That ceremony was two hours of my life that I'll sadly never get back. But at the same time the boredom of the official ceremony was worth the novelty and excitement of donning those gowns and graduating with your friends.

So what happens to you when you spend ten days of bludging around in Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast with your mates? Your skin turns from sickly white to patchy golden brown, you gain 2.5kg and your hip flexors and adductors become so screwed, even just turning around in bed becomes damn painful.

Mooloolaba was faaaantastic. Pretty much everyday was the same: wake up to the sounds of annoying construction workers across the road, go to the beach to resume sleep then proceed to get dumped a few times by 2-2.5 metre waves, have lunch, go back to the apartment swimming pool, dinner, get gelati then drink the rest of the night away. Mixed into all that was a day at Australia zoo, and a couple of nights out at dodgy nightclubs. Book me another flight and pay for the apartment and I'll be over there quicker than the Poms can lose the Ashes. Speakin' of which... BUGGER OFF YA POMS! THANK YA MOTHER FOR THE RABBITS (and kindly leave the urn behind) :D

It's a bit sad though. I'll be seeing the uni people less now, just like the end of year 12. It'll be interesting to see who I stay in touch with. It's funny though...I say this despite the fact that towards the final days of the trip we were all sick of each other :P Well, not all of us. Generally speaking the guys got on like...well, guys. Little to no arguing, with the only disagreements to do with the preferred method of hurting Stefan in an attempt to get him to stop calling everyone and everything a "dirty poon". But the girls...well, let's just say when the girls don't even trust the guys to cook spaghetti bolognaise on their own it almost comes across as an insult. Actually, it was quite fun watching certain people progressively getting annoyed with certain others. At the end of the day though, we're all good mates.

Being the perennially social one that I am who never pikes from anything (except most things), Mooloolaba was backed up by a weekend at Warnambool for Jac's 21st. Good night but it would've been better had the surgeon's imposed ban on alcohol didn't exist. Fair enough though. The last thing I need is for the anaesthetist tomorrow to give me a dose of general anaesthetic based on false readings of my body. A week or two off alcohol or an eternal anaesthetic-induced sleep? Hmmm.

Which obviously leads me onto my next bit of news - tomorrow's cutting of the skin near my right scrotum. I'm sure it's an image which you would've all wanted. Please think of me tomorrow morning at the mercy of the surgeon as he slits through the aforementioned skin to close off a minor hernia defect. If you should be reading this after tomorrow morning, then please think of me as I most likely struggle to cope with the pain of SOMEONE CUTTING THROUGH THE SKIN NEAR YOUR BALLS. On the up side, as of tomorrow I will have a small piece of mesh inserted into my body near the discussed area. I will therefore be 0.01% into my ultimate dream of becoming a Transformer. Score!

Oh and other news, I now have a job :D Will be working down at Carrum Downs at a practice - under the same group of practices that I did my elective. Got the surprising "you want the job without doing any interview" phone call the morning after returning from Queensland. Nice. The pay isn't anything special and I'm a bit iffy about the commission basis. But everything else is good. I'll see how it goes.

What else...oh I got my sexy voice onto the radio this morning. Thanks for asking me that extra question at the end without prior warning Porter!! :P 'twas a good yarn. He interviewed me for his show as a guest - someone who's a non-citizen who's pretty much Australian...to go with the theme of the show which was basically multiculturalism & integration and the idea of a citizenship test.

One week 'til Santa arrives ;)

Again?

2006-11-26T21:26:00.000+11:00

The cookie crumbled just like they said it would. What was routine became a struggle. What tasted so good became so bland. The Instantaneous became the Insomniac. The effort to smile took the same effort to frown. What raised interest became a mere distraction.

What instigated it lingered, forced by life's lack of diversity at the time - the places that needed going to, the inevitable people, the things that needed to be done. But like with all bruises, time carried out its work, and history became just that.

So one must then ask...

Why would anyone want to revisit such a thing? Why would anyone sit idly by, letting themselves walk on with full awareness of the trap that befalls them? Is there any sanity in rationalising it as a risk worth taking?

Lessons are to be learnt, not forgotten.

Ashes to ashes...

2006-11-22T23:55:00.000+11:00

Tomorrow it begins!

I'm sorry but if Australia loses this time we deserve to be knocked off our perch of cricket invincibility. Australia will win the series 3-2.

Meanwhile, A Midsummer Night's Dream is a pretty funny play. And why won't anyone come up with a decent way to combat canker sores!? >:(

Yes I'm usually a political fence-sitter but...

2006-11-20T21:01:00.000+11:00

Out of boredom and a strange, sudden & renewed interest in politics over the past two days, I've sifted through a lot of articles, photos and videos of those G20 protests, in both the right-wing "oh ma gawd those ratbag violent protestors!" mainstream media and the left-wing "all coppers are violent thugs and are the scum of this evil capitalist society" indepedent media. It needs to be said that the violence was but a tiny, tiny minority of the peaceful protesting that went on uncovered by mainstream media. Having said that, the independent media had a lot of biased stuff which would make you shake your head in disgust. I guess the concept of unbiased media is as mythical as a Mark Viduka goal for the socceroos. One thing that is certain is the anti-capitalist sentiment amongst the majority of the protestors out there. (I'm sure some didn't care about capitalism or socialism...just so long as third-world poverty was reduced!).

Just out of curiosity, of those anti-capitalists - those haters of the world's corporations, how many:

1) were wearing shoes that were made from Adidas or Nike or some other well-known brand?
2) were communicating to each other from Samsung or Nokia mobile phones?
3) took photos to send into the independent media to illustrate "vicious police brutality" using their digital cameras made by Sony?
4) accessed the internet to organise whatever they were doing via a large company..say, Telstra broadband internet?
5) drive cars made by a company that's owned by General Motors?
6) bank with ANZ?
7) have eaten a burger from maccas?

No really, I'd love to know.

All disagreement with the concept of stopping the G20 aside, a lot of the protests were done in the proper manner. Aside from the people who took it upon themselves to create violence, some other things that really pissed me off though:
- Toddlers that were right at the front standing directly opposite the riot police!! If your kid was there you should be shot by the child services people and the kid be told that "mummy and daddy died in a fishing accident"....seriously! It'd be better than having you as parents!
- Those dicks that tried to scare the police horses from behind, obviously to cause them to go on a rampage in the midst of a crowded street.
- Accusations that the cops started the violence. Yep, sure is a lot of stuff out there in independent media land that gives evidence of this. A picture of a cop chasing or holding down protestors is apparently hard evidence of this. Yep, the hub cap on my left wheels are missing so they must've wanted to fall off! And c'mon, an entire unit of cops ordered to "beat down on site any protestors"???
- Further to this, the plans of some of the protestors "that in each of their engagements with the media they deflected comments about potential protestor violence by making cunning remarks to imply that 'police cause the violence'"
- Some dweeb comparing the actions of the police to that of Tiananmen Square. Sure, if you discount the military infantry and tanks, the order to crush the protestors and the 200-3000 (depending on who you believe) dead people! What an insult to those that were injured or died.

Now I sound like a capitalist pig! :P Let the records show that I do believe that bits of our society is screwed, especially the general imbalance of wealth and the state of the economy in Africa.

Even so...I remember seeing video footage of this lady with a loudspeaker speaking out about the crimes of the capitalist society and how the world would be a much better place if they were able to run it. If that did happen...

...Richard Branson hurry up and build a new society on the moon or Mars so I can join you!!!

G20

2006-11-17T20:57:00.000+11:00

Even the most oblivious people to political issues will have heard what's going on down here in our fair city grand this weekend. If not, then don't bother going to the CBD for a drink in the area around the Grand Hyatt. Security is so tight, the chances are you'll have a red laser sight pointing to your forehead as you walk along the street from a sniper who is placed on top of the neighbouring skyscraper. Yes, G20 is here. For some it means that "those capitalist, money-hungering pigs are coming to town." For others it means "the opportunity to optimise and strengthen the economy" is at hand. For the rest it means about as much as the north-eastern most tip of Russia - no one gives two shites about it. And whilst the meeting of the 20 (although someone told me that it was 19) largest economies in the world is obviously centre-stage, the expected protesting and resultant security measures are dominating the news. Whilst I am not a particularly politically-minded fellow, at least not as educated as some of my close buddies (Porter...Bob...), I think I know enough to have my own opinion on the protests going on. And it can be summed up as follows:

F*#k off you hippies.

Ok ok. That wasn't really such an educated statement. :P And pigeon-holeing the protestors as a bunch of hippies puts me on an intelligence level on par with, oh say, Bill Clinton choosing oral sex from a fugly intern over his presidency.

They aren't "hippies" as most people would think. Not that I've been amongst their ranks, but I'd venture to say that many of those who will be out on the streets tomorrow are people with phDs, and full-time jobs, and carbon monoxide-producing cars. There will inevitably be, however, the tree-huggers and multi-colour shirt-wearing, long-haired "if it resembles a leaf, I can smoke it!" people. Yes, the people out there protesting will no doubt be diverse. However, many will have one common goal - to stop, or at the very least, disrupt the G20 meeting from going ahead. You know it's true when their website itself is called "stopg20.org". For me, this is what pisses me off about the protests.

In a very small nutshell, the G20's job is to develop policies to strengthen our global economy. On the other hand, those voicing their opinions against it - "anti-globalisation" supporters as critics put them as - band together against the large multi-national corporation machine. Their view, is that this so-called "plague" is detrimental to the real issues in our world such as poverty, the environment and labour rights.

The whole point of the G20 is to discuss the very matters which the protestors are pissed off about. Yes, its primary function is to strengthen the economy but to do it "the right way" can only be achieved through this sort of meeting. In other words, the G20 is a forum to discuss ways in which the economy can be strengthened, whilst also keeping in mind those issues of the environment and poverty. It allows progress to be made towards "the right way" of doing things. Whether this progress is made is another thing altogether. Yes, there is the potential for policies that regresses back towards destroying the environment and making it worse for the third world nations. That is certainly true. But if you want things to change...you need to give it a chance to change. By trying to prevent G20 from happening, the protestors are taking away that opportunity. The current issues which they're pissed off about will remain stagnant and we're back at square one.

In essence, they're preventing the very thing that they want happening.

The only way you'll get a "fairer go" for little Yakubu of Somalia is if you let progress be made towards achieving that goal. Let's be realistic here. Destroying "the corporations" and changing the capitalist-way our society runs (like many people want to do) will just create more problems than solutions. We live in a world where there is indeed great imbalance between the "rich and the poor". We live in a world where McDonald's dominates aunty's little cafe. We live in a world where corporations give 5 cent wages to people. What our world isn't though, is a place where a single wave of a magical wand will make everything right. You cannot expect the environment to be perfect in one day. Poverty cannot be eliminated with just one political policy. You need to let things take its course whilst encouraging those in power to do the right thing. Make a statement and encourage change like the Make Poverty History concert is doing right now (btw, I'm listening to it on the radio right now and Evermore are a little disappointing...).

Just don't be a dickhead that tries to jump the fence or blockade the entourages of political figures being driven up to the Grand Hyatt's door tomorrow.

Uni? HAHAHA!....I need a job :(

2006-11-13T22:43:00.000+11:00

I wish I could blame university for the lack of updating for the upteenth time but I can't. The fact of the matter is I've just been so caught up with my endless search of the perfect way to be lazy. If you could only see my room right now. You'd be quite impressed at my impression of a room caught in the midst of a month of bombing raids in a war-torn town. And it's been this way for so long now that I've developed the ability to walk around without the lights on. The promise to clear out all the books and uni crap off the floor is now a good two weeks overdue. I'll give it another week before I get off my arse and start doing it.

Such has been life ever since I became the latest person to break free of the prison that is university.

No more uncomfortable lecture theatres. No more writing 177049 at the top of everything. No more sucking up to supervisors at clinics. No more annoying uni hippies who believe that shoving anti-everything-that-our-government-does flyers down your throat is a more constructive way of spending time at university than, say, actually doing some studying and avoiding repeating subjects that the Government and ultimately the taxpayer pays in part for. I've been meaning to do a hippy rant... I should do that eventually. I mean, I'm not cheering the war on and I'm not exactly building statues of our dark overlord Howard and worshipping him with incense. But imagine them hippies in office... Actually that'd be funny. Give them a year in office, watch the country spiral back into the renaissance, then watch as they try to fix everything up with big drum festivals and tofu barbecues.

Heh, I should keep going but I won't because finishing uni is a much better thing to talk about! :D YAAAAAAAY!!!!! Exams were shit. Never again. Though I'll probably find myself back at uni in 5 years time doing some silly little course which will supposedly further my career but only accomplish providing a few extra letters on my business card just for show. Either way. No exams for a long time....period.

Oh God I'm talking like an American now. Meh, at least their hippies like American football too.

So what's the first thing you do when you finish uni? Look for jobs. Well actually, there's the copious drinking...and the partying...and the relaxation in front of the couch with remote in one hand and beer/chips/other TV remote in the other...and the refusal to start the aforementioned cleaning of your room. That'd make job hunting about the third or fourth thing you'd do then. Either way, I've started looking for a job. Had a job interview last Friday which went well, but I'm not too sure if I want to work there. Some smart cookies already have a job picked out, paid for and stored away in the boot. Others, myself included, have the job websites bookmarked in the favourites.

The thing that strikes me about this whole job hunting affair is how we're all comparing ourselves to each other. One minute, we're all still jobless and reading the sports pages before the classifieds is perfectly fine. The next minute Ash and Julia have a job and we're all sending in thirty applications at once, some unknowingly to the same place because we've lost track of which hospital/practice we've sent one in to. Then there's Brendan. Whilst we're all freaking out at the prospect of being the last one to sew up a nine-to-fiver, he hasn't even finished his resume. And you know what? He doesn't give two shits about it. What a bloody legend!! He understands the truth: that it's only November and there's tons of jobs out there. And when most of us won't want to work until next February or March, why the rush?

The other notable occurrence that, well...occurs as a direct result of this arduous exercise in selling your soul to prospective employers, is the number of times we're pitted against each other. It doesn't help when your profession is a relatively small one and you end up applying for the same ten jobs and hence go to the same ten job interviews. One night you're sitting next to each other downing a couple of beers and reminiscing about the good old days when you both outfoxed clinic supervisors that spend their weekends working as cows, the next morning you're sitting next to each other in a group interview answering questions whilst also trying to imply that your friend is a slut whore of a bitch and will undoubtedly kill three patients per year, hence concluding that by the process of elimination you are the man for the job. If I were an employer, just for the token fun of it, my first question in a group interview would be, "so, why do you think I should hire you instead of him?" I could potentially film it and send it to channel 10. It'd be a great reality show, like Big Brother except that interesting stuff would actually be occurring.

The serious downside to this though, is what happens when you get the job but one of your good mates doesn't. Definition of 'awkward' right there! It's already happened between two of my mates and it doesn't help when the one that didn't get it was a supposed shoe-in for the job 'coz she worked as an assistant at the place this year. It's not fun for all involved: the successful one feels guilty, the failed one feels inferior, the bystander friends all don't know how to approach the matter. It's almost like an informal test of how mature we all are, and a taste of what being 'out there' is going to be like. To the credit of all involved in this particular situation, it's been handled in the most mature way possible.

I guess this really is the real world.

A gust of August

2006-08-28T16:36:00.000+10:00

I have this theory... and it's taken almost two years since I became one of the mindless sheep drones around the world and joined the blogging fraternity for me to figure it out. I've come to realise that the more time I have on my hands, the less likely I am to update this thing. Even now, I write this in the midst of an evening that should be occupied by article reading and the beginning of what could potentially be the winner of the "most bullshit-filled assignment" in my educational history (an Ethics assignment... who cares if I decide to fall in love with one of my 78 year old female patients that has become transsexual and become a born-again "male" gangster?!). No, instead here I am, emptying the overflowing mailbox and mowing the overgrown lawn of my online house.

This past month has been quick. People say it often: "This week/month has been one of the quickest ever!" But this time, that's never been more true. I'm hard-pressed to find another month, or another period of time which has drifted by so quickly and meaninglessly.

Retrospective thinking will have my think twice about that statement. It's been two weeks of holiday and almost two weeks of a new clinic rotation filled with a holiday house, birthdays, a musical, and numerous nights with the rest of the group/gang/posse/cult. Yet they all seem so distant right now, despite the fact that the birthdays were just a few days ago! Perhaps it's a result of being so focused at the finish line ahead, without giving any hesitation of looking back. Oh yes, less than 7 weeks to go plus a few weeks of exams...

Oh, as to what happened with the whole Shepparton debacle... I passed ;) Had that meeting with the year-level coordinator and she was on my side. Even said she was impressed and glad that I stood up for myself and insisted on getting a copy of the marks. So that's behind me now. I've just gotta make sure I don't screw up the actual neuro theory exam. And I'm hoping to heaven that my clinical exam won't be a neuro one. Granted I honestly do feel that I passed...the fact that the bitch...err, supervisor wanted to fail me has just dented the old ego a tad bit. Not sure if the confidence can withstand a neuro clinical exam now.

But eh, who cares about that just yet. I'm at the children's hospital now doing the paediatric placement. Lucky me got put into the cardio area which is supposed to be the easy one. After two weeks I can see why everyone else have said that. When your mornings consist of sitting down and supervising children blowing into masks and bottles, whilst perhaps playing uno at the same time, then followed by playing a game of indoor soccer or basketball, you know you have it pretty sweet. The afternoons are a bit more work - seeing the kids either in ICU (the poor buggers) or on the wards, tends to elicit more activity in the areas of the brain that aren't in the 'daydreaming' section. So far it's been really fun. The kids I've worked have been awesome, and I've already decided that working with paediatric patients is heaps better than the adult kind. Granted, it's HEAPS easier working with cardio-related kids rather than those with neurological or musc related conditions.

Oh, and hay fever has come early this year >:(

Clinic controversy!

2006-08-02T19:39:00.000+10:00

Ok, it's been a bit since I last wrote. The long and short of it ("it" being the boring bit of this story) is that last week my main supervisor came back from holiday. Upon doing so, she's been drilling and drilling away at me, asking questions left, right and centre and pointing out holes in my knowledge. Prior to last week I thought I was doing mildly OK. But after that week I was concerned so I went up to her to ask about how I've been going and what I need to work on. After all, I've had no feedback since the halfway point of the clinic so I have every right to know how I've been going. Anyway, she tells me that I'm not at a passable level.

*alarm bells*

So, I email the year level coordinator and the school's dark overlord (Gill) about what's happening, just to give them the heads up that I might not pass.

A nervous weekend ensues, dampening the triumphant arrival of our new 100cm LCD TV...(can't wait to get back to hug that giant beast!!).

Cue this week - the final all-important week. Ok let's face it. No point beating around Shepparton ("Shepparton" as in "the bush"...get it?? get it??!!) Whereas previously I've been all about learning new things and building up my knowledge, this week my mindset has been all about the marks. Whether or not I'll pass or fail. You can't blame me - I'm a friggin' student. So anyway, my main supervisor's attitude towards me doesn't change (more on that later). I end up doing OK, but oddly enough not being given the opportunity to "show" my improvements on what she felt needed to improve. When you say I need to work on my assessment...ok fair enough....then why don't you give me a friggin' new patient to assess?!?!? Furthermore, why give my feedback barely halfway thru my final week when you know I need everyday to "prove" myself? And...why the hell request that I stay the entire day at the hospital today (usually I'm there only for half a day) when you don't organise a single patient for me to see in the afternoon?!??! I mean, wtf?!?

Ok, getting off track a bit...

Like I've mentioned, I had my final feedback marks today. Ok, fair enough my other supervisor will be absent tomorrow hence the reason to give it to me now. But then again, you don't need her to be there for it so long as she gives you a decent handover. Anywhichwhatway, here's the gist of what went down:

*Walk into room with my 2 supervisors (S/V)...sit down and talk about how I think I went...I show them how I marked myself (for the record I marked myself as about a 56% or something or rather)*

*S/Vs show me my marks*
(The following not quoted word for word obviously)
Main S/V : Blah blah blah, hence we don't see you as passable.
Me: Can I have the total marks please?
Other S/V: That's 38 (out of 75)

(slight silence, the realisation that it's actually a mathematical pass sets in)

Main S/V: Don't worry about the marks. The fact of the matter is that we don't think you're passable because you still need some supervision. Plus I don't think the marking scheme is weighted properly enough, espeically with the planning and education section.

Now this bit is quoted!....

Main S/V...and I QUOTE: "We'll probably have to put down some of the marks"

*ALARM BELLS RINGING IN HEAD...uhuh, she ain't gonna do this to me. This is where I draw the fucking line*

Me: Ok...Could I please sign and have a copy of those marks that you've shown me?

From this point on, my main S/V gets more agitated. Tension really rises, as I resist any efforts from her to justify the fact that I've failed. The fact that she's gone and said that she'll put my marks down just to fail me makes me lose ALL respect for anything she says. I am NOT leaving that room without those marks in my hand with my signature. The fact that she obviously doesn't agree with the marking scheme is beside the point. It is set by the university and is a FORMAL scheme that needs to be adhered to. As my brother pointed out to me later, I've inadvertently illustrated a major flaw in my main S/V in that she is marking her students according to what she thinks is the definition of satisfactory rather than that set by the university.

Back to what happened, in the end my main S/V has obviously become very agitated. She snatches the form off the hands of my other S/V, slams it on the table and angrily outbursts "FINE!"...then proceeds to write an additional comment on it, saying that I shouldn't pass (in obvoiusly quite loaded and assertive language) and I should repeat another neuro placement. At this stage, despite being startled at the reaction, I kinda half-expected it. We obviously haven't had the best of relationships, but I'm proud of myself in the sense that I've done nothing wrong. It is her attitude towards me that gives me the right to be agitated at her. Yet, she is the one that has consistently been agitated with me, intimidating me and talking down on me. So, yeah, as she's writing down her comments I explain my position (calmly I might add!). I tell her that, look, regardless of the fact that you think I haven't passed, you have still given me a pass. And you can't take back the marks that you have shown me, especially without any proper justification.

And just to seal the deal in regards to what I think is the most immature form of behaviour coming from an adult, let alone a supervisor... We then go on to talk about the feedback for my case pres. It's a pass but barely as well... I'm not too fussed, since I wasn't expecting much out of it. My main S/V tells me the marks...to which I reply "ok, so what's the main feedback regarding the case pres?"

To which my main S/V sarcastically goes (rough quotation only) "oh so you want us to justify these marks too then huh?"

I would soooo love to discuss the attitude of this S/V to the higher ups at uni...but I'm not sure how wise or easy it'd be considering the lack of any evidence. I think it'd be appropriate to add in the conversation that I'm having with Stefan right now (cheers for lettin me mate). It best sums up my S/V...

Stefan - Census time... woohoo! says:
thats fucking dumb!
Stefan - Census time... woohoo! says:
you cant fucking do that the slut!
Stefan - Census time... woohoo! says:
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my godddddd
Stefan - Census time... woohoo! says:
baaaaaaaaaad feelings welling up inside me
Stefan - Census time... woohoo! says:
im getting fucking pissed off
Stefan - Census time... woohoo! says:
how the FUCK can people be such ridiculous CUNTS
Stefan - Census time... woohoo! says:
FARK!
Stefan - Census time... woohoo! says:
fucking stab the whore in the back and throw her in the compost
Stefan - Census time... woohoo! says:
seriously
Stefan - Census time... woohoo! says:
for fucks sake, seriously
Stefan - Census time... woohoo! says:
people like that are the DEVIL, its EVERYTHING i hate about clinics
Stefan - Census time... woohoo! says:
fucking power-hungry whores that were perfectionists when they were students and think everyone has to be a fucking ace in an area in 4 weeks when they have been working for 50 years!
Stefan - Census time... woohoo! says:
fucking cuntlickers

Yeah...needless to say, my S/V has been nothing short of...well, immature I guess is the best way to put it. The odd thing is that she's nice to other people - the other PTs, the pts, and even the other students. But as Roma and I have found out, she obviously has a two-faced personality to her, whether she realises it or not. She has not, and I mean this literally, NOT smiled at me even once the 5 weeks that she's been at clinic with me. Personally, I'm quite happy and even proud of myself, and the way I've handled it. The last two weeks has been so difficult for me, in terms of keeping emotions in check and keeping calm. I can proudly say that not once have I given any sign of "losing it" with her. I've taken everything on the chin and replied in a calm and civilised manner, even all the way til that final feedback today.

Really, I want to go on and on about her but I'll leave it to another time. Enough anger for now...

Tomorrow I'm back at the hospital. Considering my other S/V will be away, I'll be with this main S/V most likely. And that will probably turn out to be one of the more awkward positions in my life that I'll have to endure.

So what now? My S/V called my year level coordinator and so have I. Unfortunately she got in first...grrrrr..... Right now I don't know if I've passed or not (ie. I don't know if I have to repeat a few days/weeks at the end of this year). I'm having a meeting on Friday with the year level coordinator to talk about it, and I'm assuming I'll get my answer then. But judging by what others say and from my own opinion, they can't make me to do it. 51% is a pass and that's all that matters on the record.

But then again, stranger things have happened....like...all that's happened today that's caused this predicament for example :P

Bloody supervisor

2006-07-25T09:24:00.000+10:00

I told you what her main problem is! I said "Her main problem is hip abduction" And then later on you say "You've missed the point, that her main problem is her hip abductors"

For fucks sake!

For the first time in about a year's worth of clinics, I wasn't gonna just stand there and take it. Not when I got it right but she's trying to make me wrong. I told her that look, I just said that, I just told you what her main problem is and you're saying that I missed it when OBVIOUSLY you weren't listening to me. Argh. Well maybe I didn't say it that last bit but I probably should have.

Bloody med students....

2006-07-24T20:27:00.000+10:00

Only one day into this latest installment of Shep '06 and already a multitude of blog-worthy misevents have managed to work their way into the week.

Drove up last night with the satisfying knowledge that this will be the second last time I have to do the dreaded Sunday drive up. Upon pulling up into my usual Sunday night dinner venue (Hume Fwy service station) I hear this rattle on the left side of the car as I ease the speed down from 125...err...110km/hr to the speed hump "requirement" of 20 km/hr (ie 50 km/hr). How odd? I thought, but the sound quickly died out so I thought nothing of it. Pulling up into the parking spot and getting out of the car I decide to check out the left side of the car anyway just in case. Low and behold, my hubcap-less left rear wheel now has a friend with the left front deciding to join in the naked fun. Great. Not like my car is starting to die enough anyway. I walk the 200 m back to the freeway offramp/exit to the servo and find the missing hub cap lying on the road, miraculously untouched by the other drivers desperately trying to grab a mid-drive meal and coffee to keep them awake.

Another 90 min or so later I somehow manage to arrive in Shepparton without the darndest recollection of what happened inbetween the service station and arriving into town. My house, previously occupied by 4 of us was now infested. Infested by a rodent species - arrogant, disgusting, loud and downright inconsiderate in nature. They are the "we think we are top shit" human species otherwise known as the medical students. Argh I shouldn't be so stereotypical...the med students I know personally are decent blokes and ladies. But last night...AARGH! So anyway, back to the story. I arrive at the house to realise that the peace and quietness was demolished by some 20-25 (?4th or 5th) year med students. And faaark I WAS NOT HAPPY! Not because they were there. That's fine. But they were absolutely feral! They were only there for one night, as a temporary shelter before they all moved out to another nearby town for their rotation. But they left with a shitload of unwashed dishes just sitting in the kitchen. I mean...wtf?! What? You med students think you're so good that you get some sort of room service to clean it for you?!?! Poor Kelly, myself and the two others here now have to put up with it. We're not washing it. Why should we? Another thing... the backdoor of the house is a heavy duty door that breaks your eardrums when you slam it. Up until 1am last night they were going in and out of the door, letting it slam despite there being a huge sign on the door saying DO NOT SLAM! Kelly, the poor girl, sleeps in the room next to that door and did not get any sleep, also considering the racket they made all night. In the end she cracked it and got up out of her room and started scolding a few of the students that were unfortunately in her way. I don't blame her... Me? I kinda didn't even bother trying to sleep til about 2-2:30ish knowing that there's no point until they die down. And the final straw? The final insult? The one thing that has forever tainted the image of med students in my mind? My packet of Tim Tams....the ENTIRE UNOPENED packet of black forrest Tim Tams of which I was soooooooo looking forward to opening tonight? They've gone missing......

FUCKING MED STUDENTS!

What else? Oh, I wake up this morning and drive up to the hospital. This time a weird sound is coming from the right side of my car. I park the car, get out, and guess what? My right rear decided to have a flat. Greeeeat. At least I had a spare and it's inflated. Problem is, I've never changed a tyre before. I had a rough idea but I thought I'd play it safe and call up RACV. Yep, how embarrassing is that? :P I was fretting over it though coz I was supposed to conduct the class at the ASHE school. And literally as I got my phone out to call them to say I'll be late, they call me and tell me that they've to postpone it 'til next week.

Hehe...funny day.....

Bloody med students....

Aarrr matey! Ye be in the paper!

2006-07-18T21:39:00.000+10:00

I'm in the paper! Well, it's not the Age or the Herald Sun. It's the Shepparton newspaper. But still I'm in the paper. I managed to get my ugly mug holding a model skeleton standing next to four other smiling students on page....well I forget which page now. But it was nice. Nice since it shows that they're all impressed enough to put me into print. Going by everyone's comments, they were quite excited about the short-course that I created for them. The fact that they're seriously going to try and make it a part of their official curriculum for their students was flattering for me. Seeing my face in the newspaper confirmed it even more. I'm actually quite proud of my little baby. It was a shitload of work, especially when I thought I'd have to deliver a class per week. But seeing as I only now have to deliver two of the classes and the next group of students that come up here (ironically Jennie is next I think) will deliver the rest made it easier for me. Oh the irony, if Jennie does have to do it, that'll be a surprise for her. Payback for some of the pain! MUAHAHAHAHAHA....hehehehehe. What, let me be nasty for just a little bit ok?

Liz: Hi Jennie
Jennie: Hi
(Blah, blah, blah......)
Liz: So you're going to have to do a (few) 45 minute talk(s) to a class of 20ish year olds

Hehe

Which reminds me, I have to finish my handbook for the course! It's gotten to the stage where I've completed all the easy bits, but I have to finish all the hard annoying odds and ends. Ergh...

So in my boredom last night I decided to pay the Village cinemas here in Shepparton a visit. The town was dead at night but that didn't stop the brave 5 or so people coming out to watch the 9:15pm session of Pirates of the Carribean 2. And the verdict? It wasn't bad... But, well firstly the first one shits over this one. The story wasn't as good as the first either. Having said that though, you could tell that the story was a work in progress. You could tell that the story was made with the third movie in mind. And because of that, the ending suffered a bit. The balance between question marks and resolved issues was too biased to the wrong side. However it was still a decent movie to sit through and I'll definitely be hanging to see the third one.

Time to return home. Home as in, 900 metres away...not Melbourne home :(

I can see the light!

2006-07-15T16:15:00.000+10:00

Home again for the weekend. Went and saw Superman yesterday with Stefan. The movie was indeed quite good. My only gripe would be that I felt it was a little slow to get started. And I can see how Julius thinks it dragged out a bit at the end, but I didn't think so. Caught up with Cze-Hui too. Good to see that she's doin well. Good to see that she passed her exams too.

It's about this time that the prospect of next week begins to kick in and my happy levels start to drop. The drive tomorrow doesn't make things better. I haven't had a proper Sunday for more than a month now because of it. But at the same time, I feel quite excited. Three weeks to go til Shepparton is over. Not that Shepparton is bad. In fact, it's been quite an experience, especially the professional elective component of it. It's just the neuro clinic block that I have to do whilst I'm up there. At the start of the year this was the one block that I was genuinely worried about - moreso than even musc at St. Vs. But now it's almost over... From then on it's all downhill. Two week break followed by another eight weeks of relative ease (provided I get lucky and manage to score a decent supervisor for paeds).

The end of the tunnel is nigh. Excluding the two week break and the exams, only 11 weeks are left. Thinking about a total of 17 years education, 11 weeks seems miniscule. Mum was taking down a whole lot of crap from the cupboards so she can put it in our storage garage up the road. She took down this old tattered bag and told me it was her high school bag in New Zealand. It made me realise how bloody far I've come when now even I have surpassed that stage of my life.

11 weeks......

Pride and Prejudice shows you can form an "i" and a "me" in "feminine"

2006-07-11T21:05:00.000+10:00

Oh don't get me wrong. I ain't coming out of any closet just yet. Oh no...I'm still deeper into the closet than those pesky kids in Narnia. But being stuck in a foreign land (Shepparton) with nothing to do last night but curse the heater gods for screwing up our unit's central heating system, I decided to pass the cold time by pulling out the portable DVD player (awesome 21st present I must say, especially seeing as it wasn't on any sort of wishlist!) and one of the pirated DVDs that Mum and Dad brought back from Malaysia. (And by "DVD" I mean "someone setting up a camera in the cinema"). Actually, the one I watched last night was of exceptional black market quality if I do say so myself. Most would just have the movie itself and that's it. But this one included all the special features you'd see in a legit DVD. The picture quality was also pretty darn good.

Anyways it might be a good idea to actually talk about what the hell I watched. Anyone who knows me will know that my top list of fave movies would include the likes of The Matrix, Top Gun, Gladiator, Hero and other assorted "kill kill kill" movies. Which is why, of the choice of movies I could've watched last night, Pride and Prejudice was quite a bizarre decision. I've seen my fair share of chick flicks. Quite frankly, they're mostly all shit, worthy of forcing one of the cows up here in Shep to eat the DVD, shit it out then return it to the directors, producers and writers of that particular movie via express mail to ensure the foul smell reaches them in time to convey my feelings of disgust. It's really nothing against the romance genre. I've seen a few which were quite good...just not many that's all. In fact, I'll go out boldly here and say that I quite enjoy a good romantic story... And if you can combine it worth lots of killing then all the better! (See Hero and Crouching Tiger...)

So anyway, back on track after being derailed the second time...so I watched it last night on my little screen with headphones. I've read the book before back in year 9, and even though I can't remember all the details, I knew the gist of what to expect. And after the movie ended I must say.... I was really, really impressed. As far as chick flicks go, this would easily top my list. I think it's probably attributable to its purity. This was a pure romance story. Most chick flicks that I've seen combine romance and an element of comedy. But even other pure dramas, pure romance stories...something about them that just doesn't match up to this one. By halfway through the film I was really getting into the movie, thinking c'mon Elizabeth you idiot! You love Mr. Darcy!!! Don't deny it! Stop being so blind! He LOVES you!! And by the time the inevitable happened...I wasn't crying like most other girls I know would!...but I was genuinely going YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYY!! :D :D :D :D I really don't know what made it so good. But it was a good movie.

Maybe it was because of Keira Knightley.

Does it *LOOK* like I can speak Chinese!? Oh, wait...