whoa i can finally blog here from home! for some unknown reason blogger always hangs on my home computer so i'm forced to blog only from hall. which is irritating! RARRRRR.

anyway we've gotten into a bit of a hoo-hah over exam timings regarding some admin matters. since we've expressly been ordered not to air our dirty linen in public i'll have to wait till it all blows over before some v choice things can be said with regards to this issue. mmmm. till then, we'll just have to wait and see how it goes!

i wish i could say more, but unfortunately am not in hospital right now so have less entertaining tales. so will have to make do with yakking on about community medicine, which puts me to sleep. whenever we have comm medicine lectures, it seems like half the medical student population disappears to the depths of the library to study "more invigorating subjects", ie. stuff they view as being more impt as compared to comm medicine, which is "largely common sense" !

i, on the other hand, being convinced that lectures are good for you and hating to miss them, merely sit calmly in my seat, stay awake and look like the good student that i'm supposed to be (of which i am obviously NOT if not i wouldn't be writing this blog!), and urm, succumb to the monster of hypersomnia in oh, the 1st 5 slides. which leaves me with a neckache and a puddle of drool (eurgh) after the lecture is over. darn. another lecture wasted!
and to put it another way - that means i still have no clue how to interpret journal articles and studies and all that jazz - i haven't been paying attention in evidence-based medicine lectures at all. RARRRR. i need to wake up and smell some roses, it's certainly the most impt thing in comm medicine!!! geez. to think i did statistics for A levels and now i can't remember a thing about them p values and chi-squares.

exams are headed soon, it's time to buckle down to learning drugs and stats. whoopie!

project is almost done! a few things left before we're done with it for good, thank goodness. wading through endless data and trying to figure out the analysis system for someone as computer impaired as i am is no joke. my sister says i must belong to the stone age since i am hopeless at anything to do with computers. which amazes her that i have a blog at all!

was coming out of toilet last week when i met my pharmacology lecturer who's a really sweet lady. she thought was someone else (called me the wrong name, darnit! - i was quite disappointed! but am not smart/pretty/notorious/etc enough for me to be memorable to her), and we got to talking about my hearing problem. i thought that was rather funny, it's something few people notice unless, like me, you've been trained to notice this kind of thing - which means that:
a) you're an ENT doc
b) you're wearing a hearing aid too
c) you know someone who's wearing a hearing aid
d) you're paranoid you're going deaf and think you'll need a hearing aid soon
e) you're v observant!
f) you've a fetish for hearing aid wearers
g) you're plain odd

and she's a practising psychiatrist on top of being a pharmacology lecturer, so she's definitely not a). and i didn't see her wearing one, so that rules out b). so i chose c). and turns out i was right! her niece is someone whom i really look up too, someone who gives me hope that yes, despite my hearing problem, i can do it too. i can be the doctor i've always aspired to be! if she can do it, so can i! what inspiration! am really delighted to find that out!

and my prof was so sweet about it too - she offered to put us in contact and keep me updated about the latest steths to come in that might help me.

i've been really encouraged by this chance meeting - serendipity i believe!- and i hope it'll spur me on, and keep my spirits up when things seem so bad, when i can't tell whether there is a murmur at all, or even breath sounds. others seem to have it so easy!

we're almost done! after having slaved away trying to sweet-talk various gents and ladies into taking our survey, we've almost reached the target number required for our study. and the best part is, we've managed to increase our response rate by a new formula! which makes the study more credible (i hope).

i can't say i feel much for this study, it's not something i feel will be of much use but whatever's worth doing is worth doing well, isn't it?

it was brought up to me (by a secret source, of course! - how thrilling this sounds, like a spy novel. hoho) that some one in our group is even more disinterested than i am, to the point that they're faking survey answers. cripes!!!! that would COMPLETELY ruin the whole credibility of the study (not that there was much to begin with actually, but that's another story!) i have no qualms about faking answers (i actually did that for a project when i was much younger - MUCH), but i don't think that should be done when the rest of your group is slaving away trying to procure actual answers. in the project when i faked everything, we laid all cards on the table and agreed to fake it together as we felt the project was pointless. and we had a brilliant time doing it too!

but in this case: i take offense because it demeans the amount of work i, and so many others have put in. we do our best to sweet-talk/persuade/hard-sell/soft-sell, and try so many tactics to get a response, like lurking at the postboxes/mailboxes/at their doors/pretending to be salesmen and then coming back as students/writing letters etc etc etc. and to see our hard work go down the drain if they do fake results, is simply heartbreaking. i have developed blisters and peeling skin and twisted my ankle in the name of this study, and you are telling me you can't be bothered to even try???

pfffttttttt. i cannot believe it.

i know i sound hoity-toity here, am sorry. it's just that, like i said - anything worth doing is worth doing well isn't it?
there's probably a whole multitude of reasons why they are doing so, i don't blame them. i just need to rant and let off steam. RARRRR.

besides! our group leader has already had a word with them and they've agreed to give their best so we can overwrite those faked survey forms! hooray, that is good news!

so we're here again! long time no blog, i've been trying to squeeze as much fun stuff into my pathetic holidays as i can, to make up for the lack of time. whoever said the lack of rest only started as an intern must have been joking. it starts when you enter medical school!!!

am plunged headlong into project now, we're heading to the suburbs to conduct surveys on health. rejection rates are extremely high, sadly so, and which means that it might bias our results. (response bias) i hope it'll come out alright! it's not really pleasant getting doors slammed in your face, but haven't gotten any slammed into my fingers yet, so that'll do for now. gotta look on the bright side!

it's another month to go before project wraps up, i'm wondering how we can finish it at this rate. mmmm. maybe we'll even get it published - how exciting can that be! wish me luck :)