Massive apologies!

I have neglected my blog for so long! Sorry y’all!

Unfortunately I will be neglecting the blog still for a few more weeks yet…. There is something really really really MAJOR happening in my life that I can not really use up the time with blogging as addictive as I remember that feeling to be – even if the crap I write is not Pulitzer worthy (or mater of fact local student magazine worthy).

So anyway, when the current major occurrence in my life passes well, I shall make the big announcement and come back to this blog and celebrate by having cyber champagne… or well you get the idea.

Thanks everyone for still visiting (I am quite shocked to see that I am actually getting over one viewer a day after such a long period of inactivity).

So so-long! Will get back to this thing as I said above in a few weeks (10 weeks tops LoL!)

*pKay waves hands frantically and then scutters back to his study desk*

Story of the starfish.

It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference. – Tom Brokaw

I was originally going to write about something else, but after reading through this incredible blog I just had to write about it. If you get anything out of my little blog, then it would be to go over there and read some incredible stories. It makes me feel very privileged and I should be very grateful to be in a part of the world where I do not fear for my life, when driving a car, or when living in my home or going to hospital. Sometimes we forget how lucky we are and how much for granted we take many things. I salute the owner of that blog and anyone else who is willing to stay in countries such as South Africa and try to do good for their country. Very brave and very noble. Never give up!

Which brings me to the next point. This is an excerpt (or a cut out, however you want to call it) from this one source of a scene (or a passage, again however you want to call it) that I thought I will share with everyone (anyone?) out there. I got the inspiration as I mentioned from reading the blog and in particular the latest post on that blog. The owner of that blog actually mentioned “the story of the starfish” and I think this is referring to the same/similar thing. :) Hence enjoy: 

 ………

The balloon lands in a small open area, on the south beach of Cabeiri.  You get off and the balloon sails back into the sky.

The sand here gets very hot in the daytime. The beach | [ ] – [X]      
carries on to the west and to the southeast lay some    |           \ 
cliffs. There are several balloons here that will take     |             [ ]
you to different areas around this world. A beach        |
house is not too far from here either.                         |

There are three obvious exits:  house, west, and southeast.
                   

The Balloon Keeper is here.

Balloon keeper says: Welcome to the balloon landing.  There is a sign here which lists the services available, I hope you enjoy the ride.

 

 

   

>”You go South East”

There is very little life here. The coast is rocky        | [ ]            
and the cold sea air blows harshly against your        |    \       
skin.                                                                 |     [X]     
                                                                                         | 
                                                                                                                                                                           

The only obvious exit is northwest.

A starfish is here.

>”You look at the starfish”

>”Suddenly from observing the starfish, you rember the story told many moons ago…”

A wise man was taking a sunrise walk along the beach.  In the distance he caught sight of a young man who seemed to be dancing along the wave. As he got closer he saw that the young man was picking up starfish from the sand and tossing them gently back into the ocean.

“What are you doing?” the wise man asked.
“The sun is coming up and the tide is going out; if I don’t throw them in, they’ll die.”
“But young man, there are miles and miles of beach with starfish along it.  You can’t possibly make a difference.”

The young man bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it lovingly back into the ocean, past the breaking waves.
“It makes a difference for that one,” he replied.

>”After the reminiscing of the story you pick up the starfish”

The one starfish is in your hands.

“You know what to do with it”

 ……

Pimp my … Cadaver?!

I never knew it was happening to me. I read many med related blogs about it. The horrors of pimping seemed so real. Within the blog Med School Hell (as an example) I found many descriptions of horrible ogre like doctors, physicians with a need to see fear and sweet from a newbie, evil nurses prowling the corridors ready to strike and see blood from incorrect answers!!! I have actually experienced this pimping to a degree.

But let me get this straight. I am not a med student (not for 10 or so more years anyhow ha-ha) and nor is my course medically oriented (like a premed course as they call it in the US). It is a science related course though and there are many subjects that I have taken that have a medical-ish/clinical-ish aspect to it. Anatomy was one of them.

However, at the time I had no clue about any of this. I never read any of these blogs that have been going on for years and years, I did not know what pimping was (in the medical aspect), ‘LOL’ to me was ‘laugh out loud’ and not ‘little old lady’, and the closest association I had to GSW was HEAD SHOT HEAD SHOT in CS. I basically chose Anatomy over ‘Calculus and scientific statistics’ because well… who wouldn’t?

 

Head shot! Head shot! DIE TERRORIST SCUM!

 A GSW of a child from one side of the head to the other.

Note:This picture is the ‘least disturbing’ when searching for “gunshot wound in Google images”. Don’t say I didn’t worn ya.

Anyway when I went in my Anatomy practical classes I was like the chubby kid in the candy shop. I have never seen a cadaver before in my life (and when I first heard of this I actually thought of fish eggs) and everything was new to me. The green gown/dress attire of clothing was a bit strange but apart from that it was an incredible learning experience. It is one thing to listen to a lecturer all day talk about the flexors of the thigh, it is another thing to see the actual muscles being pulled like pulleys and producing actual flexion. Ditto for all the nerve innervation, blood supply etc. Thinking about it some more, this theory vs practical applications applies to more than just anatomy class but anyway back to the story…

Hence after poking through the cadavers and hearing a bit of a spiel from the demonstrator about this muscle and that nerve becoming into that nerve and that opening and that space etc, the head demonstrator came in. The questions commenced. Again I (and I think a lot of other people in my class) had no idea of this ‘pimping’ aspect and instead just called it the ‘gee that guy asked a lot of fricken questions!!’ after the prac. It was difficult and many times I got questions wrong and called an artery a vein and other silly mistakes which made me feel and look like a tool. He would go on discussing the anatomy some more and as we were all in a circle he would always go clockwise and begin to ask questions one at a time pointing to a structure and so forth. We were all nervous as hell and were all praying for the easy ‘what structure is this – while pointing to a muscle’ question.

Gluteus maximus. Tell me that’s not the name of a Roman general that has slain 600 men with his bare hands?

This went on for an entire year. Over time our head demonstrator gauged the questions and began to know many of us in what our personality is (i.e do we like answering questions, do we have a clue, are we clueless) and he fitted those questions accordingly. In the end though, after being asked more questions in that subject alone than in my entire undergrad degree: I have to say it wasn’t too bad. I mean sure, no one likes to look like an idiot in front of other people, but that’s life and people look like idiots all the time. You do not need a daily dose of YouTube to realize that. I suppose this entire pimping thing is what you make it. A me vs them or a well OK let’s try and learn some things.

Naive much? Maybe… From what I have experienced though it wasn’t the end of the world.

 

Stay tuned… 

Sacrifice over… for now.

To many people holidays are not voyages of discovery, but a ritual of reassurance. – Philip Andrew Adams

Hey all! Miss me? Come on, say it’s true. ;)

Exams are over! The semester is over! The holidays have begun… well actually they begun a few days ago but I only settled in ‘holiday mode’ now. So then what is the first thing I do when jumping on the net? Write a blog! :P This is however a little note to say that all is well, all is going fine and there are no problems in my world outside of blogging! I got so many little tidbits of things to talk about and say but they will have to wait until another time (and this other time will be very very soon :) ).

Just thought I would mention my little bit of thanks for all those loyal visitors that stopped by after I took time of! I was actually surprised I got above one viewer after my ~2 month hiatus from this. Glad to see there are still people who would rather procrastinate than do actual work!

 

Anyway, time for me to shut up. Will write again soon!

Cheers! 

Sacrifice

It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich. – Henry Ward Beecher

Woah that was a fun semester. In a strange random super fast sort of way. I had so many assignments/reports/essays/homework/orals/etc to do that it completely consumed my life. Oh and the actual having a life outside of blogging didn’t help this blog much. Ah but unfortunately I am only here to make a quick little ‘hello’ to anyone out there still paying attention to this blog (population zero). Yes I am still alive and well and yes I got many more stories to tell. Unfortunately they will have to wait until I finish my exams which will take the greater part of June. I won’t be logging on here until then but I do hope you all have a great June (whatever you happen to be doing around June!)

All the best everyone!

BUSY BUSY BUSY BUSY & a YouTube video.

Well I am not the first blogger to say this, but far out, real life is really really busy. University reports, assignments and all those other things that make life distinct from the Internet and blogging are up and running. This makes it really difficult to blog. I really don’t understand (excluding those that get paid to blog) how people can blog 3/4 posts a day. I salute you all (or laugh at you for going a tad overboard, whatever way you want to look at it ;) ). Oh and let’s not forget the exams that are coming up. Yay! Who’s excited?

So to finish of in some half ass sort of way (as has been done so before sadly) I will put this video I saw up here for others to see. All I can say is damn. TV is such a powerful tool to show you things that are so obvious and yet, so many people miss it and make the same mistake. The vicious cycle continues etc. Suddenly all those rapists, psychopaths and stalkers don’t seem so unreal. They were just doing what others before them have done. Nothing new. So why are we still getting shocked?

(Ah this reminds me to make a post about my views on capital punishment for some reason….I shall make a draft of that me thinks)

Anyway sorry again to all you wonderful awesome super cool readers out there (totalling zero of course but shhhh). I will try and reduce my life and spend more time on this stupid blog in future. :D

Word!

Human Body: Pushing The Limits

Who here loves the Discovery Channel?

Put on your David Attenborough voice over: “Hee-are we see an evolved species, in it’s na-Tur-aL habitat.” 

Great works have been filmed and viewed from it on countless occasions. Yes I am showing my real deep geeky/nerdy side (I which consist of 9 different types of cheese) but I have to admit that I am absolutely fascinated by a lot of the things that show throws at us! Animals in the wild are among an all time favourite (along with what Animal Planet gives us of course).

Recently I had the pleasure of watching all 4 episodes of the Human Body series. Overall it was quite good. The whole show is presented in an excited exaggerated kind of format for the average lay person. I liked the overall structure of it, but to me a lot of terms seemed very basic and I was on the edge of my seat waiting for them to say hypothalamus, pineal gland or the frontal lobe instead of the ‘learning centre’, the ‘sleep control centre’ or the  ‘logical thought processing centre’ respectively. Now I know why doctors want to throw up when they watch shows like House or Grey’s Anatomy. To be fair I didn’t notice anything inaccurate with the show (I am still a newbie scientist though so don’t take my words as gospel), but it just seemed very basic. I guess that’s what learning about a lot of the stuff they said though does to you. What the average stuff is said on the media and TV about science is so basic but yet, for many it is stuff that people barely can understand. The same thing obviously occurs to me when I read about legal things, financial things (seriously it’s all just a bunch of random numbers to me), or any other topic I am not specialized in (life in general maybe… OOH SNAP!).

The right hypothalamus is connected to the right thalamus, the right thalamus is connected to the…

Oh and one more thing. I found the constant flashes back and forth and constant editing and repeating of certain scenes a bit excessive. I suppose the purpose of it was of course to bring excitement and make the show seem like fun, but to me it seemed like they tried a bit too much to excite and dazzle! Or people like flashy stuff? I suppose it’s better than reading it from a book so I will shut up now hehe.

I did learn a number of awesome things though. This includes:

-If you are ever lost at sea with little or no food, the fishes un cooked liver, skin, eyes (has fresh water in them believe it or not), and a bunch of other internal organs are quite tasty.
-You can fall 60 feet (OMG its 21st century people- no offence of course!) and get by with a fractured knee joint a fractured hip and still survive after 2 days of agony.

 

I thought this proves the above point quite nicely. ;) (I just dug a deep deep hole didn’t I?)

MOVING ON:

-You can lift 500 pounds (or was it more) when you are just about to fall of a cliff.
-You can run faster than a camel when a fireball is thrown at you by a wizard.
-Staying awake for 2 days makes you cranky and there’s a reason why people hate alarm clocks.
-Magic tricks are fun.
-Some people have cheesy voices. I mean ugh, magic is cool!?
-The magic colour changing card trick (YouTube this one)
-Monks from China can survive pain via controlling their mind and stuff.
-Eating less food makes you live longer (I want to look this up for confirmation as I can imagine some of my lecturers debating this, but for all I know it can be an accepted fact from the scientific community). 
-We might be able to one day control our dreams (THIS IS COOL IMO)
-We might be able to restore the vision of people in the future (well I guess people always knew this will one day happen, but they showed a really awesome case of this on the show)

Plus heaps more!

So yeah, when bored and you want to know a few more things about your body, do check it out. You just might learn a thing or two!

 

My obsessive compulsive is the mandatory placing of a caption under every picture, when it might not be needed. ;)