Assignment Again...

I don't like assignments, really... Either there is too much stuff left unwritten, or I have exceeded the word limit when there are 2 questions to go.

That's why blog is a better place to write - there is never a fixed topic, a minimum or maximum word limit, logical connectors, paragraphing or grammatical correctness.

Good luck to me, in finding time for writing one more section, trimming the lengthy paragraphs and finding places to put in the citations.

I might be just a random variation due to sampling error.

Good night.

Trivia about Me

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Chang Yang!

1. The average human spends about 30 days during their life in Chang Yang!
2. American Airlines saved forty thousand dollars a year by eliminating Chang Yang from each salad served in first class!
3. Chang Yang can smell some things up to six miles away.
4. While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes dressed up as Chang Yang.
5. Marie Antoinette never said 'let them eat cake' - this is a mistranslation of 'let them eat Chang Yang'.
6. Long ago, the people of Nicaragua believed that if they threw Chang Yang into a volcano it would stop erupting.
7. Devoid of his cells and proteins, Chang Yang has the same chemical makeup as sea water.
8. There are now more than 4000 satellites orbiting Chang Yang.
9. Baskin Robbins once made Chang Yang flavoured ice cream.
10. Forty percent of the world's almonds and twenty percent of the world's peanuts are used in the manufacture of Chang Yang.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

Patriotism and Unity in Melbourne

Yesterday evening, while Xuan Ni and I were walking back to College Square, we met a few Malay juniors who were heading to the city. The young, exuberant lads were clad in Malaysian flags and equipped with DIY "Malaysia Boleh" banners. I regret that I missed the chance to capture their striking outfit which some may think as incoherent with the Melbourne backdrop, but they exuded pride in their cause - they were off to support the Malaysia team playing for Gold in the Commonwealth Games Badminton mixed team event.

I attended the semi-final the day before, and the atmosphere was simply rapturous and overwhelming. The Malaysian supporters contingent, although relatively small in number, made a prominent vocal presence in the Melbourne Exhibition Centre. We were sure that we have taught the Melburnian the Malaysian vocabulary. Although I didn't join the Malaysian supporters this time, I am sure they would have cheered even harder and louder for our team - they won the England team 3 - 1.

I can't help but to wonder how patriotism and unity is playing in the air when you least know it. The Malaysian Badminton team consisted of only Malaysian Chinese. On the way home, I was thinking how good it would be if we share the same spirit on every arena in Malaysia. I dream that one day, our fellow countrymen are judged by the merit of your qualification but not kulit-fication. I dream that one day we don't have to bicker over oranges and apples when everyone knows the exact difference between them. I dream that one day, we share the pride of our achievements regardless of skin colours. I dream that one day, we no longer wonder why only 2.3% scored A1 in SPM Chinese paper when more than 10% can score A1 in many other subjects. I dream that one day, unity and patriotism transcends the realm of political rhetorics and SPM writings, to our every breath and step. I dream.

What Will You Do?

Sorry for being missing in action for the last few weeks. The course is driving me crazy, and the cough I am having now is virtually bringing my lungs out. What an irony that while we are studying respiratory diseases now, half of the lecture hall are coughing away spraying their germs like perfume aerosols.

Yesterday I had my weekly PBL in the morning, and something that happened disturbed me badly. Just a scenario for everyone to consider:

Say you are a practising family doctor now, and your former coursemate is practising in a suburb nearby. One day the former coursemate ringed you up and asked for your opinion regarding a sign of his patient which he's unable to diagnose. You studied like a nerd back in med school, so you have a clear idea of what the sign means.

The question is - Will you give him the answer?

Now maybe some are going to say, "Of course not! He's unable to give the diagnosis, now if he's going to lose his customer/patient, so be it!" But if we give it a second thought, why did you become a doctor, in the first place?

A slightly similar scenario happened yesterday. Just so that everyone knows what I am talking about, I would just introduce Problem Based Learning briefly. Problem Based Learning is one of our course modules in which medical students are divided into small groups of 10, in which medical cases are discussed on every Monday and Friday. On Monday every group is given a case which is the same for everyone. On that day, we will go on with our routine of making hypotheses, constructing mechanism, suggesting types of medical examination and identifying learning issues. After Monday, everyone goes home and does their own research regarding the learning issues. On Friday, we will present our learning issues and bring the case to a closure. Oh ya, the most important thing about the PBL: we are marked according to our participation, presentation, knowledge, teamwork etc, and the marks count towards the final semester result. The PBL cases will also be incorporated into our final exams.

Eeerm, oh ya, to make the whole incident clear, I have to talk about another not-so-intuitive term first - TopClass. Topclass is basically an online forum in which we get our weekly lecture notes, have discussions online and post our PBL discussion notes every week. The PBL discussion notes, in this case, is available for access to everyone including people from other groups.

A screenshot of TopClass.

So what happens is, at the end of the PBL, some people would visit every group and leech off the best mechanism notes and especially constructed mechanisms.

A screenshot of PBL mechanism.

Eerm, so I have rambled for too long, let me get into the point. So it was on Friday that we had our learning issues presentation and everyone was trying their best to get the better of others' ass. Humiliation is not a virtue in PBL, impression and flamboyance is. There came a time when a group member rose and presented her meticulous mechanism on the whiteboard. It's basically about the neurological control of respiration with those never-heard-before words like Lower Pontine Reticular Formation, Nuclues of Tractus Solitarius, Pneumotaxic centre etc, and they were covered in our lecture just the day before the PBL. So she went on and constructed her own mechanism from the disorganized lecture notes and presented it impressively.

I admit that I had been impressed by her performance until the moment of truth - she went back to her seat and said, "Eeerm, can we keep this mechanism among ourselves? Don't post it on TopClass because others can leech it."

What??!

What's the rationale of keeping good things to ourselves when the point of PBL itself is to share? What is knowledge without sharing? We aren't even comparing among PBL groups, the notes are just for personal reference. I understand that you might have spent hours in constructing this mechanism, but for goodness' sake, do you lose anything by sharing with others? Has our malignant kiasuism deteriorated to such a state that we disadvantage others to our own advantage?

Now those are the same people who told everyone that they wanted to be a doctor to save life. Oh yeahh, oh yeahh.... Save your patients' lives, don't care about the others' patients, ya?

Med School Nerd Scale

The following is a med school nerdiness checklist courtesy of TonyTutoring. Haha, let's have a go and see how nerdy you are, from the perspective of med school!

The following scale has been developed in close cooperation
with the UVA psychiatry services (Well at least I was thinking
of some of their characteristics and used some of their class
time to compose it). It is designed to test if you have spent
too much time in medical school and whether you are having
adverse side effects due to prolonged exposure.
Score one point for each statement that applies to you.

1 You have ever said "Netter is god".
2 You can discuss autopsy/ anatomy over a meal
3 You own a 4 color pen
4 -it just isn't enough colors for you
5 You use more than one color to take notes
6 You have use up more than 6 highlighters in the past 6 months
7 you have ever highlighted something YOU wrote
8 you retype handouts given in class
9 you haven't had a date in 3 months
10 you haven't had a date since entering med school
11 you have not been able to remember the normal term for
something because you were thinking of the medical term (ie
reflux for heartburn)
12 You get more sleep in lecture than at home
13 You know the correct spelling for pruritus
14 - you also know what it means
15 You have ever asked a question in class
16 - The prof. didn't understand the question
17 - you didn't believe the answer the prof. gave
18 - you went to look it up to see if they were right
19 You can't hold a conversation on anything other than med
school
20 You skip class to study
21 You've said you didn't do well on a test on which you beat the mean
22 You spend more than 15 hrs a week on e-mail
23 You have a callous on you finger from writing
24 More than one professor knows you by name
25 When you ask a question, a new professor has said "Oh, I've
heard of you"
26 You can name more amino acids than past prime ministers
27 You use more than 5 acronyms an hour when talking
28 you actually know what PERRLA stands for
29 You know all the steps of the TCA cycle
30 You do not read PTA as parent teachers association
31 You can remember the muscles in the forearm
32 You know the strucures in the urea cycle
33 You know the dermatome distribution
34 You can't remember what you had for breakfast
35 You can't spell world, much less backwards
36 You've ever been sexually aroused by the breast shadow on an
X ray
37 You equate "morning stiffness" with Rhematoid Artheritis
38 You actually know normal values for plasma Na
39 -K
40 Missing class causes you extreme stress
41 You have seriously asked someone "So how does that make you
feel?"
42 You have asked will this be on the exam
43 -Just after the prof. said it wouldn't
44 You identify with Deb on E.R.
45 You have made a medical joke
46 -no one laughed
47 -You figure they just weren't that far in their studying
48 You wear your stethescope around your neck on the bus
49 - you don't even know which way the thing goes in your ears
50 "SOB" means short of breath to you
51 You have gone to student health with suspicion of a disease
you have studied
52 -within 3 days of the lecture
53 You have answered a question in class
54 -asked by the professor
55 -it was a rhetorical question
56 You can quote lines from the movie "Malice"
57 -you believe them
58 You can flip your pen over your thumb
59 - with both hands
60 - you do so throughout class
61 You have corrected a professor in class
62 -the rest of the class didn't understand the lecture to
begin with
63 You know how to claculate specificity
64 -positive predictive value
65 - anion gap
66 -you can't balance your checkbook
67 You don't know what the weather was like for the past week
68 You don't know what the weather is like right now
69 You actually talk in open ended questions
70 DIC isn't a slang term for the penis in your book
71 You think B- is a bad grade
72 you have stressed about a pass/fail class
73 You study during most of your meals
74 You saw nothing abnormal about the Obsessive-Compulsive
Disorder
75 You draw all of the slides not already provided in the
handouts
76 -including the cartoons (humourous type)
77 Anatomy makes you hungry
78 You would even consider saying "Ease back on my finger at
your own pace"
79 You know the size of a RBC
80 - you don't know the size of a football field

81 Your eyesight has worsened by 10 pts or more in the last year
82 You have the library hours memorized
83 Hou have your own seat in the library
84 You score more than 95 on the Epidemiology final
85 You own more than one white coat
86 You have debated between giving up sleep or eating in order
to find more time to study
87 You started studying for boards more than 2 months in
advance
88 You have never received a personal invitation to discuss
your grades with the dean
89 A tie is the only addition necessary to what you normally
wear when you go to see patients
90 You wear scrubs to tests
91 You have made plans to study on a beach during vacation
92 - you actually did
93 You have a designated seat in lecture
94 - You have ever asked someone to move from "your seat"
95 You sleep less than 4 hrs a night
96 -you think that is plenty
97 -you have thought about cutting back
98 You study more than 35 hrs outsid of class
99 -you think you are a slackard
100 You think everyone answers yes to most of these questions

Scale
<20>
I am not on the verge of becoming a nerd, I swear!

My Laptop: Dead

Yesterday afternoon, my laptop had died. Passed away. Heaved the last breath.

/sad

That's all for today. Melbourne doesn't change by much though.

My Idea of Holidays

It seems inappropriate to write this at the very end of my 3-month holiday, as my idea of holidays hold no more purpose by now. But since the blog looked empty and people have commanded me to update it, I think I might just conclude my holidays with how I actually anticipated the very holidays.

My idea of holidays

• ...is spending quality time with people I love, bereft of culinary and academic responsibilities.
• ...is learning everything I wished I had time to learn, like chess, programming language, flash animation, swimming, English, general knowledge, ways to light up a girl's day etc.
• ...is to have a day off, lying on bed doing nothing.
• ...is to become fit as I exercise hard.
• ...is to rekindle and reinforce friendship bonds.
• ...is to read all the books I have missed throughout my life.
• ...is to watch movies which were undeservedly forgotten.
• ...is to write a blog about the difference between Malaysia and Australia.
• ...is to write many blog articles about thoughts and reality.

But I failed miserably.

I have a lot of ideas about holidays, but reality always strikes before I know it. Holidays have taught me that a resolution is only as good as the determination and perseverance. In any holiday, the temptation of lazing off is always greater than the resolution to do good things. So here I am, packing my luggage while leaving a lot of wish items unchecked.

Good bye, my holidays, my family, my friends and my hometown. I will head back to Melbourne tomorrow with rejuvenated spirit, and a new resolution which can't be shaken. The path of the future I will tread with an exulted spirit.

p/s: Note that I have changed my address. You can find my contact details here.