I was just talking to Steffa last week when we met up for lunch. She had just come back on a 8-month round half the world backpacking trip and we were catching up on the recent events of our lives. Near the end of our quick 1 hour lunch meeting, she mentioned that each time we met, it was like a 1-hour extreme catch-up session where we virtually throw up summarized stories about the past year's events to each other. (Of course the more jucy ones get extra air-time... Heh heh).
Anyway, from our conversation, I realized something... I had nothing much to say. Was my life that boring? It was work, school, home over and over again. When I got home after lunch, I did some thinking while I was cleaning up dog poop from the balcony. I thought about the direction my life was heading and my realization was that I still wasn't sure.
Sure... I have a relatively stable job, I'm 1/3 of my way through to a degree (I hope), I have wonderful friends and family + 2 idiotic but absolutely adorable dogs. What more can a guy ask for? Well... If you're reading this God, I'd like to be able to fly. (As in Superman kind of flight... not in an aircraft.) That plus a lowering of the temperature here by about 5-10 degrees centigrade please.
My point is... I still don't know what I want to do in life. I'm just living life a day at a time. I really can't see anything beyond a couple of months down the road. I know my current job is not what I want to be doing in the near future. I also know that I want to finish my studies. But what comes after that... I have absolutely no idea.
I know that I may not be the only one feeling this way but being a control freak, it's really freaking me out.
I guess I'll just have to deal with it the way I deal with other unpleasant stuff in my life... AVOID...
Soooo... we had a BBQ over the weekend at Weng's place. I gave an open invitation to the entire clinic but it was quite a last minute thing so only 10 people showed up. Still, we had told ourselves that we were going to enjoy ourselves no matter how many people turned up and boy did we have fun. As usual, I ate too much and I also learnt that you should never place 10 Capelins over a very hot fire all at once cos you will end up ripping them up while trying desperately to flip them all over before they get burnt to a crisp.
Also, during the week, we had our first Lab sessions of the year for Medical Microbiology and Immunology. For our first immunology lab, we were told to make a 3D model of a lymphoid organ. Kind of like craft work. We were advised by our friends to make a model of a lymph node as it was the easiest. Our group opted to make a spleen instead.
At the end of the day, out of 6 groups, we ended up with 5 different looking lymph nodes models and 1 spleen.
There wasn't enough modeling clay to go round so we used some putty for mending pipes (courtesy of Max). Here's some pictures of our work of art.
What I couldn't understand for the life of me was why we were doing it in a laboratory. Now correct me if I'm wrong but I'm under the impression that science courses are more expensive than lets say... business courses due to the cost of the laboratory sessions. So there we were, dressed in our fancy schmancy lab coats, making clay models... something that could have been done in... oh I donno... say AN ORDINARY CLASSROOM? What's more, the clay that we used must have been some really bioharzardous stuff cos we had to keep our lab coats on. The fact that the air conditioning in the lab couldn't cope with the increased number of students (more on that later) didn't make a difference to the school that we were wearing coats in a tropical climate in an overcrowded room with inadequate air conditioning. What gives man?
As for the increased number of students, since year 2 started, we had an additional 20+ students from the accelerated program join our class. That brings our class size to almost 60 students. And to think I thought that my class of 40+ students in high school was big. This takes the cake man...
If the government was subsidizing our school fees like in high school, I wouldn't have minded. Just try to imagine this. Your course costs alot more than others because they claim that lab sessions cost more. By lab sessions I mean this:
Medical Physiology Lab - We were supposed to conduct an experiment on the force of muscle contractions on electrical stimulus using a frog's muscle. We went to the lab full of expectations. The lecturer showed us the equipment for the experiment which had been laid out on a bench in the lab. We were then told that the school didn't have permission to use actual frogs and we were made to watch A VIDEO OF THE EXPERIMENT. Based on the dressing and hairdo of the people in the video, I'd estimate the time of production to be sometime in the 1980s.
And that was not the only lab session where we watched a video in-lieu of an actual hands-on experiment. What's more, our lab manuals usually say "Work in pairs" but in reality, we had 4-5 students in a group.
*CoughRipoffCough*
What's more, one of the lab regulations is that we are not allowed to bring our bags in due to safety reasons. That's the standard in almost all labs I know. So the school has kindly installed COIN-OPERATED lockers ($1 per use) OUTSIDE the labs. By outside, I really mean OUTSIDE as in the building. Of course we made noise. One of our classmates even started a petition (which I signed thinking it was the attendance sheet) and the next day, our course manager came and gave us a "talk". The gist of the talk was that the lockers were installed so that the lab rules can be complied an that the school was not going to force us to pay for the usage of the lockers. (No pay = No lock). Some of us brought up the fact that the lockers are located outside the building and that it raises some security concerns. The reply we got was that if we wanted to make sure our gear was secure, just plonk in a dollar.
*CoughRipoffCoughHackRipoffCough*
I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.
