yep i'm back after such a very long absence.

haven't been updating for the past 6 months cause my life's been really crazy. not crazy-fun like i'm-partying-too-hard-to-blog fun, but more like crazy-my-life-really-sucks crazy.

first, a quick recap.

most importantly, i AM NOT IN TAIPEI ANYMORE. haha! i still get the occasional email and sms asking if i've stayed on in taipei for good considering my previous post was just before i flew off to taipei, and someone actually asked if i got married to a taiwanese!! LOL. so it was a fun but very wet trip since it rained while i was in taipei everyday.

came back from taipei, and it was a quick jaunt to nearby phuket with some of my old secondary sch classmates. it was a laidback, slack like hell trip, coconuts by the beach, eating icecream nonstop, indulging in some gambling in our monstrous hotel suite.. haha. definitely one of the best trips ever.

being in the faculty of no-holidays medicine, i returned back to school for an onslaught of short postings which truly, was pretty enjoyable because i knew the 2 major postings that were coming up after that were definitely not my idea of fun. rotating through anaesthesia at cgh, ophthalmology (eye) at ttsh (a lot of early days though, that was excellent!), ENT at cgh/ttsh, and finally the eyeopening experience in pathology where we got to go into the mortuary and watch autopsies right in front of our very eyes. the whole 8 week period doing these short postings were a breeze, with an occasional end of posting test here, and writeups there.

after that, my hell started. paediatrics posting. something i thought i'd be looking forward to. turns out, i only like kids, even though they're sick, but i really hated studying why they were sick and how to help them. i think my liking for kids should be channeled towards another job like a kindergarten teacher, and not a paediatrician. i can make funny faces and make them laugh, and carry them without dropping them, but ask me to diagnose a kid who is wheezing away with fever and a funny rash and some other concomitant problems, and i'm totally stumped. end of posting clinical test was a complete disaster, what was supposed to be a straightforward case turned out to be a total horrifying experience for me. i suck at vivas and oral tests where i'm supposed to come out with answers instantaneously. argh i just really hope i pass this posting overall.

thankfully, there was 2 week break where i took off for another quick jaunt to hongkong and macau. anson was the excellent tour guide and saved us loads of time. also realised how nice canto songs are! (despite not being able to understand a single word) and i realised that all hongkongers can sing. anson and his hongkong friend both sound like superstars, i think anyone in the street can just sing and sound like eason or sammi.

well, the worst was to come with the obstetrics & gynaecology posting. having heard so many horror stories about this posting from batchmates and seniors who have entered the realm of o&g and come out shaken, it is hard not to be filled with fear when we started this posting. so many rubbish paperwork and mini-clinical examinations where we had to hunt tutors to fill up silly little forms for review.. and then the horrible writeups, and late late times for tutorials (tutorials at 6pm?! you've got to be kidding me.) and more often than not, the doctor will say 'sorry, busy today. can't have tutorial.' o&g comprised of an osce examination, where basically its like this circuit of 10-12 stations with simulated patients and the doctors mark u in the 10mins u have in the room. remember when i said i suck at vivas and oral tests where i'm supposed to generate answers on the spot? well, as usual i crashed spectacularly in some rooms and from some rooms i emerged not knowing whether i passed or failed. ahh heck. whatever. we ended school on 22nd december, just 3 days before xmas.

and after a brief respite over the festive holidays, now i'm back to patho hell. pathology has really come back and bit me in the ass really hard after i did so badly in year2. now they expect us to go back to revise the whole year's worth of stuff and test us in like 2.5 weeks time from today.

seriously, at this time every year i really wonder why i am in medicine. a fellow classmate recently shared with me this online website where we found out that there are numerous pple out there who are disgruntled with medicine and it is scary to realise that i am finding myself agreeing more and more with their viewpoints as time goes by. i'm reading an entry eg. "101 things you wish you knew before entering medical school" [eg. #90 The best time of your entire medical school career is between the times when you first get your acceptance letter and when you start school. and my personal favourite, #47 Anatomy sucks. All of the bone names sound the same.] and i find myself nodding my head in agreement as i go down the list wishing i really knew.

but it is always during the preparation for the final exams of the year that i find myself REALLY hating the course i've chosen, and once the damned exams are done with and i'm given the all clear to proceed on to the next year, i find myself rid of these negative thoughts. but as the impending inevitable of the final year and eventually becoming-a-houseman approaches, i really wonder whether these negative thoughts will dissipate like they do in the previous years, even though as the years pass it gets longer and longer..

seriously, in all frankness, i really wish i had some time off school, sometime off all these damned clinical postings and associated tests and whatnots, and just give myself a time to think whether this is really what i want in life. sometimes i wonder what i'd be like if i weren't in medicine but i guess the grass is always greener on the other side, no?

thankfully the electives are coming up after the horrible horrible pathology exams, and hopefully the next 4 months will give me the boost and inspiration i need to see me through to the end of medschool.

and to you, the reader, thanks for reading this entry. pls post a comment, just say anything, it would be nice to see who's still regularly checking back on this blog (and wondering whether i'm still in taipei, haha)!