Randomly me, again!

Wow its been a while. I guess ill return to my bad habits of sharing my day to day happenings with the rest of the world, after a year long hiatus? haha. Oh well, some updates. I have gained a lot of weight. Were talking massive amounts. Probably in the tune of 15-20kgs. It took me a semester to burn that off, now with a compromised spine, i don't know when or if ever i will be able to get rid of it all.

second bitch point. I am off to medical school, as some of you guys may already know. It was a surprise acceptance..i was already planning for a career in research. But i guess i have a different purpose in life set aside for me. One day, ill tell my kids how at one point, my destiny was decided on a single hepatitis B jab. But that's a story for another occasion.

Busy busy busy, busy with applications here and there. Ill have to fly to Adelaide to pack up my stuff before returning to kl, then to Miri, then to kl, then to Dubai then to Dublin. Sore bums anticipated. But the good thing is, ill be living using euros..convert that to Thai baht, and you become a millionaire! Ill be able to have my long anticipated koh samui vacation next summer. Which gives me roughly 10 months to get in shape, to cut my man breasts, my extended ass as well as iron out my "keg" into a six pack- rugby team joke.

Oh well, as my gym buddy use to say- we fat people need to lose a girl in order to get fit. Another insider joke which i will explain one day, but i think most people will get it. Thats all for today. And i need to give this depressing black background a facelift.

PS. I want a smartphone, but i have been so out of touch with technology. So anyone can kindly explain to me, what is an android and what is an app, ill give you cookies. And discounts on all future consultations and surgeries (this is akin to buying stocks..if ya get what i mean)

Have a nice day!

Give me 20 good reasons

Yawn.

Alas, boredom has led me back to this wretched blog. I swore i gave up writing for good..until i got hurt which resulted in me being confined to my bed for most of the day.

So lets re-wind to about a month ago.

I was in the Uni gym, pretending to be iron man. I ran 30 minutes on the threadmill, 10 minutes on the speed cycle and a further 20 minutes on another cardio machine of some sorts. Went on to lift weights that were way to heavy for me. And this was my first decent workout in weeks thanks to deadlines etc.

I woke up the next morning feeling awfully sore, especially in my calves and chest. Typical post workout sensations i thought to myself. But then theres this unusual pain on my lower back, and it seems to radiate to my left butt cheek and left thigh through the calves and into the ankles.

Very unusual. But i convinced myself that its just a pulled muscle of somesort..hey..what doesnt kill you makes you stronger right? So i went gyming again! Doing the same routine albeit abit hindered by the muscular and back pain. Running 4 kms was tougher than usual and resulted in me getting charlie horse-calve- cramps.

The pain has just begun.

Over the next few days i faced excrutiating calve cramps whenever i walked, an extremely annoying muscle restlessness and general discomfort whever i sit and agonizing dilibitating pains whenever i got up from sitting.

I tried whatever i knew, from counterpain to massage, all failed. Out of desperation i tried Ibuprofen and that seemed to relieve the pain for 4-6 hours.

I went to the doctor after enduring weeks of the pain. He took one look at me and said " You have Sciatica."

What? Whats that?

"Sciatica, S-C-I-A-T-I-C-A, here you can google it, but essentially it meants your sciatic nerve is irritated by a herniated disc on your lumbar"

My mind focused on the words Nerve, Lumbar, Herniated and Disc. And i knew that was bad enough!

So fast forward to today.

Here i am spending 75% of my day on the bed, doing useless things like studying the art of infantry warfare and reading history books. I have a scheduled appointment with an orthopedic surgeon this friday at University Malaya Medical Centre. I just hope that he doesnt recommend surgery. My australian doctor told me that surgery was a last option, and this opinion was seconded by my physio who was convinced that the injury was due to bad sitting posture =.="

So lets see what the surgeon says!

Best scenario:

"aiya, small case la yours..should be in a few weeks you wont feel the pain ady la..continue taking your current medication and dont go clubbing ok?."

Worst case:

" Im sorry to say that damage to the L3 and L4 is pretty extensive....MRI confirms herniation....surgery highly recommended..no gym for a year post surgery. And no clubbing ok?"


Please pray for scenario one!!!!!

Trapped in the quiet solitude of constant worries i find myself humbled.

I am not what i thought i was, nor am i what i want to be.

Flashbacks of past memories haunt me again.

Shame, disappointment and all thoughts of negativity.

To strive for what is right in a world of wrongs is laughable.

I have always had a strong belief, that i have the ability to soar, soar as high as i want to.

Believing with all my heart and soul that i and i alone, am the master of my own destiny.

In the joy of success i have abandoned all that is important.

In the pursuit of perfection i have hurt others around me.

In the arrogance of knowledge, i have turned on my own creator,

and in the belief of my own ability, I have misled myself.

So now as i sit in realization of my own neglect, i realize that i am nothing.

I cannot do it.

This will be the death of me.

Update

Hello. Its been a while? how are you..yes im talking to a wall, welcome to my monologue.

hahah ok enough random scribblings..

Have been extremely busy this past week, and the weeks before that as this blog can testify.

I've just completed a presentation on immunohistochem which sucked just about that much of my life. Heres some nice photos to look at..



ooo spleen cross section XD. Stained with oxidized diaminobenzidine and counterstained with haemotoxylin. Butterfly looking thingy in the middle is the PALS surrounded by primary follicles and marginal zones.



This is....a strip of bacon! its cheaper to buy it in central market than in coles supermarket. +_+

Actually its a section of the lamina propia, and i dont think it can be found in any supermarket.

ok enough with brown boring pictures..

I still have a few urgent things to pass up this month. A completed daybook for micro, a literature review and full length report for genetics.

then final exams and sem over! Muck about in adelaide for a week plus plus then fly home to msia, 2 weeks in KL, xmas in kuching as usual then back to my beloved hometown of miri.

Ok, now i want to bitch about how much weight ive gained.

7kgs to be exact..want to see how much 7 kg changes someone?

i show u..

Before 7kg weight gain:


me and my ex-wife rachel, after she left to uk we got a divorce coz she cheated on me on some random brit lad she met in a chem eng pub crawl.Thats the reason why i gained 7 kilos..because i was so depressed

7kgs later.


This is judith lee. shes not my wife but somehow she looks pregnant..not mine thats for sure...at least i think so..oops. hahahahaha!(Judith if u ever read this please dont kill me, consider ur slippers FOC haha!)

ok, short term goal, 10kg loss. Long term goal 20-25kg. *rocky theme song starts*

Ok lah, enough for today..ill give a picture guide of my work lab soon..if i have the time. Chowz

Day 43.

It has been 43 days since i first arrived in Adelaide.

Today i was having one of my emo moods again in the morning.

No this isnt a love story, ill leave that topic for now. Its about my decisions for the future. I have been thinking alot lately about what im going to do after next year. I have always wanted to do medicine and would be my ultimate dream to be accepted into a graduate programme.

But the thing is, I dont feel i have enough brain juice to do it. I have always doubted myself in this aspect. Im struggling for this final year in biomed doing double majors. And i suppose it will only get harder in med school, that is if i can get in.

Then theres the issue about the amount of time i spend, graduating only at the age of 25/26. Ill be 3 years behind my friends. Then theres the expenses etc etc.

Most importantly, theres the admittance process, in which i need a degree of good quality(second upper or better), high GAMSAT scores, interviews etc, and a very illustrious cv of which my greatest achievement was probably......oh wait , i have NONE.

So as i was thinking about all of this on my morning bus ride to uni with my characteristic blank stare into nothing.(besides checking out the cute girl a few seats infront of me ocassionaly. She super jual mahal and smokes . What a turn off. )

ok back to the story...

As the bus approached one of its popular stops on the north terrace, near the convention centre and casino, an elderly man came abroad.

Instinctively i asked him wheather he wanted my seat. He politely said no, and told me that he wasnt going far. So i remained seated and continued staring out the window. Suddenly he asked me " So are you off to Uni?"

I said yes. He then asked me what i was studying and i told him biomedicine. He couldnt hear me that well and assumed i was studying medicine.

This were his following words

" Medicine eh? Thats a very good field to go into. Ive been volunteering in the hospital myself for about 13 years. I help out in the food kiosk every wednesday." he told me proudly.

Holy shit, this frail 70plus year old man is a hospital volunteer?? I thought he was going there to be treated, not to serve others!

So i left the bus and the old man feeling not so emo anymore. Its inexplicable, im not sure why. But somehow i was kinda smilling to myself after that short conversation with a random elderly man.

A few minutes later i clocked in for my lab placement in the molecular life science building. Wasnt expecting a good day at all.

Dr Ben left me mostly on my own today, trying to use some of his troubleshooting procedures to save the cDNA batch which i worked 2 weeks to produce, but seemed to not want to replicate in the PCR machine.

So i carried out the procedure, using another template, diffrent buffer, different enzyme yada yada. Let the gel run for a few minutes and processed it in the big computer-UV light thingy next door.

I really was expecting nothing to come up on the screen. Coz everytime im left alone to do stuff i always screw up one way or another.

Lo and behold. An image like Jesus's face on the shroud of turin came up on the screen. And indeed, it was nothing short of a miracle.



To some of you, this would mean absolutely nothing. But to me, those pathethic smudges proved that i have successfully cloned FMR1, FXR1 as well as the FXR2 genes.

You guys may not sense the wow factor in this. So to put this in perspective, we anticipated troubleshooting this part for at least a few weeks, when we nailed it in 2 days.

Hearing the heaps of praises from Ben as well as his marked increase in optimism for this mini project was all that i needed at that point.

Todays experience really lifted me. It started with the random encounter with the old man, and ended with the successful wetwork in the lab. How does this tie to my future?

It just showed me that things dont always go badly. With a little optimism dilligence, a dash of luck ..good things are bound to happen.

So ill just keep my head up, and stride on. Hey, the impossible does happen.

Thanks for reading this meaningless post, till next time, see ya.

Another saturday.

Another week is over, week 4 of the academic calendar is about to start.

Week 3 was kinda hectic with me getting sick on wednesday, missing 2 lectures in the process (thank god for audio recordings.)

hectic because i had to pass up my lab day-book, which seemed rather empty a few days before the due date..there was supposed to be 2 weeks worth of experimental data inside..some things never change :)

Speaking about week 4, i have a big paper on Hepatitis B viral treatment to write -due on week 8, not a single word has been written.

And i have another literature review about my mini project due around then as well.

AND my project is going to Kick off this monday. Havent read the protocols which my supervisor sent me.

SO,

with a whole pile of shit facing me what do i do?

Buy lotto.(Similar to 6D)


My ticket out of hell.

Why buy lotto?? Because if i win 4 million aussie dollars i wont have to pass up all those stuff i just mentioned.

Unfortunately, I didnt win.( well DUH!)

And i got a very stupid haircut, thats why im covering my face. Shit. Im not going to that chinatown barber again.

Me: Dont cut so much on the top ok.

Ah beng barber: Ok ok, I don't SCISSORS here.

I knew something was wrong when he cut my hair literally millimeter by millimeter..performing all kinds of funny scissors work and technique...@@

AH, nevermind. Cut already, paid 18 dollars for his lousy work.

Spent the rest of the day watching How I Met Your Mother and day dreaming about what i could do with 4 million dollars.

So heres a list of what i would do with 4 million aussie dollars IF I HAD WON today.


1. Immediately buy a first class ticket back to miri to tell my parents, meet up with friends. Fly back to Adelaide before monday.

2. Go to the motorbike shop behind my apartment and purchase my dream bike- Honda CBR 1000 rr

3. Ride my baby to the driving school, and pay the auntie 10,000 dollars to make me a license without sitting for the test.

4. Move out of the hostel, and buy a swanky apartment on North Terrace, just opposite of rundle mall. And like, 2 minutes walk away from school :)

5. Wait for the next weekend, fly back to malaysia. Pick up Phil from sandakan, connecting flight to taiwan first class. Party in taipei for the weekend.

yes brother, if i win lottery we will make our taiwan party dream a reality haha.

6. After partying and throwing money at pretty taiwanese leng luis in exclusive clubs, fly back to miri..make an annonymous donation of 1 million ringgit to St.Columba parish.

That way ill save myself from hell. Ok enough day dreaming. I want to do something more productive....like watching shutters for the 6th time.

Bye!