Unforeseen Consequences

And so continues the ongoing saga that is my clinical (hah! I wish...)

This week I'm up in Operating Theatre (or better known as OPSuite). There is a whole bunch of operating rooms where doctors work their magic in cutting up the human body and fixing it with the most advanced techniques known to humanity. Actually, it's a lot more primitive than I thought.

Having read many a sci-fi book and watch many a medical tv show, what actually happens in operating theatres is quite eye opening. I mean sometimes it gets downright brutal. For one operation, the surgeon had to get to the gallbladder (I think; I don't remember clearly), so he uses this soldering iron thingo and basically burns his way to the desired level. "Burns" is the correct wording here. One hand is holding a small clamp and the other holds the soldering iron. He grabs a piece of soft tissue and basically slashes it away, cutting deeper into the body. Scratch that, "burns" is that correct, "slash-and-burn" is a much more accurate wording. You could even see the smoke swirling around inside the human body. Since he's accessing the body through small holes which are plugged up with instruments, I have no idea where the smoke goes. Maybe it just floats around until the body absorbs it through diffusion. Another example is when the surgeon is trying to put a large steel nail into a patient's neck of femur. It had been fractured and the nail holds the bones in the correct position to heal. After several minutes of drilling and screwing fruitlessly, one surgeon suggested hitting the nail with a hammer, since "it will bend to the left" or something. I thought he was joking, until he picked a hammer and started smashing the nail like Thor smashing with Mjolnir (check Norse mythology; its fun). It looked so brutal but apparently the nail was going the right way, so the surgeon continued smashing away.

To be honest, OPSuite is kinda boring, since I can't really do all that much. I have done a bit of screening, doing real time x-rays for the surgeons, but I'm just a student. Other radiographers have to be nearby to make sure I don't kill the patient or muck things up. But it is interesting. I mean, getting to see surgery up close is quite cool and learning all these new things, it makes up for the boring moments.

Also, working there reminded me of the dangers of hearsay. A few of the other students didn't have the best experiences up there, due to conflicts with the senior radiographer up there. However, I never experienced anything as bad as the stories they tell. I know that he can be pedantic, and that's probably a reason why the other students don't get the best experience, but I can't really say anything bad about him. If anything I'm expanding my knowledge of the profession of radiography thanks to him. And as such, this presents the dangers of hearsay. Just because someone else says something about someone doesn't mean that it's necessarily true. Shades of Wild Swans, I know...

Just finished Half Life 2 Episode 2. It is amazing, an excellent example of game design in the swamplands of PC gaming. It also has a commentary track and you can listen to the developers and voice actors talk about the process of creating the game and why they took the directions that they did. It's very enlightening. It is a first person shooter, but it's definitely a series that everyone (at least every serious gamer) should play. There's a line in there that was spoken by one of the characters "Prepare for unforeseen consequences". That line is just in my head and I can't get rid of it. It was so well delivered. Now I have to wait for Episode 3.

Now I'm off to take a nap. Those lead aprons I wear to protect myself from the radiation are so fricken heavy. My shoulders are burning in agony. I might down a few painkillers.

The Lost Coast

I not suggesting that after last week's rant that you have a lack of common sense Land. Maybe you just suffered a brief lapse. When it happened to me, I was like, put my money in, see it rejected, sign says "insufficient change sale canceled", recheck display, see "exact fare only", take money and move to counter. Altogether maybe 20 seconds? Not over a minute of putting money in again and again. But that probably sounds a bit arrogant. I happened to notice the sign and all the other people didn't. The morning after the post I did point out it was exact change only to someone, but they snapped at me that they noticed, like a minute after first putting money in. Maybe they were having a bad day.

Anyway, the end of the week signifies the end of another aspect of clinical.

In this case it was General X-rays and Mobiles. Basically mobiles is taking a mobile x-ray machine and taking x-rays of patients who are too sick to come down to General X-rays (which is termed Work Area 1). 90% of mobile x-rays will be chest x-rays, with occasional other bits of body anatomy thrown in. When it's quiet, it's a nice little bludge. When it's busy, it's hell. And it's usually busy. Every 15 minutes the pager will go off with a request for x-rays, it could in ICU, neonates or halfway across and up the hospital. So while it does involve a lot of walking, it's the never ending request for x-rays and no rest whatsoever during the hours that drags you down. I don't like mobiles. You are constantly pulled in one direction then another, with difficult patients and sometimes difficult doctors.

Here's a little story. There was a call for a chest x-ray on the 5th level. When we got there, it turned out that the patient had just suffered a cardiac arrest and was only beginning to come out of it. One of the doctors turned us away, saying no x-ray was necessary. As we turn to leave, another doctor asks us if we're going to do a chest x-ray and is quite surprised when we told him told that there was going to be no x-ray. In the end, the doctor returns saying they want a x-ray but they will page us again when the patient is more stable. Time passes and finally the request comes down and we go back up there again. However, a doctor in the room (probably a different doctor, I'm not sure) turns us away saying that they don't need an x-ray. And we had to walk down and away again. I'm not blaming any individual doctors, but no one seems in charge and even the doctors didn't not what was going. One says yes, another says no. Make up your damn minds and come to a group consensus, x-ray or not?

And on the weekends, what do I do? Besides reading books and manga? Well, I've been playing through Half Life 2 and its sequel Half Life 2: Episode 1. It's an awesome game and great story as well. It just pulls you in so deeply. I'll probably buy Episode 2 later tonight, over Steam. Here is the intro to the original to take a look see.

Memories from the Wind Scene

Entering the third week of clinicals. Halfway there and it feels as if I've been working for so long. Just a little bit more to go then back to the uni grind.

One of the myriad of groups on Facebook that catch my attention is one whose name is something along the lines of "When I walk behind slow moving people, I want to punch them in the back of the head". Because walking slow is a bad thing apparently. I don't blame slow moving people. They have a reason (either good or bad) as to why they are moving slow. I just find an opportunity to overtake them, same thing applys to cars (with the exception of Lesley's dad, he goes sooooo slow). Apparently slow moving people equates to stupid people. Not necessarily. Moving slow does not mean you are stupid or lacking common sense. No that's different.

Here's something that's stupid or at least lacking common sense. At Granville Station, like most other train station, you can buy tickets from the counter or from the machine. Lately the machine had a bad case of the gremlins and couldn't give change; you had to pay the exact fare. It even says so on the screen just about the main one "Exact fare only". I was waiting in line and I saw the exact fare only sign, so I stepped out of line and moved towards the counter. When I bought the exact fare the next day, I ended up going for the counter because the line was full of people pushing in ten dollar notes and expecting change for their $5.20 fare, ignoring the "insufficient change" and "exact fare only" and keep pushing in money again and again. After a good minute, the person gave a snort of disgust and moved to the counter. And the next person would do exactly the same thing, pushing in money expecting change for a good minute before moving away. Rinse and repeat. Over the past fortnight, I've always noticed a short but determined line of people pushing in money, expecting change and getting none while completely ignoring the signs the machine puts up. I don't fault stupid people. Stupid people are stupid (well, duh) and eventually the laws of evolution weeds them out. Common sense, despite its name, is not very common, or at least, not as common as you like or think it would be.

Well enough ranting, what about clinicals? So good, so far. I did spend a day at the Children's Hospital in Westmead to see how different it is from doing adults. It's a lot different and I don't really like it there. I have nothing against children, and there are some pretty outgoing and funny kids over there, but there are also a large number of kids who scream and kick when just entering the x-ray room. I put it down to fear of the unknown, but I'm not 100% sure what's running through those kids' minds. It does not hurt, your parents are there as well holding you. Might be just me. I asked my mom if I kicked and screamed during x-rays or whatnot when I was younger and she said "no I was very quiet". There like this age where all the kids scream though. They seem to be around 2-3 years old. The slightly older ones don't scream even though they might be feeling a little overwhelmed and the slightly younger ones don't have a grasp of what exactly is going on. It very different, but give me little old ladies to x-ray anyday.

Also this week I'm on General X-rays, x-raying outpatients and in patients as well as doing mobile x-rays for those intensive card wards. It's been pretty cool so far, except they introduced a new system for processing x-ray cassettes. Generally speaking, most systems in Westmead are digital or DR. You place a part of the anatomy on the image receptor, a large flat board connected to a computer. The picture is taken and sent straight to the computer screen, where you can see a preview. It is very fast and produces minuscule amounts of radiation. Computed radiography or CR has a cassette with a photosensitive film inside. The picture is taken on the cassette, then it has to be taken to be id on a internal tag using a computer. A scanner reads the image and the picture is outputted on a computer screen. Longer and slightly more radiation. There is a new system for id-ing the cassettes and the other students and I had to spend some time to learn and familiarise ourselves with a new system. But it is much easier to use, definitely more user-friendly.

10AM shift tomorrow, so a few more extra hours of sleep...

Escape from Westmead

Another week of clinical is done. For the past week I've been working Emergency and while there are days where it was tiring, there were also days where it was downright boring. The weekends have never looked so good.

On Thursday I went out for dinner with some friends mainly to discuss our differing clinical experiences. We went to this awesome restaurant called Sahara at Parramatta near the bus stop. The food was great but no pics because I don't do those and I was starving at that point. I had some dish that had thin strips of lamb with bread and these sauces. Along with a couple beers and the meal went down swimmingly.

Also a few hours ago I had to put together this cabinet-slash-drawer thingy for shoes. It took almost two hours because of the shoddy engineering and near non-existent instructions. Well it did have instructions but it was a few small pictures with some pathetic labeling. I guess it did work my reasoning skills quite hard, but it works well now. My mum both that on a whim, because it looked good in the catalogue. I think it is a complete and utter waste of money and space. She doesn't have enough shoes to justify buying a little cabinet to store them, but what can I say?

That incident reminded of a time that I went to Westfields in Parramatta. I went to buy a book and get some gift cards. One of my uni friends was with her sister in Westfields and say me but she didn't say hi because "I looked very determined...like a man on a mission". I guess that the way that most guys go shopping. Generally speaking, of course, guys only go shopping when we need to buy something. We need to get that console game, that new book that just came out and maybe a new shirt because the old one is ripped. Less window shopping, more mission. Since then I've noticed that whenever I go shopping I have a clear definite list of things I need to buy and I go in, buy the items, then go out and home. Women tend to window shop and buys things on impulse more. Just a few observations.

Also bought Halo 3 for my brother. I've pretty much finished all of Mass Effect and a new game for the Xbox 360 (it still lives!) is just what the doctor ordered. And BSS finally managed to sub the remaining episodes of Moyashimon. And I'm uncapped so cue the downloading spree.

Man I'm tired. Clinicals really take a lot of you.

One Thousand Years of Pain

End of the first week of clinical and it has been pretty bludgey so far. That changes next week since I'll be going to Accident and Emergency, which will require me to actually carry out certain x-ray projections.

Last day of fluoroscopy was alright. Nothing to exciting. The only procedure that was interesting/disgusting/shitacular was a double contrast barium enema. Basically the doctor shoves a tube up your back passage and injects barium contrast. He then pumps some air to help drain the contrast out, hopefully leaving a thin film of barium on the surface of your large intestines. Various x-rays are taken, hopefully showing pathology. It's pretty disgusting and luckily it was the doctor having to do the insertion and not us. Now I see my doctors get paid a lot more than us radiographers; they have to do the dirty work.

After that I hung around Work Area 1 doing outpatient x-rays. I did a chest x-ray and was glad to see that my skill had not degraded that much. It wasn't perfect but it was good enough.

Also, I've made a nice little discovery. It's a fish and chips shop that also started doing Asian food. I tried it for lunch with a friend and I give it two thumbs up. I can't transfer photos from my phone since I don't have the cable and I'm not the type to start taking photos of my food. Neither am I a connoisseur, but I was hungry and the food was great. So if you ever visit Westmead Hospital or Westmead Children's Hospital, just go towards the station and stand in front of Oportos near the corner of Darcy and Hawksbury road. Turn go the road and go into Queens Road and you should see the shop Western Seafoods.

Also been playing Advance Wars: Days of Ruins. Not enough for a review, but it's a much darker game then previous AW games and the COs are much more balanced. In AW:Dual Strike the CO powers could instantly changed the tide of battle.

Now to catch up on rest.

My eyes are burned by the fluoro

Finally, something happened that was worthwhile to blog about. My clinical placement at Westmead started yesterday.

There are six guys altogether at Westmead, including me. We're all in the same awkward position; technically, we're second-years, but we really only have first-year knowledge. Plus the assignments that we have to do really screws things up a little bit.

It was the usual show and dance. We rock up, get kicked in the teeth with all the OH&S and emergency regulations and get the standard tour around the department. This being my second time at Westmead, I had a good idea of where all the departments are located. The radiology department is full of right angle turns and intersections, so you best bet is you're lost is to turn randomly and if it's a dead end, go back and take another path. Personally, during my first visit I spent a ridiculous amount of time simply walking to the other departments, using the tea room as my reference point. So I can always find my way to and from the tea room.

I've been working in fluoroscopy since the beginning and will stay there until the end of the week. Fluoroscopy is basically real-time x-ray imaging. Occasionally, patients will swallow some barium contrast to show extra details. Apparently that tastes really bad because a prison inmate was supposed to get x-rays of his throat and he puked on the barium and refused point-blank to drink any more. And he was supposed to swallow it two more times.

Fluoroscopy is pretty good in that, there is only a handful of ops in the morning and there is plenty of time between ops to have a break. Some ops can take well over an hour and the other radiographers there brought books along to pass the time. Unfortunately the time can work against you. Today, there was a patient in for an op on his small bowel. Twist number one: he has MRSA. Look it up if you don't what it is, but it's bad. During the op, we injected contrast into his system. As it made its way through the bowel, we gave him three booster shots of contrast to ensure it would reach the whole bowel. Which leads onto the second twist: he shat himself. He wasn't in the best of shape, so the booster shots actually worked against us in the end. It soaked through all the layers of sheets and reached the foam mattress. Plus he has MRSA. So we had to disinfect everything with copious amounts of hospital-grade disinfectant. This sort of shit doesn't happen often, so it was bad luck for us.

I also go to sit in on an ERCP prcedure. ERCP stands for Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, and it combines fluoroscopy and endoscopy to treat problems in the pancreatic duct systems. It's pretty simple actually, you turn on the real-time x-rays when the doctor tells you to, and you take an x-ray when the doctor tells you to. And it has 20 minutes gaps between ops. The bad thing is that the doctors always seem to speak softly, so you have to concentrate like hell on listening to the doctor. I had a go at using the system during an actual op and there is nothing worse when you miss the doctor's words and he has to repeat them. That happened to me several times and each time I felt like a complete dill.

Well, the clinical is only two days in and I have 28 days left. Now off to bed to rest. I can't remember the last time that I had to stand with no place to sit for 7 hours.

The odds against me

Nothing much to report. The holidays are beginning to draw to a close, and with clinical looming ahead, I actually feel glad about it, despite my nervousness. There is a whole bunch of assignments and evaluations that I have to do during clinical and its got me a little overwhelmed. Still, it'll be a interesting challenge.

There is a new little show that I'm having fun with. Since that writers' strike doesn't look to end anytime soon, I've been on the search for new stuff. This little gem is called Never Mind the Buzzcocks. It's basically a British version of Spicks and Specks, a musical quiz with a lot of humour thrown in. It's on Youtube, here's a little snippit.



Pretty fun stuff, like when Myleene Klass briefly talks about her pregnancy diary and the host is making a joke on who people don't really knows whats going, and Bill Bailey just yells out "THE BABY" and plays some scary techno music, "WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?", more music, "MYSTERIES REVEALED!". Definitely some funny stuff.

Playing some Oblivion as well to pass the time. It's a massive world.

I'll post some more stuff when I have some more news.

All the little sparkly things

Happy new year for 2008 everybody! And belatedly, a Merry Christmas. I was capped in the leadup to Christmas, but the new year brings uncapped internet once again.

Because of the capped internet, I spent NYE with a whole bunch of friends in the city to watch the fireworks. Lesley was the organiser and he did a bang up job of getting hold of the hotel room. The room itself was small. It was meant for two people and with around 15 people enjoying the the new year it did get a little squashed. But the views were excellent.

It was basically dinner at Fullhouse then fun and games back at the hotel. There was handheld gaming on, with several PSPs and Nintendo DS games. Mario Kart DS and Tekken 5 were the favourites. There was a poker game that basically went through the night and into the morning. I'm still new to poker and most of what was happening went right past my head, but I did get lucky in beating Olivio and he was forced to drink 8 shots of vodka (or was it tequila?). Not all at once mind.

The fireworks were good and there was plenty of cheers around when midnight struck. I still think the 2000 fireworks were the best. Whenever you were tired you did your best to take a nap with the the sound of poker chips and gaming dancing around your ears. Things got quiet early in the morning and everyone was suffering from the late nights and drinking. Breakfast at Macca's took away the edge though.

It was some good fun on NYE. It makes you realise that in the overall scheme of things one year isn't really that long. Time really flies and it's important that you cherish your friends and family. All the good times over the year add up and now 2008 starts on a very positive note.

Oh, and here's a little pic that Mi Zhou took sometime during the night or day.

I never got any decent sleep, so it was basically one-hour blocks of bad shut-eye, although I think I ended up 4-5 hours of sleep, which is pretty good. The bed was full so I grabbed a bathrobe to use as a makeshift pillow, put my feet up against the wardrobe and grabbed some snooze time. Here I was asleep with the legs propped up at 45 degrees by friction with the wardrobe and the arm resting on the strategically placed drawer. I did get a bad case of the pins and needles and there was some residual pain afterwards although everyone else thought it was pretty funny.

Proof that when you are dead tired, you can fall asleep anywhere.

Tonight, tonight, tonight

Ever since I bought my Xbox 360, I've kept a somewhat wary eye on it. Its reputation for loudness, overheating and failure often weighed on my mind and sometimes I ask myself: Why did I buy an Xbox 360 in the first place? I now have the answer: Mass Effect.

Mass Effect is a sci-fi role playing game from Bioware, who made other excellent RPGs like the Neverwinter Nights and Knights of the Old Republic series. And this game has all the hallmarks of a Bioware game. Excellent plot, interesting characters and amazing visuals. You play Commander Shepard, a human soldier trying to save the galaxy. You can customise Shepard in a myriad ways, from gender, hair, and facial structure. The combat is fun and simple, and there are plenty of quests and things that keep you busy.

I bought Mass Effect for a mere $77 and I've been playing it since Monday, racking up 30-something hours of play. I've been hooked since I started playing and already I'm thinking of playing it again a few times just to try different play styles, dialogue choices and plot options. And the times that I'm not playing Mass Effect, I'm catching up on reading. I introduced my dad to the wonders of buying stuff off the internet and while he is suspicious of eBay, he has really taken to Amazon and has already bought a swag load of books from them. The books on my list right now are:

• Secret Army Secret War: Washington's Tragic Spy Operation in North Vietnam by Sedgwick Tourison

• The Black Book of Communism by Stephane Courtois et al

• A Devil in Paradise by Henry Miller

I've only finished the first, which basically details the shitty US spy operation in North Vietnam. Basically they trained South Vietnamese soldiers to do special ops like in World War II, recruiting freedom fighters and disrupting the North Vietnamese Army by blowing up bridges and dams and etc. Pretty much all the ops were massive failures. There was no clear leadership nor goals and later when clear goals were detailed it was way too ambitious. All the parachute drops into North Vietnam basically failed. The teams were drop way off course and in most cases were captured by North Vietnamese forces within days. The VC had basically penetrated the operations centers in the South and the US were too arrogant to assume that they had been compromised. It just shows that while the US is the world's foremost superpower, it has and can be defeated in the battlefield. That's what Vietnam was. A defeat. And that's not mentioning the conspiracy theories on how the US cut deals with China to abandon Vietnam. It's an interesting but depressing read.

The two other books I haven't read yet, but I'll probably start with A Devil in Paradise, seeing that the Black Book of Communism is over 800 pages on detailing the failures and atrocities of communist regimes.

Well I guess it's back to some more Mass Effect.

Wicked Game

Bought the Xbox 360 a few days ago and I've been playing a lot ever since. Got it at GAME for $499 plus 2 games (Viva Pinata and Forza 2) and I was damn lucky since I got the very last unit left. I'm hoping that's a good sign.

It is a lot bigger than I thought. I have a slim PlayStation 2 and compared to the Xbox 360, it's tiny. The first thing I did was to plug it in, turn it on and stare at it for 15 minutes. I was half convinced that the moment I put in a game, it would play fine then explode in a shower of red flames and leaving a small mushroom cloud behind. It's fairly quiet and it doesn't get that hot. The Xbox 360 has a notorious reputation for being loud, overheating and dying just after the warranty expires. But I think I got the new Falcon revision with a smaller CPU, so that's probably why it isn't so loud and hot.

It ended up costing quite a bit, the console pack itself was $499 plus wireless controller with charge kit, extended 2 year warranty, plus an extra game NBA 2k8. I picked up a preowned copy of Gears of War for $44 yesterday. Gears of War is proving to be great fun with co-op. My brother and I have probably finished half the game already. It's a bit of challenge playing a shooter on a console, since it's not at accurate or easy as a PC. I bought Gears of War from GAME, but I'll probably remove the "preowned" stickers and trade it in for something else, Assassin's Creed maybe? Mass Effect comes in on Monday, so I'm hurrying to finish Gears of War soon.

I also dropped into Borders at Parramatta Westfields just to see if any new books caught my eye. And one did. The Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, part of a tetralogy of books. It's the third book and seems to be freshly translated from Russian into English. I've grown to love the series. Think Harry Potter, Russian style, set in a post-communist Russia with more adult and philosophical musings. If you enjoy fantasy, you should pick this up quicksmart and the earlier books, The Night Watch and The Day Watch.


Also picked up a DVD of We Are The Strange. $40 bucks plus delivery from the US. It's a very strange film and it's definitely not for everyone. The plot is about two outcasts, a doll called eMMM and his female companion called Blue. After meeting each other, they travel to a sinister city in search of ice cream. However, bizarre monsters roam this city all apparently controlled by the evil ruler called Him. Fortunately, they encounter a hero called Rain, who starts destroying all the monsters around them. The rather vague plot does the job, but the entire movie is held together by it's amazing and alarming strange visuals.


The director, calling himself M dot Strange, combines stop-motion animation, 8-bit artwork, computer imagery and sheer strangeness, creating the visual weirdness that he dubs str8nime. Str8nime is basically strangeness + 8 bit artwork + anime. The film itself is more of an emotional ride. It's more of "what do you feel right now?" rather than "wtf is going on?". And if you subscribe to the former, then the film is much more enjoyable. Seriously, this film looks as if Pixar made while high on drugs and it's mind boggling that M dot Strange basically made the entire film himself over a period of three years. I guess the film reminds me of 300. That film had a thin plot to string together the massive fight scenes and was a primarily a visual experience. We Are The Strange is no different. Check out the homepage and Youtube channel before deciding to commit to this.



That's it for now. The holidays is a bit more manageable and the horrors of clinical practice is still weeks and weeks away. That is going to be hard.

On Occasion

I've basically decided to bite the bullet and buy an Xbox 360. Despite my fun experiences with the Nintendo Wii and the now less expensive PlayStation 3, the games I really want to play are on the Xbox.

Knowing Jimmy, he'll probably drop a comment noting that I am mistaken in my choice, the Xbox 360 is shit, and with a month I will curled in a fetal position, sobbing, because I got screwed over. And on the balance of probability, he'll probably be right. But I'm taking that risk. There's a whole bunch of games that I want to play that are only on the Xbox 360 and not on any other platform. Mass Effect is a prime example.

I'm going to go buy it at GAME (they took over GameWizards) since they have the Pro bundle with 2 games at only $499. And I'll probably throw in an extra controller, maybe an extra basketball game for my bro and some extra warranty stuff. That'll probably add another $150 at least.

I already have my eye on Mass Effect. Too bad both EB and GAME sell it at $100. I've found a site that sells it at $77 with free shipping. Oh, the wonders of the internet. Unfortunately, my coffers will be sorely depleted. I might get some money for Christmas or maybe flog the unwanted presents over Ebay. And maybe get a job. No wait. Can't really do that. My second year of uni has 18 weeks of clinical Mon-to-Fri and unless it's weekend work I can't do it. If it were weekend work, I'd be so tired.

Now, once I have an Xbox 360 within the next few days, I should probably try to convince my dad that a new HD tv would be good. Space will be an issue, so I don't think I might be able to get those big plasmas. Bah, I'll cross that bridge later.

And when will this writer's strike end? House ended weeks ago and I need my fix. At least Doctor Who will be unaffected.

Eyes are at the Billion

I've settled somewhat into a comfortable routine of waking up, checking my downloads, then spending my time catching up on reading. It's been a long time since I read for pleasure, but I've hit up some goood books, so this post will be more like a review.

First book that I'm currently reading is The Age of Turbulence by Alan Greenspan, who is the former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve for over 30 years. Look him on Wiki and you'll know this guy is the real deal. His memoirs deal mainly with his experiences growing up and working in the world of economics, especially his time at the Federal Reserve. He goes on to examine the economic policy of several American presidents, and he is quite critical of George W. Bush's economic policy. Besides that it's also a massive discussion on how capitalism is the only market economy that works and how to have a successful capitalist market you need a democratic government. Those people doing economics would find it easy reading, but since I've never did anything economically related in my life, there were a few parts that had me puzzling over the technical terms.

But it's very educational and enlightening. My dad always said that if you read a book and you learn just one new thing from it, then it's totally worth the price of the book, regardless of the actual price. I subscribe to that view. For example, western Europe's economy is going to well with slow growth and high employment. Greenspan argues that there is too much labour protection that it hampers the economy. It's become too hard and expensive to fire employees that employers don't want to hire more people even if they need to, because when the economy slumps then they have to fire people which ends up costing a lot. Now I can see some of the reasoning behind Howard's whole WorkChoices thingo, but I reckon that some kind of labour protection should be in place, especially against unfair dismissals and the like. Howard probably wanted to go a little too far.

Next up is The Six Sacred Stones by Matthew Reilly, the sequel to The Seven Ancient Wonders. It's a very action packed novel that reads exactly like a Hollywood action film. 30 seconds of exposition then non-stop action and explosions. There is some character development but it's still minimal at best and you need to read the first book to get the full effect. It has a massive cliffhanger ending which pissed me off to no end, but it does it's job of making me want more. Definitely pick it up, it's different from how other authors right and because to that it's fun and exciting.

I'll probably buy more books eventually. The Dune series attracts my interest, combining science fiction, with environmental, religious and political messages with a hint of military action. Frank Herbert wrote six books, and had planned to write more before he died. His son, Brain Herbet and sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderson are writing the continuation. They did write the prequel series to Dune, which was alright, but it wasn't as good as Frank Herbert. Still I'd like to complete my Dune collection one day.

And finally some anime stuff. To be brutally honest, I don't watch that much anime. I read manga much more now, since it's always ahead of the anime and doesn't have those massive fillers. I used to watch Naruto and Bleach, but the fillers pissed me off. Eyeshield 21 is a manga I also read, since the anime, in my opinion, is crap. The last anime I watched was The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It was different, quirky and fun. A second series is coming out next year supposedly. However, there is any anime that caught my attention quite by accident. It's called Moyashimon : Tales of Agriculture. It's about a boy who goes to an agricultural university, with the unique ability to see, hold and communicate with microbes. It's different and its taken me by surprise. With my minor Chemistry background, it is quite interesting, the whole microbe thing. Also at the end of every episode, they showcase a new microbe, its name, where its found. The draw the microbes in a very cutesy way. I'm sure plushy toys are just around the corner. You can find it here, and personally, I watch the BSS subs. Watch it. I highly recommend it.

That's all really. Oh and if anyone is having a party, BBQ, outing or anything, just drop me a line and I might rock up. Holidays is starting to get a bit boring, and my clinical placement doesn't start until January 29th.

There is a reckoning...a Crysis...

Why am I blogging at past 3am? Woke up to muscular pain due to playing a Wii. I've rubbed some of this oil thingymabob and now instead of pain there is a stinging warmness that takes the pain away.

First of all, to the reason of muscular pain. There was a Wii Party at Dorothy's place, a uni friend of mine. Everyone bought a dish for the dinner while a light lunch and nibbles were provided. I came on time, but one of my friends was late from the airport and that held up the rest of the group who were waiting at Lidcombe station to drive them there. So it was near 1pm when everyone actually arrived. But it was a lot of fun and forced me to examine my views on the Wii.

I've always viewed the Wii as innovative but something of a lightweight. The style of play on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 has always appealed to me more then the motion controls of the Wii, and certainly for some games the use of motion controls are questionable as to whether it was really effective. However, the Wii is actually quite revolutionary. The motion controls are dead simple to use and the party games are definitely much fun at the very least. And while the Wii is still a lightweight in terms of graphics and power, I'm sure Nintendo has a Wii 2 in planning that will offer better graphics and performance.

Onto some gaming now, since that's what I've been doing these past few weeks in the holidays. I have played Crysis and Call of Duty 4. Crysis lives up to the hype. It's a graphically beautiful game, and the freedom given to you to achieve objectives is wonderful. However, the game does lean towards the run-and-gun style of gaming. I've played it three times, one of times I tried not to kill anyone at all but its quite difficult. Your cloaking powers don't last that long while running and taking a long route is...well...long. Sometimes you have to kill enemy soldiers so that they don't alert their comrades. Still a very good game.

Call of Duty 4, however, is a bit of a mixed bag for me. It plays more or less exactly like Call of Duty 2 but with better graphics and new weapons. It's nothing revolutionary, more evolutionary. Still, like Call of Duty 2, it paced well and is a great ride. The plot is decent and I liked how it drew you into it. Multiplayer is blast, according to my brother. It's easy to kill and even easier to be killed. The more people you kill, the more you level up which gives you greater access to better weapons and better powers. I'll be trying that out tomorrow.

I still have Stranglehold and Kane and Lynch to play, although Kane and Lynch wasn't rated that highly by Gamespot. Also I'm reading several books which I'll do a quick review later.

Maybe now I'll get some sleep.

Long Odds

Woah, haven't updated in a while. Got capped along the way but that's been fixed now so I'm back on the net again. So updates.

Paintball was mad fun last Wednesday. It was quite hot but a beautiful day for some paintball action. Drove to Rouse Hill for Action Paintball. I came prepared to spend lots of money, but actually didn't spend that much at all. I went for a $40 gun upgrade and boy that was worth it. The standard paintball gun (technically called a marker) shoots around 3-4 shots per second with an effective range of less than 20m. My marker had a very sensitive electronic trigger, did 15 or so shots per second and had an effective range of 50m. Needless to say, the ability to pump out lots of shots relatively accurately made me the bane of all the players involved. In one game, each team had a general who could only be killed by a headshot. I quickly targeted him from a safe distance and let off a volley of shots. By the time he yelled out "Hit!" and had his hands up in the air I had hit him 4 times on the top of the head. Fun times.

My brother's new comp finally arrived. AMD Athlon X2 6000+ with 2gigs of RAM and a 8800GT. Pretty decent specs. I'm dual-booting Vista and XP since my brother doesn't feel comfortable with Vista yet. Still it has plenty of grunt and I'm looking forward to Call of Duty 4 and Crysis.

I was capped a few days ago, but I have temporarily upgraded to the 20 gig plan, so now I have 8 gigs on-peak and 20 gigs off peak to use. More expensive at $94.95, up from the $64.95 we pay for 12GB/24GB plan. However, it didn't go through as expected initially as I was capped, and the online form to change plans didn't go through because I was capped. Had to call up Optus and get tech support to change it. It actually wasn't that bad, only took 10 mins of waiting. Last time, my dad called to change billing details and it took over 30 mins before he could take to a human operator. Thank god I wasn't on hold for so long.

So now I have more bandwidth to use until the end of the month. I won't have that slow-ass feeling of being capped from 2 weeks.

In Mass Transit

So the new computer order is in, and all I have to do is wait a week or so until its ready. Until then, I don't really have much to do, except some Neverwinter Nights and CounterStrike Source.

Actually it's mainly CS. There are a few mods out there that spice things up, instead of the old 24/7 dust/office servers. My favourite at the moment is called Gun Game and the Deathmatch mods. Gun Game basically has you start with pistols and slowly level up to better weapons as you get kills. You have to get kills with the designated weapon though. Add the deathmatch mod which respawns you back in a few seconds, makes a very fast-paced game. The two last levels are pretty hard, grenade and knife. There are a few favourite servers but all of them have friendly fire on, you sometimes it's tough to identify you targets and engaging them quickly. I'm temp banned from one server for too many team kills. But it's really fast and its easy to accidentally start shooting your team mate.

Well that's really all. Just spending my time on CS until paintball comes around on Wednesday.

My eyes are bleeding...interesting

Exam period, where I cram everything I need to know into the few hours or so before the actual exam, as opposed to actually taking the time to study. I'll pass. No HDs or even Ds but I'll make it.

Brother is getting a new computer, and I'm a bit jealous but its his turn. Being the second child he seems to get all the hand-me-downs over these past few years. So this will probably cheer him up. The bad thing about buying a new computer is that there is never a good time to buy one. Intel's Penryn and AMD's Phenom are lurking in the wings, so anything I buy now is going to be obsolete soon. DDR3 is on the horizon as well. At least the nVidia 8800GT is looking good. Personally I would wait a few months, but since my brother wants one now...I'll just make the most of it then. Forgive the techno-speak for those not on the computer hardware scene.

Next exam is radiographic practice, which tests which projections I use to x-ray the anatomy and related pathology. The exam will probably rape me bad. As long as I don't fail though. Crap thing is that I have a clinical briefing at 11am, to update our radiation monitors and tell us where we're going. Except the exam starts at 9am and ends at 11:10am. I'm not sure who that's going to happen. The dude in charge of clinical should check out exam schedules again.

Paintball next Wednesday because it's been a while since I last had some paintball action. Plus I get to drive there, so a little more freedom. Still I have to find my way there. I might get my dad to accompany me on a scouting mission on the weekends. So I know where to go and don't get lost.

Job thingo went well enough. I think I'm in and all I have to do is wait for the email stating my starting times (after the exams of course). Altogether $150 for 10 hours work over the weekend. Not that bad. On Sunday, I was working with this Chinese uni dude who was studying accounting. He kept bending over to lift the heavy boxes, when he should have kept his back straight. Next time you have to lift heavy objects, either alone or with a mate, dammit, keep your back straight and use your leg power. Not worth it having a crick in your back.

Djobi Djoba

End semester exams are two weeks off, so serious (*cough*) study mode. That said I do have a little this and that to do.

Found a possible job just a few days ago. It's in a warehouse, decorating Christmas trees and then shipping it off to the customers. Sent my CV in and dude emailed back wondering if I could work today and the weekend before the official interviews. Couldn't work today, but told him I could on the weekends. He probably wants to assess me and see how I go. I do hope to get this job. Christmas is coming around the corner and it's mighty hard to buy stuff if you're broke.

Almost a week ago, I remember have a little discussion with my friend about razors and shaving. Yes, guys can talk about shaving. He was extolling the virtues of the Gillette Fusion, the one with five blades and saying how good it was. I was a bit skeptical but interested. I use a standard three-bladed one and its cuts alright. I might pop into the shops and buy one to test out. Everytime I shave it starts to grow right back out after a day.

Also watched Friday Night Download. It's not that bad. I remember Channel 9 or 7 had something similar but I think it's off the air. The videos they choose are quite good. Like there was one of those Japanese educational ones that encourages little kids to use the toilet. It's a good mix of the weird and wonderful.

Funny little email also popped into my inbox. From an old primary school friend called Noah. It's been ages since I've last seen him, 2005 was our last reunion if I remember. Apparently he goes to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. All thanks to Facebook. It's turning out to be quite a useful social application, despite the massive amounts of vampire and werewolf invites, but at least that's dying down now. To be honest, without Facebook I doubt I would ever have any contact with him again. Despite that, it does have it's drawbacks. There's no delete function, so you can't delete your profile and I think it's too easy to steal someone's identity and create a Facebook profile of them. Still, so far the benefits seem to outweight the risks.

And listen to some Gipsy Kings. Awesome guitar stuff. I wish I could play a guitar that well. I never seem to have the discipline in the first place.

Sorry, please try again

With my brother having much more free time due to holidays and HSC, he has been hitting up the net a little harder than usual, so right now I'm capped and it is ten long painful days before I'm uncapped again.

To alleviate the pain, I tried to strike a deal with my dad. Upgrade to the next level of the plan (20gigs) for the remainder of the month and then downgrade back to the old plan next month. As a sweetener I even offered to pay the extra $30 on the bill. Didn't work. My dad was skeptical that they would allow such wanton changing to plans and observed that even with the extra gigs (8 or so) I (meaning me and my brother) would use them up anyway. He felt that the 12 gigs is enough and we should tough it out. So plan failed. The offer to help pay the extra cash to make up the difference failed. Well, shit happens and you have to deal with it.

That said, this incident brings out a few wise words out from the depths of my memory. The first thought was from a manga called Eyeshield 21. It's about a Japanese high school American Football team trying to make it to the finals. One of the characters notes that your chance of succeeding at something will be 0% only if you don't attempt it. As long as you try and have a go, your chances won't be 0%. It might not be that much higher, but you will have some chance at succeeding. That's how I consoled myself. As long as I talked to my dad and brought it up, the chance of failure was high but not guaranteed. It might have worked. The second thought that came to me after that was it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Maybe I should have just upgraded the plan, profit, humbly apologise when the bill came along and then offered to pay the difference. Well, since he was rather hostile to the idea, might as well tough it out.

You know how sometimes you have these very weird yet so realistic dreams. I just had one of those. It started off with me running and gunning these bad guys ala CounterStrike, with a dash of John Woo's Hardboiled gunplay. So I'm shooting these guys down with dual pistols, doing flips and spins until I get to the last guy. He's pointing a gun at my face, which I managed to deflect yet inexplicably I fall down. The scene changes to a rooftop on a dark, rainy night. I'm lying on my back and the guy is pushing down on me trying to choke me. I'm trying to strangle him. I can't make out his face clearly, but he's grinning ferally. Rain falls onto my face. Eventually I take a deep breath and push at his chest with both my hands only to wake up with my arms outstretched and panting hard.

It was so damn real. I could feel the drops of rain splash against my face. I could feel my hands clasp and jab ineffectively at his meaty throat. And the finish push I felt my hands slam against his chest, only for me to wake up at that point. As I got back to sleep, I felt uneasy. It was a dream, right? Did I actually dream it? Dreams can disappear so quickly from your memory that you start to wonder whether you actually had that dream at all.

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

-William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Sorry, were you in the middle of something?

Awesome. My David Attenborough DVD The Private Life of Plants just arrived moments ago. Can't wait to pop that into the DVD player and finally watch it.

That was my first docu that I ever watched. My aunt had a VHS copy of it, and I was so fascinated, not only by the info but with the video techniques and presenter who gave off this radiant aura of knowledge, that I watched it whenever I could and even borrowed it for a while. I distinctly remember this, because I was also doing public speaking in primary and I was trying to emulate the way David Attenborough spoke and his mannerisms. Now I pretty much have his whole set of documentaries. He's making his last series at the moment. On my buy list already.

Now, I read on some forum somewhere, some when, that the poster absolutely hated mobile phones going off during uni lectures. Not my biggest peeve, since at uni I perma-silence my phone and it's relatively rare that ring tones go off. They are usually silenced quite quickly. What annoys me more is the chatting you get during lectures. Don't get me wrong. A few whispered words or sentences don't piss me off. Doesn't even register on my radar. But the lecturer stops talking for a moment. A little fumble in the slides, or maybe some delay as they mentally rearranged themselves for the next topic, and all this chatter starts. It's constant and always seems to be a buzz in your ear. You're trying to listen to the lecturer make this important point, and all you can hear are snatches and ends of conversations. My pysch lecturer told us to be quiet and asked 'why are you so noisy?' and some student replied '...boring...'. Boring? So leave. No one is forcing you to stay. If you find the lecture boring then leave and go do something exciting. Don't keep talking and disturbing everyone else. Eventually, at the break, half the class left and you could actually hear the lecturer speak and not worry about the voices you hear echoing in your head.

Private Life of Plants now. Then maybe some Halo 2, a sprinkling of Neverwinter Nights, garnished with a touch of Phoenix Wright Trials and Tribulations.

The Right Stuff

I have a little rant coming up, but let's get the little stuff out of the way first, yes?

House season 4 has started. I've seen the first two episodes direct from the US and it's proving to be exciting watching. House used to be about the strange and weird medical cases that no one could solve, but it later became more about the interaction between House and his three assistants, Chase, Foreman and Cameron. That became the whole point of the show, it was what made the show good. So when all three left at the end of season three, I was a bit worried that the fourth season would turn out to be a dud. Instead he has to hire three new assistants and the interaction between him and med people is so damn funny. Two thumbs up so far.

Rant time. This happened today during our neurophysiology lecture. There was supposed to be a 9-10am lecture, but the dude never showed up, something kept him away. So we had a 2 hour lecture instead starting at 2pm. So he starts his lecture and people realise that his lecture is nothing like our notes. Turns out the notes are for revision, and his lecture notes won't be on WebCT. People grumble and start taking notes. Every slide there are murmurs of complaint, yells to go back to the last slide and afterwards grumblings of discontent. The general consensus seemed to be "why doesn't he put up the slides on WebCT, the bastard...".

Okay, so the lecture slides will never go up online (copyright issues due to using pictures from a textbook) and we have to resort to pen and paper. So can you actually shut up and take notes? Why all the complaining? It's amazing the amount bitching people can make just because you have to take notes by hand. And it is taking notes! Not writing down the entire fucking slide. Come on, you know the drill. You read the slide, then jot down the essential information. Then maybe transfer to a Word document for easier revision. A load of time was spent doing nothing because people kept yelling out for the lecturer to go back, because they hadn't finished copying all the details on the action potential and the five main stages in neural activity. I think that having the lecture notes on the Web has soften most uni students. It seems that we can't survive without having notes on the net.

Yes, I'll admit that I was a little peeved off at the fact we had to do some manual note taking, but what did I and most of the understanding students do? Suck it up, break out the pen and paper and do some note taking the old-fashioned way. Not hiss and moan at every single slide. Really, this comes down to the fact that shit happens and you just have to adapt to the situation. Or don't take notes.

Hmmm...I do feel a little better now. Now maybe instead of procrastinating, I'll dig my teeth into some work.