Wired.com's top 10 new organism list

I spotted this top 10 list on Wired.com. It's 2007 top 10 'new' organism list.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/12/YE_10_organisms

It's quite amazing. The combination of new traits that can be implanted is massive.

Dog days

I spent the day testing the Sony Alpha 100 DSLR. I only got the camera last week and I wanted to get used to the control as I have a wedding to shoot tomorrow. Overall, it was an easy transition from my older camera which is the Konica Minolta 5D as the controls were similar. I must say though, I am a little disappointed with the camera. There was some nice new features but it's not drastically different from the 5D. For me, the part that really annoyed me was the amount of noise it produced beyond ISO 400. It may have 10MP but the image quality is about the same after post processing in photoshop.

As it was a wet and miserable day out, Odie became my test subject.

Here is a sample of the photos taken. Not true indicator of the camera's ability though as I've worked these pictures in photoshop. The rest of the pics are on flickr.

Merry Christmas

Just a quick post to wish you all a Merry Xmas. I've just completed my last day at work in the Limerick. Now to get things ready for the move to Mullingar. I am not looking forward to it at all. The girlfriend and I will be heading over to her parents today for the traditional Xmas dinner. No plans for the evening yet. Then it's a couple of quiet days before it's Hazel and Barry's wedding. Very important as I'll be doing some wedding shots then. Fingers, it will turn out fine, worst case scenario, I would have learnt something from it. Will let you know how it turns out.

Not much else to say. Have yourself a Merry merry Xmas time folks.

Quick update

Apologies for the lack of recent updates. I have been busy. Between sorting out details for the new job in Mullingar and work, there hasn't been much time left to update my blog.

I was invited to take some pictures at a Fashion show a couple of days ago. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance to do so. Click on the picture below to go to my Flickr site for more fashion shoot pictures.

Learned a couple of things from the shoot:

1. People don't look as good if you don't get them to pose for the camera. Most people just don't look naturally good in the camera.

2. If you are shooting without a flash, you need to know where the light sources are. It is unfortunate in my case when the models reached the end of the runway, the lamp was overhead. Consequently, a good bit of their faces were hidden in shadow. Most of my runway shots were crap. Had a few back of the scene , pre run way shots that turn out ok though.

3. Alternately, shoot with a flash. I am not a big fan of flash photography but then it's probably because I don't have sufficient skill in using them. Any how, should the pictures look flat in terms of light source, you can always alter the light source is photoshop later.

4. Shoot lots! You'll be surprised how many of your pics are out of focus, poorly litted, blur, compose poorly, crap.

5. As I've never shot an event like this, I didn't know what to expect and I started running out of juice half way through. Make sure you have enough batteries. If you can't afford battery packs, the alternative is to buy a few more batteries and have them charged up before you shoot your event. Batteries are pretty cheap these days.

6. A fast lens with fast auto focus helps. If all else fails, get to know your manual focus control.

7. Shoot in RAW format. It gives you a lot of room for correction later.

8. Alternate angles as well as position around the catwalk if possible. (wish I had done more of this)

Potrait

The girlfriend strikes a post. Getting her to post for a few potrait shot is no easy task. Click on photo for some other pix at my Flickr site.

Meeting the priest

I recently met the priest of the church in which I was to be married. I wasn't looking forward to it. Nevertheless, I made an effort and put on my best purple shirt and washed behind my ears in preparartion for the meeting. That way, if I sat next to him during the meeting, you could then say cleanliness was truly next to godliness. (ouch!)

Meeting this priest is compulsory otherwise he wouldn't let me get married in 'his' church. Secondly, one of us needed to be Catholic or else the church would not be available to us. In this case, it was the girlfriend that professed to be Catholic but in reality she belonged to a group of people that believed in The Giant Bunny in the sky, loosely known as the “Bunnymen”. Then he needed to discuss the need for a marriage course and last and not least, the various charges that needed to be paid for the use of the church.

So the priest asked what religion I belonged to, I said Protestant. He dully wrote 'prot' in brackets next to my name and ignored me for most of the meeting. So he went on to have a Catholic to Catholic chat with Carol, emphazing that it was only ok for Carol to marry me as long as she vows to do her best to bring the kids up as Catholics, within the unity of the marriage of course, bla bla bla. I kept my mouth shut because I knew there's not a chance that was going to happen. The kids are going to be Bunnymen, through and through and we were going to celebrate Christmas on Easter, and that would the end of it!

As mentioned before, one of the things we were encouraged to do was to attend a marriage course. It sounded like a good idea though I don't think I needed it. It felt like a money racking scheme as it would cost 150 euros per couple. Apparently there are couples out there who have decided to get married without considering certain basic questions like if they wanted to have kids, home finance and who would be wearing the pants at home, etc etc.

So the priest yapped on for a good hour without offering me or the girlfriend the chance to ask anything (no tea and biscuits either). I was bursting to interject but decided it was pointless to do so. I may as well comply somewhat because I wanted to use his building for my wedding. By the time it was over, I was just happy to leave because I was getting hungry. But I must say, I was then beginning to feel somewhat excited about the wedding, it was just a sense that it wouldn't be too long now! Hooray!

Liverpool 8 - Besiktas 0

Liverpool 8 - Besiktas 0

Nice. Now all we have to do is a few more of this in a consistent manner so we as Liverpool fans have less heartache.

http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/mediawatch/drilldown/MW12027071107-0854.htm

Odie on the kitchen floor

More tales from the hospital crypt

There's nothing healthcare workers enjoy more than hearing stories about how inept their fellow healthcare workers can be. Makes for gossip apparently.

Take for example the story of the student nurse that was told to clean all the dentures of the patients in the geriatric ward. As the story goes, she collected all the dentures in a single wash basin and gave them all a good brush. Never mind the unhygienic implication, there's the obvious problem of trying to match the dentures to their respective owners. Not easy as you'd probably guess.

This leads to another story where a care attendant discovered a missing set of dentures. Concerned that the patient might be mad because he/she was missing her dentures, she decided to take the initiative and find out who owned them. So she went and approached all the patient who didn't have dentures and see if the dentures fitted one of them. This went on for quite a while as the dentures departed one mouth and entered another until a nurse stopped her when she realised what the care assistant was doing.

Then finally, there's the 3rd year nursing student who was told to fit a conveen on an 80 year old male patient by a staff nurse. For those of you who don't know what a conveen is, it's a plastic sheath that fits like a condom with a tube attached to the end of it, allowing a patient to pass urine into a bag without getting out of bed. So this nursing student disappeared for 30 min and emerged from the ward. At this stage, the staff nursed had already forgotten about her.

“So where were you,” the staff nurse enquired?

“Oh, I was with the patient. I had a difficult time trying to get him hard!”, answered the student.

Apparently this old man had a big smile on his face for the rest of the day! Hope that put a smile on yours too.

Good night!

ps: If you have any funny hospital stories yourself, please send them my way. I would love to hear from you.

Ass Invasion

I get unusual cases at work from time to time. Some make my day and some are just simply bizarre. Today's one for the bizarre cases. I had a man come in today worried that he might have been raped in his sleep. He, for obvious reason cannot be named, had too much to drink and was hanging out with this mate of his whom he claimed was of bisexual orientation and would bugger anybody up the ass.

So this two cowboys were having a few drinks together and happened to crash in the same living room that night. I don't know what happened that night but he woke up in the morning thinking he had been ass invaded. He shows one week later in the Emergency Dept, wanting to know for sure if he had been sexually assaulted. I asked him why he would think that, he cited it was because his mate was bisexual and had multiple partners. The moment he said that, I looked around to see if the crazy squad had arrived to look for their missing nut case.

So I asked him if he woke up the next day with a sore ass. He said no. So I ask him if there was traces of semen, vaseline on his body the next day. He said no. I asked him if his clothes had been removed from his person or if there was any sign of physical injury or struggle. He said no. I asked him if his mate had been known to sexually assault somebody, he said he didn't know. Well, I told him then it was unlikely anything had happened. So he asked if he was okay then? I said "Yeah, you're probably ok" though what I should have said was, " No, you're not. You've got some serious problems mate! Now shag off!"

I'll Kill Him

Hey there, it's one of those days at work again. 12 hours of mayhem. It didn't help that I had a cold brewing inside me. Anyways, I treated an infant today who was brought in by his mum. The kid had fallen off his buggy and mum wanted to be sure he was ok. So here I was examining the kid, building rapport with mum and child. Big grinning face on the kid and I decided I would press on the lump on his forehead just to see if it's boggy. Sure enough the kid started crying.

Mum smiled and tried to console the kid, knowing I was merely examining the kid. But she said something that really startled me.

"It's ok, it's ok. Oh poor boy. I'll kill him, I'll kill him".

I paused for a second.

I know she was not being malicious but the expression was a little disturbing. I've heard the term used when somebody's pissed off with somebody but there was no sign of anger here and it was totally out of context. Granted she came from a rough part of the city but surely that can't be part of their daily vernacular, not especially when talking to a 1 year old.

Another patient I saw jumped off 40 feet as part of a suicide attempt. With the exception of a couple of broken bones in his spine and a couple of busted ankles, he was relatively ok. The funny thing is this was his fourth attempt at suicide. Maybe it wasn't meant to be. Maybe it high time he gives up and embrace life!

Anyway, time to get some sleep. Long day tomorrow!

Good night!

One Night Stand

Not my life story, just the name of a song by a band I manage. The video below is that of my guys playing one of their live gigs. The song's One Night Stand, the venue, Carlow Music Factory. Our myspace site: www.myspace.com/thesecretpolice .

Have a good bank holiday weekend.

Carol sips coffee

This is one of my favourite pictures of Carol, taken nearly a year ago. The pose doesn't really show how irate she was with me when I took the picture. We just had a small argument and I was going through a phase then where I took my camera with me wherever I went. Knowing she was irate, I took this picture at my peril. Glad I did too! Which reminds me, I must take lots of pictures when we go to South Africa in 3 weeks time.

Emergency Department Stories

It's been a couple of crazy but fun days at work. First we had a young chap in his 30s presenting to us at 8.30 am after sleeping out in the cold after a few drinks. It was -2 celcius when it happened and he showed up with a core temperature of 25 celcius. He had arrested on route to the AE department. We spent 2 hours just to bring his body temperature up to 30 celcius before he started breathing spontaneously and his heart beat returned to normal. At this stage, he had been defibrillated multiple times and had warm water tubed into his body core via every possible orifice. Last I checked, he's doing quite well in ICU.

Later today, the ambulance brought in a lady in her 70s who had just had status epilepticus. For those not in the know, that just means continuous episodes of fitting. She was unconscious when she came in so I had to quiz the husband for a collateral history. He was quite shy about telling it but it transpired that they had decided to stay in bed for the day and take it easy. However, in doing so, she neglected to take her anti epileptic medications for the day. Hence the fitting episodes. We all thought it was quite sweet but the drama wasn't over yet. As he was sitting there waiting for us to complete our tests on her, he too collapsed and had to be checked in for further test.

Wait, there's more. Then came in the daughter, who showed up to see her mum. Upon entering the AE department suddenly developed abdominal pain and had to be sat down. We thought to ourselves, this is all starting to sound like a piss take! What are the odds of having 3 family members checking in at the around the same time for various reasons? We just had to roll our eyes and hope the rest of the family don't decide to follow suite. Busy day, lots of drama, good fun. Hope you have a good weekend.

ps: We've decided, Odie needs to get the chop!

Stag Weekend

Last weekend I went to my first ever stag weekend and discovered that the stag weekend was not really about the stag, but the people that went with him. Ok, maybe this weekend is probably not one of the tamer stag weekends but having said that, it would be similar to a typical night out in Ireland except that it was drawn out over 3 days with no holds barred. I had never experience something like this before and consequently the weekend was spent watching a group of 17 men, actually boys, decidedly behaving badly, indulging in unrefrained excesses and acts of dumbing down ones conscience (applied for those that had any at the first place) I was, through it all, rather intrigue of the motivation and pack mentality of the group.

To summarise, weekend activities included:
Lots of drinks
Trip to strip club
Casino
More drinks
Pulling any bird at any oppurtunity. (There's no quality control here)
Clay pigeon shooting
Random bird snogging contest
and then More drinks

Oh how the drinks seemed to help pass the time and bring out the fools in all of us and sometimes I wonder if this lot could manage a good time without any of that. Don't get me wrong, these are a bunch of nice guys, some of them just a little too nuts for me! Some of them wanted to go on my stag and it got me worried for a minute.

Clay pigeon shooting is fun though! I am gonna look into buying me a gun and join a local clay pigeon shooting club.

All in all an interesting weekend, but I felt it might have dragged on a little. Would have appreciated more activities rather than just hanging around the pub playing pool. Good break from normality nevertheless!

Boa Constrictor

The girl friend came home and told me this story today.

Apparently a friend of a friend had a boa constrictor for a pet.

Now this lovely boa constrictor would sleep curled up at the foot of her bed every night. Once a month, she would feed it a tasty gerbil or hamster. Apparently boas don't eat very much. Then suddenly, the boa stopped eating and refused any food offered to it. So she decided to take the boa to see a reptile specialist in Dublin. The man gave the snake a once over and gave it a clean bill of health. Suggested perhaps the snake just wasn't hungry. So our friend's friend brought the boa home.

Two months later, it still wasn't eating. Another trip to the reptile specialist yielded no answer. Normal examination. A couple more months passed and still the boa wasn't eating so she brought it back to the specialist. This time round, he still couldn't find anything wrong with it. So he queried if there was any change in terms of habitat, home environment or the snake's behaviour. Everything seemed to be the same except that the snake did not spend its time curled up at the foot of the bed anymore. When she wakes up in the morning, she would find the snake stretch out alongside her.

This alarmed the specialist and he suggested that she had the boa put down. This was because the boa was eyeing her up and was starving itself so it could eat her!

Now, how bout that for a potential urban myth! The girlfriend claims it's fact!

Good night!

Stress Management

Stress is a part of modern life and yes, you know that too.

Stress is implicated as being a factor in a lot of medical conditions. Primarily heart diseases and hormonal disorders. Stress causes the releases of hormones (cortisol and adrenaline) responsible in conditions related to fight-fright-flight responses. Not all stress is bad of course. You have positive stress (eustress) and you have negative stress (distress). Positive stress is what drives you forward and it's something that motivates you in a positive manner. Negative stress is the opposite, where the outcome is generally manifested in physical and mental ailments.

Why am I writing about this? This is because as of late, I've been feeling lethargic, fatigue and irritable. Not to mention the increased amount of neck and shoulder aches I've been experiencing. Heart burns and palpitations were also quite frequent. My primary source of stress is my work. I don't and rarely relax at work. I feel as though I'm on my toes all the time. Anticipating a major case and wanting to be ready when it happens. I know I've been stressed out as of late but I haven't really addressed the issue nor did I really know how. It's not really something they teach you in medical school. Well, I don't know if the current syllabus has been modified but when I was in med school, there really wasn't a chapter on it then. I figured it was time to do some research.

A simple google search on stress management will reveal a truckload of articles on the subject and a whole lot of different suggestions on how to deal with the issue. The challenge is to simplify things and to make it practical for every day use. I'm a big fan of algorithms and flow charts as it helps me to structure my thoughts. Here's the first one.

That's pretty simple huh?

I would say a lot of stress is avoidable. But in some cases, they might not be. Those not living in the free world, under persecution will find that they don't have a choice in the matter but in a lot of cases, negative stress can be avoided. The only thing then is to weigh the options and to decide if avoiding stress is the best strategy in those circumstances.

I'll touch on stress avoidance strategy in my next post. Till then, have a good day.

Negative close relationship may increase heart disease risk

For those of you in bad and stressful relationships, this might be of interest to you. Archives of Internal Medicine reports that people who have frequent negative interactions with the people whom they feel closest may have an increased risk for heart disease! That's right, your spouse or partner may give you a heart attack if you are in a crappy and stressful relationship!

So beware, if you find yourself in an unhappy relationship of late, perhaps it's time to consider measures on how to fix it or get out of it. Otherwise, it may literally kill you!

Click here for the abstract of the article.

Odie learns to lie down

Odie had a bath today. Deservedly so, he was starting to stink. Not like it's a punishment but Odie's no Newfoundland, so he's rather adverse to water. But he got his wash anyway. Got rid of the smell but somehow he ended up shedding a lot of hair in the process. I think it's the warm water. Had to give him a good brush and there was dog hair everywhere. I think some of it got stuck in my left nostril.

My blog seems preoccupied with Odie of late. I know, it seems that's all I seem to do for the last few days, is spend more time with him. I've been teaching him to lie down . I was expecting him to do it in one week but he's learnt it in two days, two thirty minute sessions. I'm impressed as all this while I thought he was a dumb dog but seemingly, he's just willful. Even now, he won't lie down immediately. He'll wait and see if you would back down with your request before he complies. The key to training a dog tricks is to never let him get away with disobeying you. You have to mean it or he won't listen to you. As you can see from the video below, Odie will try and have his way first.

Training Odie has been fun. It's been satisfying to see him actually understand what you're saying to him. Then there's the part where I have to figure out how to make him understand what I want him to do, creating pathways of associations. Actions that generate rewards, and counter actions that generate the abscence of reward or a negative reactions. Having seen a few episodes of Super Nanny, I'm starting to draw parallels between child discipline and dog discipline. The methods for training either are actually very similar. All very Pavlovian.

Anyways, I'm off to play some Halo3, which I must say, is somewhat overrated!

Good night.

Odie's puppy picture

I was sorting out some old pictures when I stumbled on some pictures I took of Odie when he was still a small tiny puppy and how he's grown. It's something for you dog lovers, hope you like it.

Odie learns to stay

It took me a couple of weeks to get Odie to learn how to stay. I especially wanted him to calm down before I fed him so that way he didn't jump all over me when I brought the food out. Here's a video showing Odie being a good dog. Odie doesn't touch his food until I say 'Go'.

It's nice when he behaves.

Narcissistic Praise Junkie and Thrash Your Wedding Dress

I stumbled on a few interesting articles on the net.

Wired.com has an article on how the US Navy Recruitment who did a study on the milineal generation likens them to 'Alien life forces' who are 'Narcissistic Praise Junkies' who expect to be praised just for showing up at work. Apparently recent childhood is defined by ego stroking and the reports goes so far to call them the coddled generation. Maybe it's just a generation gap thing because I suspect every generation before them thinks the current generation have it easy. Maybe they are having it easier in some ways but I suspect other things like competition at school and work may also have gotten tougher. Check out the article below if you like.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/omg-navy-calls-.html

Thrash the dress. Saw this in the local paper today. Have you heard of this before? Apparently it's the 'unconventional' way of ending your wedding day or getting extra mileage out of your already so expensive wedding dress. Do a google on it and you'll see what I mean. I think the only people to benefit from this are the wedding photographer. Imagine this, we have this standard package that cost 1000 euros. Then if you want a album it cost 1800 euros. Then there's probably the option of adding thrash the dress, so it's probably 500 euros more. From the general response on the net, not everybody thinks it's cool. The girlfriend doesn't think it's cool. I don't think it's cool. But then I can be quite a sentimental person. I feel the dress is an integral part of a wedding ceremony, and having something physical to connect you to the event is something nice. Each to its own I guess but the pictures from it do look pretty good.

http://trashthedress.wordpress.com/

Good night.

Paediatric Rotation

Emergency Medicine is one of the fields that exposes you to patients at the extremes of the age spectrum and at everything in between. So a rotation in Paediatric Medicine in somewhat essential and it's something I need to do next. Funny thing is when the nursing staff asked me what I was going to do for the next 6 months and I told them I was trying to get a paediatric rotation, they all gave me this funny look. Granted, I did say kids are nothing more than expensive hobbies and generally find them irrelevant unless they can be taught to do tricks, it does not mean I cannot function well as a paediatric doctor. Take for example, if you brought me your expensive car, your precious little hobby, and asked me to look after it as a favour, I would. Not only will I treat it right, I'll also make sure it gets a nice shine on it every sunday morning. So if you brought your little bundle of joy to be seen by me, I will without a doubt, treat it like your little bundle of joy and send it home beaming!

Why am I not a natural with kids? I suspect a few things along my medical career has bruised me irrepairably. Rewind the clock back seven years and you'll find me in Katete, Zambia as a medical student running the Paediatric Malaria ward. I am proud to say I didn't lose a single sprog in the 6 weeks I was there. However, one thing that puzzled me was everytime I approached a baby in the ward, they'd start crying before I even touched them. One day, I enquired why that way the case, the mother answered and the male nurse dutifully translated that it was because I was ugly. That can't be good for anyones self esteem.

Granted, I don't look anything like Zambians. Put a Malaysians smack in the middle of Zambia they all start calling you Japanese because you have this thick trendy glasses and a goatee. Hang on, did she think Japanese people were ugly?! So it's not me really!

Anyways, I've mellowed down over the years and have learnt to deal with kids a lot better. I got a Basset Hound called Odie a few months back and I've learnt a lot from him. Oh wait, I can hear Odie barking. That means he's hungry and it's time to feed him! See, I might be on my way to be the best Paediatric SHO this side of town yet!

Odie the Basset Hound

I've been messing with Odie for the last few days. When we got Odie, we were hoping for a placid little dog that doesn't require too much physical activity. I am not sure where I stumbled on the information that the Basset Hound would make the ideal low activity animal and I'm sure I got my info wrong. Well, this fella can play all day, and play he will until he drops from exhaustion. Not quite the lazy and placid animal we were hoping for. But nevertheless, we've come to love him and we find ourselves suckered by his irrestible cuteness. I've been attempting to teach him tricks and he loves tricks. I think dogs love tricks in general as it's a form of play for them.

If you like, you can check out the vid below to see Odie play fetch.

Odie

Meet Odie. 7 month old Basset Hound. Young energetic and very affectionate. Not very bright and somewhat willful.

Imaginary treatment helps chronic back pain

Who hasn't hurt their back at some stage in their life ? Patients with chronic back pain present to the Emergency Department all the time. Personally, I don't find chronic back pain cases to be enjoyable cases. Especially when half the time, it's not possible to provide complete if not near satisfactory treatment for the condition. You see, traditional guidelines don't work half the time . The policy of the hospital I work in dictates that we do not keep patients in overnight for chronic back pains merely for pain relief. Reason being that there is already a shortage of acute beds and clogging up the system with patients with chronic back pains is probably not judicious use of what is already a very limited and finite resource. So often enough, you try and give what little relief you can by loading the patients up with as much pain killers and muscle relaxants as possible, let them settle for a couple of hours and do your best to get them home afterwards. Often enough you are made to feel like the villian as orthopaedics surgeons won't touch them with a barge pole either.

Ir's not that I am not symphathetic. I've hurt my back more than once. The funny thing is , it doesn't take much to injure it. The first time I did it, I was bending over to pick up my trousers in the changing room. Then snap, this crazy blinding pain just shot through my back and I was crippled with pain, unable to move. I couldn't do anything except lie there awkwardly against a chair, trousers at my ankles. It wasn't a pretty sight.

I stumbled on this interesting article in Wired today. Apparently fake acupunture and 'real' acupunture both work better than the conventional treatment of back pain, which is oral painkillers and physiotherapy. Both type of acupuntures provide pain relief for 6 months after treatment.

It certainly raises a few questions like:

1. Is so called traditional acupuncture a complete sham after all?


2. Maybe acupuncture works just by simply sticking any number of needles in your back. No special points required


3. Does acupunture work through the placebo effect?


4. Then perhaps people with chronic back pains are simply a little looney (myself included)


5. Will I be allowed to prescribe placebo at any stage if it does no harm ? "Here's a new special tablet. You'll be back doing all the positions of the karma sutra in no time! Err, no, it's not a polo mint, really!"

If you want to check out the article for yourself, follow the link below.
For back pain, even fake acupunture works.

The excerpt from the original research article is found here :
German Acupuncture Trials (GERAC) for Chronic Low Back Pain

So no magic bullet for chronic back pains just yet. Don't fret, have a polo mint on me instead. It works just as well!

It's broken and I'm not sorry

Lately, (for the last 7 years actually!) I've been considering a career change. Everytime I tell myself I should just quit medicine and do something else, I've always found a reason to stick with it and I just can't make up my mind on the whole issue. Hence I've been at it for 7 years. Half dreading going to work everyday and then coming home buzzing from the things I've done at work! Besides, the band I'm managing hasn't made it big yet! So I can keep on dreaming!

One thing I do enjoy about medicine is diagnosing bone fractures and telling the patients about it! The doctor's done good ya!? The dramatic ones love it and get a kick out of it. In fact, in some cases those patients are almost disappointed if they didn't have a broken bone! You almost have to remind them, "Hey stupid, no fracture, that's a good thing, okaaaaaay?!"

As an Emergency Physician, I get my kicks from positive signs, especially the rare and cool ones! Like my first rectal foreign body case! I've been in A&E for 3 years before I got my first one and they don't come too regularly in this part of town. It was a definite milestone. It was the x-ray of the day and it reminded people who saw it what not to do with a can of foot spray.

My girlfriend thinks I like it for the glory! Well, some days yes! and that's really just amongst the medical staff! Someday there's no glory, just lots of shit raining down on you. Those kind of days really make you wonder why you're still waddling in the poo, when it's just the same shit, different day.

I can drone on about the negatives like the work hours, the stress, some of the crazy/lazy/waste of space consultants you have to work for, the crappy basic salary, the days when you just feel it's like the most thankless job ever but you have to tune in to"Physician's Lamentations" next week for that. j/k Anyways, all the negatives have so far failed to help me make up my mind. It's probably because I still enjoy what I do and because I'm pretty good at it too! My girlfriend thinks I should give it 10 more years. I've already done 6 years of medical school and 5 years of work, so what's another 10?

Teaching the girl to game

I think every geek out there secretly wants a girlfriend who plays computer games and understands his obsession with games! Blessed is he who has a women that thumbs and clicks! Of course this could all backfire if the girlfriend becomes addicted to gaming and doesn't shower for days. As a result your only hope for fresh air is when she leaves the room.

My girlfriend has little or no interest in computer games at all. It didn't stop me from attempting to introduce her to Neverwinter Nights a few years ago, thinking the social aspect of it, i.e chatting with fellow gamers etc would get her interested. My ulterior motive then was to get her participating with what was already my major addiction then. Well, she didn't like it and I was left contemplating the errors of my ways.

So then last month, I got this sudden craving for a game console. I felt the time was right to buy one and I wanted one in my life and there was just no stopping me. But I didn't know which one to buy. Eventually I settled for a Wii and the reason for choosing that was because I thought it was something the girlfriend could get into! Hang on, you say, there's a recurring pattern here and yes you're right! Strangely enough! She liked it but lost interest after I beat her too many times at wii tennis. She's such a sore loser!

But she's not all bad though. Sensing that my gaming cravings were not quite satisfied (since wii games were mostly pussy games and I need something a little hardcore), she bought me an xbox 360 for my birthday. Bless her soul, I was flabbergasted. It was something I totally didn't need but simply just wanted! A man can't have too many gaming consoles!

So with the new xbox plugged in, I tried to get her to play some co-op game, that's only because she was hogging Call of Duty 3. I wouldn't have mind but she hadn't quite mastered the controllers. Spending time looking at the floor and sky and not being able to navigate through an open door may seem funny at first but it gets really tiring after 40 minutes of the same thing. The only co-op game I had then was Gear of Wars. 10 minutes into the game, she thought it was boring and decided she would watch tv instead.

I'm back at square one again.

Holiday plans sorted

So finally booked a holiday. Myself and the girlfriend are heading off to Cape Town in November for our yearly break. She's getting it as a birthday present so she's pretty ok with it. Though our initial destination was Morrocco, I found out as a Malaysian citizen, I needed a visa for Morrocco. Where as the girlfriend doesn't need it as she's Irish. The irony is I know more Irish folks working abroad illegally than I do Malaysians. Anyways, it takes at least 4 weeks to get the visa approved. As there's no gurantee that I will get the visa and it would be too late to book another holiday if the visa wasn't approved, I decided to go for the safer option. While the both of us have been to South Africa, although not together, I'd say it'd be a nice experience to go back again. I remember how cheap and good the food was over there. I had some good and lots of crazy experience when I was there 7 years ago. I suspect the trip this time round will be more sedated and I suspect age will have a lot to do with it.

Now for something less cheerful. Only recently, one of the nursing staff in the Emergency Department I worked with found out that she had breast cancer and that it has spread to her lower spine. While we are used to seeing patients coming in with first time diagnoses of cancer, it is always shocking when it happens to be one of your own. She only found out about it when she started getting back pains. So she had missed it in her breast as the primary and she only had a mammogram the year before! There's no cure and she's got at most, a couple of years to live and her children are only very young! So girlies, and this statement is not made lightly, fondle your breasts regularly. If you can't be arsed to do that, I am sure your partner would appreciate the oppurtunity to assist you. It could really be a difference between life and death.
Good night!

Corn Beef

I had corn beef for dinner tonight. First time in 4 years. Eating corn beef reminds me of my child hood. It was one of the few canned meat that I actually enjoyed, along with luncheon meat or spam as they call it here. Classy!

I suddenly realise I had no idea what corn beef was actually made of, bar the beef of course. I never bothered to find out, till today!

Corn beef as we know it today owes its origin to the Irish who began salting beef and pork in the middle ages. Basically, the Irish started debonning pieces of beef and soaking them in brine ( a process called curing). The name corned beef came about in the 1600s. "Corn" comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for granule or pellet, referring to the grains of salt used to make the brine in which the beef soaked.

Well, who would have thunk. The corn beef I ate when I was a kid was brung from China!

So how much salt is in the typical can of corn beef? According to saltmatters.org, the typical sodium content of corned beef is 1200 mg/100g or more. The human bodies requires about 5 gram of salt per day. That's a lot of salt man! The funny thing is that there used to be a lot more salt in the old days. The stuff they used to feed the sailors back then had so much salt in it they call it 'salt junk'. At least the current corn beef today doesn't taste half bad.

To sum up, tonight's cheap and tasty corn beef meal consisted of
1. Stir fried corn beef and lightly cooked chopped up peppers ( 1.20 euro for beef and 2 euro for peppers )
2. Peas (1 euro)
3. Rice (1 euro approx )
total cost of meal for two, 5.20 euro.

My next plan is to make my own corn beef. I'll let you know when it happens.

My wedding plans

I am too complicated for my own good. Actually, it's probably more like I make my own life too complicated for my own good.

When it comes to weddings, well my wedding, it's no different.

I proposed to my fiance two Christmas' ago, as you guessed, on Christmas day. Proposing on a date like that is very practical as it makes the date easy to remember. As you can guess, I'm not a big romantic. So when I asked my girl friend to marry me, it's also for a practical reason, that is, to assure her that I want to spend the rest of my life with her. On top of that, I quite fancy her on most days and we are arguably in love. So I thought, it was not a bad deal at all.

So I decided to buy this ring in Malaysia. Well, I sort of knew what she wanted as she had hinted strongly at a princess cut diamond ring just prior to me leaving for Malaysia. She knew I was going to buy 'the ring' when she discovered one of her rings was missing (I had to borrow it to figure out her ring size lah). She then proceeded to quiz me and one of the things I'm not is a good liar. Even as I stood there denying profusely that I had taken her ring, I knew she had guessed when this massive grin spread across her face and it's as though her face had lit up like the full moon. I thought I saw fireworks exploding over her head too!

Well, I stuck with my plan to buy her a ring without her around to choose it. I was informed later on by my mates that it was very brave of me to do so. Anyways, I stopped by in KL on my way to Kuching. In between buying a DSLR, a new stereo, a new laptop, a new projector and some new clothes, I managed to find just enough time to buy her a ring. All this in 5 hours of stop over time. I was quite proud of my achievement as I had never shopped so hard before. I always knew I had it in me!

Anyways, to cut the story short, the ring came home to Ireland with me. Stayed hidden for 3 months. Which is quite an accomplishment in itself as the girlfriend has a habit of finding things that are usually meant to be hidden. I proposed, she accepted amidst my stuttering of words while I had forgotten my previously well composed lines due to unforseen nervousness. I had even forgotten to get down on one knee as planned. Disaster!

From there on, we lived happily ever after.

Wrong!

You have to plan your wedding ceremony first! The point is, I had planned for the happily ever after bit but I totally forgot about the getting married part. If there ever was a an industry designed to blatantly rip you off, this would be it! Getting married is stressful!

Here's a few things I dislike about weddings
1. It's not really your wedding . It's everyone else's wedding. Those of you who come from Asian families know it's about keeping your mum and dad happy. Your friends and work colleagues happy. You try not to offend anyone. The 'wedding politics' is enough to make you think twice about getting married.

2. It's so damn expensive! We've set our budget at 20k euro. From an Irish wedding perspective, that's actually a pretty low amount. I keep hearing people say, you only get married once. You may as well do it right. But hey buddy, the wedding is just the first day of the rest of your marriage, do you really want to start it by being in debt ? I know plenty of people who have to take out a loan to get married. But we're saving for ours and we can't afford more than 20k. That's a deposit on a house!

3. It takes too much organizing. Why can't I have a wedding perfectly tailored for me without me having to cut corner and stick to the budget? Why can't all the people I don't necessary want at the wedding but I have to invite anyway for my parents' sake simply declare themselves unavailable for the wedding so I don't have to sort out my wedding invite list like it was some kind of military strategic planning?

4. The evil florist. It appears weddings are synonymous with flowers. So you can't have weddings without flowers but bloody hell, flowers aren't cheap. The florist know they've got the market cornered on that one and aren't shy about charging you an arm and a leg for a little carnation for your button hole. Well Mr/Ms Florist, No! I don't want to pay you 50 euros for some kind of consultation fee just because you call yourself a 'designer' florist!

5. Wedding photographers. These guys really really rip you off! I'm rather disgusted with this lot. I work as a doctor. Even I don't get paid as much as this guys for the kind of hours they put in. Enough said.

6. My wedding car isn't a spaceship. I don't want a horse drawn carriage or some vintage car. I want to beam into church please!

Ok, maybe I might have it tough! But I've been assured by my female friends that the brides have more to worry about. Well guess what, better them than me.

So that's that! Next time I'll try and post some tips about saving money for your wedding but don't hold your breath! I haven't got any yet.