Red Velvet, If You Please

For years my mother has been banging on about a red velvet cake.  It’s something she’s seen on movies and American TV shows or whatever, and has decided somewhere along the line that it’s something she’d like to try.  Of course, there’s nowhere around here that sells red velvet cakes.  So this led to her asking for one for her birthday – along with a huge seafood dinner home-cooked by my sister and myself, which we of course agreed to. 

But she fell ill shortly before her birthday and so we decided to postpone it.  And then it just never actually happened.  And I’m sure she thinks we’ve just forgotten.  Well, I’m not in the financial position to put on the seafood spread, but the red velvet cake I can do.  And plan to surprise her with it very soon.

This recipe sounds good; I’m sure there are a million different opinions about the ‘right’ way to make it since it seems to be quite an iconic dessert, so I’ve just taken one at random.  Or actually, not so much at random as on the basis of the beautiful photography of the process by the author. 

I think what I’ve done here is made it difficult for myself – I’m not sure my photos will be able to stand up against hers!

 

PassOut

Today was the last PBL session ever.  PBL is something we’ve been doing since first year, and it seemed like a fixture in the med curriculum, because who could confidently see themselves with their head above water at the end of second year?  Nevertheless, today was the end of PBL.

Sure, on Friday we have the conclusion session to the current PBL case, but that’s in the lecture theatre and not the intimate group of 9 that we’ve been so used to.  That part is over.  It’s a big deal, because it really brings home the fact that there’s one week of classes left in the year.  No, it’s one week of classes left in second year.  No – it’s one week of class left in the pre-clinical years of medicine. 

The game is entirely different next year, with full-time clinical placement.  We have one week left in the classroom ever.  After that, it’s being totally accountable for your level of knowledge.  Of course, none of the medico-legal responsibility rests on our shoulders, so that’s something to be glad for!  But by all accounts, it’s a big change from the pre-clinical format.

In other – and totally related news – I passed my supplementary exam.  This means my chances of actually getting to 3rd year are now massively increased.  The supplementary exam was harder, but I did better than I had in previous exams.  Just goes to show how much difference a bit of terror makes.

Anyway, I’m taking a quick break from the study now, because although we’re at the end of it, the final exams are testing us on anything and everything from the last two years.  And that’s kinda scary.

25 – It’s Less Than OK

Oh, I jest.

25 today!  I’m older it’s true, but as a friend said,  my insurance rates go down today.  Today I can hire a car.  To these, I could raise a glass!

Dark Day

The morning was hot and sunny, even though it was early and I was making my way up the hill to school.  I reached the fifth floor a bit out of breath and a little sweaty.  It wasn’t because of the walk.

I sat down in the chair and tried to write my name on the four-million exam pages laid out in front of me.  I’ve always seen it as a bit of torture; something to freak you out with as you watch your hands tremble under the weight of all that horrible pressure.

Anyway, the perusal time started and I flicked through the pages of the supplementary exam.

‘Oh, no,’ I thought to myself as my heart sank.  This was not what I studied.  In fact, this exam seemed to be crammed full of the stuff I didn’t study.  I must have misjudged entirely what the second-year coordinator had said about this supp exam, because I was under the impression that this exam would be much like the last.  In fact, this was much harder that the original exam that I failed.

I flew through the exam while being as careful as possible to put every detail down.  Although I shouldn’t have been watching the clock, I did have a charity meeting to attend about 20 minutes before the exam was slated to finish, so I may have rushed myself a little.

Anyway, the exam finished and I had enough time for a cigarette downstairs before running up to the meeting that went on for ever and ever.  By the time I got out I was already running late to go to a colleague’s house to complete a paper outlining research in pregnant women.  As soon as I got outside I felt rather than saw the change in the weather.  There was a bitterly cold wind whipping through the admittedly permanent wind tunnel that is sandwiched between the hospital and the medical school.  I looked up into the sky just as it was broken by a delta of lightning bolts.
I felt like I had been asleep all day and was just waking up.

I drove the 40 minutes or so to the colleague’s house in hail and rain to continue my day of dull duties.

Sometimes I feel like my time has been so over-appropriated by my life as a med student that it bites severely into my sleep time.  Oh well, I’m sure I’m supposed to just suck it up.

In any case, that was last Wednesday.  I’m not sure when the results are coming out, but I won’t hold my breath for them.  I think time will pass a little smoother if I just forget about it entirely.

This weekend was a rural health trip to Bundaberg, and of course the famous Bundaberg rum was sampled at some stage.  Although I could have given myself a weekend free to fuck around in the garden (my tomatoes are growing like bamboo), I decided to take a look at rural health.  The weekend involved intubations and resuscitation of a bleeding neonate.
Thank God the individuals involved were made of plastic!

But now I can sit back and smile because an irritating phase of the year has just passed.  And now I’m just bloody tired.

New Look

My dad has an online business which is a new car brokerage.  His website – www.aussienewcarbrokers.com.au – is fairly inconsistent with a relatively poor design, but the thing  is his business model is so great.

Aussie New Car Brokers works by a consumer filling out an online form detailing the car that they want to buy.  It then goes on a database that car dealerships can peruse, and if they have the car they can contact the brokerage and submit a price.  This price is then presented to the consumer and the other dealerships.  If a competitor dealership has the same car, they can submit a lower price, which would obviously appeal to the consumer, and ensures they get the business.  It doesn’t take too much brain power to see that this leads to a bidding war between the dealerships, and the customer can just sit back and watch the price of their new car plummet further and further.

For the trouble of facilitating and maintaining the communication between buyer and seller (which is never a direct communication – something I’d love!), dad takes a flat fee from each sale which comes not from the customer but the dealer.

In short, everyone wins.

In my opinion, the face and linchpin of the business is the homepage.  So in an attempt to improve the image of Aussie New Car Brokers I have designed a new face plate – feedback would be appreciated!

(Clicking on the image will show full size)

Birthday Cake

I’m irrational.  We know this.  If you’ve read even one of my previous blog entries, you’ll probably know this about me.

The thing is, I’m turning 25 soon, and I don’t really like it.  I’ve never been one of those people who worries about his age, and I know I won’t feel any older once my birthday arrives.  It’s not really about getting old.  It’s just that I feel like I’ve reached a point where I need to grow a lot more in order to make the most of my age.  I don’t want to get to a point when I’m older and look back thinking I wasted my prime feeling insecure, or that I haven’t traveled enough, or experienced relationships enough.

I guess what I’m trying to articulate is that I’m very mindful that right now might be the ideal time to make all of these realisations so that I may spare myself some regret later on.  I want the wisdom of age now.

The thing is, even I don’t think that’s entirely realistic.  I believe wisdom comes from experience, which doesn’t necessarily come with age.  If you waste your time (hence this post), your minimal experience might not count for much.

Whatever.  I feel totally emo right now.  Maybe that’s me clinging to youth?  Haha, or maybe I’ll just mash my face into some birthday cake, like when I was a little kid.

T minus 11 days.  *sigh*

You and Your Hands

I kept telling myself that using a dating site was not desperate.  Not for a gay guy living in a town where ‘gay’ meant effeminate, thin and blond, or it meant bitter, old and predatory – with nothing in between.  Still, if someone asked me where I met a certain guy, I would hesitate before telling them. 

After the complete failure of the last guy – who I never got to tell you about and probably won’t bother since it was such a non-event – I decided that the dating site would be somewhere to go window shopping, and that I would shop without any intent to buy the wares on offer.

I came across the profile of a guy to whom I was immediately attracted on the basis of his picture.  Now, anyone with a dating profile knows that there is that one photo where the light hit the strange position you happened to be in at just the right way and the result was a photo that looks too good to be you.  In any case, I decided to explore his profile a little more.