Hehe, my insides are jiggling, and I don’t know why.  It tickles.

Anyway, I’m just here to procrastinate a little.  You know the drill. 
I’ve been procrastinating in my real life quite effectively also - I even went for a really long walk with my iPod yesterday/last night.  I felt like going for a walk, but that might have been my brain cleverly diverting me from study.  Probably was.
I’ve also been doing laundry, some cleaning (not much, or enough), and spending a lot of time in the garden with my various plants and have even been singing to the tomatoes.  Oh, and my insides are jiggly.

It’s Wednesday today, and I have an exam on Monday and two on the following Thursday – and then freedom until next year!  Suffice it to say Christmas is coming early this year – Friday 13th of November!

Triskaidekaphobians be damned – it’s gonna be a great day!

It’s exam time.  Yet again.  It always seems like exam time. 

I’m at the uni doing a mixture of study and buggering around that is probably best described as 10% study and 90% buggering around.  I’m not motivated – as usual – to study, but this time it’s a little worse because it’s an exam covering everything from the last two years.  While that sounds scary, my brain tells me: ‘at least this time there’s no mad dash to just cover the material at least once – you’ve already done it.  Kick back.’
But I know my brain tries to deceive me.

So, here’s my list; the causes of hypertension:

• Idiopathic (aka we don’t know)
• Pregnancy
• Age
• High BMI
• Cushing’s Syndrome
• Conn’s Syndrome
• Hypothyroidism
• Hyperparathyroidism
• Oral Contraceptive Pill
• Phoeochromocytoma (my favourite)
• Shitty Diet and lifestyle (salt, tobacco, fat, stress), and
• EXAMS.

I really can’t get my mind to go past that one!

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!

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.

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!

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.

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)

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*

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.

I saw that he was 27, lived somewhere in the same state as I, and seemed to either have learned English as a second language, or simply had lower writing skills.  I thought he was cute, possibly too cute for me, so I was about to exit out of his profile and keep moving when I noticed a photo of him cuddling a dog.

Now, I am a sucker for dog men.  I’m a sucker for dogs, really.  So I enlarged the picture, and was smitten enough to send the guy a message: “cute dog, cute guy.”  I was pleasantly surprised when he sent a message back saying he thought I was good-looking. 

We ping-ponged around for a while before he told me that he was deaf, and had been since birth.  I assume his hesitance in telling me this is a result of past rejection, but instead of putting me off, this bit of news was endearing to me.  For months upon months I have been talking with friends about learning sign language.  I’ve always loved different languages because to me they are a novelty-with-a-purpose , and sign language seemed to add another element of novelty while still remaining useful.
Over the course of a few weeks, we would try to catch up with each other and chat on MSN since it turned out he lives about 2 hours drive from me.  One day it clicked in my simple brain – I’m supposed to be a going to a wedding in the same town that he lives in.  I’d never been to this town before in my life, so this seemed like good timing.

The day of the wedding came, and I travelled north with my family.  The AFL grand final was on the same day, and since my family is big on AFL, they had all decided to meet at the pub before the wedding to watch the game.  I took the opportunity to organise a coffee-date with James.

My parents and sister wished me luck, and I went down to wait out the front of the hotel we were staying at.  When I saw him walking toward me I started to panic – what if my finger-spelling is shitty and he laughs at me and can’t understand me?  We greeted each other and gestured toward a coffee shop, with me constantly blundering by trying to talk to him.  After a few minutes of writing text messages on the phone and showing each other, I wrote “should I try and sign?”  He smiled and nodded.
The first thing I did was show him the alphabet to see if I had all the letters right, and he was clearly pleased when they were.  From that point on, the conversation flowed.  I would spell a word and he would show me the sign for it.  Before too long, it was time for me to go to the wedding. 

Later, at the ceremony, I kept thinking about the coffee with James and how good it was.  He was sweet and gentle without being effeminate.  He had a great smile and a great laugh, and I clearly needed to spend more time with him.  I sent him a text message telling him to meet me out the front of the hotel so that we could grab a beer.  I snuck out of the reception.
We had a couple of drinks and walked back to the reception where things were finishing.  My sister was out the front smoking a cigarette, so I introduced her to James.  She told me to bring James inside to meet everyone, and after a bit of hesitation we went inside the restaurant.  Everyone was drunk, including myself, so I thought this would be a well lubricated situation to introduce the guy to my family.  I’ve never before introduced a guy to my family, but I believe that it should be done early on and without any ceremony or expectation.  Should it be short and casual, the second meeting (which would most likely be longer and a little more formal) won’t seem as daunting.  Anyway, I digress.

As it turns out, everyone was going into town to kick on.  Including my parents.  So we all went off to the nightclub, and had a merry old time.

Later that night, when mum was too drunk to walk in an entirely straight line (or upright), James and I walked her back to the hotel.  She told me that she thought he was a lovely boy.  I was forced to agree.

With mum tucked safely away in her hotel room, James and I headed down to the foyer to walk back to the club.  We stopped for a moment to warm up. 
“I like your hands,” I said to him.  He smiled, leaned in, and kissed me.

Man, what a kiss.

Well a couple of weeks ago I got accepted into the hospital I’d applied for as a first preference for next year.  In that respect (and in many others, too) I’ve been quite lucky.  I always get placed where I want to go.  But this one is for 2 years, and it’s not on the Gold Coast where I’ve lived most of my life.

Granted, it’s not very far away from the Gold Coast, at least geographically.  However, if I’m to use the dirty word ’socioeconomic,’ we’re talkin’ about a whole new world.

Since the placement is for 2 years, and involves every weekday, I’ve decided to move there.  Everyone has strongly advised me against the move, but since most of these chirpers have never even been to the place, I’m ignoring them.  I actually studied there for a year previously, and found the place refreshingly un-pretentious.  I think I’ll like it there.

It’s exciting times, since it involves a life renovation – new hospital, new house (and it will be a house, not an apartment), new roommates, not to mention the prospect of a dog and a whole new social arena that will bring the new interactions that I’m craving.  Of course, the shadow of my failed exam and the unpredictability of the real estate market (selling our house) stretches across the prospect of this large change.

If I fail the supplementary exam that the school has offered me – which I won’t – then my life remains pretty much as is, except that I’ll have to find somewhere else to live on the Gold Coast.  Still, the idea of failing this exam positively stinks of stagnancy – repeating a year of uni and staying on the Gold Coast.  Passing the exam brings fresh opportunity that I’m really looking forward to.

I’m talking in circles, here.  Maybe I should focus this loopy, repetitious stream of thought into a mantra, of sorts…

The times, they are changing for the better.

(oh, and like girls get a new haircut when they want to change their lives / themselves, I’ve given my blog banner a revamp.  It’s a scene that – in real life – has always inspired me and given me a sense of empowerment.)