#creation

My new favourite cells are the umbrella cells of the urothelium. They are actually the most awesome thing ever. Their apical surface has specialised structures
- inflexible plaques
- folded bits of floppy membrane
Soooo when your bladder is not full, the inflexible plaques are able to fold the floppy bits of membrane away, just like an umbrella. But when your bladder is full, these folded bits are able to unfurl - allowing your bladder (and ureters) to stretch without tearing the cell membrane, and thus compromise the barrier function of the urothelium. Honestly, one of the coolest cell types ever.

... two hours later

I give you the fruits of my sugar high - instead of being crazy and shit, I decided that it was more sane to sit down and map the trigeminal nerve and write down everything that it innervates. Well, most of the things that it innervates.

Perhaps I should indulge in sugar more often. 

Ha. No. There has to be some middle ground between diabetes and doing well... 

#cold

We don't seem to get the nice fluffy snow that you see in movies. No - we seem to only get hail. Except it comes in such copious amounts that it's able to settle, so first years are able to pretend that they've finally experienced a famed snowfall while at university. It's funny actually because I remember my Facebook feed exploding with statuses about snowfall when I was in my first degree but clearly, we've all become quite jaded as we've aged and I hardly had any notifications about snow this time around (which sort of sucked because I wanted to know if it was going to be a dangerous walk to class today without opening my curtains and letting heat escape).

Also, had to put this in: ughhhh A.'s status is a cry for "Please applaud me and bow down in awe and worship". I cannot believe I had a crush on him for seven years.

And M. and I just made a double batch of white chocolate and macadamia cookies... we've had like three biscuits each (plus copious amounts of cookie dough) and I feel so disgusting right now even though they tasted like heaven in my mouth (sooooo good). I've been having comfort cravings for three days now and I didn't have the courage to act on them, so I'm glad she did and it's now completely out of my system. But now my abs are also completely out of my system... fsdjsdfljksdf. It took me a week to work off that banoffee pie... another week's worth of hard work will be required to burn off these sons of bitches.

#medstudenthyperchrondriacroundtwo

Bleeding. Thoughts instantly leap to "Oh, shit - I'm miscarrying a child which I never knew I was carrying."

Two things now come to mind:
1. Oh for fuck's sake, pleaaaase can I not have my period AGAIN (and insanely early) when I'm seeing E.?
2. Pleasepleaseplsplspls don't let me be stuck in the house with no sanitary products.

#comeatmesnow

I am happy. I went grocery shopping yesterday (in preparation for the supposed snow arriving tomorrow) and treated myself to some hummus and yoghurt. And the aforementioned almond milk. I had much skepticism at first, but I assure you - soooo good.

Seeing as my carrot cake baked oatmeal was a resounding success, I thought I'd change up the recipe and make baked apple oatmeal with dried figs. I could not stop nomming on it when it came out of the oven. I look forward to breakfast for the next week: warm oatmeal with a generous dollop of yoghurt.
And tomorrow, I try my hand at making pumpkin lasagna, with zucchini replacing the pasta sheets. Fingers crossed that doesn't just turn into a mush of orange and green.

And J. fixed the vacuum cleaner and finally after three long weeks, I have been able to vacuum the house and now no longer fear walking outside my room without my slippers on.

So. Come at me, snow. I am so ready for you (except, the last time I challenged nature, we had a power cut for a day and it was pretty awful, even though we had gas heating so we could still cook and keep warm... so you know, the snow can uh, come at me... within reason).

Also, just realised how fifties-housewifeish I sound. I spend my evenings browsing for recipes and am ecstatic when I can clean the house. Oh, and I have a perm. All I need is one of those small aprons and away we go.

#almondmilk

Almond milk, where have you been all my life? Soooo good.

#kindergartenvisit

The unofficial things that I got from my kindergarten visit which will not feature on my report:

- I want a maximum of two kids

- I want to send my children to a place where they will not come home with stuff smeared all over their face and hands

- children are dirty creatures and I need to carry hand sanitiser at all times

- I am definitely not going to specialise in paediatrics because while I like children, I only like them in very small and controlled doses

- I will love my own children because I did get a tad clucky, but any extended period of time spent with a large group of children (who are not my own) would make me crazy

- my child will always be sent to kindergarten with a thick coat because I will not have them playing outside in the cold without one

- I am not spending copious amounts of money on branded clothing for them until they can appreciate them/other children will not smear their dirty hands over my child's Country Road tops

- I prefer old people to little humans

- germsgermsgermsgermsgerms. That is all. 

Also, I am shattered. In the light of my full 9 till 6pm day, I decided that I would wake up at 7am to exercise. I was surprised that this was actually successful and it gives me hope that I will be able to repeat the feat next week. But I am sooo exhausted. 

#feelingdomesticated

Couldn't resist it... had to upload a photo of my bibimbap with cauliflower rice. 100% carbfree and utterly delicious. It would have been a very virtuous meal had I not gotten the munchies halfway through preparing it (there was a lot of slicing and julienning of vegetables involved) and attacked the leftover banoffee pie in the fridge.

Oh well.

I told J. about the banoffee pie and I hope he finishes it all tonight so I don't have to stare longingly at it every time I open the fridge.

Also, cannot wait for breakfast tomorrow. Made baked carrot cake oatmeal. Mmmm. The only thing that would make it sublime would be the teensiest bit of Greek yoghurt - but alas, I am too poor for that this week. 

#arseburnage

I remember scoffing at Jennifer Aniston's claims that she could no longer tolerate junk food - that her body was allergic to it in fact. I will now agree to some extent because I just spent the majority of this morning on the crapper. And while I finally don't feel so bloated, my arse burns with the fire of the raging sun/a woman scorned.

My flatmate returned from the UK (and brought me back the coolest t-shirt of all time) and drove back down with his mother, who is honestly such a talented chef. Anyway, his return meant that we had a get together at the flat and I ate so much because I love his mother's cooking. Sooooo much. And L. brought his famed banoffee pie (which was delicious), which meant more scoffing of food.  

Which is why I am detoxing because if you did an x-ray, loops of bowel would be dilated. Except, dilated bowel = bowel obstruction and clearly, my bowels are not obstructed given the performance they gave this morning. But you get the gist. 

#neveragain

I have learnt my lesson: I am never ever
a) consuming alcohol on an empty stomach
b) going to continue drinking despite the clear effects on my gait (I had full on ataxia, yo. I was however still able to spell 'world' backwards)
c) scoffing carbs galore because I am so bloated - I feel like my body just doesn't tolerate carbohydrates like it used to. Or simply my body is unused to feeling full

We held a surprise birthday party for one of my friends last night at one of the more nicer eateries in the city. I will say for $27 - it was a pretty decent feed in terms of quantity and at the risk of sounding like a complete food snob, while it was no degustation course, my palate was sufficiently pleased. Or rather, I was just stoked as fuck to eat pizza and garlic bread after denying myself such lovely carbohydrate filled foods for suuuuuch a long time. I did refrain from using the parmesan cheese because I figured I was probably going to exceed my entire caloric intake for the last three days in the space of a single evening. Anyway - this was all done while my friend plied my glass with wine, which immediately went straight to my brain because I hadn't eaten for four hours. It certainly made the evening enjoyable because I was just like, "Eh fuck it - I'm just going to eat all the things" and then followed it up with dessert. At this point, a few of us decided to go for a quiet drink. I had begun to sober up during dessert as dinner kicked in (belatedly) and thought another drink probably would be okay seeing as it was only 9pm.

I could not have been more wrong.

We found this charming lounge bar (might I mention, down the end of this incredibly dodgy looking alleyway), complete with a roaring fireplace and the plushiest couches I had seen in a long time. While the other upmarket bar in the city centre that we normally visit has an air of refined exclusiveness, this one had a more intimate feel to it, while still maintaining that upmarket feel. And the cocktail menu! So many choices - but my eye fell on the Turkish Delight martini, complete with a glace cherry. So anyway, out my drink came and I took a sip and my uncultured mouth was not used to the alcoholic taste. Normally, I can quite comfortably scull (ahem, I am rather ashamed of this) wine, but this drink I had to drink very slowly because it was just that strong - but oh so delicious. It was like a liquid turkish delight. So anyway, I managed to finish that drink and then got dropped off home, thinking that I'd be okay to sleep off any residual effects because I wasn't actually tipsy at that point - just rather tired.

Wrong.

My heart was pounding the entire night. I have never been so aware of my heartbeat before and fuck me, it was the most uncomfortable feeling in the world. Imagine after going for a run and feeling that constant rhythm on your chest - except this is like 3am in the morning and you haven't been out for a run (because at least that's a legitimate reason to have a pounding heart) and regardless of what position you lie in, you can still feel your heart. After a rather restless night of pretty much null sleep, I eventually worked up the courage to google this phenomenon (just in case it did warrant waking up my doctor flatmate and seeking medical attention - because I am a hypochondriac) and apparently, it is quite common. Also M. gets this too when she drinks - so while it all rather seems benign and self limiting, I think I'd rather not repeat this experience again.

So it's going to be two weeks of detoxing from all that. And catching up on sleep because I am shatteredddddddd

#planning

I am thoroughly addicted to Pinterest. And it's not a good idea when I'm hungry and trawling through the pages and pages of recipes. Anyway, it's made the whole prospect of cooking much more enjoyable, so I'm going to plan my meals for the following week. Also it looks like another (typical) miserable week filled with rain and temperatures that do not exceed twelve degrees celsius, so I'm going to look through my Pinterest for warm (comfort) food:

Breakfast: carrot cake oatmeal bake
- rolled oats
- carrots
- two eggs
- one cup of walnuts
- 3/4 cup of seeds of my choice

Lunch:
- apples (as per usual)
- edamame beans: one packet
- one mushroom and one egg

Dinner: cauliflower rice. Yeeeeeup. That shit is amazing AND versatile - not to mention, incredibly cheap and healthy. One cauliflower head is enough to fill me for four nights.
- Monday and Tuesday: chickpea curry? - need coriander, onion
- Wednesday and Thursday: Bibimbap: will need zucchini, mushrooms, carrot, spring onion and mung bean spouts/spinach, three eggs?, kimchi heheh
- Friday and Saturday: maybe I should get another cauliflower head...

#iwanttobeatrophywifeexceptnotreally

Another weekend with E. has made me realise that
a) I am spoilt prodigiously
b) I do actually accomplish a lot in my weekends in terms of study and so I am now behind (but it's okay because I had yet another wonderful weekend)
c) I should not take any more 6:50am flights back because they are always delayed
d) I don't want to leave his side ever and even if this possibly means being a stay-at-home mother... but then also (my rational side kicks in):
e) I don't want to be identified by my appearance alone

Let me quantify each one:
a) I fucking love my perm and I would do it again in a heartbeat when I have the means to pay for it myself because I don't want E. forking out for it again. Also, we had yet another lovely degustation experience - this time at Roots. Let me just say now that this place positively enchanted me and took the whole experience of degustation to the next level. I think it might even be better than Pescatore... and that's saying something. Anyway, degustation revolves around having multiple miniature dishes, each one skilfully prepared and consisting of an explosion of flavours and textures. You're not meant to chomp your way through them (like the scrubs in the table next to us who started after us and ended up overtaking us) because you will be sorely disappointed; you're not paying for quantity - you're paying for quality.
Roots was amazing. We weren't sure what we signed up for when we booked ourselves in for an eight course meal (in reality, ten course)... with no menu. So it was a massive surprise as the waitress brought out each dish because we had no idea what to expect and good heavens, it was worth the trust. In fact, E. was so taken by the place that he asked a barrage of questions when we went to pay.
(1) Cheddar cheese bread puff: one word describes this. Heaven. Honestly, imagine bread the consistency of mochi, but is fluffy at the same time with a molten core of delightfully aged cheddar. My stomach rumbles at the thought.
(2) Pickled tomato and gherkins with edible flowers and parsley oil: I will admit to thinking initially 'Oh, damn it - what have we gotten ourselves into? Is this just a hippie style degustation menu?' but this was a light way of starting the meal and I could not have been more wrong about the whole experience. And I didn't know that gherkins could taste that good.
(3) Pumpkin with egg yolk sauce served with sourdough bread and olive oil: I don't normally like pumpkin, and neither does E. But this dish made pumpkin into delightful bites of joy. In fact, we spent a veeeeery long time over this dish because each mouthful was beautiful. This might've been my favourite dish.
(4) Paua served with oatmeal, salsa verde and garlic chips: I refrained raising an eyebrow when the waitress said oatmeal. But fuck me, did that oatmeal go beautifully with everything else.
(5) Fish with leek, sauce and salmon crackers: Normally, I'm only a fan of fish that has been pan-fried or is served sashimi style. But this fish (I have not the foggiest idea how it was prepared but I can tell you that it was neither) was honestly so flavoured packed that I also laboured over each bite because I didn't want to finish it.
(6) Jerusalem artichoke, sauerkraut, smoked eel and soil baked potato: you had to eat everything all together in order to experience the bite of the the sauerkraut, the crispy texture of the artichoke, the saltiness of the eel and the earthy smoked flavour of the potato in perfect matrimony.
(7) Quail with barley and egg (baked in the oven for 45 minutes at 60 odd degrees) with sundried seaweed: At this point, my heart was torn between lingering over each bite because we were approaching the end and excitement over the next dish.
(8) Venison with barley, caramelised onion and onion ash: Venison has that rather musty taste to it if not prepared properly, especially if it's served rare. Nope - still amazing. My only complaint was that the onion was just on the raw side, so I got that stingy taste when I ate it.
(9) White chocolate coated pork crackling. Sounded weird as but honestly, amazing. When you bite into it initially, you get the sweetness of the chocolate, but then as that dissolved, you were left with the saltiness (and crunchiness) of the crackling. You know how people combine salty and sweet food together like salted caramel to make something taste from good to brilliant? Same principle here but on steroids.
(10) White chocolate cream with fejoa and berry ice cream: Oh yes... a perfect end, a perfect 10, the home run to a 10 out of 10 dinner.

b) OSPE is in three weeks and I feel so unprepared. The timing sucks because I go to see E. again the weekend before OSPE and so this limits the time I have panicking over Ping's lectures.

c) My flight out was cancelled this morning. Bonus: Air New Zealand gave me $12 to spend for breakfast (I wish I had seen the muesli and yoghurt before I had spied the scone). Downside: Missed out on two lectures this morning and so spent this evening playing catch up instead of studying.

d) Sunday was Mother's Day and so it meant that it was literally impossible to get into any place for lunch without a reservation. In hindsight, we were idiots for not booking but we had an even better experience just having fish and chips in the car while overlooking the port, and listening to Michael Buble. Also, dug into some divine slow cooked lamb with scalloped potatoes, washed down with cider later that night. And I enjoy raiding his closet and being with him means being able to take full advantage of the fact that we are the same size. I stole his cardigan and brought it back home with me - and received three compliments for it. I think it's worth mentioning at this point that I had picked out the cardigan. I'm honestly so content when I'm with E., regardless of the surroundings. I used to think that when you love somebody that you just sort of reached an endpoint - like that was the maximum you could ever feel for another human being. But in actual reality, the best thing is that love is sort of infinite - it just keeps going and that makes me happy because I know that what I feel now might possibly be nothing in comparison to what I might feel say, ten years from now. Ick. That's rather disgustingly cheesy.

e) We ran into one of E.'s registrars in a cafe - who addressed me as a 'fashionista'. Now, don't get me wrong, I like having my sense of style acknowledged, but I also realised at that point that I'd rather be known for other sensibilities, such as intelligence. So, it's odd having spent a weekend being as content as a cloud and wanting to just settle down and forget my studies because it's juxtaposed with this drive, or rather need, to prove myself.

#medstudenthyperchondriac

Another poo story - I seem to have plenty of these recently. Anyway, my bowel motions of late have been like a type 6 on the Bristol Stool Chart - mainly due to the fact that I don't eat a lot of gluten in my diet (and that usually does a really good job at binding your bowel motions together). So watery shits don't really disturb me because they disappear when I eat carbohydrates. 

I digress. 

This morning I was on the crapper and when I wiped, I saw blood. My thoughts immediately leapt to "Oh shit, oh shit, I have bowel cancer" - not even like, "Oh, maybe haemorrhoids".

Then I realised I had my period. There was an audible sigh of relief. 

#perm

So in a wee bit of a conundrum: my perm looks so much better when I'm naked. I shit you not. It goes from mediocre to being "heeeeeey that shit is niceee" (you have to imagine a sleazy man saying it whilst winking).

postscript

Man, I'm stupid. Had the unfortunate experience of going to the toilet (and taking a dump) just after someone else had recently used the loo. Our toilet is so crappy that even with normal flushes, it doesn't do a good job. Anyway, obviously two flushes right after each other is too much for the toilet to handle and it just gave up. So here I am, sitting on the loo, waiting for the toilet bowl to refill so I could flush my shit away.

It took me five minutes to realise that I could simply lock the door and wait for the toilet to refill in the comfort of my own room instead of standing awkwardly, staring into the toilet and smelling my own shit.

#bevelingup

Sooo, did my first venepuncture today in class. To be honest, given the fact that I hardly trust myself to take someone else's blood, I was pretty reluctant to give up my arm - but as it was, it turns out that another girl and I were the only girls in which decent veins could be found, while the poor boys got stuck twice, so I'm sort of okay with sacrificing my arm. Also, it didn't hurt that badly.

The hardest part is not actually finding the vein or even poking the needle in. It is trying to keep the needle still, while trying to fit the vacu-tainer onto the needle and undoing the tourniquet. So anyway, in true fashion (which E. was cracking up about last night when I was asking him for tips - he was literally like, the worst case scenario is if you go through the vein - and then he doubled up with laughter), I ended up shoving the needle through the vein when I was trying to push the vacu-tainer onto the needle and so had to gently manoeuvre the needle slightly out before blood rushed into the tube like it was supposed to. Then I pretty much felt honour bound to offer my arm up to my poor partner because I had transfixed her vein. She did a pretty decent job (I think) because it wasn't too uncomfortable and I have just a wee bit of bruising at the site.
I'm glad I didn't go first - the boys who went first demonstrated the importance of:
a) knowing how to undo the tourniquet with your non-dominant hand
b) undoing the tourniquet before withdrawing the needle - because blood went a wee bit all over the place. Actually, it was slightly amusing because the poor boy who was the first guinea pig is a tall sporty sort of bloke, and he went a tinge of ivory and had to lie down for a bit

I wish we had an abundance of arms and equipment to practice on before our clinical years. But at least it's some comfort knowing that we can use butterflies in the hospital, which removes the problem of trying to fit on a vacu-tainer with your non-dominant hand, while trying to minimise any movement.

Tomorrow: getting my hair permed/air waved. Here's hoping that I don't end up looking like a sheep.

#purge

Just a side note - maybe not half a can of corn... seeing as it passes through the bowel virtually undigested. I woke up and it was like I had taken Pico-Prep the night before. Great feeling because I felt like I had emptied my bowels entirely and done a thorough colon cleanse, but not so great for my flatmates who had to deal with the fact that I had demolished the toilet and it was virtually out of action for the following hour.

#iwanttoeatallthethings

Watching Masterchef was not a good idea because now I am craving chocolate trifle like something crazy. Also because it's cold, my body has just decided that it is flinging all self control out the window and is craving anything warm and fatty - which I think is what it's supposed to do as a survival mechanism. But luckily today, I tried my hand at a new recipe - cauliflower fried rice.

I kid you not - that massive bowl has no more than 250 calories at the most (and most of it came from the scrambled egg). But how on earth did you manage that (I hear you say in an astonished voice). Because it has absolutely no rice - it just has cauliflower that has been attacked by the grater. I was pretty skeptical at first because I was like, whatever... cauliflower + grater does not = rice. But I shit you not - it was pretty much as good as a bowl of actual fried rice, which was perfect on a cold evening like tonight. M. agreed that it was pretty awesome too, so there - two endorsements for this smashing recipe.

I give you: Cauliflower fried rice. 

Ingredients (serves one)

• half a head of cauliflower (you could probably even use a third of a head, but I was like hey, I'm cold and I want to feel full)
• half a carrot
• handful of green beans
• one egg
• two mushrooms
• half an onion
• one teaspoon of minced garlic
• half a can of sweet corn kernels 
• soy sauce 
• salt
• a wee bit of coriander

1. Cut up the carrots, green beans, mushrooms and onion (p.s. if you want to be a bit lazy, you could probably achieve exactly the same results using frozen mixed vegetables, but hey - I wanted to use fresh ingredients. Also, there isn't enough room in our flat's freezer to toss a bag of frozen vegetables in there).

2. Cut cauliflower into florets and grate (I used the larger hole). Just a warning - it will be quite messy. Otherwise you can use a food processor, but I'm a student and I don't have one lying around in the flat.

3. Scramble the egg and fry into a flat omelette shape. Remove from pan and cut into squares.

4. Add a dash of olive oil and add onion and garlic to frying pan.

5. When onions have become translucent, add the carrots. You have to stir for a bit because carrots take a while to cook and you don't want to bite into undercooked crunchy carrot bits because you don't get that shit normally when you get fried rice (if you want to be doubly sure that this doesn't happen, you could probably pre-boil the carrot bits). 

6. Add green beans and cook for a bit before adding the mushroom. At this point, add some soy sauce and salt, to taste

7. Add corn kernels and stir the mixture for a bit. Remove from pan and set aside.

8. Add grated cauliflower to the frying pan. I added a wee bit of olive oil and then stirred the cauliflower around until it was juuuust cooked.

9. Add your vegetable mix and scrambled egg pieces to the pan and mix together. Add more soy sauce and salt to taste. 

10. When you're about done, add the coriander and serve.

I was pretty pleased with myself. The best part is the fact that I can jazz it up and change the recipe a bit to get different sorts of rice, like Moroccan or Mexican, depending on what additional vegetables/condiments I add to the cauliflower rice base. I don't know about you, but I don't think I'm going to get sick of this for some time. Looking forward to dinner already tomorrow!

#frozen

This is great - we seemed to have skipped over autumn entirely and proceeded straight to winter. The daily temperature does not exceed ten degrees celsius. It is insane - but at least it's not actually raining any more - but in saying that, I would much rather wet and warm than just plain cold. My toes are constantly numb and wearing warm woollen socks have been a saving grace.

In other news, I have purchased a $5 yoga mat and it has saved my sacrum from being repeatedly bruised from my ab exercises - which are going well, especially given the fact that my daily workouts now suck an hour of my time. The reason why I'm able to keep to it is also probably due to the fact that metabolism bores the shit out of me (ironically enough - because I'm pretty sure I'd learn something that might help with losing weight and gaining lean muscle) so I'm really not that motivated to study, unlike the nervous system module.

And the annual progress test reared its ugly head again. Weirdly enough, I wasn't really stoked by the 72%... it was more a sense of relief that I did get above 70%. I really did peak too soon... what the fuck was I thinking when I got 70% in second year? It's not like I'm going to be able to get 90% by my fifth year...

Also, it still amazes me when I get irrationally shitty at E. that he actually apologises (even though it's not his fault). Poor boy. He has a lifetime of irrationality to deal with. Or perhaps he's just making up for the first two shitty years of our relationship. I mean shitty in comparison to now. Funnily enough, I remember thinking that those two years were wonderful and yeah, they were. But he got away with a lot of shit back then which I probably wouldn't simply sit back and accept now. That's why they were shitty.
Also, he wouldn't let me dress him and he insisted on wearing hoodies and skater shoes. Ew.