#zzzworkinglife

My arse hurts from standing all day. Except, that's kind of a good thing because it means that I did work my gluts out properly when I did my squats this morning. I really hope I have the self discipline to get out of bed again tomorrow at 7am...

Also, I made this delicious couscous stuffed eggplant for dinner. Got back home at 6:30pm, took me half an hour to make it and then half an hour for it to bake - during which I showered. Efficient use of time. And then I had this to enjoy afterwards:

Ingredients:

- 1x eggplant

- 3 sundried tomatoes

- 1/3 cup of sliced olives

- 90g of feta cheese, reduced fat

- handful of baby spinach

- 1/3 cup of couscous

- Moroccan spice, cumin and paprika

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. 

2. Cook couscous as per directions - but add Moroccan spice and cumin to the water for flavour.

3. While this is cooking, slice the eggplant lengthwise and using a spoon or knife, dig out the flesh to make two eggplant boats.

4. Dice the feta and add to the olives, tomatoes (sliced) and spinach leaves (roughly chopped) and mix in a large bowl.

5. In a pan, cook the flesh of the eggplant that you've dug out and add cumin and paprika (plus salt to taste).

6. Add this to the feta, olives, tomatoes and spinach leaves. Add couscous to this mixture and mix well.

7. Spoon mixture into the eggplant boats that you've made and put into the oven and bake for 25 to 30 minutes/until eggplant is tender. 

I put a few spoonfuls of hummus on top and it was divine. The couscous that was sitting on the top was crunchy and just added a wee bit of texture. The only thing I'd say that needed improvement was that it was perhaps a bit dry - so maybe when I cook the couscous, I'll add a bit more water than the normal 1:1 ratio so it's just a bit more moist when I put it into the eggplant boats. But it was pretty bloody damn good the way it was today. And so healthy! Only 387 calories. Hollah.

#onemoresemestertogo

Actually, the thought that was floating through my head right after the renal essay was "Less than six months left in this place."

I cannot wait to leave. 

I finally understand why people eventually go crazy and desperately want to leave this place. My friends who left at the end of third year were so willing to leave and I had always thought it slightly strange because this city is built for people like us - everything within walking distance, a free gym and reasonable prices for food and living. But I think I get it now.

This place reeks of stagnation. Of life, I mean.

It was great for seven years because of

a) the aforementioned reasons

b) being able to escape the clutches of parental control

but there's just a sense of time lost, spent meandering around going no where - rather like the Israelites in the desert for 40 years. I can only imagine how maddening it would be if you had no partner - it is nearly impossible for young professionals to find a decent/suitable match here because this place is crawling with university students who just look so bloody young. 

Imagine Neverland. This city is exactly like that (except like ten times colder and less magical). You're stuck in this vortex where things don't change. Don't get me wrong - it'd be a nice place to raise your family or even grow old in (if your arthritis is able to stand the cold temperatures), but for a twenty-something year old - I just need change. Something different to happen or even things to happen. 

That's the great thing about being able to pick a different city to do your clinical years in. You finally get a sense (albeit a rather artificial sense) of being a proper adult as a fourth year clinical student and being able to leave this place is quite a symbolic way of doing so. 

I cannot wait to leave. I cannot wait for life to begin. 

#onemoreday

Just a renal essay standing in between me and freedom. And when I say freedom, I mean two weeks of me earning a decent wage. Yussssss. But that is all hopefully going towards my savings so I don't have to beggar myself next year. Although - given that fact that I am living at home once more, it probably means that I won't be able to purchase nearly as many clothes as I normally would do.

However I am wondering when I can fit exercise in because I don't get back home till 6:30pm and I will be pretty ravenous then and if I leave exercise till after dinner, this means that I'll be starting at 8pm, by that point, I kinda just want to curl up and drink tea. Which only leaves two possibilities:
- I don't exercise at all (and get fat, and not to mention - when I do start up again in two weeks time, I will have to restart from zero again).
- I wake up at 7:10am every morning to exercise. A fifty minute workout starting at 7:20am-ish means that I will be done by 8:10am and will have enough time for a quick shower. sdjkdsfjkldsfjkl.

Also, spent this evening watching an inguinal hernia repair while studying the kidneys. Ah, medicine. Don't you just love it?
Speaking of study, let's face it. Prof. W. pretty much just wants to hear how awesome ACE inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockers are at minimising the progression of hypertension, chronic kidney failure and diabetic nephropathy. Oh, and proteinuria is bad. And the kidneys are the single most important organ in the body.

And I am immensely grateful for the hot water bottle my parents sent me. I am going to utilise this everyday now, thank you very much.

#win

Ah, frantically checking my bank account today was totally worth it because that tax return looks bloody good in my account right now. AND I managed to pick up a Huffer dress (new and unworn) for $31.

Hollah.

If only my renal essay on Friday would go as smoothly.

Postscript: it's finally happened... I think it's time to graduate from the soy flat white and move onto greater things. Except that this move may have been precipitated by the sub-par soy flat whites that I have been receiving of late. Another reason why I cannot wait to go back home.

#worthasecondpost

So... this just happened:

Pause.

Actually, you need to hear the back story. For the last month, our flat has been plagued by a rodent problem. For awhile, it was okay because it just ran around the kitchen and left a few droppings. But then it discovered the pantry and got into my oats. And since then, it has been pillaging the pantry every night. Eventually, we got sick of it and put traps down last Sunday.

This is where the majority of my drunken peanut butter brownie went. Note the use of the word 'majority'. These mice were ninja ++ because for five successive nights, they were able to stealth away the brownie without setting off the traps, even when we formed the food into a bolus around the spring platform. In fact, they were getting so brazen that we noticed food disappearing from the traps during late afternoon/early evening. We despaired and bought warfarin (despite our initial misgivings - because if you use rat poison, they don't die instantly and eventually you will find a dead mouse somewhere that you don't expect to) because we were getting that desperate. But the mice didn't take a bar of it.

This brings us to today, five days later.

I walked into the kitchen thinking, 'Oh, I might as well put the dishes away for the night,' when I shit you not, there was a rattle and I was like 'Oh snap, that sounded like the mouse trap,' and then stupidly decided to look. Or rather, my superior colliculus decided that it would make my eyes foveate because it saw movement in the corner of my visual field. And oh so fortunately, I was just in time to see the mouse do its whole death twitch/squirm.

Cue screams of blue murder.

A. was out at a band gig, and so I was so very lucky that M. was over because I'm pretty sure J. would not have been nearly as obliging in
a) picking up the mouse (plus trap)
b) putting it into a plastic bag
c) throwing contents of bag into a public trash bin at the bottom of the street
In fact, he was all for leaving it there (right beside the fridge door - how on earth was I going to access my milk for my coffee?!) until morning for A. to get rid of. But like I said, so lucky that M. was over.

I then proceeded to bleach the kitchen floor thoroughly because J. had dragged the mouse around the floor for a bit. Gross. But pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease let that be the end of the rodent problem.

#recovery

So, last weekend my flatmate plied me with sake and got me drunk (sidenote: I have discovered that I prefer sake as my vehicle to inebriation, as opposed to drinking icebreaker simply because sake is warm). As you know, drunk people lose their inhibitions and either get really chatty or emotional or flirty. As it turns out, when I get drunk, I lose all my inhibitions and eat everything in sight. And while we were drunk, we thought it would be a fantastic idea to drunk bake. So we made peanut butter brownie (which was actually really decent) and I proceeded to eat a fifth of said brownie (note: this was after I had demolished a self saucing pudding and half a tub of ice cream) before I sobered up and decided to remove myself it.

People wake up with a drunken one night stand. I woke up the next morning feeling bloated and ab-less. And almost preferred to have woken up with an STD because at least you know you can treat chlamydia with some azithromycin... whereas it took me a week of eating extremely cleanly and exercising to get my abs back.

But then this happened last night:

And now I just want to eat all the cheesecake. Stupid flatmate and his extremely persuasive manner. But honestly, that cheesecake was beautiful, with a blind baked base, middle baked layers of cream cheese and vanilla, with a separately baked layer of sour cream and sugar - all topped with a boysenberry coulis. 

Comfort eating sounds very enticing to me right now because I got completely outgunned in Renal Day today. Renal Day for those who don't know, is a day where we sit through five back-to-back half hour sessions on various clinical renal cases. Each session is taken by a hospital consultant/registrar and obviously, they rather like the Socratic method of teaching (having been used to terrorising ALM students with this style). But, if you know your shit, this is a prime opportunity to shout answers while your peers are sitting paralysed in fear. Unfortunately, there was a fellow gunner in my group who stole the thunder. And now I feel like a rather useless medical student. I may have to have another slice of cheesecake. 

Except tomorrow is MECA and there is free food aplenty... 

#iheartmedicine

It took a few days and three hours worth of writing up lectures given by Prof. W, but I'm over moping because kidneys are just so interesting. This module has been well organised and as much as I hate writing up Prof. W's 100 odd slide lectures, the way he uses cases to illustrate pathophysiology is just tops. So yeah, kinda over mooning over E. because I have kidneys to study and think about. I think I may like them more than studying the brain, which was pretty awesome too. In fact, I'm going to read some past year renal essay questions for fun.

Note to self: onesies are a lifesaver here. I am so snug in my onesie that E. kindly purchased for me when I visited him last weekend. Combined with socks and I am honestly so happy and warm. Still recovering from eating a fuckload though - I can feel the bloatedness... it's going to take me another week, methinks.

#footinmouth

Today, our normal HIC tutor was away and so we had a substitute one. Our HIC group is normally quite outspoken in general and we've gotten to the point where we're able to be quite honest about the shortcomings of HIC to our tutor (who I think may actually be just a bit frightened of us all). Anyway, the substitute (who we had no clue about his background) asked us a few questions while we were on the subject of orthopaedics. This was the conversation:
Tutor: "So, how can you tell when someone is an orthopaedic surgeon?"
S: "Oh, you can tell by the way they talk about their Porsche and how their job allows them to pay for the petrol for their Porsche."
Tutor: "It'd be funny to say at this point that I'm an orthopaedic surgeon - but I'm not."
J: "Yeah, because otherwise, why would you be taking HIC? You probably have better things to do."

Strike one... as we soon found out.

Tutor: "So if you can tell what specialties doctors are in by their demeanour, what about GPs?"
Me: "I'd imagine them to wear jeans. Actually no, sneans."

Strike two: the tutor turned out to be a GP. 

Tutor: "So what did you guys think about the health check day?"
Basically, this question led into a ten minute bitch fest about how everyone found it an absolute waste of time.

Strike three: the tutor turned out to be the HIC convenor. 

Oops.

#mope

I hate coming back here. I honestly hate it here. The overwhelming sense of loneliness and the fact that a mouse went all rogue and ate my food. And the fact that half a week is enough to send me into withdrawal from. E. A weekend is okay because it's only two nights and my brain can deal with that. Throw in an extra day and I'm just all melancholy and shit.