Bleeding Love Dance

Been busy and totally neglected this blog again. Was on the interview trail and am finishing up some fourth year required electives. So this is a post to declare I'm still alive! Also, those of you still plagiarizing my stories - c'mon, do we really have to do this again? Also, since some readers have informed me fictionpress finally got off its butt and disabled the whole copy+paste function ... how? Why? It takes pathetic to a whole new insanity level if a plagiarist is resorting to figuring out how to get past the c+p thing in order to copy a story to put up on another site.

I love songs, dances, musicals, things that are able to effectively tell a story so if it's accomplished in a visually captivating way, thumbs up! I like this:

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone's been enjoying the holidays and is ready for 2013!

I've been blissfully lazing around during my winter break after wrapping up my ob-gyn clerkship. After seeing all these deliveries and scrubbing in on the C-sections, I have extreme respect for mothers. Mad respect.

As one of the many perks of being a lowly medical student, one of our duties is usually gathering the general history of the patient in triage. So when a woman in labor is busy breathing her way through a contraction and squeezing the threads out of the sheets, hey - you get a medical student hovering over you, asking about your chief complaint ("What do you think? I'm in freaking labor!"), past medical/surgical history, your previous deliveries ("Can't you pull up the information from my medical charts? I've been here before!"), current medications, allergies, STDs, abnormal pap smears ("No, no, no, NO."), etc. Believe me, we're very sorry, but we enjoy the process as much as you enjoy resisting the urge to throw something at our heads.

So ob-gyn was fun, in that mildly traumatizing way.

Anyway, a friend gave me this snow globe for Christmas and at first glance, I was like, "Aw, this is super adorable. It even plays music while I watch the snow fall. I'm going to treasure this forever!"

And then, the other day, I take a closer look:

Be happy, indeed. A bear gleefully prepared to trample a tiny turtle beneath its huge paw. Or caught right in that magical moment before he sends a flying kick at the turtle's head.

Am I to assume this is a subconscious manifestation of my friend's real feelings for me?

Am I a puny turtle, idiotically grinning away, while the shadow of a foot looms over my head?

No.

When the moment comes ...

I shall be the bear.

Sex Therapy

A lecture we had during psychiatry clerkship was on sex therapy.

The lecturer touched upon paraphilias (sexual arousal to objects, situations, or individuals that are not part of normative stimulation, causing distress to the individual or harm to others) for a while and described an experience she had:

One night, the phone rang and she went to pick it up. On the other end, a man breathed harshly before diving into obscene comments and lewd suggestions. Instinctively, she slammed the phone down.

Then, with her hand still on the phone, she thought about this.

The phone rang again and she picked it up. It was the same guy making the same crude remarks and this time, she informed him, "This is an impulse disorder you have, which I imagine would probably cause you a lot of distress. I know where you can get professional help -"

The guy hung up on her before she could finish.

But then, a few minutes later, the phone rang again and when she answered, he asked, "Does the place accept Medicaid?"

"True story!" she stressed as we all laughed in disbelief.


Sorry for being awol. Been really busy lately. I finished my psychiatry and neurology clerkships and I'm now on my pediatrics clerkship. I'm on nursery week and all the babies are so, so adorable - even though a fellow student said that he's since realized all newborns look like Winston Churchill.

Winston Churchill, Master of The Disgruntled Baby Stare-down

Psych Ward

Been rotating on the psych ward. Had a full week of orientation stuff which included getting a large set of keys since the entrances to the wards all have sally ports, a personal alarm (essentially a panic button that I should press in case I get trapped with a violent patient or something so that in the security guards' office, my picture and my location would flash on their screens and they can come rescue me) and a brief defense training which involves basically how to take down a patient without really hurting him/her. It involves two staff members and if it was two of us girls vs. a large, hostile man, would probably not bode very well for us girls.

All in all, it has been a nice experience so far. The attending seems to really enjoy teaching and the fellow is really nice. The patients are allowed to roam freely through the halls so a lot of times, when we're meeting in the office, the patients would stare and tap on the window on the door to the room as they mumble to themselves. It feels a bit like we're in a fishbowl sometimes.

We had a new patient transfer into the ward the other day and the woman seems to be bipolar with religious delusions and hallucinations. She also has a long list of serious medical conditions including breast cancer which had metastasized to her bones, but she has no insight regarding her problems.

During the initial interview, she refused to talk to the fellow, calling the doctor a prostitute who had tried to pretend to be the patient and had stolen her stuff to go to heaven. But that was alright because she had a bright light named Abraham who protects the patient and had impregnated her so that she gave birth to the other student with us.

The fellow tried to ask her a few more questions, but the lady refused, screaming, "I'm not talking to you! You're evil! I'm the prophet and the mediator of the bible and you're going down!"

The doctor gave us a look and I jumped in with a question about how long had Abraham been visiting her.

To which, the woman grinned. "He doesn't visit me. I go to see him. He's right there in the other building, helping the people find heaven. You can go there and see him, too." She sighed. "I like talking to you. Chinese people are always nice. Nice and delicious."

The room went quiet.

"I'm delicious?"

"Yes. Nice and delicious," the woman laughed.

"What do you mean by that?" I inquired to fill the silence in the room.

She just beamed and continued to giggle.

"Okay ... thank you," I said at last.

The fellow has since decided that since the patient "liked" me so much, I should follow up on the woman.

"Don't worry. We'll be with you," another student declared. "... so she doesn't eat you."

"Gee, thanks."

tltr

One of my cousins and I like to bicker a lot. Most of our interactions consist of mocking each other for fun though unfortunately, I think he has a lot more embarrassing stories to make fun of me with.

I don't remember exactly what we were texting about - maybe discussing which laptop I should buy to replace my old one or the crazy price increases in external hard drives after some Thailand floods hit manufacturers hard - but at one point, I must have text/ranted.

His response: "tltr"

At first, I was like did he sit on his phone and texted me by accident?

Then, pathetically, I went to google what tltr stood for just in case it was one of those newfangled text speech.

It was. Urban Dictionary revealed tltr = "too long to read".

Stupid cousin.

My response: "sorry you're illiterate."

And that's how part of Adel's text conversation with her brother, Adam, came about.

Other sparkling texts I've exchanged with cousin:

Him: can i come over bored
Me: you can come hang with bro. cramming until dinner tonight.
Him: u should just wing it
Me: I wing you!
Him: Wing isn't a verb
Me: You just used it as a verb. Ohhh winged.

Random Food Photo to bring flavor to this post:

One good thing about cousin though is he can be a really handy garbage disposal. We were at a Japanese food buffet and I, overestimating my gut, ordered one too many rolls. And the thing is the rolls look better in picture than in reality. They had mixed in some fried tempura batter in with the fish in the center, but something about the oil was really heavy and tasted horrible. I couldn't stomach it and was literally breaking out into a sweat, getting a tad nauseous. I felt especially bad because cousin was treating and I expected to just pay the extra fee myself for not finishing the rolls.

However, cousin finished his plates and simply reached out for mine after I ate all the raw fish lying on top of the rolls like sashimi. Even though the remaining rolls were really bad, he still claimed he could finish it all, saying it was no problem at all. And he did. By breaking it down, grain by grain, separating the mass of pink fried concoction in the center, and forcing all of it down. It was simultaneously hilarious and touching because I thought it was so cool of him to just shovel it down for me, taste buds of steel.

So yeah, I suppose he's one of my favorite cousins.

Even though he's still an illiterate fool who should really stop making fun of me.

Advanced Medical Technology

Captain Planet, He's Our Hero

When I was a kid, my cousins and my brother and I would play "make-believe anything". No, that's not what we called it, but we were really, really into this make-believe business. We acted out anything from our own hot creative mess of a Mighty Mutant Morphin' Club to The Boxcar Children to camping with a blanket over four chairs until we grew so big, one of our cousins was inevitably stuck sleeping "outside under the stars". And we loved to pretend we were Captain Planet's Planeteers. We even made our own paper rings, we were that legit yo.

Except whenever we played make-believe, my brother - the youngest - always got stuck with the less than heroic role. We were always "saving" him and he was always getting "hurt" or "kidnapped" and he could never ever be Fire because my older cousin already got dibs, but we tried to pretend his Earth power was still cool. Usually by going "AHHHHH!" and staggering around the room whenever he brandished his ring and belted out, "EARTH!" Like we were in some epic earthquake.

I remember now that we must have fed him some line such as you can play Earth and Heart. Two powers! What a bargain! But honestly, years later, I couldn't even remember there was a Heart person until a friend recently mentioned it in a late night conversation. Why were we discussing Captain Planet? Can't remember, don't ask haha.

Him: "No one ever wanted to play Heart. He was useless."
Me: "Heart? There's no element like that."
Him: "There is a Heart power. No lie. He was that short little kid with a monkey -"
Me: "OH! Wait ... what exactly did Heart do?"
Him: "Exactly. What does Heart do?"

Well, apparently, Heart can speak to animals ... and care about people a lot ... and I guess, recycle really well.

So naturally, my little brother would gamely pretend to talk to a stuffed monkey for all of five seconds before "EARTH! EARTHQUAKE!"

"AHHHHH!"

This comic made me think of him and our cousins and our younger, more carefree years. Do I feel old.

If we had played this Guntron team though ... yeah, bro would probably have been the bullet. Haha.

Run Away

Preserves

I always knew Peanut Butter was too good for Jelly haha.

The Butt Dance

Friend had a potluck at her place the other day. I decided to bring spring rolls so I wrangled my brother into helping me wrap rolls the night before.

During wrapping, we bonded:

Brother: So, the butt dance.
Me: Oh. That Korean thing?
Brother: Yes. KARA.
Me: Hmm, that's really the only song I know from that group. What's the name of it again? Mister or something?
Brother: No clue. I only know of The Butt Dance.
Me: Oh ... okay.
Brother: ....
Me: La la la la lala laa la la la lala la la -
Brother: Don't.

My brother doesn't like to talk much.

Anyway, this is the butt dance he is referring to. Kinda old news, but I guess no news is too old for guys when it comes to girls doing synchronized booty-shakin':

There's a Body in the Bushes

I went out to bowling and lunch with friends the other day. We took a walk by the piers first and it was a drizzling, but pleasant day. As we passed by some benches where there were shrubbery set directly behind and above the seating, there were birds chirping incessantly and we're like, "Aw, birdies on crack." We turned around and the first thing I saw was a pair of grimy sneakers attached to a pair of legs in cutoff shorts attached to ...

There was a man sleeping in the bushes right behind the benches.

His body was horizontal, reclining on the dirt, half covered by the green underbrush. I presumed he was probably sleeping on the bench and then decided to crawl into the bushes for cover from the rain.

We spun right back around and walked away as quickly as possible.

Two feet away, we paused and threw each other hesitant looks. "Wait ... is he okay?"

"What if he's dead?"

Oh, snap, Hippocratic Oath.

Yeah, we remembered. Suddenly, we were a hovering group of dumb medical students, wondering if the homeless person was injured and if we needed to call the ambulance. And how offended would he be if we grabbed a stick and stuck it under the leaves, maybe give him a little poke, poke to check if he's breathing? Or wait, what if he wasn't a homeless person? What if he was some guy who just wanted to connect with nature and meditate in the bushes? Oh, dear.

We stood there, clutching our umbrellas, and studied the guy. Just as we started to take a step back to him, a park employee rumbled by with his garbage bin and paused next to the man.

Okay, bush man appeared to be fine. Fine enough that he shifted over and continued sleeping there at least. Off we went.

Writing Status: 3 pages into TM Chapter 29.

Violent Tendencies

My brother had jury duty today so he took my laptop with him to help him pass time.

Except the background of my laptop is of three fearsome girls brandishing weapons ... like so:



He came home and complained that the lady next to him took one look and started laughing. He got so embarrassed, he went and changed my background to a dark cityscape.

What's wrong with it? I think it's epic.

Let Them Eat Cake

I had the weirdest dream ever, but it wasn't all that unpleasant.

I was thrown back to this Pride and Prejudice type of setting and I sat in this stuffy gold gown with my sister(? I don't have a sister in real life) next to me and this tall, broad-shouldered guy with dark hair to my right who never looked at me directly, but I knew - just knew he was the Darcy type. Across our dinner table were two girls who were also sisters, one dark-haired and one blonde. My dream self recognized that the dark-haired one was the meaner one while the blonde was the prettier, somewhat nicer girl.

Then things went silly from there.

Waiter took our orders - and we could place orders for special BREAD. (I blame this on yesterday night's search for brunch food. I'm going out for brunch next Sunday with some friends and I made myself hungry looking at menupages. So many muffins, challah toast and bialys, ooh.)

Anyway, so we placed our orders, but when our special BREAD came, silly me had no clue which one was which. There was a longer challah looking type with onions (which was supposed to be mine) which I started to cut open and .... stuff with gravalax but my sister quickly warned me "That's not yours!" (Stupid sister!), so I grabbed the blonde girl's rounder, smaller bread instead and, er, dropped back the other bread into the basket, gravalax included.

Guilt guilt. I buttered the blonde girl's soft bread and was chewing it when Darcytype tilted his head left in my direction and whispered ... something. I forget, but it was something that made me realize "Oh shit! Wrong bread!" and made me feel even guiltier for dropping back my bread into the basket since even though I didn't bite into it, it's not quite nice to have your fingers all over someone's bread.

Meanwhile, the sisters across from us were oblivious and they kept chatting away, eating their entrees while I'm still gnawing at my bread, mouth dry. They finished their entrees and they didn't appear to notice or want the bread, but as the blonde girl turned her face, eyes all shining, to Darcytype across the table, he made a remark "Enjoyed the food?" which had this snarky undertone that I knew was directed at me.

Guilt overwhelmed me and I slammed my bread down onto my plate and leaned forward like a mad woman. "Excuse me! But I ate your bread!" Sounds ridiculous, I know, but in my dream, I was acting as if I was making a noble speech. "I didn't know this bread was yours and I'm sorry but I also sort of buttered/gravalaxed my old bread for you too." Pointed at the challah sandwiche with salmon in between.

The sisters stared at me, revolted. "Ew!" exclaimed the blonde girl. (Not very Pride and Prejudice, no?) "I can't believe you ate my bread!"

I started to stammer. Darcytype went silent and still next to me. I babbled, "I'm sorry - I - I'll make it up to you - how about - how about you have my dessert instead?" At this, while my upper torso's leaning forward to the girls in supplication, I felt Darcytype's shoulder brush against mine, leaning against me as if telling me "No. You don't have to do this."

I'm guessing this must be very good dessert.

The girls' eyes widened and they immediately agreed even though they were still pretending to huff and pout.

This must be incredible, mind-boggling dessert!

I sat back, forgotten, as the girls went back to chatting, and I felt absolutely miserable for trading my heavenly chocolate cake or something for a piece of stupid bread.

But when dessert came and the girl took my plate, Darcytype cleared his throat and subtly shifted his plate over in front of me.

I blinked. "Wh - what?"

His voice was gravelly as he finally glanced over at me. "I don't care for sweets."

Then he dropped his napkin into his seat as he got up and left our table.

. . . Weirdest dream ever! I rarely remember my dreams, but this is the weirdest dream of all time!

They say dreams tell something about you.

I guess mine says I'm a pig that prizes her dessert way too much.

That, and I should label my bread in the future.

Stephenie Meyer dreams of sparkling vampires and I get dreams about cake and bread. Thank you, muse.

Happy Holidays!

Elizabeth: "That's exactly right. I ate your bread!"
Darcy: "And I relinquished my cake to her. Problem?"

Fowl Play

Okay, I lied when I said I was gonna get started on my essay. Brain cells not functioning well right now.

I came across this really, really old piece of news last weekend about amazing celebrity mishaps and I think it's my weird funny bone trigger. I just couldn't stop laughing my head off whenever I thought about it even though it was probably quite scary and painful at the time.

Fabio went to Busch Gardens back in 1999 to do a promotional event for a new roller coaster, Apollo's Chariot. Locked into the middle seat of the front row, the ride set off and by the time the ride ended, they rolled back into the station with Fabio looking oh-so-serious with blood splattered across his nose and cheeks.

Apparently, as the ride passed over a pond on a descent, the serene geese floating upon the lake were spooked and ...

A bird hit him in the face.

WHAT ARE THE ODDS?! He had two lovely costumed ladies to his left and right and the stray goose does a kamikaze into his face!

It must be all that "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" pheromones.

Laughing Girl: Yah, I totally placed the hit on you, Fabio. Not butter, my BUTT!

Park officials said that no sign of the bird was found (cue creepy X-Files music?), but I think a park guest mentioned that a dead goose was found floating in the pond after the ride. Either Fabio killed the 20 lb goose with his wicked powerful nose or we can be optimistic and say that the bird is still out there, ready to snipe someone another day ...


By the way, I always knew roller coasters are one of the top dangers in the world. I never saw the joy in paying a lot of money to wait on super long lines to strap yourself in a reckless contraption that wreaks havoc on your hair and vomit reflex. No, sirree. Now add stray birds to the calculation.

(Roller coasters rank way up there on my fear list along with bloody horror movies, fatty meat, and insects, a.k.a. I'd rather get a shot than be dragged onto one. The end.)

Love Spats

I have two more quizzes on Monday. That's another one for Biochemistry. The readings make my eyes bleed. I do this thing where I like to pinch together the pages of the chapter I'm supposed to read and then go, "Oh, that's not too bad. I can do this in an hour." And then I realize that the text is printed on what amounts to toilet paper or those nifty oil absorbing sheets and the pages are so paper thin, they go on and on and on ...

The French exam I took last week went well: 99. I misspelled juillet. But! My Biochem quiz totally thrashed my butt. I'm still recuperating while trying to memorize various things about laminopathies and the details of Spinal Muscular Atrophy. My brain is going through atrophy.

The other day, while I was downstairs trying to force myself to study, I overhead the most bizarre conversation. It was so awful, it was amusing.

A man had stopped right in front of my house at the fence to my driveway, probably thinking that the brick wall of the store next to my house served a good privacy bubble for his phone argument.

Not if he was practically bellowing his words out.

I sat by the window to my driveway, just several feet away from him, but hidden from him. I couldn't see him either though I did try to crane my neck, peering sideways to see if I could catch a glimpse of what might be the biggest asshole in the world.

So I was reading about the basal lamina when a loud voice suddenly snarled, "I owe you nothing! What do I owe you? What? Do I owe you something just because I had sex with you?"

Hmmm. Basal lamina or crazy lovers' spat? I dropped my pen.

He followed it up with more sparkling lines:

"Where are you now? Here. Just do me a favor and come back right this minute and meet me. Just walk back. I took the time to meet you and you're acting like a child."

"Yeah? Well, let me tell you something, you're not the first good looking chick I've gone out with!"

"I gave this my best efforts and I don't see you trying. We have a good friendship and you're ruining everything. You know what you told me last time. Remember? You said you were happiest being with me so why do you have to go and be like this? Stop crying. Stop crying! Just stop!"

"What the hell do I owe you? Friends don't owe friends anything! That's not how a friendship works. I don't owe you and you don't owe me!"

"You know what? We had a good thing, but you're too spoiled by men. Yeah, men catered to you. I don't do that. I don't cater to women."

"So are you coming or not? Come back and meet me at Dunkin Donuts. Start walking back right now."

And then there's my favorite:

"I wrote a poem the other day and let me tell you, it was pretty damn good. I write good poetry. Yeah, you don't know anything about me. It's your loss."

I have no idea how that came into the conversation/argument, but I presume he was trying to elaborate on the many awesome qualities he has.

I was chatting with a friend online while the man was still yelling away on his phone outside and he suggested that I step out onto my balcony and dump a bucket of ice water on his head before doing a giggle, duck and run.

Since the man was speaking on his cell phone, it was all one-sided and I have no idea what happened in the end, but I sincerely hope the girl didn't get suckered in and ended up trudging back to meet the guy. He was absolutely callous about her feelings and if they were "friends", then he was a friend she didn't need.



Anyway, I've fixed up some more parts of False Facades and in between studying for my quizzes, I'm working on the new chapters to TM and UF. Kaetlyn has been flung clear across the library and is still getting attacked in Unfinished Business. Meanwhile, in Through Me, Tristan is finally back at home and everyone is preparing for the first party of the season.

Until then, Happy Mid-Autumn Moon Festival to those who celebrate it!