On The Edge

Shall I bore you with some insight into my schedule? And perhaps also some distressing turbulences we are currently hitting?
Well, basically we would have no weekend this week, after a mid-term for Integrated Program II, with 8 more hours of classes after that. How long till Integrated Program II? H'm, 2 days including today. And I'm still sitting here merrily complaining away.
I did not had a good day. In fact, I haven't had good days in days. Anyway, you won't do anything much on bad days, and here's with me -

1. Class' over. "Why in the world made her set the fonts so small I could barely see from row three?" "And look at my elbows, it's so full of mosquito bites. Someday when I conquer the school with my troops I will remove air-conditioning from the offices and install them in the classrooms. And I will say to the teachers 'speak at a speed of 1 word per second and set your powerpoint font size to at least 50!'"
   
2. I have to tune my mind to 'study mode'. Given the current bad mood and the fatigue that it suffers from Immunology the previous week and god-knows-what before that, the tuning usually involves flipping through some magazines, and probably a little snoozing. The above process takes up to 30 minutes.
3. Finally we can start - Pharmacology page one.
4. "Drugs for asthma are mostly prophylactic, except terbutaline and albu-... see that guy with the checked shirt is gorgeous!"
5. "I wonder what a twitter is? H'm, gotta check it out as soon as all this heck is over."
6. "OK OK, back to work...and steroids are the only way to manage long-term asthma because it relieves the chronic inflamm-... I am anti-steroids! How can these people administer steroids with such limited considerations? What the heck are these pharmacologists thinking? According to my secondary school Pendidikan Moral teacher, steroids are no good!"
7. Friend comes, asks a question. Answer "I don't really know lah, just remember A causes B. No need such effort as to why or how, the patients won't ask you anyway."
8. "No," the friend says, "according to the new WHO- and UN-approved medical education guidelines, which specially emphasize problem-based learning, you have to fulfil the 5W1H criteria to graduate - what, where, when, why, who, and how the drug works...."
9. Pretend to go to toilet to avoid further grilling.
10. "Omalizumab is an anti-IgE antibody that will inhibit normal IgE from attaching to high-affinity IgE receptors on mast cells...sounds wonderful. Next time I go to the ER because of asthma, I'm requesting for this drug."
11. "But look, heck, it costs $600 for just 15mg. Are they selling gold or what?"
12. "The good-looking guy is looking this way."
13. "Now, seriously! Bronchodilators - Methylxanthines, Theophylline...I wonder if Theresa Theng carried a bronchodilator or a beta-agonist? She definitely takes steroids, look at how she became fatter as her disease progresses..."
14. "Oh, 5.30, time for dinner!"

Then when I come back home at night my roommate would console me, saying it's ok and we'll wake up at 6 and have an early start tomorrow. Thinking this would compensate for the inefficiency during the day, I happily start blogging.
The next day I would snooze the 6am alarm and sleep right through till 8, while my roommate sneaks off and had a headstart. And my vicious cycle would begin again.