Its December 31st.
Sigh ... Another year down .

And how am i spending new years? Sober as ever with a path/micro/pharmac (or maybe forensic) textbook at hand staring blankly at the pages.

No parties, no plans no nothing. In a hostel with about five hundred girls and unable to do anything. Apart from that theres the regular what have u been studying u dunno anything at all line given by all the lecturers. Its like they were all programmed to say that as we struggle to comprehend what they say... neoplasia? metplasia? gangrene? cholecystectomy? streptococci? ipratropium bromide? inaba? ogawa?

... ya did i just start speaking a foreign language. Maybe.

Post 26/11

We all know about what happened on 26/11 and the aftermath of that.
So the question on most peoples minds is "so what next?".
Mumbai, Hyderabad , Delhi and now... Bangalore?
As thousands of people keep telling me the terror threat in Bangalore is quite large and we're sitting on a time bomb and dunno exactly when its gonna explode or hopefully very much just deactivate we just have to wonder so what are we really suppose to do?
Every ones going about their work normally but theres an increased awareness among people. Something makes a loud noise and we turn that way and sorta jump.
The area in which my college campus is situated is supposedly a very sensitive area where there are frequent riots and curfews.So the other day as we all drag ourselves down to the mess for breakfast and suddenly hear a BOOM and then flames everyone wakes up and rushes away from the window . Thankfully it was just some idiot who lit a fire with rubbish in it and something went off but hardly anyone went and sat near the window after that.

I just got back home to Bangalore today and my mom gives me a lecture about where not to go and what not to do. Do not enter malls and crowded areas. Be careful when going towards the majestic side etc etc. My mom happens to be slightly paranoid ( the understatement of the year).
Its affected all of us but are we handling this in the right way? Restricting our movements? Avoiding certain areas? And how long is this vigilance gonna last one two months at the max and then back to normal until something else happens?
Or can we prevent that?

The list

OK clearly due to demand this list has been put forth...

Warning: do not judge me by the stupidity in this post

1. Play a guitar for my 'lover' by standing outside his balcony a la Romeo Juliet style except for the role reversal.


2. get sloshed and stand on a rooftop singing "we wish u a merry Christmas and a happy new year" on a hot summer night.


3. eat a dog biscuit


4. sneak out of the house after every ones asleep and do something dumb


5. repair something (it seems extremely challenging to me)


6. bungee jumping (don't we all...)


7. sneak dads car out of the house when hes not looking.


8. go to Gokarna (ya we all know why)


9. eat something french (not the snails tho yuck!)
10. blue streaks
11. go and shop for something i would probably never buy otherwise and actually wear it
12. work harder academically ( I consider this a very challenging task)
13. learn to drive a geared bike

So here's to the road ahead!

Cheers!

Turning twenty

A few nights ago a couple of my friends were hanging around my room when my roommate goes like shit I'm gonna turn twenty in a couple of months and went into this melodramatic explanation about how she was getting old and she hasn't done much in her twenty odd years of life.Two decades of life down.. sigh its like a turning point on life!
We each contemplated and realised that neither have we. We haven't done crazy extremely wacky stuff that we can just picture ourselves doing them. We sat talking about our future and about how once were done with college these will be the major chunk of our good memories and we need to make them special.
My roommate also pointed out that we don't have much time. Since most of us are turning twenty soon or so she believes. So we made a list. Each of the seven of us made a list on what we need to do before were twenty we even cut out an old shoebox and started collecting funds on monthly basis we christened it ' for extremely crazy messed up shit before turning twenty fund'. I was made the treasurer and hence the box resides in my room and whenever people keep coming to my room for stuff they look at it and laugh. We know that years from now even when we look back at this we were gonna laugh our asses off too. Till then were pretty damn serious were gonna pull this off...

The syndrome

They say that once you start your clinical postings and learning about so many different things in the hospital ninety percent of the medical students feel they have some sort of problem or deadly disease. Manifestations include being overtly paranoid about everything, seeing all sorts of micro organisms around you with your microscopic vision, using complicated medical talk to tell other people about your deathly psychotic sickness. Basically its all in the head
The other day we had OPD (out patient department) where patients come during certain set hours to be sen the other day. My batch mates and I were standing "observing" the doctors do their thing. Finally a batch mate of ours walks in and goes straight over to the patients side instead of joining us. So we started our "observing". Patient complains of "periorbital oedema" I'll spare you guys from the explanation but truth was we really couldn't see any "oedema" in the "periorbital" region at all. But she swears it was there yesterday night. LOL.

This classical example demonstrates why medical students should not be subjected to so much studying, the adverse effects are such as the above probably even worse!
A serious issue which needs some considerations at least. Before we start self medicating our selves and killing ourselves

emotion(less)

I found myself in a situation the other day where I was sitting with two total stranger talking about -MEN . One a house wife and the other a recent MBA graduate we were stuck in a car together and just started talking out of sheer boredom.

The topic just came out of the blue. The two of them started out about how easy it is for a man to manipulate a woman if he just appeals to her emotional side. Haven't we all been a victim to this sometime or the other?

But I just realised it works out both ways. True women are more emotional than men generally are, but this hasn't stopped a lot of guys to give me the line " you played with my feelings" etc etc. All I could say to them was how so?

So most people can't help it when theres emotion involved and no matter how hard we try to put a barrier between places we shouldn't involve the emotional side to get the better of us it usually does.

Which kinda just leaves us against our last defences- but we're only human...

Piercings

I decided that two holes on each side of my ear are not enough. So I decided to go in for more...
So I went to the place and got my ears pierced twice on each side again. Now I eight piercings in total on both ears.
A lot of people I know where clip ons and stuff. I feel its a bit wussy on their part to sit with five clip ons on each ear! Come on! Grow up and get it pierced! So people do ask the normal questions after you get something pierced like
"Did it hurt?", "Don't you prefer getting it done under anesthesia?", " Can you sleep?" "Cant you just get clip ons? "
To the last question as if!!!
Yes it does hurt, if you do it by gun shot its similar to someone stapling your ear,
And no for the first few days its impossible to sleep on your sides. You gotta sleep supine in a rigor mortis position. You can only take out the earrings they put during the piercing safely only three to four weeks afterwards though. This is to allow the wound to safely heal.

Now I gotta go shop for some rings...

How the holidays just start sucking

Exams are almost always followed by holidays. These holidays gives you time to rejuvenate ,recreate and repent writing those exams.
Holidays also gives you the time to do those things you wouldn't be able to do on normal working days like take up a class or go out somewhere nice etc.
I remember during the last few days of my exam I was always planning how I'm gonna spend my one month worth of holidays. But as soon as they started I realised things sometimes don't work out the way they were suppose to and even if they did you end up getting bored in a couple of days anyways.
So whats the whole point of having holidays when your gonna end up getting bored with it anyways? And probably spend most of your time online or staring at the TV watching a re run of some old show you've watched five billion times.
The only thing I've probably been doing in the holidays would be classes particularly driving classes - release clutch , depress accelerator, 1st gear , neutral , 2nd gear. Yup. Meeting up with a couple of friends and watching TV. So what if I haven't watched TV for almost a year this overload is not good anyways!
Anyways if anyone has good ideas about how to spend free time please please please help me out.
Thank you.

Sulthan battery

Didn't know where to chuck these here they are...

one of the most beautiful places in Mangalore

one year @ med school

One year at med school:

• She thought the guy sitting on the opposite side of the lecture hall was a snob and a smart ass at the beginning of the year. They ended up going out.


• Dead bodies are freaky, but after you start seeing them almost everyday during dissection you kinda get use to them around when your discussing movie plans for the weekend or playing truth or dare and pictionary.


• every open window in lab is a ray of opportunity to jump out and run after attendance is taken.
• no matter how much you try not to touch the formalin you always end up touching it


• white coats never stay white.
• You probably only learn how to insult after you hear teachers " you think you'll PASS? The only thing you'll pass is urine" , "go to the exam and pass urine". " You are PATHETIC! absolutely PATHETIC"
• lingo change - legs feel like ants crawling all over it after sitting down for a long time to its a sciatic nerve compression.


• sleep is a luxury students just can't afford.


• people just can't stop talking about passing.


• no one ever studies for the last exam. the fact that its a last exam is distracting.

But its over... at least for the next six months.

The present scenario

Time to open those books. Its about time to start studying!
"Start studying" is like the same line we've all been saying for a month now. Finals approaching in July .. it sucks. Lately I've been doing nothing short of cribbing, lack of sleep which could be attributed to my roommate who keeps threatening to pour a bottle of water on me if I don't wake up at five thirty in the morning. Its boot camp seriously.
Then there's the five million things to study and you don't know where to start. I've been chugging in caffeine for several nights to keep me awake or as its called in the hostel lingo -"night out" which doesn't mean a night with no in timing in the hostel but just means your gonna stay up all night in the hostel and slog your ass off on a topic that you wouldn't even understand if you read it some fifty billion times!
But hey... there's a promising one and a half month odd vacation after it.
So it should be worth it ... right?

The tag thing

5 things you wish you could say to people

1. Im giving one my fakest of fake laughs can't you make out?


2. That's the most pathetic shit I've ever heard (without making them feel bad)


3. Pink shirts make you guys look so gay I'm to disgusted to even throw up on them


4. It would make things a lot more easier if you guys tried to be yourselves sometimes


5. Mom I flunked

8 things about me

1. I can read anything apart from subject textbooks


2. I love chocolate


3. I like to sleep late into the day only if my roommate let me.


4. I supposedly have an acid tongue


5. I show sparks of intelligence which make people say " oh so you actually are smart?"


6. I love my dog . If its between the guy an the dog its the dog.


7. I'm extremely lazy sometimes and just refuse to get up saying my ass is glued to the chair. I was literally lifted and hauled out of the room once.


8. I eat rice with two fingers , aloo bonda and fish fry with a spoon which has made me the recent butt of all jokes.

one way to win my heart

get me lots of chocolate ( no i will not share)

5 things things cross my mind a lot

1. when do I get to go home


2. food.. good food


3. sleep


4. murder plots to kill some of my lecturers


5. when does class get done

one thing I wish I never did

slack off work

three turnoff's

1. fake people


2. guys in pink shirts


3. dirty rooms

4 things I wanna do before I die

1. travel the world
2. drive a car at 200
3. scuba diving
4. buy a bmw

one confession

I like having assorted sets of notebooks(spiral bound, hard bound , soft bound etc etc) even tho I dunno what I'd ever do with them. I just love to collecting them.

I tag

aareet http://nangineer.blogspot.com/

samu http://samulicious.blogspot.com/

deepika http://allswelldatendswell.blogspot.com/

Exam trends

This post has been a product of my observations leading up to and during this recent exam... I noted slightly exaggerated trends of some of my peer. They are as follows-

• Under eye circles due to lack of sleep become the new "in thing". Followed by skipping bath, food and reduced telephonic conversations with bf's.
• Bed time habits change, some sleep for two to three hours a day. I once was the earliest to sleep before an exam one thirty. They looked at me for days after like I'd sinned.
• some people start talking subjects... like once this female came up to me and goes like " your teddy bear seems to have some form of Cushings syndrome, the symptoms which are pot belly, moon face etc etc. I swear since then I haven't looked at my teddy in the same way and I'll never forget Cushings syndrome.
• constant dropping off or dozing on your books. I do this pretty often and when someone asks me to go sleep on my bed I reply I was just recollecting something with my eyes closed.
• If you can recite a chapter out of the text book word to word people start coming to you to explain the chapter to them cuz their too lazy to study themselves! The only time I knew a chapter from the textbook was contraceptives. I'd never read the chapter but people really didn't care, they asked me everything from the physiological basis of after pill to flavors of condoms. I felt like I was giving sex advice ...sheesh
• the most common thing which can be observed is I'm so tensed am i gonna pass? When they so know they are. I reply " no you aren't, your teachers will curse you, your parents will throw you out of the house, no one will ever go out with you cuz they think your too dumb and finally all your friends will turn their back to you all cuz u flunked in one internal in your entire year"
• common lines "will I pass?" , "how much you done studying?" "When did u sleep when did u wake up? "
• When the power goes off before back up comes those few precious minutes tick by people start taking out their cellphones and start studying using the light from it going crap theres so much to do.

So I guess exams do tend to bring the best in us and the worst in us too....

Changes

A recent phone conversation with my friend made me realise that a lots changed in such a short expanse of time. Aren't we all striving towards becoming better individuals than what we were? We can't all just stagnate over time can we?
We were just talking about close friends and how we've been all changing... constantly. I've lost touch with a lot of them and was shocked at some of the stuff my friend was telling me about. Like the fact that I missed out on this wedding of one of my friends back home which made me realise that crap! shes got a husband I don't even have a boyfriend! Then theres the transformation of one of my friends underwent like this radical makeover minus plastic surgery supposedly I won't even be able to recognise her. From this total tomboyish look to this total chic look . Sneakers were replaced by 6 inch heels, from talks about brands like Nike and Adidas to L'oreal over Maybellene even her taste in guys has supposedly changed. Then there was this one friend who's gone into total depression and is currently on anti depressants. I still feel really shitty sometimes when i think about this considering we were pretty close at one point of time.

I use to think only girls complained about how fat they've become but this guy I know keeps complaining about his weight when hes actually become super skinny. lots of guys who started wildly experimenting with their hair and some really painful piercings (ouch!).
Then there was my friend who was on the other end who became a lot more artsy, a facet of her personality I've never seen.
I asked her about what she thought about me. She said " You know... I've always seen you make right descions and fast ones too but now you seem to be totally and utterly... confused"
hmm...

Hows life?

Sunday morning
10:30 am
I'm still fast asleep
beep beep
With one eye open I try to find my phone. Its lying there somewhere on that table. Groping around for it and I finally do find it.

Text message : Hey , hows life?



Normally hardly any of us would think twice before replying to this. A friend who hasn't messaged in a while outta slight curiosity to know what you've been up to messages and asks "hows life?" Depending on how close this friend is I would use my discretion on how much information to give him/ her. But at that point of time I just stared at it for a while. I must have looked really weird at that moment with my hair all over the place in the morning, my blanket still on me in this awkward sit up position staring at my cell phone screen . My roommate walks in at that point and goes "you alright???"

"huh , ya just woke up"

After sitting up in a better position ,still staring at my screen I ask myself. So hows life?

Good? great?slow ? fast? bad? sad? terrible?sweet? spicy? icy? ... (the last part was cuz my stomach was growling.) But jokes apart how many of us can really answer that?

How is life? At that point of time I could say its relatively OK.. slightly on the boring side but otherwise I really dunno.

So I hit reply

"Life's... cool!!"
Cool???
Cool = I don't really know what to reply to that so I replace it with the most ambiguous word that could possibly mean anything at this minute.
Sigh... I've got a lot to learn.

Leaving home

It's just so hard to get from fun mode to back to college mode. Very hard...
We realized this time that if we extended our holidays we'd feel worse when we got back plus the fact that my friend has a lot to organize when we're back. So when I text her to ask if our tickets were booked (we were on the waiting list till now) she replies saying "sadly they are , how I wish we could have stayed longer". So true. But tickets booked it just confirms the fact that we gotta go. No point postponing the inevitable. sigh...
So getting those bags packed and then we're back off to coll. The worst part about it is my mom crying. And my moms a really strong person and seeing her crying every time you say goodbye when you come down is well.. pretty disheartening.

These are probably the few things I miss about home

• Dog licking me as soon as I get into the house
• Music when I want it how I want it
• the remote in my hand and sitting on my sofa
• non oily chappatis
  
• plain cold milk right out of the fridge in the night
• my bathroom!!!
• my warm bed with my nice pillow
• no 6 30 curfew
• sleeping into the morning
• washing machine and drier
• high speed internet
• air conditioning!!!
• neighboorhood sounds

the list is pretty endless so no point. Now I know what they mean by home sweet home. So true..

The relationship thing

One of the sad things about being single is after the initial few months you start hating almost every couple you see hand in hand together. Whether random people on the road or friends etc its annoying. Maybe this is a more pronounced thing when most of your friends are already hooked up you can only be happy that valentines day thankfully falls on a weekday this year.


The few things I've noticed is that whenever you step out of the corridors at mid night its not silence that greets you but a million low buzzing sounds of all those girls sitting and having mid night conversations with thier bf's. I have this one friend who just can't get off the phone. She probably even falls asleep with the phone. Wow...

The stupid things people do when they're in relationships like get you somes notes at mid night right at your doorstep or run away as soon as you spot friends seeing you with your girl on an empty beach or upper berth- train journey- one pm or jumping waves are like some of the absolutely hilarious stuff i've witnessed, kinda cute but still I ask myself was I ever this way? Did I ever have the whole "in love" expression? Did I ever have more fun then than I do now?

I dunno , don't seem to remember. Maybe I have amnesia.

The kite festival

my kite

OK, so boring Saturday we just finished theory internals the hostel is like empty. The entire ground floor is deserted, theres absolutely nothing on TV, my roommate and me are just sitting around...

So what do we decide to do?

The kite festival!

She thought I was joking, come on its so far away you can't be serious and stuff.

In the end I pushed two girls outta the hostel with me and we all set out to watch the kite festival.

The international kite festival was on this beach called panambur, really far away from where we stay so we took an hour or so to get there. It was nice. The beach is nice and big the sand is pretty fine so we all took out sandals off put it in my bag and set off towards the shops. The nice thing about those shops there is that the sand from the ocean just comes into the shops so the floor is nice fine white sand which really feels good in between your toes. We bought a couple of these shell trinkets they usually sell. Then we saw that they were actually selling some of these kites for the rest of us to fly. I decided I wanted to fly one too. So we bought a kite, took it out to the beach and flew it . It was pretty exciting, we all felt like little kids flying kites on the beach. Running away from people who were trying to cut out kites!

>sand sculptures

Finally I just sat down in the sand watching the kite festival from afar. Supposedly each kite took like eight to ten man hours to make and they were so beautiful, birds,dragons depictions etc etc people from different countries like Belgium, Italy, Korea,China ,Us, Australia had come to fly kites. It looked pretty amazing. The whole sky with different shapes and sizes of kites.

In the end we were tired and decided to head back. Kites in hand, reliving those childhood memories of flying kites! Now that kite hangs in my room reminding me everyday that the kid is still inside me and that simple things like kites and sunny windy afternoons at beaches could bring it out!

the biggest kite

The bleeders room

So its new years eve and as my previous post said... I get extremely depressed thinking about what I've really done this year. So ya I'm sitting in my friends room as usual lost. All of a sudden she gets a call from Nikhil. B positive blood needed. Someone who hasn't had a vaccination in the last fifteen days. Our entire class got vaccinated a couple days back. Since I've already got my shots I was spared. So he asks me if I could donate blood. I really dunno what got into me but ya i was all joshed up, maybe I can do something worthwhile for once.
So we rushed to the hospital. Every time I step into that place I think someday I'm gonna be walking in here white coat Dr tag and work here... that hospital really gives me a high. So anyways theres Nikhil- shorts tee. Just got out of the room looks. On the way briefing me on what happened to the guy and why he needs blood and stuff. Supposedly he had a renal failure. We reach the blood bank,
Nikhil: you really ready to do this?
Me: ya
Nikhil: have you had malaria TB or anything?
Me:nope
Nikhil: Have you got drunk in the past 24 hours?
Me: *eyebrow raised*
Nikhil: k just kidding .. fill in the form.

Done.
The guy checks my hemoglobin. I notice two rooms in the blood bank the bleeders room, the refreshments room. There were more but those two were the only ones that caught my attention. Some of my friends came along with me... for support as they call it. Curiosity too.
We were sitting and all talking I'm lying down supine on the bed. Guy puts a spighmamanometer into my takes my arm injects this thick needle into me right into my medial cubital vein (don't bother I'm just showing of that I actually studied anatomy). He gives me a sponge and tells me to hold it in a fist that's so that the veins don't collapse.
The whole procedure took like half an hour another classmate came along too. Guess they needed a lot of blood.
It was extremely weird to see a huge thick fat needle sticking out of my arm. Every ones just talking, they said something funny I tried to laugh ha ha ended up saying ouch instead. After that I just listened to the sound of them talking rather than trying to make out what they were saying.
The guy came back in and took the needle off. told me to flex my arm and hold cotton. After a while I was asked to sit up straight. Felt wobbly first but then I was fine. Gave me some apple juice! Yay!
Then I could leave. The patients wife thanked the two of us. So maybe I did do something good. Not a total waste of the year.
Nikhil stops me at the door holds up three fingers and goes "how much am I holding up"
Me: five
Nikhil: ya shes good...