Drug-Making at High SPEED

By the end of the year I'll probably be able to make drugs at the click of a finger, if today's pharmacy lab is an indication of what the rest will be like. We had to produce three drugs - ear drops, an ointment and a saliva substitute, and we were to make them within three hours. Fair enough - one hour per product. The only thing though is we had to share some equipment such as the computer to type up labels and the weighing machine (whatever it's called!) to weigh stuff, as well as having to get the tutor to sign off each product we measured to ensure it was accurate. That proved to be tricky at times! I spent quite a bit of time waiting for others to finish using equipment, and we only had one computer working at our bench of five, so that caused a bit of a backlog. However, I was assigned bench monitor for this week which meant I had to stay behind till the last person finished so I'd be last to leave anyway!

To catch up to others though I had to run around finding drugs, measuring things and pouring things at breakneck speeds (OK I'm exaggerating now!)! At the end of the lab my tutor told me that I may need to work a little faster next time, and I told her about the lack of equipment and she just told me I might have to look around for spare equipment or jump ahead of other people. Hopefully it won't be like that for our assessment!

Working Harder!

It's amazing - I've only fallen asleep during one lecture this week! That must be a new record for me! It was a pretty good week overall. So far I'm keeping up with all my lectures (even though most of them are introductory lectures!), but it hasn't been without a little bit of difficulty. I've been spending my four hour breaks falling asleep for an hour before being awake enough to concentrate on studying!

Once again this semester I have early morning starts and I finish at 4pm on most days. Because I take this pharmacology paper with Zahir (old school friend) first up in the morning, we have been catching the bus into the city on most mornings and power-walking our way up K' Road to Grafton. He's also in my Biosci lecture stream so I've been seeing him quite a lot this semester! I've also been catching up with some of my first year pharmacy friends a bit more than once a week like last semester. I caught up with Hannah (a first year pharmacy friend) after my Biosci lecture on Tuesday and walked with her to the bus stop and learnt a lot more about her!

I also managed to catch up with the Rutherford gang - Zahir, Alex, Gwen and Chen in the past week (the exact day eludes me though!) which was cool because they're always fun to be around!

I got to sleep in yesterday since I had my first lab class at 10am, and so I caught a later bus into the city, and Phoebe happened to catch the same bus! So I managed to catch up with her. We walked to the city campus and I crossed paths with Jennifer, this girl from my Sunday School class and when she called out to me she had to pause to think what my name was!! I'm going to have to get her back for that at church tomorrow!

I've had two labs in the past week, one for Pharmacy Practice and one for Biosci. I can't really say much for Biosci, it was extremely boring! At least I got to sit at the same table group as my first year pharmacy friends! Pharmacy Practice lab was quite cool though. We got to make DRUGS!! We got to make capsules and an ointment. I got to be partners with Ai Ping, this pharmacy friend which is quite cool. Making capsules is quite though. It just takes soooo long! You've got to fill each individual capsule with powder using these spatulas, then you have to weigh each one of them! It took us about an hour to make ten capsules each. Just imagine how long it'd take to make 100!

I've been trying to develop a bit of a routine in the past week where I spend my long break revising what I've just learnt and reading ahead, as well as trying to memorise everything. After my final lecture at 4pm I'd catch the bus to Grafton and do a bit of study and homework at the Philson Library over there. I've now discovered that it's a lot faster to walk to the K' Road bus stop than to catch a bus back to the city and walk to the bus stop at Sky City! The only thing is K' Road is quite dodgy at night!

Last night we had youth group with it being 'activities night'. We were to finish our display board for the church foyer and then play some games during the second half of the night. To start off though Aonghas and I had to lead the singing. Usually no one sings except for the adults who run the group and probably Aonghas, me and a couple of girls, so Aonghas and I decided we'd sing something a little contemporary and try get them to stand up and join us as we added some actions! We found this song called Jesus You're my Superhero (yeah it's a bit of a kiddy song but hey when it's got Yu Gi Oh in it then it must be good!!) and danced to it and added some actions and some actually joined in, with one of the adults asking for a copy of the song so she could get the little kids in the children's Sunday School class to sing it!

We also played some games which involved getting into two teams and competing against each other in mental and physical challenges. I was pitted against another girl in seeing who could try sing 'laaa' the longest, and I beat her! Yay!!

Catching Up

Today was the first day back at uni for the second semester of 2008, and it was going so well for me...till BIOSCI106...

I caught the bus into the city with my old school friend Zahir and discovered some happyhappyjoyjoy stuff! Yay!!

My first lecture was a Pharmacy Practice lecture from 8-10am and I stayed awake throughout the whole time. It was actually quite fun, since it's actually 'pharmacist' stuff we're learning! After my lecture we were walking to the cafe and there were all these 1st years all around us probably going to their MEDSCI lab (which involves dissecting rats), including our favourite 1st year pharm class rep Eliza!

I was going to join my friends when I came across Nikki, one of my friends from Rutherford and probably the first ex-Rutherford friend I've caught up with in months! I ended up sitting with her and her friend Maria, who are both starting nursing this semester. It's pretty cool because now there are more Rutherford people at Grafton! It turns out Nikki's friend knows a girl from Rutherford who used to go to school with us and is extremely good at the piano! Nikki's friend also sorta looks like this Korean girl who used to go to my high school yeeears ago before she went back to Korea, and was a reeeally good singer!

Anyway they had to go off to their first nursing lecture, and I went off to another Pharmacy Practice lecture, and once it was over I caught up with them for lunch and afterwards took them to the museum upstairs as I had promised to (it's a good way to impress girls too haha). The drawcard too was the severed hand with burn marks after whoever owned the hand grabbed hold of a high voltage power line. That really grossed them out! I'm sure a year from now it'll be nothing to them, especially since nurses get to see dead bodies!!

They had to go to another lecture afterwards, and so I went back into the city for my BIOSCI lecture (which I arrived late to because of the bus!) and I fell asleep! That destroys my clean sheet for semester two! Fortunately I've already read over that lecture weeks ago so hopefully I haven't missed too much! I caught the bus back to Grafton to do a bit more study when I caught up with Hannah, another first year pharmacy student which was cool too!

Yesterday at church I got a little surprise too when Angie showed up for the first time since the beginning of the year! Her friend wasn't going to church with her so she came to ours...so that's why!! But it was a good catch-up with her. After Sunday school our families ended up sitting at the same table for lunch. Our mums are in the same Sunday school class too so they know each other as well. I've tried encouraging Angie to come to our youth group but we'll see what happens!

Anyway time to sleep early! For the past few days I've been preparing for bed at about 10.30pm and ending up getting into bed at 11pm and sleeping before midnight. I'm a bit behind schedule tonight so I'm off!

Maori Health Week

For the past week I've had to attend Maori Health Week which the university has made compulsory for all 2nd year med,nursing and pharmacy students. We spent the first day at the city campus where the week started off with a 'virtual' powhiri in the Fisher and Paykel Auditorium (the original marae where it was supposed to be held became unavailable at the last minute!) before having another sort of powhiri down at the other marae at the city campus before having some very European morning tea (cupcakes and scones!).

We then had three guest speakers talk to us about Maori health. It was funny as there were a few people sleeping or reading novels! I did my best to stay awake! Whether I did is another thing...

After lunch we got into our assigned groups which were made up of med, nursing and pharmacy students. We had to discuss the case that we were given and come up with an intervention. We would spend the next few days planning this intervention with the ultimate goal of presenting it to the other groups in our 'pod' a group of groups focusing on the same case. The winning group of each 'pod' would then go on to present their presentation to everyone in the 'grand final'. Our pod's case was that we were a nurse at a public health clinic trying to improve low rates of Maori women being screened for cervical cancer.

Our group was quite good. We worked pretty well together and I don't think we argued at all during the week, unlike some other teams which I heard had major disagreements and arguments! There were about five pharmacy students, five medicine students and three nursing students in our group. Our facilitator was a third year medicine student as well but he was pretty cool and laid back, but very helpful!

Each morning we had Te Reo Maori lessons where we were supposed to learn some Maori...supposed to...I don't think our teachers had anything planned so by the end of the week we had only learned three lines, and two Maori songs. One of them was a really cool, funny song that apparently has every letter in the Maori alphabet! I'll upload it to YouTube sometime!

The following days we had to travel all the way to the Tamaki campus for Maori Health Week. This brought back many memories from last year, when I had to go to Tamaki for population health papers as part of the Health Science degree. I sorta started to miss it all and just wanted to go say hi to the tutors and lecturers from last year even though they didn't know me! To get to Tamaki though, I had to catch a bus into the city and then catch another bus to Glen Innes. The bus from the city to Tamaki took 45 minutes though! I ended up taking the train back into the city after each day since it only took 15 minutes.

Our group came up with an intervention that we would hold a day where meetings would be held at a local marae to talk to Maori women and encourage them to get screened. We thought our intervention was pretty good! We were all prepared and made our presentation at the pod presentation. We were up against another tough group led by none other than this pharmacy lecturer Simon who was extremely determined to win! The only thing was that all presentations were peer-assessed, so each group had to mark other groups. At the end of all presentations our group collated our marks but they were in the 50's and 60's which we thought were a bit too low so we added 10 marks to each group. When all the marks from each of the groups were added together though, Simon's group beat our group by ONE point!!!! They went on to represent our pod in the grand final.

Unfortunately (or fortunately???) they didn't win the grand final. This group that did immunisation (I think) ended up winning the grand final, with each group member receiving a $50 book voucher. Their presentation was certainly entertaining. They did a roleplay where the main guy 'Tane' was played by this Asian guy who wore this flax skirt!

The week certainly helped me learn a lot, but rather than learn a lot about Maori health, I learnt so much more about the other disciplines and what was involved in nursing and medicine! It was cool getting to work with students from other faculties and it made me realise that med students aren't exactly snobs and know-it-alls as they're often made out to be! They did most of the work and the leading though but I'm not complaining! I caught a train back into the city with a nursing student in my group and I definitely learnt a lot about nursing from her too!

Here's the Maori I learnt from Maori Health Week: Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa. Ko Calum toku ingoa. (Welcome, welcome, welcome everyone. My name is Calum)

Locked out of the House

Finally I got a day to myself and I ended up locking myself out of the house! Yesterday I was left home alone for most of the day as my dad went down to Tauranga for a funeral, my mum went out, Hamish went to work and Aonghas went to a course. That meant I had to deliver everyone's newspapers! I went out to deliver one side of the road and when I got back there were a few kids on the other side of the road calling out to me

"You want a threesome?!! How about a twosome???"

It was beginning to rain so I went back inside for a while. When the rain subsided I went out again to deliver newspapers on the other side of the road, but when I got back and tried opening the door, I forgot that I had put the chain on, so even though I had the key I couldn't get back in! I tried looking around the backyard and getting into the garage to find something I could use to get into the house, but the garage was also locked (I don't have the key to that!) and I couldn't find anything! I didn't want to go over to the neighbours and sound like a fool, so I decided to walk down to the public library and hung out there for a while.

My mum wasn't coming home till about 4.30-5pm and it was midday by then. All I had on me was my phone, my clothes and my keys! I tried ringing my mum several hundred times but she obviously didn't have her phone with her! So I ended up just trying to read and sleep a little to pass the time away while I started to starve! I ended up having to drink from the tap in the toilet!

Finally my mum picked me up from the library and we got home, but she didn't have the key to the front door (since the back was chained) either! I ended up having to do a few things to break into our own house! I won't say exactly what just in case...

So that's a bit of excitement for me these holidays, just in time before Maori Health Week...

Day at the Dump

I really haven't had much to do these holidays. I ended up going to the Refuse Station or whatever it's called...the dump...with my dad to pick up some free firewood. I nearly drove down the wrong driveway but fortunately we made it to the right place! We pretty much filled the boot and the back seat with wood. I'm not too sure how much of it was treated wood but hopefully not too much, or else if we burn it we'll have problems!

When I got home I vacuumed the car and even surprised myself that I was capable of doing such a thing! I suppose that's a reflection of how boring these holidays have been!

Comes at a Cost

After cleaning up the computer a bit I've found some photos I completely forgot about and some photos that I previously uploaded to Yahoo Photos, until they changed to Flickr and deleted all my photos, so I've re-uploaded them here. I've been meaning to go 'pro' with Flickr but I might wait till I've got a bit more money in my bank account!

Speaking of money, you'd certainly need a lot of it to be able to afford the latest 3G iPhone don't you? $6000 (for one of the plans) for two years seems quite extreme just to be able to make phone calls, text and use the internet on a mobile phone, doesn't it? It may be a reasonable plan in comparison to everything else that is currently on offer in NZ, but it isn't very affordable. A lot of people certainly were expecting a lot more for a lot less (check out the furious responses on NZ Herald and Stuff), but once again we come out worse off when compared to other countries. That's if you wanted to get an iPhone in the first place...

I'm no fan of the iPhone, and was never considering getting one anyway! For a start I don't think the hype is warranted at all! OK so it's an Apple product and it looks fancy, but you can get other phones with more and better features than this phone. Apparently it doesn't have a camera on the front which means you can't really do video-calling, the camera it does have is only 2 megapixel (when you can now get phones with 3.2-5 megapixels!), you can't send pxts...Oh and just a disclaimer too, I don't like Apple either! ;) The very fact they initially made all these exclusive deals and the way they go about designing their products and selling them just makes them sound like the next Microsoft, trying to suck as much money out of us as they possibly can, an impression many people will probably have of Vodafone right now, judging by their responses to the iPhone plans!

I have to admit I always had the impression that Telecom was the money-hungry telco after having dominated the landline/internet/mobile/whateva market for so long, and that Vodafone was our saviour, giving us better offers. I guess they have in some ways (think back to free weekend texting, aaaah yes those were the days! We were promised something so much better in Superprepay, but where's the part where we get free stuff for nothing, including not having to spend money in order to get the free stuff???), and because we only have a duopoly you can't really expect prices to come down too much can you? While I wasn't planning on buying the iPhone, I was hoping the iPhone would be a catalyst for change in mobile data rates (i.e. that they would fall!), something Peter Griffin (from NZ Herald) predicted would happen. I guess not anytime soon anyway!

John Campbell grilled their marketing boss Mark Rushworth, but all he could get out of him was "it's a fantastic phone that comes with blablabla". I'm sure he knew what to expect and was probably told just to stick to the script and try promote the phone as much as possible no matter what he was asked!

Well I guess all we can really do is wait till Telecom get their GSM network up and running, and hope very hard that NZ Communications gets up and running sometime soon and that this will lead to better offers for us at an affordable price! ;)

Wild Weather

Boy has the weather been crazy! In the past few days it has rained, then stopped, then rained, then stopped, then hailed HEAVILY! It is kinda cool when you're in bed at night, it just makes you want to sleep!

The downside to all this is that it is really freezing!! Of course we don't have it as bad as those down south do, but it is pretty bad compared to much of what we're used to! Our house certainly doesn't help either. Because it is an old house, it only has insulation in the roof but not in the walls, so it is a lot colder inside than in other houses. We've only just started making use of the fireplace.

It's now week two of the holidays and I don't think I've really accomplished too much! I have been reading up a little bit on biochemistry, seeing as people say it's tricky and it definitely sounds uber boring!

I've also started trying to sort out our computer. It's as messy as our house! We have about seven hard drives and our videos, photos and documents are everywhere, which isn't very good when you're trying to do video editing but can't find the video you want! I ended up spending all day shifting things around. It's really weird how it says there are five days remaining, but the files shift in ten minutes! It has been interesting having a look at what we have lying around on our hard drives as I've found some photos and videos I haven't seen in aaaages!

I briefly caught up with my friend Jacqueline at West City yesterday and tonight I talked to my friend Diane on the phone for a while which was cool! She's up in Auckland till the end of this week for her uni holiday before she has to go back to Palmerston North (I feel soooo sooo sorry for her!) to study, so I'll have to catch up with her sometime before she leaves or else I won't be seeing her again till the end of the year!

Woooah and Wooops

Shower mats are important! I learnt that the hard way when I slipped over in the shower yesterday! I was standing on one foot, cleaning the other when I slipped over. Fortunately I didn't break my spine or impale myself on anything like the shampoo bottle!



My fall wasn't as bad and cheesy as this one though!

I've been doing a bit more driving lately, picking Aonghas up from school and Hamish from work, but today in bad weather I got hit by a truck! OK it wasn't as bad as it sounds. I was waiting at a round-about when this large truck was turning into the Foodtown car park, turned too sharply and hit the back of the car! I felt it from where I was sitting, and so I was afraid this massive truck smashed some light or dented the car! We kept on driving till we got to school and fortunately it was just a bit of a scratch on the bumper!

When I was driving down Rosebank Road a little later on though there was a bus that had stopped at a bus stop and a motorcycle coming in the opposite direction which was overtaking another car. I should've slowed down/stopped the car behind the bus and wait but I wasn't paying attention and drove right in between the two, just narrowly missing both! So luckily I didn't knock the motorcyclist over or collide with the bus!

RIP Ms Anne Horne

RIP MS ANNE HORNE

I was surprised to hear of my boss's boss (I think that's her position?) passing away just yesterday and she was still quite young too! My only real encounter with her was when she interviewed me for the recorder teacher position. May she rest in peace where good music is played and yummy food is served!

On the Sidewalk

It looks like they're doing up the main street of Henderson once again. We used to have these fancy street lamps which were these domes on top of a metal pillar that lit up at night by the main crossing from West City to the other side of the main street (Great North Road). When I was walking down that road to the bank yesterday I was surprised to see they had replaced them with those ordinary yellow traffic lights and the domes were lying on the side of the road! You would think that in this day and age they would be trying to widen the road, especially with all the bus stops and car parks there. While they have done so for bus stops, in other areas of the road it looks as though they're trying to narrow the road with gardens! I don't exactly know what they have planned for the main street but hopefully it looks good. It better be for all the work they're doing down it!

Speaking of Henderson and West Auckland in general, it can be a bit lonely being a Westie at uni, especially in pharmacy. Everyone around you will likely be from North Shore and be from Westlake or Takapuna, or from Central and have attended Mt Roskill/Auckland/Epsom Grammar! They talk about stuff that goes on over in the Shore or over in Mt Roskill. You try tell them something about what happens out here in Henderson/Te Atatu...well they've never heard of Te Atatu to start with! I wouldn't be the first to admit that West Auckland isn't as...upper class...as other parts of Auckland (and then again I may just be stereotyping!) and so sometimes when you hear all your Shore/Central friends go on about their former school or their area all you can really do is listen with envy! (Trying not to trying not to trying not to!)

Anyway with a lack of good TV on tonight, I watched this Cantonese movie 'Love on a Diet' tonight which was pretty cool. I've got to try reconnect with my Chinese side! There's something about Chinese movies which make them pretty quirky and funny, even though they can be a bit cheesy at times! And most importantly, the happy ending is always cool! (Well...sometimes you just wish it would all end bad to better reflect the real world don't you...but we won't admit to that!)

Ways to Spend Your Time

The holidays have just started and already I've nothing to do, but hey I'm not complaining! After twelve weeks of constant uni, boring is just what I need! I've started listening to Scarlatti sonatas as I need to find a baroque piece to play on the accordion...oh and a lyrical piece! That's a real problem for me. I have difficulty finding lyrical pieces that I'd like to play as I'd rather play rough and faster music! (maybe it requires less skill or something..)

The Piano Accordion Coupe Mondiale (world champs) is coming to Auckland next year and my teacher asked me if I wanted to compete and I told him I might as well, seeing as this may be my only chance to compete in a world championship in anything, and the cheapest opportunity to do so! It means I'd have to perform a 15-20 minute programme of music consisting of at least a Baroque piece, a lyrical piece, and some technical show-off piece (I think). I'm sorta slightly more motivated to practise more now, as I'll be up against all these hard-out musicians who practise over ten hours per day while up till now I'd only be doing at most one hour a day! I don't want to embarrass myself again and come last out of everyone, including the other New Zealanders who enter next year though, so once I find some pieces to play, my accordion practising will increase! At least more than before anyway!

As for Aonghas and his quest to get an orchestra ready for the KBB Schools Orchestra and Band Festival, he's finally been given the go-ahead by the music teacher. The thing is that entries close this Friday, so he's really only got tomorrow and Wednesday to get as many people on board as he can! It looks like the brass section will be thin once again. Why oh why couldn't there be more brass players?! Especially people who play in the bass clef. That's what the school orchestra would really lack. No bassoons, trombones, cellos, double-basses. That's been the case with every school orchestra I've ever played in. The piano has to fill in for all the missing parts! Oh well any orchestra would be better than no orchestra in Aonghas's case though. He just needs more than 24 people for the orchestra to be allowed to perform in the Main Hall! (You can probably tell how keen I am for them to get an orchestra together, so I will stop going on about it now! Aonghas has probably gotten sick of me too!).

That's probably what happens when you get too bored...