Tales from Semester Two

Second semester was by far the busiest and hardest semester I had ever endured and it's been a few weeks now since it has been all over, so here are a few stories from the second half of the second semester:

- I had two pharmaceutical industry placements in the second half of the semester: at Douglas Pharmaceuticals and Propharma. Douglas Pharmaceuticals is on the same road as my church out West Auckland, so it was cool just having to make a five minute trip for once, rather than having to make an hour-long trip to the city.

We got a tour around the plant, which felt like exploring a candy factory! There were heaps of machines making drugs, and we had to wear protective clothing to enter certain rooms. We also got to see these workers in these spacesuit-like-suits washing rooms. My friend's dad works at Douglas, and so when one of the workers smiled and said 'hi' to me, I assumed that was him!

The second industry placement was a half day at Propharma, this time in North Shore. At first I had no idea how I was going to get there, and was originally planning on skipping a class so I could catch the train there. Luckily one of my classmates offered me a ride there and back which saved a lot of time and hassle.

Propharma wasn't as interesting as Douglas as it was mainly a warehouse where they sort out drugs to send off to pharmacies who have ordered them. One good thing though was that they gave us the answers to the questions in our workbook and also provided food, even though it disappeared quite fast!

- We had a couple of group projects that were due towards the end of the semester. Our pharmacology student project required us to come up with our own lab experiment to test a hypothesis. I felt really bad about this one because I didn't contribute as much as the other two in the group!

- The bus lockout occurred towards the end of semester which was a little disruptive as it meant having to wake up earlier to get down to the train station to catch the train into the city. The train stop was a lot closer to campus though which was a lot more convenient though. I have to say it was fun at first to catch the train, but that was probably due to the novelty factor. After a few days of catching the train the excitement factor dropped off a bit. I was amazed at how full the train carriages got though! I don't think I'd ever seen the trains that full!

The morning after the pharmaceutics formulation assignment presentation Angie wanted to catch the train with us, and so she walked to our house in the morning (how she wakes up so early in the morning I'll never know!) before we took her to the train station. That's where we caught up with another guy from Rutherford, Matthew and joined him on the train.

- As for the other group project it was a formulation assignment for pharmaceutics where we had to write a report explaining our choice of formulation for an ocular drug (for the eyes), and then do a presentation in front of a couple of lecturers who would be marking us and asking a few questions at the end. Our group went first. I did the easiest part, which was to explain the anatomy of the eye and explain how LASIK works with the help of a little animation. Our presentation wasn't too bad. The scary part was the question session at the end, but the girls answered the questions quite well, and us guys were saved by the projector bulb blowing! We ended up having to change tutorial room because of that!

- Because I regularly finished class late in the day and stayed at Grafton to study for a while after class, I would usually walk down K' Road to catch the bus late at night usually after 8.30pm. Lately there had been guys at intersections holding these big signs advertising their escort service, the 'honk if you love sex!' kind. Occasionally they would hold the sign at me as I stood beside them waiting at the intersection for the lights to change. There was this one time though when I was standing at an intersection near one of the signholders who was talking to this girl. The girl then finished talking to him and came over to me and asked

"Hey, would you like to come and have a drink with me?" (pointing to some place further down the road).

Thinking that she had something to do with the escort club, I told her I apologised and told her I was rushing to catch a bus, which was kinda true. To confirm my suspicions, the guy at the next intersection who was holding an escort club sign also was standing with a girl!

- Even though I've been stuck in Grafton all semester, I've been able to return to civilisation by catching up with a few people over in the city campus. Throughout the second half of the semester I had to attend a few Dessert Club meetings, but sadly I couldn't make it to any of their events! I think we actually only held one event in that time - a Dessert Night! Our planned Amazing Race had to be cancelled due to a lack of interest.

- I also got to get my first photo taken with someone graduating - Janey, from Dessert Club! I caught up with a few others at Albert Park and we were waiting on the others for quite a while and time was approaching 2pm, which was when I had a tutorial on! I really had to go, but my friends were urging me to just wait a little longer so we could all get a photo together. Eventually all of us old Dessert Club Committee members got together and had our photo taken before I rushed back up to Grafton to sneak into my tutorial. Fortunately it was just a quiz competition on bipolar disorder between our and another tutorial class.

I also managed to catch up with my friend Angie for lunch at Albert Park before we had a little walk through campus and caught up with this girl Cathie, who used to go to Rutherford before defecting Rangitoto College!

I also regularly bumped into my second year pharmacy friend Scholastica! We went over to the hospital for lunch once and she explained to me the menstrual cycle (for study purposes of course!). Funnily enough, a couple weeks later while studying for my exams in the cafe and sorta...chatting with Angel my pharmacy friend, I ended up trying to explain the menstrual cycle to her! I still don't think I can fully memorise it though...

- We also had a bit of car trouble during the semester as well. The first time came at the worst possible time - assignment hand-in time! I had spent all of a Sunday night and Monday morning working on my pharmacology report and had it finished about an hour before it was due. My mum drove me into the city, but as we were driving along the off-ramp, I could hear something rattling. Very soon I could smell a burning smell and smoke began to come out from under the bonnet, so we pulled into a side street which was just down the road from the Grafton campus. I jumped out and ran through the rain to Grafton to hand in my assignment. Being so puffed out (a sign of how unfit I am!), I walked back to the car and we rang AA. The guy determined that the cap for something was missing and he'd have to call a tow truck. After another half hour of waiting, a tow truck came and we took a ride all the way back to the mechanics in Henderson!

On our way to what we thought would be our last ever accordion lesson a week or two later, we were driving through Hobsonville when we could smell a burning smell again and so we pulled over again and called AA. Once again, the tow truck was called and we were taken to the same mechanic in Henderson. Hope he didn't mind seeing us again!

- October was a sad time for us in terms of learning the accordion. We would have our last ever accordion lesson with our accordion teacher Campbell. What makes it sad is that we've been learning the accordion for over ten years, and have been learning from Campbell for more than three years at least! We were going to stop learning last year but decided to continue for slightly longer. Unfortunately we weren't able to enter the world championships due to uni and everything else being a distraction.

We ended up leaving Campbell with a shield/trophy that said on it:

THE ANDERSONS' FAVOURITE ACCORDION TEACHER
Campbell Bettridge

Just because we aren't taking lessons anymore doesn't mean we've stopped playing the accordion though as these holidays have proven!

- APSA (Auckland Pharmacy Students Association) elections were quite hotly contested this year! Only the president, vice-president and marketing rep's positions had one nominee running. We had very interesting campaign speeches, which included Eddie (a 2nd year student running for education) playing his ukulele, many of them trying to bribe us with lollies, Lisa and Sofie (two 3rd year students running for social reps) dressed up as Sailor...Moons (?) dancing and chanting, while Taniya (2nd year running for treasurer) doing a little dance for us, Patrick and Wasif doing a rap for sports rep and Himesh (2nd year running for treasurer) playing Who Wants to be a Pharmacist...Millionaire? with us. There were plenty of third year and second year students running for the positions which made things a little difficult for me as I'm friends with most of them! My friends Eddie, Kathleen and Ziheng were all running for education rep, while my friends Susannah and Hannah were both running for welfare rep. I had no idea who I was going to vote for! I did make some promises in advance before knowing who would be running, so I had to fulfil those promises.

What was a real shame was the voting process. This time instead of doing a paper vote, the vote was conducted through the uni website. However, it stuffed up and didn't let some people to vote, and so another vote was required. Something happened with the vote count though and because some votes were so close, a 'tie-breaker vote' was required for some positions.

Congratulations though to all those who did win, and commiserations to those who missed out!

Apparently things did get a bit heated with some contestants dissing others behind their backs (when one thought the other was a friend!). After the results were announced as well, some third years weren't happy at hearing that they had been beaten by a second year and were even considering getting people to sign a petition for a revote! In the end things cooled down and the results stood.

- One of the most difficult things of the semester were dispensing labs! We were often required to dispense two prescriptions in the space of three hours, which was not much time for us! What was even worse were the dispensing assessments! The first one was a practice, and so there wasn't much on the line. We had to do different tasks at each of nine stations. We were only given ten minutes for each station. The first practice assessment didn't go too well for me, but the second one wasn't too bad. I passed at least! How it works is that you have to pass the dispensing stations to pass, regardless of whether you make it over 50%. Quite a few people scored more than 50% but failed the dispensing stations, and so failed the assessment overall!

- At times I felt as though I just wasn't cut out for pharmacy. We had weekly tutorials for pharmacy practice where we had to discuss cases in groups and then present a roleplay to the class where the patient discusses their symptoms with the pharmacist. I would NEVER go up and do the roleplay, until one week when some of the group members egged me on to have a go. The cases were focusing on eye and ear problems, with our group's particular case about some person with...some ear problem I can't remember. Anyway I had to play the pharmacist, and I did it completely wrong! I pronounced the name of the drug wrong for a start, and when asked by the patient how the drug (eardrops) should be administered, I told the patient that the head should be tilted and the eardrops applied to the ear. Someone asked whether the patient should be standing or sitting, and this is where I sorta said (as a guess):

"Sitting or standing it's really up to you..."

That's when the class started cracking up laughing and I was told you should be lying. I was just standing there a little embarrassed!

Exam Period

- There was only about a week between the last day of lectures and the first exam (oral exam) which was on the first Wednesday of exam week.

This time my oral exam for pharmacotherapy was the first exam while the written exam for the same paper was the last exam only a week and a half later. My oral exam was just after midday this time around.

The day didn't start off well when I caught the train in and got off at the wrong stop. I only discovered this after I had gotten off the train! I was in the middle of Newmarket, instead of near Grafton! I wandered down the main street looking for the nearest bus stop, till I found the right one and fortunately caught the bus to Grafton.

As for my performance, unfortunately it was quite similar to that last semester. was given ten minutes to prepare two cases that were given to me - one was on bipolar disorder and the other one on Type II diabetes. I was much more familiar with the diabetes case and spent slightly longer time preparing for it. I was not really confident with the bipolar case, and this showed when I went into the first exam room with the two examiners to talk to them about the case.

I was sweating profusely and had to say 'I don't know' to quite a few questions! While the patient in the case had lithium levels greater than normal, what the examiner steered me towards was the conclusion that the patient was dehydrated!

The second case was a lot more straight forward. I managed to answer a few questions. There was one moment though when she asked me a question and I said hyperglycemia was possible. That's when one of the examiners asked me what I said, and I started to think whether I said the right one out of hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia! It turns out I was right the first time!

I spent the rest of the afternoon studying with my friend Scholastica before catching up and studying with Natalie till late at night.

That was because the following day was...MEDSCI305 exam!! I was really worried about this exam because I hadn't done so well in the mid-semester test. What made it worse though was that once I caught the bus I started to feel a bit funny. I thought that maybe I was just full from eating several buns for breakfast, but I was feeling worse as time went on. It was once I got to Avondale that I felt like I could no further, and emptied a plastic bag I had and got off at the next bus stop. It was just as well, as I vomited into the bag as I was walking down the road to the nearest public toilet! I didn't make it so instead I just sat at the bus stop and rang my parents to come pick me up.

My mum decided to take me to see the doctor so that maybe he could give me a medical certificate just in case. I didn't get to see my family doctor because she was busy, so I didn't know this doctor too well, and while he told me it was probably just a tummy bug, he said I had to see the uni to get a form for him to fill out first. After he gave me an injection of metoprolol (which was a drug I had to know for the exam later that afternoon!).

I felt a lot better in the afternoon though so I had no excuse not to sit the exam :( It didn't go so well, which was not unexpected.

As soon as the exam was over, I went over to the computer just to have a quick look at the news and noticed a flash mob had been dancing around the streets that day and were due to randomly start dancing down at the viaduct, or at some place called Vulcan Lane in ten minutes time. I quickly texted Aonghas and we started making our way down there.

We were walking down this side street though and noticed some teenagers sitting on the ground which was weird. There were also quite a lot of teenagers walking around for a Thursday afternoon on a school day, wearing nice clothes you don't usually see them wear at such a time. They were standing in groups, quite a few of them were looking at the jewellery displays at the nearby jewellery store, which was also unusual as you don't get that many people looking at jewellery! Surely all these people were pretending to be normal and were part of this flash mob! We sat on a nearby bench and were very soon joined by some 'office workers' who sat next to us. Aonghas was sure they were in on this flash mob but I wasn't so sure.

We stood a little closer to where we thought the action would take place, and some guy came up to us and asked if we were part of the flash mob. We told him we weren't, and then he asked if we knew some guy called xxxx, to which we said we didn't. It was really weird becaues he seemed to know quite a bit about flash mobs.

That's when it started! All the people we assumed to be in on it like the young guy dressed up as an office worker on crutches all came together and started dancing in sync with each other! While they didn't do such a good job pretending to be 'normal' people, their dancing wasn't too bad!

Anyway, I had a weekend before my next four exams (one being a dispensing assessment). I even skipped church to study!

My next two exams were on pharmaceutics and pharmacy practice respectively, and they weren't so bad. I did have to guess quite a bit though!

All my remaining exams were at Tamaki and so I had to get to uni early in the morning to catch the uni bus to Tamaki. Many of the students were already at Tamaki by the time I got there, which meant the buses weren't so crammed.

Because our exams were only two hours long, it meant we had to wait another hour for the buses to come (because exams are usually three hours long). I spent the time discovering new places and buildings in Tamaki I never knew of before, such as the games room!

Before my last exam, I had my final dispensing assessment which was compulsory to pass in order to pass the course. There were tales from other students of having to dispense these really difficult medicines, but I was lucky all I had to do was to count pills and not label anything difficult like asthma inhalers! I was afraid I had done something wrong though, and would have to resit the following week.

We would be told the next day if we'd have to resit, which was also the day of our final exam! The final exam was the written exam for pharmacotherapy and I have to admit I had slacked off slightly as it was the last exam, and I had also thought I was going to fail that paper after screwing up the oral exam the week before. The exam wasn't so bad though, and I managed to write a whole lot of rubbish!

By 11.30pm, I was free! After taking the bus back to the city, I celebrated by buying Wendy's, the perfect way to the end the year.

Birthdays and a Ball

For a start, to those who have invited me to their birthday parties that I have not been able to attend, let me just apologise, and that I would have loved to make it but I'm handicapped by living far away out west in Henderson, and am stuck on a restricted license which means I have to be home before 10pm. My mum still doesn't even trust me to drive outside of Henderson either, so I have to rely heavily on public transport which isn't exactly very flexible!

Fortunately I have been able to attend a few 21st birthday parties during the last half of this year:

- During mid-semester break it was Estee's 21st birthday so we had a surprise tea party for her! We were all asked to dress up and bring a tea-cup to the party. Once again I was running late, which is not so great when it's supposed to be a surprise party, so I had to forgo trying to get a present and went straight to her house to meet-up with the others and prepare to surprise her. I had to park further down the road so she wouldn't see my car.

We were all upstairs when she came home with her boyfriend Pita, and I have to admit we didn't exactly know when she came home! I'm sure she was surprised though as she wasn't expecting anything!

We all had some tea and finger-food before we sang Happy Birthday and ate some cake. We also had a look at this really cool book with photos and little quotes that Estee was given as a birthday present from her parents. It was pretty cool, I think I was in one of the photos....somewhere!

The costumes people came in were pretty creative! David was dressed in black and white, and came with a top hat and walking stick, while Nick was dressed as a Viet Cong. I only managed to come up with a grey cardigan-like jacket and tie with a little hat!

- A couple of weeks into the second half of semester was Shrikkanth's birthday. I came out of my dispensing lab and got a text message from Shen, asking me if I'd like to join them for dinner at the BBQ King to celebrate Shrikkanth's birthday, so I jumped on the bus and made my way back into the city to join them in the engineering building. We all went down to the BBQ King together.

The BBQ King which was a small little Chinese restaurant was packed (especially since it was around dinner time!), and so a few couples were asked if they could share tables with others just so they could find somewhere for all of us to sit!

I ordered this dish with barbeque pork that was quite difficult to chew (my jaw is a lot weaker than it used to be too) and had quite a bit of fat. I ended up eating the meat part of it and Shen kindly ate all the fat! He was telling me I really should eat the fat because I'm so skinny!

- At the end of that same week Toni and Joanne had a combined 21st birthday in September. Our group from Rutherford showed up in force to celebrate their birthday! I also met Szelin, my neighbour which was a surprise! It was interesting hearing stories about Joanne and Toni's childhood and some of the funny moments in their lives. There were also quite a few lesbian jokes too! (Just for clarification, Toni and Joanne are definitely not lesbian!).

What made it more special was that I've known Joanne from way back in primary school and so it was quite cool to celebrate her 21st after knowing her all these years!

After the speeches and the cake-cutting we just hung out talking and doing a little dancing before my mum rang me and ordered me home (courtesy of Aonghas my driver!)

- 10th October was the social highlight of the pharmacy year - the Pharmacy Ball/Formal Dinner (combined this year due to the recession I'm guessing). I was really tossing up whether to go or not, as two of my closest pharmacy friends told me they weren't going after I had bought my ticket, and I didn't know if I'd end up being a loner or not. I also had exams to study for (or maybe that was just a convenient excuse in favour of not going?) I wouldn't have been able to get a refund anyway so I ended up going, and I definitely don't regret it!

Doors opened at 5pm which is probably the earliest for a ball I've attended! I ended up arriving at about 5.30pm. I only sorted out my dress at 5pm! I ended up dressing up completely in black (decided to try something different).

The ball was held at the Hilton Hotel this year, and because I didn't know where it was, except that it was on a wharf, I looked for the nicely dressed people when I got out of the car and followed them...from a distance...The Hilton Hotel was flash! There were stairs at the entrance with an arch made with balloons and waiters and waitresses standing on either side holding plates with drinks on them!

Once I got in I discovered most tables were all taken, well the good ones anyway. I caught up with a few other 3rd years who hadn't found somewhere to sit yet and joined them in the search for a table (while taking photos along the way of course!). We managed to find a table on the side of the room that was opposite to the stage. Once again I was sitting behind a pole and so I didn't manage to see much of what was going on on stage! At least we were close to the food and the bar. That meant I constantly had this waitress coming up to me asking if I wanted another drink. At first she presented a wine bottle to me, but I asked if she had something non-alcoholic and from that point she constantly refilled my glass with diet Coke!

I was really looking forward to dinner because I hadn't eaten and I was starving! Once we all got our dinner though, it was time for a the formal part of the night to get underway. One of our lecturers gave a speech on behalf of the staff, before some of the APSA (Auckland Pharmacy Students Association) executives gave some speeches and some of the 2010 APSA executives were announced! Not all of them were announced though due to complications with the voting process (I'll explain in a later post).

Once dinner, speeches and dessert was out of the way, it was time for the dancing part! I was surprised at how fun it was! I sorta joined in the second year circle for a little while before I slowly drifted to the third year circle. It's cool how you end up talking to people you don't usually talk to in such a setting!

One problem was that on that same night was my good friend from high school Jacqueline's 21st birthday party as well! She's invited me to her birthdays each year for the past several years and this year was no different. I didn't want to miss it either! I discovered it was at a nearby club though - the Zen Night Club. Now before that night I had never stepped foot in a night club before, mainly because my parents don't like me being out so late at night, especially in the city. However, this time I was already in the city and it was before midnight. The ball would continue till midnight and there would be time for plenty of dancing, so I decided I'd leave the ball for a while and run up to the club to celebrate Jacqueline's birthday, or at least be there for the speeches!

When I finally found the club, there was this guy standing by the entrance, who I think must've been the bodyguard. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do so I asked him if I had to show my ID to him, but he just let me in! When I finally got into the really dark room and caught up with some of my high school friends sitting by the bar, we just hung around talking till it was finally time for the birthday speeches. It was slightly different to what I had imagined. I always imagined night clubs to be huge warehouses with heaps of people packed dancing close together, but most people were standing around by the bar with only a few people on the dance floor! Then again it was only 10 at night, so it was still quite early.

Birthday speeches began for the other girl who was also celebrating her birthday with Jacqueline, before it was Jacqueline's turn. Shen and Larry gave the birthday speeches, with Shen going first. It was really nice! Jacqueline was also in tears I think! Larry did a Kanye West and interrupted Shen for a moment.

After the speeches I made my way back down to the Hilton to continue the dancing at the ball. I left half an hour before it was due to finish though because Shen was offering me a ride home and it'd probably be easier going home with him than having to get someone from my family driving all the way to the city to pick me up.

- Later that month on the 21st was Sarena's birthday. It happened to be on the night before my pharmacology lab test, and so it would be a bit of a risk going to her party, but she's one of my good friends and I wanted to be there at least for some time!

Because it was at a sailing club in Pt Chevalier which was on the way home for me, I was able to catch a bus there...after I did all my study of course! Before that though, I did a little quick shopping to buy Sarena some chocolate as a temporary IOU birthday present, and a couple of plastic bags for my costume...we had to dress up in the occupation we wanted to aspire to when we were younger. Because of convenience and time, I just cut up and wore plastic bags, and drew on them. I could just dispose it afterwards before I went home! (Oh, I forgot to mention, I hadn't told my parents about the birthday party either because I knew they would frown upon me attending it when my test would be held on the very next morning!).

Other people were a whole lot better dressed. Amy was dressed as a policewoman, Ellyce a fairy, Shrikkanth a gangster (I think!) Shen a...cowboy or one of the Village People? I can't remember! haha

There was plenty of food at the party and a lot of Sarena's family and friends. It was soon time for the speeches. Kat, one of Sarena's longtime friends gave a speech which brought back memories from intermediate school! Kat, Sarena and a few of us were all in the same class in year 7 at Rangeview. Shen followed with a speech which brought back memories of high school as well as singing to her! Shrikkanth gave a bit of a speech too.

After that there was dancing and bubbles everywhere! It was approaching 10pm and I had to get home so I could do some final study for my test tomorrow!

Boy, the year of 21st's has been busy!

Baptisms and Battles

We had two major events happen at church recently:

 

Stephanie's Baptism

 

Stephanie, this girl in our youth group was to get baptised along with her dad at church on Father's Day (first Sunday of September...almost a month ago!). This of course is a big thing for Christians (or so I'm told!), and so when I first found out a few months prior to her baptism I thought it'd be a good idea to do something special for her! I had seen some of the other youth groups support their fellow youth group members in past baptisms and so thought it'd be really cool to show Stephanie just how much we support and love her (in the good way)! The only problem was...I had absolutely no idea what people are supposed to give people for baptisms!

I called for any donations from people in the youth group and got quite a few generous donations from a few, which was more than enough to buy something for Stephanie! I tried texting a few people for some ideas but didn't get any replies, so I went with my mum and Aonghas to a few Christian shops to have a look, and we ended up buying her this calendar thing as well as a cross necklace.

 

Fortunately Stephanie and her sister Vanisa didn't show up to youth group the Friday night before her baptism service and so we were all able to sign the card without having to look over our shoulder!

 

Sunday morning was the big day! The church was twice as full as usual and I sat all the way in the back with Jireh. We were trying to organise what 'spontaneous' act all of us in our youth group should do when Stephanie receives her certificate. Gabrielle and Jenny were going to present Stephanie with her present on behalf of the youth group, but we couldn't see Jenny, so Jireh tried ringing her up just as the service started and we got a terse text message from her! It turns out she was already in the service when we tried ringing her!

 

After the sermon, Stephanie and her dad were the first few people to get baptised, and so Aonghas and I dashed to the front to film and take photos.

 

As soon as they were baptised, I went out back to Jireh and we started sorting out our 'spontaneous' act. We were planning on doing a Mexican wave, similar to the one we did at Epsom Girls Grammar's music evening (except that one failed with a measly two people). Time was running out as all the people who got baptised went up on stage to get their certificates and I had to go back to take some more photos.

 

As Stephanie came up on stage though, there was loud applause and a Mexican wave of sorts travelling along the back of the hall! Well done guys!

 

We didn't end up giving our present to her at the service but gave it to her afterwards when we took heaps of photos with her. I also caught up with my pharmacy friend Hannah after the service, even though it was really brief!

 

Congratulations Stephanie on getting baptised!!!

 

The Combined English Youth Fellowship

 

A couple weeks later on the 18th, it was our inaugural combined English Youth Fellowship evening, where our Oddfellows youth group got together with the City Church's Livng Water Fellowship to play some games and get to know each other better.

 

Because no one else volunteered, Jireh and I took it upon oureselves to organise the games for the evening, as the other fellowship would be in charge of worship. We were having trouble coming up with games though, and we really only finalised it on the day!

 

We showed up early and there was hardly anyone there...not a good sign! The people all started to trickle in though, with the city churchers all coming in one big lot!

 

They first led worship, in which they sang a few songs. None of us seemed to know any of their songs, but that's OK! We were interrupted by a fire alarm, but after that we kept going.

 

It was then time for the games! The first game I had planned for them was the name game, where everyone stands in a circle, and we go around the circle saying our name and an adjective preceding it with the first letter being the same as the first letter of our name, such as...

 

"Hi my name is constipated Calum!"

 

The next person would have to say 'hi' to everyone before them before introducing themselves. Unfortunately not everything goes according to plan! After a little confusion from a last minute game change, I picked someone to start, but they were too shy and spoke really quietly. The next person couldn't hear and things started to unrabble. I ended up just getting everyone to introduce themselves!

 

We then got everyone into four teams (which should've been six - I didn't realise the teams would be so large!), and got them to play a few games where they had to arrange themselves in order of various things like height, hand size, etc. 

 

The next game was when we gave each team four sheets of newspaper and told them they had to get all their team members from one side of the hall to the other without touching the ground. We played it a few times but then teams started cheating by ripping up the newspapers into little pieces and everyone just shuffling across to the other side of the room! FAILED

 

OK well at least the last game went well -  the Oddfellows vs Living Water challenge! Aonghas made a cup to give the winninng team, even if it was just a cheap cup bought from a discount store, and spray-painted silver (it still smells!). The game called 'Tunnel Ball' involved each team standing in a line with their legs apart, and the person at front rolling the ball back along through the tunnel to the last person who then ran to the front and carried on. It was quite close but...Oddfellows won! :D

 

Supper was a segregated affair, with the Oddfellows hanging amongst themselves and the Living Water people playing basketball by themselves. I caught up with Hannah which was cool. You could kinda see the contrast between the two youth groups - theirs is more outgoing while ours was a little quieter and reserved! Maybe that's why we're called ODDfellows!

 

There was also this new girl who I saw standing along by the doorway. I thought I'd try make conversation with her, which didn't get too far but I suppose at least I gave it a go!

 

Hopefully we haven't scared the other fellowship away though, and that we get together a bit more often and get to know each other well! 

 

My One Second of Fame!

After keeping an eye out for familiar faces in the media for so long, I finally spotted myself in the media this morning on TV ONE's Asia Down Under. In fact, I spotted myself for the most part of one second! It was a blurry close-up shot of the side of me too!

The story was actually about David Choi, a talented violinist and med student who's the leader of our Medical and Health Sciences Students Symphony Orchestra (MHSSSO) and Ann Kim, another med student and flutist who actually started up the orchestra. They filmed and showed a lot of our fundraising concert too!



You can watch the story on Youtube and on TVNZ On Demand. Fast forward 10 seconds and you can see me, and my ONE second of fame! :D





Our first ever performance was at the University of Auckland School of Music on the first Monday night of the mid-semester break. The orchestra had three dress rehearsals on the day. I ended up missing them all because of my community pharmacy placement, and pretty much only got to the performance just in time! I did make it to the rehearsal the day before though which was good. I ended up switching seats with the real pro violist who knew what he was doing, and I sat at the back. That was OK with me, as I still am not too confident on the viola, especially after not playing for quite a while!

At the concert I sat a little further behind the two violists than usual, which meant I couldn't hear them as well! It felt weird, as it sounded like I was the only violist from where I was sitting! I was also aware that the Asia Down Under camera crew were present, and so was hoping they wouldn't hear my mistakes! All I had to make sure I was doing was that I was moving my bow at the right time! I could just pretend to make sounds whenever I got lost ;)

David Choi, the concert master, performed a few solos and was absolutely brilliant! To think he can juggle both studying medicine and music is amazing!

In the end it was a great concert. I got to know a few med students a bit better and make music at the same time! The audience was also great too, despite it being mostly med students!

What Holiday?

 The first week of uni after the mid-semester break is over, and what a week it was! The two week holidays preceding it weren't much of a holiday either!

 

The first three days of my holidays were taken over with my community pharmacy placement. Of course I was filled with dread when I heard we had to spend THREE WHOLE DAYS in a community pharmacy this year! I was really dreading it after I read what we had to do in our workbook - consult patients! There was no way in a million years I'd be able to competently consult a patient!

 

I was assigned a small pharmacy in the middle of a block of shops along the side of a road in Henderson. At first I wasn't too happy about it as I had my placement in a small pharmacy last year as well and hardly anything happened! However little did I know that it would be to my benefit!

 

There was only one pharmacist and one technician at the pharmacy and they were very very nice to me! The pharmacist let me dispense some medication (usually the repeats and not medication that needed to be dispensed in 5-10 minutes!) as well as explain a lot of things to me, like their procedures etc. I also got to enter patient information into the computer! 

 

The first day was a little slow and I stood there for most of the day not really doing much. I was given a half hour lunch break in the middle of the day, which I spent wandering to the neighbouring bakery to buy some food and then walking down the road and back as slowly as possible as I ate to pass the time away! 

 

As part of the placement I had to interview a patient with a chronic condition on what her life was like (things like quality of life and so on) and she she was supposed to come on the first day (which came as a surprise to me) but she never showed up. Secretly I was thinking

 

"Please don't come, please don't come!"

 

but I knew I'd have to do a patient interview one way or another in order to pass this component of my course! After the pharmacist rang her at the end of the day to remind her, she did show up the very next day. She was quite nice, and didn't really have much to say/complain about (I cannot elaborate due to confidentiality stuff)! When we came towards the end of the interview she asked me where I was from, and when I asked her to guess, she guessed I was part Asian! WOOHOO!!!

 

I also made a very big discovery at the end of the first day of my placement - the pharmacist is the mum of one of my old intermediate school friends! I haven't actually talked to him since intermediate school but I recognised her surname from a mile away! It's quite unique, apparently they're the only people with that surname in the country so that's probably why! 

 

The days went by faster as I was given more work to do. I still had that patient consultation to do though, which was bothering me. I had to consult someone on cough and colds medication, as well as consult a patient receiving prescription medication.

 

Consulting a patient receiving prescription medication wasn't too bad. It was standard paracetamol and something else. I just recited the instructions that were on the container. It was a young girl who I was talking to though, so I don't know how much she paid attention to though!

 

As for the colds and coughs patient consultation, talk about big fat FAIL! There weren't that many people coming in with symptoms, and so when this young woman did come in to look at cough and cold medication, the pharmacist sent me out there to see if she needed any help. I asked the pharmacist to come along for a bit of support, which I needed in the end! I asked the girl if she needed any help, and initially she said she was OK, but then she asked me

 

"Which is better? These medications or these medications?" (pointing to two different areas)

 

I was left standing there blankly going

 

"Uhhhhhh..........."

 

That's when the pharmacist jumped in and saved me! She later apologised for interrupting, but I wasn't complaining!

 

With the pressure of having to complete one successful consultation, another person came in later in the day with symptoms and was talking to the pharmacist. I was still standing by the medication trying to figure out what did what, when the pharmacist was making a recommendation to the man and called out to me

 

'What do you think Calum?"

 

I was a little caught out and was left going

 

"Uhhhh......"

 

I ended up doing a roleplay with the technician since we ran out of other patients for me to screw up the consultation with! I can now say that after I caught a cold the following weekend and spent time looking up information on medications, I now know a bit more about them!

 

During my lunch break on the final day when I went to the bakery the Chinese lady at the counter asked me if I was training at the pharmacy that week, and then asked me where I was from. When I explained to her I was half Chinese, she said she could tell!

 

So overall, I really learnt a lot from the pharmacy placement and the pharmacist and technician were great! They were so nice and I enjoyed myself (when I was doing something!). The pharmacist even offered to check my workbook and when I went to pick it up a week later (I even saw Edwin, my pharmacy friend, doing his placement there!), she even went through a few things and taught me a bit more about a few different medications!

 

It's just a shame I had to spend the rest of the holidays working on several assignments. I really should have been studying for tests, but instead I had to worry about this pharmaceutical care plan assignment and this validation report I had to write.

 

I sorta had an idea of what was expected for the pharmaceutical care plan. I was given a case, and had to explain how I would treat her/modify her treatment. I would read the guidelines and decide to treat her one way, but then after reading something else think that maybe there was a better way of doing it and keep going around in circles! It was driving me crazy! The night after I finished it I even had a dream about the care plan! I was lucky enough to get some advice from a few people at church who are doctors/pharmacists though.

 

As for the validation report, that frustrated the <insert something here> out of me! None of our notes were of any use, and the lecturer/tutor didn't even teach us how to do it! I tried asking a few pharmacy people but kept getting fobbed off by most, who would responsed with one word answers! I hope I wasn't bothering them, but it sure didn't give me much encouragement to ask people for help again the next time I need it! Fortunately Nadine, a pharmacist in my Sunday school at church came to my rescue and gave me some useful advice! I spent the night before it was due just chucking some stuff down before I was too tired and went to bed. I did a bit more at uni but found out it was due a lot earlier in the day than I first thought, and so just handed it in! It was only worth 2% anyway so good riddens to that!

 

In the first week back at uni though I had a test on Wednesday and one on Thursday. Wednesday's test was a multiple-choice test, and so I could get away with half-studying for that. When it came to the test though, I went through the test and answered all I could within the first twenty minutes (shows how much I know!). With so much time remaining, I ended up dozing off a little, till the invigilators told us we had 5 minutes left to go! I furiously answered (or guessed) the remaining questions. That is only the second time I've ever dozed off in the middle of the test!

 

I was a little concerned with the test, as I answered 'All of the Above' for a lot of the questions, and so I tried to avoid that answer for a few of the questions I didn't know, just to balance it out a bit (which is not the way to go!). It turns out a couple of the questions didn't even make sense (I didn't even notice! Shows how much I was paying attention doesn't it?), and so they're going to be removed with the remaining questions being worth more marks. Hopefully those questions were the ones I didn't know!

 

As for the MEDSCI test on Thursday, it wast terrible, possibly one of the worst tests I've ever sat! The day before, I was cramming as much as I could. I ended up deciding to focus on a few lectures as I had received a tip-off that in the mid-term test we'd get an option on what we wanted to write about. Boy was I wrong. There was a 40 mark question (out of a total 50 marks in the test) which was based on ONE lecture, the ONE lecture I didn't look at in depth! I tried filling in two pages of rubbish! Hopefully I get some marks out of it!

 

To finish off a hectic week, we had an online quiz test for our MEDSCI lab on Friday, which I pretty much had to guess! Fortunately my lab report mark wasn't too bad and Turnitin didn't accuse me of plagarism! Yay!!