Two weeks since the last post this must be the longest I've been away from blogging and I admit to procrastinating as well, thinking to myself well...I'll post something tomorrow... Although I do have a good excuse for the past couple of weeks - my two assignments!
But let's start off with something I missed mentioning in my last post several weeks ago - Rhea's farewell dinner! It was on the 19th of September I think...Anyway Rhea was an old mate from school and I also got to know her younger brother through one of the Studio Shows back at Rutherford when I was performing the accordion in one of them and he was playing the drums with a band. They also lived just down the road from us!
Anyway Rhea and her family were moving to Australia noooooo! More people moving away!! She had a bit of a farewell dinner the night before at Nando's at West City. I didn't know who else was going but when I got there...slightly late...there were a few of the old guys from her year at Rutherford such as Aone, Natasha (Howdle), Lisa, Caroline and Jenna! I haven't seen quite a few of them since they were still at school last year!
We had a bit of a catch-up over a feed before we went over to the arcade place by the movies to play a few games. The cinemas had plastered all these signs everywhere saying you had to be a movie-goer in order to enter the arcade and to use their toilets too! Oh well we just disregarded those signs! A few of the girls played the basketball shooting game while it was Natasha vs Caroline in air hockey (is that what it's called?). Caroline had a bit of trouble with one of bike-racing games munching up her money! I managed to scare Natasha while she was playing this shooting game with Caroline ahahahahaha! The security guard was quite nice too, often calling some of the girls over to play free games whenever one of the machines said there was credit left!
So Rhea's now gone off to Melbourne. Hopefully she's having a terrible, terrible time being surrounded by Ockers and feeling homesick. Nah nah it sounds like she's adjusting well and having fun over there! Hopefully she comes back and visits sometime in the future!
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In the past week I've been mainly working on two assignments, one a formulation assignment where I have to come up with my own drug, while the other is a 3000 essay on a certain drug.
For the formulation assignment, I was partnering with my friend Steven to come up with a drug that contained at least paracetamol and pseudoephedrine. What we had on our side was that one of my youth group leaders is a pharmacist who's in the manufacturing/formulation side of things and was able to give me advice on what sorta ingredients to use and how to go about deciding which excipients to use.
In the end we came up with a paracetamol and pseudoephedrine suspension with orange syrup and...well I won't tell you what else is in it or else you might steal it ;) The morning of the day it was due Steven and I were making last minute checks and fortunately the guy sitting at the same table as us was a pharmacy student, probably a year or two ahead of us, who offered to help check things for us! He said it looked good so hopefully it's all OK! We ended up naming our drug: Paediatric PP! We were thinking about Paradrine, or Pseudomol, but then just before one of my pharmacy labs I heard someone else talking about those names and came to realise that a lot of people were using names like those!
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I had my Individual Student Assessment in the pharmacy lab last week. That is when a tutor pretends to be your patient and you have to pretend to be their pharmacist and instruct them on how to use the drug you've made. They then ask more technical questions to test your understanding of of the drug. I got this Korean tutor who I must say was HARSH! She asked me all these technical questions and I couldn't tell if she was still pretending to be the patient or not! She asked me a question I wasn't too sure how to answer, and so I was thinking...should I make something up or be honest and say I don't know the answer? So I thought I'd go along with the roleplay and say
"I'm not exactly too sure sorry but I'll go get the pharmacist"
That's when my tutor/patient said
"But you ARE the pharmacist!!'
Oh boy.... no marks back for that yet though.
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And finally, my MEDSCI204 assignment, a 3000 word essay on one of six drugs. I (stupidly) chose atomoxetine to write about. It just happened to be one of the newest drugs of the six, the one with probably the least information. For example, when it came to the mechanisms of action, most of what I got was
"Scientists are still unsure how it works..."
That's great help! Now I admit I did miss quite a few lectures that week just to work on my essay, but despite that, I still ended up doing an all-niter on Thursday night and only just got the essay finished at 7.30am Friday morning! It was due at 1pm later that Friday, but because I had a BIOSCI lab from 10am-1pm that day I pretty much had to submit it before I went into the lab.
I caught the bus into uni with Phoebe as I usually do on Friday mornings. We got into the city so early that we had plenty of time to go into a computer lab and just muck around, put on makeup (and I'm not talking about Phoebe...jk), and submit my essay before having to go to class. I was so tired that day I sorta fell asleep in the lab while the tutor was going through the instructions! I was about to attend my chemistry lecture straight after, but I only sat down for a few seconds, thought.....NAAAHHH and left. When I exited the building I came by the Music School, so in a spur of the moment sorta thing I attended the lunchtime music concert, which probably isn't such a good thing when you're tired, because you're bound to sleep right through it, especially when it's classical music!
Well I was determined to attend my BIOSCI lecture after a week's absence, but it turned out there was none! That meant I could go home early! :D When I say early I really mean 3pm. I was sitting at the bus stop when these teams of people dressed up came by. One team was dressed in rugby gear, one in army gear...they were carrying scales and asking people at the bus stop if they could weigh them! Apparently it was part of their company's team-building competition 'The Amazing Race'. They did adjust the scales to start at 10kg though. Talk about cheating! I managed to catch the bus back home with Phoebe again so that was cool catching up with her again.
Now I've only got one more assignment to go..my pharmacy externship! Unfortunately the pharmacy I'm spending a day at is in Ranui. My friends who don't live in West Auckland anymore but still put down West Auckland as their preferred location managed to get a pharmacy in Te Atatu Peninsula, the one this girl in my Sunday school works at as an intern! My friend who lives in Lynfield also got a pharmacy in Henderson! I suppose Ranui isn't too far away anyway. At least it isn't as bad as my friend who lives in North Shore but was given Penrose after there were no more pharmacies left on the Shore!
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I've been catching up with my friend Alice in the past few weeks too. We had a big long discussion on all sorts of stuff at one time and then the next week we went for a little visit to the laptop shop where I had bought the laptop case that was too small for my laptop. Fortunately hers fits! After talking to her though I kinda wish I bought a Sony Vaio now! Maybe I'll make that the next brand I try!
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You may be aware that I semi-sprained my ankle after falling down the stairs in a lecture theatre a few weeks ago. Well a week later at youth group it was activities night and we were playing some game with balloons...sorta like netball...and I somehow bent my middle finger back and sprained...or bruised it? It turned brown at least! Now it is feeling a bit better and I can still play the accordion! Oh and my ankle's all better now!
As for my application to sit my exam early because of my surgery, I'm still waiting for my orthodontist to write a letter for me. Please please please write the letter before the due date Mrs Orthodontist lady!!
