This was so exciting that I needed to blog about it:
I got free lunch!
Ok, that"s part of what I"m going to blog about, but definitely the most exciting (for me). The food was significantly better than FMC, sort of on par with those "all you can eat for $8" places in Central Market. Which is acceptable, but not the greatest.
Of course, if I wasn"t such a cheapass, I could have paid a whopping SGD$1 for a plate of noodles or SGD$5 for just about anything (as mentioned in the last blog post...).
Note: SGD$1 = AUD$0.75
SGD$5 = AUD$3.80 i.e CHEAP.
What else I"m impressed with is the internet I"m using at the moment at a family friends house: 100Mbit connection. That is a theoretical maximum speed of 4x the best of what Australia has to offer (at least, until the NBN comes through... Someday...)
So I was having a conversation with one of the MOs which waiting for a thumb PVNS excision to finish up, and it seems that there are lots of pros and cons to living in Singapore.
Pros:
Minimal income tax - Even for earning $300,000 you pay about 13% tax. Above that rises to about 20%.
Food - The food here is spectacular, cheap and available all hours of the day!
Travel - The Singapore MRT is bloody awesome, reliable, fast and pretty cheap.
Internet - As mentioned, super fast!
Cons:
Pollution - Air quality ain"t the greatest here.
Rent - From what I can figure, quite expensive.
Cars - I also discovered something crazy about this:
Singapore have freakin' expensive cars.
Now, I don"t mean like, Ferrari"s and all that, but even just regular cars!
From what I can work out, in order to own a car, you must first be able to afford to pay a "certificate of entitlement". This is a sort of registering of the car with the government. I think they do this to put a limit/quota on the number of cars in Singapore (due to increasing pollution, population etc), which is a decent idea, as those that can"t afford, use the MRT which reduces carbon emissions etc.
So yeah, how much would cars be?
Lets see, I am contemplating getting a Ford Fiesta. You can get it on sale in Australia for a scratch under $20,000.
Second hand Ford Fiesta here? $70,000.
Seriously. What.
Showing posts with label free food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free food. Show all posts
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Darwin - The Saga Begins
So we"ve started at the hospital now, so our holidays are over...
Monday was pretty much just administrative issues with a brief period on the wards.
Tuesday was much of the same, though we had a lunchtime JMO teaching session with food! Very impressed with the food, as I was pretty much expecting sandwiches but instead got greeted with trays of lasagna, chickpea curry, stirfry, cottage pie, salad... So yes, a good feed. The teaching session was quite interesting as well as it seems that they have started using an electronic prescribing system up here. An interesting change from the written ones back in Adelaide...
Today is when the real fun began, as I rode into the hospital, leaving my items in a room and having a shower before handover and ward rounds. I have a feeling that I will be a lot more fit by the end of this, assuming I survive biking around everywhere...
I"m based in the Isolation wards, which is pretty much infective things. Most patients appear to be bronchiolitis and diarrhoea. So I"ve been trying to remember things about these, especially dehydration and rehydration issues. Not so easy to remember.
Luckily, everyone here is very helpful, printing protocols and guidelines off for us left/right/center!
In fact, as I sit here typing this, I probably should be reading these guidelines on dehydration and paediatric fluids... But I"ll do that later.
I"m actually currently still in the hospital, as today is the day I"ve been allocated as being "on take". I"m not entirely sure what that means, but so far it involves me eating the rest of my lunch and trying to read up on different conditions. I will have to ride home in the dark too :S
I"m sure I"ll survive, though I"m supposedly supposed to be here until 10pm, though I"ve been told by my superiors that I can leave whenever I want to. I do want to admit a patient at least though.
Anyway, hopefully I"ll be able to get some real internet soon (at home rather than only here at the hospital) and I"ll be able to blog a little more frequently.
Don"t hold your breath though.
Monday was pretty much just administrative issues with a brief period on the wards.
Tuesday was much of the same, though we had a lunchtime JMO teaching session with food! Very impressed with the food, as I was pretty much expecting sandwiches but instead got greeted with trays of lasagna, chickpea curry, stirfry, cottage pie, salad... So yes, a good feed. The teaching session was quite interesting as well as it seems that they have started using an electronic prescribing system up here. An interesting change from the written ones back in Adelaide...
Today is when the real fun began, as I rode into the hospital, leaving my items in a room and having a shower before handover and ward rounds. I have a feeling that I will be a lot more fit by the end of this, assuming I survive biking around everywhere...
I"m based in the Isolation wards, which is pretty much infective things. Most patients appear to be bronchiolitis and diarrhoea. So I"ve been trying to remember things about these, especially dehydration and rehydration issues. Not so easy to remember.
Luckily, everyone here is very helpful, printing protocols and guidelines off for us left/right/center!
In fact, as I sit here typing this, I probably should be reading these guidelines on dehydration and paediatric fluids... But I"ll do that later.
I"m actually currently still in the hospital, as today is the day I"ve been allocated as being "on take". I"m not entirely sure what that means, but so far it involves me eating the rest of my lunch and trying to read up on different conditions. I will have to ride home in the dark too :S
I"m sure I"ll survive, though I"m supposedly supposed to be here until 10pm, though I"ve been told by my superiors that I can leave whenever I want to. I do want to admit a patient at least though.
Anyway, hopefully I"ll be able to get some real internet soon (at home rather than only here at the hospital) and I"ll be able to blog a little more frequently.
Don"t hold your breath though.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Short week.
A short week pretty much covered with me being sick (An actual flu! Gosh!) and trying to avoid writing an ethics essay (from henceforth known as The Worst Essay Ever).
Tuesday morning started with the biggest rainfall I had ever seen in Adelaide for a long, long time. The thunder and lightning was also quite pretty! As I had been so sick (poor baby), I considered using the rain as an excuse not to go in (Yes, thats right. The rain would be the excuse, not the headache, hacking cough, raw throat or muscle aches), but as it approached the point of no return, the rain stopped and I was forced to get ready and go in for ward rounds... Which were uneventful.
On the other hand, it did allow me to find the details of the patient I wanted for my ethics assignment. Oh, don"t get me wrong, I did plan this all out ages before, I just managed to forget exactly which patient it was... Little boys with croup all sort of merge together after a while...
Wednesday and Thursday passed by pretty uneventfully as well, with quite possibly the most ordinary Paediatric Grand Round ever... The free food was almost not worth sitting in on that presentation.
So Friday and a week off! I woke up really, really early (After having a dream in which I really didn"t wake up early and I was terribly late...) to catch the bus in order to make it to the city by 7:45am so I could make it to the bus to Millicent. Somehow I managed to get to the city by 7:15am. A tad early, so I dozed ever so nicely in the bus terminal to the soothing heavy rock of the instrumental disc of Nightwish's Dark Passion Play. After hours on the bus which were plagued by technical difficulties (a leaking roof), roadworks (everywhere!), dangerous conditions (lots of rain!) and bogan attacks (literally, a bogan attacked a poor mother concerned about the welfare of her children in the presence of cigarette smoke), I managed to arrive safely in Millicent.
So here I am, its freezing, but its a nice calm place that makes me want to sleep 18 hours a day. I"m not entirely sure why. Maybe its something in the water...
Or maybe its the civil wars that seem to go on in these parts...
Tuesday morning started with the biggest rainfall I had ever seen in Adelaide for a long, long time. The thunder and lightning was also quite pretty! As I had been so sick (poor baby), I considered using the rain as an excuse not to go in (Yes, thats right. The rain would be the excuse, not the headache, hacking cough, raw throat or muscle aches), but as it approached the point of no return, the rain stopped and I was forced to get ready and go in for ward rounds... Which were uneventful.
On the other hand, it did allow me to find the details of the patient I wanted for my ethics assignment. Oh, don"t get me wrong, I did plan this all out ages before, I just managed to forget exactly which patient it was... Little boys with croup all sort of merge together after a while...
Wednesday and Thursday passed by pretty uneventfully as well, with quite possibly the most ordinary Paediatric Grand Round ever... The free food was almost not worth sitting in on that presentation.
So Friday and a week off! I woke up really, really early (After having a dream in which I really didn"t wake up early and I was terribly late...) to catch the bus in order to make it to the city by 7:45am so I could make it to the bus to Millicent. Somehow I managed to get to the city by 7:15am. A tad early, so I dozed ever so nicely in the bus terminal to the soothing heavy rock of the instrumental disc of Nightwish's Dark Passion Play. After hours on the bus which were plagued by technical difficulties (a leaking roof), roadworks (everywhere!), dangerous conditions (lots of rain!) and bogan attacks (literally, a bogan attacked a poor mother concerned about the welfare of her children in the presence of cigarette smoke), I managed to arrive safely in Millicent.
So here I am, its freezing, but its a nice calm place that makes me want to sleep 18 hours a day. I"m not entirely sure why. Maybe its something in the water...
Or maybe its the civil wars that seem to go on in these parts...
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Great Exceptations
I typed the title of this post last night intending to blog about stuff, instead I ended up changing it and leaving the below post. Now I forget why I wanted to use this title.
On new housemates:
My unit is now a bustling suburban bedroom mini-community. From the first year aquaculture/marine biology students to the first year health science student to the German exchange psychology student, we"ve got it all! A friendly bunch indeed, mostly away from home for their first time, getting used to not having the roving parental eye of control over them.
On a failure of a Monday:
For the second time this rotation, a certain consultant has been away and unable to give us our eagerly awaited lecture. This is getting to be quite annoying, as they get their lecture times in advance by quite a few weeks, certainly enough to tell someone if a conference happens to be on that week...
On free food:
Ahh, O-week. With the new students coming in, the great annual welcome begins, with BBQ lunches, dinners, morning teas, afternoon teas, ice cream... All free! All it requires is a few omitted truths or small lies, and you"re free to munch away! Alternatively, you can do what I do and make use of the most important piece of information I learned on the wards: Look confident. As long as I look as if I should definitely be doing this and that it would be pure stupidity on anyone else"s part if they were to interrupt and question me about this, I can do (or eat!) just about anything.
On the gym and associated activities:
The annual free week from the gym, a time to stock up on exercise and activity to make up for the lack of these over the remainder of the year... I don"t know where I was going with this topic. All I really needed to say was that I"ve been going to the gym for the last week and now I will stop due to outrageous membership prices. Outrageous.
On surgeries and complications:
So being on the Surgery rotation, it would be expected that I should be going into theatre and seeing some interesting surgeries. Yesterday was one of those days with a laparascopic anterior resection. The initial preparation of detaching peritoneum (sigmoid mesocolon?) from the colon went smoothly enough, until the surgeon started exploring higher and managed to nick the splenic artery. This obviously wasn"t quite too big a problem as the surgeon deadpanned "Oh. No no no, don"t do that." and proceeded to clamp off the artery and asked for sutures, prodding on the nurse with an equally unexcited "Sutures, sutures, we have a bleeder." As I then expected the surgeon to cut open the abdomen due to the complication (which we were trying to avoid due to the patient being quite old and having an open surgery would make recovery a lot longer), I was very impressed with what happened next. The surgeon proceeded to suture laparascopically, which looked very difficult (much like trying to have dinner using 50cm cutlery) but it was done and the surgery was continued with no further complications. The patient looked well and in good spirits this morning. Wow.
On the musculoskeletal workshop:
Now, I don"t expect this to reach anyone that this will matter to, as I don"t believe I know of anyone placed locally in the course that actually reads this blog... I could be wrong of course, but judging by the lack of hits and the rare comments only by fellow bloggers in other areas, I"m probably quite accurate.
We had a musculoskeletal workshop yesterday, lead by a doctor who I believe gave us a spine examination session during GP week last year. It was brilliant. The notes given would have been worth their weight in gold (and a significant weight indeed) had they been given to us last year for when we were doing musculoskeletal clinical skills last year, but for now, they are just incredibly useful. These notes cover the various musculoskeletal and rheumatological examinations and include a DVD with clinical examinations. We"ve also been given an almost definite OSCE station, so that"s a good start too. For anyone who has yet to sign up or go and was considering skipping it, don"t, it"s well worth the four hours it takes (unless you"re a physio, then you know everything anyway...) and a lot of good practice too.
On expectations:
I"m not sure what I wanted to relate regarding this topic. It probably had something about the need to be in two places at once, but the consultant this week (the proper consultant, not the evil substitute one, mentioned previously... or not, that seemed to have been on a power trip as the main one was on holiday) was cordial, in fact I would say almost soft drink.
We had theatre this morning (a simple stoma reversal) followed by a tutorial on evaluation and causes of post-operative fever and presenting a surgical history. The consultant was very good actually, pushing for knowledge but not criticising the lack of it. I"m quite sure that I am seen as a moron as after a few seconds of silence and possibly a look of fear in my eyes, the consultant proceeded to answer the question given moments earlier. This consultant is also the first one to have given a set system for presenting a surgical history to a surgeon. In a nutshell (Oh help! I"m in a nutshell!): keep it simple. They don"t want to know all the "crap"* physicians care about, they just want to operate, "because honestly, its a lot of fun"*. So they just want "a history, not a bedtime story."*
All in all, an interesting week and it"s not even Friday yet!
Oh darn. SMS from Intern says Ward Rounds will start at 7:30am tomorrow. Not a good start.
* Indicates actual words/quotes from the consultant. Wonderful!
On new housemates:
My unit is now a bustling suburban bedroom mini-community. From the first year aquaculture/marine biology students to the first year health science student to the German exchange psychology student, we"ve got it all! A friendly bunch indeed, mostly away from home for their first time, getting used to not having the roving parental eye of control over them.
On a failure of a Monday:
For the second time this rotation, a certain consultant has been away and unable to give us our eagerly awaited lecture. This is getting to be quite annoying, as they get their lecture times in advance by quite a few weeks, certainly enough to tell someone if a conference happens to be on that week...
On free food:
Ahh, O-week. With the new students coming in, the great annual welcome begins, with BBQ lunches, dinners, morning teas, afternoon teas, ice cream... All free! All it requires is a few omitted truths or small lies, and you"re free to munch away! Alternatively, you can do what I do and make use of the most important piece of information I learned on the wards: Look confident. As long as I look as if I should definitely be doing this and that it would be pure stupidity on anyone else"s part if they were to interrupt and question me about this, I can do (or eat!) just about anything.
On the gym and associated activities:
The annual free week from the gym, a time to stock up on exercise and activity to make up for the lack of these over the remainder of the year... I don"t know where I was going with this topic. All I really needed to say was that I"ve been going to the gym for the last week and now I will stop due to outrageous membership prices. Outrageous.
On surgeries and complications:
So being on the Surgery rotation, it would be expected that I should be going into theatre and seeing some interesting surgeries. Yesterday was one of those days with a laparascopic anterior resection. The initial preparation of detaching peritoneum (sigmoid mesocolon?) from the colon went smoothly enough, until the surgeon started exploring higher and managed to nick the splenic artery. This obviously wasn"t quite too big a problem as the surgeon deadpanned "Oh. No no no, don"t do that." and proceeded to clamp off the artery and asked for sutures, prodding on the nurse with an equally unexcited "Sutures, sutures, we have a bleeder." As I then expected the surgeon to cut open the abdomen due to the complication (which we were trying to avoid due to the patient being quite old and having an open surgery would make recovery a lot longer), I was very impressed with what happened next. The surgeon proceeded to suture laparascopically, which looked very difficult (much like trying to have dinner using 50cm cutlery) but it was done and the surgery was continued with no further complications. The patient looked well and in good spirits this morning. Wow.
On the musculoskeletal workshop:
Now, I don"t expect this to reach anyone that this will matter to, as I don"t believe I know of anyone placed locally in the course that actually reads this blog... I could be wrong of course, but judging by the lack of hits and the rare comments only by fellow bloggers in other areas, I"m probably quite accurate.
We had a musculoskeletal workshop yesterday, lead by a doctor who I believe gave us a spine examination session during GP week last year. It was brilliant. The notes given would have been worth their weight in gold (and a significant weight indeed) had they been given to us last year for when we were doing musculoskeletal clinical skills last year, but for now, they are just incredibly useful. These notes cover the various musculoskeletal and rheumatological examinations and include a DVD with clinical examinations. We"ve also been given an almost definite OSCE station, so that"s a good start too. For anyone who has yet to sign up or go and was considering skipping it, don"t, it"s well worth the four hours it takes (unless you"re a physio, then you know everything anyway...) and a lot of good practice too.
On expectations:
I"m not sure what I wanted to relate regarding this topic. It probably had something about the need to be in two places at once, but the consultant this week (the proper consultant, not the evil substitute one, mentioned previously... or not, that seemed to have been on a power trip as the main one was on holiday) was cordial, in fact I would say almost soft drink.
We had theatre this morning (a simple stoma reversal) followed by a tutorial on evaluation and causes of post-operative fever and presenting a surgical history. The consultant was very good actually, pushing for knowledge but not criticising the lack of it. I"m quite sure that I am seen as a moron as after a few seconds of silence and possibly a look of fear in my eyes, the consultant proceeded to answer the question given moments earlier. This consultant is also the first one to have given a set system for presenting a surgical history to a surgeon. In a nutshell (Oh help! I"m in a nutshell!): keep it simple. They don"t want to know all the "crap"* physicians care about, they just want to operate, "because honestly, its a lot of fun"*. So they just want "a history, not a bedtime story."*
All in all, an interesting week and it"s not even Friday yet!
Oh darn. SMS from Intern says Ward Rounds will start at 7:30am tomorrow. Not a good start.
* Indicates actual words/quotes from the consultant. Wonderful!
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