Sydanee!

Am back in sunny Sydney!!
Man, it feels soooooooooo great to get the camden rotation out of the way.. and I passed everything!!

Spent the whole day cleaning and refurnishing my room in St Mike's. Man I feel tired.. still haven't recover from staying up late the night before the exams.

Can't bum around too much yet.. still have a case report due on midnight tomorrow. I better get to it soon!

Tagged

Kena tag from KLo.. I have to agree the first part is a hard one as well, and it took me a while to think and write the 6 things down..

6 Weird Things About Me.

1. I can put my two legs over (behind) my head without much effort (using my hands to pull them). Maybe cos im too hunched...argh! need to stand up straight!

2. I have this habit of "playing/caressing" the hems of my pillow. Big time addictive habit..

3. I think I have sleep apnoea.. I wake up subconsciously/consciously sometimes throughout the night and sometimes sleep in a funny position (froggy style).

4. This ties in with the sleep apnoea as well, I feel sleepy nearly every afternoon.. no matter how much sleep I get the night before. So afternoon studying is very hard for me..

5. If I have continuous net connection, I check my email very very frequently. Sometimes more than twice in an hour KLO! :)

6. I can't drink coffee on an empty stomach.. upsets and "flatulates" my tummy! :P

Now lumber 2..

The rules:
1. Add a direct link to your post below the name of the person who tagged you.
Include the state and country you’re in.
Lomantik (Sydney, Australia).

2. List out your top 5 favorite places to eat at your location.
In no particular order... I somehow feel that these 5 places do not reflect the good food in Sydney that well, but these are the places I visit the most.

a) Sydney fish markets - my favourite food is seafood.. go figure
b) Taste in newtown - crazy chicken caesar salad! I'll need to try their other stuff too..
c) Faheem's fast food in enmore - double thumbs up tandoori chicken! I need to try this new indian place in newtown as well.. apparently the restaurant is opened by malaysians.
d)Shalom/Ayam goreng 99. or any nice indonesian restaurants.
e) Michitaro - bang for buck jap restaurant! I like the una tama don (eel on egg rice)

alrightey! now to tag people!
1) Ashley Ho - haha! now you kena!
2) Wenqi - if you ever read this, :P
3) Chin Kian
4) Irene Teo
5) Tim Teoh

Weekend chill

Man, I'm getting slack in updating this blog.. Past 2 weeks has been crazy in the university equine rotation. Starting at bout 730 am till bout 6pm daily, with treatments at night on certain days..Just this morning I had to give 2 hourly checks and meds(10pm,12 am, 2am, 4am...) on a miniature horse foal that is hospitalised for colic.. and her fluids keep stuffing up, so most visits took about an hour to sort it out. Yep, I don't have to explain any further!

Oh well, the next two weeks should be much more relaxed now that I've got the equine rotation out of the way (well not entirely.. still have a test that I need to resit)

Ok ok, now for some exciting updates.. Firstly, I went on a "field trip" with my lecturer/senior vet together with 2 others to ultrasound 2 horses. One of them was Musket, Makybe Diva's little brother! I just found out that he was sold for a whopping $2.5 million aussie dollars ! (which is an Australian record according to wiki) Man, his vet must be having a pretty intense career.. But yea, it's not everyday that you get to swab alcohol on a $2.5 horse's chest.. thought that I'll share it with you guys..

Secondly, I managed to book return tickets to Melbourne for $10! That's even cheaper than taking a cab to the airport from Sydney.. I owe this to Jetstar's 3rd birthday sale.. well, the tickets were just $3 one way ($2 credit card surcharge). Also bought the one way tick to tassie from Melb for the same price, am now looking for cheap flights for the return back to melb. I'll be looking forward to this super low budget trip of mine!

Gonna chill a bit at the moment.. but still gotta study and prepare for the next subrotation on monday.. here we go!

1 week break

On hols for a week.. and its zipping by VERY fast!!
arghh.. the day seems to fly by without me doing much.. which is quite sad

There are lots on my to-do list for this week.. and one of them is holding everything back cos it's the highest on the priority. Thats to finish up my report/literature review for my previous internship at Gundagai. I have to finish this before I move on to the other stuff.. and it's taking me a while!! Yeah, and I'm suppose to be writing up the assignment right now!

Ok, I better start on it now..I want!!

Gundagai and piccie update!

It’s my 2nd week here in Gundagai! I do have net connection, but only when I’m at the office. No phone line in my motel room. Oh well, at least the connection at the office is pretty fast. And I do spend some time slacking in the office! Was even searching for online games to play and spend my time, haha.. Hmm I better use this time I have in the office to write up some of my assignments and to post up an update!

Am driving back to Sydney for the long Easter weekend! Well, driving down to Melbourne was an option as well, but I decided that Sydney would be better. Thanks ah pork for the comment on the previous post! Well, Gundagai’s not too bad.. very small rural town with nice views of the hills and such. The Murrumbidgee river (which is good for fishing) runs through the town. Well, I would love to take up fishing one day.. just gotta find the gear, initiative and maybe some kaki as well.
Here’s a pic of the motel I’m staying at..

Okay okay.. Now some pics and info of the places I went to in Malaysia.
Went to the Sungai Sedim forest reserve which had the longest treetop walk in the world.. yeah world! It's nearly 1 km in length if I'm not mistaken. Some piccies :

I had to show this expression at this sign.. That's the highest we were above the ground I think..

Next, was the Bukit Hijau forest reserve! Went there specially just to sit under the amazing waterfall! Highly recommended !

Also took a trip up to Langkawi for a couple of days. Really regret that I didn’t take a pic of the beach at Tanjung Rhu, which I personally felt was the best beach in Langkawi! It's like one of the beaches that you see in the island holiday brochures. We saw some funny patterns on the beach at Pantai Kok:

An upclose look :
So cool right?? These holes are made by tiny little crabs on the beach.. and the balls of sands must be the sand that they dug out.. Oh I just googled about these sand balls. A source mentioned that the crabs will take sand into their mouths, suck out the nutrients, and spit out the tiny balls you see here. Very cool indeed.. and these holes with their surrounding sand balls were scattered all over a major part of the beach.


Lastly, I took Wenqi for a fireflies cruise in Nibong Tebal. It took me a while to find Mr Heng’s contact number on the net. Hmm.. wonder if I will get into trouble if I post up his number here.. Just to be safe… I better not.. But if you need his contact, do drop me a message!
I heard that the fireflies activity here is not as good as the one in Kuala Selangor.. but it’s good enough for me! Plus it’s much nearer to Penang as well. Personally, I felt that it was an unforgettable experience. Catching the fireflies and watching them glow inside your palms definitely contributes to this!

Man I miss Penang.. missing the atmosphere, family, friends , tiuking sessions (gang-fights), food, cheap stuff..

Alrightey folks.. thats about it from me for now! Hope you enjoy the pics!

Sydney

Ah, just got back ere 2 days ago...
It's been a while.. sorry for the super late update !!
I think by now, all you guys who are still reading this are like coming in ere once a month or so. Well oh well..
My 2 main excuses are :
1. Lousy net connection
2. Different lifestyle

I had a great time back in Malaysia, with the internship, the holidays, and spending time with frens and loved ones.

2 days from now, Monday, I'm off to Gundagai for a month of rural placement. Gundagai's like 4 hrs southwest of Sydney, and I do hope it's not super ulu.. At least I pray that the accomodation that I'm staying at has like a phone line for me to go online or to call a particular singaporean, :)

Alrightey, will post bout the highlights of my hols in malaysia next! (if there's net connection at Gundagai....) Gotta try get back into gear with this blog thingy..
Adios amigos!

Back home..

Heyya peeps..
just a short note to say that I'm still alive!
am back in good ol Penang for bout 2 1/2 months!

The past few days before coming back to Malaysia has been crazy.. with moving, and a whole heap of other stuff.

Spent New Year at a friend's place together with some old friends.. not at some happening place like Gurney, which Alan told me was filled with kids.. ;)

Yah, so I'm having a month of hols before I start my internship at Gill's at Gurney.. time to chill pill

Will try to get updates up.. but there is very little motivation with the dialup speed that I have.. right now, my speed is just at 26.4 kbps.. happening..
alrightey, goodnight!

Euthanasia

I euthanised my first animal today..
Pipper was a 16 year old German Sheperd.. 16 years old for this breed is really old!

It was a sad moment.. the dog , Pipper, belonged to an elderly couple. They declined to be with her during the process, and the old man started crying.. haih, so sad.. he quickly wiped his tears away before he left the room.

oh well.. I'm sure I'll put down more animals in the future. I pray that I won't ever take this as a routine.

stay tuned, will blog non-vet stuff soon! :)

Ellie

This is Ellie!! My first spey patient! I just found out that my colleague (Tim, the guy who took the photos in my previous post) took her back! I thought at first that they were just joking till I found these pics on his facebook! Don't know if he's keeping her for good.. will check with Tim when I meet him.. maybe Ellie's an unwanted dog.. hmm..

That's Tim.. checking out the stitches that I popped into Ellie.. you guys check it out too! haha, I'm so proud of myself that I'm showing it off here..

The weekend's here~!! Can get to rest a bit more.. and I'm looking forward to it. Reason for resting a bit more= I'm on call.. have to work half day tomorrow.
Can't go anywhere far though.. can't go back to Sydney, can't go to church for this weekend..
Oh well..

adious peeps!

The real world..

More like the real working world of my profession..

Started my very first day of internship on Monday.. which was hmm.. pretty hard to describe.
Fun, exciting, nervous, intimidating, tired..

It was pretty crazy on the first day itself.. my learning curve was like nearly 90 degrees, and I learnt so so so much.. and having a good memory of all that I've learnt for the past 4 years would be really really helpful as well!

We (See Yang and me) were asked to do a consultation on our very first day there! Thank goodness I had See Yang there with me, so it wasn't THAT bad.. yeah but still..
A consultation involves a simple introduction of yourself, obtaining history from the owner, and a physical examination.Our first patient for consultation was a Staffy (staffordshire bull terrier). His owner brought him in because of aggression problems... haha, thank GOD that he was really really friendly to the both of us. It went pretty well, for our very first consult! We get to do 90% of the consults that come in everyday.. So I'm pretty confident in doing a consult myself now! Did a few by myself today! You get to meet all types of funny and cute patients, as well as the different types of owners as well!

On Tuesday, I scrubbed in with the head of the clinic into a orthopaedic surgery to correct a german sheperd's hind leg. It was pretty exciting, as it was my first time watching a surgery in front of me eyes.. but it was tiring as well, as the surgery lasted for nearly 3 hours.. and I was just standing there, with my hands raised in front of me to maintain sterility. Well, I did help a tiny little bit, like flushing and sucking up blood.. lol

Next, to wednesday! We spend wednesdays at the spey clinic where we just spey and castrate animals all day long. I had my very first spey and castration! with some supervision of course.. The castration was on a german sheperd, and it was pretty easy and non invasive. The spey was on a dalmatian, and as a first timer, it wasn't easy to look for the uterus and the ovaries! But I guess it gets very easy after I get familiar with the abdominal organs.All went well, and it felt really good to see her recover back to her lively and bright self afterwards! I really do hope that there are no complications involved in her minor surgery!
Below is a pic of the spey and the patient:

The person looking at you is my anaesthetist, Suzanna ( a fellow student intern) and I'm right behind her, paying full attention on my patient.. The person in blue is See Yang, admiring my surgical skills.. and the person on the far left is my supervisor.

That's my patient recovering well from her surgery and the anaesthetics!

Cool aye? Yeah, definitely!!
But it's really tiring though, with the long hours and stuff.. I work from 8 to 5 pm, and till 6.30pm on tuesdays and thursdays. And I have to be on call every alternate day and weekend. When I'm on call, I have to return back to the clinic at 8pm for afterhours treatment, and yea.. if there are any emergencies (touch wood), I get called back to the clinic. And I also need to study at night after that, to make sure I know my stuff the next day, or to answer some quizzes that my supervisors give us.

Yeah, thats that.. It's not so bad now that I've got the hang of it! Yup.. Sorry if I sounded like I'm all over the place in this post.. there's just a lot of stuff to tell you guys about, and I'm feeling a bit tired as well.. and it's just 10.35 pm, gosh..

So yea.. Till then peeps! God bless ya!

Lap time : 9 days 6hrs 30 mins

In primary school , its time to bring board games and hand held nintendos..
In secondary school, you hear people shouting merdeka and mat rempits horning and rev-ing.. Some go play football, some go tiuk (cybercafe), some go lepak..
In uni, its time to sleep.. and maybe watch dvds..

well for me at least..
what about you guys?

p.s. haha, i'm not that boring.. we're having some mini party tonight in just for the housemates in the pink house.

The Final Lap

starts in 10 hours..

alright.. here we go!

think different, think HDs! ;)

Civic Type R

It has an ugly butt though.. could be better

The K20A which most Honda enthusiasts crave to swap into their cars..

*drools* How sexy is this ??

This baby goes on sale in the UK in March 07. Man, I hope Mr Honda Australia decides to bring this in.. I might just get one! haha, give me some time to earn the money..
Okay, I should be studying..
bye bye

Stuvac

is here!!! it's that time of the year again..
trying to wipe out all distractions.. arghh.. I must do well this sem!
can't wait till its over..

Went to my first auction today.. it was pretty cool! Things were going so so cheap as well! It's this car stereo specialist shop that decided to clear off a whole stack of their stock by auction.. and whoa, they have some pretty high end stuff going for real cheap!! Like 1/3 of the retail price!! Madness.. I dropped by to see if I could get myself a bargain.. but the stuff which I'm interested were in the later part of the auction, and I had to get to church then. Oh well.. I'll keep a good lookout for such auctions next time.. haha, although they rarely happen.

Oh, I wanna go to the Australian International Motor Show! Lets see if I can find the right time to go..

I so love the bridge to the new song, "Hosanna" by Brooke Fraser..
It goes like this :
Heal my heart and make it clean,
Open up my eyes to the things unseen,
Show me how to love like You, have loved me,
Break my heart for what break Yours,
Everything I am for Your kingdom's cause,
As I walk from earth into eternity..

man.. that's the cry of my heart..

The coming of an end..

The end of my days as a vet student is drawing near.. in about a months time, I'll transition from this :

to.. *jeng jeng jeng!* this!Thanks you , thanks you..
Internship is definitely gonna be a big stretch for me.. applying all the knowledge I've learnt since first year, which I doubt is still in my head.. Therefore, revisions would be a good idea to avoid scoldings from bad and evil vets who are supervising me..

Now I need to study for my finals which are coming up.. my final finals as a vet student. I need to end this with a bang!

Eight-legged intruder

Woke up this morning, and I saw this girl at the corner of my ceiling..

Now for an upclose view..Massive aye? Welcome to the country.. :)
This is like the 5th Spider I met in our house here in Camden..

A painful lesson..

Birthdays are days which your friends around you use to show their appreciation and love towards you..
That's one lesson I painfully learnt a few days before my birthday..

Here's the story.. My housemates decided to have a birthday dinner celebration thingy a couple of days earlier, cos I won't be around then (encounterfest). And on that day, I played touch(which involves a whole lot of running) at noon, and I decided to mow the lawn.. which took me the whole afternoon. We have a huge lawn.. remember? So yea, by evening, I'm already half dead..And all throughout the dinner, I was pretty much half dead, which affected the way I carried myself throughout the dinner.

The worst part was that when it was time for the cake, I asked them whether it was alright for them to bring it home instead, cos we were all very full.. Yeah, I know.. who would do that?? me.. sheesh..but hey I wouldn't normally do that, it's cause I'm quite close with my housemates, so I thought I should be frank with them. Big time bad move aye.. Right after that, the girls were pretty angry with me, but the guy was completely unaffected! which I find quite funny.. :) Yea, to cut things short, it was all sorted out in the end after some serious talks and apologies from my side.. and after feeling like the worst housemate/friend in the universe..

Celebrating the birthday of someone close to you is a real joy indeed and you'll definitely put in some effort passionately.. but celebrating the birthday of someone you don't know that well could be an obligation. That's so very true for me.. what about you guys? well, what I did was that I forgot to view it from the other side for my case for the first point..

Ok, sad stuff aside.. I spent my birthday at Encounterfest! which was indescribable! nothing beats encountering God man.. The day itself was pretty hot though, it was a max of 38 degrees! Social justice was fun! check out K-Lo's blog for more info on that! haha, am getting lazier by the day.. And for the album recording, Kudzi moved me to the very front row on the floor/the mosh pit! I couldn't believe that I could just put my hands on the stage to rest! I think you're gonna see plenty of me in the Dvd recording of the night! So make sure you get one when it's released! :) The mosh pit was insane in the last few songs, and I was squashed to the stage most of the time then. Haha, but it's fun!
This year's (including next year) project is gonna be crazy.. United is launching this thing called The I Heart Revolution.. They're gonna put together a cd from songs that are recorded live from different parts of the world! But there's more to just that.. it's about starting a revolution..

This is a pic of Encounterfest that I stole from Ashley.. I love the graffiti style !coolness..

okay on a side note.. I saw this on ebay..
*drools* I am so so tempted to buy it!!! Do you think belle would look good in that? it comes with door trims and the roof as well.. so basically her interior would be 80% in that colour! Bidding ends real soon.. arghh!!! help me!!

Lastly, thanks again to everyone for the birthday wishes and the presents!! Really appreciate it!

the secret place..

I've found a place,
caught in open arms..
Where Love's embrace,
mends a broken heart..
Here I will stay,
For all my days...

-Dean Usher-

Coming up..

Can't wait!!

The Road Trip

Argh, back to uni.. back to sticking my arm up the cow's arse.. back to getting cow shit splattered all over me..
At least this is my last day of cattle practicals.. next stop is sheep! which would be much better..

The road trip last week was hmm... nice? crazy?
I drove 2100+ kms, used 217 + litres of petrol, drove ~25-30 hours in 6 days.. Yeah, I'm quite proud of myself ... aren't you? We(the people in the front seats) saw at least 20 road kills on the way there, and roughly about the same number as well on the way back.. Man, I pity all those tourists who are like "Yay, we get to see wild kangaroos on the roads of Australia".. yeah.. it's more like bloody dead kangaroos lying everywhere.. I'm very thankful that I did not kill anything during my road trip.. well, I did kill lots and lots of insects..

This is how belle's number plate looked before the road trip.. (well more like after I clean it.. I don't go taking up close pics of belle's number plate for nothing..)This is after the road trip..
Why like that? Cos when belle is going at high speed, she just rams down every single insect that flies in her way.. and their mini guts will explode and make them stick to her. Her whole front is just covered with bugs of all types man.. What's best is that I can see every bug that hits the windscreen.. got sound effect somemore when they meet their fate. It's quite irritating though, cos they are pretty hard to clean up.

Ok ok, now to not so gross stuff.. We (Wenqi,Tania, Dong Xie and me) left on wednesday morning to Melbourne and dropped by Canberra for lunch, the floriade, and also to pick up another road trip homie, Carmen. These are some of the pics we took at Canberra.

The whole place is filled with flowers, especially tulips! Don't wanna bombard this blog with too many pics.. so the pics up here are the ones I've chosen for you to see ok ? Ok, after Canberra, we headed down to Melbourne.. When we reached melbourne, it took me a while to adjust myself to the roads there. The roads in/near the city looked pretty messy because both cars and trams share the same roads. Driving with trams can be cool.. but can be frustrating when you are stuck behind them. They are super slow!This is a pic that I took while I was in a traffic jam. Note the remains of a bug on the windscreen.. it's not bird shit ok?
Melbourne's nice.. it's a combination of Sydney and Adelaide. Food's good, and the cafe lifestyle is nice. Shopping's good as well, but it would be better if they have sales going on.. I'm a cheapo, :p
The top left pic is some cages with canaries hanging from a ceiling of a building called GPO. Think it's a shopping center.. it's suppose to be some kind of creative decoration.. I think.. no idea what it represents.. weird decoration ideas people have.. Bottom right is a pic of me and my sis. It was her birthday on that day.. and yea, you don't have to tell me that we look alike.. we get that too much.. The other 2 pics are creations from Coco Black, a famous chocolate cafe there. They have pretty rich stuff there, and you really need to order carefully!

We also went down for a drive to the Great Ocean Road. It was amazing.. it's like one of the best roads to drive in the world! The views along the way are absolutely breathtaking, although the driver (me) did not get to enjoy it as much as my passengers, but still from the driver's point of view, it's just super nice as well! Can't describe it.. you have to drive on the road yourself!
Below is a collage of some of the views that my passengers took from inside the car whilst I was busy driving..
We stopped by some spots along the way such as Erskine Falls, the 12 Apostles and the area around the Loch Ard Gorge. Below are some of the pics of these places :

And oh, we saw a wild echidna just beside one of the trails we were walking on.. check the movie out! It's not that clear/visible though.. but still! We were able to get close enough to catch it!


Phew, is this my longest post ever?! I think it is.. since I've packed so much into my mid semester break! Still, I'm too lazy to describe everything in detail ..
Alrightey, back to uni life now.. few more weeks left before the exams, then the rotations, then back home to Penang for a nice break!