My Second Favourite Thing in The Whole Entire World World

Second I hear you ponder? Well I didn't want to leave missbliss out and no, its not my new eee PC (although I do love it lots).

CAKE! - Fortunately for me, one of missbliss's finest attributes is making fantastically yummy cakes of all shapes and sizes. This goes hand in hand with one of my best attributes, the ability to gobble cake like no other living human!

This post is to celebrate the wonders of cake (particularly the chocolate cake I have waiting for breakfast), missbliss's ability to make said cake, and to rejoice in the chocolaty goodness of the world.

The amazing 'chocolate splurge' cake. (Or as I like to call it - breakfast)
The icing got a bit messy but hey - any mess involving chocolate can only be good right?

My birthday cake - made with 2 of my other favourite things - cream and raspberries.



CHRISTMAS CAKE! - one of the best things about Christmas (and missbliss doesn't even like it so all the more for me!)
This was last years wonder - decorated by none other than the little medic himself - with edible, gold painted holly made from icing

Its getting to the Christmas time of year which can only mean more cake - YIPEE!

UPDATE: After breakfast:

Gadgetery Goodness

If you're a long time reader of my blog you'll probably be aware that I'm a bit of a techno geek when it comes to gadgets. If I had the money I'd buy all-sorts of goodies. Sometimes, gadgets come along which are just too good to miss out on (at least in my opinion.)

This situation happened last week and I decided to splash out on a new toy. I was fortunate to find them in stock as they're very new and in demand (for those who know what they are that is.)

Its quite expensive, but also a bargain, and I hope to be able to earn the money to pay for it, well, I've already bought it, but I'd like to earn some of that money back through the following:

a) Selling my PDA on eBay - as much as it pains me because its also a gadget and I love it its sort of redundant now as I have my Nokia N95 and my new toy which effectively take care of anything the PDA can do.

b) Selling old books on Amazon - I've already sold a few, and hopefully will earn a few pennies this way whilst also freeing up some bookshelf space (much needed in our house *glares at missbliss*) 'Sociology as Applied to Medicine' is one of the many wonders now listed on Amazon, I bought that eagerly during my first week at medical school, (yes I was naive) I might have opened it once in the last 4 and half years....oops.

c) Volunteering as a 'model' for the 4th Year OSCEs - at £20 a pop, a few sessions of that will help no end (not to mention it being an excuse to get out of PBL!)

So I'm sure you're all wondering what it is that I splashed my non-existent (at present) cash on, well I could do a cal and not tell you but I'm not that mean, besides, you'd never guess in a million years.

It looks like a laptop, and is in fact a laptop, but its small, about the size of an A5 writing pad, and only 900g in weight. The Asus eee PC, is my favourite new gadget. Unfortunately the operating system is based on Linux which means its completely different to Windows but I'm slowly getting used to it and it can do just about everything that I would ask of it. Its not meant as a main PC but at £200, this exceptionally portable, sturdy and generally cool gadget can be slipped into my bag to be used to surf the web on the move, check emails, write blog posts and most other stuff your £500-1000 laptops can do.

Ok, ok, so you might not be quite as excited as I am because I am a bit of a geek but still, I'd recommend these to anyone. Few things are quite as exciting as waiting for a new gadget to be delivered - so much so that I actually looked forward to PBL this week because I knew that after it, I'd get to play with my new toy. Woo

p.s. Check out the reallm for more PBL tales.

Bringing the Islands to Life

Now we've settled into our new flat and got the Internet up and running we've been able to upload some of our Solomon Island videos to youtube. Hope you enjoy them:

Taking off after stopping to re-fuel

Driving through a local village on the island

An English lesson Solomon Island style

Solomon Island children playing down by the sea

Playing volleyball in the evening with a load of local children.

(yes ladies and gentlemen, that's me - do excuse the odd clothing arrangement)

Custom dancing the night before we left, AMAZING!

Evening in paradise

There you have it, a few videos which I hope bring to life some of our amazing experiences. It makes both of us really happy to look at the videos and pictures but at the same time, its quite sad because we both miss it tremendously!

A few random thoughts

OK, So I should actually be in theatre at the moment but the surgeon has disappeared and I'm fed up of playing 'hunt the surgeon'! I've been sat here for 10 or 15 minutes thinking what shall I do, various options occurred to me and I even started a 70 question meme but it was going rather slowly and I was a bit bored so here are just a few of my random thoughts.

1. - Everyone seems to be particularly excited about Christmas this year, despite the fact that it's still 46? days or so away whispers of Christmas are everywhere. Its probably like this every year but I've never noticed such a buzz before.

2. - There was disappointment among my fellow students this week as news filtered out that we'd no longer be getting free coffee during PBL/lectures. Must be a cost-cutting exercise, although rumours are that it'll be back when the new building is ready (which is already 4-5 months behind schedule, I'll be surprised if I ever see it open whilst I'm here) Personally this news didn't bother me one little bit, I never drink coffee or tea so its a complete waste of money as far as I'm concerned. I'd much rather have my share in biscuits, sadly this doesn't seem to be allowed. My PBL tutor accused me of being a Mormon this week because I didn't drink any caffeine, I told him I just get my caffeine from other sources!

3. - Facebook is turning us into a nation of freaks. I registered on facebook in its very early days but its grown incomprehensibly since then. Almost everyone between the age of 17 and 23+ is on it, and you're seen as some kind of freak if you're not. Or maybe its 'cool' to shun this social networking phenomenon. No doubt about it, it is a useful tool which makes life easy for example sharing pictures and keeping in contact with far-away friends but at the same time it can be a real problem. Facebook 'stalking' everyone you've ever known is almost mandatory these days, and I can't help feeling a great deal of trouble is going to come of it. I'm not even going to mention all the ridiculous third party applications that have been added in recent months, they're almost enough to drive you insane. I'm fed up of being 'bitten' by someone using a vampire application or being invited to the "my little toe is bigger than your nipple" society. Get a grip people!

4. - If you're wrong, just admit it!

5. - IKEA is amazing, I love walking around, I love looking at the stuff, I love picking the flat-packs out of the warehouse, I love trying to cram the flat packs into the car, I love putting the flat-pack stuff together and I love standing back and admiring my new TV stand, bookcases, drawers and various other IKEA goodies.

6. - I'm a geek, but you know what? I don't really care what anyone else thinks.

7. - I'm hungry, time to get some food and go back to theatre. What a strange post.

It is done!

After many minutes staring at the 'submit' button I finally plucked up the courage (after checking everything just once more) to click it and that was it! Not even an "are you sure you wish to submit" With one click it was done, off into cyberspace to be scored by someone who knows nothing about me other than the answers to 7 questions!

9th January is the day we find out our Foundation School allocation - bring it on.

Future Surgeons – Surgical Skills course

Last Friday, I went to the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh to attend a surgical skills course for medicals students. It was great fun and very useful – especially considering my useless excuse for a medical school have refused to bother teaching us about things such as suturing (quite strange given that its on the competency list on the foundation application – but never mind)

Credit must go to HospitalPhoenix for recommending it, unfortunately he wasn’t there as one of the tutors. I would have quite enjoyed racing him against the clock stacking sugar cubes and fastening cable ties laparoscopically (bloody difficult!) I was also disappointed to see that the Angry Medic didn’t turn up despite his name being on the list of participants (I hope everything is ok in angry’s world!)

So anyway, the course itself, it’s called something like: ‘Future Surgeons: Key Skills’ and is intended as a basic surgical skills course for medical students. There were about 20 or so of us there, mainly from Scotland but also a few from other areas of the UK including one from London who had come a very long way!

What made it so good was probably the tutors, they we’re all fairly old but rather proud of their combined 200 years of experience. They were all very friendly and very good teachers. The lead guy, a retired orthopod was hilarious; he was a comedy genius and a good teacher too.

It was very interactive and an excellent environment to learn things in with a number of experienced tutors roaming around to answer questions and help out. I really enjoyed the whole thing and despite having to make some urgent phone calls at lunchtime to sort out moving into our flat the next day, the whole thing was very relaxing.

Am I a future surgeon? Who knows, I'd quite like to be but whether I'll cut it in that cut-throat, competitive world only time will tell. *Goes off to actually learn some anatomy*

Missbliss wrote here about our very long and stressful moving day on Saturday, we're still unpacking and are slowly settling in albeit with a couple of teething problems.

Foundation Application Update coming soon to either here or the real little medic.

Medics on a Train!

I’m currently on a train to Edinburgh to attend a surgical skills course for medical students; fortunately by the wonders of modern technology I was able to reserve a seat with a plug socket for my laptop. Sadly, I wasn’t able to reserve all 4 sears so when I got on, someone was sat in my seat. Anyway, I finally managed to get myself sat down but as there was someone next to me I had very little space so I sat reading my gadget magazine (ok so I’m a geek) waiting patiently for the other person to disembark.

I soon realised that the woman next to me, who’s toe I had stood on and almost destroyed when sitting down, was in a deep conversation with the lady at the other side of the table. Now, not that I’m nosy or anything but I soon realised they were talking about doctors, not only were they talking about doctors they were quite openly slagging them off. For some reason I found this absolutely hilarious. I listened attentively for 10 to 15 minutes or so, whilst pretending to drool over the latest gadgets in my magazine.

I could barely contain myself as such wonders as “they’re [doctors] all very very arrogant” and “you either get one of those – just out of medical school types who barely look 18, or an arrogant consultant who won’t listen to you” came flooding out. At this point, I decided it might be quite funny if I got out something medic-y. I happened to have the details of my surgical skills course so pulled it out of my bag and slapped it triumphantly right in the middle of the table. Almost immediately the conversation stopped and the look on their faces was a picture. For the next 10 minutes or so they continued to babble about this and that although there was no more slagging off doctors.

Now I don’t know if this was right, or if it was wrong, but they were really giving doctors a hard time and rather than butt in and stand up for them, I thought the subtle approach would be more amusing.

Anyway, the lady, who also had a ridiculous amount of rubbish which she failed to remove from my side of the table until she departed, has now left the train leaving me free to type blog posts/work on my foundation application/play football manager or all of the above. Actually, my foundation application is just about finished, missbliss is has spent ages trying to delete the 100+ extra words I had written for each question and it’ll be ready to submit well before next Friday’s deadline.

p.s. Writing on a train is strange, every so often the person next to me takes a drink and perhaps, just maybe, takes a sly peek at what I’m up to – in which case, Hello! I don’t really know if he’s reading this or not, but either way, I thought it would be amusing to type this just so he knows that I know, if he is reading that is.