sardonic

(adj.) cruel remark, intended to mock fish.

One more week until exams, and finally I'm starting to feel a bit of the stress? It's only when I get to a time where I estimate I might not be able to fit all the things that I need to read, that I get a sense of urgency. So, in order to relieve this stress, which may potentially reduce my capacity to undergo effective study and learning of concepts, I will go out tonight. And tomorrow.

Lately, there have been a few family issues around (luckily not involving our own), but it has nonetheless drawn my parents into it. Despite the intention of them having a holiday, the latter part of their trip ended up with them trying to resolve other people's issues. So, a few weeks ago, a few days before coming back to Melbourne, they ended up counselling people, doing diplomatic talks, and general political manouvres. The reason for this is probably because they were seen as relative outsiders, with some level of impartialness, as well as their general rationality and people managing skills. So I, fresh out of my psych term, got to thinking - should I teach them anything? Would it be helpful if they got taught CBT, relaxation techniques, or just some general theories of the mind and psychology? I'm sure that there could at least be a bit of use for these tools, if not only to support what they were already doing. The question arises of whether this should be done - or i guess, whether it is ethical to use these techniques on people you know personally. I know at least that I have met some people, or people's parents, with behaviours and attitudes that I disagree with. Is it worthwhile for me to suggest ways in which people around them might go about changing that behaviour? Or perhaps they just need to make those relatives aware of their problem? Or perhaps just talking with them and just saying what they think. Should I, as an outsider, say anything to the person whom I disagree with, on their relative's behalf? Or just for my sake?

pellagra

One of the longest days for perhaps half a year has just elapsed today for me, with a 8am start going through mostly non-stop to 5:30. That translates to 6:30am-7:00pm door to door time. Don't know how much of everything I absorbed. One thing I would like to mention that I did recall though, was talking about patient transfers today. Finally (in our last week) we learnt some practical information about patients, on moving them, and moving them around (as well as getting to play with some one-handed wheelchairs and various walking aids). One of the things mentioned though, was hoists. And the thing I wanted to mention - following on from a previous stem - was that when I got home, I watched a little of the limited TV I watch during a week, and what did they talk about? Hoists.

This time, though, I think that drawing out of this coincidence is bordering on the paranoid (The TV can read my thoughts!), and that now I have gradually moved from bizarrely fated occurances (Scott Wilson) down to this now. I'm sure I've heard of hoists a few times throughout this rotation, and they are certainly not so rare now as to probably not get a mention on TV once in a while.

In the past, there was a certain disease that caused mental difficulties, a sore mouth, and red inflamed roughened skin. Various experiments lead to the discovery of certain food stuffs that could cure it - like milk - and hence it was thought of thereafter as a vitamin deficiency disease, rather than an infectious one. It was found in 1867 that the molecule nicotine, consisting of 2 rings of atoms, could be split up by an acid to form another compound, nicotinic acid (with different properties). Later, it was found that nicotinamide (nicotinic acid plus an amine group) was the specific compound that was the active vitamin essential in curing this disease (and later, too, it was found that nicotinic acid itself could be ingested as the body has the capability to convert it readily to nicotinamide). The problem was, of course, that doctors didn't want the public to get the impression that vitamins could be obtained by smoking (they CAN'T), nor that food stuffs that contained nicotinic acid would be addictive or poisonous, so instead, a shortened abbreviated form of the substance was sought after. From the stems of the words nicotinic, acid, and the ending of vitamin, came the word niacin, which the one we use today.

perfect number

I went over to Chi's last night, intending to study. Though some was done, we of course got sidetracked and ended up watching Big Brother (again) and playing poker (again); I won. As we were watching, it really does seem to me that they (or some at least) were just acting out for the cameras. No doubt producers are happy about that. Though you do come to understand how some people are, and natural personalities do show out eventually, there still is an element of putting on a mask - and so I pondered how much of an affect the outside has on them. Either consciously or sub-consciously, they all know cameras are everywhere; microphones record their every breath. And people are watching them. So I wondered, what would happened once Big Brother for example, came to its 137th series, they've come to their yet-another-houseload level, and there's no more hype, no more glamour, and hardly anyone is watching them? Would they act out the same with that knowledge? Or to take it a step further, what if cameras were placed around the house as they are now, surveillancing continued as it is, but the tapes and recordings destroyed afterwards (and they had knowledge of this of course)? Would that make any difference at all? Is it any different from not watching at all, a normal household of people?

I mentioned before how I had the coincidence with a friend's name. Well, another one has just come along. Last Sunday, I had a barbecue (or sorts) at my place, and Jim, Pete and Chi came around. As they entered, they were in the grasp of their conversation which was around random trivia questions they were posing for each other. At this point, Pete (whose turn it was to be quiz master) mentioned Perfect Numbers - something which I had perhaps heard of in the past (in my long forgotten maths days), but really something which I did not encounter everyday (A perfect number is one where its factors sum up to itself). Then, one day later, as I was reading through my current book, which goes about explaining various words used in science and where they originated from, lo and behold, I came across the explanation of Perfect Numbers. Once again, I was forced to question the chance of encountering an uncommon concept, which I'm not sure I've actually even ever heard before, pop up twice so close temporally. And once again, all I can say is that there can be many factors or excuses, like perhaps I had heard of Perfect Numbers before, but had just forgotten it (unlikely, as I tend to remember simple concepts of interest like that), or that there was a high likelyhood of finding it in a book about scientific vocabulary, or that perhaps I had had a glimpse of the heading on a random opening of the book beforehand, and noticed when Pete mentioned it, rung a bell in my head, picked up on it and asked him to explain more. Well.... shit happens.

Btw, the first 5 perfect numbers, out of curiousity, are 6, 28, 496, 8128, and 33,550,336. At the time of printing, my book says that the 21st on was worked out in 1971, it's twenty-one thousand and three digits long.

Pringle point

Today I attended another (long) team meeting, but luckily this time, some of the food was being passed around to us medical students at the back (good ol' reg). Among the various tim tams, muffins, cookies and biscuits was a tube of pringles. And as my mind was wandering off away from that meeting, I was reminded of my old uni maths class. There, at one of the lessons, we were doing 3D graphs or something, and we had come to a figure with a parabola going up in one direction, and interesecting with this, a parabola going downwards, except with the X axis perpendicular to the orginal curve - the saddle point. Of course, after drawing and mapping this out, I soon realised this figure was the very essense of a pringle, and hence I said as much. (I ended up giving my teacher a small tube of pringles at the end of the year after I graduated high school).

Anyway, after my small reverie, I was watching the team members going about their meeting, and then I soon noticed something strange. One after another, people would go about and eat their pringles, but that everyone was doing the same way. This went on, and almost everyone I saw were eating the pringle a certain way up. The strange thing was, after I analysed how I was doing it (and I think how I normally eat them), I discovered I was doing exactly opposite of the majority. My rationale was to eat them in a way that I thought would conform to my tongue - that is, with the long axis of the pringle facing down (downwards parabola), and the short axis going upwards towards the sides. This way the chip would follow the curve of your tongue as it sloped downwards towards the back of the throat. I pondered this a while, trying to come up with an explanation, but I couldn't come up with any certainties. Was the chip flavoured more on one side? Did they just pick 'em up like that from the bowl? Were they always jsut stacked like that in the tube? I have no idea, but I think my way is still more logical.

Sop refined

I've been pondering more on my previous idea of subjectivity. It seems that interest also holds with subjectivity, and a common way that this is done is through stories. For example, it isn't as interesting if in a conversation I just mention that I did that and I did this, but more so if i mention things that happened, my reactions and my interpretations. I don't it even matters how small a triviality it is, as long as its a story or an easily imagined or visualised account of the events.

And from this, I think that it is not the content of what is said, or the events that transpired, but the way in which it is retold that makes it interesting. The content has to be decriptive enough, but concise enough that you don't blabber on, and interest has to be kept up throughout the story. The chain of events have to be told in the right order, with a logical sequence of events, so that the other person can understand why you did what you did. And finally, the punch line or the point of the story has to be given at the end, perhaps with a lead up to this, and maybe this being up to as long as the whole story itself. I think that this is quite difficult to do perfectly, and so, of course, I don't think I really have that many stories to tell. Of the ones that I do, I usually need to think back on them, and figure out what i want to say, the details to include, and the point of it - this takes a lot of thinking, really. And afer an attempt at giving it, I can always see what happened, what might have gone wrong or right, and see where I could have improved on it. An annoying thing that happens sometimes is that others might start a story or mention something, and then pass it on to you. For example, you might be a group setting and you hear someone mentioning something about what you've done or a story you've given, stuff it up by giving the point, not starting it properly, or just not in the way that you would like it, and then pass it on to you to give the rest. This annoys me, because the person may have hyped it up too much, or they may have given away the point, or maybe just because I'm not prepared and gotten my ideas together before I start. But then, I think the main thing is for me that I don't have enough practice in it, and don't feel I can do it well yet. I think the thing I need to do is to have my eyes out for more happenings, analyse it in the way described above, and then try it out (and improve and remember it for next time).

I've recently had occasion to use my SoP system, but have encountered a few problems with it. I'm not sure whether I mentioned it before, but the numbers derived from it wasn't supposed to be correlated literally with each other, or averaged or summed up in some mathematical fashion. The idea was a situation where perhaps you were the decision maker, and then you could hear the respective sops from everyone else, formulate and calculate this in your head, then make a decision based on what others have given you as their indication of preference. And in this capacity, it has worked really well (if I may say so myself), as I think it streamlined the decision making process.

Now, there are 3 problems that I think arises now. Firstly, what happens if you are faced with more than 2 options? You can't really have a linear scale in this case, with 2 polar extremes. I think what needs to be done now is to split up the different choices, and then give a rating scale, perhaps from 1 to 10, for each of these possibilities. For example, you might say A: sop 3, B: sop 6, C: sop 5. The problem then is how to express this as a single sop? Obviously in this example the preferred option is B, but how can we arrive at net sop? Would it be ok for that person to say B: sop 6 without taking into account the preference of the other sops? It wouldn't really work just to minus the other sops from the winning one (you end up with B: sop -2, which doesn't really indicate that you want to do B). What you really need is something that works out always to be a positive sop in the end. One way I've thought that this might work may be to average out all the 'losing' sops (e.g. (5+3)/2= 4) and subtract this from the 'winning' sop (6-4=2) and hence churn out your net sop. Not sure how this will work, but I'll try to test it out.

Secondly, how do you compare sops once you hear them. How do you correlate a 5 from one person, with a 5 from another. What does it mean? So now, I propose that for the decision maker, or at least the person correllating and synthesising the sops needs to have a weighting system to the sops, depending on who it comes from. For example, if say there was someone in the group that usually you didn't agree with or was deemed to make bad judgements, you might assign a factor of say 0.5 (50%) to their sop. In this way, if the person in the example said their sop was 4 for going shopping, you might then apply the x0.5, and hence you come to a weighted sop of 2. I guess in a sense this can be called a person factor, or opinionation (yours of them).

Thirdly, how does the decision maker combine and intergrate all the sops from all the inputs from different people? Can we leave it to a simple summation process to arrive at the decision? Once again, sops are subjective scales of prefence, so it might be hard to compare. I think so far though, that addition of all the sops for a particular option, and see which one gets the highest sop, might be a solution. This, once again, will need to be tested out... but I'm optimistic that this may work.

mirrored mannerisms

Went out to the New Downunder hotel again last night ($4 crownies! and a chess board). We ended up watching the gratuitous antics of the housemates. It was unnervingly addictive.

Today, we went to have Yum Cha at Shark Fin Inn in Keyborough (highly recommended), and ended seated at a place next to the wall length mirrors on the side of the restaurant. As I was staring at this mirror, and at my self, something that I had pondered came back to me. For my whole life, most of the time I see my face would be in the mirror. Every morning, brushing my teeth, taking a shower, I would be faced with... myself. I'd get used to my own features, my own looks, where everything lies on my face. And this, I realised, was completely different to what other people saw. Your mirrored reflection gives you a left-right reversed image of your features. Though your face might generally be symmetrical, I came to realise that on closer inspection, it isn't. There are subtle differences here and there, freckles, the way you smile, the position of the eyes. Your mental self image is just not the same as what the rest of the world sees. But who is right? Which is the real you? Your real image? I think, it is for this reason, that at times when I look at myself in a photo (one of the times you see yourself from other people's view) that I don't always look right, or feel that its just not me (or that maybe i'm just having a bad hair day). But it is in fact this image that other people see as you.

I generally spend a lot of time watching people, when they speak, when they're listening, when they're walking around the place. It can be funny sometimes when you notice that some people have their own individual repeated mannerisms in movment and speech that they use all the time. Some might have a saying or phrase, some might have a way they walk, or move about, and some might have their own way of greeting people. Most times, these seem normal, at least not out of the ordinary, but at other times, it can just make people look silly. And, of course, I realised, I must have my own little intricacies and mannerisms. Me, I think I nod too much. When different people are being spoken to, they go 'uh huh', 'yep', just stare, or whatever. I just nod. Everytime I'm in that situation, I get this urge to nod, like a high frequency, low amplitude nod, but I feel that's just my way of telling the other person that i'm listening. And then, I realised that this might look ridiculous to others. So, I've recently tried to stop this, or at least nod less often, and tried other ways of acknowledging, like saying 'yep' or something. But of course, these habits are hard to change, and so I guess it will only be with time that I can see what will happen.

SoP

I went into the urodynamics procedure, where they try to work out the reasons why people get urine incontinence. They have various pressure transducers (to work out bladder pressure) and in the process, slowly fill up the bladder with fluid to see what happens, all in the meantime occasionally using Xray imaging to view the outline and filling. At various times, the patient is also asked what they experience, going from a sensation that they could go, to a sensation that there is liquid or fullness there, to feeling full, to being on the point that they really really need to go now. Well, the lady I saw finally got to the last stage, and we could see that her bladder was pretty full on the monitors. At this point, the doctor then asked that she stop holding on and let go (she had an absorbent pad on and around her), but after saying a few times that she really really felt the need to go, she couldn't. We all waited around for a while, but nothing happened. All the while, I watched the little monitor, measuring the volume, go up and up, as the bladder filled up more and more. Still nothing. There was various attempts of coaxing and encouragement from the doctors, including having a running tap in the background, as well dunking her hand in cold water (this was definitely having an effect on me). We finally gave up, gave her a little bell, told her to ring us after she had finished, and then left the room. The bell rang a minute later.

Apparently the woman had had a case of stage fright (quite common actually), and could only finally go after we had. Though I'm not sure that I would have had the same problem, it'd be interesting to find out whether I can save myself some embarassment next time I'm busting to go by imagining that everyone was looking at me and expecting me to go.

I've lately come up with a system of indicating how strongly I feel for a particular situation. I've always had the problem (with some people more than others) where there's a decision to be made, and both I and the other person are or seem ambivalent about what to do. We end up standing around going 'well, whatever you think' or some such and nothing gets done. So, I came up with clarifying how much I preferred a particular option by specifying afterwards how much I cared. For example, if i didn't particularly care where we went for lunch, then I might go 'Lets go to Shanghai Dumpling (again), my strength of preference is 2 (over going to Hungry Jacks (again))', whereas the other person might roll their eyes and reply that they had been to Shanghai Dumpling too many times in the last week. Of course, stating my preference in sentence after every decision might become tedious, and so I shortened it to 'sop' (strength of preference), followed by a number, which represents on a numerical scale how much I preferred one to the other. Imagine a spectrum, with SD 10 on one end, and HJ 10 on the other, for example, with a midpoint of ambivalence (0) in the middle. Well, that's how I imagined it. I'm hoping that in the future this might make certain decision making processes much more efficient if we can communicate our ideas and preferences without so much fiddling with words and expressions.

sidekick

Today, I accompanied a geriatrician for a house visit. Generally got an idea of what happens in a home visit, the assessment, the options for management, the goals, and so and so forth. When it got to finishing the history, I finally did something useful (for once), the Distracting Neuro Exam! As the doctor came to the point where she had all she needed to get from the patient, she got me to take the patient aside and perform various examinations so that she could go and talk with the relatives a bit more privately. So here I was, putting out all sorts of hammers, tissues and things, and tapping and prodding the patient here and there with my little sideline act, without a clue on earth what I was doing (god i need some physical examination practice). Next time I'll have to bring some bananas and a monkey suit.

Yesterday, in the most boring team meeting I've ever had to endure (10/10 pain), I encountered a Dr. Scott Wilson. Now, I had heard of him being around somewhere in the hospitals, but never actually met him. So in the course of the meeting, he walked in, got introduced by the consultant (he himself is reg or something) and that was that. Now, this in itself has no meaning, its just that I had a good friend back in high-school by the same name, and I thought nothing more of it after that. This morning, I boarded my train, got out my book to read, went through a few stops, and then heard someone approaching, calling my name. Of course, who else could it be but Scott Wilson, whom I had only seen on occasion once after 6 years leaving school. We caught up a bit of course, and exchanged numbers and made plans to catch up more in the holidays. Even more strange is that he normally catches that exact train (on my line) from Cheltenham, and that I've never bumped into him before. Now, I could of course say this was in some way 'fate', or at least much more than a coincidence, having both first met Dr. Wilson and Scott one right after the other, when previously I could have met them at any other, earlier times. Why all of a sudden now? But then again, perhaps at having met the Dr. Wilson first, it had got my mind thinking, and hence I was unconsciously looking out for Scottand had recognised him straight away and it has registered in my memory (not the case today, as it was he that approached me, not I him). What I think is likely though, is that if i hadn't bumped into my friend today, I wouldn't have written this down here today. What's more, if I had (and have in the past) encountered something that is out of the ordinary, or that jogs a memory or something, that if I had encountered the same again soon after, that I would then go on to remember this and make something out of it. I would only remember the times where this situation has occurred, and of course, not remember the times where, lo and behold, no co-incidences have occur. Shit happens, and so life goes on.

pain!

I've got this !#$%ing ulcer in my mouth, and its killing me. It's been over a week now, and it still hasn't gone away, and it's in a position right up between my gums where I can't treat it directly either. Everytime I start eating, have a drink, or go brush my teeth, it totally paralyses the left part of my face with pain. Its times like these where I appreciate how comfortable it is when I'm normally healthy, painfree, and it sometimes surprises me how I can so soon and soeasily forget what it's like when it does hurt. I've been taking some Vitamin B (who knows?) this past week, and it's also been interesting for me to see that I've taken the tablet more consistently on the days that it has been worse, or when I get some acute pain. It's truly amazing what a motivational influence pain can be, as I'm sure many people throughout history have known.

careless whipples

Time can never change
The Careless Whipples, of a surgeon...

I'm never gonna drink again,
Can't you see I got no liver
Though it's easy to pretend
you know I'm gonna sue
should've covered up and made amends
by getting me an organ giver
but now you're never gonna cut again
because i'm gonna sue.

Seems like things people come up with (well, at least me), come from discrepancies, misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and the like. I've had countless conversations, that have stemmed from something that was said or heard incorrectly, and then my imagination takes over and usually a convoluted story springs forth. For course, this depends a lot on who I'm speaking with, and whether we can feed ideas off each other. I reckon this process is likened to the genetic mutations that are gathered and formed in evolution; the generation of new, original material, more than the sum of the original inputs. Surely this is, or at least one of the ways, people and humanity have formed and do form new ideas. It seems to me that all other things in our life are derived from one thing or the other that we had witnessed or had experience of. We usually just build up new ideas from old ones, but these are not radical - they are fundamental and inevitable conclusions from the originals. (A + B = AB (a different entity, but generally the same). Conversely, I'm proposing that from errors, we can obtain totally different properties and ideas (A + B = pineapple). Though it seems like we can sometimes be in the grip of our past, and our environment, I believe that there are things that can affect and change us that are unpredictable.

jim's party

Haven't done anything this weekend, apart from going to Jim's 23rd last night. It's sometimes seems amazing to me how unstressed I am, seeing that exams are coming up in a few weeks' time. Maybe its just my perception on how easy I think it will be, or something, but it has been a trend with me to leave things at the last minute... hopefully this won't just be another case of that.

I've been annoyed, always have been but more so lately, at people who say things or do things just to get recognition or to show off. After such a comment is made, I normally ponder for a while, analysing the context and content of the deed, just to try and see what the intention was. If it ends up being self-inflatatory, it really starts irratating me. For example, some of the gossip I listen to sometimes seems to be said just so the person saying so can make (or think) themselves like they're really great friends with the person they heard it from, or whom the information concerns, or that they're better because they knew before you, or know more than you. It's as if they're saying, "Oh, didn't you know that? I found out weeks ago. You're not really with it are you?". Even more annoying is when people barge in when a question is asked, right in the middle of when you're giving the answer, or straight after. It all seems to be in an effort to go "Me Me ME! Look at this knowledge I have! Aren't I Good?!". At these times, I usually give up, stop competing in the noisy battle trying to get a word in edgewise, and sit in silence, in great irritation. The most annoying thing is, though, when I catch myself doing the same thing. I've found myself mentioning things, or even repeating comments if I think others haven't heard. Afterwards, I think back to what I've said, and what reasons I could have had for it.. and if it does seem that I've said it for the above reasons, then I feel ashamed and tell myself to be more careful in the future. I just don't see a point in saying something only to make yourself seem better, or more knowledgable, just for the sake of it, without any added value in the information itself.

encounter

I was just walking home today from the station, the time being about 12 midnight (as I often do), all draped and huddled in with my great coat, when I noticed a lady across the road staring at me. She had been walking her dog (god knows why at midnight), and as I approached and completed my crossing, she ask me with with incredulity, "Are you wearing your pajamas?" (with a straight face mind you). I hence proceeded to derobe my outer garment, upon which she said "oh, i guess not" and then walked away.

I've been thinking back on my previous account of humour: people, situations, and ideas. It occurred to me that rendering anything subject, is to make it more moving, triggering emotions and feeling in the individual. This can be in both a positive and a negative way, for although tragic past memories can be stirred to mind with this act of relating, the same can change an fundametally abstract idea to one that we hold dear to our hearts. Thus it seems to me that to draw ideas (and humour) we encounter, to experiences we have had firsthand, is to multiply the power of effect it has on us, for better or worse.

consolidation

After another late night (as one does these RAPP days with little pressing to do) keeping myself warm with a few glasses of preboiled water, I went to bed. I remember dreaming as usual, but toward the end of that dream, feeling the urge to go to the toilet, finding one in the dream, and using it, but not feeling that sense of urgency and fullness go away (and a good thing at that). I was standing there, going and going and going, puzzling away, when it finally occurred to me that I might be dreaming. As soon as I realised that, I got up, and went to the loo. Its a good thing my body can differentiate dream from real life in this circumstance, seeing that its sometimes so hard to distinguish once you're stuck in there.

Had a conversation last night with a friend, and they happened to mistake the word consolidation for consolation (an error I frequently make when I'm not careful). In that time just before I dropped off to sleep, my mind tumbled that word over and over, with the thoughts branching off in all directions, when I came to an idea. I have no idea whether people have already done or tried this, but here it is anyway. In septicaemia, pathogens, usually from a single source like the urinary tract or lungs, grow in number in their location, and then start to disseminate out into the blood stream. Soon, they start taking over here, causing a major life threatening situation for the person. What if, there were some way (through chemokines and the such) we could introduce a homing beacon of some sort, in a place that was easily assessible (say, close to the skin) and 'collect' the pathogen at that spot. Here, they could either be destroyed locally, or at least filtered from the bloodstream to at least limit the production and numbers there. In this way, we could round up and 'cull' the invaders, perhaps even to the extent of 'persuading' the ones from the primary source to travel out from their locale and hence treat the cause too. But of course, this is just an idea; perhaps I can make some use of it some time in the future.

Austin Interview

Had my last interview today. Yay. Took me 2.5 CDs to get me there and back from the Northern. Maybe I should be putting Austin down lower on my list.

I was feeling bored last weekend, with nothing urgent left to do, and so I pulled out some of my old piano music and started playing through them. I found some of my old Bach baroque pieces and although I couldn't quite play them to sound quite right, I really got into them. Now all week, I've had those little melodies and countermelodies pop up all the time, when I'm daydreaming, driving, just walking around, and even when I'm in that state just before I get up when i'm not quite awake. Today, I just had to pull out those pieces again and go through them again. The only problem is that I feel I need baroque pieces, more modulating voices, countermelodies, themes, canons - and I have some, but I can't play them well enough to satify my need. I think it's some sort of orderly mathematical clockwork-like quality to that style that appeals to me, which is what I'm after. I need to buy some CDs.

Got a call yesterday from an old school friend, asking that I help out with his girlfriend's exam or some such next week - Vocal. The problem lies not in my will, but my ability, as I have seriously forgotten whence it was last I practiced. I feel that if I can't do it well (especially seeing its for exams), then its best that someone else should do it. The other problem is that there may not be others, or that others may be even worse than me. So, in the meantime, I've pulled out the old Hanon studies and warmed my fingers up in anticipation. I've forgotten how sore they can get after practice.

Humour

Had a tutorial about humour yesterday, and it brought to light the way it can be used, especially in a negative manner. In particular, it focused on situation where a patient might be talked about or joked about, and the morality of this. On the one hand, there's the issue of confidentiality and respecting patients, whilst on the other, it can be seen to be a method of stress relief for example. It was also interesting to note that students tended to side with the patients more (when they were at the brunt of a joke). Apart from the fact that medical students were also usually the target of jokes, I think the comraderie between patients and students lies in knowledge. Both are on the bottom of the ladder, with little knowledge on what's going on, what will happen next, and so on. With this is a sense of helplessness and lack of power - they are both at the mercy of the superiors above them. Let us hope that once I reach a level where there are those below me that I don't forget what it was like to feel helpless at the bottom.

Another focus in the session was that of 'safe' humour, and of all the things spoken of, the only one that was, was humour about one's self. Sex, politics, religion, and that about others (especially a disability) were out of the picture, and even that of events and situations were inconsistent. Here, you would need to know a least some of the background of your audience to be able to make sure you don't offend. This subject got me to thinking of the idea I had heard somewhere in the past about a hierarchy of conversation. The three things were: talking about people (gossip), situations, and ideas; this being in order from lowest to highest. I don't think necessarily that this was referring to a 'goodness' or 'badness' rating, but perhaps more of a abstractness and requirement for thought as one moved up. In any case, I got to thinking, and the conclusion I reached was also that the more objective you got, the 'safer' it was. The example above of humour about situations could be dangerous, as the obejctive idea of a situation could refer to a subjective situation that someone else might have had, which then might cause offense. So the thing being the least subjective, with the least chance to be able to refer to anyone in particular, ideas, should in theory be the safest for use in humour. This, of course, I cannot be sure of but I will try to look out in the future now and see if I can find any examples where humour about ideas has failed.

Western Interview

Another day, another interview. Seemed to go better than yesterdays' one, at least it went on for longer than 5 minutes this time. I probably felt more comfortable with the more conversational tone of the interview, as well as not having to sit behind a 3 metre wide board table with the interviewers staring across at me from another postcode.

Had some talk today on a hospital's computer system, and how they're all starting to link up now throughout the state, and eventually, Australia. I've been thinking for a long time now how the whole system seems to be all jumbled up, with no integration at all. Everyone just does their own thing, and leaves others to pick up what-ever pieces they can. I even got to thinking I should design my own hospital and health system to ensure everyone knows what everyone else is doing, has done, and where to find everything. But after today's talk, I started thinking maybe things are not so bad after all, or at least there are people in the network that are actively working and striving towards an end that's similar to what I envisioned. I will have to wait and see what it's like once I start working, as I can't really judge how good or bad things are at the moment.

Dad just walked in then (he's back from his trip now) and mentioned to me how China's recently formed a depart or something within the hospital/health system: specifically to combat the growing problem of computer addiction in children. The symptom is that they get violent when taken away from the computers, and lash out at parents. The treatment they are looking at is, of course, medication. Maybe I need some too.