My stomach is currently doing these odd twisty things. Today is Queens' admissions day, the day when you find out if you're in, you're out, or you're waiting (again). Today is the day that months upon months of preparation and waiting come to an end. Today is the first day of the rest of my freaking life!!! Aaaaaaaaah!!! Why do schools do these things to people!!!

I've been checking the meddie forums all day, some people have gotten so desperate they've called the admissions office to harass them about their status. But I'm scared to do this because what if:

a) I don't get in. I'll be so depressed I won't be able to work for the rest of the day.
b) I get waitlisted. I'll still be depressed and I still won't be able to work for the rest of the day.
c) I get in. I'll be so ecstatic I won't be able to work for the rest of the day.

Do you sense a pattern here? Clearly, the only solution is for me to give up on productivity and leave the office at 10 in the morning. This morning was the first in over a month that I didn't need coffee. My eyes popped open and the only thing I could think was "it's admissions day...dum dum DUM!!!" The only time I can imagine being more nervous than this is on my wedding day. This is ridiculous, why am I even trying to work? I should be stalking my mailman. Besides, in retrospect, I'm not sure if the Queens interview went well! Maybe I've just been deluding myself. Oh why oh WHY can't it be 4? I'm so edgy I've started to turn melodramatic!

Won't someone please check my mail for me? If it's good, bring me a tub of celebratory Haagen-Dazs. If it's bad, bring a me an even bigger tub of consolation Haagen-Dazs. Just please don't let it be a waitlist because the thought of having to wait AGAIN is killing me...

My squishy bear graduated today.

She also goes by squshington bear. Or squashington bear. Or squishington wishington bear. Or squashington washington bear. Or squishy wishy bear. Or squooshy bear. Or squooshy wooshy bear. If you really want to annoy her, you can call her squishy wishy squooshy wooshy squashy washy bear. You get my point I hope. Basically any combination of the above will work.

It also really bugs her if you call her Jessie. Our grandmother has problems with the English language, so she's turned the name "Jessica" into "Yassica" and you can feel free to use that as well. Other variations include "Yassi" and "Yass". I'm particularly fond of the latter.

Once when Jessica was mad at me, she squirted half a bottle of mustard into my sandwich behind my back. I found out the next day at school the hard way. I was very hungry that day. Our friend Allan also made the mistake of making her angry. When he came over to mow our lawn the next day, he asked her for some water and she put two drops into a cup, saying "you never said how MUCH water". The time after that he asked her for a GLASS of water and she threw two teaspoons of salt into it saying "you never said what KIND of water".

I came back this summer to find that I had been usurped. Not only had she turned my room into her study, she had also taken over my seat at the dinner table and pilfered my car. Why I am telling you guys all this? Because I've come to the realization that my squishington squashington bear is going to university next year and seeing her in her grad dress with her hair done and getting into a limo with her friends made me wish that she'd stay my squashington washington bear forever. Sniff...sniff...wah!!!!

Grin...

Notice anything different???

I REALLY hope you guys like this new template. Admittedly, it isn't my own. I'm a complete blank when it comes to HTML and programming and the like (ironic isn't it? Both my parents are programmers). But I found this one on blogskins and just couldn't help myself. It reminds me of the VOGUE cartoons that Trudy and I used to love so much (remember Pepper and Taylor?)

Considering that it took me 2 hours to figure this thing out (at work nonetheless!) and considering that this is my first time fooling around with template changes, I might not have worked out all the kinks yet. Please let me know if you find any errors. Better yet, please let me know how to fix those errors! I hope I've given credit to the right people! LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!!

(And if you don't like it, a gentle reprimand will suffice. But I like it =)

I've just had the worst cup of chai in my life!

1) They ran out of lids so it was cold by the time I got back to my office.
2) Not enough chai mix! It was so very weak!
3) There were coffee grounds in the bottom of my cup! What the heck??? Chai has nothing to do with coffee!

THIS ISN'T RIGHT!!! IF I'M GONNA FORK OUT $4.00 FOR A CUPPA CHAI IT SHOULD TASTE LIKE DIVINE AMBROSIA!!!

It's funny how all the little things in life can make or break your day. I think I need to start looking at things from a larger perspective =) I also think I need to drink less coffee/tea but I've been saying that for a while now =)

This is a story for those of you who think I drink too much coffee =)

I was supposed to catch the 3:00 bus today to go back to Calgary. At 2:15 I was sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant and decided that I wanted one of those ultra-sweet, ultra-strong Vietnamese coffees. The kind where the water percolates down through the coffee grinds into a glass of condensed milk and the whole mixture then gets poured over ice. So after about 20 minutes, maybe a tenth of the water had filtered through and I was starting to get really frustrated and cranky. I get that way when I haven't had coffee.

We called the waitress over who showed us this technique of creating a pump with your hands to put pressure on the water inside the percolator and force it through the filter. We were all so fascinated we took turns pressing the air above my coffee, the result being:

a) a lot of other people's skin cells flavoring an otherwise amazing cup of coffee
b) I missed my bus completely

Not only that, the 4:00 and 5:15 buses were cancelled because it's a long weekend! So here I am, getting into Calgary 3 hours later than I originally intended all because I needed my caffeine fix. I think I need to get my priorities straight.

It's done! It's finally done! And now I can stop forcing myself to read the Canada Health Act and just let myself enjoy what's left of the summer. I've heard from other people that U of A likes to ask ethics questions and that I should be prepared for some rather tricky ones. Instead, ALL that they asked me was ethics. I seriously believe that 75% of the time was spent talking about incredibly negative, hypothetical situations that forced me to exercise my critical thinking abilities and tested my moral stance on EVERYTHING!

Booyah, there were 9 words with 3 or more syllables in that last sentence. All that studying for the verbal section of the MCAT actually does pay off!

But overall, I think the interview went well. And it was nice that Ah-Ling could come up with me so we could over-analyze our lives and enjoy the boys in suits together =)

Anyways, I've spent the last day relaxing with my friend Trudy up in Edmonton. So far we've stuffed ourselves full of Cajun food and icecream, bought extravagantly expensive paper, and gone boutique shopping for half a day fuelling ourselves with lots and lots of coffee =) We also saw a talking mime.

Regardless of age, I'm of the opinion that all of you MUST GO SEE SHREK 2!!! Absolutely hysterical.

This has been a horribly disjointed post. But I'm hoping that my excessive adjective use will make up for my lack of organization. You will all have to forgive =)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!! WE WON, WE WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GO FLAMES GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Coming back to Calgary in time for the last few rounds of the playoffs has been awesome =) This city has gone absolutely nuts.

Anyways in other news, I'm heading up to Edmonton tonight for my interview. Those of you who feel like praying like mad on Friday May 21, 10AM (MST), feel free =) Thanks guys!

My love affair with coffee started way back in high school when I had far too many spares for my own good =) At one point, Ah Ling and I had 3 spares a day (out of 5 class periods), and we were usually inside a coffee shop for at least one of those spares. One of these days, I'll actually get around to calculating the amount of money I spend on coffee in a month, and hopefully the number will shock me out of ever wasting hard-earned cash on a substance that is a diuretic, and hence increases its own rate of excretion =)

While my obsession with coffee definitely hasn't progressed as far as the guy in this article, (8 cups a day??? Are you serious???) I can definitely relate to the bit about caffeine headaches =)

Another stupid coffee statistic: The average North American office worker spends 2 weeks on coffee break every year.

My plug for the day...

I've finally put up a link to my housemate Melinda's blog. Check it out =) She's currently in Northern Ontario travelling with Queen's Medical Outreach and it sounds like her, the potatoes, and the black flies are getting along swimmingly.

My house was unbelievably dirty this year =) My housemate Keith just posted a story on his blog about Chinese people and Dettol. It had me laughing myself stupid over memories of us trying desperately to keep our kitchen clean.

We had this blue plastic dish which we used to store our dish washing sponges that sat on top of the radiator. Around February, Keith realizes that we haven't cleaned beneath there since the beginning of the year, so he lifted it up. Not only was it absolutely cemented onto the radiator, when he finally managed to get it off, there were colonies of bacteria underneath. they formed a ring in the shape of that dish and it was dark brown.

Heat from radiator + moisture from sink + cooking oil = Salmonella paradise

That same day, Keith also decided that the cloth we used to clean the kitchen was absolutely disgusting. Probably because it was used to clean the bathroom at the beginning of the year, and for some reason, we decided to move it downstairs. Eww, eww, eww =) So Keith decides to sterilize the cloth by soaking it in a bucket full of water and Dettol. Most Asian people are overly familiar with Dettol. The smell is like antiseptic combined with formaldehyde from the Anatomy Lab, just terrible =) The smell is so bad and so overpowering that Keith moved the bucket from our teeny tiny poorly ventilated kitchen to the living room. Now our other housemate Melinda, grew up in a less traditional Chinese household, so she had yet to encounter the joys of Dettol. The second she walked in the door, she started to complain. She couldn't believe that something which smelled so awful could actually be beneficial because by this time, the smell had spread to pretty much the entire house. On top of this, the smell lingered for another 3 days or so, she wasn't impressed =)

Because I am a 'leuhd', I decided to do a Google search on 'Dettol' and came up with the following link. Check it out chemistry nerds (that means you Keith =). It's actually pretty good. Sterilizes (it kills MRSA!), low toxicity, works on insect bites, and (best of all for the Asian folks) cheap =)

Now I read on Keith's blog that his mom has bought Dettol soap =) So he can go around all day smelling like a Chinaman =) Haha, oh Keith =) If you coat yourself in tiger balm you might be able to drown out the Dettol, but that's like jumping from the frying pan into the fire =) You better hope that you can't absorb it through your skin or else that biotoxicity we learned about in Pharm might come in handy =)

The last few days at work have been really awesome. Despite a slow start, I find myself liking this job more and more. They've been hiding me along with the other trolls in the basement in records services, where my job is to do chart reviews, identify co-morbid conditions, symptoms upon admission, lab results etc. I realize this doesn't sound overly exciting but for a med wannabe, it is =)

If I can decipher the writing, I usually end up reading most of the chart. It's absolutely amazing the number of conditions you can have. The majority of the charts I read come from elderly patients, and it's not uncommon for them to have 3-5 folders full of information. They have heart failure, a past heart attack, a past angioplasty, two past bypass surgeries, and then diabetes, and then cataracts, then they have chronic renal failure, they're allergic to everything, hip fracture, prone to falling, fainting spells, hypertension, high cholesterol, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypothyroidism and cancer. The list goes on and on and on. We have so many drugs, so many procedures, so many surgeries that we CAN do, but if I ever get to the point where I'm the one who's affected by all these conditions, would I want to do them?

On a happier note, I met with my friend Candice for lunch yesterday. Also yesterday, Calgary was in the middle of a May snowstorm, but seeing as the ground was very wet, most of the snow melted as it hit the ground leaving huge puddles. As Candice and I are walking along the road, she steps in a little puddle. Seeing as she's wearing suede shoes, she steps to the side of the road, and lands in an even deeper puddle. She tries to climb a hill to get away from the water which is now at ankle-level, and it turns out that the water THERE is coming up to mid-calf. Haha, poor Candice (I couldn't stop laughing for about a minute) =) What a way to spend your last day in Canada =)

My mommy doesn't read this blog =) And it's a good thing because then I can post all kinds of things about her and she'll never know =) It never serves to amaze me that a woman who makes her living as a computer programmer can't program our VCR =) And that someone who has spent the last 20 years of her life working with technology still has to ask me how to add attachments to her emails =) The best thing about my mom is that she's learned to laugh at herself over the years. A definite must when you say some of the things she's been known to say =)

My sister lives in a bit of a blur. She's very 'mong cha cha'. This one day she lost her pencil kit, and being the airhead she is, she didn't notice at all until she reached home and my mom asked her for it. So my mom's starting to get very agitated because my sister is seemingly oblivious. She's going "Jessica! What's wrong with you? You're telling me that if I were to snatch this out from under your nose you wouldn't notice? What if I were to snatch it out of your bag, put something inside, and replace it again, would you notice then? Why don't you pay more attention? Why are you so spaced out? What if someone put DRUGS IN YOUR PENCIL KIT, WOULD YOU NOTICE???" At which point the two of just burst out laughing and she absolutely could not continue her lecture.

Another funny thing about my mom is that she's very long-winded. When she sends me to the store for things, she'll usually call me while I'm there and ask me to pick up something else, onions for example. 30 seconds later, she'll call back and tell me to make sure I pick up GREEN onions. 30 seconds later, she'll call back again to make sure I did actually get the right onions. She'll ask me to quote her the price to make sure I got it right. She'll ask me to describe it. At which point, I get fed up and yell something akin to "MOTHER!! I'M 20 YEARS OLD!! I KNOW WHAT AN ONION IS!!" because not only is she wasting my daytime minutes, everyone in the produce section is glaring at me because they've had to listen to 'toccata and fugue' on my cell phone 3 times. So she'll apologize. But then she'll call back again 2 minutes later to ask if I can pick up some milk too. But she trusts that I know what milk looks like.

But out of her many quirks, my favorite mommy phrase has to be "time and motion studies". Because she's Singaporean, she loves being efficient. It's her mission in life. To her, packing a suitcase is a fine art. When we were young, she used to dress us at the same time as she fed us. We'd take one huge bite of PB & J, and then put on our shirts. Another huge bite, and put on our socks. On Thursdays, she used to throw the materials from all our lessons into the car so that after choir, we could practice speech while we were driving to the college. Then, while I was in theory, she's go over Jessica's homework with her. While Jessica was in lessons, I'd have to go over my homework. If we had extra time, she'd pull out the Kumon so that we could do drills while waiting. Not a second of time wasted. Absolutely no extraneous movement =)

And while we continue to bug her about it, to this day, I still cram my breakfast in my mouth while changing in the mornings. I still carry extra work or a book with me everywhere I go, just in case I have a free moment. When exam time comes, I look at my calendar and I still count exactly how many days and how many hours I have and how I can use them best. But I don't think I'll ever let her know about it =) Because it'll just give her another opportunity to prove that she's always right =) Muah! Happy Mother's Day guys!

On Thursday, I had the chance to sit in on a balloon angioplasty. Definitely one of the neatest experiences of my life. For those non-bio geeks, when someone comes in with some really blocked up arteries (note to self: stop eating poutine), they'll often insert a small balloon into their arteries and inflate it, pushing all the gunk to the sides and opening up a passage through which blood can flow. This is a good thing. Blocked arteries lead to a plethora of unpleasant things: high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, heart attacks, strokes, loads of nasty stuff.

It was reassuring too. I find that in my interviews, the question that is hardest to answer (and which always comes up) is 'so why do you want to be a doctor?'. It's difficult because my reasons are so multi-faceted. There is no one reason. Instead, there are piles and piles of little events in my life and quirks in my personality that have amalgated into one big aspiration. I worry sometimes that maybe my desire to go into med school has just been one big coincidence. That maybe I chose it out of ignorance of the many other careers out there. But watching this procedure, I knew that this is what I want to do in life. That although it won't be any easier for me to answer that fatal question, in my heart I know that my intentions are true and that this isn't just some whim that chanced upon my addled brain one day.

Aah...the end of a long day at work. Today, to my horror, I discovered that the lady I share an office with is a Rhodes scholar. And a medical doctor. And she has a PhD in economics. And she's nice. And the first thought that popped into my head was "how many stupid things have I said in the last two days in front of this ridiculously smart lady???"

Don't you love it when a meeting that was supposed to take place in the early afternoon doesn't happen until 5:00? And don't you love it when you learn that you have 2 days to complete a poster for your really huge boss when you've never done a research poster in your life? (My cut-and-paste affairs from elementary school don't count). When you realize that everything that was going on stats class (while I overslept at home) is actually relevant to everyday life?

Twice ain't so nice...

Does anyone still remember the 90s? I was a big fan of them. Mainly because I could run around in a plaid, button-up shirt and baggy, tapered jeans and no one would say anything. Fortunately fashion has evolved since then, and one of the benefits of this has been tighter jeans. I previously mentioned that my friend Viv's 'baggy' jeans were cutting off the circulation in my thighs (ref. Apr. 10 blog). Well last week I was chatting happily with a friend when I happened to feel a draft, looked down and realized that I had a big, gaping hole in my pants. After nearly dying from mortification, I managed to explain the situation and quickly found myself another pair of pants.

Then last night, I'm standing on a stool putting dishes away when my sister, who was standing behind me, suddenly erupts in peals of laughter. I have another big, gaping hole in yet another pair of pants. At this point in time, my bottom half has almost no wardrobe left. I had to rush to a seamstress to beg her to hem 4 new pairs of pants for me just so I could have something to wear to work this morning. Not only that, but upon arriving at the gym last night, I weighed myself to discover that a semester's worth of poutine has tacked on another 5 pounds. On top of all this, I tried on a pair of pants last night that I had bought at Christmas and discovered to my horror that clothes which fit perfectly 4 months ago must now be worn with a corset. Must...go to gym...right now...don't walk...run.

Oh yes, and I just started my summer lab job yesterday. So far, I've been thrown into random windowless rooms with stacks upon stacks of paper with the intended purpose of 'background research'. Oh, and my boss looks like a big tree. Huge tree.

I've been feeling sorry for myself alot lately. Mainly because my girls will be spending their summers doing incredibly exciting things like going on missions in China, working for ridiculously posh companies, and assisting with surgeries (and she's an English major!!! How is this in any way fair???), while I get to spend a lot of 'me' time. Mind you, I have no problems with 'me' time, I just wish that it was voluntary. But I'm trying to get over it, really I am. To find some kind of purpose to my summer, a raison d'etre if you will =) Who knows...maybe I should take up macrame...