It's been a long while!

1. I promise never to overeat again. And I'm swearing off all frozen balls for as long as possible. Wonder why funny shit always happens to me when I'm away from home. I don't wanna die in a foreign land with no family beside me :(

2. 白天我们是 student, 晚上我们是 housewife -.- After lessons we went to the market to get sauces, meat and veggies. Went home, 2 of us cooked. I cleaned my room and laundered the bedsheets meanwhile. Then 2 of us did the dishes. Then I went to sew my bag and top. Then I went to iron stuff. Then I did laundry a second time before finally bathing. Wow. Totally a day in the life of a housewife. Actually not even a day. It was just an evening and a night. Somehow there's this sense of satisfaction/achievement, even it was domestic chores at the expense of entertainment or study. I feel like I can do everything on my own! Even sewing which I've never done before! :D

3. National day here is such a chore for us but such a HUGE even for the locals. They specially bring in fresh flowers everywhere - including my lobby downstairs and the entrance of the hospital. Apparently there's going to be a very nice flower show thingy for national day. And Joyce said they've been shooting the clouds to disperse them so there'll be no rain on national day. Wow. She also said they banned the sale of knives for this period, cos of the stabbing incident. Double wow. Troublesome thing is that it will be damn crowded everywhere, we have to bring our identification documents for spotchecks, prices will go up during this holiday event and there is increased security (firewall stringency).

4. I have to visit grandaunt (whom I probably have never met before) myself on midautumn festival! Ok la, since she was my granny's fave sis, I shall have to try to psycho myself to look forward to going to her house, though the prospect is quite sian, since it's so far and there's generation gap and I'll have to be polite and eat alot and be a good guest etc...but I'm actually quite eager to see how she's like. Haha. Plus I settled my gift already so that's 1 stress less :D

5. My first exam in China - Ear Nose Throat elective wasn't too bad afterall. Despite being sick and hence missing out on some studying time which made me quite stressed, it really was manageable. Luckily didn't overstudy! Muahaha. I think we only have to pass, since electives don't count towards GPA, but please bear in mind the passing mark is 60 here! (And each grade has a range of 2-3 marks -.-)

6. It's been a really tiring week since Sunday was filled with internship, exam and lessons, and I haven't fully recovered - appetite not back to its former glory yet! At least this week's intern quota is over so I can wake up later tmr and the day after. Then will come the 1 wk national day cum midautumn break, after which yea, sadly, more exams. Core exams. Acupuncture exam! Gross. It's a really fun subject, but not when it comes to memory work. Good luck to me.

7. I hope my mentor is nice.

8. During internship I marvel in awe at the speed and ease with which my teacher can 看病, the quality and efficiency of her thought processes. It's like she doesn't have to pause to think, she just asks question after question which will help with her diagnosis and help decide what tests the patient should do. I know it's experience, but it's really different when you see the east-meets-west approach first-hand. And you see it done better than just a single approach in Singapore. Here the doctors can prescribe both western and chinese medicine (though the western med is translated into chinese and has chinese words on them). They do the same tests, just all in chinese. Which is what we're going to learn soon. Imagine an exam solely on ECG in chinese. Oh yikes. Don't even wanna think about it.

9. Leaves are turning red. Is it really mid-autumn? The thought of winter approaching triggers both excitement and dread. Mixed feelings.

10. I wonder why our teachers are so smart. Or rather why their memories are so good. And I always wonder how much they earn as specialists. Haha.


I should go catch up on my sleep before the dust catches up on me. Beijing is a dusty city. It is engulfed in dust such that once u sweep a clump away, another clump appears the next moment. How very dynamic.

wide awake

Had my first 见习 lesson today, and it happened to be acupuncture. Woots. Lesson 1, and we already had to stick needles into ourselves. Spent awhile practising on toilet rolls, trying to stab them with the correct method and angle without bending the needles. Then we had to try on ourselves. Haha. I was damn scared, hands got cold and clammy, but when everybody around you is doing it too, somehow you just abandon all fear, caution and hesitation and just do it. It was like a now or never thingy, instead of asking people how it felt and whether it was easy to puncture human skin, you just had to try it yourself. And try it we did! One near the elbow, and the other at my fave 合谷穴 which is on the hand. Freaking fun, I tell you. It seems scary and sadistic seeing lao shi do it to patients, and how it is described in the textbook, but really, twisting the needle, pushing and pulling on it after insertion, isn't as painful as it seems. Or rather not painful at all - no feeling! I think I poked the wrong place la haha. But at least I got the needle in deep without freaking out or fainting or something. And I only wasted like a teeny drop of blood when removing the needles, so the aftermath is just 2 holes haha. More to come! I didn't feel as suan as I should have, cos some of my friends could still feel the stimulation after removing the needles, so the next thing I have to do is to find a small bottle to kope some alcohol from the hospital, then I can go home and practice poking myself ;) Yays, no more needle phobia, all in a morning's work! Whee! Acupuncture is actually so fun. It's kinda weird feeling the needle traverse the different layers of fascia- skin, muscle, fat etc but we probably have less nerves than I thought, cos once the needle goes deep, pain is replaced by other sensations, or even no feeling, depending on whether you've hit the right spot. Fascinating eh? But we have to memorize lots of shit :( And the next lesson we'll be tested on 拔罐. It's like, after seeing the teacher do it on a patient, we'll have to practice on each other till we're up to her standards. LOL. Wonder what will happen if we can't pass. Feels like a crash course of sorts.

This morning it was 10 deg outside -.- Please let me enjoy more of autumn before it suddenly zooms into winter!

Just had my 八宝 noodles, named on account of the 8 different ingredients used ;) Damn full now. I need to bathe and study!!! ENT exam!!! Grraaahww ><

内科见习 tmr. Hope I get to use my stethoscope on real patients :D

I can't believe I didn't rip the album "Black and Blue" into my lappie or ipod. Sad. The cd is lying at home! :(

I wanna get this new album soon!

	Backstreet Boys 酷猪音乐[kupig.cn] - Straight Through My Heart 酷猪音乐[kupig.cn]
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

it's not over

From haze to mist. Crazy weather. I keep thinking it's my eyes that's getting cloudy, or that my specs are dirty, but seriously the visibility here is really bad.

I'm sick of bread and potatoes and I'm reaching my threshold for 包子，饺子，馄饨 and 枣糕. Omg. And cooking is seriously a chore. It's 10pm and we just finished cleaning up and mopping the kitchen floor. I'm so not looking forward to the ENT exam next Sunday. Everybody please impart your luck to me. I need loads.

I hate supermarkets. I think the number of supermarket trips I've made so far since arrival have far exceeded my life-time's worth of them thus far (excluding supermarket shopping in USA). There come a day when I don't have to do grocery shopping, I'd be overjoyed.

Am now officially into stationery shopping. Hyaks :p But I haven't been able to find a 0.3mm mechanical pencil yet :( Somebody please fedex it to me from SG! And the white paper here is really not cheap. I need rough paper! Shall just go get the cheapest (but not as cheap as I'd like) rim tmr.

The idea of exercising in winter brings about mixed feelings. It'd be troublesome to exercise in warm clothing, plus the prospect of having to wake up early on Saturday mornings is a put-off, but still I'm tempted to join the Taiji class hahaha. It's at the 体育公园 just outside our house, and many of our classmates are going, so that's a plus point =) It's time to 站马步 again! (The last time I did it was in Sec. sch ><)

I wonder why it's so freaking easy to fall asleep in class here, despite my hugest efforts to stay awake, even with the help of coffee (though rationed to last the whole day). Maybe I'm used to 2-3 cups a day, so now 1 cup for the whole day simply can't do the trick. Sian. I miss yuan yang! Sometimes I suspect I move past the REM stage of sleep too, cos there was once I almost slid off my chair but jumped up in time to save my ass (and my face) haha. If I had my stethoscope with me I'd probably have caught my heart skipping a beat lol.

Sleeping earlier doesn't help. Maybe I have to try 11pm. Madness, not with so much work! :(

Spent the night sewing up holes and poking holes into my own fingers - advance acupuncture practice! Woke up with a start to my alarm and realised my legs were drenched in sweat. To the point that my quilt almost had watermarks. I must have been pouring, and it wasn't even that hot when i threw the quilt off me. First thing I saw when I opened my door was a note on the wall that read: "Friends, we have no water. There is no water coming out from the taps. By the way, this is not a joke. -Jo" I went to test the tap and immediately went into panic mode - cos I needed to brush my teeth and shit!! Realised Jo and Joyce had gone out to try to top up the water card, and they said we should make friends with the neighbours so we can borrow their toilet. But even if we couldn't flush, I still had to shit. And the top-up-water-place had electricity outage since Tues, so they couldn't top up our card. How cui is that? And China, rigid as ever, has it such that we can only top up at that particular place, and we couldn't borrow another card or buy value from elsewhere cos the house equipment only recognizes 1 particular card. But anyway luck was on our side and we managed to make do with the 5 units left in the card, order more mineral water for backup and top up our card after class. Lucky they got the electricity back in order. Stupid shits.

I can't bring myself to start reading my textbooks. I've been lagging for a week now, cos I've been busy playing and buying stuff for my room etc, but now that papee's gone home I'm hit with the cruel reality that I'm supposed to be studying, like everyone else around me. Ultimate sian-ness.

And I got my own internet now, but it's kinda stupid - I can't seem to bypass the firewall with VPN and freegate, so yup I'm kinda banned from facebook. Unless I revert to tapping. Oh wells. Bye world.

I hate falling asleep in class but I can't help it with only 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Whoever wakes up at unearthly hours like 6.45am to chiong to school?! Crazy. I think throughout 15 years of education I never had to wake up at such timings. But the sun rises earlier here - by the time we're out of the house it seems like it has been morning for ages and everyone is already up and about. And I never ever fell so sound asleep in class before - it's like a complete K/O that never happened to me in 15 years of education too. So many firsts. Haha. Enriching the experience?

The weather now is good. If only it won't turn colder.