goodbye 2009

regardless of how short its going to be i've decided to put up a post on the last day of this year...it feels kinda nice to sit back and look back at the days which have gone and will never come back...this year was not one of my favourites....this was the hardest year for my batch since we joined college and my batch means a lot to me...we went through too many crises..hopefully its all over now...i feel a bit sad too as 2009 is getting over...2010 sounds so...i mean its the sort of dates u'lll read in science fiction novels when they want to imagine all sorts of stud robots and other stuff in the future...cant believe i'll be starting final year in another 3 months...scary,though.i can still remember my first day in hostel as if it were yday...ah...i miss first year...
TV channels and newspapers are trying to collect and put up stuff on everything they can think of abt 2009...i liked Indian Express' editorial page...they've filled it with selected 'Letters to the Editor' and quotes by ppl from diff. stratas of the society...i kind of felt an urge to spend some time of this last day on net...after all i turn to this place so often...when i am bored,frustrated,etc,etc...so anyway HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of you out there....and goodbye to 2009..

blah blah and more blah

Aaaarrggh...it hurts to see that my blog is such a barren land..not that i am getting very concerned abt no one reading it,though i would be kind enough to admit that i've given up searching for comments on my posts cos i know there 'll be none...but what actually upsets me is that i haven't really rambled on anything for a long time...it gives me a lot of satisfaction when i can just bullshit away to glory abt any random thing and there is a nice loooong post at the end of the session..so here i am trying to make yet another post though i cant really think of anything interesting to jot down..frankly speaking,i should be studying/doing my project work/something in those lines...i've got two tests coming up next week..but its ok...for the time being i really really need to express myself...

may be i should write abt my quality time spent in buses..being the ideal,faithful student,i miss the collg bus on most of the days and therefore end up taking the town bus in the morning..i really like those twenty minutes which i spent with myself,unless i am terribly late for a class...i think abt any random topic,scold myself for being such a lazy ass,philosophize,review my past mistakes,try to make up songs abt my collegemates,plan my future,etc,etc...but the funny thing is that i dont talk so much with myself if i am in the collg bus..not that i'll be talking to someone all the time...there r lots of times i sit inside the college bus and just get bored...also i guess sitting near the window helps my thought process,whether its collg bus or town bus....one good thing abt town buses is that u get to witness interesting stuff at times..once i remember an old woman beating up a drunk guy cos she thought he was trying to misbehave with women..actually the poor chap was so drunk that he just kept falling off his seat..i dont even know whether he realised that he was getting thulped so badly...anyway finally the conductor joined the fight and our protagonist was mercilessly thrown off the bus....(btw,as i just finished the last sentence,the plank on which the keyboard was placed kinda came off the table and everyone around started staring at me..i could sense my ears turning red..thats the first thing which happens to me when i am under pressure..i just looked around, gave a sheepish smile and continued :D )

Its funny how absurd your thought process sounds to you when you actually write it down and read it after a few months...i had typed till the previous para and left it some 2-3 months back...coming back to the topic,(what topic actually?dont demean yourself..theres no topic;this is just senseless babbling!!)i wonder how my dad would've spent the numerous hours he spent travelling...having to work at a place which is almost 3 hours away from where you stay means a looooootttt of travel.But unlike me,he's not that much of a careless daydreamer....he did make quite a few friends,made millenious observations about ppl,witnessed several funny/wierd moments which were later presented to us as interesting stories...i guess i've inherited that quality of adding garam masala and being a story teller...thats enough for the time being..i am tired of thinking for more stuff to make this crap longer..

Med school bloopers...

Since i couldnt really think of any happenings in the recent past worth blogging about and i am not imaginative enough to think about biographies of psychopaths, i thought i'll just put up some bloopers which r famous in the college...this being a mini india and thus having ppl who r not familiar with the mother tongues of their patients results in the origin of a zillion language jokes..some of them may not even have happened but they r still quite entertaining and r always the favourite topic in gassing sessions especially if u cant think of any other interesting stuff to talk about...

The thing abt these bloopers is that they r handed down batches but as years go on the name of the person who made the blooper changes..for eg,there was this one about the guy who used to bunk almost all the physiology pracs in his first year and then finally turned up for the exam without any clue about the experiments...he got a question on demonstsration of reflexes..the smart ass made friends with the guy on who he was supposed to demonstrate the reflexes on and told him to lift his leg when he hit him below the knee.Having struck the deal,our hero was so excited and happy and he looked around at the lesser mortals around him who were dumb enough to have actually attended the classes..finally,the examiner,who looked like he was going to fall asleep any moment, turned up and repeated the question which he had already asked half the class......."Demonstrate knee jerk,please".Mr.Smart ass took the knee hammer in his hand,gave a look of disappoitment for being asked such a trivial question and gave a small tap below the subject's left knee...i would give a fortune to see the expression on that examiner's face when he saw that right leg going up...the funny thing about this story is that when we joined college,this one was atributed to one of the guys in final year batch..i later found out that they used to believe that this was done by one of their seniors and one week back,one of the lecturers shared this with us as a heroic act of one of his batchmates...so i guess ppl just come with a story and put in the name of someone in college at that time just to make it more interesting...
Coming back to language jokes,there is this one about the paavam south indian medical stud who had never heard a bit of hindi taking the history of a patient who came with some stomach upset.This chap asked the patient courageously,"Jab aap toilet jatha hai, janvar aatha hai kya?"All that he wanted to know was whether the patient passed any worms in his stool.I dont know whether the patient was being very smart or he was feeling a lot of sympathy for the poor guy.He just said,"Nahi bhai saab,me toilet jaane ke samay dharwaza baand kartha hai!"(now i know my hindi is not that great but i think i've put together the last sentence kinda ok..i didnt reall bother abt the first one 'cos its anyway supposed to be screwed up :) )
Actually i dunno why i started the post with this joke.After all,i am also a southie and sometimes i am slightly bugged with those morons from up north who make fun of the south indian hindi accent,make those stupid hair oil joes and think that they are really cool.On top of that,the zillion language jokes which i mentioned earlier comprises mainly of the molestation of tamil by punjabis,delhiites,biharis,etc.I think one of the very famous one is the one which happened in one of the opthalmology exams.Having learnt some of the important key words in tamil including the translation of "I am a medical student","Please look this side",etc. our protagonist was feeling a bit of self-confidence."So what if I dont know the language?",he told himself."After all a lot of communication is non-verbal.."since he had half an hour more to wait for the exam to start he tried to boost up his spirit by remembering all those heroic stories of doctors who went and worked in Africa,how one of his seniors from Kerala worked for two years in Bengal."Also there isnt much of histoty taking in opthal...its mostly exmaination only..this should be a cakewalk for me." At last it was his turn and our all the initial intro and some how surviving through the history taking(the survival bit mainly applies to the patient..)he was so happy to just start the examination.So he confidenly raised his index finger and told the patient.."Inge ukarungo.."I can only imagine what that guy must have felt at being ordered to sit on somebody's index finger.All that our doc-in-making wanted was the patient to look at the tip of his index finger.I guess the exam tension and the relief of having finished the history taking bit must have mixed up all those funny-sounding tamil words which he crammed the night before exam.May i should once write a post about the possile thoughts that the patient would've had on being asked to sit on an index finger.There any more language bloopers which had been handed down batches....I think for the time being I'll stop with this one.

Pegasus(the awesome version)

Actually i was supposed to publish a post on psychiatry posting and Herbertpur trip before this one but owing to my laziness it never saw the light...so here u go...a short story on the making of PEGASUS '09...my part of the work was actually kinda fun..calling up ppl from all colleges,inviting them for the fest,explaining to some of them why we cant give free accommodation 'cos of our tight budget,listening to a few horrible caller tunes,apologising to some for different reasons and blah,blah...i also got to be a bit of a critic regarding t-shirt designing,posters,etc but all the work connected with designing stuff was done by the silent chinki and chichra...one of the few things connected to pegasus which they werent involved in came out with a Vitruvian man without his important stuff...


From the time when ppl started planning abt pegasus or even much before that everyone kept reminding each other that this is going to be the last thing we r gonna do as a batch and we'll be soon joining the old men club..anyway,everything went well and now we r all officially jobless...i guess a few guys also had a bit of PPD(post pegasus depression)..the term was coined by either pranav or chichra..i am bad at remembering who said what...i just remember the shit ppl say..now its time for dinners and getting the rest of the sponsored money...i cant actually believe this post is becoming so boring..i was damn excited after pegasus and i started writing this stuff thinking that i am going to create my longest post ever..but now i am actually running out of things to write...oh,i forgot to mention my mistake..i asked my bro' to come to Vellore and enjoy the fest..well,to put it short,the poor guy got ultra bored... plus he had to listen to crap like 'how i got syphilis', 'what type of weed do i take',etc,etc...


One of the things which i 'll remember abt this year was the crazy'dappamkoothu'outside the informals stall...it was the spontaneous ideas of one of the brilliant minds around and it turned out to be a huge crowd puller...the crowd went absolutely crazy...u could see dust clouds above the informals stall...another last minute decision was the singing competition near jukebox..the no. of ppl who think that they can sing is much more than what u imagine..talking abt singing,i am remineded abt the dilemma that the in-charges faced when one girl kept on bugging them to let her sing a tamil song during Rock competition...she just wont be convinced that all those wierd looking guys wit long hair are not exactly the fans of Tamil filmmusic..finally they had to let her sing 'chandralekha' during one of the events..eye witnesses told me that she was trying to put so much expression into the song that she looked like she was trying to shit...i forgot to ask abt the audience response...

Though i was in reception,there was enough time to go &watch some culturals also...adzap this year wsnt that great..WCC had to advertise for underwear which glows in the dark..they just went crazy and half the audience started hooting and howling..of the few ads which i watched,i liked MCC's the best...they were spontaneous,uninhibited and provided 101%entertainment...Turncoat was quite good(in this one,u r given a topic forwhich u start speaking supporting it first and then change ur opinion whenever the judge says 'turncoat'...)the guy who won the event spoke on'Hand-eye co-ordination is extremely important while watching TV:-)..it was truly hilarious..i thought of taking part but finally didnt have the guts to do so...
I think its time i ended this post..otherwise i'll just come and type two sentences everyday and publish it by next year pegasus time only..anyway,now more than one week is over since the final showdown...i remember the last night in reception..i slept on the cane chair..badly wanted to sleep on the bean bag but both of them were already occupied..this time i didnt have stamps all over the face when i woke up..the last collg to get clearance and leave was BMS collg,B'lore...Next year we'll be final years who will come and see the fest like some visitors..cant believe time has flown away so fast..sometimes i wish all this should just get over fast and that i just want to get out of collg..but then i remind myself of the struggle after that..phew...i think i am feeling too hissy&pissy today..more than i usually do..may be its a strange co-incidence that today i complete 3 years of collg life...

Clerkship notes-1

Well,well...it has been quite sometime since i added anything here and i am feeling kind of lazy though i am supposed to study how to put Ur hand in some one's gluteal fold and etc,etc...(don't misunderstand me..my posting started in the unit of colorestal surgery..)i wonder how many assholes will a colorectal surgeon's index finger see in its lifetime...i seriously pity that finger..how many times would it have hoped.."if only i was not born in the hand of this jackass..or may be at least his left hand instead of the right.."i wonder whether this is the reason why most of these ppl seem to be quite constipated most of the time...may be some time they should put a finger in their own anal canals and ensure that some shit goes out...
Anyway,besides the finger in the ass stories(oh that reminds me of the story when one of the senior surgeons was in a mood to rag and asked a few of my seniors to do rectal examination on each other...dunno what the end of the story was..not that i care about the fingers of those pricks..)we had fun watching the PG registrars sleep during surgery and listening to the utter stupid answers that we gave to the questions we were asked etc,etc...and now i've rightly reached the conclusion that this post sounds damn boring...not that it means i am going to stop writing this shit..so who cares if they r boring..i'll might as well make them a bit longer than my prevoius ones..i was actually embarrassed by the size of my first 2 posts when i had a look at them..i mean,how can a medical student who has entered his third year (Hopefully..)not be an expert in the art of gassing and creating amazing loads of bullshit...actually i think that was the major difference between first year and second year...believe it or not..i wrote one full page on a machine for second year Univs.without having any clue of what it is...but i haven't yet achieved the great heights of my friends who defined pregnancy as a condition affecting women in reproductive age groups all over the globe or those great souls who drew the picture of a scorpion when the lesser mortals who set the question papers quizzed them on scorpion sting treatment or the imaginative ones who defined drunkenness as "a condition which causes embarrassement to a person who consumes alcohol and to those around him"..
actually most of the stuff i've written here r not really stuff about my clerkship posting...but i cant really think of any highly interesting events during this posting except for one of them suggesting that we can take turns to volunteer for the demonstration of rigid sigmoidoscopy(in which a 25 cm rod makes it way up ur..well,u guessed it right)or digital rectal examination(i guess the name speaks for itself..but for those morons who happened to think it involves anything realted with computers:"NO!"it just means that the surgeons index finger will be having a trip into ur ass)..so,i hope i've at least made this post longer than the others..if not may be i should consider accepting the invitation to volunteer for the demo..on second thoughts,no..who knows what these ppl are going to put into u once u show them ur backside..i am sure one day they 'll make something the size of the twin towers or something.. :-)

about irritating idiots

Phew!!!i am writing this mainly 'cos i am so generally pissed with life and especially with the behaviour of some of my classmates.i dont like confrontations so i generally just swear in my mind when i get badly pissed with people.i know i am deviating away from the topic but i dont really care...that was kind of the purpose of this post..i know its kind of spineless not to telll ppl on their face when they become irritating but this is much convevient...to be frank,in many situations i cannot exactly point out to myself why i am so disturbed and irritated..sometimes there is no reason at all..sometimes there r people whose faces which bug me..

Well after writing till the last line i had to leave 'cos i had some work..now i am in a completely different mood and not feeling bitchy like i was(dunno whether it is manly to have felt bitchy or to have accepted it but then,who cares??)So like i was saying people can be irriating in several ways...some jackasses think it is really smart to walk around making jokes when people are working on something which is supposed to be "teamwork".then there are those great ones who are permanently in the dream world,smile to themselves,speak to voices you can't hear and then ask stupid questions..but i guess the most irriating are the"supervisors".The supervisors are a clan who walk around the whole place telling whom to do what and how people can improvise their work.They firmly and strongly believe that their existence,commands and guidance is essential for bringing out perfect results though the truth is just the opposite.Actually i would take back the "most irriating" bit about supervisors.Sometimes i feel ultra-irriated by myself..when i started writing this post one of the main reasons for my irritation was my own inefficiency..i guess i was kind of trying to mask that by feeling irritated with others..(wow,not bad i am sounding semi-philosophical :D)guess this much 'll do for now..

The Jawadhu experience

just back from the community health programme in Jawadhu hills in Thiruvannamalai..i am not sure whether it is part of eastern ghats,western ghats,etc,etc..so i wont be boring u with the geographic details..atul was saying that he remembered having to draw 2 small lines as part of the ghats in tamilnadu..may be this is that only..any way,the trip was quite a lot of fun..(though i had a bit of mood swing attacks and was kind of depressed for arond half the time on the first day of the trip..)
we were contemplating the methods to be adopted in case of getting beaten up in the village considering the fact that our study was to find the fertility rate of the tribal population in the hills..but the people generally turned out to be qiute nice and co-operative(i guess we might have actually got beaten up if we used the national family health survey questions which had questions like at what age did u have ur 1st sexual intercourse and other such stuff:))well most of the females still giggled and some of them were blushing like crazy when we asked them how many children they wanted to have at the time of marriage...then there was the tricky part of keeping the drunk husbands occupied while chinthu interviewed the wife.on the last day i had to manage a drunk guy and his wife at the same time.i was a bit scared in the beginning that the guy will screw it up but it turned out to be the most hilarious event in the whole programme.he started blurting out random words in english and told me he was an MBA holder(i didnt ask him what MBA stands for according to him...that chap turned out to be someone who is married somewhere else and happened to be visiting his sweetheart in the hills).anyway it was lots of fun and it was the last interview during the programme.

this whole trip was actually quite informative.in these tribal villages the guy and girl stay together for 2-3 months before they get married...talk about live-in realtions!!
another interesting thing was that they breastfeed their kids for 4-5 years...we even found someone who was breastfeeding her child for7 years..but the shocking thing is that most of them still deliver at home..the mother/mother-i-l/sister-i-l,etc.help around during the delivery..many of them offerd us food and all and one of us had the honour of naming a kid also..i know... that was quite a cute thing.. :)anyway now back to the civilisation and analysis of all the data that we collected.