Uncle Leo, why are you so angry!

Remember that Seinfeld episode where Uncle Leo has his eyebrows burnt off accidentally and ends having some eyebrows (badly) drawn on. He ended up looking angry at everyone, which made the episode a classic. While that episode was funny, the reality is...eyebrows do bother me. No no, not in the sense that they should be removed. My pet peeve is seeing so many butchered eyebrows! Honestly, there's a limit to how much you can pluck them! I'm getting the hunch that these people are going for an eyebrow look that falls in between a transvestite and porno star.
So let's start with what I call the McDonald Arch eyebrows. These eyebrows have an unnatural semi-circular shape that makes you look like you're constantly surprised. The picture above is the best I could google at the moment, but I've seen worse..
Next, there's the "I glued on a piece of string" for eyebrows. These ones are literally as thin as a piece of string. I'm not really sure what to make of it because it doesn't look natural at all. I think Pamela Anderson is a good example of that.
The last one on my mind is what I call the "mini chopsticks" - these ones are excessively trimmed, to the point that it just looks like a straight line hovering above your eyes.
Whether you believe it or not, there's a science about how eyebrows are shaped. For example, forensic experts can figure out the width of your lips (when you're not smiling) based on where your eye pupils (the dark spot) are. Similarly, the eyebrow has a science as well. The eyebrow starting positions is roughly where your eye starts (towards your nose that is!). It then slopes up almost in a straight line until it gets to its peak. The arch (peak of the eyebrow) is found by drawing a line from the side of your nose, across the eye pupil and then towards the upslope of your eyebrows. Afterwards, the eyebrow slopes down so that if you draw a line from the side of your nose again, past the outside of your eye, it'll meet up where it should end. Here's an example of what I'm talking about, I drew some lines to make it clearer. Well that's the end of my rant about bad eyebrow jobs.

Where's her face!?

Some people think bigger is better. I just never thought that it would apply to sunglasses to the extent I saw today. As I sat peacefully on the bus this morning, a young lady boarded, and if it wasn't for my common sense, I could have confused her for a gigantic fly. Her sunglasses covered I would say 2/3 or more of her face! I understand that the current fashion is the big sunglasses look (which is recycled, since my grandma has the same glasses), but it seems that this fashion is getting out of hands! The glasses I saw today covered half of her forehead and went down to nearly her mouth. Which brings me to the next point - fashion trends are usually followed to look attractive, but when you can only see someone's chin and some of their forehead, then what are you showing off? Well, we'll see what the next fashion trend will be...sunglasses at night anyone?

Human Nature - Broken

So yesterday I had the privilege of learning that a friend of mine blocked me on msn. I really don't know whether to consider them as a friend any more, simply because our friendship was fragile by this point of time already. It's kind of like those "Jenga" towers, and my friend's final move toppled everything over. Am I bothered because I was blocked? Not fully, I just find it immature. What does bother me though is that one week ago, that person said that they would never do something like that. I trusted those words. Now I have no trust.

Why would I trust someone if the friendship was so fragile? It is because it didn't used to be fragile. That person used to be my closest friend. However, a long time ago, I made a mistake towards this person - I bottled up some issues I had involving this person because I didn't want to risk losing what we had. That bottling up ended up hurting both of us, and despite my best intentions, I ended up losing the person anyways. It was inevitable. I could only delay it for so long. However, all was not lost. There was one last strand of friendship between us. We kept distance, but I thought we still trusted and respected each other. I thought wrong. Now, I move on. The last strand was cut.

Does all of this bother me? A bit; but I can't let things linger within me. Life is too short. But deep down inside, like any human being, I'm looking for reason and understanding of this situation. More importantly, was this situation incidental, or is it reflective of those around me, those that I will meet and human nature as a whole?

Propoganda 101

Watch the news lately, and tell me what you notice. Is there a new theme? Not sure yet? What if I gave you a clue -- China. Now what goes through your mind? For the last several months, I've noticed an abundance of anti-China themed news throughout the media. The most recent case involved the lead tainted toys (for which the Chinese Boss killed himself), the toxic toothpastes, toxic pet food, unsafe toy parts, defective tires, etc. While I never really had the highest expectations of a product if it said 'made in China' (you get what you pay for), I was surprised by the sudden burst of media focused on China's products in what seemed like a fear mongering propaganda fest.

I fully agree with the fact that products that can harm people should be banned. However, I don't think there's a surge of unsafe products from China, which leaves me wondering why there's a dramatic anti-Chinese product hype. Either there's a surge of more defective products from China, or it's a strategic move to compromise China's economy, or lastly - a new tactic to distract the public from the failed attempt to free Iraq.

China's economy has been growing rapidly. Of course, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone considering how much of our capitalistic world depends on them. In short, China is on its way to become the new world power and USA knows this. You can't attack China militarily (especially for no reason), so how do you compromise such a big nation? The only logical thing I can speculate is to do so using economics. By making millions of consumers paranoid about any product with a 'made in China' label on it, China's industry would feel the pressure.

So is China a victim of its own success? Is China responsible for the quality of its products? To answer both questions at the same time, I'll use a Spiderman movie quote - "with great power comes great responsibility". As a potential new world power, China has to step up as a leader, taking full responsibility for its decisions and its impact on the world. Unlike the previous century, China cannot sit quietly behind its walls from the world's eyes. As a leader, China has to take responsiblity for the quality of its products, it has to pay attention to the vast pollution it creates (especially as the world's greatest oil consumer), it has to pay attention to its role in maintaining world peace, it has to play a protective role with the United Nations etc. As a new leader, the world has its eyes set on you and will analyze all of your actions. Just remember - with great power, comes great responsibility.

Summer Medical Electives

Like a man with bipolar disorder (minus the depression phase), I figured signing up to MedQuest for a summer elective wasn’t enough; so I signed up for another elective right after! As I type this little article away, I still don’t know what I was thinking, or why I was so keen about keeping myself so busy this summer.

For those who don't know, MedQuest is a program run by medical students with the intention to encourage highschool students to choose a career in healthcare. One of the main problems is that Southwestern Ontario lacks many healthcare workers, and to compound this problem, students are 3x less likely to apply to such programs in comparison to urban regions such as Toronto. MedQuest intends to encourage more students to go towards such careers and to hopefully comeback to their hometown one day as a healthcare worker.

For my first elective, Marielos, Ahraaz and I went to Leamington to organize the MedQuest camp. Leamington, known as the Tomato Capital of Canada, is a little town that’s about a 45 minute drive from Windsor. One of the first things you notice about the town is the different cultural mixes – it’s full of German Mennonites, Mexican Mennonites, and many Portuguese, Italians and Lebanese. The other thing we noticed right away was how friendly the hospital staff was! Initially we thought it was the generic ‘we welcome you’ type of friendliness, but soon we realized that it was a truly amazing set of happy healthcare workers. The best way I can describe how happy I found the hospital environment is to just let you imagine everyone, including myself, on Prozac all day.

The best part of doing an elective in a small town, as you know from rural week, is that you are exposed to a lot of hands on experiences. In Leamington, we learned how to put in IVs (at the expense of some poor patient’s veins), take histories in the ER, scrub in the OR, and listen to tons of murmurs. Furthermore, I got to watch/help with two births, as well as more paps than I can count. Which brings me to my next point – I don’t know whether to feel bad for all the things women have to go through or to just admit that women are the stronger sex. So now that I’ve distracted myself with women, I’ll move on to the next distraction. I can’t count how many times the nurses and a bunch of patients who gave me this advice – “If you want to have a happy marriage, the key is to say ‘Yes dear’”. While this was amusing to me, it often came out of nowhere in the middle of a conversation! It was just as bizarre and amusing when one of the nurses wanted to set me up with her sister – thankfully I didn’t say ‘yes dear’ to that suggestion. Before I stray back to my review of my summer electives, I’d like to point out to the guys reading this –saying “yes dear” to your lady is probably a good idea unless she asks you if her new dress makes her look fat.

My overall experience with MedQuest would be best described as priceless. It was hectic to try to balance your day at the hospital, running back home to organize the camp, make tons of phone calls to physicians, people to sponsor food, answer too many emails, find supplies for suturing, casting, create lectures, and so on. It was difficult at times to remember that I was actually on a summer break. At times we stayed up until 2 am organizing various aspects of the camp for the 30 grade 10 and 11 highschool students, and somehow we had to find the energy to wake up at 7 am to get ready for the hospital. If it wasn’t for the unbelievably friendly family we stayed with and the amazingly friendly staff at the Leamington hospital, I don’t think I would have stayed sane throughout the 6 weeks I stayed there. I was also lucky to have stayed with two great classmates, who I now know so well. However, there were some bumps, especially with the late nights planning, but Ahraaz, Marielos and I came out alive and a lot closer than when we had first started.

The best part of MedQuest was the final week when everything we had planned began to unfold. Everyday we watched our highschool students grow closer to us, learn a lot about healthcare, learn a lot of hands on procedures, and most importantly – develop the confidence to know that they can achieve their goals. After we finished a large mock disaster involving the students, fire department and the EMS, we wrapped up the week by thanking the students for making this camp a worthwhile experience for us. The students surprised us with thank you cards, hugs, tears and memories that will forever be ingrained in our memories.

Fast forward through life

I don't really like telling people that I'm in medicine. My willingness to admit that I'm in medicine is even smaller when the person I'm talking to is new to me. Why? Because people tend to make a big deal out of it. Telling people that I'm in medicine suddenly changes their view of you, and while some people do enjoy this sudden burst of respect, admiration etc. bestowed upon them, I find it fake - how can your opinion of me change so rapidly simply because of a title!? I will then hear (again) about how privileged I am. While this is true, I believe that people don't understand fully why those working in healthcare are privileged. Yes physicians will never go hungry, they'll have a nice car or house, they're respected and they have job security etc. But you can get that with other careers too without doing another 10 years of school, going $100,000 into debt, or losing a lot of sleep.

The greatest privilege in medicine for me is the impact it has on my life. I began a summer elective in rural town (population about 25,000). I spend most of my time in the emergency room (ER) and on my second day working there I realized the beauty and true privilege of being in medicine. The privilege that healthcare workers have is the opportunity to see life in fast forward! In the hospital, I would watch babies being born, I would watch children with injuries, adults with various ailments, and elderly people with all sorts of complaints and an eye for someone to listen to them. It is truly fascinating to watch an entire lifecycle in one working day. However, I have the privilege of listening to all of these patients when they are in need. This truly makes you appreciate life as a whole, especially the days when your health is strong.

Soren Kierkegaard once said "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.", maybe the privilege of medicine is that we get to peak ahead.

Why stress?

The respirology exam is coming up in 5 days and I havn't reviewed a lot of my notes yet. I have a big faculty meeting in three days and I have to do two reports for that meeting. I haven't touched my assignment yet...and I'm trying to apply for summer electives. Sounds quite busy, and that's why all day I felt stressed..most of my day has already flew by! Then it hit me...we will always have one task after another, we will always have a lot of work, especially in this career. I realized that no matter what level of education we're in, we think our current workload is insane, and we look back at our previous years and laugh at our previous workloads. Who knows how much we 'stressed' in kindergarten.
So what is the solution? I figure one day I'll look back at this exam and this week and I'll laugh at the silliness of it all. So why not laugh at it now! To make things even more cheerful and simple, why not just be happy that we're alive? Life goes by too fast to get stressed and angry. Don't regret. Just live day by day and be thankful for that. Just don't forget your goals, life is boring otherwise!

Google Earth - a new tool for more procrastination

Sooooo I have a hard time sitting in the same spot studying piles and piles of notes...in all honesty, how can they expect us to cram undergrad into the first 6 weeks of medicine. Oh well, c'est la vie! :)
So being bored and easily distracted, I downloaded Google Earth and what an amazing program it is! I saw Mount Everest, Rome, and then I went back home : Alexandria, Egypt! I found the apartment we lived in, the park I used to play in, the castles we visited, the water front, the beaches and the best part of it is that I found the street where I got hit by a car in..by some doctor. Ah the sweet sweet memories of childhood.

So I am supposed to be doing an assignment..

However, it seems the power of procrastination is doing its job again. The strange thing is that the assignment is actually interesting and I feel motivated to do it (not just to get over with) but also because it is a useful learning experience. Yet, I find myself reading the news, chatting on MSN, and now I started to make a blog.
It would be really interesting to know what goes on in our mind when we procrastinate..because there's a part of you that knows what has to be done, yet somehow, that little part of your brain that says 'I'm bored' ends up winning. Moh well! alrighty back to attempting to work again.