There’s no glitter in the gutter

This post is waaayyyyyyyyyy overdue but now that I’ve completed my cell biology practical folder (with an anatomy/histology one due soon, but that’s a whole other lag in posts) I’ve decided I should give you an update!

I demand that you listen to this while you read my post (or just listen to this; whether you read my post or not is irrelevant):

Yeah I know it’s not the right background music for my rambling but it’s still a good song. Not to mention this is a better way to make you listen to a bit of music I like than posting it right at the end where you probably won’t bother.

Okay pictures!

Here’s what I have for breakfast every Saturday morning: scrambled eggs and vegetarian sausages with OJ. Yes, that is EVERY Saturday. I know it sounds boring and routine but when you have cereal or a sandwich for breakfast every weekday morning (and weekday lunch in the case of the sandwich), anything that is a weekly meal is a good thing. I even have the same Subway Veggie Patty sub every Sunday and ENJOY it. Especially since my dinner from Tuesday through to Friday this week was the exact same thing. The joys of student living.

Oh but scrambled eggs have got to be one of my all-time favourite dishes. I even remember it was the last thing I ate before I had to fast for surgery. It’s easy to cook and yummyyy.

And this was my dinner today. I bought too many vegetables last week because I was sick of having the same every day so I just tossed green beans and baby corn together with some pasta and cooked them with olive oil, garlic and chilli flakes. Like a pseudo Aglio Olio with vegetables. It was tasty (mind you, I have no standards when it comes to food). A BIG shout out to Gill for being the best cooking teacher I’ve ever had! Because instead of pointing out what tastes good, what comes in handy, she tells me to JUST GO FOR IT. (Sorry to all those who might have indicated likewise, but I actually got to watch her cook, which was necessary for a visual/kinesthetic learner like me) Yay

School this week.. I had SIX practicals in five days. I don’t like certain histology practicals because all we do is look down a microscope and figure out to draw the stuff in the simplest way we can get away with. Most people end up taking pictures of the samples which sucks because I don’t have a camera :/ I liked the bone one, though, because we got to see the actual leg bone of a cow(?) that was cut in half to reveal the cartilage and marrow. It was still fresh and bloody and everything.

Dissections are second to farm practicals, I suppose. Hmm, wait, maybe dissections are the best. Because I absolutely loveloveLOVE anatomy. All the big words that we need to memorise rock! (Geek alert!) The only problem with dissections is that we’re not entirely sure how/where to cut stuff and are either too careful and therefore slow or too careless and hence cut off some structures by accident, nerves in particular.

We dissected dog’s heads on Monday and Tuesday! We had to do it layer by layer to reveal different structures each day. So we have to know all the names of the muscles, bones, nerves, veins and other glands and such before the dissection. What’s crazy is, we’re given a lecture on the structures that we’re supposed to reveal ON THE SAME DAY. Yep and we’re expected to know it. Like they expect vet students to have superhuman memory.

On Friday, we were supposed to do a third dissection of the dog’s head, but some of the dogs were fuming too much (we use the same dogs for all the days) so my group got a cat! As you can imagine, this is marginally more difficult because a cat’s head is much smaller. But it was alright because we didn’t have to be as meticulous about the first two layers and could get right down to the third layer. And the cat was fresher and less frozen, so instead of the white and whiter structures we saw in the dog, we could actually see differences in pinkness in the cat. The cat smelled like pee, though, and it had nasty nasty teeth so overall it could have been a more pleasant experience.

Thursday was our farm practical and this week I did Cattle Handling which was tiring, to say the least. Oh but first, about 10 of us missed the bus because it decided to leave 5 minutes earlier. I was standing right by the door, signalling for the bus driver to open it but the bus driver of another bus for the second years waved him to go away. I was like, what the..? And so were the others outside the bus and on it.

The school wanted to get us taxis but since there were so many of us, we got a minibus instead. Anyway, cattle handling was about learning how to, well, handle a cow. This was Cattle Handling 1 so we were taught how to approach a cow, how to put a halter around her neck, how to hold her head to check her teeth and put in a mouth gag.

As you can imagine, I’m highly disadvantaged because I’m short and I’m comparatively smaller than all the Caucasians. When the cow puts her head down, I can comfortably wrap my arm around her head but once she lifts it, it’s almost impossible to keep my arm on her. And we have to use our left arm to grab the cow if we’re right-handed, so my left wrist gets a little sore afterwards.

An incident happened that showed how really disadvantaged I am. Each cow is placed in a catch and each catch is about 3m or so apart. I was trying to get control of the cow in one stall but she was getting a little annoyed so she swung her head really abruptly to the side while I was still holding it and I got flung to the adjacent catch. There was a crash and, needless to say, people looked my way to see what was happening. The person in charge told me to rest and try again SIGH. I don’t know if that would have happened to anyone else in that situation.

Okay I think I need to go plan my meals for this week so I can finish my vegetables before they take root in my fridge. I can safely say you can expect more pictures this week!

I’ll write you harmony in C

Another song. And school tomorrow. I know I’ve yet to round up my football week but.. hopefully I’ll get around to it.

A good day for football

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag, Lahmi!!!

  

I hardly watch you anymore, but deep deep down, I think you’re still my favourite player. At least, you’ll always be my first one You’re the reason I was a right-footed left back.

And the reason I’m 21.

—–

On a still happy note, the Dick Vet women’s football team beat the Glasgow vets 7-0! This brilliant fifth year scored FOUR GOALS. She really is amazing. And she kept on running throughout the entire match because she’s so fit from cross-country! I will be as fit as her some day. SOME day.

And then I managed to make it for the end of Nottingham games training, which was.. dumb but at least I got to talk football for a bit. And I like feeling like included. In school it’s almost like I acquire the power of invisibility.

I’m supposed to be at a pub getting free dinner provided for all the sports people now, but I can’t be bothered. Apparently, they’ve only got enough food for 100 people. Let’s see.. Men’s and ladies’ football, men’s and ladies’ rugby, hockey, basketball, squash, tennis.. Multiplied by two schools.. Yeah I suppose that’s enough for all of us.

And the food’s just laid out so I don’t stand a chance. Then after dinner there’s going to be a Dick Vet vs Weegies (Glaswegians) pub crawl and I don’t really fancy paying for drinks at every pub and trying to make it to the last destination drunk. It’s not my kind of fun.

Anyway, I had my food from yesterday for dinner so it’s all good. I think “it’s all good” is starting to become my motto for life. Congratulate me on my new-found (albeit possibly transient) optimism.

Anticipation

Okay I have just put something into the oven and am awaiting the outcome.. I don’t really think it will turn out well. Yes, I’m optimistic like that. I followed the recipe book but I substituted some of the vegetables. So maybe THAT’S why my food always turns out a disaster, because I intentionally deviate from the instructions. Like I used some healthy spread alternative instead of butter and I’m not quite sure it’s the same thing..

(Photobooth pictures! I still haven’t figured out how to transfer photos from my phone so these will have to suffice since everyone wants me to put up pictures. And yeah, imagine me putting my Macbook up against the stove.)

All my chopped vegetables!

Ingredients for the Bechamel sauce I poured over the veggie layers. You can see the reflection of my Macbook by the knobs.

Into the oven!

Anyway, I wish my oven door was made of glass so that I could see how my food’s doing without opening it. Just now I went to check on it and I am sure I shut the door but it was swung wide open when I next visited it! So now it’s taking a longer time to cook. Sigh.

I think I’m eating a lot :/ My excuse is the cold, but I really think I’m overcompensating. I try to gym more to cancel out the effects, but I think I overcompensate for that, too! But I love my exercise plan for this week: Gym on Monday and Tuesday, Dick Day 11-a-side on Wednesday, FIRST TRAINING WITH A FOOTBALL CLUB I FOUND on Thursday, Intramural 6-a-side on Friday and NOTTINGHAM GAMES on Saturday. Wheeee football

But ISRSAF

I just checked on my food (notice I just call it food because I don’t know what else to call it) and it’s bubbling in a way I don’t like! Oh man..

I will miss this long weekend. The vets didn’t have school on Monday and Tuesday and I was SUPPOSED to be studying but I GOT MY INTERNET BACK (as you can see) so my study plans got ruined. :/

BUTBUT I managed to get lots of things done. Like I did two loads of laundry! So I have lots of clean clothes. And I rearranged my room! Both out of necessity and a random desire. Necessity because now I don’t have wireless and I have to use a cable to get internet. But the layout of the room is such that the plug-in is in one corner and the only powerpoints are in the other. As a result, my phone is currently occupying a space on the floor by the heater – which, I’d like to point out, is really dangerous because I use my heater to get my clothes to dry faster and what if water drips onto the phone and electrocutes me?? – and I have to find a spot to put my Macbook.

My lonely (but potentially hazardous) little phone

So I moved my cupboard to the plug-in corner in order to put my desk in the powerpoint corner for my Macbook. THEN I realised the cable couldn’t reach the desk at that corner. I pushed the chest of drawers away and moved my desk closer to the door so that it’s closer to the plug-in. And realised that I don’t want my chest of drawers to be at the powerpoint corner so I moved my cupboard BACK. It was a good move, though, because the cupboard in the plug-in corner made the room look a whole lot smaller.

In the process of moving the cupboard across the room, I successfully boarded myself in. I was thinking then that if I ran out of strength, I would be trapped inside and my flatmates would not have known any better.

That’s the empty powerpoint corner, newly vacated by the cupboard, but currently occupied by said cupboard. I didn’t know there was another powerpoint until I moved the cupboard out.

Pushing all miscellaneous small furniture against the window to make space. Yeah, I know, it’s really really messy.

Navigating my way through all the squashed-together furniture. The last picture’s the view from my door. Which means if everything had suddenly caught fire in a tragic turn of events, I would have been burned alive.

The end result:

This is the view from my doorway..

..and from my desk where I’m currently seated. Look at that floor space!

Now my room looks so spacious! I love my room I think you can play Twister in it, no problem! Plus if I had a sleepover, three people could sleep on the floor comfortably. But just a while ago before my last oven check, I tripped over the cable and my Macbook fell off the desk! Still don’t like the locations of the powerpoints and plug-ins. I swear the people who designed the room weren’t thinking when they did. Urgh.

I’ve just taken the food out. It doesn’t look anything like the picture in the recipe book. And it’s not really quite browned yet. It’s been in the oven for forty minutes, though, and I don’t want to burn all the veggies. I’m waiting for it to cool before tasting it. -crosses fingers-

I haven’t talked much about school yet! Last week, I had one 9 to 4 day and two 9 to 5 days, owing to the fact that the week before I had four 9 to 11 days. It was pretty ridiculous. In vet school, what goes around comes around, so a relatively free week means horror the next.

So last Thursday, I had a farm practical.. on milking! It was really really fun, though it was messy (but, as a general rule in vet practicals, the messier it is, the more fun). Twelve of us in any one week would get to visit the milking parlour and help out in milking the Langhill cows. (Sorry, no pictures!)

We had a little introduction to milk production and milk quality and briefing on the milking process. After that, the cows were marched in, and each cow has a ear tag, as you all know, and when she goes through this gantry-like archway at the end of the parlour, her number gets scanned into the system and appears on a monitor at each milking machine. Almost everything is automated.

Basically what we had to do is clean the udders before milking, put on the four-pronged milking cluster (which is a lot harder than it looks with the vacuum and all) and spray iodine on the teats when the milking’s done.

There are a lot of things to take note of, though. The monitor tells you things like whether the cow’s sick or has been taking antibiotics so you know when to unplug the milking cluster from the main batch of milk and attach it to a dumping bucket. And it also tells you if the cow has only three working teats and if its milk yield for that day was lower than that of the previous day.

Oh the messy part is the unpredictable pooping and peeing! Hahaha the cows can poo as they enter the parlour, as you’re cleaning it, as you’re disinfecting it or as they leave. And THERE’S NO WHERE TO RUN. Hahaha so it was exciting all round. We wear protective waterproof gear and gloves, of course, but we don’t wear anything on our heads, so we were getting gunk in our hair and on our faces! Still, it’s really really fun.

Earlier on Thursday, we had a lab practical which involved drawing of body organs and all. So we entered a lab where there were tables and tables on which lay prosected animals (meaning they were previously dissected and preserved) and we had to draw and label the different parts.

So there were sheep foetuses, dog foetuses, even a cow foetus, all with their innards exposed. There was apparently a one-eyed sheep foetus somewhere, but I didn’t have time to look at it after drawing everything. But I did spot a pig foetus with A EAR FOR A HEAD and it was really neat. It was like a museum of oddities!

Then on Friday, our lab practical involved more drawing. We had to look at specimens of chick embryos under the microscope to draw them and then we learned how to obtain our own chick embryo specimens! That involved getting a fertilised hen egg each, breaking into the air sac at the larger end, cutting the embryo out of the yolk, then.. killing it. So that we could observe them under the microscopes to draw them. By the end of those two days we all got so sick of drawing. And now whenever I get an egg out to cook, I think of dissecting it. :/

But one cool thing was that we saw a Siamese chick embryo on Friday! Someone so luckily obtained one and it reminded me of Magnemite from Pokemon! They shared one head and I think one eye, and their bodies stuck out on either side of the head like the magnets. How awesome is that!

I think that’s about it for cool school stuff. Tomorrow’s Dick Day and the Dick vets will compete with the Glasgow vets in a variety of sports. We’re playing 11-a-side football (which the vet school team doesn’t usually do) and hoping our fitness is good enough to last us the match.

And I can’t wait for Nottingham games! It’s going to be quite exciting meeting up with people from other universities, but the bus ride is going to kill us all. We have to set off from Edinburgh at 3am just to get to Nottingham at 9am.

Oh and you’re probably wondering how my food turned out. The upper layer was okay, it turned brown and had a cheesy sort of texture. But at the bottom, all the juicy vegetables diluted the Bechamel sauce so it kinda became soup :/ It was yummy, though. Just need to figure out how to reduce the water content?? How I’ll do that is beyond me. I’m going to be eating this for days.. Oh well, the joys of student living.

I’m just your average Thundercats ‘ho

 

I’m lazy to post about my week, because I’ve FINALLY got internet in my flat so I’m like a kid in a candy store (literally, though, my kitchen IS like a candy store). So here’s a song for you to (hopefully) enjoy. 

Church later!

21

I’ve just made myself a yummy dinner of egg noodles with mixed vegetables and vegetarian sausage in Szechuan sauce. The veggie sausages smell a lot like the Hwachong Fishtank sausages. Sadly, nothing was made from scratch, my cooking abilities haven’t improved an inch. Random: I found out that the brand of my knife is “Cook and Eat”. (Well, no, I think I’ll use my cooked food in a food fight.)

Spent time over the past few weeks watching stuff online and trying to study, even though studying sometimes makes me feel a little more dumb. The vet notes on cell biology are incomparable to the Hwachong ones. I haven’t been watching football much and I feel so isolated from the EPL. Sigh. Match reports and live commentaries just don’t cut it.

That said, I play football a lot here but um. Quality versus quantity, I guess. One hour of training on Monday, one and a half hours training on Wednesday, one hour match on Friday and two hours plusplusplus on Sunday. Needless to say, I look forward to the Sunday one the most. Sometimes I wonder if I can get through the week without it.

But, as always, football gives me so much heartache. I am so so bad at it I’m ashamed to say I play it. I miss Arion. SO SO x1309860 much. I want to run until I can’t feel my legs, I want to practise passing/control/movement/etc until I get mentally exhausted and I even want to be scolded and punished for not getting things right until I cry. Masochistic, I know, but football just doesn’t feel the same now. I don’t know what state my skills will be in when I return home and it depresses me to think about it. Sigh why must I love football so much it hurts?

On a happier note, I think I’ve pretty much decided what church to go to. Even though it’s not really like Citivision, I like the sense of community and family there and I just want to be in a place where everything feels familiar. I may join the Christmas choir and help out in children’s class! Don’t think that should take up a lot of my time..

If any of you guys see me online, please volunteer to update me on stuff happening back home – I’m kind of sick of asking people questions.

Camera Phone

I know I haven’t posted in a very long time. It’s because I know some people know about this blog when I didn’t tell them about it and I don’t want just anyone to read it. Anyway.

It’s beginning to rain quite a bit here. And by rain, I mean mist, because you can barely feel the raindrops when they come down and it looks like someone is sprinkling water into an electric fan. Singapore’s raindrops seem vicious compared to Edinburgh’s. I love how breath now comes out in wisps now, though. It’s one of the best parts about cold climates.

I would have updated earlier but I forgot to bring the CD to install my mobile’s programme on my Macbook and I thought that as long as I plugged my mobile into a USB port, the Macbook would detect it, but apparently not. So no pictures of the dinners I thought looked decent enough to photograph. I don’t really take pictures of anything else, really. I haven’t actually been doing anything fun or worth taking a snapshot of.

Hmm I’m thinking of taking up squash in addition to football (because football training is only two hours a week :/). Good way to relieve stress! Just whack the ball hahaha. I’m actually getting the most exercise out of climbing the stairs to get home so yeah.. FRESHMAN FIFTEEN, HERE I COME.

I just got home from the vet school’s Christian fellowship, tomorrow I’ll be going to the Pollock Chinese Christian Fellowship’s dinner gathering and on Sunday there’ll be church! Awesome.

In the afternoon, I went to the farms. Cute cows and sheep! And I realise I don’t know a lot about farm animals so I’m going to start by.. learning how to recognise breeds at least. OH OH I have an ADOPTED COW! We’re all assigned one from the farms and we have to monitor their milk yields and vet visits and stuff and we can actually watch the cows and calves on webcam through our electronic curriculum page online.

Oh yes, Faith, the bag is black and kinda rectangular, with two handles like a carrier and a zip opening. And the picture of the Friends cast is in black and white, on both faces on the bag (same picture). I saw it at one of the many many thrift stores we have here and thought of you! I would totally buy all the people back home stuff if it wasn’t only just the start of the school year.

Um yeah, I can see I’m being very incoherent. I’m really bad at blogging. I’m sure I left lots of stuff out.. Ah well, I’ll bring more news next time.

Disillusionment

I don’t know.. I’m really starting to wonder why I came here. Maybe I’d have been better off in Australia? Everyone here is about the drinking and I guess they have that sort of mentality Down Under, too, but.. I don’t know it feels like you’ll never fit in if you don’t go clubbing and boozing. I’m not that kind of person and I don’t feel like I’m going to change just so I don’t feel like a foreigner.

I hate the feeling, though. Of being a visitor. I want to have friends who have lived in the West all their lives. I don’t want to just have fellow international friends. There’s only so much you’re going to see and experience from the outside looking in and I didn’t travel halfway across the world to realise my little well is smaller than I thought it was.

Perhaps it would have been different if I was the only Singaporean in the course? Then I would never have had the choice to seek solace in other Singaporeans/Asians. I’d have to stick my neck out to make friends and I’d probably go clubbing and whatnot but, well, at least they’d be my friends and not people I’m forced to talk to just because we’re going to be studying the same thing. It just doesn’t feel safe or fun to do that sort of thing with people you’ve only just talked to.

I’m not saying Caucasians are better than Asians, don’t get me wrong. I just thought.. I’d assimilate better. Damn it, I want more friends.

Updates

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS INTERNET.

I can’t wait till I get the internet set up in my room. I’m using Audrey’s internet now because I can’t sign in to mine at my flat. I feel so deprived of entertainment without TV and the internet. I actually fell asleep at 8pm reading some HANDOUTS the accomodation services provided. About healthy eating. That’s how bored I am.

About my accomodation.. It’s a 15 minute walk from my main study venue which will prove to be a pain later on if I ever wake up late from school – I’m never going to run there in time in the morning cold on cobblestone pavements. I stay on the 5th floor (the 6th in Singapore because the first floor here is Ground) and THERE IS NO LIFT. So on the first day I had to drag 46kg++ worth of baggage up 6 flights of stairs. Of course Audrey did most of the work, my arms are almost completely useless hahaha.

The good points are that it’s along Nicholson Street where there’s a Subway (if I ever feel lazy to cook; by the way, 12 cookies here costs 3pounds, that’s LOADS cheaper than in Singapore, awesome if you ever need to grow fat), lots of bookstores, countless bargain stores, the Southsider (the vet medics hangout) and a few supermarkets like Tesco. I’m already pretty familiar with Tesco and even the streets around the area, so that’s good.

My flatmate’s from Newcastle and she’s vegetarian, too! Although she’s more flexitarian because she eats fish sometimes. We’re still awaiting our last flatmate. She’s already missed half of Freshers’ Week, which has been pretty good fun so far I guess, but it’s mostly just trawling around the city. Most people have just been around to the different bars, queueing up for events in clubs only to be rejected at the door because of full capacity.

And they’re not kidding about Caucasians finding any excuse to drink. We had a Safari party just now and we were invited to two flats belonging to vet final years and there was alcohol everywhere. And the Asians tried to drink as little as they could so they wouldn’t knock out and have to be hauled around. But everyone else doesn’t care much.

I think I should continue updating some other time. I’ve got to get going to my flat. See you when my internet’s set up!

Time turner

I wish I had a Time Turner so I could buy myself more time. To finish up farewell presents, to buy all my remaining stuff. But if I’m really honest to myself, I will never find that I have enough time and the real reason is to delay going off.

I know that I have to leave all my comforts here in Singapore if I seriously want to grow up and be independent. But knowing doesn’t make it easier. Does it ever?

I’ve been trying to convince myself that I’m not going to be gone for long and being there is only temporary. The operating words here are obviously “trying” and “convince”. Because making farewell presents isn’t a sign that I’m only taking a short trip. Because trudging along the aisles of the NTUC near my home thinking, “This is the last time I’m going to be here.” doesn’t allude to simply going on vacation. Because referring to everything as “my last match” and “my last training” is just me trying to savour every damn minute left here.

 

I wish I didn’t have to go, but there’s nothing the education system here has left to offer me.