my secret Garden

I've gotten a fair bit done today. Ok, maybe not that much...

Little bits here and there. Not too intensive. This morning I cleaned up my desk a bit - chucked out random scrap pieces of paper that have been accumulating, and I put some notebooks away on the shelf thing.

Organising things so that they seem neat and, well, organised again. That didn't exactly work out as intended, but it's still tidier than before. I figure it's good to get all that sorting and clearing out done earlier in the holidays so that I can just do whatever for the rest of the time.

'Vanity Fair' (William Thackeray): started reading this today but I didn't get too far into it before I got distracted with clearing out junk from my desk.

Excuse me for not recounting things in chronological order. I was getting rid of some letters and things from banks and wherever, so I had to shred them up. Of course, we do not have a shredder, so I had to manually shred them.

Yes, we used to have one - long time ago, though - but then the blades got blunt or something. I don't know. Anyway, point is, I got a bit of a headache from tearing up all that paper. Nothing a bit of food couldn't help, though.

On top of organising papers, had to re-organise stuff on my laptop. I moved lecture notes, etc to my other hard drive. I also went through the folders, trying to find things to delete.

Usually I'm quite reluctant to delete uni-related files, but I tried to be a bit more ruthless this time. I ended up deleting 30-something items, which isn't too bad. It actually feels quite nice to delete things and then empty the recycle bin.

Just this afternoon, I got back to playing those little mini games that have been terribly neglected during semester. Didn't stick with that for too long, though, because I was playing just a bit before lunch, and then after lunch I didn't really feel like playing anymore. I watched two episodes of 'Family Guy'. Good cartoon, that is. I have it all on my laptop, but, in the spirit of deleting things, I deleted the ones I've watched already. My sister has them on one of her external hard drives, anyway.

Right now I have the 'Family Guy' theme song in my head. Sorry if that's gotten it in your head too. Has anyone seen the ads for 'The Cleveland Show' yet? I just saw one just before when I went to have dinner. (For those who don't know, Cleveland is a friend of the main dude from 'Family Guy'.) Hmm... imagine if 'The Simpsons' had a spin-off show for the Flandersss.

These days I've noticed that my posts have sort of been getting shorter. And I've been thinking that maybe that's a good thing - in terms of being easier for people to read and me not being bothered to write so much. Well, it's not like I have that much to ramble on about, anyway. Theoretically, I could, but theory doesn't always come into practice.

I really don't know what to write here now. I only finished exams yesterday. My mind's still sort of on exams. Like, even after the exam yesterday, and I went off to do some good nothing-ness, I kept seeing links to exam content or stuff that I'd learnt this semester. We went past a bar at one point and I just thought of how alcohol can induce a hypohglycaemic episode in diabetic people, so they should only drink if they eat food as well. And I thought of other random facts during the day too.

But, I don't intend on forgetting everything. That would be bad - especially considering that I did actually need to remember a fair bit of stuff from last year for this year, so, logically, I'm assuming I might need this stuff for next year. To help me remember everything, I was sort of planning on mentioning stuff here. But, seeing as I know some people do not find it to be very interesting at all, I don't know how well that will go. I already snuck in something educational in this entry already. First paragraph, too.

So, anyway... exams were alright. I could probably have been more prepared for my very first one and the very last one. I don't know why those two suffered. I was seriously so under-stressed for the last one that I was sort of worried about why I was so under-stressed. And it wasn't because I'd studied heaps for it and knew everything. I still guessed quite a few questions. To be honest, there were a few lectures that I hadn't looked at since we had the actual lecture - and I looked at those the night or morning before the exam. Sure, those lectures weren't very content-heavy, but I still needed to know them all.

And, yes, I did have six exams - three 2 hour exams, a 1.5 hour exam, a 1 hour exam and an oral exam. But, when you think about it, it's not so bad... because some of the content overlaps between courses, or they complement each other. And I suppose I studied reasonably well during semester. That's probably because we didn't have as many assignments as last semester. But, then again, we did have a whole lot of pracs and hence prac reports to write up.

I probably shouldn't be boring people with uni-related stuff at the start of the holidays (or any part of the holidays, really), but I haven't been doing too much else in the last few weeks apart from study and exams ... and sleeping and eating, etc, etc. Don't know if I'll be doing too much now anyway. Nothing-ness is good. It's quite nice to be able to sit here and do whatever mindless activity I happen to feel like doing.

Oh~ and waking up without an alarm is good, too~!

It was an unlikely friendship between a cat and a turtle. And not only a friendship, but also an alliance.

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If anyone so happened to be wondering, study is coming along ok. Nothing too eventful to report here. Just looking through lectures with the occasional distraction and persistent boredom (hence the need for distractions).

- - - - - -

My feet know the way. They'll get me where I need to go. No thinking required. They know where they're going. I could have my head in the clouds and my mind wandering off in the opposite direction - but my feet know where they're stepping and they keep moving. By the time my mind catches up, I'm already there.

- - - - - - -

There was an explosion in the other room, and the flames roared louder. They could hear the wood splintering and feel the whole building struggling to stay intact.

There was a door at either end of the room. At one end, smoke was streaming through the edges of the door, and the merciless fire seemed to be charging at it, trying to force its way through to them. There was no chance of escape through there.

Quickly, he ran to the door at the other side of the room. His friend followed closely behind him. In a mad panic, he grabbed at the handle and turned it. But the door would not open. He rammed his shoulder against it. But still it would not give. The door was not locked, but it was stuck. Hope had come and gone in a heartbeat.

"What are we going to do? The door's stuck! I can't get it to open! We're trapped!"

"Try pulling rather than pushing."

"Oh."

Ok. Time to blog again. Not about anything in particular (is it ever about anything in particular, really?). Just felt like blogging. I still have a load of stuff to do. But really felt like blogging, so will blog. Of course, I'll be doing work while blogging. Much too stressed to blog with a clear conscience. Finishing up my placement case study sort of takes away from that. Well, that's the theory, anyway. We'll see if it actually works.

Ok, fine, I actually just closed this for the last few hours while I completed my case study report in between other distractions. Don't think I could have written much interesting stuff here in between working on case study, anyway. It would've all just ended up being about anti-inflammatory drugs (which is what my case study is on) and professional practice standards (which is something we have to write about) and what I got out of the experience (which is sort of quite blog-appropriate, but too bad).

Have to work on my biomed essay now (oh, joy!) Yeah, no, I don't have much else to write about other than uni-related stuff. Such is life at the moment. I actually can't wait until I finish all these assessment items, and then I can just study for exams. But then, after biomed essay, I still have to do another case study, then I'll have prac reports as well. I still have four more prac reports to write up before end of semester. Plus I have a prac on Monday of week 13, which totally sucks. Granted, the reports are done in groups, but then some people would say that that makes it harder, not easier.

Apologies if this rambling about uni assessment has gotten you more bored than you were when you were doing your own assignments or study or whatever else it was you were doing before coming to do some procrastinating here. Ah! See how dull things have become since the end of both the AFL and NRL seasons? (Sarcasm, people. Sarcasm.)

I have really been craving for holidays lately (just like many of my fellow students have, I'm sure). To have all that free time and none of this stress - that would be wonderful. But I actually really want to keep studying during holidays, too. I'll need to revise stuff, at least. As many of you may know, I quite like studying. It's just that the stress that comes with the assessments which are the main point of studying is not very nice at all.

Maybe I'll get so enthusiastic about studying that I'll even make my blogs more educational. But don't worry, there'll still be a lot of mindless nonsense for those less intellectually-inclined. I'll probably have lazy days, anyway. Or days when I have no time for writing or studying or doing stuff. We shall see how I go. Need to stop this talk of holidays. Must focus on assignments and study! (Yes, I know that holidays and study are not one and the same.)

Hmm... trying to think if I've done much non-uni stuff in this last week. Can't say that I have. Like, seriously, can't say. Top secret. Wouldn't it be great if I was in a secret organisation or something and I was, like, undercover as a uni student? Then I could have people to do my assignments for me, and I'd just have to infiltrate stuff or whatever it is that people in secret organisations do. Don't I have an awesome imagination? And, no, this is not what I'm thinking about in lectures and whatever. I pay attention. Of course I pay attention.

I had a dream about looking at multi-vitamins last night, so today I took a multi-vitamin with my lunch. I don't really want to be advertising drugs here. Maybe when I become a pharmacist, I'll be constantly advertising drugs to people. I mean, of course I won't. That's unethical. And possibly illegal, too. I am only to promote the quality use of medicines. Us pharm students love that phrase. Quality use of medicines. Brilliant.

But, honestly, multi-vitamins are only meant to be a supplement. They're not meant to replace a proper healthy diet. And they're not meant to be taken on impulse when you have dreams about them. But I was thinking that I haven't been eating a lot of vegetables lately, so I thought it might be worthwhile to take one today. And remember, people, take with food to minimise stomach irritation. That's all from me for now. I have work to get back to, and you probably do, too.

I'm not going to suppose that anyone actually watched the AFL grand final on Saturday, and I'm not supposing that anyone who reads this is much interested in AFL, but I'm going to write about it, anyway. You people should know what you're missing out on. But, of course, I understand if it's not exactly your thing, and I'm fine with that. You can just skip the next three paragraphs (yes, three!). Do not despair, though! That's the end of the AFL season this year, so it probably won't come up again in my blog until the 2010 season.

As those of you who read my last entry and paid enough attention to it to remember would know, I had wanted the Saints to win the grand final. And, as those of you who watched the grand final or saw it on the news or otherwise inadvertantly found out about it would know, the Saints did not win. Geelong won. And by two goals, too. Not that that's that disappointing (yes, I am allowed to use three "thats" in a row), considering that they're both Victorian teams and I am not overly fond of Victorian teams. I think I mostly wanted the Saints to win because they haven't won a premiership since, like, forever, and because Riewoldt (their captain) is a Queenslander, and because they were minor premiers.

I suppose it's just as good that the Cats won because they lost the grand final last year after winning the 2007 one, and it'd be damn disappointing to come second two years in a row. Not good for the morale. And then one of them dudes is retiring, presumably. I haven't been following it, but he's one of their better players and they wanted to give him a good send off, even though he wasn't sure if he was going to retire or not. Saints can probably have another good crack at it next year, anyway.

I'll be interested in seeing how well the Lions go next year because they actually finished in the top 8 this year. If you'd asked me at the start of the season if I thought they'd make it to the top 8, I would have said 'no'. I remember seeing a tipping thing around the start of the season, where someone asked a bunch of experts or whoever who they thought would finish in the top 8 this year, and only one of them had said the Lions would. Kudos to that person, whoever they are. And I am also eagerly awaiting the induction of the Gold Coast team into the league (actually, maybe not that eagerly, but it sounds better if I say I'm "eagerly awaiting" rather than "disinterestedly awaiting" or just "awaiting").

I could not possibly not write about the chocolate buffet, could I? That, my friends, was a lot of chocolate (and, yes, too many negatives in that rhetorical question). But I am determined to not let it beat me. I will conquer the chocolate buffet one day ...maybe. They'll still have it next year, yeah? Otherwise, the place does do a breakfast buffet, and I sure do like my breakfast foods. I suppose it might be easier next time (assuming I'm not too busy next year to spare an evening for a next time) because I've been once now, and know what to expect. We shall just have to wait and see.

And, no, surprisingly, I did not do any guilt exercise per se. Like, I didn't do anything extra on top of my usual walking and whatever else it is that I do. Thinking takes up energy. Brains need energy. Carbohydrates are the brain's primary source of energy. Yes, this is my random attempt to add something educational and useful into this. Do not be afraid of carbohydrates, people! Well, you know, I could write something educational about infrared spectroscopy or mifepristone as a contraceptive, but then, who, really, is interested in all that sort of stuff? Of course I am, but then it'd turn out like the AFL thing, where no one who reads this actually knows/cares about what I'm saying about it.

Yes, I know, this isn't going anywhere. But the main point was just to mention the AFL grand final and then talk about chocolate buffet, and I've done that now. (Hmm... Should that have been the other way around - "talk about the AFL and then mention the chocolate buffet"?) Actually, I should also mention the dinner on Tuesday night. That was good. Hot pot and stone grill at Antartic Circle. (Should I be advertising them? Too bad, I already am. Suppose I should mention then that the chocolate buffet was at Bistro Allure. Very friendly service there.) I suppose having to cook the food ourselves made it quite a bit more fun - added an extra element to it all.

Mid-semester break is going quickly again. Still haven't done that much. Need to finish off two more case studies for placement, need to finish biom assignment, need to read articles for 2050 exam. I'm probably missing stuff. We can just leave it at that for now. We don't want to be stressing out too much while we're procrastinating. No, that would be bad. Procrastination should be a time for relaxing. Relax, people! Actually, this is about all that I have to write this time, so you can get back to work now.