Phew!
Setting up my domain was evidently more stressful than I thought it would be 
Big thanks goes to Edrei and Jon for helping me set it up.
Well, its not much so far, but I’m working on it bit by bit. Looks like summer will be fun this time round!
Nothing much happened today, just had Ange over for a movie. The sweet thing bought me a pair of sunnies after my Sportsgirl pair got eaten up by the waves at Scarborough last week.
The start to summer holidays was pretty uneventful, with Christmas shopping and swimming and relaxing combined with work around is not too bad.
Well, off to tweaking my site some more
I finished my clinical medicine paper yesterday and it was just such a relief to have the burden off my shoulders! I just couldn’t wait to get out of uni and head to the beach that day.
Lin, Angeline, Destiney and I trooped off to the Scarborough/Brighton beach after the many detours to various places to run some errands. Met up with Euhin and Kim there, who had already set up our fancy schmancy gazebo/tent which was really an excellent way to escape from being sunburnt. Although we did get a lot of stares from people around us…Haha
The bad thing was I lost my Sportsgirl sunnies and nowhere in WA carries it anymore. Only can be found in the Eastern States. Grrrr
Went home from that and went out to dinner at Northbridge at Sorrento Restaurant. Awesome food there Went off to Timezone to take nice neoprints which were hilarious. Escaped to Margeuax at Hilton after that and went sorta clubbed. Although the girls said that that isn’t official clubbing experience for me, since we only went in for an hour or so.
All of us were so tired after finishing the exam and going off to the beach and baking we were definitely not in the mood for clubbing. My feet nearly killed me after that, but alls good. Came home and collapsed on my bed and fell asleep till this morning.
I still have me 2 seasons of Friends to watch after I finish the house work
I’ll let the pictures do the talking now, as they say pictures say a thousand words
Kim, Destiney, Ange, Lin and Me
Me, Destiney and Lin
Destiney and Ange
Kim and Lin doing what they always do 
Kim and Euhin far, far away. Was my fault that I stood too far to take the picture. And I had unflattering pictures of everyone which I will most definitely NOT put up here…Hehe
Mabes and Baron during dinner
Clockwise from bottomw left: Mabes, Baron, Euhin, Kim, Tiffany, Ee-Lyn, Olivia (face blocked by me, sorry!), me, Ange, Lin
From the club
It’s only just beginning to sink in that I have already finished my 2nd year of uni. Oh man. And that I have a whole summer of not studying! Woohoo!
Now I gotta definitely start the housework
As soon as the examiner said I could start my reading time, I picked up my paper and started grinning from ear to ear. There were 4 questions and all the stuff that we went thru during study group yesterday came out in the exam paper.
I think I fared quite well for the paper and hopefully for the unit. But I don’t want to get my hopes too high and be disappointed with everything. I’m just glad that I knew what I was writing about and not just writing a whole heap of space filler. I mean I did babble on during the whole thing, but it was good
Speaking about study group, yesterday was quite an eventful night. It was a night of cumulative trauma. We were talking about the incident on campus where the girl jumped off and I was getting quite disturbed as I thought about the whole existentiality of life and things like that. We were on the way to the Euhin’s car, which was parked in a dark alley way and I made him walk ahead of me because well, he is a guy and well I don’t really like walking in the dark.
We were still talking about the whole incident and when he suddenly turned around and went “Raaaaaah!!!” at me, with the whole hand gesture like pretending to be a monster. I screamed my arse off. I know it sounds a little stupid, but you must understand that the scary factor was building up and I had my on his back the whole time we were walking.
Euhin and Emmeline burst out laughing while I was scared outta my skin. As we continued walking to the car, we passed by a wall and he pretended to get pulled in by someone. I screamed my head off, cause I seriously thought someone was going to rob us! Turns out he was just pulling my leg again.
I couldn’t take much more of this anymore and we all piled into the car and Euhin drove back to my place to get somemore studying done before we called it a night. In the car, we were talking about the whole thing again and he was saying about hoe we should treasure our lives or something in relation to the whole incident, trying to placate me I suppose after the scary incidents.
Back at my place, I had to disarm the alarm before letting the others in, so I went and did that and told them to wait outside to. Next thing I knew I told them it was ok for them to come back in again, but I got no reply from them.
So I told them to cut it out or I’d lock them outside. Knowing me, I wouldn’t really have locked them out cause it was cold anyway. After cajoling them for another good 30 seconds, they still didn’t come out, so I opened the fly screen and asked them to please come in for one last time when suddenly behind the wall, there were hands sticking out and Euhin’s voice went “woooooooo” in the whole scary ghost sorta voice.
I cracked and started screaming again. And they popped out behind the wall and laughed at me again. The rational part of me knew it was him all along, but my nerves were just too shot from the previous scares and thinking back on horror movies and scary stuff. So cumulative trauma does add up to make people slightly edgy and scared.
Back inside we were studying for a bit and they continued the scary stories and everything. When Emmeline said, “You know, all the horror movies always start with a bunch of teenagers joking around about horror stories…” I burst out crying. I just couldn’t take it anymore. My nerves were sorta fried by this time and I think they must have realised they pushed me over the edge by that.
Euhin tried to calm me by saying that dogs have a sixth sense and they can sense danger and stuff. While he was saying it, Tiger was sleeping. When he finished saying that sentence, Tiger started whining about something and I got creeped out again.
And knowing the fact that I will be staying alone for the rest of the night till everybody came home, it really didn’t help.
Aunty came back at about 11pm, so it was good. I was hiding in my room after my shower and started carrying my handphone wherever I went.
I know I might seem a little paranoid with everything, but you’ve gotta admit that it was scary. I’m a kinda girl who doesn’t watch horror movies, so that would explain why I got scared out of my skin.
Oh and not to mention, I slept at 2am cause the adrenalin was pumping all thru my body and I couldn’t get to bed. And I over slept by 30 minutes and thankfully I had the hindsight to give myself extra time JUST in case something like this might happen.
I’m just glad gerontology is over. I’m so gonna associate gerontology with horror movies now.
Which ain’t good.
Study group today is at 11am and I’m already having a headache from the combination of lack of sleep and working yesterday. At least the Red Bull air race is finished, so I won’t hear them plane buzzing above my head anymore.
On another note, talked to dad on Saturday and he said that Jennifer’s wedding had been postponed to June. Which means I’ll miss it. Well then, I won’t be able to go to any of my cousin’s wedding on my dad’s side because I ran out of cousins. And I was so excited about going as well. Sigh.
They had really enjoyed their trip to London, without me like usual. So unfortunate that I happen to have exams at the time and still have 2 more papers to go before I finish my 2nd year of uni. They got me a Harrods bag and a T-shirt that says, “My mother went to London and all I got was this lousy T-shirt”. I’m sooo gonna wear it and take pictures. Hahaha.
Yesterday at work, David asked me if I see my family in Malaysia often.
I said I see them at least once a year, so its not too bad.
Then he said if it were him, he didn’t think he’d be able to do it, living so far apart from his family all the time. He’d be too homesick to concentrate. He said that he admired me for doing what I’m doing, living so far away from my family.
That really got me thinking, am I really strong to be able to live 4000 miles away from home? Am I really strong to be working and studying at the same time?
I look back at the time when I was 17, freshly done with SPM in Malaysia. I had no idea where I wanted to go, but my parents got me to enrol in college in Perth. Perth wasn’t foreign to me, I’d been there many times and I had 2 uncles living in Perth at the time.
I knew I didn’t want to leave my friends behind, but there was no way I was going to be able to get a good uni education in Malaysia if I stayed behind. Part of me felt so sad that I would be leaving everything behind: family, familiarity, friends, and everything I knew for the shor 17 years of my life.
Part of me felt liberated, I was going to start over in a new place, hopefully I could and I would do well in this new environment. I knew there were going to be challenges ahead of me, but I was game.
Now, here I am. Close to 3 years later and halfway thru my uni degree. 3 years seem like such a short period of time, but I remember every single tear shed, every drop of sweat, every laughter with friends and every single good time.
I’ve made countless new friends and have kept in touch with most of them. I love them to bits and I am certainly glad that I did come here.
Thinking back to the time in 2003 where I was so uncertain about coming, I’m glad that I had the strength to come. I had the strength to presevere thru all the hardships in life and coming out of them a better person. Like the saying goes, “What doesn’t break you, only makes your stronger”.
I am living proof of that statement.
Random question: Why do people call it smarty pants when supposedly smart people have better brains?
Thinking back on yesterday’s VIVA exam for rehab, I cringe in pain from all the stupid things I did. Now it definitely a time when I wish I am a smarty pants.
I’m looking forward to this Wednesday when I finish and we can go wild and crazy after clin med exam. I’m not so worried for that paper cause I need only 4 marks to pass so I can read the stuff a bit later after I finish my gerontology study.
And after reading yesterday’s news on OASIS (Curtin’s student portal) where the girl jumped off the bridge, it struck me as scary. Well duH you might say. But to think that someone had gotten so close to the ledge and actually jumped off just deadens me (no pun intended).
I read somewhere that when a person goes thru the suicide, a majority of them don’t want to die, but sadly most do. So when that girl was jumping off the bridge, she must have been thinking that she didn’t want to die, but the place she picked was rather high, so sad to say, her suicide attempt became a reality. This is assuming that she really committed suicide and wasn’t pushed off.
The uni accidentally realised her name yesterday and I couldn’t help but think that name sounds very familiar. Might be one of my friend’s ex-housemate or something. Will have to ask her when I next see her.
Anyway, I should really be hauling my butt to studying gerontology. Then clin med and then start planning stuff for next year as I need to find that OTA job and definitely start planning for my career. This is scary. I’m now a woman in my 20s.
*shudders*
It’s over and done with!!!
I suppose having regrets at this stage isn’t exactly going to do any good, but one thing I definitely must write about is how the thing went.
We picked case study 2, which was something that I was dreaded quite a fair bit as it had things about the hand splint that we did not know nuts about. I was praying not to get anything I don’t know and I was nervous as shit as soon as I picked up the card.
Anyway, while doing the case study (I got the one where I had to teach the client how to dress his lower limb - he’s a tetraplegic) I had to put him on this sort of gigantic yoga mat and teach Lin (who was pretending to be the person) how to put on track pants.
So I walked over to get the mat and was rushing cause time was just soooooo limited and as I was carrying the mat….
I walked on it and tripped to the ground.
Right in front of the examiners.
I really didn’t know where to put my face after that. I just laughing at my stupidity. While instructing the client how to dress. And I told her to pull the stupid drawstring as well. Man.
I need to hide somewhere now. Somewhere which doesn’t have any yoga mats and track pants with drawstrings.
I suppose I should feel a little relief that I have finished my anatomy exam, but it didn’t go to well. At the very least, I’ll be able to get enough marks to get a supplementary exam paper. Which would suck, but failing the unit sucks even more.
I hate the wheelchair propulsion movement analysis with everythign I’ve got. I expected the door knob movement analysis to come out, not this wheelchair one. Sigh.
I’ve got the VIVA on Thursday, which is less of a worry. As the time goes on, the exams further down the track don’t worry me so much. VIVA is sort of under control and gero and clin med are also sort of under control. Gero I’ve got to read up, but I’ll be able to do it now since that anatomy is out of the way.
I’m glad that is done. I cnanot stand anatomy and am glad that I will not have to do it for the rest of my life. I will probably miss the cadavers and scaring people with my cadaver stories, but its good that I do not have to remember all the muscles and functions anymore.
Whatever happens is beyond my control now. All I can do is continue praying. And by the way, in case any Curtin OT people are reading, the answer to the 50 year old man question is that he fractured his clavicle. Not his humerus. I’m doomed.
It’s now Thursday and exams are looming around the corner. This isn’t good at all. I’m so over studying that its not funny anymore. I’m getting sick of waiting for the day to come and passing all my units.
Speaking about hairy stories, I found my first white of my 20s. And I only JUST turned 20. This is not good at all. Must be all the stress I’ve been going thru lately. When I found that hair, I plucked it and of the whole strand, about 2 inches were pure white and the rest was a brown shade which I coloured my hair to. Aunty Siew Lian says its wisdom. Oh man….If the amount of white hair I have on my head corresponds to my wisdom, I musn’t have very much wisdom then…Teehee…Now Lin is just laughing at me. Hmph
On the topic of hair, I haven’t been to the hair dresser’s in ages and last night I thought it’d be a good idea to trim my fringe. Now usually my fringe trims are good, if I might say. So last night was DEFINITELY an exception. What I did was place my scissors just at the level where I wanted to cut my fringe, but for some reason or another I turned a little bit and my scissors ended up higher than I had intended. And I had begun snipping. I couldn’t very well uncut my hair, so I had to cut it from t hat level downwards.
I would put up my picture, but its really too embarrasing I’ll never live this moment down in my life. Oh joy. So now I’ve resorted to pinning all my hair back which results in this rounded looking face. Now don’t you love me?
I officially am put off by public transport. Though I must say I love my new smartrider thing which works like the Touch ‘n’ Go in Malaysia where you tag on and tag off the bus or train and the computer automatically deducts the right amount for your journey. Sure, you can’t use the 1 zone multiriders for 2 zones anymore, but it sure does save you a lot of hassle with the funky multirider machines that always somehow screws up my tickets. Well, yesterday I was running for a bus when the b us just left without me. Sometimes I wonder if the bus drivers are just scared of me? Cause I look like a mad woman trying to catch a bus? Or are they just too ignorant of how important public transport is to some people like me.
Anyways, besides stories on hair and public transport there is also the story about the library books this morning. I am soooooo put off by my stupidity sometimes I wonder how I made it to uni doing occupational therapy.
You see, the UWA library has some fancy-schmancy glass doors and there is a slot thru the front bit so you can return library books thru it after hours where it drops into this wooden trolley where the librarian remagnetises all the books.
So I rocked up at 7.30am to return my now overdue book before I procrastinate once again and I find the old chute blocked up and no sign saying where else I should return my books. So I waited and was not very happy since I had agreed to meet the others for VIVA practice at Curtin at 9am and I rely on public transport. So I sat there on the benches outside the library.
Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.
Then I remembered Euhin used to go to UWA and he had just returned some books a day or 2 ago and he should roughly know where the chute is. So I SMSed him, hoping that he could at least tell me where to leave the stupid book. Even he didn’t know where else the chute would be and since the library opens at 8am (this was 7.50am by now) I could just wait another 10 minutes to return the books.
So I waited and brought out my THR stuff to read while waiting and my patience level was slowly dissipating by the second. I looked up and saw a girl walk with a book in her hand and she came to a wall near me (which had this sort of gate thing) and she pushed her book thru something and walked off empty handed.
I just stared at that place in the wall in disbelief. I was sitting 1 m away from it and I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I packed up my stuff and walked closer to inspect it and voila, true enough I found the after hours return chute. And this was 5 mins till the library opened.
See, they now have updated their after hours hours library chute where it is now hidden at the side of the fricking door and not labelled properly so people like me NOT FROM UWA do not have a clue to where to return the books to. See, Curtin designers are MUCH MORE SMARTER than the people who designed UWA (they had better not be the same people :P). For one, the sign to the chute was obscured by walls and the newspaper dispenser thing so I couldn’t have seen it. Second, the sign wasn’t bright enough. It just blended in with the background.
Rawwwwwr!!!
Heard enough stupidity for today? Haven’t heard enough? Say something!
*Note to self: Next time, try not to be sooooo stupid during exam periods.
P/S: Zaneta, don’t give up!! Hope all the funny stories above put you in the mood to study after laughing! Chin up babe!
P/P/S: People from Curtin reading this, come up and tell me how crazy I am the next time you see me.
P/P/P/S: I cannot stand anatomy anymore and I actually would consider working in rehab after I graduate and I passed my gero assignment!!! Thank you Calvin
Public transport and me definitely DO NOT CLICK.
Recalling what happened on Wednesday, yesterday and today were equally bad times for me. First of all, the bus that hit the lady on Wednesday, was no. 1501. The bus I took yesterday to uni was no. 501. And that bus clipped my foot. What happened was the bus driver closed the door before I could get my foot off the bus while alighting the stupid bus.
Then this morning the bus I took was no. 1301. What are the chances of me getting buses with all similar numbers?!?!?!? Anyway, I took that as an omen and decided that I ‘m going to catch a train and bus to uni instead of taking the normal bus. So I got off and got onto the train. So happened, today the ticket inspectors were there and checked tickets. I had nothing to be afraid off, since I had my multirider with me and I definitely pushed it in the correct machine to get it stamped when I took the first bus.
So I showed him the ticket along with my concession card. He didn’t say anything, which was exactly what I had expected. Then I looked at my multirider to check what time I got on the bus this morning, so see how long more I had to go to reach uni.
Couldn’t find the printed date or time on my multirider. I started panicking and turning my ticket in various angles to see if somehow the ink is invisible. Nope.
Turns out the machine didn’t stamp my ticket but charged me for the trip. Had the ticket inspector been vigilant enough, it would have looked like I didn’t put in my ticket into the machine and gotten a free ride on the trains. Which would have cost me a fine on the spot.
Thank God he was one of those lazy ticket fellas who didn’t check. Phew.
I didn’t plan on it being such a morning where coincidences just result in horror. I left home at about 10am this morning to get to uni by 11am to try and get some quizzes done before my anatomy lab this evening.
Seeing that I missed my connecting bus at the busport, I went upstairs to get me some grub cause I wasn’t feeling too pleased with the buses. Next thing I know, I met Anggie and Darren! Now that was indeed the nice coincidence of the day. Sat with them and caught up for a bit and left to go catch my other bus. Turns out I had missed the next bus by 2 minutes. Trust me to do things like that.
Fine, so I waited to take the NEXT bus to uni 10 minutes later. Got onto the bus and went a-travelling down St. Georges Terrace. Next thing I know, I looked up and I saw this lady in front of the bus and heard this heart stopping thump as the side of the bus crashed into the lady. She flew a bit and next thing I know (I was sitting towards the back seats), the bus driver had drove a little bit more and I saw her thru the back doors of the bus, lying on the road, cllutching her right arm and with a little cut on her head.
My heart just stopped right there and then. She looked a bit dazed and I don’t know if she hit her head or not, but I think her arm was giving her the most pain.
Little to say, most people there whipped out their mobiles and called the ambulance and people were gathering around her to see if she was alright and brought her to sit outside the cathedral. The bus driver pulled up, out of the way of traffic and made us all get out of the bus. He quickly radioed the appropriate people and got down to check if she was alright. The ambulance was pretty good and rocked up in 5 minutes and 2 paramedics took their own sweet time to get out of the ambulance to see the woman.
Admitedly she wasn’t very bashed up, most would be a concussion, a few stitches to her head and probably an ice pack and x-ray for her arm. It wasn’t as if the ground was blood splattered or anything. It was such a commotion, that you would imagine that someone just got cut up pretty badly.
In the end, the ambulance people helped her walk to the ambulance for some first aid and I got onto the same bus that hit her and left on my merry way to uni. I am still shaken up with all that has happened, but I’ve come to the deduction that I’m going to try and avoid taking buses for a while. Seeing people on the road where the bus came dagerously close to them really had got my heart pumping way over its normal range.
That particular accident really was the fault of both the bus driver (which is Malaysian btw - connection seen?) and the lady crossing the road. She tried to cross the road in front of a bus which was picking up passengers when the bus I was sitting on was trying to pull in front the stationary bus. That woman just walked and BAM! She got whacked a bit.
Eventful morning indeed.