Iron Chef Midnight Cook-off

Late Monday night, we had the Iron Chef Midnight Cook-off where the 2 contenders were Eunice and Junxian of course! In case you wonder why, it was Eunice's birthday on Monday and Junxian's birthday on Tuesday, so Arooke has kindly organised this event to celebrate both their birthdays together. For those of you who've never watched the TV show "Iron Chef", it's actually having 2 teams who've to cook up at least 3 dishes using the mystery ingredients and the main dish has to be a "cake" that looks like the birthday girl or boy (depending whose team you're in!). I was assigned to be in Junxian's team and everyone just created a bunch of edible mess by the end of the night! To get a better idea, have a look at some of the photos below...


Arooke's invitation card to "the gang" to join in the cook-off...




The cake depicting Junxian's face... The strawberries are his hair and nose while the raspberries are his eyes. A banana will do for his mouth... Notice how much "mashed raspberry self-made jam" we spread over the whole cake to make him look super-red as he usually looked after a couple of drinks...




Eunice's team had to cope with Lemington's, M&Ms and lotsa choc and Nutella... Here's what her team thinks her face should look like...




A small portion of the "edible mess" we created by the end of the 30-minutes cook-off...




The birthday boy and I...




The birthday gal and I...



And thanks, Arooke, for organising this superbly fun yet hilarious event that just strengthens the bonds of us Basserians! ^_^

Alcohol night + Chinese lunch + Eunice's birthday = Great times together!

More snapshots from Down Under...

Firstly, "alcohol night" on Thursday themed "Give a boy a beer, give a girl some passion". Since Passion Pop is so "cheap", Junxian decided to get me a bottle of Skky Vodka instead...


The guys with their beers at foosball...




Lynn and I in her room...




Me and my Skky (perhaps someone can warn me before they snap the photo?!)




"^_^ Smile!" My inscription on Junxian's right arm...



"=P Ya drunk!!" Lynn's inscription on Junxian's left arm...



Secondly, we decided to skip "construction day" ("make your own sandwich" lunch) yesterday and headed down to Kingsford for Chinese food instead followed by McD's sundae with "Hello Panda" cookie bits...


Our lunch and dessert: Combination tofu hotpot, pork chop in plum sauce, kangkung in malay sauce, sweet and sour fish fillet, shan tung chicken and McD's sundae with "Hello Panda" cookie bits...




Chee Sen and I discussing over the menu...




Junxian capturing a random shot of us... Seen together with me are Claire, Nori and Arooke...



Thirdly, we decided to pre-celebrate Eunice's birthday which is supposed to fall tomorrow... Shots captured at "Boy's Quad Lawn" after our fulfilling lunch yesterday...


"Happy 21st birthday, Eunice!" Notice how the candles are arranged to form "21"...




One for the album:
1st row (L-R): Louise, Eunice (birthday gal)
2nd row (L-R): Arooke, yours truly, Lynn, Rue, Gaya
3rd row (L-R): Chee Sen, Nori, Tim, Dev, Junxian

Fun times with friends!

Here are some fun times I shared with my Basser friends... (The 1st 4's from formals while the remaining's from Rue's birthday)


Wednesday's formal dinner at the dining hall (with Lou Lynn, Chee Sen @ Horse, Junxian @ Junction and Eunice)




Junxian and I




My 2 bodyguards i.e. Ed and Junxian




Dev spotted a "clock" tie which caught everyone's attention...




"I need $200 to get my life back in order. I am homeless and desperate. God bless you." Junxian acting as a blind man with his guitar at the streets. Notice the coins we threw into his guitar bag...




Me monopolizing the game while Chee Sen and Nori succumbed to bankruptcy... Don't ask me what Rue and Lynn are doing in the background... Yoga?




"Jane, perhaps writing down on paper will help?"Chee Sen and Nori teasing me at the Fuzzy Wuzzy game...




"Happy 18th birthday, Rue!" My happy Basser family...



Thanks everyone for the fun times we shared... ^_^

Classes, assignments and clinical sessions...

Time really flies and passes us by without us realizing. I can still remember the moment I received my offer from UNSW and the glee and excitement that came with it. And now, I'm already done with my 2nd week of official classes...

So, like most people would blog about, I'll just post an entry on how classes went...

Lectures
With 240 1st years in the lecture theatre, you know how easy distractions can be. The noisy chatter of the row behind you, the cute guy sitting at the other end, the gorgeous gal whom you envy, the lecturer who asks you and your fellow classmates to just shut up, etc. The list goes on... The 1st few lectures we had mainly concentrated on the history of medicine, the different disciplines, public health and so on. Yeah, it's those stuff you wish you can sleep through but know you can't. Still, one need not worry with the I-Lectures you can listen to online. But lectures are getting better and cooler as time passes. Hats off to Hazel Mitchell! Your microbiology lectures rock! :) And I'm pretty sure the other 239 students in lecture would agree with me... But one wonders how one's going to deal with all the recommended reading texts... :p

Scenario Group Sessions
12 students sitting around the 8 tables in the scenario group room with one cool facilitator is pretty fun. Everyone's so vocal and we've got several debates which Lily, our facilitator, would laugh for she's just plain amused at our antics! Too bad you can't escape assignments though. I've got 3 queueing up for my attention; one's an oral presentation, the other's an individual assignment where I'll have to interview A/Prof Nick Hawkins (your lecture rocks too, Nick!) and research on a particular statement/topic of his which catches my attention, plus the group project of discussing a health issue using the integrated health model i.e. individual proactive, public proactive, individual reactive and public reactive aspects (wonder how my group of 6 will piece together the 2500 words)...

Tutorials
Just 12 of us again in tutorials. So far we've only covered database searches. But it's so cool to know we know how to use stuff like Medline and Sirius where most students will only learn it in the 3rd year! And to think Suzanne (our tutor) went to the extent of showing us a clip from ER on how the doctor failed to run a search on Medline, causing one of his patients to suffer renal failure... Good job, Suzanne, for keeping our interests alive and keeping us awake with the free gummy and sour candies! ^_^

Science Practicals
This has got to be one of the coolest classes (except besides clinical session, perhaps)... So far, we've been to the anatomy and microscopy labs. It was simply smashing to examine the cadavers though it's ironic that we should feel hungry (that's the effect of inhaling too much formaline) while looking at dead bodies... Hehe, makes us sound like cannibals... And besides the conventional microscopy, we learnt virtual microscopy as well where we just used the computers to examine slides and there's the super cool hassle-free zoom-in and zoom-out buttons plus the scanning areas... Thanks, Ng, Kumar, and others for these wonderful opportunities...

Clinical Sessions
Had my 1st clinical session on Thursday in Fairfield Hospital (the furthest UNSW clinical teaching site) which is 2.5 hours away by buses and trains... Had several thought-provoking discussions, visited the busy emergency unit where we're told the various procedures and of course the wards with the sick patients (it does make us feel guilty that we should enjoy the precarious pleasure of the clinical experience excitement at the expense of someone else's illness and misfortunes)... There's also the X-ray department and oh, who can forget the cardiac surgeon who was so eager to show us the stress test and heart ultrasounds? Thank goodness I could answer his questions after he explained to us the different interpretations of the heart ultrasound. And thanks, Ray, for letting us naive 1st year med students examine your heart structure through its ultrasound and hopefully the scar left in your left ventricle by your previous heart attack will heal after the surgery... And to Dr Jeremy, our clinical tutor, thanks for showing us around. It was cool to be just in a group of 7 touring around a close-knit friendly hospital community with a whole section devoted to UNSW students alone with the tutorial rooms...

Oh well, I've been blogging quite a bit on my 1st 2 weeks... Anyone wants to share his/her experience?

Basser + Medicine = Hogwarts

I've officially been "down under" in Sydney for 3 weeks and 1 day as of today... Though 22 days may seem a short period of time to many people, the journey I've travelled so far has been a medley of ups and downs. But I've come to realize the marvels of a newly discovered equation and that is:

Basser + Medicine = Hogwarts

Some of you may be scratching your heads by now or pry open your mouth exclaiming, "Huh?!" at this seemingly ridiculous equation. But don't get fooled as I lay down for you the evidence...

Let's start with Basser College, the residential college I'm currently residing at, in case you didn't already know. Basser College is one of the 3 Kensington Colleges (like how Gryffindor is one of 4 houses in Hogwarts). We all share facilities including the bathroom and like how head boy and girl in Hogwarts get bigger rooms and private baths, the tutors here get their own flats and private showers as well. There's of course the ever familiar common room but we label it as The Birdcage here in Basser. And the striking similarity to Hogwarts would definitely be the dining hall which we share with the other 2 colleges: Goldstein and Baxter. We've got long benches flanking long tables plus the portraits of the 3 founders (of course, they're each named Basser, Goldstein and Baxter) plus the badges and banners of each of the 3 colleges. Oh, and did I miss out the lighting deco? (though it will not match Hogwart's "night skyline" with the "moon and stars")... There's also the annual cup and board of honour... Hmm, did I miss out anything? :p

You may now say, "Ok, ok, I understand how Basser is similar to Hogwarts but what has Medicine got to do with Hogwarts?!"

Well, let me first clarify that in UNSW, all medical students are split up into 4 colleges: A, B, C and D. And according to a senior who was explaining how Medicine is so like Hogwarts and Harry Potter, each college tallies with each of the houses in Hogwarts: A's Slytherin, B's Ravenclaw, C's Hufflepuff and D's Gryffindor (which is good news coz I'm in College D!).. Then, we've got similar subjects: Biochemistry (Potions), Clinical Sessions (Care of the Magical Creatures), etc. And then you've got super long names you've got to remember and pronounce out loud such as (I can't remember exactly what the term is) is similar to "Wingardium Leviosa" (the 2 did sound alike). Instead of the long Hogwarts robes, we've got our labcoats and of course, the stethoscope is our wand... Then again, you can't run away from lecturers and facilitators who'll either remind you of Minerva McGonagall or even Severus Snape! So far, I've been lucky not to get any "Snapes" (probably coz I'm not in College A @ Slytherin) but I've yet to attend my 1st Biochemistry session (think Potions) which I may encounter a "Snape"... Oh, and the part that the senior said that made us all freshers beam with pride? "Just like how hard it is to get into Hogwarts and only a selected few are admitted, you too have made the cut for Medicine in UNSW." ^_^

I rest my case.