Now it’s already been a good couple of days since I started preparing for my interview next week. Aside from the nightmares every night I have of various faceless people slapping me with question after question, I found I’m beginning to approach matters in a very different way than when I first started out. I’m starting to observe all available perspectives with much greater ease. I’m finding it easier to think about all the ‘what ifs’ and ‘what exactly are they thinking/feeling’. It’s all wonderfully eye-opening, at the same time bringing me a sense of peace with myself and my constant frustrations at the seemingly incompetent world around me.

A hunt through Borders and Kinokuniya have yielded close to zilch in my search for the book Ward Ethics: Dilemmas for medical students and doctors in training. I did, however, find a book by Tony Hope entitled Medical Ethics, which in all honesty is a pretty tough read. I’ve resorted to reading the former through Google Books, trying to figure out what went on in the omitted pages.

I’m not entirely sure if I’m ready for the interview next week. But I’ll give it all I’ve got regardless. A medical school dean once said in the welcome speech to freshmen that 90% of the doctors you will be, you already are. And if the interviewing committee finds I’m not ready for life as a doctor, I wouldn’t want someone’s life in my hands either.

There are times when I wonder if my life would have been easier if I had gone on and did some science related course rather than this BFA of mine. Certainly, the GAMSAT would have been much easier. No telling if my grades would have been better too. I was a very different person back then, while choosing university courses. Unsure and unconfident of myself and what I could achieve. To be quite frank, I still wanted to study medicine back then. But this complete lack of confidence in myself translated to a total lack of confidence that I would be able to do anything to effect any positive change at all in anyone’s life.

Quite simply, the old me wouldn’t have made a very good doctor at all.

Sure, going through ADM resulted in me realizing I actually couldn’t draw after all and gave me a less than fantastic grade at graduation. I still don’t have the basic sciences required to qualify me for an MD program. The GAMSAT and studying for it was absolute hell. But I’ve come out a completely different person.

I’ve learnt that I can make a difference if I just stood up and took action to help others. I’ve learnt that if I tried really really hard at something, I would be able to get the results I wanted (results as opposed to grades, unfortunately). I learnt that I had enough passion to override this uncertainty in me. If I gave it all my heart and soul, I can do some good in this world. My life would count for something. I would have made a difference.

I wouldn’t have learnt any of this if I hadn’t chose ADM, hadn’t met all these wonderful people, hadn’t done all those things. I’m done thinking I’m not good enough, or I’m not smart enough. Studying for the GAMSAT this year was undoubtedly the toughest time in my life. Not only did I have to juggle both GAMSAT and my Final Year Project concurrently, I also spent hours with my mom in the hospital. Emotionally, physically, and mentally taxing. I’ve learned alot more than enantiomers and F=MA. I still managed to get a relatively competitive score for this year’s admissions (though not good enough for Flinders or ANU).

I can do this.

Pulitzer

Here’s a link to a series of photographs which won the Pulitzer Prize a couple of years back documenting the final leg of the journey for a young boy afflicted with cancer.

His courage, her strength. Certainly puts your life into stark perspective. Worth taking a few minutes to look at.

LINK HERE

Clicking the link above will navigate you away from this page

Monash one step closer

Today I got the email I was waiting so long for.

I’ve been invited to interview with Monash Gippsland Medical School on the 4th of September. The interview will be held in NTU’s Nanyang Executive Center.

Excited! And nervous at the same time. It’s my first med school interview (not counting the somewhat informal question session with Dr Chow a while back). Didn’t actually think I would get to interview this year, what with my lousy GPA and borderline GAMSAT. But now that I’ve got a spot in the interview, I’ve got my last chance to show em what I’ve got to offer!

Been scouring the forums for some clue as to what the MMI will be like. Reading through some bioethical journals as well. Quite an eye-opener.

Pretty tired these couple of days. Mostly from the early mornings that come with work. Love work though. Kids are cute (though demonic sometimes), co-workers are awesome, hours are good, pay is great.

Should get to sleep soon. Xuan and Lu leaving tomorrow evening, Papa in tow. Had satay club just now after dinner with long long. Yummy! And cheap too. Will miss them once they’re gone. Soon I’ll be lonely again.

And all I’ll have is Bear Bear… And my girlfriend. Lol. More blogging tomorrow. Sleep now.

Updates of the poor and the jobless

So… Now I’m jobless again. This time by my own volition. Due to a whole bunch of reasons concerning my mounting disatisfaction with myself, I made the rather silly decision of leaving a possibly great job with a definitely great company.

The people at the office were just awesome.

Lol. Awesome.

But really. After one week, I feel like these guys are my friends. I learned alot about roto and matchmove though I was never in those departments. I have a much clearer picture of what it takes to work in this industry. Plus, I’ve made lots of great friends.

Overall, same applies. Nothing learned is ever wasted. No experience is in vain.

I hope to be able to finish my showreel by mid this week and let Oli and Sam take a look. Though, to be frank, I dont think my work can compare to the reels that come through the door every day.

Someone changed my soap again a couple of days ago.

Who is this person who changes my soap? And dictates what I will smell like for an indefinite period of time? Does this person know the power he/she wields?

Need to go pick Hua from the airport later today. And study to give tuition tomorrow. I’ve been missing an entire week! And Prelims are coming up. Need to start re-reading my GAMSAT book too. And getting out some physics questions to ask Hui Qiong.

Lots of studying to do.

Lots of things to do as well.

-Roars-

The Options of the Optionless

I’ve had a good 3 weeks of freedom now, having completed my degree and with no immediate plans (or at least, none that are set in stone). Feels rather floaty, waking up in the same foggy haze that I fell asleep in, going through the day eyes charged with the same pointless gaze till they close again. Now that the excitement of freedom has worn off, only sheer sepulchral boredom remains, showing me with very little effort at all that this is what it is like to be a zombie.

I’ve started on studying Social Studies again to help tutor Yuan in preparation for the dreaded exams later this year. It’s a whole easier going now I’m not at the business end of the O Level knife. I’m endeavoring to finish the entire syllabus (inclusive of question answering techniques) in 9 weeks (with two sessions a week, that brings it to 18 sessions in total). This would leave me with another 2 weeks before his prelims to tie up any loose ends.

I haven’t tutored in FOREVER.

Forever sounds long, but in today’s context, it barely covers a year.

Especially with all these people running amok, flinging around like confetti, deluging unsuspecting passersby in a torrent of “whoopee!”.

The sanctity of “forever” has been reduced to a “maybe we should sit down and talk about this”.

Which brings me to something I was discussing with Sara Tan the other day. What of these fairy tales, still implanting delusional theories of love and romance and happily-ever-afters in the impressionable minds of your young? Girls (and some boys) grow up to become women (or men), heady with subconscious dreams of a knight (who may or may not be a man) on a white steed/motor vehicle/transportation device, sweeping them off to a happily ever after in some castle. Or mansion. Or terrace house. Or government flat. Perhaps it is these very seeds of things-that-will-probably-never-come-to-pass that are the cause of unhappiness when said women (or men) do not find their happy ending.

Let’s get to writing some real stories. Ones with realistic endings. Like having the prince and Snow White go back to their grand castle, only to find out after a couple of dates that it isn’t going to work out because he has unresolved issues with his family, leading to a nasty teary breakup. Or Prince Charming realizing that Cinderella has an insatiable shopping addiction and squanders away fortunes on gowns she will only wear till midnight and shoes she tends to forget while leaving a party. Or Beauty finding out the castle she now lives in is littered with decades of furballs.

Something along those lines.

According to Xuan’s economics lectures, persons who are unwilling to find work cannot be listed as unemployed. They are simply cut out of the equation due to their lack of name and tendency to ruin the numbers. Perhaps the term “self employed by a really bad employer” is a more accurate description instead of “    “.

So, my last week was pretty spectacular for a self employed by a really bad employer person. I did get to finally meet Dr Chow and talk to her about my concerns about medical schools and the career path of a healthcare professional. And it was the first time anyone’s heard my reason for why I wanted to pursue this rather ludicrous sounding dream of mine.

If I had known she was a medical school interviewer, I wouldn’t have said anything…….

But after pouring out my heart and naiveté onto her and her lunch, she said she was convinced.

And I’m a much happier camper.

Today I heard of another case from a distant aunt of mine whom I was meeting for the first time today. Her daughter was accepted into medical school despite her really dismal grades.

Little bits of info like these make me that little bit more hopeful of getting into medical school next year.

But what if I don’t? What then?

I’m not entirely sure, to be brutally honest. My ultimate goal remains unchanged, but the pathways to it wind deeper and deeper into muck and thick undergrowth of confusion and pandering about. My choices stand as follow:

1. Sit for the GAMSAT again
And hope for a better score. And in the mean time, take up some part time work here or there while doing some voluntary work at the hospitals (though my mom isn’t too keen about it now that H1N1 is going about)

2. Take up a graduate diploma in Science or Biotechnology
It’s a 1 year course in Melbourne University and covers all the course prerequisites for the Melbourne MD to be opened in 2011. I’ve just sent an email to them to verify if a) I am eligible for that course to begin with, and b) if courses done there can count towards subject prereqs. If it’s a green light for both those questions, then it might not be too bad a next move if I don’t get into med school next year.

3. Sit the MCAT again in June and apply for Duke NUS
Really really really not sure if I should do this. It’s a 4 year intensive course with it’s clinical year (oddly enough) placed in the second year and not the third or final year like other medical schools I’ve read about. I would very much like to focus on the clinical side… The research year might kill me…

4. Join the SCDF as a paramedic for 3k a month
Okay… I’m making that up. I did email them to ask how much the entry pay would be in the paramedic career path given that I have a degree (degree holders can get 3k entry pay with the qualifications I currently hold, I think) but the pay for paramedics on the site is listed only up to poly diploma and A levels. With a 1.5 year training period and a 2 year bond after that, it’s more or less the option if I’m giving up on med school.

Depending on what happens this October, we might spend a really really really long time apart.

=(

Sigh…

Let’s go skiing!

Apply Insult. Rub vigorously.

I feel thoroughly insulted today.

Not just insulted, but sinking into this feeling of being thoroughly jaded.

What, really, is with this attitude?

I ended up writing a response that, within an hour, had snaked its way to being longer than the thesis paper I’m halfway through.

Sigh…

My irrepressible 2 cents worth

So I can refer to again in the future, here is the gist of my gripe against what the NUS SoM student wrote, in the words of others.

The Final 10

I MISS MY GIRLFRIEND!!!

10 more days…

Some updates.

Trailer cut is done. Trailer soundtrack is done. More or less final cut of final animation is done. 3/4 exams done. All that’s left is:

• Basic Cell Biology exam – Monday
• 10 sec trailer deadline – Monday
• FYP deadline – Wednesday
• FYP Thesis – Monday after
• FYP final presentation – Monday after

We’re winding down to the last few days…

We’ll work hard together!

Almost there…

Yesterday was the BS803 exam, and my second last paper of my university education. Exams started on Tuesday with Japanese (which was fun), followed by Modern Art on Wednesday (which was even more fun), and yesterday’s horror (not that much fun).

For one, I’m not entirely sure how the marking is supposed to go when each MCQ has more than one answer. How do you mark something like that? Not to mention, as YY had calculated with a disturbing number of figures, the odds of getting a question completely right would fizzle down to 0.008%.

I found the paper pretty tough, though not as horrific a mind-**** as GAMSAT or MCAT (which is guaranteed to totally screw you over). But I attributed it mostly to poor preparation (preparation having been simmered down to a mere 6 hours before the paper since the day before went to the creation of lovely poster material (which, btw, we were only given notice for a few days before)). I found myself spending 50% of my one hour in the exam hall pondering this paradox:

Which of the following statements is/are FALSE?
a. sth sth sth
b. sth sth else
c. sth else else
d. none of the above

Can hardly believe I’m pondering this, but if I were to select any of options A-C, wouldn’t that make D false as well? So do I shade D along with A? If I don’t shade D, would I be graded as having gotten the question wrong? And if I pick D, would it mean that ALL of the above are false (because it is false that none of the above are false)?

I’m so confused. And over just the wording of the bloody paper.

Some questions required some awesome shading skills and required shading of all the blanks.

=.=

Didn’t like the paper much.

I liked the view I got for Jap and Modern Art though. For the first time in 4 years, I got to take papers in the exhibition hall of Nanyang Auditorium, which was on the third floor. And being from ADM and 4th year, we got seats next to the window. Here’s a shot of the view before I turned off my phone.

Not bad, considering I had spent the last 3 years in the SRC’s near windowless gymnasiums…

Speaking of Modern Art, we were finally given our essays back after the exam on Wednesday. I did… Slightly better than I had hoped (I felt like I had sidetracked to Zimbabwe somewhere along the line while talking about Surrealist Manifestos) and have semi-optimistic hopes I might get a B+ for Modern Art. Hopefully. Though I’m not sure if a B+ will be enough to get me one foot into med school.

So now with the exams nearly over (and one more horror paper on Monday), I can concentrate on my FYP. I finished the last of the renders on Wedneday and spliced them together on AfterEffects last night to find…

1. One scene had rendered the wrong camera and could only see a fraction of the character wiggling in the corner of the frame
2. Some shots are way too dark
3. The animation is way too fast. But slowing it down would mean I have to inform Mark my animation will be longer, or just make my credits zip past like WHOOSH

=\ Not many choices there… Now re-rendering scene 1 shot 3 would leave editing out of the question, at least till tonight. Where can I get sound? I’ll need to go down to school to get it done. But I barely have enough time to revise for my exam on Monday. And the 10second trailer is due on monday.

GAH.

Here’s a picture of the poster I magicked up in half an hour!

Hahahahahaha I love the credits.

Feeling a tad tired of my FYP. I just want to get it over and done with, then go relax somewhere without wondering if my render is done, or if the vertices are going nuts, or if the curves have been worked out, or if the image has been anti-aliased (which I am ashamed to say, I have no idea what that means). I just want to graduate decently enough to get into med school.

I have plenty of other thoughts whizzing about my head. The recent discourse about bond-breaking (the scholarship kind, not the molecular kind), my 2 cents worth about that 3rd year NUS SoM student who wrote in about the unfairness of subsiding overseas med students (which I have plenty to say about, but many online have already voiced my views), the seemingly hostile takeover of AWARE (one of the proponents of homosexual rights in Singapore) by a group of people with unknown agenda (though one of them is renown for being anti-homosexual), not to mention the entire fiasco about FYP deadlines jumping like mexican jumping beans, BS803 (the way the questions were written was a load of bs, thinking about it)…

LOTS AND LOTS OF OPINIONS.

Shall complain to my mom.

11 more days…

HOLIDAYS. GET YOUR ASS HERE NOW.

Render my woes

So I just (‘just’ being 25 seconds ago) checked on my render only to find that the 148 frame shot I sent to batch render overnight had only gone through 140 frames in 9 hours. So I opened up the file to check what went wrong…

And found an excess of 3 directional lights in the scene. Effectively blowing out everything into white nothingness.

140 frames of pure. white.

omg.

wtf.

Nearly all my scenes are whited out with lights I don’t recall setting up.

ARGH.

And Mark just moved the FYP deadline from the 22nd to the 20th.

I don’t have time for screw ups now…

And the whole of last night I was struggling with a new error message:

Maya could not create command port : Jorubi 7835

Jorubi being what I named my computer in a fit of aloe vera gel loyalty. The error prevented me from batch rendering. A couple of trips about the CG forums yielded it might be due to a TCP firewall. Further poking about revealed that it was a hanging maya batch render in the background.

=.=

Utter rubbish. I hate rendering. If I could, I would rather just make everyone watch it from my computer screen as a wrestle with dragging the slider across the timeslider.

I just got a Seagate 1TB hard disk yesterday. And with full intention to render out to this lovely little new addition to my already massively cluttered desk.

Bah. I found the problem. Overblown light.

Shall fix it and get back to biology revision…

By the way, I found that DBSK sounds amazing at 11pm and my brain is otherwise filled with cell components and their respective functions. I’m addicted to Mirotic (hahahahaha! Wendy! Our club has grown exponentially!)