pud1m's blog

Finals results

After handing in our portfolios, me and Az managed a week of half-hearted study for our finals.  We passed :D  Still hasn't quite sunk in.

The parents said they'd go up to Ninewells if I wanted them to, after visiting relatives and stuff.  I got a text from them 3 minutes after the results were due to go up saying they knew how I'd done, so clearly they were waiting there in suspense to see how their wee boy had done <3

The room of requirement

Aye, OK, I just finished Harry Potter VII.  It was good.  In other news, people wondered what my room looks like.  Here's your answer, and the item middle top is the most important device ever invented by man:

Room panorama (Large)

I won't bother with pics of the fairly small shower room, it's fairly standard in there :p  Need to get some photos of the amazing washing line I've rigged up outside on the balcony and pipes.  Think I'd make a good 18th century sailor, what with the knot tying skills, scurvy and syphilis (clarification: I only actually have one of these afflictions)

Victoria Peak

Spent the morning in theatre, after listening to a PhD student ramble on about papillary thyroid cancer.  I was a bit scared by her seeming ignorance of statistics, given that she's studying for a doctorate in research, but never mind.  Saw a couple of gallbladders being taken out, keyhole style (they appeared through the belly button in a plastic bag) and some of a huge all-day liver procedure involving some of the craziest looking surgery gear I've ever seen.  One of them (seriously) looked like a magic wand with lightning spraying from the end.

There's bugger-all on in either hospital on a Tuesday afternoon (except varicose vein repairs...think I'll pass) so I went for the easy option - an afternoon off.  Cashed some travellers' cheques then wandered back to the Peak Tram which wasn't anything like as packed as Sunday.  It takes about 10 minutes to get to the top station, which has some pretty spectacular views over the city.  Got some daylight ones, then had my dinner (there are two shopping centres up the peak) and read some Harry Potter til it got dark.  I'll let the photos do the talking - wow.

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Skylinenight (Large)

Falciparum, vivax, ovale, malariae

Went to the basketball court up the road before dinner.  Fun, but I got bitten a few times.  Midges at home are annoying, but at least they don't carry dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis or malaria (all rare, but possible round here.)  Let's hope none of those possibilities occur and I just have some itchy spots instead.

I got an avatar - it's the HUK logo.  Terribly, terribly tragic I know, and if you can think of a better alternative let me know.

Today involved colorectal surgery, feeling up more hernias, and lots of Harry Potter.  I'm also listening to Test Match Special, and the umpires just pulled the players off (bad light) with one Indian wicket left to fall.  Bugger

Sunday's random wanderings

Having dried off a pair of shorts (well, mostly) I ventured out at about 2pm.  First on the list was lunch, which I doubled up with a visit to the main uni campus.  It reminded me of Glasgow Uni a bit - a few lovely old buildings mixed with horrible concrete sprawl.  My 80p meal of a ham omelette, satay beef with instant noodles, and tea (sadly with horrible milk - think it might be UHT around here) went down swimmingly, then I continued my ambling around.  On the campus there's a huge sculpture (read about it here) commemorating Tiananmen Square. You wouldn't find anything like that across the border in China, and it's a demonstration that there really is one country with two systems.

There's also a sculpture of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Chinese republic, who was one of the first graduates of what became the uni's medical school.

Again much like Glasgow Uni, the original building has got a bit lost in amongst huge expansion of the university's facilities.  However, it's well worth finding as it's lovely - very colonial - and about 100 years old.

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Uni tour over, I walked along Bonham Road and Caine Road to Caine Lane, sit of the Hong Kong Bacteriological Institute - now the Museum of Medical Science.  35p for students again, and good for a look round.  The place was founded in the middle of the slums, where there was a plague outbreak in 1894 - the cause was still unknown, and with no antibiotics, the mortality was around 75%.  Due to research done in Hong Kong, and other places, Yersin discovered the plague bacteria (yersinia pestis) - or did he?  Apparently some Chinese bloke may have got there first - I'll need to do some reading.  I was also entertained by a sign claming that Traditional Chinese Medicine can cure SARS - again I'll need to check the BMJ for the paper.

The museum gave an interesting background to the places that I'm currently working in - Tung Wah hospital, where I was watching colorectal surgery (it's a glamourous specialty, honestly) today, was founded in 1870 to give the locals combined Chinese and Western medicine to try and allay their fears of the West.  It seems to have done the trick, since the surgical clinics are always full nowadays ^__^  Pictures (L-R): a syphilitic heart and aorta (main blood vessel) - even Dundonian teenagers aren't at risk of these any more thanks to penicillin; preparing smallpox vaccine the old way, featuring a calf tied to a table; and the museum itself - very pretty, and easy to miss tucked away among all the huge tower blocks.

Back on the trail, my plan was to catch the Peak Tram to Victoria Peak, which is waaaaaay up and overlooks Central and the Mid-Levels.  Unfortunately, I hadn't reckoned on Sunday being the day when all of Hong Kong descends on the centre of town.  For starters, it's the only day off for the (mostly) Filipino maids, who all congregate at the parks, fountains, and (bizzarely) under the HSBC building to chat, eat, and play cards.  The queue for the tram was huge, so I figured it was best left for another day.

I crossed over into Hong Kong Park instead - just as the huge aviary was closing, unfortunately, but plenty of time to wander around in the shade and look at all the skyscrapers that surround the place.  There's an Olympic Park, which resembles an ampitheatre (think it's connected to next year's Olympics in Beijing), a conservatory, a museum of teaware (note to Az: I'll bring you back here someday), and a registry office (!) where people get married before the obligatory photos in the park.  At one point I had to make a quarter-mile detour because there was a couple blocking my path while being photographed.  It's a popular place for graduation photos too, though bizzarely these were being taken at the SARS memorial (maybe graduating medics?)

Made it down to Central eventually to look for somewhere to eat, but much like the tram and elsewhere, it was mobbed.  Yummy Kitchen received my custom for yet another night, but not before I'd taken a few more pics on the way.  The statue chap used to run HSBC, and he lives at the base of the HSBC building in Statue Square, which is false advertising if ever I saw it.  He's the only one left, as the Japanese took all the other ones away during WWII.  Speaking of which, the HK cenotaph is right in the middle of all the urban sprawl but still manages to look very dignified in the middle of its patch of grass.  Finally, can this really be a legal registration plate?!

An evaporation miscalculation

I needed to do some washing desperately today (if only so I have shirts and trousers for uni in the coming week), so I threw everything in the machine a wee while back.  I've also made some plans for the day (photos later if I actually carry any of them out).

My load of washing includes all four pairs of shorts that I have with me, so I'm stuck here til they dry >_<

Kowloon

First of all, a picture from the other day - the view from my window/balcony.  It's a nice hill.

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My plan for today was to switch off my alarm clock and sleep til whenever.  There was a lecture on up the road at 10, but since I woke up ten minutes before it started, I decided to sack it.  I was planning to head over to Kowloon anyway, since Cathay Pacific's office is there and they cancelled my flights to Japan (long story!)  Hopped on a bus into Central, and got off at the wrong ferry terminal (oops) so wandered along to the correct one.  Took some photos on the way, including this one of the IFC (International Financial Centre).

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First class (the top deck) on the Star Ferry across the harbour costs the princely sum of HK$2.20 (13p) and gives you great views, both of where you're heading, and more importantly, back across the harbour to Hong Kong Island.  Caught one of the ferries going the other way to give you an idea of what they look like.

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First stop after the ferry pier was a chemist's shop - I'd spent about half an hour in the sun and could feel myself burning already.  Maybe the weather people with their EXTREME sun index weren't lying after all.  Wandered about a shopping mall where I was accosted by various sales assistants who followed me round.  I'm not sure if they were trying to make a sale or suspected me of shoplifting, but never mind.  There was a basketball court set up in the place as part of some promotion with a hoop that was a bit lower than usual - maybe 9 feet?  I've somehow developed hops and can do a two-handed rim grab (more work in the gym to come) and I was SO tempted to dunk on the teeny kids that were playing...

On the way out of the place, two random Asian girls accosted me and asked if I'd mind being interviewed!  Seems like they were doing a business project at school or uni or something, and they quizzed me on my use of noticeboards, and whether I'd buy their Chinese Chess themed one.  First stop proper was the Cathay Pacific offices - flights have been reconfirmed, so I'm actually being allowed out of Hong Kong once I finish here.

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I wandered up the main street in Kowloon (Nathan Road - pictured left and below) which is a comedy mix of malls, topless bars, electronics shops, and pushy Indian men trying to get you to come into their tailor's shop.  Keeping two hands on your camera is a good way to avoid getting a leaflet shoved into your palm ^__^

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Had lunch in a wee Italian coffee place and then finally gave into my desire to purchase camera stuff.  Went to a place that had been recommended online - about 30% cheaper than the UK, and not a tourist trap like so many camera shops around here.

Stopped off to pimp my camera with the bits I'd bought, then went to the HK history museum (below).  I knew a wee bit about the history of the place but it was pretty informative, with some cool displays charting the place from prehistory all the way to the present day.  Well worth the 35p student entrance fee!

(R-L) one of the prehistoric locals; a Chinese wedding procession; crates of opium (empty, I imagine); the Chinese destroying said crates, and starting the Opium wars; and a Chinese tea bar place.  Quite the social hub in the last century, I'm led to believe.

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I hopped on the ferry back across the harbour - got a bit seasick as it landed (am I turning into my mother?!) as it was quite choppy, then wandered through posh malls and bridges over the streets to the "social" bit of central.  I wandered around and failed to find the place I'd identified in my guidebook for tea.  I was quite tempted to stop for a drink to watch some of the cricket but most places seemed expensive and there wasn't anywhere showing most Scots' least favourite sport - I put TMS on when I got in and (surprise!) it had been rained off all morning.  On the way home I went via the curious contraption on the right - the Mid-Levels escalator.  Built in the 90s in an attempt to reduce traffic congestion (it failed spectacularly) it's a collection of escalators and travelators that take you from the middle of town up to the main residential areas above Central.  It runs downhill every morning, then uphill for the rest of the day, passing over the streets below.

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There was a rather spectacular collection of cars (left) outside one of the hotels in central, sporting two Mercs, an Aston, a Ferrari and a Porsche.  Right enough, Hong Kong does have the highest number of Rolls-Royces per head of population worldwide, or something.  The Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon (wandered past there earlier - a great big colonial structure, where the local garrison surrendered to the Japs during WWII) keeps a fleet of them for the use of their guests.  Apparently afternoon tea can be had in the lobby for about a tenner.  I'm sorely tempted to go and live like a colonial toff for an hour or two *^_^*

Got the minibus back up the road (think a taxi with 16 seats - hail it in the street, then shout at the driver when you want to get off further up the route) and had dinner in my usual haunt of Yummy Kitchen since it's cheap and tasty.  I thought they'd buggered up my order the other day (I'd ordered "braised chicken in a Swiss sauce", mainly to find out what was Swiss about it, then got a plate of chicken wings) so I ordered the same thing again.  Surprise (lots of these today) - along came more chicken wings!

I took 130 photos today - I don't know how my poor laptop is going to cope.  Might need to buy an external hard drive to stick them all on or something...

And for my next trick: photos

Alright, so my Dad has been asking for pictures.  Here's a few, all taken with my phone - not bad quality, I'm sure you'll agree.

Went to bed last night about 9pm, having been up for roughly one full day.  Slept pretty much straight through til 6am, which was nice considering the jetlag-fueled insomnia of the past few days.  Alarm was set for 6:30, but I figured I might as well get up.  Wandered up to to Queen Mary for the 7:30am meeting, and took this shiny pic of the hospital on the way (right):

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Surgical pathology was the topic of this meeting.  Biiiiiig mistake - twenty shades of purple wouldn't be able to recreate most of the slides I had to sit through.  Think I might give this one a miss in future.  Went for breakfast - chicken teriyaki sandwich and a bottle of this strange purple Chinese beverage:

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Got a taxi over to Tung Wah for the morning PBL teaching with Prof Patil (nice chap, who again doesn't seem to know much Cantonese - perhaps the adage about surgeons not bothering to talk to patients is true?)  Felt some hernias, was amazed by the 52-bed ward and was told by the locals that they were taking me to a "traditional Chinese restaurant"

Not unlike a Chinese at home, though a bit more hectic with all the business types needing a quick lunch.  I just about managed with chopsticks, though thin and slippery things (more on that later) are still quite challenging.  We had dim sum, most of which was tasty, and socially acceptable to a westerner like me.  I especially liked the shrimp thingies, dumpings, and spring rolls.  Then came the tripe.  Oh yes, cow's stomach was lapped up by everyone at the table, and I, of course, had to try some.  If you ever fancy eating something that tastes horrible, and has a texture something like a hard rubber band, I can recommend it highly.  It was nice to see some "proper" Chinese food though.  Picture (don't know quite what I'm so terrified by):

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Afternoon in theatre was spent in the company of the prof, four students, and three hernias (two on the same person).  One of our medical student party (who shall remain nameless) entertained us all by taking so long to scrub up that the operation was nearly done by the time he arrived at the table.  I got to scrub for the second hernia repair, got to hold a spermatic cord, then was allowed to go when two proper doctors arrived and made me completely surplus to requirements.

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No afternoon teaching, so I wandered down into Central for the first time - mental doesn't even begin to describe it.  I needed an Octopus card so I could use the bus and put an end to this taxi nonsense - they're fairly cheap (£2.50 from one hospital to another) but not as cheap as the bus (35p).  Did that, then had a look around.  Found the first places that my mum and dad would go, were they ever to visit Hong Kong.  Can you guess which is which?

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(Not sure if the second one is too clear - it's Marks and Sparks, not some random road junction ^__^)

Sitting in front of my laptop now, listening to Test Match Special (I'm a cricket geek and proud).  Following my harrowing lunch experience, I'm craving Western food so, of course, I'm off down the road for a McDonalds.

Let's do the time warp again

So let's be honest...jet lag is rubbish.  I'd use a stronger word than that, but I'm reliably informed that relatives well past pensionable age are planning to read this blog.

Slept for some of yesterday (Tuesday) evening (though I did make it out for dinner at Yummy Kitchen down the road), then proceeded to be awake all night.  Got up a few times to read, do random things on the net and have a drink of water, but save a 90-minute spell about 1am, I managed no sleep whatsoever.

After lying awake til 5:30, I decided I might as well get up as my alarm was set for 6:30.  Chatted to Leigh on MSN for a bit, had a shower, and wandered up to Queen Mary (the gigantic hospital up the road) for the surgeons' 7:30am meeting.  Why do they like to start so early?!  All a bit boring, really - just an audit thing on recent surgical deaths - mostly horrible brain haemorrhages.  Meant I was up and about and doing stuff, though.

Via the canteen for a coffee (a word that I'm glad is included the average local's English vocabulary) and a brief encounter in a corridor with someone from Uddingston, I went to the general surgery teaching clinic.  The Prof and I knew about as much Cantonese as each other, so the local students took histories from the patients, then we all examined them.  All lumps and bumps - hernias, lipomas and sebaceous cysts - exactly the kind of core surgery that I didn't learn on the vascular ward in Dundee.  There was a wannabe medic there, shadowing from school - just finished his GCSEs.  The look on his face when he had to watch a digital rectal examination was priceless.

The other guys were dead friendly and invited me for lunch with them.  We needed to go across town to Tung Wah Hospital (a bit smaller, and where all the day-case general surgery is based) and they suggested we eat near there.  So we hopped in a taxi and ended up in a wee buffet place, which like lots of the restaurants around here serves a mad collision of East and West.  I ordered a chicken curry pizza, which was almost exactly the size of a 10p piece, but with toppings a foot thick (I may be exaggerating slightly, but it was very small), while the other guys had some pasta thing.  The buffet bit, which was sort of a salad bar arrangement, had tomatoes, onion, and peas (which I thought a bit of a bizzare choice) along with pineapple, floury balls that I thought were tatties, and a few other things that I didn't like the look of.  One particular item, a sort of shiny yellow sheet-like thing, was on everyone's plate except mine.  Naturally, I got asked to try some before they'd reveal what it was.  A Hong Kong delicacy, apparently.  Sort of rubbery and gelatinous, without much flavour to it.  Can you guess what it was?

Why, the subcutaneous layer of a pig, of course!  Apparently the people round here can eat every part of a pig - including the blood, which they seemed to think was something I'd find impressive...until I told them about black pudding.  Mentioned haggis too, which they found intriguing.

Afternoon was another general surgery clinic, but not as good for me as almost everything was done in Cantonese.  Saw some more lumps and bumps, mainly, and we escaped before we were able to watch someone's haemorrhoids being banded - yum.

Finished off with a lecture back at Queen Mary on ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease - both relative rarities over here, apparently, but core knowledge for us.  Not that that means I actually know anything about them ^__^

And that is that - an 10.5 hour day.  Some of the student teaching around here is on Saturdays and Sundays too - mentalists...

Hong Kong

I only really got a Vox account so I could comment on Az's blog, but then I started writing a huge comment that I figured might as well be a blog entry.  So here we are in Hong Kong - arrived last night at 7ish after plane delays and a missed flight.  Think BA managed to secure a fire sale of prawns - prawn salad for lunch, then prawn stir fry for dinner.  Slept through most of my flight to HK - kinda handy leaving at 11 at night.

Got the bus into the city after I landed in Hong Kong - nice shiny bridges and good views of the city on the way in.  Decided I'd walk the last bit of the way - biiiiiiiig mistake.  Gwei-lo bodies aren't made for carrying two bags in the summer heat.

Ahh, the heat.  HK is absurdly, absurdly hot at the minute.  As I type this at 1:30, it's 31^oC and 75% humidity outside.  Mercury hit 34^o yesterday - severe weather warnings and all sorts.  I walked up to the hospital this morning before the sun really got going, and arrived sweating just slightly.  Met the woman in the Surgery office, who spoke comedy English, and then got told that instead of being based at the place five minutes up the road, I'm 45min across town instead - for three weeks anyway.  The walk home (downhill) made me sweat buckets and the first thing I do when I get in is throw most of my clothes on the floor.  I have air conditioning in my room which keeps the place at a positively Antarctic 19^oC but more importantly stops it being so humid.

I've somehow managed to forget a towel (I'm SURE I remember packing it) and also a hoodie that I intended bringing, but there's no way I'll ever need that.  Wandered into Kennedy Town and bought a couple of towels, a water bottle and some other stuff that I needed.

Now I'm sitting in my chair, contemplating having a shower before I meet my supervisor at 3.  I doubt he'll want to meet someone who smells like I currently do, having walked home up a 45^o incline in the midday sun.