A short announcement

For those who read my blog, I’ve an announcement to make.

I’ll stop blogging till further notice.

Thank you for your support and reading my blog on a regular basis.

Yours truly, Ken

When keys meet strings

My gf send me this link yesterday night and I haven’t stop watching it seen, downloaded the clip and I’m just amazed at how he (Jon Schmidt, the guy playing the piano) manage to improvise the score for the piano, cello and the drum. Maybe after the exam, I’ll download the score and try to improvise the score for a piano duet since neither gf or me can play the cello..

Hope you guys enjoy the video as much as i do..

p/s : Enjoying the 4 days break, resting and slowly starting to prepare for finals.. Sorry for the absence for so long.

Photography Exhibition 2009

Photography Club CSMU is organizing the 2nd annual photo exhibition. This time we’ll be featuring a total of 30 pics, I’ll update this post with some pics of our exhibition when it kicks off next Friday.

Yours truly will be printing the pictures tmrw morning, while the new president will be buying the frames and etc. By the way, I stepped down as the president 2 months ago. Well for those of you who are here, do have a look at our pictures. All comments are appreciated.

Photography Club CSMU 2009

Shot with 2 x 430 EX fired off camera, try guessing where the flash was placed if you can =P

Till then.. Sorry for the lack of updates, been really busy lately. Will try to write as soon as I’ve the time.

A ‘traumatic’ weekend

As all of you might have known, I had such a week due to a coward joker who imposed me and left a comment at POTS blog. God bless you, for who you know you are, you really need it.

I would like to share something with all of you, my gf sent this to me when I was facing this problem and it did help to calm me down and think carefully how to face this problem. Here it is, written by Daisaku Ikeda, a prominent figure in the buddhist world.

” One cannot become a starring player in life if one is easily swayed by one’s emotions over every little thing. Strength of character lies in performing the drama of life with courage and confidence, practicing self-reflection and self-control under any circumstances. “

I would once again like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to my family members and gf who have been so supportive of me, my friends for believing in me, and to YOU, thank you for making me realised that I’m so lucky to have such great people around me, and teaching me such a valuable lesson in life.

Clarification!!

There is a imposer out there, leaving comments under my name. I’m not the person who left a comment in POTS blog, to prove that I’m not that person, I’ve the following points to clarify:

1. I didn’t participate in the Amazing race, and I’ve no idea what the participants did.

2. I’ve no idea that See Choo is doing haircuts.

3. I’ve no idea that there is a prom poster in 4th hostel till I read the comment left by the imposer.

4. I didn’t sit for STPM and where does the 3A1B comes from? Same applies for the MUET band 5.

5. I’m not familiar with taekwando at all.

6. I’m not a racist and never comment on other religions. I’ve been blogging for 3 years plus and never once I’ve wrote anything about any religion.

Based on the above points, dear readers, please don’t get the wrong idea from the imposer. I’ve no idea who is him and what is he up to. Thank you.

*Updates : 1. Palmdoc has clarified the issue on MMR and has posted links to my blog.

2. POTS has posted a new entry regarding this issue. Read it here!

Confessions of a CSMU student

I got a blog link from gf, and it was a malaysian doctor’s blog, sharing his opinion on how incompetent ukrainian & russian graduates are. Well after reading, I beg to differ in some points :

1. First & foremost, the universities over here in Ukraine & Russia are well established in the European region, we’ve many professors who’re well known with their research, there are also excellent teachers & doctors over here, always willing to share, BUT.. as my ‘mentor’ always says, there are bad apples everywhere. Of course there are lazy & irresponsible teachers over here. You can’t just brand the university for not providing good medical education.

2. Students wise, and I would repeat, there are bad apples everywhere, and of course we’ve excellent students over here, who always score high in their exams, qualify for viva just like any other top scorer in local universities. We’ve graduates who received research grant, and one of them just received his PHD at the young age of 29. On the other hand we definitely have lazy students over here who doesn’t want to study & prepare for classes. I’m just trying to say, it’s unfair to criticize the university just because of some students.

3. I’m not too sure of the situation in Malaysia now, maybe some of my seniors made mistakes serious enough to cause the death of a patient, but still that don’t mean the following batch of graduates would be the same. I’m not trying to defend my university’s reputation, because I believe there is pros & cons of every other university.

MMC might have their own reason for derognizing us, be it political or they really think my university is incompetent. But if  CSMU is really that incompetent, why recognize us in the 1st place? I thought the recognition of a university is a tedious process, requiring a certain amount of time and observation, and after 5 years of recognizing, the council tell us our univeristy is below par?

As quoted from the link :

“Most of them don’t know pharmacology or physiology.

Most can’t perform simple clinical procedures like urinary catheterization and intravenous cannulation.

Most can’t deliver acute care to a patient in distress.

They are not well-versed with common medical terms and classifications.

In short, they are a different breed altogether.”

In certain ways I do agree with you, some of us here are really weak and incompetent, but as I’ve mentioned earlier on, not all of us are like that. I hope I didn’t offend you by quoting your post, and my intention of this post is just to clarify certain matters but not find fault with you. I should thank you for pointing out to us  the mistakes of our seniors so we still can learn more while we still can.

I believe that as long as one has the right attitude, aptitude, and necessary skills, experiences and with of course with hard work, no matter which medical university one graduates from, one can be a good doctor.

Research period..

    Sorry for the long absence, my wound is healing well, and everything is fine over here.

   Yours truly will be participating in a infectious disease (ID) conference organized by the district hospital over here. Will be presenting a topic on HIV, handed in my presentation to my teacher last week, and will be having a rehearsal with her next wednesday. On the other hand, I’m starting a research on pediatrics neurosurgery, intracranial hemorrhage in premature new borns & pterional access in craniocerebral trauma, planning to attend a international medical congress in Antwerp, Belgium in September. Abstract final submission date would be 30th June, hope I would complete the research in time.

 

   Finals will commence in June, and there will be 5 subjects this semester, which is internal medicine, peadiatrics, surgery, infectious disease, obstetrics & gynecology, looks like I”ll be having a tough few months ahead. Wish me luck ppl!

   A bit worried for gf as she’s facing problems with her summer elective posting, MMC came out with a stupid policy stating that all malaysians studying in russian universities MUST complete their elective postings in Russia itself. They’ve no idea how many problems will arise due to this policy, airticket, visas, passports the list goes on & on.. Sigh, as expected from malaysian authorities…

I’ve finished processing the pics that I took in Rome, but the travelouge won’t be up so soon I guess, but for the pics, you can head over to my flickr gallery, the link is on the right hand side of the page. Till then…

A break

Yours truly went through a minor surgery 2 days ago. For privacy reason, I won’t be stating what surgery I went through. So I won’t be blogging for the time being as I’ll need some time to recover.

Till then, and Happy Women’s Day to all the females out there!

Unfairness..

7 years ago, it happened for the 1st time,

Every year after that I faced the same thing,

And yet today it happened again..

I believe in everyone’s life, you’ll face something that you’re unhappy of, unsatisfied of, and you think you deserve better. And I do think I deserve better too..

Winter Europe Trip 2009 Pt II (Venice-Bologna-Florence)

As promised, this is the 2nd part of my winter europe trip travelogue.

Arrival in Venice Treviso airport

We landed in Venice Treviso airport in the evening, waited for a couple of minutes to collect my backpack, got our bus tickets from the Treviso airport to the town center. The journey took us around 1hour plus. We were kind of lost when we reached the town center. Venice is known as the city on water, but I see no water at all even after I stepped down from the bus. We asked around for directions on how to get to our hostel, and started our painful slow walk to the hostel. Slowly canals, gondalas & valprotties ( boats ) started appearing and then I knew, I was in the real Venice.

Our hostel were situated in a strategic location, with a valprottie station just outside but we didn’t know for the first time, so it took almost 1 hour for us to find our hostel, settled our payment and had a short rest. Then we went out hunting for dinner as it was getting really late. We found a shop and tasted ‘real’ italian food, pasta, spaggeti & lagsania, and it was consider cheap, €5.80 for a plate with your selection of 2 different pastas. Yours truly had a feast that night =P  We stroll around after our dinner and decided to go back as all of us were tired.

2 in 1 dish, well worth the price and it’s delicious =)

The next day, we bought the 3 days pass for the valprottie ( public transport in venice ) As we’re still students, we couldn’t afford the more luxurious gondala ( taxi equaivalent for land transport ) My other half and me decided to spilt up with our 2 friends and we took the valprottie which went over the whole island. It was really amazing to see a whole city built on water, although some of the buildings had some algae growing on them..

Taken on the valprottie ride around the  island

After a whole big round, we got down in the main station ( San Marco square ) had our lunch and met up with our friends. San Marco square is the famous tourist attraction spot. Gf took her time looking for souviniers and bought a mask in the end. I took a couple of pics but I think it’s not that nice. We continued walking, and as ppl always say, you’ll definitely get lost in Venice. True enough, both of us got lost even with the map because the street names are really confusing. We decided since that we got lost, might as well walk blindly around. I found a few fantastic spots and took some pics. Really love how it turn out to be..

Taken during our ‘lost’ journey

We found a coffee+sandwich shop  which served real good coffee and in fact I had the best time in Italy tasting different type of coffee.. FYI yours truly is a coffee lover.

Looks tempting right? It taste real good =P

I wouldn’t elaborate the tourist attractions on details as you would be able to read it off any other tourist information sites or you could buy a lonely planet guide.. We went around looking for train tickets as our next destination was Rome. We wanted to stopped by Pisa for the Leaning tower and a direct train from Venice-Pisa-Rome would cost a bomb. After numerous tries on the ticket vending machine, we managed to work out a cheaper alternative. We’ll be stopping by Bologna, Florence & Pisa and then only to Rome. Bad news was we’ll have to wait for 6 hours in Pisa and our train to Rome was at 2am in the morning. We bought our ticket from Venice-Bologna-Florence, and from Florence-Rome from the machine and the we decided to buy the ticket from Florence-Pisa in Florence just in case we needed more time in Florence.

Us in the train

As it was just a brief stopover in Bologna, we got down the train for toilet break, took some pics and hop onto another train to Florence. Saw a real Lamborghini for the 1st time in my life, it was really gorgeous.

Back & front view of Larmborghini

Footsteps in Bologna

We had our dinner in one of the fast food restaurants and went back to the train station to buy our tickets from Florence-Pisa. We arrived in Pisa around 8.30pm and started walking to the leaning tower. I’ll continue with the pics in the next part. Stay tuned ..

p/s : Head over to my flickr gallery for more higher resolution pics..