Moscow!

I was going to write the other day, cursing Michael Carrick for handling the ball needlessly in the dying minutes of the Chelsea game, but now since we're through to Moscow for the Champions League final and him doing an OK job in this morning Champions League game, I forgive him :D Anyway the next 3 games will define Man Utd season - champion or the first of the losers. My prediction: Champion. I'm so totally not biased.
I've been busy lately trying to catch-up on my schoolwork and guess what, my ward is still closed down because of that virus and I had to scavenge the other ward for my cases for two weeks now. I haven't finished those schoolwork yet but I thought I take a breather and write something. Today, I'm going to share a recipe called 'ayam masak hitam' or chicken cooked-black which I attempted to cook yesterday. Odd name but it was spicy and the taste was OK too, I guess, as I didn't get to taste the food that much since I was the last too eat that night and my flatmates had scraped most of the sauce leaving me with just the chicken. The dish was served with long-grain white rice, and prawn and cabbage tom-yam soup. The recipe is modified from Resepi RR Resepi:
Serving size: 4 male
Ingredient: 8 chicken drumstick, turmeric powder, cooking oil, 2 large onion, 1.5 tbsp chili powder, 4 tbsp oyster sauce, soy sauce (sweet and salty), water.
Method:
1. Roll chicken drumstick in tumeric powder. Fry until golden brown. Lift and set aside.
2. With new cooking oil, simmer diced onion until soft.
3. Add chilli powder and simmer until aromatic (='wangi' - I have no idea of the word in English to translate this Malay word when used in describing cooking method.)
4. Add the fried chicken, water (1/8 cup), oyster sauce and soy sauce. Soy sauce is added until the gravy turns black. Fry until gravy is thick.

Strike ended

The argument against the strike was that such action would:
1. harm patients
2. degrade trust between docs and patient
3. destroy the image of medics as an altruistic profession
4. placing patient as 'ransom'
5. docs are already overpaid
One of of my teachers here proposed that the strike action should be considered in an utilitarian light, which means if the long-term benefit far outweigh the short-term damages then the action can be justified. I totally agree with him (I'm sure he's not reading this blog - I'm not looking for favours here :D) and I felt halting brain drain is better in the long-term than the inconvenience of a 48-hour strike. Malaysia too is suffering from brain-drain, in fact it is far worse than NZ. 4 years ago, a Malaysian public health officer told me that the turnover of doctor from public health service to private sector or oversea is 1 doctor per day! I'm pretty sure the trends remain more or less the same. The problem is further exacerbated by the stop-gap measures taken to fill the void created. One of them is restricting specialist training in Malaysia in order to ensure there are enough junior doctors around. This only result in more turnovers as junior doctors are drove out due to poor prospect. NB: My knowledge on Malaysian health system were mostly anecdotes from people who used to work/studied there and is dated to at least 1-2 years ago. Recently, a pay rise were given to civil servant in Malaysia including doctors, which saw them gaining a quite significant increase in wage. However, the housemanship (internship) years were extended to 2 years as there were quite a number of high profile cases of medical misadventure during election year.
Some idea taken from:
Frizelle, F. Is it ethicals for doctors to strike? NZ med J 2006; 119(1236):1-2

Photo taken from http://www.engrish.com/ and is copyrighted to them.

RMO strike continued

I felt the repercussion of the strike today as one of my class was canceled because there wasn't enough workforce. Continuing from the last entry, with the mounting debt and low wages, most NZ graduates ends up leaving the country, mostly to Australia due to the fact that NZ graduate could work straight away there without requiring to undergo any examination, or doing locum. In the end result, the health service ends up with shortages of medical personnel while those on locum used to fill these gaps were generally more expensive (3x normal wage) and recruitment drive targeting foreign doctors also drains money. To stop this trend, RDA felt that wage increase is needed to help retain doctors. In my opinion, NZ may not be able to match the wage that Australia or other richer countries are offering to their doctors but with the modest increase, it should help to ease the burden of student loan debt and facilitate retaining those who do wish to stay but were forced to because of financial restrain. There is nothing that could be done to those who do wish to go oversea for the money. It is also good to note that not many medics are in it for the money, in fact, I think it is foolish to do so as the money isn't here and with the intellectual prowess most medics have, other professions are better suited for that.

Some of public opinion on the RMO strike on NZHerald: Here

--- to be continued.

Yeah, I prefer Camel too:

Not. Some docs do smoke though and my colleagues and classmates do - in fact one of the surgeon i know who-amputate-legs-of-smokers smoke (not for fun but because their legs are stuffed - smoking cause your blood vessel to block off esp at the legs), so it's not surprising with all those anti-smoking adverts and campaign out there, smoking remain prevalent in the society.

busy

I don't think it is feasible for me to post daily - something worthwile that is - as I do actually need to study...Anyway, today about 2000 junior doctors all over NZ went on strike and a further 24 hours will be taken tomorrow. Despite this, there has been plan on another strike sometime in May as discussion between RDA (Residential Doctor Association = Junior Doctor union) and DHB (District Health Board = semi-autonomous organizations formed by the NZ government to distribute the funding and provision of health services in their respective district) broke down. Reactions of the public here has been divisive where some has supported it while others seemed disgusted. The RDA justification of striking is stop the retention problem of NZ doctors in NZ. Compared with the wages in other developed countries (NZ considered themselve developed), NZ docs is grossly underpaid. As tertiary education is usually funded by taking loan, most NZ medical student graduate with atleast NZ100,000 of debt.

--to be continued. getting late...

Norovirus

The hospital ward I'm attached to is currently suffering from norovirus outbreak and thus students are forbidden to enter there. Even though norovirus infection isn't normally fatal, especially for a young and healthy guy like me, it can be fatal to those frail elderly at the ward I'm working in. With the strike by the junior doctors tomorrow, I don't know if it will be worthwile turning up tomorrow.

Not in the zone

Nothing new today I'm afraid. But I did come across this quite intriguing youtube video (embedded below) and had a look at the original version and I learnt that the music used in those Urban Ninja video I posted in several entries before this were music soundtrack of the movie the Last of the Mohicans. The music is called Gael according to the comments on YouTube.
I no longer use torrent or P2P to get my music as they are all freely available on YouTube. If a YouTube video finish streaming, the flv file (format of the video) is automatically saved in "temporary internet file" which can be copied, renamed to have .flv extension added on and by using a software, rip the soundtrack off the video and recorded into a new mp3 file.

Theme

Last night, while having trouble sleeping, my mind started racing as usual, usually on random stuffs and one of them is a thought on the blog and here it is - the theme of the blog. I need to stop randomly write and has some direction and purpose and so I came up with this theme: what I learn today. Its nothing spectacular and could be pretty random too but the whole idea is to jot down something new that I did that day. Its the whole self-improvement thing as well as with this theme, I could achieve:
1. Revision
2. Review and reflect
3. Just to make the list long and impressive
On another note, I was going to write about the impending RMO (Residential Medical Officers - to you laymen outthere, junior doctors, I said j-u-n-i-o...kidding) strike this coming Tuesday but I didn't have enough information on it (my Internet connection has been slowed down due to overuse but will be fast again tomorrow). There will be a post on it in the future - largely on ethical issues surrounding it I guess, we'll see what I come up with. Anyway, I'm going to bed early tonight so I could wake up early to cheer on my team at 4 am. Man Utd for the double. In the meanwhile, Yo!: (I nicked the photo off a blog, the credit is in the source)

Nothing important

I have to admit, I can't concentrate on anything - its like I have ADHD or something - and so there has yet to be any consistency in my writing exercise yet. So before going to bed tonight, I'll kick start the exercise with this totally pointless post.
I did made progress on my reading of that Michael Legat book and the book goes on describing the qualities a good writer: discipline, stamina, a love of words and a feeling for them, imagination, experience (knowing the subjects helps), observation (according to authors: writers are observers), something to say, dissatisfaction (with own work), self-confidence (of your own work), selfishness (eg setting aside time for writing), and professional attitude. The qualities that I have: discipline (no), stamina (no), a love blabla (no), imagination (everybody has this -according to the author. this point is elaborated further in the book at a part which I have not read yet), experience (depends - too long to elaborate tonight), observation (yes), something to say (yes), dissatisfaction (greatly yes), self-confidence (scarce - I deleted the previous edition of this blog out of shame of the content), selfishness (yes), professional attitude (huh?).

Flexing

I finally shrug off a cold that's been bugging me since last Thursday and head off to Hanmer Spring today for a hot water pool bath. Hanmer Spring is the only hot water pool that I knew existed in South Island, NZ, and with it only 1.5 hrs drive away, it was the place to go when one ran out of ideas of places to go. Nothing special there, I must say, and its not that relaxing as the place is buzzing with people (for NZ standard that is, if in Malaysian standard it's like omg, so few) but still a good escape from my cold and damp flat (no wonder the flat's cheap!!). So anyway, I went with several flatmates and we just spent the whole afternoon bathing there and picnic and prayer at this park below called Dog Stream Park (weird name):

This part of the entry may perhaps be the most beneficial to you readers out there as I am about to impart my feeble knowledge here, see it is as a token from me rewarding your perseverance in reading this entry this far. Steam inhalation has been thought to relieve the common cold and I was going to use this idea to convince one of my flatmate who caught a cold from me (muahahaha) to join the trip. But, I did some research and behold, according to BMJ (British Medical Journal) Clinical Evidence, there is not enough evidence from clinical trial to suggest whether steam inhalation has any effect on reducing the severity or length of the common cold. Clinical trials that were referred to in this report showed mixed result - some showed very modest benefit of steam inhalation while others showed no benefit at all. Meta-analyses (analysis of result of clinical trials by pooling them together) could not be done because of heterogeneity of study population, different method of assessment and poor reporting by some trials. Other information that might be useful:

Treatments that might be beneficial in common cold: antihistamine (only at reducing symptom of running nose), and decongestant (short-term relief of congestive symptoms)

Treatments with unknown effectiveness: analgesics, anti-inflammatory, echinacea, and zinc

Treatments that is unlikely to be beneficial: vitamin C

Treatments likely to be ineffective and possibly harmful: antibiotic

Exercise

You might have come across this before in this blog but I intend to repeat it here again, my act of blogging is one of the several avenues I have taken to overcome my addictions to other things, ie. worthless hobbies. As part of the rehabilitation, I also resorted to return to reading books and as the saying goes "to kill two birds with one stone" - I've started reading writing for pleasure and profit the revised edition written by Michael Legat. It is really an ancient book - published in 1993 - as the first chapter starts off with describing tools a writer might require and one of them is a typewriter. A typewhat? Exactly, its ancient! But the book is free - I nicked it off my dad's shelf - and writing is a skill I intend to master one day, so I thought it might be worthwhile reading. And by the way, I only finished reading the first few paragraphs of the first chapter, so don't judge the book effects on my writing just yet. In those few paragraphs I read, it described writing as a craft and like all crafts, one could only master through practice. Just like muscles, the writing minds when used regularly will works wells and painlessly but when used rarely it becomes awkward and stiff. A good way to exercise - see what I did there, still connected to the muscle analogy - is to just write down whatever come across your mind. As these exercises turns to habit, writing will become second nature to you. So, be warn readers, I will used this blog as a mean to exercise. Not that it will be any different - as my blog has been on the whole an incoherent mumblings - but it will be much worse as I from now on intend to write more often in this blog. Preferably daily. As if.....





On a different note, here are some panoramic photos of Christchurch (NZ) I would like to share. There are serious flaws in these photo and could serve as tips to those amatuer panoramic photographers (like me). All these were taken using a camera which has no panoramic function and the software used was Adobe Photoshop CS 2. All photos have been scaled down to 30 - 50% of original size. The first one is a photo of Sumner beach. This one isn't that bad.


The second one, also on Sumner beach is pretty bad - the waves in the middle of photo split making it unrealistic. Tips: 2 separate photo of an ocean cannot be used in panoramic photo.

Finally, this is a scenery from Summit Road. Down the valley is part of Christhurch city. Lots of faults in this photo too - find it yourself. Note to self - research on panoramic photo.

Easter break

For 4 years running now, I've spent the start of my easter break by attending the Canterbury University and Otago University Muslim Student Association (MUSA)'s brother camp. The camp, one of the two main annual activities run by these organisations, was held this year at Iona Camp, Herbert just 20 minutes drive from Oamaru. It is held for university students and aimed at building ukhuwwah (brotherhood ties) among the muslim students as well as being a learning opportunity to further develop knowledge on Islam. Almost for 4 years running - coincidentally I was one of the organizing committee for the first two - the format of the camp hasn't changed much: The camp starts with team building activities followed by lunch then a lecture then sport and the first day is capped by a barbie (down-under slang for bbq) and night quiz. The following day start with fajar lecture followed by sport and the camp is finished by a lecture. I joined the camp this year mainly to meet up old friends from Dunedin but I found the lectures were quite stimulating as well. Going along the theme "Muslims in the West", the first lecture outlines the behaviour, the attitude, the preparation and the duties that a Muslim is advised to adopt to live in such environment. Of significant interest to me is the idea that as a Muslim here, da'wah should be one of those inherent duties Muslim actively pursue even if it is just portraying oneself as a Muslim. The second lecture reminded the brothers at the camp on the essence of our prayers to Allah in that they are glorification and rememberance of Him and should not be treated as rituals, a practice one can fall into. The lecturer eloquently quoted a beautiful analogy from a famous Muslim scholar (whom I could not recall his name or his work - I'll get back to this later) for his lecture. Anyway, after leaving the camp satisfied with the enlightenment and good company, we were joined by a group of Dunedinites and head off to Oamaru's penguin colony (bottom photo: bottom-right). We came too early to see any penguin as they only return from fishing during Maghrib so we head down south to Moeraki Boulders (top photo). We finished our 2nd day at Dunedin. Before heading back to Christchurch on our 3rd day, we showed our newly arrived friend Dunedin. As usual, Baldwin St, the world steepest street would be one of the destination (bottom photo: top left). Another site to visit in Dunedin is Signal Hill Lookout (bottom photo: bottom left). Finally, we also sneaked to the Albatross Colony at the Otago Peninsula - a 30 minutes drive from central Dunedin but there was admission charge at NZD15 - a price too steep for me to just see birds :D, so we didn't spent much time there.

The other photo showed the Cookie Time mascot wall mural at Cookie Time factory at Templeton located at the outskirt of Christchurch. It made what was once the largest cookie in the world, a record only recently broken. The cookie is no longer there though.

the return

OK, I'm back and so many things happened in the past 1 month. I wasn't able to post anything in the past month as my ISP exchange crashed which resulted in excrutiatingly slow internet connection. Anyway, there was the Malaysian GE, and I must admit I am surprised (and somewhat pleased) by the result. Good luck to those involved. On the personal level, I finished my run and spent my easter break at the Canterbury and Otago Muslim Student Association (MUSA)'s Brother Camp. The camp held at Iona Camp, Herbert was 2 days 1 night long and we spent the other day of the break at Dunedin. I'm not in the mood in writing anymore here, this entry is just to get the momentum of writing get going again. There's something wrong with the image uploader, so no photo yet.