im back wohooo

Finally, I have recovered. I was struck down by organism small enough that microscopes can't see them. Most people would call my previous 3 day experience a 'cold'. It all started with a sore throat at the endocrine clinic leading up to cough at the lectures then a fever after bedside teaching followed by chills early evening and culminates with headache and lethargy later on. What makes it worse was the timing. I was ordered to finish a textbook during this week and have to hand in my patient report on Friday. The report is easy peasy to get a passing mark but my consultant want a distinction from me, so he wanted a report of a textbook standard. He could be just fooling around when he said that to me, but I have to be safe. Taxpayers money is at stake. hahaha. More stress to weaken my immune system.

GP

Time flies and another run is coming to an end. GP run was interesting and it did gave me quite valuable insight on the workings of GPs in NZ. It does cast a stark difference between GP practice in Malaysia and NZ. The former is more impersonal, detached and more of a quick-fix approach while the latter tends to be the opposite. Which one is better? I dont know. Circumstances are different for both countries. NZ is only 4 mil people compared to 25 mil of Msia, which translates to different time and resource pressures. But anecdotal experience suggest the NZ approach brings out better patient satisfaction and this measure is perhaps the best in demonstrating which system is better.

bored

In the highly unlikely scenario where someone would have read and remembered anything from this blog, you may recall that I blogged about how my time managamenet was f****d messed up. Then one day an old friend asked me, do you still play video games? Sheepishly I replied yes. Because in that instance I remembered how I vowed to cut down the games yet i did the reverse. It got me thinking, ' now that is the culprit behind my bad time management'. At least one of them anyway. So, the instance I got back home, I flicked on the laptop and uninstall my games one-by-one until there was one. Dota/WC3 remains. Its a multiplayer game anyway so I figured it wouldn't be that often I can play that game. So 1 day later, I suddenly found myself with ample of free time. How boring was my life, a life entertained by computer games and when that is gone I find myself bored because no computer games to keep me entertained. Ive grown dependent on it I guess. A substitute hobby need to be found. Movies, books, arts, writing is the way for me I guess. Getting back in da'wah field would be good too (well its a must actually hehe). Having said all this, is going cold turkey good or should i had eased it off gradually? We'll see. Stay tune.

Lonely

Hahaha. Looks like Im the only one visiting this blog. Sooo lonely. I am a quiet guy so it is a consequent of that I suppose. Yet I hate being lonely. Damn. What the f**** Im blabbin about, being soppy and sh**. I will look back at this entry and would think, damnnn, I need to delete this.

bandwidth eater

Everybody should think YouTube is great. It's now my source of pirated music. A firefox plugin called videodownloader and a software called flvsplitter then allowed me to download the videos and be played with windows media player along with files of other format. So thats pretty cool. But if you have just got an mp3 player installed in your car, they wont play flv and all your latest musics needed to be converted to mp3. Flv to mp3 converter? I found an online version: vixy.net Paste url of the video on vixy.net, it then convert the video to mp3 and downloads to your PC. Cool eh. This is a pretty long entry just to say: check this website out. haha

Regression

I'm not that busy. Just poor time management. Then, it suddenly struck me, I wasn't like this back in college, nor was in high school. Always got my assignment done, prepared well for tests and yet still manage to nick in time for soccer, games and minor socialising. I thought, with age and experience, there's always one way to go, that is improvement. But yet, here I am, regress to a point where I live like I was in lower high school years. Indulged in feeble entertainment such computer games, TV series and excessive soccer, I found myself lacking in areas I should be investing more time in. Academically mediocre when distinction should be aimed for, disengagement in da'wah when it is fard, distant when socialising is better, these are the norms for me for the past year. So, this is like a wake up call for me. Change and be like a 23 year old Muslim should be.
As I am keying in this post, my mind sort of wandered on how did I regress like this. But, then I figured, its better if I pondered on how I was able to function at higher level before. And the first thing that came to my mind was the effect of people around me. I always had people who would push me, or rather inspire me. Friends at school or my parent, they were there and the inspiration could be subtle, but it worked. I guess here in NZ, I have grown out my friends here and have got used to them to be no longer inspired. No offense. But then again, my social circle for the past 2-3 years here have been rather limited. Since I would be stuck like this for the next 2 years, an alternative must be reached, though I do think friends influence is only one component of the factor of changes. A good alternative I reckoned is books/reading material. Quran will always be the best bet. And I guess, returning to read books on deen is the way too.

useless post

Transformers rockk. awesome movie.

idle

Dah jadi balik. Kejap semangat nak blog, kejap tak.

Developing

2 weeks away from another OSCE and just finish the latest one last Friday, but I couldn't push myself to study tonight so I ended up writing an entry for this blog. So...what to write? well what about the issues that my friend moeh points about in his blog, on how the standard of service in Malaysia is appalling and how creativity of workers are stifled for 'stability' sake if that is actually can be achieved through that method. I couldn't really comment on the latter issue and the reason being I am at least 3 years from getting the qualification to get me drafted in working for a government agency. However, the former is quite familiar to me as it is I would expect be familiar to most Malaysian. In his blog, moeh points out to these example:
"I had to ask my uncle, who works in TM, to speed up the transfer process of my home line and sluggish streamyx connection. Just because my uncle is high ranked in the organization, they respond to the request quickly"
Beforehand, he was waiting for months to get a simple repair done. It could be high demand some people say? But months is pretty long, and it reflects the inefficiency that TM is handling their repair service. Honestly, I couldn't really recall any bad experience. I attribute that to the fact that I am an apathetic guy, who doesn't regularly reflects on problems of the community and someone who would happily circumvent problems because of not wanting to bother anyone when it is actually helpful to complain. But, I do feel that these frustration is vented by many Malaysians, not just my mate here. And if it is true then I see it as one of the major stumbling block in Malaysia achieving that developed status in 2020. I feel that a characteristic of a developed nation should be that it has efficient services that can cater its citizen. That is more important than having the tallest building in the world or having a man-made lake in a city purposely built for administration.
Lets take a look at New Zealand a small country of 4 mil. Nothing flash there in terms of man-made infrastructure such as the tallest building in the world but they are not considered developing because they have the services that are efficient and sufficient to cater for their citizens. How is that achieved? I think they have better accountability, healthy competition between providers, and better attitudes among workers.
My point is that I think some people had this idea that infrastructure is what defines a country status when in fact the services and the attitude and thinking of the citizens that truly defines it. Infrastructure will come later. Whats the point in having the tallest building, when hospitals are overcrowded, and trains and buses unpunctual? Hmmm couldn't really think of good example..but you get the idea. I think.

more updates

The new run, Health care of the elderly, is a bit busier than I thought. A bit busier than surgery I reckon. But, I managed to nicked off some precious study time to get more rest and update this blog. Added is new links - Alumni Hira' and blogs to people I know. Will get back to posting on blog on the weekend. Till then, here is a link for hadith database that could be useful. Please read the warning first and think about some of those interviews, documentaries and articles that had used hadith or quran out of contexts:

Hadith database

O2 Atom Pure

Enough of the random ramblings. I will start some serious post with this review of the newly acquired O2 Atom Pure. After 4 years of reliable service from iPaq 1930, I finally decided to upgrade to the pdaphone when my handphone of 2 years, Nokia 6610i finally succumbed to the unintentional abuse I inflicted upon it. I was pretty fed up of carrying both phone and pda all this while, so pdaphone was the logical upgrade. What I was particularly looking for in a pdaphone is that it must have Wifi capability and is compact enough to actually fit into a pocket. It must also fit my meagre budget of NZD 500. So, after some searching, 2 fit the descriptions: O2 Atom and iMate K-Jam. O2 atom were the slimmer version so that give it the nod for the purchase.

Pros: It is really compact. The smallest pdaphone on the market at the moment. And no more carrying a separate handphone and pda.

Cons: Vibration can be sometime annoying because it vibrates rather loudly and last quite a while. Not good when you are in occasions such in the middle of lecture. Text messaging is slower due to lack of keypad/keyboard. Windows Mobile 5 can't access certain features quickly like a handphone menu.

I found text messaging quite troublesome with the software given. One way I got around that problem is installing a third party software, SPB Full Screen Keyboard. It turns the whole screen into a qwerty keyboard, and you can just use your fingers instead of that fiddly stylus to key in texts. In fact, to get the most out of your pdaphone, I suggest installing the following software:

SPB Mobile Shell: Converts Win Mobile 5 into easily accessible handphone-like menu and enable you to use the pda-phone with one hand, just like normal handphone.

Pocket Islam: Includes prayer schedule, Quran with complete tashkil, Hijra calendar, qibla direction. Its free too.

SBSH PocketBreeze: A today plug-in that displays multiple appointments on the today screen. Also display tasks, notes, and messages.

post-advertisement

I got lonely. So I put up a link to this blog on my YM status and, voila, an increase of 30% hits for the past 24 hours. It is more impressive given the fact that the previous hits counted were hits taken for a 2 year period (roughly 100 to be exact). If the same marketing scheme is continued to be implemented, we can extrapolate that hits will be increased by 100% of the current hits by the end of week. By using the same logic, at the end of the year it is expected this blog will have an estimated 7560 visits.

If you are looking for some Muslim-flavoured news, look no further. Try this link: News

post-OSCE

As mentioned in the previous posts, I will continue the rambling about WW1 or rather specifically the fall of the Ottoman Empire and how that epoch should be pondered upon by fellow Muslims and take heed its messages after I've sat my OSCE. Unfortunately, I think the topic is too hard for me to explain. I need to do extensive reading before I embark on writing such topic. Plus its kinda serious. Intrigued? I hope you are. Read up on the topic and leave a comment. I would like to know too.

In case you are not associated with medical student, then its probably right to say that you do not know what OSCE is. OSCE = Objectively Structured Clinical Examination. It consists of a number of stations where in each station a participant would perform a task/answer quiz and after completing that particular station, he moves on to the next one. That is the common way medical student are examined. Apparently, OSCE also means = Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. For those who dont know me, I do not have any association with that OSCE. Having mentioned that, I remembered an anaesthetist pointed to us in a lecture of a common but neglected health problem: acronymophilia. Those afflicted with such condition suffers from excessive use of acronyms and abbreviations. Symptom usually depends on the person's occupation. For vets, they will utter words such as: BDSD, DSTO. The latter is more serious = Dog Smarter Than Owner.

Updates

Just one actually. The tag board has been lengthen to 300 instead of 200. Should allow people to read posts on the tag without too much scrolling. By a bit. Hehe

Reminder

No. I haven't sat my OSCE yet. Just taking a break from study. I'm not those type of person who can concentrate on one task for ages, I really need a break once a while. If not my mind wanders around aimlessly while my body hold a book looking like it is studying. So this time around, while reading up on Peripheral Vascular Disease, I was really thinking about what I really did in the surgery run, like how I would have made it more worthwhile and such. And so, since I wont get another chance to do the run again (hopefully that is the case), I thought other people should learn from my mistakes or ideas. Plus, I have now one more idea for an entry for this nascent blog. Hope this post acts as a reminder. Even better, I think the other people from the other runs should do the same. Med School do have a function for that, called an end-run stein, which unfortunately involves beer that I'm not keen of. Note to self: Must make a Muslim-friendly version.

Random post

Anzac day is almost coming to an end. The day commemorate the involvement of Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (hence Anzac) in the WW1 in which on that day, they fatally landed on wrong terrain at Gallipoli. For us Muslim, we should remember that this war was when the Ottoman Empire fell. It is when we squabble with each other and driven by British propaganda of nationalism and their army we tore ourselve apart. We lost Palestine in the process. We also were separated to smaller and weaker nations. That has remained the status qou since. But, might one ask, should we bother with such information?

OMG its midnight already..I need to sleep. Cant miss ward round tommorrow. Will continue post another day. I think after OSCE (sometime next week). Please post comment of your ideas on the topic above...

Insomnia antidote

I initially wanted to write this post in Malay, but it took me wayyy to long to finish 1 sentence, so I ended up doing it in English instead. Could have picked the easy way out, using 'rojak' but I believe it would've beat 1 purpose of blogging - practicing composing. Anyway, this is not the topic I wanted to blog about. What I wanted to do was to remind me, and perhaps some rare readers out there, that I will try to rejuvenate this blog. Not that I think its essential to do one, but I personally think it is a good alternative for freetime hobby/activity than playing computer games which I am unfortunately indulged too much in. Talking about that, I am now currently into DoTA, a variant of WarCraft III. Im not goin to talk about it much, but its load fun. Quiet addictive too, which is a problem. I do think that computer games is a good way for recreation, but only if it is played in minute quantity. Anyway, i would like to reiterate that this blog will be continued. The plan is to post at least once a week. If you happend to have read this far, then good job. The previous post did not turn out as I expected. Just showed how long I've stop blogging. I didnt even know they had those features to post photos. I should stop this random rambling now. Wondering whats the title mean? I cant sleeppp...luckily its Anzac day tomorrow. Holidayyyy....then OSCE next week.

Easter 2007 roadtrip (West Coast - Wanaka)

Photos taken from easter 2007 roadtrip. From top:

(1) Lake Pukaki with Mount Cook (highest point of NZ) at the background.

(2) Me, Abu and Zack posing on observer area of Arthur's pass viaduct (at the background).















(3) NZ have some of the strange bridges around. This has only one lane even though it bridges a 2 lane road, and share a railway track. Almost all bridges encountered in this trip were of this kind. Must be something to do with saving money...




















(4) Ice climbing. Unfortunately indoor as we are amatuers and did not have time to do it on the real galciers.

JAUZ 2005 (2)

Below is the link to more photos of Jaulah Aidilfitri 2005:

http://wanhisham83.topcities.com/Photos/JAUZ/jauz2.html

Gambar JAUZ 2005

Assalamualaikum w.b.t,
berikut adalah link ke gambar Jaulah Raya Aidilfitri KZ2 2005:

http://wanhisham83.topcities.com/jauz.html

Halaman tersebut tidak disemak, maka jika ada sesiapa mendapati ada bad links, sila laporkan di ruangan comment di bawah.
Waalaikumussalam