Back in 2003, when I graduated from Mara College Banting  (MCB) with a diploma in International Baccalaureate(IB) , I have roughly about 7 months of holiday before going to Australia. The IB programme was initially designed for students who are going to universities in Ireland and United Kingdom (UK). Therefore the IB programme in MCB finished in the middle of the year and gave their students 2-3 months before starting their studies in UK or Ireland. Most if not all universities, at Ireland and UK start their intake on August/September.

At that time, there were only two Australian universities available to MCB graduates, namely University of Melbourne and University of Monash. I am among the first batch from MCB  who are going to study at Melbourne Uni.

My friends who were going to study at University of Monash, Australia had their 3 months orientation programme starting from September that year. Their orientation programme is held at Melbourne, Australia. I guess at that time, I felt a bit disappointed to learn that my friends at Monash were having fun and getting allowance at the same time whereas I have an extra long holiday after finishing my study at MCB.

So, what did I do at that time? After few weeks discussing with our MCB principal, and confirming that I don't have any similar orientation programme similar to Monash Uni, thus began the era of me looking for various sorts of jobs.

I initially planned to work  in a factory but the working condition and the low salary immediately turn me away from the job. Then, I thought of working as a cashier in a nearby petrol station but the position was not vacant at that time.

My mom suggested to me to work as a substitute teacher in her school. So, I took the opportunity and immediately got the job. I had to teach the entire Form Four in the school from the topmost class to the last class in the Form Four. It was an interesting yet challenging experience for me.

The last class in Form Four were filled by students who were not motivated to study or even came to the school. They had to come to school because their family forced them to come. They don't have any insight on the importance of having education for their own future. Compare this situation with the topmost class students who were quite motivated to study and willing to do lots of homework to improve their knowledge.

I had to be flexible in teaching these students and need to adjust the level of teaching according to their level of interest and knowledge. It was certainly an eye opener for me to learn the skills to teach students who are not motivated to study in the first place.

After two months of teaching, I retired from the job when the original teacher came back from her maternity leave. Thus, I was jobless again. I had to look for another job but what could I do then at that time? I had only SPM certificate and IB diploma, and hardly anyone knows what is IB programme anyway.

If I'm not mistaken, I retired as a teacher on middle of September and I had few months to go before I started my study at Melbourne Uni. Waiting for my flight to Melbourne was certainly a lesson in patience for me. Doing nothing during an extra long holiday is not something that suits me. I need to do something interesting. Otherwise I will be extremely bored killing all those free time.

After early retirement from teaching those students, I had to stay at home and look after my two younger sisters. My youngest sister was only 3 years old and her older sister was only 5 years old. Early in the morning, I had to sent them to a neighbour who will be looking after them and pick them up in the afternoon. Both of my parents are working and no one is at home to look after them. I'm not qualified enough to look after young children :)

It was during those days that I had the chance to learn how to cook. I never cooked any meals before. Hmm, looking back at those days, it was funny to see how I approach cooking. I always think cooking as a chemistry experiment where you add few of stuffs together and boil them in a frying pan. To get the taste right, you need the right amount of stuff and this ingredients need to be balanced. I constantly tried to find the right chemistry equation for different type of meals but I failed miserably in the end :)  There are too many variables that need to be adjusted to get the right taste and it was certainly will take me ages if I were to write equations for all the meals. In the end, I had to use my own taste bud to adjust the ingredients.

This is an already long entry for Year Zero. I guess I will stop here and continue later whenever I have free time :)

It has been busy, but it is expected. My final year exam will be in another two weeks and yet there are lots that I haven't revised. Speaking of revision, I don't think it should be called as revision in the first place since I pretty much forgot everything that I've learned so far. Hopefully I won't be extremely anxious when the exam comes in the next fortnight.

Apart from studying, I'm also in the midst of selling my first car. It is not easy to sell an old car and it has been a bit stressful for me. The experience of selling a car certainly taught me a lot on how to deal with potential car buyers. I'm also looking for cheap courier service to bring my stuffs back to Malaysia. Maybe I would do that after the exam.

And finally, I am also inviting you, the blog readers, to my home at the end of this year (to be exact 2nd January 2010) for a small ceremony :D   I am getting married at the end of this year. The wedding preparation has kept me extremely busy and I still haven't finished printing all the wedding invitation cards. Hopefully it will be done by next few weeks and I will be able put up the scanned wedding cards here in this blog.

Last but not least, I have already booked my flight ticket home. This time, the flight ticket is paid by my sponsor :) I will be going home few days after the graduation ceremony.

p/s: After 6 years living in Melbourne, it is sad to see how things will end. After reading my friend's blog, I think I should reminisce about the past 6 years.

Over the last five days, I have spend most of my time in theatre. As part of my surgical rotation, I need to do a week of anaesthetic.

Anaesthesia is defined as loss of bodily sensation with or without loss of conciousness. There are three main components of anaesthesia, namely hypnosis (being put to sleep), relaxing your muscles and sedation (this means that you lose your awareness of your surrounding).

As a specialty, anaesthetic is one of the toughest training program to get into. There are high level of competition for young doctors to participate in anaesthetic training. It is quite attractive to become an anaesthetist since there are wide range of skills being involved and in term of salary, it has one of the highest salary grade among specialist.

Over the last week, I had the opportunity to practice putting a laryngeal mask into few patients. I had the chance to sharpen my skills in performing intravenous cannulation. 

A laryngeal mask is a tube that is inserted inside your throat during an operation. The picture below shows how to put the laryngeal mask inside your mouth.

As a medical student, putting a cannula (needle) inside the blood vessel was initially a hard task to be performed. You have to overcome your anxiety of hurting the patient and develop a good technique to insert the needle into a blood vessel.

Anyway, back to my anaesthetic rotation, it was exciting to be at the other side of the theatre. I used to be helping surgeons with the operation and hardly have any chance to sit on the other side. The anaesthetist usually sit behind the curtain and will monitor the anaesthetist machine to ensure the patient is breathing appropriately and is comfortable throughout the operation.

It is interesting to see how the anaesthetist handle the emergency cases. I had several emergency operation throughout the week such as emergency caesarian and emergency laparotomy due to unknown abdominal bleeding. There was a patient who had laryngospasm at the start of the operation and the anaesthetist taught me how to handle this emergency. Laryngospasm is uncontrolled contraction of the muscles inside your vocal cord and will cause a person to stop breathing. This is certainly a dangerous situation since it will cause lots of damage to your organs especially your brain.

In summary, being anaesthetist is fun but at the same time, it is hard to get into their training program. My next four weeks will be in theatre assisting the surgeons with their operation. This will be my last four weeks in medical school.

p/s: I'm looking forward for graduation but at the same time, I've to study hard for the final year exam. Hopefully, I will get a good mark from the exam.

It has been 5 weeks since the last time I blog. A lot has happened in the last 5 weeks. Alhamdulillah, I have finished my general practice (GP) rotation.

This rotation means that you are spending time with doctors at their own clinic and observing how the doctors managing their own patient. You will be given lots of opportunities to interview the patient on your own and then presenting your findings to the doctor. It is a good practice for my final year exam.

This rotation gives you an insight on what are the most common illnesses around the community. Sinusitis is more common than temporal arteritis. Otitis media is more common than croup. Pneumonia is quite common but it is not that severe to warrant the patient to be admitted to the hospital.

Having been spending few years in the hospital, it certainly give me a bias perception towards finding out what is the most likely diagnosis. If I were to see a patient in the hospital, I'm more inclined to think of rare or life-threatening conditions rather than to think of more safer illnesses.

I did my GP rotation in rural Victoria and there were several opportunities for procedural skills. I managed to excise a skin mole and suture the wound. After 6 years of studying medicine, I finally performed my first PR examination on a patient. It was an exciting experience to learn how normal and abnormal prostate gland feels like. I managed to deliver a baby in the hospital which is quite exciting considering that the last time I delivered a baby was almost 12 months ago.

It is certainly an interesting rotation and it certainly boosts my experience in managing the more common variety of medical illness.

p/s: Since I hardly been able to use the internet in the last 5 weeks, there are a lot that I need to catch up with. My google reader is already been filled with few thousands of unread items.