I haven't blogged for at least 2 weeks because I went away to a rural town for work experience. It was actually really interesting, and REALLY rewarding. I obviously learnt a lot of practical skills, and got a lot of a hands-on experience, but at the same time I think I learnt a lot about people and their motivations and I got a better understanding about this career path I chose.
The first thing to mention, I guess, is how DIFFERENT people are, despite being in largely the same profession. People keep on telling me that you gotta have drive to do medicine, that you're something special and there's something in your personality that drives you towards this career. As far as I'm concerned, right, all you need is asshole Asian-parents and very few viable options out of life. I think you can call me a coward in the end- I could've up and left on my own, worked 4 days a week part-time, trying to make rent, trying to study the degree I want, get high marks and make life work for me. There's always choices to make, and I made a decision that I didn't want to be stuck in a reality where I was stressed for money and stressed about finding a place in the world. Right now that place is carved out and cushioned for me- I just fill in when I'm ready and I'll live really comfortably.
I'm not the sort of person who can sacrifice a comfortable life for a murky dream I might never achieve.
So the first impressionable person I met said to me, "you're abnormal, because you're gonna be one of those few people who's going to be in control of their lives. You're not going to be a slave to bills and mundane work- you're going to do well for yourself." I would like to believe his statement, but I'm not sure it's going to go down quite so smoothly. However, this person is someone I truly respect, because of his world experience, and how reasonable and logical he sounded when he explained things to me. He let me understand that it's a balance between personal interest and the interest of the public. If you want to look after other people, then first you gotta look after yourself. It comes down to business, in the end- and I'm not sure I quite agree with him on the idea that healthcare is a business- but truly, we're operating on something very close to a business model.
From a moral perspective, it is my belief that everyone, rich or poor, should have access to healthcare. People like to ask me stupid questions like, if a man murdered the person you loved, and then you could choose to save that man's life or let him be, what would you do? The realist answer is, I'd probably want to kill whoever murdered the person I loved, but I'm not sure I would do it myself. I may or may not be able to fulfill professional responsibilities, because I imagine I'd be really pissed and wouldn't be able to provide adequate care anyway. That doesn't detract from my original statement, where I think everyone should have equal access to healthcare though. In fact to me it's two different matters entirely and the relevance is minimal. Anyway, that belief forms a fundamental part of who I am, and as such I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea of monetizing the healthcare system.
Then we get to the tougher questions? Would I want to become a doctor if it weren't for the money? Actually, I didn't want to become a doctor in the first place, so maybe the obvious answer is "no". But wait, hold on, my parents would've never wanted me to be a doctor if they didn't make money--- so perhaps without the external intervention, I would've, by chance, grown to love the profession. I guess we'll never know now- but the truth is, I'd never want to work for free. I don't mean I'd let people die if they couldn't pay, and I don't mean I wouldn't help people who needed help, but "work" is something entirely different from volunteering, right. When I "work", I expect to get paid, and when I work in an area where I believe money shouldn't influence the service, it becomes really weird and confusing. Am I opposed to or am I supportive of the idea, after all?
Okay I guess this post dragged on for longer than I expected... I'll continue the rest of the story in a diff post, since I'm pretty much falling asleep right now. It's been a long week.
Friday, 27 February 2015
Thursday, 12 February 2015
Things Fall Apart
So I've caught myself in a bit of a pickle recently... I don't think I planned out my time very well and all of a sudden I seem to have a lot of things to do, all at once. It basically started when I decided to NOT do work over the weekends- I think my landlord came over and it was a bit of a fumble with the whole getting internet thing. Then I promptly decided to sleep til noon on both days where I could, and spent the afternoon learning Korean or something like that.
Anyway I started going to the gym, and naturally when I came back from the gym it was a great excuse to be "too tired" or something. It was that or the "I had too many lectures today I don't want to think about homework". Then when I had a day off I decided to hit the gym again so as you can see I'm really using this whole gym thing as procrastination and I think I have avoidance issues. Yeah, I'm blogging post-midnight, too.
During all that my braces broke (a wire snapped), and tbh I'm not sure why. It might've been hard food but like when I actually remember eating hard food it was fine but I don't remember eating anything. I just sorta woke up one morning and realized my one tooth had migrated 50 miles, and I was like "wtf". It was really noticeable because all of a sudden there was a massive gap. I hadn't noticed the broken wire until later at night, because the wire was sorta tucked in under a tooth and it had only snapped from the part where it was attached to the bracket. I thought I had to go see an orthodontist to get it fixed but my ortho is back down South by about 7hrs of travel time and every other ortho in the city was pretty much like "we don't wanna touch another guy's work". At least it's not painful but I'm not gonna see my ortho for like a month and a half so my braces are gonna come off a month and a half later. How tragic- I really fucking hate these things.
Then I was packing because I have this work-experience thing next week, and I'll go out of town for 2 weeks. I had intended to leave on Sunday (because it was a 2-3hr one way trip) and then I realized (rather late) that THERE WAS NO PUBLIC TRANSPORT ON SUNDAYS. Like oh God the inconveniences of not having a car. Like that's such a middle-lower class complaint, but I can't imagine what people living in real poverty would feel like: they can't even afford public transport and it'd just be the shits.
So anyway I had to plan out transport, then I had to re-book accommodation because I was going to arrive a day early and it was just unnecessary stress. My laundry started piling up, the fridge was empty and I wasn't sure I had enough appropriate shoes to wear to work experience, Oh also I have very little idea what's going on in class and I worry for my retention of information. Exams are on the horizon and I have a shit-tonne of assignments and I'm not sure I know what to do with myself at the moment.
Maybe I should sleep it off and hope that my tutorial notes write itself.
Anyway I started going to the gym, and naturally when I came back from the gym it was a great excuse to be "too tired" or something. It was that or the "I had too many lectures today I don't want to think about homework". Then when I had a day off I decided to hit the gym again so as you can see I'm really using this whole gym thing as procrastination and I think I have avoidance issues. Yeah, I'm blogging post-midnight, too.
During all that my braces broke (a wire snapped), and tbh I'm not sure why. It might've been hard food but like when I actually remember eating hard food it was fine but I don't remember eating anything. I just sorta woke up one morning and realized my one tooth had migrated 50 miles, and I was like "wtf". It was really noticeable because all of a sudden there was a massive gap. I hadn't noticed the broken wire until later at night, because the wire was sorta tucked in under a tooth and it had only snapped from the part where it was attached to the bracket. I thought I had to go see an orthodontist to get it fixed but my ortho is back down South by about 7hrs of travel time and every other ortho in the city was pretty much like "we don't wanna touch another guy's work". At least it's not painful but I'm not gonna see my ortho for like a month and a half so my braces are gonna come off a month and a half later. How tragic- I really fucking hate these things.
Then I was packing because I have this work-experience thing next week, and I'll go out of town for 2 weeks. I had intended to leave on Sunday (because it was a 2-3hr one way trip) and then I realized (rather late) that THERE WAS NO PUBLIC TRANSPORT ON SUNDAYS. Like oh God the inconveniences of not having a car. Like that's such a middle-lower class complaint, but I can't imagine what people living in real poverty would feel like: they can't even afford public transport and it'd just be the shits.
So anyway I had to plan out transport, then I had to re-book accommodation because I was going to arrive a day early and it was just unnecessary stress. My laundry started piling up, the fridge was empty and I wasn't sure I had enough appropriate shoes to wear to work experience, Oh also I have very little idea what's going on in class and I worry for my retention of information. Exams are on the horizon and I have a shit-tonne of assignments and I'm not sure I know what to do with myself at the moment.
Maybe I should sleep it off and hope that my tutorial notes write itself.
Sunday, 8 February 2015
Foreign Languages
I felt inspired to learn Korean after attending Sungha's concert last week, and I regret to say my enthusiasm only lasted me long enough to get through the Korean alphabet. I thought it'd be easy because I was familiar with Chinese and Japanese sounds- East-Asian languages sound pretty similar, right? Well apparently not because I swear everything sounds the same to me in Korean.
You know how when you learn a new language you can usually romanize a word until you're familiar with matching the right character with the right phonetic value? Like in Japanese it's called romaji and in Chinese it's called pinyin. Well idk wtf it's called in Korean but it really doesn't work. Firstly there's no real English equivalent for some sounds- like, you can't imitate that sound with English letters, and secondly whatever attempts people before me have made, makes no sense to me.
For example the first Korean consonant is written as "Gah", but when I listen to a recording it CLEARLY sounds like "kah". And I don't know about you but a g sound and a k sound are not the same thing to me. Then the girl in the video is all "it's a soft g sound"- like, that sounds like a k and k is not a soft sound. We obv weren't on the same track anyway and I'm just like "oh God this language is so hard".
Why do I want to learn Korean anyway? Well firstly it's just COOL to know another language, because all of a sudden I've opened the doorway to a new culture and a sort of mini new world. Then everything after that is obv for the K-Pop bands and how I plan on finding some post-plastic-surgery hottie to marry in Korea. Probs need to learn Korean for that, yeah?
But yeah I'm stunted in my path because it's hard and I lack motivation. I think it's easier for me to learn Japanese because I listen to so much Japanese music and I must say the alphabet is like a million times easier, though it makes much less sense than Korean and its conjugated sounds. Japanese is just... easier for me to pronounce? That's about it.
I'm still daydreaming about the day where I become quadrilingual.
You know how when you learn a new language you can usually romanize a word until you're familiar with matching the right character with the right phonetic value? Like in Japanese it's called romaji and in Chinese it's called pinyin. Well idk wtf it's called in Korean but it really doesn't work. Firstly there's no real English equivalent for some sounds- like, you can't imitate that sound with English letters, and secondly whatever attempts people before me have made, makes no sense to me.
For example the first Korean consonant is written as "Gah", but when I listen to a recording it CLEARLY sounds like "kah". And I don't know about you but a g sound and a k sound are not the same thing to me. Then the girl in the video is all "it's a soft g sound"- like, that sounds like a k and k is not a soft sound. We obv weren't on the same track anyway and I'm just like "oh God this language is so hard".
Why do I want to learn Korean anyway? Well firstly it's just COOL to know another language, because all of a sudden I've opened the doorway to a new culture and a sort of mini new world. Then everything after that is obv for the K-Pop bands and how I plan on finding some post-plastic-surgery hottie to marry in Korea. Probs need to learn Korean for that, yeah?
But yeah I'm stunted in my path because it's hard and I lack motivation. I think it's easier for me to learn Japanese because I listen to so much Japanese music and I must say the alphabet is like a million times easier, though it makes much less sense than Korean and its conjugated sounds. Japanese is just... easier for me to pronounce? That's about it.
I'm still daydreaming about the day where I become quadrilingual.
Monday, 2 February 2015
February
I love how my posting habit has gone from 1 a day to more like... 1 a month? Oh well.
2 weeks of school done, my friends are still on holidays. Makes me feel kinda shit, but I've gotten back into the rhythm... sorta? The first two weeks were actually really chill, just revision and basic introductory stuff. I was just settling in. My classes were totally hectic though- everything was compulsory and I had these ridiculous 8am starts that made me want to vomit.
I guess it sounds terrible how I can't be ready for class at 8am, but really 9am is a struggle for me so 8am is just that much worse.
Over the weekend I went down to Sydney, my favorite city. Found my friends and we chilled- and I tried this mango flavored gelato that tasted like crushed mango, so I kinda feel like I might as well have just eaten a mango. Anyway it was delicious but I couldn't finish it since my teeth were starting to hurt (goddamn sensitive teeth), so my friend took care of the rest.
I tried ramen for the first time while in Syd- idk if it's "authentic" or w/e but I gotta say I really liked the flavor of tonkotsu. The soup was way thick and way salty for my taste though- there was no way I coulda finished it. Also the noodles just tasted like 2min noodles I cook, so idk what the craze about ramen is. Well, it did taste good, I don't deny that, I just don't think ramen is like, the bestest thing ever.
Then that evening I went to a concert by my fav guitarist, Sungha Jung.
Sungha is basically this Korean kid who is crazy good at playing guitar. Now you probably think I'm being really vain and following this kid because he's good looking- well I'm gonna be hipster for once and say I started following him BEFORE he was hot. Actually though- he's like, 2 years younger than me and I started watching his videos when I was around 14? I thought it was pretty amazing how he can make the guitar sound like it has its own accompaniment. I thought only the piano could do that (with the whole left hand-right hand thing), because I play the flute and goddamn I'm so bad at the instrument that I now think the instrument itself sounds bad.
So Sungha's like a prodigy and I thought it was incredible how he played so well when the guitar was bigger than he was. Then I just kinda kept following him because he covered all these new and trendy songs--- and basically all the songs he covered are the songs I like, so it's pretty cool putting his youtube vids in a playlist while I'm trying to work.
I know I listened to him play Canon (the link I posted above) on repeat while I tried to write an essay that was due in 10 hours. That's pretty much why I'm attached to him and his music.
Then I saw him in real life! He has the humor of an old man, but that might be because he's not that fluent in English. When I say "old man humor" I mean when he introduced his next song as a "funny song" and he in fact played Super Mario. It was definitely a cool concert though- he played a lot of original stuff which I really appreciated, because I usually just listen to his covers on YouTube. This song called "Sunset in Paris" or something like that sounded really nice, and I'd buy his new album if the Australian dollar wasn't so stupidly low right now. Great for foreign trade, yeah, but fucking terrible when I want to buy stuff online.
So that sums up my weekend- I now have a photo of Sungha and I on my phone and there's basically this smirk on my face every time I unlock it.
2 weeks of school done, my friends are still on holidays. Makes me feel kinda shit, but I've gotten back into the rhythm... sorta? The first two weeks were actually really chill, just revision and basic introductory stuff. I was just settling in. My classes were totally hectic though- everything was compulsory and I had these ridiculous 8am starts that made me want to vomit.
I guess it sounds terrible how I can't be ready for class at 8am, but really 9am is a struggle for me so 8am is just that much worse.
Over the weekend I went down to Sydney, my favorite city. Found my friends and we chilled- and I tried this mango flavored gelato that tasted like crushed mango, so I kinda feel like I might as well have just eaten a mango. Anyway it was delicious but I couldn't finish it since my teeth were starting to hurt (goddamn sensitive teeth), so my friend took care of the rest.
I tried ramen for the first time while in Syd- idk if it's "authentic" or w/e but I gotta say I really liked the flavor of tonkotsu. The soup was way thick and way salty for my taste though- there was no way I coulda finished it. Also the noodles just tasted like 2min noodles I cook, so idk what the craze about ramen is. Well, it did taste good, I don't deny that, I just don't think ramen is like, the bestest thing ever.
Then that evening I went to a concert by my fav guitarist, Sungha Jung.
Sungha is basically this Korean kid who is crazy good at playing guitar. Now you probably think I'm being really vain and following this kid because he's good looking- well I'm gonna be hipster for once and say I started following him BEFORE he was hot. Actually though- he's like, 2 years younger than me and I started watching his videos when I was around 14? I thought it was pretty amazing how he can make the guitar sound like it has its own accompaniment. I thought only the piano could do that (with the whole left hand-right hand thing), because I play the flute and goddamn I'm so bad at the instrument that I now think the instrument itself sounds bad.
So Sungha's like a prodigy and I thought it was incredible how he played so well when the guitar was bigger than he was. Then I just kinda kept following him because he covered all these new and trendy songs--- and basically all the songs he covered are the songs I like, so it's pretty cool putting his youtube vids in a playlist while I'm trying to work.
I know I listened to him play Canon (the link I posted above) on repeat while I tried to write an essay that was due in 10 hours. That's pretty much why I'm attached to him and his music.
Then I saw him in real life! He has the humor of an old man, but that might be because he's not that fluent in English. When I say "old man humor" I mean when he introduced his next song as a "funny song" and he in fact played Super Mario. It was definitely a cool concert though- he played a lot of original stuff which I really appreciated, because I usually just listen to his covers on YouTube. This song called "Sunset in Paris" or something like that sounded really nice, and I'd buy his new album if the Australian dollar wasn't so stupidly low right now. Great for foreign trade, yeah, but fucking terrible when I want to buy stuff online.
So that sums up my weekend- I now have a photo of Sungha and I on my phone and there's basically this smirk on my face every time I unlock it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)