My Last Day in Africa

I've been pretty busy being a tourist for the last 2 weeks or so, and it's been fun but tiring and internet's been mostly quick stops in cafes and so on. As a bit of a random observation, I think if I walked down the street in London, Ontario I'd have trouble finding an internet cafe. Yet in any African city they're a dime a dozen. Irony?

Our first destination was a place called Lake Bunyonyi. It's a mountain lake with lots of islands and rainforesty surroundings. A really pretty place and apparently Uganda's honeymoon capital. The unfortunate part of our trip there was its brevity. We left early one morning, stopped and did a little game drive in Queen Elizabeth National Park (lots of fun, and only a little taste of what was to come) but by the time we traversed the potholed roads there it was late afternoon. We had time for a boatride and a quick swim before dark, and we left the next morning at 7:30 am. Mostly it's the kind of place that would be nice to go to and sit around, relax, take in the surroundings for a few days. Regardless, it was nice to have seen it. In some ways it actually reminded me of Muskoka... if you replace the eucalyptus trees with pines and oaks it could fly.

The other wonderful redeeming quality of Lake Bunyonyi was a hot shower. After a month of hyperventilation under ice cold water in the shower it was wonderful to have as a luxury something I take as a necessity back home.

The next morning took us back to Kampala with a little stop for another game drive at a place called Lake Mburo. Lake Mburo has a problem. It doesn't have very many animals in it. To be fair, it was neat to see our first zebra, even if it was from around 400 yards off.

The trip to Murchison Falls National Park was much more fruitful in the animal department. Saw elephants, antelopes of various descriptions to the point where you ignore them, lots of neat birds, baboons, and the highlight was probably the giraffes. A boatride up the Nile to the falls had equally impressive birdlife, tons of hippos and crocs. The next day we hiked up to the falls - the lack of safety precautions in Africa means you could essentially walk into the falls if you desired. Neat to be that close.

Our next adventure was rafting the source of the Nile. Apparently some of the best white water rafting in the world, and possibly going to disappear with plans to build a dam on the river. After the initial teaching session - how to paddle and how to hold on - we set off. The first couple rapids are rather tame, and even our first Class 5 (apparently the classes go higher than 5 but 5 are the highest you can take in a raft) was pretty wet but still sort of felt like the log ride without as big a drop. That started to change with a Class 3 where our guide dumped us - essentially go into the rapid sideways and the boat will flip. From there two class 5's were a wild ride before lunch. I couldn't bring myself to drop $45 American for the video, but I peered over the shoulder of the guy at lunch and it looked pretty crazy. The final rapid before lunch we didn't flip on, but it was a 3m waterfall that you go straight over. Also cool. The afternoon was more flat water, paddling and burning sun, with a few decent rapids interspersed. The final rapid - called "The Bad Place" wasn't nearly as bad as some of the others we'd been on... I think we took a pretty tame line through it.

Then a 20 hour bus ride to Arusha, Tanzania. 20 hours on the bumpiest, loudest, most uncomfortable and above all dirtiest bus you can imagine. I'll say no more.

Our 4 day safari in Tanzania was great. We saw Tarangire National Park, The Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater. Tarangire was amazing for its elephants, which we got very close to, zebras by the hundreds, the most amazing birds of any park we'd been to, and a great shot of a giraffe taking a drink. Serengeti is a little bit tinged by a case of food poisoning which put me out of comission for some of it. But we finally got to see lions, including a mother and three cubs and the others saw a leopard while I was sleeping off the chicken. At about 6:30 as the sun was rising and we were getting set to go on our morning game drive a family of elephants, probably 6 or 8, walked right by our campsite. Quite spectacular. The vastness of the Serengeti also deserves some mention. Big rocks that jut out of nowhere, inspiring thoughts of The Lion King and keeping Circle of Life in my head incessantly throughout. And despite being one huge flat plane, there are subtle variations in vegetation throughout, and corresponding different wildlife. With only an evening and morning I'm sure we did it a disservice, but I'm glad to have seen it. Our final stop was the Crater. Our campsite on the rim was cold. As promised, but I think I was running a bit of a fever in the aftermath of the day before so I mostly huddled in my tent. The drive added flamingos, a rhino from at least a kilometer off ("oh... yeah... I think I see a horn there... with these 10X binoculars) plenty of buffalo, another couple lions and the impressive vista of what is difficult to conceive as a volcano crater simply because of its size.

Back to Arusha, and from there it's been travel - a combination of bus and air this time to make a much more pleasant journey. I'm down to single digits of hours left on the continent.

It's been a great experience. I've seen all these animals before, but there's something about seeing them just living wild minding their own business which has a completely different effect than seeing them in a zoo. White water rafting is just a good thrill ride, and I always enjoy those.

Pictures (I took around 750) will be forthcoming when I'm back on Canadian soil. Hope to see anyone who's actually reading this soon!

A month? Already?

As this is my last day on the wards here at Kagando, I thought perhaps some reflection on clinical medicine was in order. This my first exposure to really being involved (and occasionally completely responsible) for the care of others has been exciting, sometimes frightening, sometimes frustrating and mostly rewarding.

It's been the work on paediatrics that I've enjoyed most here, not necessarily because of the paeds patients, but because you get to really be involved there. I'm not quite sure how the doctors do it when there are no students to help out, but at any given time there are probably 130 kids on paeds (many two to a bed or on mattresses on the floor) and seeing every one of them every day is a challenge when there are two or three groups with translators going at it.

Although I certainly don't have any real confidence in my clinical skills at this point, I have learned most of the patterns you see on paeds here. Everyone has malaria. Or is at least being treated for it. That means 7 days of quinine. Everyone has either a respiratory tract infection or acute gastroenteritis. That justifies the antibiotic they're on. Most likely they came in with a fever or some pain. Therefore they're on acetaminophen (or paracetamol as they know it on this side of the ocean). From there, most histories go about the same. You ask if they're improving. Everyone is, with rare exception, and you sit up and take notice when that's the case. The tricky part is ascertaining when that improvement started. Timescales seem to be a difficult thing for some people here, and I imagine it has something to do with the local language, but the repeated question "are they improved since yesterday?" is usually met with the answer "there is improvement." Sooner or later you learn to give in and just take it as that and ask about their symptoms and use the previous day's history to see if you think there really is improvement.

One of the main frustrations centers around the meagre battery of tests that are available here. On paeds especially you don't order many, since kids tend to get better and so burdening the parents with extra charges for tests doesn't usually make sense unless you can't figure out what's going on with a particular kid. But the frustration comes from the tests that you do order that aren't done. I've spent many an hour running down to the lab to see if a sample for a particular test was ever received. Almost without exception, they've been fruitless. I think it's just a way of life in Africa that sometimes things just don't get done. But the third time you see a child and the test that you ordered, reordered and rereordered still hasn't had a sample taken, you start to get a bit frustrated. Often by that point the kid has gotten better and you just end up discharging them, unless the test is such that you don't feel you can justifiably let them leave without knowing the result. Then you end up with a patient sitting in hospital who doesn't need to be there simply because things couldn't get done in a timely manner.

The problem with falling into patterns when so many of the kids do is the ones that don't. There was one child - a little older than most on the ward, say 10 or 12 - who I'd seen two days in a row with a couple other students, and had some complaints that should have tipped us off but didn't. He was just really weak, we were told again and again, can't sit up on his own. We all assumed that was due to malaria or other sickness and we'd see improvement over the next couple days. What we really should have done was quantified the weakness, because we probably would have realized that it wasn't symmetrical. His left side was much weaker than his right. Suddenly our differential diagnosis gets a lot longer and probably a lot scarier. The symptoms got worse over the next day when I didn't see him, but one of the staff doctors did. He came and found us after seeing the patient and pointed out the things we had missed, all very nicely and with the intention to teach us to be thorough, not to get us in trouble or tear a strip off for missing what should have been a reasonably easy diagnosis of stroke. The problem is, stroke didn't fit the pattern at all. Kids don't have strokes, at least not with any regularity, so it wasn't on our radar when we saw him. It took a while to get over that one, though I'm not sure there's much we could have done for him anyway had we caught it earlier.

That leads to the other frustration - things you can't treat. We've had several kids go into renal failure - the best we can offer is diuretics, steroids and hope. A couple cases of congenital heart disease. Those at least we refer to a big hospital in Kampala, but I'm not sure what treatment is available there either. Kids with asthma and adults with asthma are woefully undertreated - long acting bronchodilators and inhalable steroids just aren't available. The list could go on.

But all of this has to be remembered by the huge numbers of people who come to hospital, get their IV "X-pen and Gent" (benzylpenicillin and gentamycin.... "gent" is another story for anyone who's interested in pharmacology, I won't get into it), their quinine and get better in a week and get sent on their merry way. The healed up kids are fun to play with and run around the extension while their parents wait to assemble the money for their discharge.

It's been good to learn how to think on your feet and have the pressure of making decisions. I'm sure I'll be terrified all over again on a ward in Canada where everyone speaks the same language as me and expectations are so much higher, but it's been a good learning experience and I am glad to have been a part of it.

On Being Sick in Africa and other stories

Being sick in Africa is kind of like being sick in Canada. You feel awful, you wish it would go away, you sweat, you're freezing cold, the whole schtick. But the differences I discovered were several. First off, despite the overwhelming evidence that you have a simple viral flu-like illness, you consider all kind of weird and wonderful diagnoses for yourself. Perhaps days and days spent on a ward where everyone is considered to have malaria regardless of whether tests confirm it has made me a little paranoid about it, but I will admit to taking a quick test from someone who had one to confirm it as negative. Second main difference - there's nothing to do. This is a complaint of people in Canada as well, but frankly, I dreamed about sitting on the couch watching TV during a lot of my illness. Third main difference - lack of comfort food. A bowl of chicken soup, I'm convinced, could have cured me instantly. Toast... such a simple thing. But the bread here is kind of pre-stale and there's not toaster. So it had to make do.

At this point, I mostly sound like I'm whining, but I'm back to full health so it's all sort of moot anyway.

A followup to the story of Edimus. As of this very day, Edimus is moving out of Kagando Hospital into a nearby orphanage. His mother has agreed to sign the papers to let him do that, and money has been raised to pay his bills here, his bills at the orphanage, get him some new clothes and a mattress and so on. There he'll get fed every day, get to go to school and should hopefully grow up happy and healthy. A bit of extra money is being given to his mother so she can go visit him from time to time. Perhaps not the most perfect way for the story to work itself out, but a reasonable compromise given the situation. We're all sad to see him go, but happy that he'll be in good hands.

My time at the hospital is nearly over at this point, and as of Sunday we'll be off to explore bits of Uganda and Tanzania. Hopefully I'll find time to write again!

Kagando!

The interface of this system may grind the Pentium computer to a halt, and I don't know if the sub-dialup internet will serve me well in my quest, but I suppose I can't come up with many better reasons to revive my blog than all the stories from Africa.

We landed what seems like quite a while ago in Entebbe, Uganda, made the trip to Kampala, stayed a quick night and made our way out to a very small place called Kagando. You won't find it on any maps, though you might locate Kasese, which is about 25 minutes drive away.

Here, three of us, classmates, plan to spend a month working/volunteering in the hospital. Check out their website for some idea what kind of place it is. To our pleasant surprise, there were many other mzungu (white) med students here, mostly from Great Britain but one from Holland, so we were surrounded by a great group of fellow Christian students and were helped in the transition (or perhaps even just finding our rooms) to work at the hospital.

I have many stories, I suppose, though many other them are only interesting from a medical perspective, but I'll share a couple that I hope are more universal.

I spent my first 2 weeks and a bit on paediatrics. Part of it is a malnutrition ward. There's a young fellow (I think he's 8 or 9, but he could pass for 5) named Edimus who's been a long term resident of the place. His story is actually rather sad; as I understand it his mother remarried and his stepfather disowned him, leaving him stranded at the hospital where he's remained for quite some time. That aside, he's the cutest thing ever, running around the ward, joining you for ward rounds sitting on your lap, or his favourite passtime: pinching people's bums. I understand he's going to live with an aunt soon, and so things will be a little quieter (who am I kidding... paeds is a madhouse) on paeds in future.

One member of our group has been particularly active in the community, and met tons of the kids who are around, and bonded with them over his football (soccer) ball that they are forever coming up to ask to use to play. One evening, I joined him and a few of the other meds to go on a trip to the village which shares the hospital's name to give the kids a present. A mini football with some of their names on it and an admonition to share it with all the kids in the village. We stayed and played until dark, snapping pictures with our cameras to the kids delight (I don't know what African children did before digital cameras... they must have been very confused by the black boxes that people pointed at them, now they just demand to see themselves and scream with glee). It was a special experience, and it reminds you that the simple things in life are often brushed over when you live a life where you have everything you could need.

There's tons of other stuff I could write about, and if I get time I'll continue to write, assuming that this post will go up on this internet connection...

Once upon a time I went to Markdale...

When I last posted on this blog in the dark ages, I promised another post detailing my trip to Markdale. My curriculum duties for the year concluded with this trip to small town Ontario to get a little taste of clinical medicine.

The experience was actually quite amazing, and writing from my vantage point of 6 weeks later, it seems that some of the original excitement might have worn off as I've spent a considerable amount of time doing other shadowing things at the Leamington hospital. (I suppose I should promise another post on my activities during that time...). I went up north with another of my classmates, Anita, and we were greeted early Monday morning with a tour, and the promise that we were essentially to have free reign over the hospital for the remainder of the week.

Markdale Hospital is small enough that we drove right by it when we arrived. It has something like 18 beds in it, an emergency department, an X-ray department, some day surgery and some physio. We spent the largest portion of our time in emerg, and I found myself amazingly intrigued by it. Basically, the week that I spent there showed me what family medicine might look like in a rural area. Which was the kind of thing I imagined I might be interested in in the first place. What I saw I kind of liked. You get a variety of things... traditional family practice, emerg shifts, anaesthesia, surgery... and I kind of liked the idea of a job that might look like that someday.

Pretty much every doctor I met in Markdale was a generalist, if not a family practitioner. I'm not naive enough to think that I'm not going to really enjoy other areas of medicine that I run into, but my experience so far has really confirmed what I was thinking I would like to do.

Now on to the fun part. The place I stayed when I was in Markdale.

We stayed with a (semi)retired anaesthetist who had built her dream home with her husband up in the forest in the area. This place was spectacular. I'm going to shut up and show you some pictures.
















We were greeted with this view.
















And then proceeded to their back porch, overlooking their private pond.
















Their beautiful pond...

















Not to mention the interior, which I can't do justice with in pictures, but this is their living room from the overlooking balcony





















And the little shack that they built on this land years ago, before they were retired and ready to build their mansion.

















And last but not least, my gracious, and amazingly hospitable hosts. I shot the best round of golf of my life (a 44... right on bogey golf) with Lorne one afternoon and Francis made us the best food all week long. Our classmates were so jealous...

Blue Like Jazz

This blog has been sadly lacking in real content in the last while, but I blame my absurdly busy life, with its exams, Discovery week (details in another post), camping, and transition to job all closely associated. But once upon a time, I read this book. This book was "required reading" in order to date Sue. So... a tall order. It would seem that not only did I have to read the book, there seemed to also be an implied requirement to like the book. Fortunately, it turned out to be one of the best Christian books I think I've ever read.

In some ways, it's unfortunate I didn't get to write this when the book was fresh in my mind, but I'll do my best to put down some of the thoughts that the book generated for me. The full title of the book is "Blue Like Jazz: Nonchristian thoughts about Christian spirituality." And that's kind of a nice way to sum the whole thing up.

It's made up of little snippets of storytelling from the life of the author, Donald Miller. Many of the stories are funny or even silly, but they all center around Miller's spiritual life and how it grew, changed, and often failed through these events.

First of all, this book is pretty funny. Miller is brutally honest, and often says what you might be thinking, but would never say out loud. And there are hand drawn comics in this book (need I say more?).

Lots of times he takes things and turns them around in a way you haven't thought of, but perhaps the best example of that is a chapter called "Confession". In it, he and his friends set up a confession booth during a giant party at the university he attends. But when people come in, the confessing is done by members of the Christian group that organized the booth, talking about all the things in their own lives that they felt were shortcomings; ways in which they didn't live up to the Christian ideal. The people who came into the booth were touched, and Miller says he felt himself change a great deal. It's a neat idea, and one that would certainly take guts to pull off.

This is just one example, but this book made me think about so many things in new ways. All while being readable enough that I had to force myself to read it slowly and take it in.

Now that I have a copy of the book, and am looking through it after being a couple months removed from reading it, I realize I could write a little blurb on every chapter. But that'd be a heck of a long post. So in the end, my advice is to read it. It's hard to tell you what to expect, since I think in the end, it won't be what you expect, but hopefully it's good enough that I know I'll read it again. I think that's the best review I've got.

Isn't the Internet fun?

You can tell the studying is getting to me - I'm posting more often. This is another fun post.

I recently concluded that I should put the admissions video which I've talked about on this blog incessantly up on the web at Google Videos (just because I'm a Google nut and I wouldn't mind broadcasting to the world). So I went about doing that, and then started thinking about other stuff I could put up. Now the funny part is they rejected the video. The only thing I can think of is our use of music in the background that we likely don't have copyright for. But Scott Joplin's been dead a lot of years, and I don't think he'd mind us using "The Entertainer" at all...

Regardless. The other stuff I put up is videos of skiing at the cottage last summer. I decided the world should get to see us flying around the bay up in Muskoka. So here they are.

We start with me doing a little slalom. Unfortunately, you'll later get the comparison of seeing Jonathan slaloming, and realize I'm not that great. However, here it is.

This is Jonathan's cousin Ben doing a little banana skiing.

I picked a couple of Jonathan's better slalom runs to show off his skills. Part 1 and 2.

And here's the best for last. Wipeouts! Why else do we go skiing? My brother Ben on the tube starts us out, and a hilariously spectacular one from Jonathan to close it out.

Summer approaches, and I hope to be back soon. Wouldn'tcha rather...?

Return of the Skeptics

Once upon a time I had this great idea of reviving the Educated Skeptics website, or at least putting something back up on the web that signals that we ever existed. Mostly, I wanted the mp3's of our material to be available to our multitudes of fans (not that they couldn't find one of us and legally purchase a CD...). At this point, I'm in the middle of exam crunch and procrastinating, but I've basically resigned myself to the fact that I'm no web designer (I can barely operate HTML at all) and I'm not going to be ambitious enough to make the website reappear. What I can do is put links to those great tunes back up, and that's what this is all about.

Thank Google for the free webspace.

Who could forget Only One of You? With it's goofy backwards guitar intro that was way too much fun to record, and that catchy chorus? And the "oo oo's" at the end.

Follow that with Phil. The enigmatic name. The hard panned guitar/violin duos. And that weird noise I made at the end of the song. I'm still not sure about it...

Mexican Standoff has become one of my favourite tunes. The random opening was fun, the gratuitous bass solo sublime, and if I could have mixed that end section better, it might have come out awesome. Too much guitar. Bah. Hear it every time.

Elements is a fun song. Too many chords for its own good. Who writes a song with two bridges? But it evolved well, and I really like the way the violin worked its way in.

Everyone loves the Steps Don't Make a Sound intro. You just gotta love violin with cool effects. That overblown middle section with Peters playing a whole orchestra over himself was my idea, I'm still not sure about it, but I take responsibility. Oh. And I still haven't gotten an explanation as to how the lyrics of the song relate to cell phones at all.

One Way Streets probably got the short end of the stick in the mixing process, but I still like it. Go echoey guitar. And the "ooohs." I think they could be a little louder. But I've always loved them.

Never has more time been spent on a drum beat than for On Your Own. And after all that work, we ripped it out and put a drum maching in instead. I still think my favourite part is that little backwards cymbal as it leads into the first verse.

And Tired. I think this is the concensus fan favourite. I must say, when I came back from a bathroom break during our first recording of this, and Caleb was playing that nutty 32nds thing on the final chorus, I thought he was nuts. Now I love it.

There you have it. They're back on the web.

The Real Story: What Art's Been Avoiding on this Blog

It would seem by the suddenly-active comments section of my blog that I have recently acquired some self-professed (though anonymous) fan(s). By their clever question asking, my comments were led to hint at what is likely the more truthful answer to the question "what has kept you so busy that you haven't posted lately?" And therein lies this tale: (names may or may not have been changed to protect those involved)

Our story begins on a seemingly innocuous Thursday night in October or November. On this evening, our reluctant protagonist was attending Intervarsity Christian's weekly meeting, at which small groups were being formed. Our reluctant protagonist (let's call him... Art... that's an uncommon name) was drawn to the assortment of grad students and signed himself on to be a part of that group. The fearless leader of this group (let's call her... Sue) worked out a meeting time, and weekly Bible studies began.

The tale proceeds relatively quietly for the next few months. It should (must) be mentioned that Sue added Art to her MSN list somewhere in the middle of this less-enthralling portion of the story, a bold move which was largely overlooked by our reluctant protagonist. In an unfortunate turn of events, Art's schedule became very busy with admissions videos and stage performances and many other excuses already on this blog, causing him to miss many small group sessions. However, all hope was not yet lost for Art.

It should be noted at this point that although Art thought Sue was a really cool girl, a great Bible study leader and kinda cute, he was simultaneously unsure of her feelings as well as generally... let's say... "unbold" in these matters. But just when it would seem all hope was lost, fate stepped into this matter, using several degrees of separation.

Sue was frustrated by Art's "unobservant maleness," and unsure how to proceed. Just then, a remarkable turn of events was set in motion. It would seem that two people who both attended the University of Waterloo for their undergraduate degrees (as had Sue and Art) would have some common acquaintances. And when this certainty was revealed in the form of a friend of Sue's (let's call her Mary) Sue lamented to her: "Art's an inobservant male, what am I to do?" Not to fear, fate intervened yet again when Mary told a good friend of Art's (let's call him Jonathan) about the entire episode. Now Jonathan - knowing the ways of Art's mind and realizing his chickenish nature - immediately passed this knowledge on to Art, to do with it what he would.

At this point, our reluctant protagonist, newly bolstered by this information, made some bold moves. The aforementioned (and woefully underused) MSN channel was reinitiated, and at an oppurtune moment after a small group, some of the group went out for a bite to eat after
their meeting at Art's request. At this point, Art had his senses attuned, his radar set to monitor Sue's every word for indications of this newfound truth. Despite his best efforts, Art still appeared to be an inobservant male - although subsequent investigation reveals that Sue was broadcasting on all available channels, Art was still receiving mostly static. Undaunted, he suggested a theoretical date of a Settlers game. Some clever work on Art's part turned that Settlers game into an afternoon together, which was greatly enjoyed by both parties.

At this point, I'll stop the pompous 3rd person telling of the story (as fun as it is) and mention how after that first date, I've spent as much time with Sue as schedules and distance will allow, and enjoyed every minute of it. Timing being my strong suit, we started dating just as Sue was leaving on a clinical placement in St. Catharines, but as a wise man once said to me, "phhh... watcha gonna do." But before she left, we had four consecutive dates (a new personal best), and I had a wonderful time throughout. Since then we've met up for a weekend in Waterloo and worked the long distance thing. Mostly, I'm really excited about her and the whole thing, so life's been lots of fun lately. I think that's the end of the story as it stands right now. It's been a whirlwind three and a half weeks since our first date, and hopefully I'll have many more things to say in this blog in the future.

Gubernaculum!

Apparently I post in twos now, because this just occurred to me and now I have to put it down. My previous favourite anatomical structure in the body was the Anatomical Snuff Box. Now don't get me wrong, I still think it's pretty cool, but at least in name I think it's been surpassed by the gubernaculum. Granted, you can't see this, since it's an embryonic structure, but just say that name again. Gubernaclum. It's just great. One more time. Gubernaculum. Or, to really finish it off; many, many gubernacula.

I'm done now.

This post has no title

I would like to blame my conspicuous lack of posts in the last month on being busy, but one would think if I were really busy I'd have plenty to write about. So I could blame it on life being too boring, giving me no material to write about, which would be a lie. It would seem the truth lies somewhere in between: I've been busy, and somehow haven't bothered to blog. However, the hints have been dropped that I should post something (you know who you are...) so I believe it's time to put something together. This opening paragraph (and so many others) makes me think of one of Jared Penner's posts which observes this phenomenon of apologetic blog openings as an inherent problem of blogging. But perhaps I'm just too apologetic in general. I'll blame my Canadianness... but this is getting me nowhere, frankly I'm just typing filler.

I suppose the one constant in my life since I got home from the Dominican is my attempt to read my way through "The Iliad." It's been a bit of a slow process, more due to the fact that I find myself with so little reading time, and perhaps a bit due to the density of the material. In some ways, I wish I could be 10 for the rest of my life and read as much as I did at that age. I keep saying that when I retire I'm going to do nothing but sit around and read to make up for all the time I haven't done that since high school on. But back to The Iliad. I'm not sure I'd have enjoyed this read as much without the little bit of perspective that a few university English courses has given me. So many of the literary tools that were discussed in the diverse literature in all the courses I took are found in this story. But the great thing is how this was written a couple thousand years before most of the stuff I've read. So I would say I've enjoyed the story somewhat along the way, but I've got more of a great respect for the writer who, if not the first to use many of these ideas is certainly near their beginning of being put down on paper. Plus, I think now that I'm this far (60 pages to go!), I kind of have to finish it, just so I can say I've read it...

This side of the fence

This weekend was the first of two where prospective students come interview at Western. As admissions rep on council for my class along with one other person, I'm responsible for planning the student run portion of those weekends. That mostly involves having members of the class be around to chat with people, take them to interviews, take them to register and so on.

In truth, the main reason I wanted the position when I decided to run for it back in September was because of the experience I had coming to Western for my interview last year. The second years (then first years) that were there to put us at ease certainly did a great job of that for me. And so, I've been looking forward to this experience ever since I got elected to the job.

Having seen both sides now, I would have to say first off that I'm certainly a fan of this job. Besides the lack of stress in just hanging out and talking to people, I think I've gained some perspective on how much I, and likely all my classmates, have changed over the last 6 months or however long I've been at this med school thing.

I suppose any change is usually too subtle to be noticed if a person is observed consistently, and observing yourself would likely be no different. But just seeing the crowds of interviewees coming through the doors over the last two days has reminded me of what a difference I see in myself from this time last year.

Most of that difference lies in my perception of direction for my life, which I suppose shouldn't be shocking. But I remember how focused I was on medical school as the end goal of all the school I had been doing for so long. Suddenly school has a whole different purpose, and even if my study habits haven't changed dramatically and much of the learning I do still has a focus on the upcoming exam, I think I've convinced myself reasonably that learning for the sake of learning really is what it's about now.

The second part isn't as meaningful perhaps, but medical school in many ways isn't as stressful as undergrad. Just looking around the room, you see a bunch of laid back first years from my class and a group of interviewees who are doing their best to look calm. Granted, an interview isn't the right venue to make a fair comparison on stress levels, but the pressure to get marks in undergrad as compared to the pass/fail system of med school takes just enough of that edge of pressure off to put the stress level down a notch.

Either way, when asked by various students if I had any parts of Western that I didn't really like or if I had any regrets, I had to think long and hard to come up with anything. And I think that's a good thing.

Dominican - here I come... errr... was

My posting has been conspicuously absent lately, but I blame at least part of that on my trip to the Dominican. Not to mention the exams preceeding it and the exam studying preceeding that and the crazy amount of work done on the admissions video previous to that. So with that summary of the last month thrown at you, I'll return to the more interesting portion - Dominican.

Along with 29 classmates and two friends of classmates, I headed down to San Juan, Dominican Republic for a week during our March break. Here we are:















If nothing else, this attests to how close our class really has become - the group that went is by no means representative of one particular clique from within the class. From its humble beginnings as a few people from the class talking about heading south for the break, it snowballed into the group you see above. Somewhere along the way, my friend Matt convinced me that I had to come, since we could play tennis every day. Which we almost did. And so I was hauled on board.

Most of my week was pretty relaxing - laying on the beach, reading, playing cards, swimming, etc. In fact, I polished off the back half of the Narnia series and read a third of The Iliad (I ran out of reading material and it was what available for borrowing). As well, I nurtured my crotchety old man side by playing copious amounts of bridge. That's right. I can admit that I like bridge. A couple of attempts at windsurfing, at which I actually made some progress (Jonathan take note) rounded out the majority of my activities for the week.

I did partake in one day trip, a catamaran voyage to go snorkelling at two different reefs. It was an amazing day. Other than the 7am departure time, it was a near perfect day. The weather was, along with pretty much the entire week, perfect. Hot, sunny, barely a cloud in the sky. The crew that ran the boat was great, entertaining enough on their own to make for a great day. The variety of fish and coral in the reefs was amazing, and I remembered how much fun I had snorkelling in Florida with my family a number of years ago. We sailed back under sail power, and saw a group of whales, and I'm pretty sure I caught a glimpse of a dolphin at one point. To boot, I won a bottle of rum in a cannonball contest. How did skinny man Art Winter win a cannonball contest you ask? Well, my years of experience in my home pool has taught me that a cannonball contest is won on technique, and that technique is the canopener (or jacknife) whose splash is so much more impressive than a cannonball can ever be.

I could throw in a few other stories - a 3 hour game of pool basketball that slowly degraded into "kill the guy with the ball," many late nights singing karaoke (either in the karaoke bar there or just on our own), generally making a ruckus as a large group of people, and so on. But I'll leave you with a couple shots of the scenery as I remember when I could wear shorts last week...

The Instigator

I took a little trip down memory lane the other day, looking at "The Instigator" - a comic published on the CBC site about all things hockey. Although I was entertained by the current run of comics (and his Olympic contributions) I really was looking to relive hockey seasons past and see some of the ones I had laughed at years ago.

For example:





























Mario, on one of his returns from retirement. Those were the days.































Eddie Belfour after his tirade at the Olympics trashing a hotel room. Priceless.




























And that old folks home went on to win some Cups and stuff.

But the greatest of them all, I believe, is this:





























This was after a long overtime game, some random playoff game that I think I might have watched. But as a Leaf fan, my history with Kerry Fraser runs so much deeper (mostly in terms of spite for him) and frankly, I think that hair is hilarious.

Check out the rest of them (I linked at the top) if you like hockey. Hilarity will ensue.

Nothing mere about it

This post started out with me writing about the book I just finished reading: Mere Christianity. But as I went to my favourite source of gratuitous links for my posts, Wikipedia, I found that the article there was in some ways rather critical of the book, which I have almost nothing but praise for. Its main point concerns Lewis being vague and creating false dilemmas. The piece of the book they choose to illustrate this (evidently a famous portion, quoted by Ronald Reagan at some point...) was one that I found to be particularly profound.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg—or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.

Wikipedia's "argument" is that Lewis doesn't consider other reasonable options, such as Christ's claim of being the Son of God being attributed to him later by the writers of the Gospels. To me that argument isn't even really this argument at all. Really, that argument is asking whether or not Scripture is ispired word or a nice piece of literature. With regards to Lewis being vague, I see many of his metaphors as being simplifications, but what good is a metaphor if it is more complicated than the thing it is trying to convey?

This could quickly turn into a rant about Wikipedia and the bias of a system where anyone can write about anything they like, and work their own views into it, but I'll leave that for another day.

Really I would rather talk about the book. I think it should be required reading for anyone who is Christian, is thinking of becoming Christian or isn't Christian and would like to hear some good reasons to think about it. It solidified for me a good number of things that I either understood poorly, or had never thought about. Parts of faith can often be taken at face value as you're taught them, and this pulls those things out and gives a how and why to them.

FInally it would seem that as I slowly read the book a few chapters at a time, the part of the book I was reading would seem remarkably applicable at that exact moment. From Bible study discussions where I would immediately see the connection to what I had read to discussions with friends to random daily events, I would see connections back to the book. Coincidence can be blamed for many things, and maybe I was looking for what I had read and therefore finding it, but it would seem to me that there might be a bit more behind this. In either case, it was a great book: thought provoking, applicable and remarkably readable for what passes as a theology text. Now everyone should go out and read it. Yes, that means you.

The Toronto Notes

Just a quick post here before I head to bed.

This:


 















is everything I'm supposed to know to be a doctor. It's dimensions are 8 3/8" × 11 7/8" × 2 1/4". For those metrically inclined, that's 212mm × 302mm × 57mm. My bathroom scale says it weighs 4 lbs. And it's in point form.

Mostly I'm saying it's a pretty intimidating book. So when licensing exams show up, hopefully I'll have all that info stored away in my brain.

That's all for tonight. 

Me weekends.... yarrr

With the flurry of activity that have been my last couple weekends, I think it's time I get off my lazy arse and publish something here. Vaughn is putting me to shame writing deep poetry and expounding on politics every third day. I'm feeling the pressure.

Two weekends ago a big chunk of my class and a good number of the second years headed out to Quebec City for a little thing called Medgames which is a weekend of athletic competition between medical students. Schools from Manitoba east come, and since it's in Quebec, the Quebec schools tend to have the largest representation.

Now Western's reputation precedes them. We usually send a huge group of people (check) sign up for lots of sports (check) and then default all our games because people are usually too hung over from last night's party to get up to play (check). I broke with Western's tradition and participated in as many sports as possible. A waterpolo game where only 7 people showed up. That's a LOT of swimming. In fact, I've never felt like I was going to drown as much as for that 40 minutes. Our frisbee team consisted of three troopers in the foot of snow and pouring rain playing a team of 6. Let it be known we had a 2-1 lead and held them at 2-2 for most of the first half. I hopped back in the pool to participate in a 4×50m freestyle relay, and played some volleyball. But the real kicker of it all was when I got up early Sunday morning to go watch other people, and while waiting for the 4×200m track team to run we realized that there was no 4×200m track team. Except one guy. So me and another guy hop down to the track, in our jeans, and run the relay. By some stroke of genius I was chosen to run anchor. We actually maintained second place by about 3 feet at the handoff to my leg. I pushed hard around the corner, but it became apparent as this chiseled, short-short-wearing guy in spikes blew by me on the back straight that I was quite outclassed. I believe I yelled something like "Hey! That's not fair! You run track!" at him, though I'm not sure he understood me. Language barrier and all that.

The weekend was a blast, and though I ended up making the decision to play more sports and see less of the city, my view out the hotel window indicated that Quebec seemed like a cool place. I'll have to go back sometime.

Which brings us to this past weekend. Sunday a group of people from our class went to a Pistons game. My first foray into the world of professional basketball was a pretty good game. Our seats were up high, but the view was still good. The game was close, a rarity for the Pistons lately, and we even had hope of it getting pushed to overtime, but the Pistons triumphed by two. The atmosphere at the game is pretty fun, maybe not as crazy (except in our section) as I might have thought, but the game was a blast. We stopped off in Windsor at a bar and then headed back late. I even made 8:30 class... at least in body.

In between exciting weekends I still go to class a lot, work on the admissions video, and whittle away the rest of my time doing who knows what.

Thus ends the Art report.

Winnipeg, here we come

This past weekend I got to head out to Winnipeg. You might think that a free trip to Winnipeg for a weekend would get people jumping, with the competition for spots being fierce. And that's where you'd be wrong. However, 5 brave volunteers represented Western at the CMDS (Christian Medical and Dental Society) Western Canada conference. Which begs the question "why are you going to a Western Canada conference?" The simple answer to which is that because the conference was in Winnipeg, they figured us east people were so close they'd just invite us too.

Anyway, Friday afternoon, off to Toronto and the snowy north. Meet Vaughn and Peter Allen at the airport in Winnipeg for a great 45 minutes of hanging out that involved Slurpees and cake and then off to Camp Assiniboia.

The weekend was a good experience. Meeting lots of other med students (and a few token dentists; it would appear that the overwhelming majority in our group is constant) who share faith was cool. The weirdest thing about the weekend was the fact that it really felt like a return to the old days of going on youth retreats. Frankly being at a Mennonite camp and singing and having sessions and all that stuff almost made me feel like I was back then, but once in a while I'd be reminded that I was there with other meds, such as when we did case discussions, and somehow the whole experience felt like ramming and old part of my life into the new part. Which I think is a good thing, it just felt a little odd at times when I'd suddenly become aware of it.

The speaker was pretty good. Really philosophical, we're talking some high level theology going on. Lots of logic, and references to C.S. Lewis, and defining words and Greek and Latin and Chinese and other amazing stuff. If you could follow him and stay with him and catch most of the references he was making there was some really good stuff to get out of it. My main criticism is that when things get really philosophical they can become almost inapplicable in life. And for myself I usually try and see the practical in most things. Though I enjoy the beautiful parallels that (for example) he drew between Lord of the Rings and modern society his talk about everyone being called to sainthood, and sainthood being of the heart, with no concrete method or even decision that can be made to bring it about can be kind of frustrating to attempt to use in life. His other interesting characteristic was being Catholic, and really attempting to show some Catholic doctrine as very important, including some stuff I wasn't too sure about. The bottom line is he made some very convincing arguments about a lot of stuff I'd really never thought about before, so it was nice to stretch the brain a bit.

We had some free time on Saturday afternoon, the highlight of which was doing a high ropes course thingy. This is all with the belaying system and whatnot. The one was a climb up thing with rope laddery sections and tires and 4×4's and stuff up to around 45 feet, and the other, more challenging, involved a "tightrope" of cable with ropes hanging down from above about every 6 or 8 feet, so you walked across with the ropes to stabilize you. The second half of that part was a bunch of small wooden "swings" attached above you that you could put one foot in and had to move across sideways. Hard to picture I'm guessing, this might help you out. Lots of fun, remarkably hard on your grip strength, leaving me with amazingly sore forearms for a couple hours.

Ok, this post is now long, I'll end it here.

Christmas past

Holidays are over, which right now means so is my vacation from posting here. Who knew two weeks could be so short.

It was a wonderful two weeks though. Lots of time spent with family and friends, all very relaxing. We put the tree up as a family, something I've missed out on the last few years with exams going later. As usual my family worked through the regime of board games at home, including a couple new ones we kids gave our parents for Christmas. My success rate was rather low, but I did take Scrabble, Yatzee and most of the Settlers games we played. To be fair, I was teaching them Settlers...

I also have a good friend who has decided to move to Edmonton, so this break was my last chance to see him for the near future. Don't worry, it wasn't one of those emotional goodbyes; we both know that MSN was our primary mode of communication over the previous 200km distance. It should be just as effective over 4000. And since, according to said friend, I don't have a soul, I shouldn't have to worry about missing him or anything like that. All joking aside, it will be very different not to see him regularly, but now I have an excuse to go to Edmonton!

Well, besides all the good food and good singing and good weather (that's a lie) that's about what happened on my Christmas break.

Thoughts

This is probably going to end up just being a bunch of random unorganized thoughts, but I feel as though I'm due for another post, and I have plenty of unconnected things buzzing around my head. So I figure I'll lay them down here.

For starters, I'm done exams. Which is a wonderful relief. They went well, although the scale of "well" seems to be shifted, partly due to the "six-oh and go" attitude that is bred by this pass/fail system, partly due to the rumours that fly from upper years about any question that everyone does bad on getting dropped from the test (resulting in wildly inflated grades) and to some degree just because the tests, however similar to what I've seen before, are subtly different in some ways.

Being done means a good weekend just past of relaxation and celebration. Hung out with friends, went to a Christmas party, carol sing at church, lunch with Don and El, CMDS dinner at a house unlike any I've seen before, comlete with second carol sing of the day. Only one thing could put a stop to such enjoyment of life.

And that would be the return of class on Monday. OK, it wasn't that bad. No worse than any normal Monday morning in terms of content or attention holding ability. But the very fact of returning to class after a set of exams was a bit of a downer. Fortunately this week is full of fun evenings. Such as waterpolo and dodgeball against the second years in the last two days, talent show, poker and the like.

Lastly, and rather disconnected from the above, is a conversation I had with a friend this evening. The topic of Christian faith came up, thanks to his asking about it, where I hadn't really anticipated it coming from him. We had an interesting conversation about faith and science, as well as sharing where we both stand right now in our journeys. It was neat to connect on that level and good to see someone working their way back towards faith.

Procrastination

So I needed to quickly know a value for the Faraday constant, and that led me to a very cool discovery. My method of choice was, of course, a quick Google search for faraday constant. At the top was, first off, my answer, but also a little link saying more about calculator. Looking to blow some time, I follow, and discover another new feature of Google.

Basically, it turns your search into the answer to a math question. But not just silly stuff like 1+1. You can put constants, units, and pretty much anything else you can think of in, and it can figure most of it out. Preposterous calculations such as speed of light in picometers per decade are quite possible. Suffice it to say I spent too much time dabbling at this.

My procrastination only continues as I write this post, but really, I just had to kill 10 minutes before supper was ready...

Schtudying

Studying. I've been studying for finals, starting last week Wednesday. For those of you keeping track, that would be two and a half weeks before my first exam. As a professional procrastinator this is a major step forward in my studying career. My hope is that through this proactive approach I will somehow be a better studier than in the past.

As a professional procrastinator I have been very successful in the past. That past would mostly entail my undergrad education. In a world of multiple choice questions and occasional short answers, it works well to cram. Now I would call most of the cramming I did in undergrad the non-memorization type of cramming. I learned concepts, facts when needed, but all of it was done in an effort to keep the amount of studying time to a minimum. At least subconsciously, if not overtly. By learning things reasonably well in a short period of time and then getting it all out efficiently on an exam I managed to get the marks I needed, while maintaining my procastinating nature.

I suppose my justification for this type of work was that in the end, I was still working on the "these marks are just numbers to get me somewhere else" theory, one that had been in force since late high school. However, I should really be moving out of that mindset at this point, since a) the marks don't matter any more and b) I'm supposed to know and remember and use this stuff forever. At least that's what we're told. Once in a while you wonder when doctors need to know that Lck is the signaling molecule for the CD4 and CD8 receptor and phosphorylates a... oh, never mind.

The big question is how do I learn to learn for good? Much of my undergrad knowledge is still there, in pieces, but as I joked with some people this very evening, the ability to recognize and choose a correct multiple choice answer from a set of alternatives doesn't exactly cut it when a patient presents with a set of symptoms. I guess my first attempt to make this stuff stick is to study it more in advance (thus my slow digression from Captain Procrastinator to some advance work). Perhaps I need a new style. But I'm kind of stuck in the one I've got, and it does seem to get the job done. I do think with a more focused attempt to learn the stuff that seems relevant for the future I can make it work. So onwards with the concise, hopefully applicable, likely illegible study notes. Hopefully some of it sticks.

Of Lions, Witches and Wardrobes

Last night I finished reading "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe." I'm not sure exactly what age I would have been when I first read the book, but suffice it to say I'm pretty sure the number fits on my hands. When I finished the full set of books, I remember my parents telling me that not only were these books stories about kids going off to another world, they were also allegorically the story of Christianity. At the time I remember pondering this quite seriously, and my child's understanding of faith allowed me to see at least some of the parallels that existed.

It's probably a shame that I waited this long to reread this book (and I'll get around to the rest of them sometime as well) since I really enjoyed looking for all the allegory in the story. Lewis is actually very direct in much of the material, and although I won't go into details I was actually a bit suprised at how obvious some of the parallels are. Especially when you're looking for it, much of the book jumps out at you. This is the English student in me creeping out again, but frankly I'm OK with that, since I don't often get a chance to let that side out with 10 hours of immunology with the same professor in the same room over the last two days... but I digress.

My reason for resurrecting this book from my distant past is, of course, the upcoming film version of the story. In my mind before reading the book I particularly wanted to see how I thought the story might translate to film. Plot-wise I'm sure the writers will make their usual obtuse changes to the plot for the sake of making the story more film worthy, or to put their own stamp on it, or to change things for the sake of changing them... whichever of those options is usually invoked when perfectly good stories are modified for the sake of film. At this point I'm resigned to the fact that no story can make it to film in its written form. But I'm much more interested in how the Christian allegory in the story will be presented. I wonder if a secular movie going public would even notice many of the parts of the story that are thinly veiled portions of Christ's passion? Or Peter as Peter? My fear is that the allegory could be intentionally subdued to maintain the political correctness of the film. I think it would be a great disservice to the story to try and make it into a secular adventure film. Hopefully I'm not the only one.

I suppose only time will tell.

MSN + procrastination + boredom = ?

It has come to the attention of Artimus Winter and Davimus Sparling (the real creative geniuses behind the Educated Skeptics), that there is a greater need for extreme weather conditions in the South to increase in size and frequency. It has been widely know that the South has been ravaged by Katrina, Rita and Wilma, however - what isn't as an apparent fact, is the extreme weather phenomena that has been ravaging through parts of Canada, and more recently, Germany.

"Justin", the latest in meteorological phenomenon to be the scourge of our planet, has been found to move in the opposite direction to all of the other storms. So, where Katrina blew through and over New Orleans, Justin has been sucking all over Central Canada and Post-Nazi Germany. Over the last 5 or 6 months to 24 years (how old is he?), the suckiness of Justin has dramatically increased extraexponentially, causing the Tower of Pisa to straighten, the hockey blackout of 04/05, the migration of the water buffalo known as "the pilgrimage", 14,000 droughts in Sub-Saharan Africa, a small - yet unnoticed - ice age, and the extinction of the bunny. Worth noting is how the Fox television network has been literally the only sole entity to remain completely unaffected by the terrors of Justin's magnitude.

Experts Winter and Sparling have speculated that this is due to higher order theories of diffusion. Other theorists have attempted to convince a large body of Fox Executives to stand in Justin's path, thus creating an anomaly that will implode in on itself. In lay terms; two birds with no stone. Most conventional meteorologists, however, are turning to global warming. With global warming comes the increase in aggressive storm action in the south due to the increase in oceanographic temperatures. Storms that blow; the good storms. It has been estimated that the average global temperatures would have to increase by 5 degrees Celsius over the next two years in order to obtain the optimum "blowing" storm level to match the sucking rate that Justin will have achieved by that time. Creating a gentle "global draft" that the world can enjoy on their front porch.

In conclusion, Justin Liu has been deemed the suckiest person to walk the face of planet Earth. This doesn't exclude possibilities such as SuckAlphaPsi, code name for a planet where everyone sucks. In such an environment, it is conceivable that a person suckier than Justin could exist. Until that day, it is respectfully submitted that Justin sucks more than vaccuums, black holes, the Backstreet Boys, toilets, Fender Squier guitars, and likely many other sucky things.

Sincerely,

Dave and Art

Silly Things

Perhaps I'm going a little stir crazy from studying the upper limb. But I thought I'd pass along what I think is probably the coolest name for a body part that I've so far come across. I include a picture of the Anatomical Snuff Box. I kid you not. Apparently in the 1800's it was named based on its use as a snuff holder for those of the snorting persuasion. Really, it's just the space formed between a few tendons going to your thumb. I could tell you what they are, but I'll just let Wikipedia take care of that.
















Secondly, I'm now the proud owner of a stethoscope. This is mostly just cool, since even though I really have no idea how to use it, it does mean i can listen to my own heart beat when ever I get the urge. The real challenge was colour choice. I went with navy blue - not black, but not too overstated. Unfortunately, lime green was not available.




A Day of Firsts

Today was a pretty neat day. After six weeks of mostly class with the odd small group discussion thrown in to keep us on our toes, we finally got to do something today that almost felt like really learning how to be a doctor. From now on, Fridays are Clinical Methods (or, in Western slang, since nothing can be spoken or spelled in full, ClinMeth). For today and the forseeable future that basically means a small group of people interviewing standardized patients.

A standardized patient, for those of you keeping track, is essentially a person who is to act like a patient coming into a doctor's office, with a set of symptoms, family history, etc. Our job is to have one person interviewing the person while the rest of the group waits in the wings, watching. Things get more fun when the person interviewing gets stuck and they call time out. At this point, the "patient" sits and pretends not to hear while we talk about how the interviewer is doing, what they could ask, what they might have done better, and so forth.

Now although I didn't actually do the interview today, it was neat just to be part of the experience. And of course, I'll get my turn soon enough. Interviewing is a bit of a tricky thing. You need to be open enough in your questioning to let the person feel involved, specific enough to get the information you need, personable enough to make the patient feel at ease. For the time being, with our lack of knowledge of disease, it falls to us to work on the third, while dabbling in the first two to get a sense of how it should work.

Apparently, when med school students start out they're all great at being "patient centered," and we all end up impersonal and jaded by the time we make it through clerkship and residency. Probably due to the long hours and frustration with the heirarchy of power we have to claw our way up. For all we're told about the phenomenon, it certainly seems a long ways off right now. Hopefully we as a class can maintain the level of humanity and "patient centeredness" we have now.

The second neat thing about today was my first cadaveric dissection. Though the prospect of this is something that would turn some people's stomachs, I was quite intrigued by the whole thing. Despite the fact that our cadaver didn't have a radial artery that we could locate (no small feat - no blood to half her arm) the rest of the work went reasonably well. Things are never as clear cut as they are in your nice textbook pictures, but our work on the flexors of the forearm (think moving your wrist toward your elbow) allowed us to separate and identify most of the things we were supposed to find.

The real trick will be when we have our bellringer test and I have to be able to identify pretty much any structure they pick in the upper limb... but that's a story for another day.

Grebel and its Ultimate

I think the pattern of posting on Wednesdays is one that will likely continue, since I have from 10:30 on to do what I please. Things like studying, researching or working all seem like good options, but so does posting something.

This weekend's trip to Waterloo (and Toronto to see U2!) only reminded me again how great playing Ultimate at Grebel is. There's something about Grebel Ultimate that is better than everywhere else I've played. Somehow I think the "spirit" of Grebel manages to squeak its way out on the Ultimate field. Even the frosh we were playing against seemed to fall right into Grebel Ultimate, without being told or taught how.

There are certain things that make Grebel Ultimate different. I think a lot of them have to do with the (dare I use it...) community approach to life at Grebel. Things like the fact that the sidelines and endzones aren't really clearly defined or enforced, but they seem to work out anyway. No one abuses the grey area (too much anyway) and it makes the game more relaxed. Of course, the fact that you never keep score (numerically anyway) also adds to that feeling.

Defence always just seems to happen. Maybe it's not always the best, but the game is certainly entertaining. Compared that with most of the other Ultimate I've played where people immediately assume that we should be playing tough man-to-man defence. Now maybe I'm just lazy, but frankly that's a lot of work. After a single trip to the competitive Ultimate team at Western, I decided it really wasn't for me. The relaxed feel of a Grebel pickup game is, in the end, what I love about Ultimate.

Lastly, the great tradition of Grebel Ultimate is the long bomb. Though this exists in all Ultimate, at Grebel we've perfected it. I'm not sure how this philosophically fits with Grebel, but I do know that it's certainly the most fun way to play...

My First Real Post

So in this first post, I guess I'm writing to sort of say why I'm writing. In this blog. I suppose my inspiration is really Nathan Sherwood's blog (see link) since I really enjoy reading it. Also I really feel I have no writing outlet (for whatever little bit of writing I really feel the need to do) with hoards of science and multiple choice tests being my lot in school. I think my intent is less to have a running commentary of my daily life and more to do some commenting on observations and thoughts that I have. Again, see Nate's blog for inspiration.

Currently I'm getting toward settled into first year of med school. The odd thing about this brand of "higher" education is that in many ways it feels like a big step backwards. (My apologies to everyone who has already heard me go through this spiel.) My days consist of 8 hours in a single classroom with professors coming to us. An hour for lunch and "recess" every 50 minutes between classes. Lockers down the hall. Also, every class is made up of the same set of people - a phenomenon never seen in a science undergrad at Waterloo.

Overall it's actually kind of a neat experience. Returning to knowing people in classes, as well as the experience of meeting a million (actually 132) people all at once is something I haven't done in a while. And while my lack of ability to remember names has been a bit disconcerting the experience has been going well so far. I think this whole med school thing is something I'm going to enjoy. I'll try and keep you posted.

My Photo

Me!

This is a test

Well, I think I might try out this blogging thing. This is my first post to see if and how it works.