The Synapse Connections of a lifetime

I've been told by several people of the usefullness of taking Vitamin C to prevent colds and also to treat colds.

Apparently, while looking through MMR, there was a Cochrane review on the matter which reviewed the studies done to evaluate this issue. It had been updated and their latest conclusions were that:

“Regular ingestion of vitamin C has no effect on common cold incidence in the ordinary population. It reduced the duration and severity of common cold symptoms slightly, although the magnitude of the effect was so small its clinical usefulness is doubtful.”

However, I guess it's no harm to take Vitamin Cs to reduce the severity of the problem as there really isn't anything wrong with that practice. However, from this review, it is implicated that regular pill popping of vitamin C has not been shown to have any real beneficial effects for prevention of cold.

Reference:
Douglas RM and others. Vitamin C for preventing and treating the common cold. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2007,Issue 3.

As part of the Session 2 O-week, the Resident Society of International House organised a picnic at Centennial Park this morning.. The turnout for today's event was surprisingly high, making this event a successful one.

During the event, we had the usual small snacks and we played some mini team-based games, which is quite fun although not exactly the most creative games i've played so far.. :P

I'll post up more pictures and elaborate more in the near future, stay tuned.

For now, this is a picture we took in the end of the picnic, during the clean-up process. The water in the buckets were to be disposed of, what better way then to snap an action picture of static flying water? :P It turned out to be quite a cool picture. The guy closest to the left is me by the way :)

Started my second session on Phase 2 med course this week. We're doing the course called 'Society and Health'. I really dread this course, at least the non-hospital part of the course. Why? Because it's filled with endless statistical and ethical stuff that bores everyone out. I can seriously see at least 10 people sleeping on the first day of Uni. I hope the hospital attachments are interesting this time round, we're gonna get attached to various aspects of community health care, so we'll be doing home visits and stuff, which are quite interesting.

But then, we received an email from the course coordinator from Sutherland Hospital.

The best sentence i've see so far from him is this:

"Everything that can go wrong with this has gone wrong"

So now we're kinda lost souls with no idea where to go or what to do, hence my free day today, which i'm glad for :P

The trip i just had during the winter break was great. Went to Perth to visit my baby and the trip was a very enjoyable one. :) Took some nice pictures while we're at it, and gave my new tripod a test run. I'll post up some pictures when I have the time, but this is one of my favorite.. It's taken during a Curtin Uni organised tour called 'Twilight Tours'.


This is taken at King's Park at night. It's pitch black at that time, but a good 60 second exposure lighten up everything, including the stars. It's quite difficult to aim the shot here as my camera has no viewfinder and it's pitch dark. I was lucky to hit a shot that obeys the rule of thirds here though. Hehe! Don't kill me bb :P



In King's Park, we were also greeted with a magnificent view of Perth's Cityscape. It's truly a great sight and the location we were at greatly puts everything is a good perspective for photography (minus the stupid trees blocking the view).


On the way to King's Park, we visited a beach (forgot the name) to supposedly see the sunset. Unfortunately, the sun has setted before we reached it.. so it's pitch black.. haha! Oh well.. luckilly, I was armed with my tripod here, and I was able to take some quite colourful pictures of the twilight hour.



That's all for now, more pictures shall come later :)

I might be updating my aquaria KLCC post as its receiving some hits from google/yahoo search. Stay tuned.

Quote of the day: "Most cardiologists think that the heart is the most important organ in the body"

In the ward rounds today, we saw a patient that had severe Alzheimer's disease. The woman was bedridden and have lost most of her cognitive functions.. She is no longer able to speak, move or understand what's going on around here.

The consultant were talking to her husband and then suddenly he said something like "can I have a talk with you outside?"

What follows are a little bit shocking, as the discussion that ensued revolves around the suggestion of discontinuing treatment.

"It is time. Discontinuing all her treatments is the best course of action.."

I was surprised, but everyone was calm, the husband confessed that he had prepared for this. He knew it was coming. The thing about this situation is how the consultant handles it. Again, it takes good skills to express your empathy and explain what's going on, and what's the best course of action.

It was a sad situation for the husband, and we could feel his grief. It was a very difficult decision that only he could make. Hopefully, he would be able to cope with his loss.

Korean barbecues are pretty popular here, with some restaurants situated just right next to each other. For Anne-lise's birthday, we celebrated in one of them, called BBQ-city at Liverpool street. Simon managed to book a huge room that looked pretty cool, it's one of those Japanese (Korean?) styled short tables that requires you to either sit cross legged or kneel jap style.

The seating arrangement is pretty cool for the first 20 mins, until I begin to lose sensations to my toes.. The few minutes after that is pretty much a struggle to stand up from that crammed position to drop some blood back.. Luckily some of the other guys are suffering too.. haha!

The food is 'geng', actually, not the food, but the price.. so I rephrase.. the price is 'geng'.. so 'geng' my wallet felt lighter.. A lot lighter after the dinner, but that's not the point :P

[Vegetarians beware, pictures of meat ahead]

Here's how a usual Korean BBQ set up is like, you get a pan (I don't know what it's called) and they give you raw meat to cook yourself. It's a neat setup, and in another place where it's a buffet, you get unlimited meat so you can literally cook till you drop. Also in the menu are MISC stuff like kimchi, pancakes, radishes and other random stuff I can't name.

We also ordered a hotpot (or steamboat) dish called beef and mushroom (I said beech and muchroom that time for some reason, it was hilarious!). It has a number of different kinds of much.. mushrooms and also noodles, which is quite tasty actually..

Then after the meal, we sang the birthday song and ate the cake.


This is Anne-lise and Simon. The fuzzy image of a person at the back is the manager, and he's trying to 'xiang jing tou' or trying to get into the picture and do the Asian victory sign while I was taking the picture. This guy, is quite a businessman, he offered a wine to the 'most beautiful lady in the room tonight' and we all know he's going to give it to Anne, haha! Then he sang the birthday song himself! It was actually quite good, he had the soprano type voice, lol! I was quite stunned at that (not at his voice, at his appearance mind you :P).


After that we all went to Club 42 (M.K's place in Barkers) for an after party, I left early so I have no idea what they did after that, haha! They were still sober when I left though..