Panto

Last year had a few highlights that stood out from others, and without a doubt, one of these was the taking part in the Imperial Islam Awareness Week 'panto' (as well as a later charity week one). The hilarity experienced during early morning and late night rehearsals was almost unbearable to my abdominal muscles, and the outcome of the end product couldn't have gone better.

I had the pleasure of being part of their IAW panto again this year; again organised, written and directed by Omar Hafeez Bore (the legend), could we pull it off again this year? This was due to be the last performance that he would be organising (which I sincerely hope won't be the case), and we all wanted it to be spectacular. I was promised my big acting break (as opposed to the other two where I was more of an 'action' actor), and I had the fortune of not having any exams in the run-up to the panto performance, and so I was able to give up a few mornings and evenings to rehearse.

I and a couple of others are considered to be panto 'veterans', there from the beginning, so it was funny watching all the new people try to get the hang of our lecture theatre 'takeover', which has been the common feature in all of our performances; counting up in sequence, with each person having their own number. The story then usually progresses into something Islam related, and for the latest one, it would be a sequel to Slumdog Millionaire, with 'Jamal' trying to win a million pounds for charity. The TV crew are really a bunch of people who want to make the questions more Islam orientated, and I'm the policeman who puts an end to that, drawing gasps from the audience when I destroyed the 'supercomputer'. This was set to be the most immersive panto yet, with loads of videos shot for Jamal's flashbacks that he uses to answer his questions. Never did I imagine I'd be in a supermarket at one o'clock in the morning and witness a scene where three guys would be fighting over a last carton of soya milk.

Unfortunately, when it did come to the night, technical problems overshadowed the preparations, and instead of some last-minute rehearsing, people were frantically trying to convert the videos we shot so that they could be viewed on the lecture theatre computer. Some of the videos didn't convert in time, but the main ones did, and the story wasn't really affected, but some awesome ones had to be left out.

As with every panto, preparations were very much down to the wire; last minute tweaks with the powerpoint presentation (in which the main gimmicks of our performance are embedded) and ironing out details that we hadn't thought of before. And once we finally got going, it all went extremely smoothly alhamdulillah! The second half of the panto wasn't rehearsed at all, with just the format of the millionaire questions to go by, and any difficulty switching on a video or powerpoint mistake was cleverly filled in by some on-the-spot jokes. After my bit was done and I was watching the rest of the panto, I sat tearing up bits of paper to use as confetti when the million pounds was won, and I thought it provided quite a glamourous climax to our performance. Everyone loved it, and I will savour these moments for a long time to come. But I think the best part of any panto I've been in is the rehearsals, where comedic genius flows free and where unintentional gaffes are written into script.

I feel kind of empty immediately after such exciting events in my life, but that feeling has been short-lived this time, as my to-do list gets longer and longer; you can tell by the two weeks it's taken me to finish off this post!

Fun-filled February

The most obvious highlight of this month, revision and exam aside, was the two weeks of hypnosis I had the pleasure doing. It was literally awesome and mindblowing. Compared to other people's module choices where they were dissecting up bits of arm or writing essays on blood vessels and diabetes, we on the other hand were hypnotising each other and being hypnotised by the teacher. We also learnt some wicked stuff on how to tell what people are thinking based on eye movements, and other cool human behaviour stuff. Successful hypnosis depends on the 'pre-induction' questions the practitioner asks the patient, and when enough is known about their personality and methods they use to relax, then a suitable technique is used to hypnotise them (the coolest one being where you can make their hand unconsciously levitate). So we learnt one or two of these techniques every day before them being used on us as a group, after which we were told to partner up and practice.

The scripts for hypnosis are quite long (they usually take around half an hour), and located on multiple random pages of our sheets, so we had to seemlessly and silently flow through the procedure without having to fumble through the bundle and find page 33 so we could wake them up. There was a funny moment when my partner turned to the wrong page, which had to conveniently be the 'amnesia script', which is used if you want to the patient to forget something suggested to them earlier in the session. The idea of the script is to convey long-winded, confusing sentences (which do make sense), but keep the mind occupied trying to untangle the meaning and hence allow them to forget. While my partner was reading, she herself got confused and couldn't hold in her laughs, and it didn't help my state of trance either.

Our exam was to basically hypnotise someone, but without scripts, and the lady who wrote the hypnosis textbook was there to examine people (but sadly not the pair I was in). I had to go through the whole procedure of asking my partner questions about what their problem was and explain the process of hypnosis to them before anything began, as well as asking them not to chew any gum, switch off phones and go to the toilet (which we obviously rehearsed beforehand). And then we followed the template of certain scripts (based on how they best relaxed- again pre-rehearsed), but had the opportunity to add our own little bits in or adapt them if we wished, so I added a little submarine for them to climb in and go 'deeper and deeper' into the sea, allowing them to go deeper and deeper into trance. Our examiner told us we both did astoundingly well, especially with our imaginations and my ability to cause my partner to smile during trance, so I take it we passed!

The last day of the month, I received my result for the triple-module exam, and alhamdulillah, despite some harsh marking, I got 70% (which yes, is good in my eyes, and the eyes of the guy who worked out the class average). This result can kind of let me rest a little, as I now don't feel the need to justify myself being at medical school in a sense; I am supposed to belong here and the exam results prove it. Although, the next challenge is trying to maintain (or better) my rhythm, as you could probably say that every exam you take in Medicine is progressively more important than the last.

My month in status updates:

Lesson of the day: when going to head the ball, avoid your opponent's teeth. You are likely to bleed.

In all my 21 years, never have I been in a reversing bus. That all just changed.

will be stretching his short-term memory to slightly more than 30 seconds tonight

Ah, exam over. I wonder how long I should give it before I revise for the next one :P

Getting hypnotised twice in one day is my idea of a module well chosen! :D

Hand levitation hypnosis is like, the coolest thing I've ever experienced!

needs a flapjack to celebrate the submission of his writeup on cholera, but maybe should take some tetracyclin first just in case :P

really needs to get down to inventing a station waker upper!

 

Video of the month:

And finally,an interesting quote used by our hypnosis teacher, from Henry Ford:

If you believe you can, or if you believe you can't, you're right.