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.

404: Not Found

I was recently looking at a friend's profile on Facebook, as you do, and I got a weird feeling when I realised that I was looking at a profile picture that would never ever be changed again. The thing is, my friend passed away just over a year ago, and it struck me that apart from his wall, where people occasionally send their best wishes to the afterlife (where the internet will be infinitely better, if needed at all), nothing else on his profile will change. He is going to remain 'single', his hobbies won't change, that quote from Malcolm X will stay there, and he'll never join that group "Rest in Peace - *insert his name here*".

It got me wondering, how many dead people's profiles are there on Facebook? Isn't it a bit creepy that physically deceased people can seem so alive on the internet? In about fifty years, we'll just have loads of these 'ghost' profiles piling up; having practically no worth, because nobody will really have an urge to want to preserve the status update badman Johnny made on New Year's Eve, or how many "Don't you just hate it when *insert mundane life occurrence here*" groups he joined.

And then there will be the hundreds of millions of youtube videos made by dead people, some of which may probably have more worth than a few words strung together on a Facebook page. Imagine it, we'll be watching intimate and from-the-heart messages by vloggers who'd be long gone, to be replaced by new, full-of-life youtubers who think they'll live forever. I don't know, maybe the internet itself will be dead in a bit, maybe there won't be an Earth to have an internet connection on in fifty years. Maybe they'll just re-introduce what hotmail did some time ago; which was to deactivate someone's account if they hadn't used it in 30 days. I don't feel the same about books or creative works made by people in earlier centuries; maybe because I wasn't part of that generation and I'm in the middle of this more 'alive', techno-savvy one, but I do sometimes feel like making my own "R.I.P. Yasin Fatine" Facebook group just to get everything sorted, and to freak everyone out :P

And breathe...

Well, the latest round of exams are finally over, and I never seem to take full advantage of the moment of freedom afterwards; even after this mega exam consisting of Human Development (basically about stuff where the sun don't shine), Cardio-Resp ("lub dub") and Metabolism (digestion,diarrhoea and a re-haunting of Biochem), I didn't exactly know how to celebrate. The exam in my opinion, went quite well alhamdulillah; not too many tricky questions, and compared to FunMed, I didn't have to quickly fill any gaps in whilst the examiner told everyone to stop writing. I actually quite enjoy exams, especially if I'm properly prepared for them and even if I'm not, the vibe filling the whole room is something unique. Exam halls aren't places regularly frequented, and the seriousness of both the invigilators and fellow exam-takers is something I find quite amusing. All past friendships are forgotten once those doors open, with people managing only an awkward smile as they walk past to find their seats.

When you're sitting the exam, everything in your mind is a jumble; do I start at the beginning or skip to a certain section? Our exams involve Short Answer Questions (SAQ's) and Extended Matching Questions (EMQ's, where they give you a list of 20 words and you have to match them to the descriptions given; quite tricky sometimes). All past papers you've done are nothing in comparison to this exam, why on earth do they have to shake things up when it's my year, always?! But maybe it's just the adrenaline pumping through your veins as you wonder if you'll finish in time, and whether or not you'll make a fool of yourself in front of the markers.  Any little sound becomes amplified and could put you right off your flow; any constant coughing, or interruptions by the examiners, or the constant clockety clock footsteps of the invigilators can really annoy you.  And it doesn't help that every so often you can hear a tube train run underneath the exam hall.  It's actually one of the reasons why I want to take a dyslexia test (apart from getting extra time); I get to escape to a quieter venue to sit my exam!

The morning exam was the online anatomy/micronatomy spotter (no, it doesn't mean identifying zits); they give you pictures of corpses and microscope slides, and either ask you to identify bits or layers of cells, or their function and what they produce. This exam was easier than the FunMed one, and apart from some menacing placenta questions, it was quite a chilled exam, especially as alot of questions were repeated from earlier years.

When it's all over, and you think you've done well (which in Medicine's case means scraping a pass), there's an overwhelming sense of relief as everyone gets up from their places with wide (and sometimes uneasy) grins on their faces. And then begins the chatter about how everyone found the exam, and what they put for specific questions; and I'm quite a guilty culprit when it gets to this stage, needing some sort of reason to justify some of the answers I put down during the exam.

So now I'm in the middle of a clinical hypnosis module, I can relax, literally. An update on that will come once I actually finish learning and experiencing everything and get assessed (but so far it has been phenomenal!), and once I get this PBL writeup done; my blog being the last excuse I can make before I really get down to typing 2000 words on Vibrio cholerae and how it causes diarrhoea. Goodbye.

January Juxtaglomerular Apparatus

I need to remember to stop mentioning that my month has been a hectic one. It's always going to be hectic from now on, and I have to get used to it. My days have been choc-a-bloc with lectures, PBLs, extra lectures and cadaver examining; I fit eating somewhere in there too (nowhere near the cadavers, although they do get your salivary glands going ¬_¬). Anyway, several things happened that didn't happen the month before, like becoming part of a new PBL group (they shuffle things around in the new year); and so far I don't think we have gelled very well at all. We're just different people, and the higher male numbers in the group create an imbalance with who says what, and generally it's either very quiet (most of all when I'm cracking my jokes or introducing some 'psychosocial' ideas), or very noisy with people speaking over each other, maybe in an attempt to impress the tutor. But I do feel that sometimes people are with-holding information in an attempt to deprive it from others; which is a bit too competitive if you ask me.

So yeah, I've noticed that my blog posts are mainly going to be revolving around life at uni, which would make sense since I spend most time there, but after these exams I'm promising myself to have a proper life again. Sometimes I question myself and wonder whether or not I do have any hobbies, or what I've achieved generally, but it could be just forgetfulness especially if I'm caught up in the moment of hectic pre-exam cramming (which I'm not really doing at the moment). Maybe my 'competitive' nature and random urge to start 'projects' serve as a sort of reminder to myself of the things I can achieve. Maybe that's with everyone.

So what happened this month? Algeria qualified for the world cup, by beating Egypt in a tense final encounter, and which has resulted in the countries (and their residents) not talking to each other any more. They just played each other in the semi final of the African cup of nations; Algeria losing 4-0 with 3 players sent off (including the goalkeeper for headbutting the referee, which surprisingly got him only a yellow card first). So I am looking forward to seeing Algeria play in the world for the first time (in my life), and ironically they're drawn in the same group as England, so that will be fun to watch!

I also became a first year representative of MESS, which is basically a student-led group at uni who get upper years to give extra lectures on the topics covered earlier that week by lower years. I actually love it, and have barely missed any. I practically learn more in MESS than I do in real lectures, even though the extra lectures are held in a dingy chalkboard lecture theatre in the basement of the hospital; it's where I've learnt most. So now I have to make lecture announcements twice a week, along with another rep, to the rest of the year on what would be covered that evening. Plus I've now got a cool hoodie with my name on!

What I like to do is look at a month and wonder where I was the same time the year before. But January/Febrary time is especially significant because of the turn-around my life has undergone in these months. Two years ago I was in a completely different world (in almost every aspect) to where I am now, and last year was halfway to where I wanted to be. I hope to talk a bit more about my past once I get my short-term future sorted out, i.e. not flopping this 3-modules-in-one mega exam! So I'll leave you with a few things I'm including that I haven't done in the past, to paint myself, and you, a better picture of what this month has brought.

Facebook status updates:

-They dragged it out for ages, but twas a sad end to Tennant's doctor :/

-Stop and search number 4, standard

-is in a room full of dead bodies... alone

-Best feeling today: pulling the cord on the routemaster bus for the first time in 15 years!

-The force of gravity beats ironing any day!

-Transport FOR London?? You're having a laugh!

-Who needs changing rooms when you've got a tube carriage all to yourself?

-has concluded that meeting the BMA treasurer has done no harm to his future bank balance

-Professor Kumar ♥

-has yet to learn that oyster cards don't open front doors ¬_¬

-Standing outside the egyptian part of edgware road. Maybe I should keep my distance :P

 ~~~

Ah, how can I forget Professor Kumar? She is one of the co-writers of Kumar and Clark, Clinical Medicine; THE book used by doctors and medical students all over the world, and she gave a couple of lectures on gastroenterology at our university! She qualified from there, and she is one of the nicest people ever! You would think that being world-renowned could have a negative impact on your personality (especially if you're a doctor already, and apparently she's from Pakistan- not that that's related at all :P), but she is so down to earth, and warned us of becoming arrogant in the future; that we were like everyone else, just choosing this career path because we wanted to help people. She is quite funny, and knows how to keep a bunch of students interested, bringing in three patients suffering from random gastro-intestinal diseases, and telling stories of her life experiences, and the lessons she learnt on the way.

A friend's moment of pondering:

If black is the absence of colour, how do colourless things exist?

Another friend's cool quote:

May the (mass x acceleration) be with you.

Competition

Continuing from the last post, now that I think about it, I am quite selfish, and maybe moreso than other people. Not in the usual "I want it all" sense, but in competition, I want nothing more than to come first. If there is a level playing field and a concept of 'first place' exists, second place is not an option. I know it's quite a bad way of thinking, and I have toned that urge down quite a lot since my younger years, but it still remains, and quite strong too. When I go out bowling with friends, or enter a football tournament, my competitive  nature takes over. I don't openly show it, as it can cause unease and discomfort with other guys (who, let's face it, are probably feeling the same), but I like to call it friendly competitiveness.

Having grown up knowing nothing more than achieving the top every year at school since year 1, my parents haven't exactly been discouraging me from quenching my competitive thirst, and I'm happy they haven't. I believe in trying your best in everything you do, and if it means unwavered aiming for first place, then so be it. Now I'm studying medicine with 340 others in my year, I have to be a little more realistic; many graduates are taking the course, as well as unsociable bookworms and people retaking the year. Of course it would be phenomenal if I somehow managed to get the best grades in the whole year, but I've learnt there are other methods of becoming the best person you can without having the absolute top exam results. But I still aim.

Of course, you find many people with competitive streaks have a sense of loathing for their fellow  competitors; willing to go behind even their friends' backs if they wanted something achieved, which isn't rare at medical school. Competitive people are probably more likely to cheat their way into first place, if they had the chance to, which is maybe why the concept of cheating exists in the first place! Another small  disadvantage of being first also may be that you haven't learnt enough, or got the mindset to improve on an aspect of your performance in the future.

Some people may not like competition or those who pursue it, but it could be that they feel they can't keep up with them, and if given the chance, they would gladly pinch top spot and the rewards that come with it. The rewards: Most of the time competition may not have an instant tangible prize, neither would there be a  physical first place either; life being a sort of large-scale competition, and whether people like it or not, we're all competing. Gone are the days of hacking each other to death in 'survival of the fittest'. It's much
more subtle than that; we're still competing for the same things: resources, partners, houses, jobs, but without the spears and war-paint, most of the time.

The best feeling about winning first place is the feeling itself. Knowing that you've taken up the challenge (most of the time in your own head, where no-one else really cares), and are experiencing the joy, the ecstasy, of knowing there's no-one else above you. It's a sort of freedom gained; the open space above you is so unrestricting, and it helps you aim for so many new horizons. The feeling is only temporary, until the next bit of competition comes along; so yes, it probably is an addiction. Either it's an addiction to the feeling of winning, or it could a constant yearning for attention and acceptance, but I like to think it's just the extraordinary euphoria you feel that surrounds your moment of achievement.

Last Thursday I won the Imperial Quran competition for the second year in a row, alhamdulillah. And even though I had my mum telling me not to be too optimistic; this being a more difficult one than last year, memorising 10 pages and against 6 other people, in the end I found myself walking up and collecting my winner's certificate. I made quite a silly mistake halfway through my recitation but I won the 'final showdown' (which I was half prepared for in my competitive every-scenario mind). The point is that after I made the mistake, I was sure that I wouldn't win it, but just by carrying on and with Allah's help, things that you don't expect, or think you deserve, can most certainly happen.

I've experienced a lot of loss in recent years; not getting into medical school two years running, crushing disappointment at sporting events (loads, practically every Sunday now), and even the losing of my mind at one point. But I've managed to appreciate that the more you've been on the receiving end of defeat, the sweeter success tastes.

It's not the position you stand, but the direction in which you look.

Be nice to each other

Well, what a weird week it's been.  At a time when the weather has made front page news, and travel has been at times severely disrupted due to the snow, it's been a chance for our Great British population to complain about something new. Personally, I find snow quite enchanting, and its concept a bit weird. You go to sleep with the streets outside chilly but bare, and the next morning, "flump!" Like the sky saying "well, here you go", thick snow has been deposited everywhere over cars, trees, houses and streets. A blanket of freshness, and although the temperature is probably the coldest you've experienced all year, you can detect a sort of warmness coming from the radiant whiteness, like the world around you has been dressed in cotton. The crunching sound of fresh snow beneath your feet, the sense of optimism you feel when its practically waiting for you to mould it into a throwable sphere, or sculpt it into a carrot-wearing companion, no experience is comparable.

Of course, things do get a bit spoilt when it all turns into mud-coloured mush, and the inclination everyone has of being friendly to each other gradually thaws. Sometimes you can learn life lessons in the weirdest of places; Baker Street station, one morning there are delays on practically every line leaving it. The station announcers are ushering us to different platforms if we want earlier trains, and I finally settle for the Metropolitan line that would take me some of the way to my GP placement. The platform is quickly filling up with no sign of train approaching, and when one does arrive, and doors open, everyone scrambles to the front of the crowd in an attempt to board the train. And it was then did I hear what I never would expect myself to hear in such a setting: "BE NICE TO EACH OTHER!"

Like an authoritative schoolteacher telling off her pupils in the lunch queue, the lady over the tannoy system was trying to calm the pushing and shouting crowd of commuters who were desperate not to be late for work. It's funny, if some people are even slightly impeded upon in any way, they start to lose their inhibitions and begin to get nasty, even though the only consequence would be running a few minutes later than planned and maybe feeling cold for a little longer. And then they need to be taken back 30 years in their personal histories to be reminded to play nice. It made me wonder about how selfish I actually am, not only in situations where the concept of queuing doesn't exist, but in life in general; how far would I have to be pushed before my animalistic instincts got the better of me?

By the way, I love certain memorable days on the calendar. Today is 10/01/10 and for some reason I always feel like doing something special on these days, just because the numbers in the date look nice next to each other!