Just came back from the Drums and Tuba show. My head is still rattling a little. These guys are incredible. It's 3 guys: a drummer who can sing while playing, a guitarist who can make his guitar make intergalactic sounds, and a tuba player who plays a strong bass-line while simultaneously manipulating a soundboard to loop their prior sounds, push them up an octave or two, and bend them. It's like being surrounded by a wall of sound and all of it so rich and varied and textured. And you KNOW you love it when your collarbones vibrate with the music. It shakes you to your core. Even your heart can't help but beat in time. I am in awe.
Slaves of Spanky opened and they were awesome too. "Testicular!!!"

Drums and Tuba are playing tomorrow/today? (Friday, Sept 23) in Toronto at Sneaky Dee's. I know, it's a sketchy bar x3, but for this band, it's well worth wading through all the dodgy characters. Seriously. DO IT. 
I can't remember where all you reader-folk are from, but there's a show in NY too, Oct 15 @ The Delancey. And Oct 14 in Sayreville, NJ at the Starland Ballroom.

Anyway. I'm exhausted. And I have to be up at 5:45 tomorrow/today morning. Last day!!!  Spent all evening packing stuff up, leaving my room considerably more barren than it once was.

But first, because my tummy is all beer-y and I just watched some incredible musicians, I want to ramble.
1. Going to shows by yourself is a-okay. So what if you have to sit alone for a half hour or so, nursing your beer and people-watching? You will eventually run in to people you know. Or, in my case, five. =) But it's an incredible sense of independence.
2. The types of boys who attend these shows are a certain brand of hot. They're in to live music, for one, and they're probably amateur musicians themselves. Because really, who else would to go out on a Thursday night to a show that starts at 11pm when you have to get up early for work the next morning???
3. Musicians themselves are hot. CB is hot. Except sometimes, he looks like a skinnier Ashton Kutcher. And Ashton Kutcher is not hot. Oh well. Win some, lose some. Point being: they have a sloppy, starved style to them. As though they've become so engrossed in their music, their passion, they've forgotten to eat or comb their hair or shave. And that's exactly what's happened. Sometimes CB gets up in the morning, intending to go to the washroom to wash up, but then he'll get sidetracked by his guitar and never make it there. Instead, he'll sit on the couch in boxers and dirty old plaid bathrobe, and practice until hours later, he realizes he's hungry.
Ultimately, they are hot because before they get famous, they tend to have no pretension, no attitude. They exist simply to play their music and it consumes them. There is no pride, just a burning desire to be better, to write more, to play more. Clothes, hair, smelly armpits--these all don't seem to matter too much. Not when they could be playing. There is something attractive about that engrossed passion that doesn't really care about consumerism.

I need to go to sleep.

Hola. Font colors went retarded. No idea why.
I'm having a sh*tty day. No, week. Monday, I got yelled at (completely at random) by Hew because he can be such an irritable cow, but everything's fine now. Tuesday, I get told I have to be on call. Thanks for the advance notice, d*ckwad. But you'll see (below) what happened with that. Today, I had a rough start because my R1 thinks I'm selfish for not answering my pages (again, see below), I didn't do as well as I'd hoped on my Emerg exam, and I'm stressed out about CaRMS. I was also advised to attend a visiting lecturer's talk about the Prostate, so the Urology Dept can look good having so many students attend lectures from visiting bigwigs. I didn't go, and got my haircut instead. Screw it. My Surgery block is over in 2 days, I'm exhausted, and I really couldn't care less right now. But don't worry, if you have prostate problems, I promise I'll be ready as a physician.
Spent most of today working on a caffeine high trying to get transcripts, cover letters, envelopes, packages, etc etc together while I'm still in town to get them done.
Then I talked to my mother, which was fine at first, then ended with a damper. I'm not going to say anymore.

I need to move far far away I think. Just for a little while. Going to see your parents isn't supposed to stress you out. Seriously. But it does, because it screws up my schedule and my whole life rhythm gets turned upside down and criticized to boot. But at least now I know my iPod mini and iBook have arrived!

In other news. I got a haircut. And I like it. Even though it's not all that different from my other haircuts. I love my hairdresser. She is WONDERFUL. And I think I've single-handedly referred about five people to her. I think she likes me too.

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I've been tagged by NotAsian, and if I knew how to link, I would.

10 years ago I was having the time of my life, falling in like with Bon Jovi and waiting for high school to start.

5 years ago I was having my first legal drink at a bar with four boys I spent most of undergrad with. I haven't seen or spoken to any of them in approximately the same amount of time. Oh, I was also dating a dude I've sometimes referred to as the Arrogant Bastard, and I was depressed and a giant stressbucket.

1 year ago I was just starting 3rd year medicine, tanned from Hawaii, and probably the happiest I'd been in a while...except that things w/ The Ex were complicated and I was stressed out about school.

Yesterday I worked all day, studied at the library, and missed all my pages (I was on home call) because my pager is retarded. I didn't mind though.

5 snacks I enjoy Canned fruit + cottage cheese, nectarines, tomatoes with basil and cheese, beef jerky, Oreos.

5 songs I know all the words to The Sweater Song (and all the other Weezer songs), Livin' On A Prayer (or anything really from JonBonJ), Billie Jean, Be A Man (from Mulan), the Alphabet.

5 things I would do with 100 million dollars donate half of it to various research/poverty organizations, buy houses for my parents/me/brother, pay off tuition for me and brother, buy cottage in the woods by a lake for friends and family, invest in stocks and properties...and many other things, but I only get to list five. Plus I'm tired and don't have that money, so why think about it?

5 places I would run away to Florence, Beijing, Barcelona, Hawaii, Greece (haven't been there yet, but one day..we'll see).

5 things I would never wear PVC pants (bad to sweat in), anything with a brand name that is highly visible, socks with separated toes (so uncomfortable!), triangle bra bikini (boobs too small), black underwear with white pants/underwear that sticks up above pant waistline (just plain tacky).

5 favorite tv shows I don't really watch any TV. I guess I like ER and Jeopardy.

5 bad habits biting the edges of my fingers, picking at lower lip, being a spaz, easily distractable, re-wearing dirty underwear to minimize laundry load (I put pantyliners after a day so i'm not really sitting in my own filth). Ughh.. did I just admit that on the internet?

5 biggest joys my friends, my brother, the boy, evenings, weekends

5 favorite toys  Rubber bands, a toy to remain unnamed here, digital camera, Silly Putty, paper clips.

5 fictional characters I would date  The manager from one of Sophie Kinsella's books (Keep A Secret? I can't remember the title), Noah Wyle's character from ER, Mark Ruffalo's character in just about any movie, and that probably makes five. I can't remember show names. So sue me.
But really now. You can't date fictional people. That's for dreamers. But I guess that's how you fall in love too.

5 people I tag to do this Why do they always end like this? WHY? Okay. Fine.
Yayaroon, BoraCroft, Synaesthetics, Lcloh, ThinkingMansIdiot. And DearestPrincess for six.

Just so you know, I'm going to be writing a lot about CaRMS until probably next February. It stands for the "Canadian Residency Matching Service", and it will eventually decide my life direction and where I will be living for the next 2-5 years.
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I've been working on CaRMS crap all evening. Have decided to apply to 11, maybe 12 programs. Mostly Neurology, some Family Med. Haven't submitted the final list yet, because I'm indecisive like that. Goal is to be decided by the end of the week.
I should be studying some more, but I'm just going to forget it come Wednesday morning, so I've actually already planned for the cram session to be tomorrow night. (It's my Emergency Medicine OSCE, and it's supposedly just 3 stations of xrays and ECGs.)

I spent Saturday working on my resume, registering for CaRMS, figuring out what I'm going to need to get done for the application. It took bloody forever.
Then I went and got drunk at S and Drummerboy's, hopped over to the Meds House party and socialized with other inebriated folk, then over to my ever-favourite pub to drink some more. I got home at 3 am, and woke the next morning with a few cuts on my toes. ? Actively tried to remember the events of the night, and managed only what I've told you so far.

Sunday morn, service at a Baptist church I'd decided to check out because they'd left a flyer in my mailbox promising a free lunch for students. The sermon and service were dull (or maybe I was just hungover, because I was seriously nauseated for a good chunk of the sermon), and I opted to forgo the lunch because the realization hit me that I'd have to socialize with all these people and answer the same damn hello-how-are-you questions over and over. And really, roast beef isn't worth socializing for. Let me eat in peace. Even if it is just frozen perogies.

Spent the rest of the day working on my CaRMS application and trying to get everything in order re: what I need to do before I leave my pretty little university town for the gambling scuzz of Niagara Falls (and not the tourist town of Niagara-On-The-Lake). 6 weeks baby. Any of you are more than welcome to visit and/or get hurt+come to the hospital. =) Also had dinner with Chins and celebrated the MidAutumn festival w/ gfn and friend. And by celebrate, I mean we watched the moon rise by the lake, all big and bulbous and fiery orange. Then we went and had some fantastic moon cake. Being Chinese has some rockin' cultural benefits man.

I'm now officially boring with my ho-hum weekend recaps. So I'll stop.

ARRGGAAAHhh.
I hate it when the internet is slow and you actually have to do something important. Like right now, I'm trying to get my residency applications in order (or started..you know how it goes) and every page is taking bloody forever to load. Blarrrgh.

Spent the day sleeping in, then going to a kickbox aerobics class, then going to the market for brandywine tomatoes (delicious) and a mini-lecture about the many different varieties of tomatoes from the woman who grew them. Eccentric smile, dirt under fingernails, and left eye tic not withstanding, she was a very nice lady. Then bought some Ontario-grown Bartlett pears for cheap cheap cheap and picked up some smoked turkey at the butcher's. I'm only here for another week, may as well take advantage of the quiant joys this town has to offer before I leave right?

Yesterday morning was my Surgery block exam. Not as brutal as I'd expected. It was easier than the Medicine exam, and if I came out of the Medicine exam barely passing, then I'm sure to have come out of Surgery in the clear. Which is good. Spent the afternoon in the OR feeling sad. Our patient is a young guy, early 30s, with a giant bladder cancer. It's huge. He's got fetal alcohol syndrome with mild mental impairment, so we're not sure he really grasps the somber truth about his illness. Anyway, we'd hope to take his bladder out, then divert his ureters to an opening on his skin so it would collect in a bag, thus relieving his persisent bladder symptoms and maybe slowing the onset of his inevitable death, but when we got in there, the tumour had invaded the back wall of his bladder and was firmly stuck to not only his rectum, but his sacrum too. It would have been impossible to take it out safely (lotsa big blood vessels around there that we couldn't see clearly). So we left it in. And then we had to take his rectum and divert it to the skin too, so now he's got two little pink stomas on either side of his belly. One he pees from, and one he poos from. Hopefully, this will make things more comfortable. He probably won't make it till next summer.

To unwind, one of our Urology staff invites everyone to his house on Friday evenings for beer, beer, and more beer. So that's what we did. It was strange. I felt like such a fraud sitting there, on his big plush couches, his kids running around, and all the residents there, having beer or wine and fingerfoods. The residents would all bring their wives/girlfriends and kids (because all the urology residents are conspicuously male), and then there was me, with my two female classmates, feeling incredibly young and like I was playing grownup. We're talking about medicine, house renovations, the new iPOD Nano, and whatever else people who are supposed to be adults are talking about. I don't know what that is exactly, but I wish I'd been drunk. That's all I have to say about that.

The last time I felt that way was when I had to present for the CCNS conference. They introduced me as "Dr." by accident, and I had to go up on the podium, powerpoint and all, and childishly say with a wink and a smile, "Actually, I'm not a doctor yet." As though reminding my audience would delay the coming of adulthood ever so effectively.

And then I realize that my friends are all in what you call your late twenties. That half of them are married. That some of them have children, own houses, cars. Then I realize that I'm not all that far off, having completed none of those life stages, but that's okay. It's just the changes you see in yourself that are scary. I look at the undergrads milling around campus and think, "Geebus, so young, so young. And that music, so loud, so loud." 

I think I'm going to go drinking tonight. Meds House party a possibility.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.