Memories

In my article titled ‘Sydney’, written on 25th June 2007, Shiau Cern’s name was wrongly spelt as ‘SiauCern’.

I hereby express my sincerest regret and seek for her forgiveness.

Nine days in Sydney flew by so fast. We had a pleasant stay in SiauCern’s boyfriend, Matthew’s Uncle’s house. His name is Uncle Francis, with Auntie Gloria and their children Charmaine, Felix and Tim in the house.

They have 3 dogs too, which stayed indoor most of the time! :o) I’ve never realised humans and dogs can build such intimate relationship. However, I’m still not inclined to have any pets in my house, because of my hypersensitive nose.

Although we were in no way related to them, but all of them treated us so well! In our 1st night, while we were asleep, Auntie came in to our room and put on another layer of blanket! Even the heater was on full blast.

Most of the nights, we had home cooked dinner prepared by Auntie Gloria. After half a year of hostel food in a foreign country, home cooked Chinese cuisine can really bring you into tears. From char siew, to roast duck, to steam fish, to soup.. :o)

There was a night uncle brought us for a Japanese dinner in King’s Cross, which is the red light district in Sydney. The restaurant only opens at 630pm and reservation is compulsory to have a meal in there. Since we arrived at 600pm, uncle decided to take us to a walk around King’s Cross. :o) Interesting..

The restaurant is built underground. Thus, there’s only a small uninteresting door on the ground floor. But after walking down a long staircase, the interior was magnificently Japanese. We had sushi, salmon steamboat, sashimi and many others which I couldn’t name. Everything was so good! But of course, the price was even better!

On Saturday morning, they brought us out for dim sum (better known as Yum cha here: i.e. Let’s go for yumcham..). It seemed like wherever you go for meal in Sydney, you need a reservation, which fortunately we had. The queue was so long. Inside, the restaurant was double storey and each storey was as big as a football field. And they were packed! And they were all Asians, which sometimes make you forget that you were in Australia. :o)

Auntie would buy fruits for us everyday and before we leave, she would make sure we have refilled our bottles and brought our umbrellas along.

I wanna express my gratitude to uncle and auntie here again! They have inspired me to treat my future guests with similar hospitality! :o)

Everyone! Welcome to my place.. wherever it may be! :o)

Bondi Beach

Hyde Park

More pictures of our trip to Sydney can be seen on Steph’s blog! www.stephwong.blogspot.com

‘Good morning sir, my name is Chun Peng. I’m a 4th year medical student.’

I’ve been rehearsing this phrase ever since my results came out yesterday! Yes. Finally i’m a 4th year medical student, after one and a half year of 3rd year.

After IMU, we are supposed to continue as fourth year (sem 7) in most of the partner university and begin clincals. However, in Uni Melbourne sem 6 and 7 is a research year (we called it AMS) and we are exempted from it. Since they couldn’t put us in sem 8, so they put us in sem 5 again! Thus, we had to stay for another semester in pre-clinical, going for lectures and doing tons of PBLs again.

In sem 5 here, we did Microbiology, Immunology and Oncology. It’s a difficult semester because the focus of curriculum here is very different from IMU.

In IMU, we were a lot more clinical based, which means we focused a lot on pathology and clinical features of the disease. For example:

1. We’ll understand the different types of leukemia, their respective risk factors, their presentation and prognosis.
2. In microbiology, we know EHEC causes bloody diarrhoea. But we were never expected to know the mechanism.
3. We had practicals where we looked down into slides too see various organisms. But, as quoted by Ganesh, this will never come out in exam! True enough, many of us attempted to skip.
4. We focused a lot on physical examination on the patient. We had to report every step we do in the process.
5. History taking.. Our aim is to gather as much information as possible regarding the patient’s illness within the 5 mins.

Melbourne is very research based, which means they would want us to understand mechanisms to the very molecular level in each of the disease.

1. Using leukemia again, we need to know which gene is involved and what is the effect when that gene is translocated to its new location. But we are not expected to know the types of leukemia.
2. In microbiology, we need to know the exactly which toxin EHEC produce and which ion channel it affects and how it damages the capillaries to cause bloody diarrhoea and eventually lead to haemolytic uraemic syndrome.
3. We have practical every week. We learn about different cultures and the various investigation methods for each microorganisms which can only be found in IMU notes.
4. For physical examination. We are only required to act it out, no reporting at all.
5. History taking.. We focus on the biopsychosocial model, thus besides understanding the presenting illness, we need to find out how has it affected the patient in every aspect of his life.

These are some of the fundamental differences between IMU and Uni Melb. Studying here is definite challenge. But I’m quite proud to say that I have a better understanding in microbiology, immunology and oncology which we learned them only as bits and pieces in sem 1 and 2 in IMU.

Congratulations to the M1s who are sent to Uni Melb! Most probably we will organise a gathering together with the M2s who will be coming here at the end of this year!

Cheers!

Here I come Austin Hospital!!