PR 4106: Dosage Form Design III

No drug.. No caffeine.. Yet I was still troubled to fall asleep the night before. And all that worry and stress were useless.. In fact, the whole mugging was useless because nothing was hardly asked from the notes. Sigh..

1/3 of the MCQ questions were from the woman's 2 chapters. Another 1/3 was about excipients. Oh come on! That means only 20 MCQ questions out of another 10 sets of notes. Seriously the lecturer should just retire if he is that lazy. It was hardly testing what was taught. And seriously, some questions regarding the excipients were rather dumb. Who cares which thing comes from the sea? Who cares which thing swells the most when taking water? Jeez... I reviewed about excipients but I stopped at knowing which is for what purpose. Seriously who cares about the trivia and redundant questions like that!

The long question was bad too. The second question came from the FIRST set of notes omg! Yea you know, first topic is always the useless one rite? Haha.. Anyway, I was lucky that I somehow mugged that redundant slides which eventually came out. The first question was jialat. I never see this "multi-particulate controlled drug delivery system" term before. So I asked the asshole. His reply was crap: "Did you attend my lecture? This is a proper term to describe this kind of thing". WHAT THE FUCK. Seriously WHAT THE FUCK! If that term is so important, then you should put it somewhere in the notes. Fuck him man!

Anyway, I "won". Before I asked him, I asked the woman. She gave me a blank face and WTF expression upon seeing that word. She said she would have to call the asshole. So yea that asshole came. And guess what, apparently MANY of my classmates had also never see/read/hear that term before. And I checked the textbook after that. The term used in textbook was "single-unit" vs "multiple-unit". So yeah I don't know where he invented that term of his. Stupid shit...

Oh well who cares seriously.. There was no way I could figure out that tablet is single-unit and pellet is multi-particulate. Aren't tablets made of multiple of powder/granules and hence also multi particulate? Screm him ba! And anyway I did not answer his question. But I did attend that lecture but I skipped your others (thank God for that because you did not even ask us about all the granulation and fluid bed whatever). Perhaps he did mention the term but maybe it sounded so lame/general that nobody realised that it was a "proper" term and note it down somewhere.

PR 4102: Pharmacotherapy III

Whee.. the first time I felt so glad after an exam despite the inability to have a proper sleep last nite. I wanted to sleep at 1230am but ended up reading my notes up to 3am. Was it the caffeine? Was it the clarinase? So weird.. I took them at 930pm and I was ready to sleep at 1230am. But then suddenly the drowsiness was gone and replaced with anxiety. Anyway I woke up at 430am.. and after that I just tossed around my bed. Didn't know I slept for how long but in the end I woke up before my alarm rang. Gah! And I had a horror dream which caused me some breathing difficulties. In my dream, I was at my home. Apparently outside they were fogging with some new thing. The white fog entered my house so quickly and it was all white. I even crouched down and tried to breathe through the door gap and it was still difficult to breathe. Then I woke. That was 430am LOL.. Perhaps that is how suffocating and dying feels like.

Anyway, I am so glad that the topic I spotted came out! Yay.. I was banking on depression, anemia, or bone disorder. Anemia came out!! Whee.. Of course nothing would be perfect with my brain but at least it was better than crapping for epilepsy for CA2. Before the exam, I checked my CA2 grade and I am just in right in the median. Sigh.. 50%. That is like B grade? :( Sad.. I hope I can get A le :( Even an A- may not help me to stay within first class range.

Oh ya, this is by far the easiest pharmacotherapy paper. The MCQs were rather straightforward and short, especially the psycho parts. I think the lecturers just bo liao anyhow made. Lol.. Previous pharmacotherapy MCQs were always tough and impossible to eliminate answers one lor.. Well that's good! And because it was just 1 SOAP and no other written question, I could finish the paper. 

But at the end of the day, THANK GOD FOR HELPING ME PREPARING THE RIGHT STUFF!!

Lent and Easter 2011

Happy Easter 2011 :D

This is another memorable and meaningful Lent and Easter for me and that's why I would like to jot it down as a good reflection for me in the future. The season did not start very good for me actually. I skipped Ash Wednesday (which by right marks the beginning of Lent) :p Can't remember whether it was due to FYP, CA, or I was just simply lazy :p Anyway, no excuse is good enough for me to skip church anyway LOL. But still, not long after that, I skipped one Lenten Sunday Mass. Gosh! Haha... I skipped the Palm Sunday to because I was on holiday at home. Penitential Service for my parish fell on my birthday and of course I skipped it again. Haha.. It was raining that night and I was caught in the rain after having dinner. But even though it did not rain, I think I would not go also :p And due to exam, this is the first time that I did not attend Easter Vigil Mass. That means it was my first time attending Easter Sunday Mass. Lol.. Oh ya, there was no Stations of the Cross too at the Good Friday service which I attended.

Well this Lent was meaningful for me because the abstinence really helped me to fix my life. I realised how fat I am and the main reason was due to uncontrolled eating. Thus for Lent, I gave up all those junkies: no potato chips, no bubble tea, no Coffee Bean/Starbucks/Spinelli, and no fattening fried chicken from the canteen. On the second week, I felt that I gave up too many things and wanna pick just one instead. Thank God I managed to complete the whole abstinence for the whole season. Yay!! I just hope this can last as long as possible :D Since now is exam season, the temptation for drinking coffee to keep me awake and read notes is too huge! Lol. I hope I can resist it. To be honest I was sort of "addicted" to those 4 things.. Previously I could have them to as frequent as once a week.. That explains my ballooning stomach and acne flares.

So as a result, my face is much smoother (read: acne-free now). Haha.. About whether I slim down or not, I guess stopping those junk only help to prevent further gain of weight.. To lose those which had been put on, I need to do something about it XD And as a bonus, I could not access Restaurant City from home. So now I decide to quit playing it again. This is the 2nd time quitting so I guess I won't be hooked back anymore. Lol.. Just nice to give up a game. Can focus more on the study.

Moving on to a take home message from the Good Friday homily. I always think that when Jesus said "It is finished" before His death, it meant that he had finally finished his mission on this earth. But based on the real language in which the Bible was written, the word that Jesus mentioned meant "(Debt) fully paid". To me, this is a more powerful message since it signified that when He died, He fully paid/redeemed mankind from sin and death, which means He died to save me (and you), not merely to mark the completion of his mission. And it could be linked to a parable of the servant whose debt was pardoned by the master but he did not pardon another person who was indebted to him much less. Basically debt=sin.

That touched me because currently I had an issue with a seller in eBay. I am tempted to take a revenge :( But again, the Good Friday reminded me something more important than a few dollars. Oh gosh.. Will I succumb this time =x

Lastly I received this sms:

There's NO oil if olives are not SQUEEZED

There's NO wine if grapes are not PRESSED

There's NO perfume if flowers are not CRUSHED

So when there's PRESSURE in your life, GOD"s just bringing out the BEST in YOU.

As good as the thing means, I would actually argue: what happened to the olives, grapes, and the flowers then? They are destroyed right?

But another part of me would add another line:

There's NO salvation if Jesus was not CRUCIFIED

So yeah, thank God for this blessed and meaningful Easter. May yours be blessed and meaningful too :D

PR 4105: Natural Products

The paper was quite do-able on the verge of easy actually. Unfortunately, I focused on the wrong things so at the end of it, I still could not do well. I focused on the chemistry parts (like terpene vs steroid or the steroid production) and ended up more were being asked regarding the regurgitation.. Sigh.. 

The MCQ was not too terrible. About <10 questions I was unsure. The rest I was pretty sure and hopefully it is not only my feeling but they are really correct! The headache was the long question. 

I sort of prepared for regulation and the extraction so I guess they were pretty okay. Though still, I missed out a few things :( The last part on clinical trials at US was unexpected though. I just checked the notes and the answer should be dependent on FDA to determine whether it was a drug or not. Haiz.. If FDA says drug then need to apply for IND thingy..

The TCM question was a nightmare came through. I hate TCM topics and guess what: the largest chunk of info that I skipped was the one came out as a 10m question! How many TCM therapeutic classes are there and name 4! That was like 10m giveaway :( To me it was totally gone case.. My "guess the magic number game" was wrong. I was thinking of 16 19 or 21 and the correct answer was 22. And I totally had no memories regarding any of the therapeutic classes.. I wrote 6 craps, I think, and let him choose la.. Don't think out of 6 I hit 2 correct T_T

The last question was also a heartache. I forgot about garlic parts :( And I got gingko and ginseng mixed up. Oh gosh -_-"

I am very very sad.. It was a very easy paper, in my opinion, as most of the things only "name". No need lengthy explanations so I could finish before time. But oh well.. I spotted and focused wrongly.. I would still consider myself lucky because at the last minutes of desperation, I got the inspiration to just read the main summary of drugs used for CVS and for mental. The last question came out similarly like that (not much details was asked) but I still got the garlic wrong :(

And I really wanna slap the TCM lecturer. 4 sets of god-knows-what-shit and only like 5 MCQ questions plus the shit 10m question.. Haiz.. can only hope other people skipped those shit tables too :'(

Short stint home

The short break home was definitely worth it. I never expect that I could be more productive at home than here. I am way too distracted with laptop and internet here. At home, they are no longer the distraction as I have my bed, my comics, and my toys. However, this time I managed to resist temptations LOL. I only read about 10 mangas (out of 40-50 books I guess) haha and I did not touch my toys at all. Come on, just another few weeks to go and I can go back to take care them all.

However the productivity is still too low :( Oh well, now I am at the brink of unable to finish studying (as usual...). But I always wonder what will happen if I did not go back. How much laggier would I be right now? Haiz..

And I am so glad to find out that there is a HDTV at home now. I would definitely find an AV cable here to link my PSP to the HDTV during the holidays hahaha... I also got the chance to driving automatic car which was really damn easy! Lol.. Although I am still a lousy driver. In fact, I almost crashed into an old couple who were crossing the road. My attention was focused on a reversing car on the left and did not see the couple crossing from the right side. Thank God for my dad to see them and for them to walk very slowly too!

My mission to replenish toiletries was not fully accomplished. I don't know why everywhere was running out of stock of my shampoo!! Grr.. at least I got the soap and pimple mask ba.. And it was surprising that  with only 50 bars of soap (by right should only be 5kg), my luggage was 16.7kg. The people doing the x-ray was laughing when they saw my luggage. They had to be thinking which crazy guy would go overseas with a luggage full of soap and nothing else. :p

Upon reaching Singapore, I wanted to eat Popeye's but due to renovation, terminal 1 no longer has it. Ended up eating Aston's. This food cost me $12.90 (no further tax!!). I am just weak towards sausages. Lol.. Anyway it is considered expensive since normal things like chicken chop or fish and chips only cost $6.90 and they came with 2 side dishes. But this was filling. Thank goodness the waitress told me that no need to worry about side dishes. Otherwise I would definitely order 1 side dish haha..

The bottom most tasted like lapchiong but it was salty instead of sweet.. Overall the whole thing was too oily and unhealthy ba! And I was cheated by the sausage which looked like a shell. It did not come like that. They put a toothpick to roll it that way. Lol

So yeah.. back to mugging now.. 7 more chapters to go :( Don't even remember what I read previously haiz..

I'm 24!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!

Gosh I feel so old :( 24 already!! Time really flies.. When I was a kid, I always dreamt to get married and start family at 25! Looks like I am running out of time. How to find a girlfriend and get married in a year time? Lol..

Anyway this year I celebrated quite a lot of times: with YEP people, with usher friends, and with my clique. Gonna be fat quite sure haha.. A bit sad because I do not have the time to celebrate with my junior clique ba.. But oh well.. sooner or later gonna say bye bye to them haha..

Actually I feel very emo although it's my birthday :( I feel very tired and lethargic lately.. Not to mention anhedonia.. Haiz.. not even PSP can lift up my mood le

Fucking unfair!

So there goes my $200 or my $400 cash. And nobody from my clique stood any chance either. Thus, I skipped the symposium today. I find no point in going. Yeah call me a bitter sore jealous guy. It's okay. I rather be true to myself than having to put up with fake smile, fake congratulatory message, bla bla bla.. Since I have wasted almost $100, of course I was eager to get the money to cover! Zz..

But oh well, my main source of irritation (other than the money) is not about the winning. It is about how untransparent and unfair and biased the whole thing was. Seriously all the posters look the same! Those so called potential winners are not outstanding or what. And it does not take a genius to see some trends. It is either based on the projects or perhaps based on the supervisors.. must give face to those more prominent and influential ones I guess..

But oh well, since the start it has been very unfair. Some projects are better and some are just gone case. Some get supervisors and mentors who are directly involved (heavily!) in the project making the project of course 'better'. Some of the projects are continuation and hence can combine all the results together to make them more 'wow'. Some are in richer lab.. Some supervisors and examiners are biased because they come from the same lab and I suspect some undertable collaboration also. Some students are teachers' pet so their bright future is also guaranteed.

And yah, I am still very bitter about my experiences. I am not a teachers' pet.. I am not blessed with a heavily involved mentor and supervisor. The lab people are not as helpful as others. My materials are freaking limited. My supervisor is not understanding and always equalling effort with more time being physically present in the lab while she never compares with how much materials and help I was entitled with in the first place. Not to mention that I am stuck in a field which is heavily dominated by one research group.

Seriously I am damn sick of this. This is the most disgusting course in the whole university I guess.. And I swear that I will forever snub this bloody course and if God allows, perhaps to the whole profession altogether.

Life is not fair, never was, and never will be

Poster

This marks the REAL end of FYP!! Yay.. Months and days and hours of suffering are finally come to an end.. with another $40+ bucks flying out of my pockets! Yeah sigh.. as always I made a mistake in my first print. I did not check carefully! The mistake was really small and almost unnoticable. But once it was printed to a 118.8cm x 84.1 cm paper, the mistake was amplified and was really obvious. I have a few text boxes covering the images and heading below the text boxes. Haiz.. I even took a taxi back because I was scared it would rain on Saturday. Aaah...

But perhaps that glaring mistake was a blessing in disguise. After that, I realised many more mistakes. Haha.. I finally re-did all my diagrams to make them sharper (for the first one, I copy paste the images from my report and stretch it to the max to fit into the poster haha). Other than that, there are many small mistakes like missing letter "s", should delete letter "s", too many space bars, or forgot to enter etc.

The final product was not that fantastic :( Haha.. It was black and white and I basically hate black and white.. I did not choose colour because right from the start (yeah the start of the project), I was already thinking that for my poster, I would make the title background from carbon nanotubes picture.. The same thing for the body background. The title heading came out nice and I am satisfied with that. The problem was with the body: it was not easy to get a balance between a sharp background without it actually distracting the proper writings. Bleah... Looks like my 'vision' and 'imagination' were too fantasy-like that they were not practical or they were just not matched with my skills. Haha.. Anyway, not a single person said my background was good and they recommended removing it. Oh well XD actually my supervisor said it was okay. Haha..

I decided to go with it anyway since it had been conceived on my mind since day 1. Lol.. But I still appreciated the inputs about the background interfering with diagrams and with reading.. Without these inputs, I would not put a whitish textboxes to 'blur' the background or to enlarge some of the diagrams to cover the distracting part of the background.

Haha too be honest, I still don't find it fantastic. I still prefer those using colours.. But oh wells, posters generally look the same. They are either having white background + coloured boxes or coloured background + white boxes. It is just a matter of what colours being chosen. So I am proud with my creativity to use something different (thick skin!!). Haha.. But I love creativity. Just like one my friend's poster! Everyone was finding it difficult to squeeze in words but this friend can put a giant picture of spinal cord in the middle of the poster right through from the top to the bottom. And it made the poster really look nice and creative! With a mighty combo of her brain + her creative poster, I hope she can get $400. Haha..

My poster :)

Due to confidentiality issue, I 'masked' the words with Wingdings font :p

There goes my A's

Another bad CA today.. I hardly had the time to concentrate, not to mention that the topics and notes are sucky too, and thus I chose to spot question. Unfortunately, luck is not with me this time around and what I spotted did not come out. I was still lucky that I read epilepsy during lunch so at least for the drug treatment, it was not so bad. It was bad but not TOO bad.. Haiz.. I don't know why the SOAP requires diagnosis to be made! I just focused on the drugs and did not really the descriptions.. Anyway I always thought fainting = atonic seizure.. I don't really care about the leg twitching or incoherent speech parts which made the case to be a complex partial seizure :( And first line for atonic is second line for complex partial. In short, my whole SOAP is wrong because I diagnosed wrongly...

Fuck!! Anyway.. second class liao.. Last week, the natural products results were also not good. I thought the papers were okay.. A bit sad because a bit low but I thought close to 80% was good enough.. But there are always people who are getting 90%... :( No A liao.. no matter how hard I try.. it's a limit of my capability..

Now I realise why I am a true rabbit.. I hate competitions :( Thank goodness school is over soon.. Though in worklife, competitions = sucking ups.. something which I also don't like.. Is there a job which does not require me to compete?? :(