#72 the dilemma

I'm still alive, duh.

For the past few ages I've been away, first to face one of the most important exams of my life - the fourth year exit exam of medic school. I passed (thank God!), although there were certain things which I could have done better. There was the practical exams (the OSCEs) in which I thoroughly bombed the stations for Orthopaedics and Paediatrics, the former because I was a klutz with no sense of organisation and the latter because it was the first-station jitters. The MCQs being MCQs (I forgot the exact number of questions already but it was certainly more than 120) made me so tired and cold and subsequently sleepy (damn hall air-conds!). The long case was fun, though. I got an easy case, CCF with diabetic complications, the patient was very cool, the examiners were helpful because God knows I was babbling like my life depended on it. Case in point: I couldn't even get the word "BUSE/CREAT" out for five minutes (they were asking for a lab investigation for kidney function), the examiners had to twirl around and around to get it out of me, and they looked intensely relieved the moment it rolled out of my tongue I couldn't help mumbling "I'm sorry".

Then, I went for a LONG-DESERVED HOLIDAY and an awesome elective posting in the Emergency Department of Queen Elizabeth Hospital 1 Kota Kinabalu. The department people was awesome, and our supervisor was one really cool guy who made 'disaster' sounds like an attractive word. I stayed in God-forsaken Petagas, which turned out to be quite a charming suburb area, and went back to Bongawan for the weekends on the NEW TRAIN! NEW TRAIN! NEW TRAIN!

The sea view from the train, about fifteen minutes away from my home.

These two are so cute, but they're probably brothers.

Holiday activity: searching for rubber tree seeds! And they pay you, too! (RM 3 for each measly kilo)

This is my wallpaper now.

Holiday activity: DIY crafts. I sucked.

Then I went back. Boo. Ah well, my first posting for the fifth year was Accident and Emergency. It wasn't like my electives though, because the HOD was quite hands-on with our lot. She even asked me a question (an easy anatomy question, but it was awesome that she even noticed me), and told me she looked like one of her employees: which I don't really adore but hey, you suck it up.

Last weekend I went to a CME held by Philips Respironics, apparently they make CPAP devices. It was the first formal symposium thingy I attended, but it was on a Sunday so maybe it didn't count? There was talk from a really nice sleep lab - I guess the word is owner, because he's actually a cardiologist, and another one from a sleep medicine specialist who looked really young. And really tall. Uh.

Anyway the CME was really nice. It was on obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), which is the fancy term for snoring, hehe. Now, despite having several risk factors for this condition I amazingly did not have it (confirmed by my mother), and I speculated that this was because my tongue and oral passages have a higher muscle tone from all that wailing Massenet, Puccini, Strauss and Verdi. Which is kind of contradictory because as most vocal pedagogues would tell you muscle tension is a definite booboo in classical singing, at least the Italian school.

Which brings me to another point: during the holidays I've been experimenting with tenor techniques from this wonderful pedagogic website, in particular what he called the 'wail' and the 'cry', and to my amazement I managed to stay on F# and Gs forever! There was no muscle tension, my neck didn't look like I was choking myself, and my tongue stayed clear out of the emission (a real big problem for me, as I flip higher than F I tend to roll my tongue backward and produce this crazy muffled mezzo-sopranoish timbre, which on the plus side can go up to F#5 but probably sounded like a duck's squawk in a hall - you should hear me sing O don fatale sometimes, I camp it up better than La Bumbry - how can you not, when you have the chest of a baritone and the head voice of a contralto!). The notes higher up also sounded clearer, but I still like my D's and Eb's the best. Hence the dilemma: Am I a short tenor alla Domingo in disguise? (Gasp!)

... TO BE CONTINUED