Today was the first freshers day, we ran out of leaflets in 2 hours. I was shattered. Then I ran around UCL for a good while till 4 pm. Then I came back home and left at 5pm for the meditation sesh in Camden.
It was really bad, cos I only got 4 hours sleep the previous night. Me n debs were waiting for everyone and I was sure i'd be falling asleep and dropping off the chair. But it was ok, most people's Mantra's were ohm or ummm or in-2-3-out-2-3, mine was "wonder what I should buy abi, did I get all the food/leaflets I need, what should I do with LINKY baloons. So you see there was no chance of letting me fall asleep. About 1/2 the way through...I began to trancend (ooo get me) but then I got stuck thinking about Mrs Draper (my year 1 teacher).
After I had HAD to charge mi phone up so went back to debs funky bedsit. There we almost killed ourselves laughing about incidences of Vommiting, She's thrown up in abu-dabi (I think u had to be there at the time-but honestly it was side splitting). Then she helped me admit some stuff that I was in complete denial about, its a good thing, but denial is so much easier to cope with, the problem is we think to much. We discussed everything, from blokes to politics and all the way onto discussing Hungary and Africa not to mention the obligatory medical chat-she feels the same bout medicine as me were all a clicking there!
It was great we are going to abi's party on Sat in Soho which will be good. I'm off to stick Johnny labels.Night.
Deadly quiet so I basically get a kitchen and bog to myself
Lift talk-everyone chats in them, even if you have never met the bloke before they seem to wanna know what course your on and where your from.
Post actually reaches me
The beepy cards (more later)
The fact it looks slightly like a castle
Poirot lived here-so it must be good and there are 3 rolls royces outside the gates (all belong to me of course)
The Uni:
OOOO big helicopter lands on the roof and say morning to them off "Trauma" v exciting
Pathology place has swoooosh barriers but hard to explain-come visit
We have labs with floating rooms called "cell" "cloud" and "spikey"
The union is lovely
The people are even more lovely
There are only 19 people on our course and all seem friendly, higher boy:girl ratio than ucl
I found the doctors pub-where they all go to get drunk.
My ID card is fab (although picture is bad) it opens doors to everywhere and has chips and barcodes and swipe-ness and I have 4 different ID numbers
Comparing the ID card with the UCL paper one makes UCL seem a bit of a joke really, but never mind, I think UCL is inproving them
OK things I hate about Barts and the London:
The Halls
I couldnt get into the TV room and signal of TV here is a bit (well very) rubbish
The internet is kinda jerky
It freaks me out that I have a cleaner clean my room every few weeks
I get scared doing the laundry
One of the guys on our floor looks like a pervert, another one looks like a monkey
The security guards are the most unenthusiastic people I have ever met
Everyone is a bit posh (I know its not their fault-its London generally)
The Uni
On 2 campuses, Mile end campus IS NOT near Mile end tube....I found that out today
They don't give you maps-apparently you must instinctively know where your heading
Whitechapel is vvvvv rough, pissed people will come upto you and as the sign says : Muggings happen here! Beware of suspicious behaviour
There arnt nice food places-Nandos, Pizza Hut, Mc D etc..so stuff you wouldnt eat on a daily basis. No M+S no Tesco, Sainsburys. I'm gonna have to make packed lunch
We arnt allowed in to the Pathology builiding
But we can go into a Lab which we don't really need
People in my course are 5th years and already set on qualifying whereas it hasnt entered my mind yet-can be tricky to understand where they are coming from
Its not UCL (sob) I miss everyone! But im doing the ole meditation again so I will see some of the people on Thur and LINKS is Wed so it will be ok
Well I'm mid way through the most hellish couple of weeks in the history of the world, not in terms of personal suffering or anything that terrible. But quite simply to much to do in such a small amount of time.
I have registered for mi courses which sound sooooo very up themselves:
Neuropathology (ok not to posh sounding) Cardiovascular Pathophysiology (WHAAAAAT??? they are deliberatley trying to sound superior, and it kinda works)
I have 4 days of freshers fairs to organise....that means arranging people, ambulances, free stuff, food for people, sign ups, posters, leaflets aaaaarrrrggghh the list goes on.
I have lectures begining on Friday which I will have to miss, I have my great ormond street thing on monday which im gonna have to try and fit in.
The st John stuff is somewhere near brighton and the first fair is on Thurs
The comittee tshirts are at York street...so not with the comittee
I also have to sort my library applications out, I need to find a student card I ordered and I have an oyster card floating around london somewhere!!
Just to top things off, my phone is broken and my student loan hasnt come through, so I cant call people easily and cant pay my rent.
Well it was one of those evenings yesterday, mum phoned to tell me the results of the blood donation, i'm O +.
How rubbish is that? Bog standard commonest one, off the top of mi head its approximately 35-40% of population have it. Still I don't appreciate being common. Oh one good thing is that I think Debs has the same group, so if either of us needed a transfusion we could swap (I think that happened in LOST in series 1 but I aint seen if for aaaages). But the cool thing is that my blood has been stuck into some sick dude which is so amazing (a lil weird tho). Anyways i've gone off the topic. Mum phoned and it made me think of home, and not having to do work, me and debs were chatting yesterday and both of us agreed that medicine is a bit...yeh you know. Just the constant repetitive slog of essays and clinical skills and "Hi my name's Kathy i'm a 3rd year medical student, is it ok if I ask you some questions?" Grrr.
It didn't help that I decided to watch Sleepless in Seattle and part of Eternal sunshine. The first made me cry like .....something that crys alot, then the second just messed with my head!
Debs and farha are coming over for the guided tour tomorrow at 11 am!!! will have to get up early to tidy.
I found the post room today, and I had some post. Now im gonna finish up here and go do laundry.
Fire alarm. Stupidly early int morning, still in jim-jams and not quite sure whats happening. Then got told we don't get out quick enough and are all gonna die!!!! Enough said really.
OK serious crazyness down here: its tuesday (i think) and Queen Marys are about as far from UCL in terms of organisation as something very very far away!! Ok so i've worked it out, i'm grouped with the freshers meaning I had to collect room keys at a stupidly early time, however I don't enroll for another week and as u need ur student card to : get access to the house, the internet, the university etc... i'm pretty much locked out of everything.
Ahaa but she must be able to get on the internet if she's written this (I hear u say!!), well I actually sneaked into UCL using my now out of date ID card and managed to log onto one of their computers!
Meeting John doo daa at the volunteering unit tomorrow morning the catching up with farha n Debs after their exam! As for today, well im gonna read the bbc website as I missed news for 3 days!! Then serious shoppin (for washing powder n shampoo) then home.
OOO and guess what ? The cleaners hoover your room for u every 2 weeks! how cool is that?
I keep finding tons of stuff I completely forgot about...e.g. prefects tie and all the "little pots" philippa is gagging for (I really should have brought them over, nevermind can always be a crimbo prezzie ;-P).
Also Smoosti's post has made me think back to Chapel High!
Rember Phil how Jade punched you in the face cos we reported her for being late (I was obviously too tough to mess with :-) )? Also when you and Kim were going through you "bad ass" stage and used to put banana skins and loaaads of other rubbish down the heaters in M6!
Rebmber Kim's facination with the middle one out of Hason, and you with ur "greasy" Howie! OOO and rember how we all used to hang out with Slats and all the other year 11 people like that "Religious Chris" who joined choir? actually maybe that was just me an Hannah, I wonder where she is? Probably still in Dove.---ooo and I saw her mum in Aldi but I hid behind the oat cakes, what would I say to her?
Ok back to the present...I have just ordered tickets for Have I got News for you. I don't know if I got em yet. So i'll let you know! At least this time the system didnt crash, but they sneakily put them up at 5 to 12 and as they get all allocated in about 10 minutes 1/2 could have gone before anyone thinks of trying.
Off to Stockport for some "essential" uni stuff.......havnt worked out exactly what I need, but the bus journey is long enough so I'll work it out then.
Well i'm gonna be the first to give my critique of the evening:
It was much better than the usual pre-uni meal (may be due to the lack of nun's present :-P ). The trains wer'nt working very well when we got on, cos instead of going Stockport-Manc Piccadily-Manc Oxford Road. It went Stockport-Manc Victoria-then stopped!! Which it don't usually do, cos victoria is a million miles from where anything vaguely interesting is....although a prince Charlie Photoshoot, where we got accused of being Paps was there. But as the ticket was only 3 quid it was fine.
Yada yada etc...we eventually arrived at the comedy store with 10 mins or so to spare. Also I will just add now...people seem to never trust that I know where I'm going! Did we ever get lost? I think not.
We (I-due to stingy mates) got the drinks...and the lovely bar man, who had a brain like a sieve managed to give me a Double shot of JD in a teeny tiny glass with about 1 drop of coke!! So obvioulsy it tasted nasty and v strong....but I drank it cos why waste it?
The show was good actually it was better than good cos it was free and funny, which is a good combination. I liked all the exacts except the bald one with the teeth, and to a lesser extent the little ginger guy....although he had cool shoes and picked on us which was great, philippa went all shy.
Philippa and melissa thought the compare was the best, but the first guy on was sooo much better, come on The Ikea catalogue joke was genius!
The journey home reminded me that i'm sooo far away from london. The show finished around 11:00pm or a bit after. We went to Oxford Rd-No trains to anywhere except Manc Piccadily and Chester. So we got on one to Manc Piccadily. Get off there and look for trains to Buxton, Chinley, Glossop ANYWHERE!!! But nada there was the last bus to Stockport which we JUST caught, OK getting closer to home. But then there were no busses or trains to home...grrrr it was only around 12:00 completely early to some people!
So the (totally fab) mother had to come get us. As we were waiting....cos stockport is like 45 mins away from home, the coppers turned up to shoo a pissed person (called Graham) from the station. So he staggers up to us and decides to talk to me...come on there were 3 of us WHY ME??? Then the police turn up and encourage him to move on. They check we are ok, which we are. Then go and sit in their police car, not sure if they are making sure we are ok or just watching Graham?
Get home at 1:00 absoultely shattered but twas good. I think we are gonna go again, just when we know we can get home ok!
Phil I shall be ariving on ur door step at approx 3/4 ish! Say now if that ain't a good time. I will bring with me something I think (well know) u wanna look at...Debborah Moggarch hint hint!! Hopefully you havnt seen it yet?!
I am in so much pain right now. I'm doing my upmost not to start crying! :-( I will show you my war wounds (they aint icky or anything) tomorrow and you can make sympathetic ooo-ing noises!
Oh and ideally we need to get the 6:40 from Whaley if we want to get to the show in time!
Well I woke this lovely morn after having a bad (ish) dream involving an egg which hattched into some sort of Beaver animal. I then tried to feed it cucumber which it didn't seem to like! But it was that or sausages, because thats all that was in the fridge. Stupidly I though in this dream "beavers eat trees so they must like cucumber" but after discussion at breakfast we agreed they actually eat fish, so maybe it really wanted the sausages!
Any hooo the dream got stranger and stranger and i'm not gonna carry on explaining it! I got enough grief after the buiscuit tins and rat in a car dreams!
But mingled in with this dream was another where I got to my Halls and I found it was actually a dorm...so I had to share with 17 other people! Understandably I dont want to share a room..especiallly with 17 people! So while I watched "This Morning" I decided it would be a good idea to actually read the tenancy agreement I signed about a month ago!
And (I know grammatically undeseriable!) guess what?! Apparently all of the rooms come with their own Fridge!! Now how cool-and admittedly completely usless is that? Why of all the appliances do they decide to stick a fridge in there? I'm not complaining though.
Its sounds sooo much better that first year halls which were just poop really! See we were in Langton Close which was average/scrubby but next door was Frances which was vvvposh/height of luxury! So of course we used to get evacuated for various resaons every few weeks...and them at frances would just stand at their windows and watch as we froze ourselves outside!!
Oh incidently I have a single room (whew!!) and there is only 205 people there! So its a diddy little hall...even better!
Well I did it! I have never been more scaredy-cat-like in my entire life! We sat down and filed in forms, then I had a blood test...this was where they spike ur middle finger and put a drop into a pot of copper suplhate! Its supposed to sink down (me and mother worked out that iron sulphate should be formed which is an insoluable preciptate)! Mine sank.......then rose back up again! But then it sank so all was ok.
I got called over to the bed, then my worst fears were confirmed when I heard these words uttered "I'm a trainee can I put your needle in?" AAAARGHHH I was so tempted to run for the hills.....but instead I said "sure everyone needs to learn" (why oh why did she have to learn on me?) To give her credit she did a pretty good job, and the blood was sucked out. They completely take more that 1 pint tho, they fill up lots of little blottles too so they can test it!
The sucking out was supprisingly fine, chatted to the delivery guy who was v friendly and also found out I was lying next to a Johnny....she was a Buxton one and is FAW (mwahahaha I out rank). Then after the blood sucking the wierd lightheaded ness begins....maybe its just cos they plonked my big bag of blood right next to me *shudder* but after a couple of mins the feeling goes away.......I can only liken it to the standing up at a choir concert where the venous pump stops and your at the point of knowing blood aint getting up there. Philippa, obviously wont know what i'm on about here as she "apparently" never felt faint (yer right).
But after the drink and biccys we went to TSB (who are arses) then to Partners (wooo student discout) then home.
I actually feel terrible now! but I think I was getting a cold anyways and even if it is from the blood donating, I am gonna be doing it again, cos whats a little discomfort when you're saving peoples lives. Plus next time I get a key ring and if I do it 10 times I get a badge!!!
First (and most importantly) Phil, hehe well we have been friends since the start of the Universe (which was a while ago) so it is my complete and utter duty to fully embarass!
I shall do this with a brill photo:
See this was us all snoozy on the second tour of Germany! Now I think I look pretty nomal when i'm asleep, no strange expressions or anything.......but dear me what does phil look like?! The mushroom haircut (so many memories) and do I spot a bit of dribble there :-P
Katie took this, I think, and I found it allong with a ton of the fab letters you used to write, I also noticed you wrote "mood"as "maud" when you were talking about Jo, hehe spelling was never great! I was actually going to put another Germany picture of Phil up (in sexy evening wear) but decided that too much of a good thing is never good, plus I can save that for laters!
I also have to show you a picture of my bed!! A fair few people know my bed (ok that must NEVER be taken out of contex) as being all high up, and rember my inability to cope with making it down the ladder (I remeber the bruises)!
Well I have solved that problem by making it all low down, I havnt worked out how to take the bars off the side yet, so it does look slightly like a safety bed for 2 year olds!
But the thing you should appreciate phil.....is the extreme tidyness of the general area, and the fact the high-ness has gone. Same as urs just a bit slower to achieve it! (I miss ur metal bed they were fab, it was like an assault course just to get in them!
So now I shall turn to the shocking recent "appearance" of me on the Khumars........Yes people we now have some screen shots!!!
Contain you excitement PLEASE!!
OK...well its not all good news, unfortunately you never see my lovely (ok maybe not) face, just the back of my head. Can it get worse that that? .......Oh yes it can.
See I thought this type of thing was an appropriate time to wear "semi-slutty" top as the studio would get warm....and stuff! So thinking it looks nice (as not fully slutty) I am filmed in it!
But now, I actually found out (while finding screen shots) thats the top has malfunctionned and Kathy's boobie strap is visible on National TV!! Ok not as bad as if it was Kathy's actuall boobies on TV but still, makes me seem common scally type, which I (and all sane people) want to avoid!
Still I have put a picture of where I was below:
1=Debs! 2=Boobie Strap (aaahhhhh) 3=Dhim (who actually isnt on this one-sorry!) but he's next to me so it cut him of this piccy!
Well today I had a lovely breakfast of spinach and orange juice!! That was it, all I had. I shall explain why, in two ticks, but for those of a medical inclination (and those who read the title) it should be pretty obvious.
I and the mother will be Blood donating in Buxton on Tue of Wed next week (can't remeber days anymore). See I have already donated all of my organs so I though the next bit was a bit of the old bone marrow and blood.I think i'm on the bone marrow register, cos I signed something in the drunken stupor that was freshers month a year or two back. So that leaves Blood!!
Well I have this fear.....OK it aint of needles and it aint of blood. So whats the problem with the blood giving then? Well I have (like many other people I suspect) a complete and utter phobia of PAIN!! I can't stand the stuff.
It donesnt help that my last experience in giving blood could only be describled as horrific! I shall explain:
I was going to Chapel surgery to get some routine tests done for my Uni course (HIV and Hepititis B immunity) so I sit down and wait for professional doctor type to come sort me! Now guess who turn up......the bloody district nurse! I love nurses (in a healthy way tho, not is some sort of perverted way!) but this particular one I knew quite well. Its one of the probs with living in a teeny tiny place.
So nurse attaches the tornique and a nice juicy vein pops up. Then she sticks in the needle...which wasnt that bad and puts on the vacume pot (im sure they have a proper name) and the sucking of the blood begins, except it doesnt. It comes out in spurts....I'm panicking by then thinking she has a artery (brachial) but she thinks that the needle is in the wrong place, which it was cos it was half in the vein half out. So what does she decide is the course of action....SHE FLIPPIN WIGGLES THE NEEDLE IN MY ARM!!
Now I'm not sure how to convey the total and absoulte pain at this point! Anyway the pot is about half full by now which she seems to think is enough. The she acts supprised when I feel a bit ill, and then to top of the worse blood test ever, she sits me in the incorrect first aid position for feeling faint!! I mean come on! Also it didnt help that through the whole blood taking my mother was sat next to me going "ooo theres a bit more" and "its spurting quite well now"! grr!
(woo tests came back negative...cept for the immuntiy one which was positive YAY!)
But despite this I feel I should give blood, here are my reasons:
I will soon be sticking needles in people and so should experience it for myself! Its like having a virgin who's a sex therapist.....they really can't be expert if they havn't the experience!
I wanna know my blood type...If im AB Ive been adopted (which could have happened) and I want to fill that section in on the front of my organiser!
I recon its a good way to face my fear!
There are free buiscuits
I want the pin badge when you donate 50 pints (just 49 more to go)
I want to look hard!!
Oh incidentaly the point of the breakfast was to increase my iron levels, vitamin C helps aid the absorbtion of iron which is particuarly necessary in women!! Farha told me that, it was one of the few questions I got right in First year!!
Remeber only 1 out of every 100 people who can donate blood actually do! So if I can do it then you can!!
