school's in for-evah.

Medical students strive for a stance of professional neutrality where their knowledge & skills matter but not their persons- as if they were not humans, interacting with humans, in a social world where every aspect of our beings has social and cultural meaning
- Kenny, Nuala P 2004

First day of school today. Unfortunately my enthusiasm for it lasted all of 5 minutes into our histology lecture. I find it very difficult to try and keep myself motivated to learn things I am almost certain I will never use. I understand the importance of learning basic science and physiologic mechanisms in order to have a solid foundation to build your clinical skillz, but it can be very frusterating sometimes. Today I spent an hour learning about the different layers of the gut and the different types of cells that make up the lining of the stomach and esophagus. It's just so discouraging to be constantly forgetting this knowledge they spit at you.

I had the idea today that it would be interesting to do last year's exam this christmas and just see what i retained. I mean, do the same exam the first years are doing and see if I still know anything. I know I'm not stupid, and that I'm relatively good at retaining information, but I sometimes it's frusterating. I don't know how many times I've learnt the coverings of the heart, or the different parts of the fallopian tube, but i just can't seem to make the knowledge stick. Even if I could, will I ever need this "useful knowledge" ever again?

At lunch, our course director talked trash for half an hour about how this year is going to be sooo much different than last year and how we aren't going to be "spoon fed" this year and that "studying for exams just isn't good enough anymore". Despite the angsty feelings this stirred up in me and the class at large, I plan on doing the same thing I've always done. Take that UBC Medical School Administration!

Included in his speech were the usual comments about professionalism. bleh. I'm so sick of that word. Nobody even really knows what it means except short white coats and being 5 minutes early.

It was nice to see everyone though. I will endeavour to appreciate this last year of hanging out with people all day like it's highschool before we never see eachother again.

Man, apparently I'm right on the predicted course of becoming maximally disenchanted by 3rd year.

Time to wash the smell of one hundred beef burgers out of my hair (orientation bbq).

eat shit. he's a robot

"I remember one time I tried to pity this fool. He told me his name was Jeff. He was married. He pulled out his wallet and showed me three pictures of his kids; Kelly, Robert, Brittany. Real cute kids. Don't get too close man. It's hard to pity a fool if you get too close.
-Mr. T

I'm back now from the LWI. Probably the best one so far. Kurt and Jordan were in Castlegar for a couple weeks before the party, so they did lots of work to make it an interesting one. There was a good mix of old and new people from all over BC, Alberta and Ontario. The Manta was amazing fun and didn't kill anyone. We never really acheived sustained flight but we certainly made progress over the course of the weekend and got some significant hangtime. Pretty much everyone rode it and it was no problem for kurt to recoup the cash needed to purchase it.

Unfortunately, we had a such a good group this time, it is hard to figure out who to ban. The original cache of the lwi has always been the fact that at the end of the weekend, we eliminate the weakest member of the party. In practice it can be a complicated process, but it essentially is based on people taking fun away from the group. This year, everyone was very fun, but at the same time respectful and not annoying. A hard line to walk for some previous lwiers. I'm sure we'll figure something out.

Highlights include

Karen nose-diving the MANTA
Friday night at midnight
Tibes on the Tramampoline
Navy Seal instruction by Tory
Dance party on the Barge
Hot Summer Nights: 16 Sizzling Tracks
4 man Manta
Soft porn pass the shot
The 1st co-ed Kurt Saari Ring of Power
MANTA injury and subsequent operation
Darren's strobe lighting
Shot or lapdance
Sunday night Tatoo Parlour


Lots of great photos. Here's one.

nothing about something

"I've never been a fan of Amphibians. Not only do they strengthen the argument for evolution, they are Nature's fence-sitters. Come on Amphibians, which is it: water or land? Pick one, we're at war."

-Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report

If this blog isn't scared for its life yet, it should be.

This is my last day of work. I can tell because I received a large chocolate cake with "Thanks!" on it. Due to my difficulty with gift giving , I don't have a gift for my supervisor. I will get one next week.

Which means, of course, that these days of truly having not much to do are over.

Apparently 2nd year is much more time consuming than 1st year. This will most likely be true, as I feel like I had a pretty good head start on my peers last year due to my lifescience degree.

Regardless, I hope to continue posting, albeit at more irregular intervals.

Don't despair little blog! Never forget the hope provided by the gods of procrastination!

I was investigating the possibility of buying some Colbert Report shows on itunes and had to switch to the American version of the music store to view them. Whilst browsing in America, I discovered an ABC show called Kyle XY
and was immediately drawn to it, due to the similarity between Kyle XY's name and my own name, Kyle Merritt.

Unfortunately, it's on ABC family and looks relatively lame. Kyle XY has no belly button, and was found in the woods somewhere acting like a baby so a family adopted him. sure. Anyhow, the whole show is meant to be a mystery, and the website uses the tagline "Who is Kyle XY?".
I have to admit, I am curious as to what made them come up with the XY. I mean, he looks pretty masculine to me. Now, Kyle XXYYYY , that would be an interesting show. Are they just using some of the letters from the tail-end of the alphabaet to evoke feelings of the unknown, like in the X-Files? Personally, I think the lack of a belly button is an excuse for him to lift up his shirt and reveal his so-perfect-I-don't-even-have-a-belly-button-abs.

After briefly perusing the episode descriptions, I couldn't help but liken the plot lines to those of the 80's television show Small Wonder, where a father builds himself a robot daughter, similarly clueless to the customs of human society. Ok, maybe they aren't that similar, but Small Wonder was a wicked show. Ok, maybe it wasn't that wicked, but I do remember this episode where Vicki (The Robot), buys drugs from a dealer at her school, and the parents think it's the human son who owns them. Good episode. I sure felt bad for the son until they discovered the truth.

grade 5 art project

If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you can't see Chuck Norris, you may be seconds away from death.
-Top 100 facts about Chuck Norris

I'm starting to get a little worried about THE MANTA. Kurt recently sent out an email about THE MANTA to the LWI crew and Lise alerted me to the fact that another company's version of the same product has been recalled. I found a news story about a boy who fell from THE MANTA and ruptured his aorta and collapsed both his lungs. yikes. Despite this, I'm stil excited about riding it this weekend, which leads me to wonder. What's wrong with me?

I contemplate this question every time I am launching myself off the Texas Creek cliffs into Christina Lake. This is a tradition that Kurt and I started around the time we graduated from highschool. The cliff is 60 feet high (we measured with a ski rope), and juts out over the water, providing a perfect jumping platform into extremely deep water. The climb to get to the cliff, however, is tenuous, and the possiblity for a slip and the subsequent roll and fall is very real. At any rate, it's dangerous, people have died and injured themselves. So what's the deal? Why do I do this every year? To overcome the fear of the first jump, I convinced myself that I was really being courageous, that by jumping, I was "alive". I'm not sure if I still really believe that, but nonetheless, I jumped it last weekend and I'll do it again this weekend. Maybe it's simple, I enjoy "the rush". I like the feeling coming up out of the water, victorious, having conquered my fears once more. Maybe it's the ego. I like proving my local knowledge and balls of steel. (I don't literallly have "balls of steel" nor would I want to, but I have learnt how to protect them on entry into the water in order to prevent "slappage").

Sure, it's stupid. Despite this concession, I would argue that there is something elemental, something authentic, something naturally wonderful, about going up or down mountains. I don't know what that means per se, but I like the way it sounds.

Maybe I should've call this entry "Getting up and down things, I like it".

I don't have a photo of me jumping the cliff (one strike against the ego hypothesis...yes), but here is one of Kurt, Vince and I contemplating the task.

mid-night killing sprees

I got tired of feeling like Dracula.
I wanted to see some daylight, and not just at six o'clock in the morning
-Kate Moss

I live upstairs in a three storey house.
Heat rises.
There are no screens in the windows.
There are mosquitos that live in Kitsilano now.

I never really notice them before I go to sleep, and have been debating each night whether or not I will risk keeping my window open. Because I can't see any, I decide that I would rather have a cool breeze in my room and risk an insect or two. Over the past three nights, for whatever reason, at three o'clock, they attack. The first night I would just try and swat them away in the dark, but they would inevitably be buzzing by my ear again just as I was about to drift off. Now I just get up right away, turn on all my lights and jump around my room.

bzzzzzz....slap!
bzzzzzz....bam!
bzzzzzzz....smack!

The problem is that by this point, half of them have already had a sample of my tasty blood and aren't interested in me for a little while, but I'm still smearing their blood-filled bodies, all over my walls. Vengeance is a powerful force. By the time I've dispatched about 10 little draculas I'm am so charged up by the hunt, it takes awhile to fall back asleep.

Tonight I'm using my fan to generate a cool breeze with the windows closed.

square eyes

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
~Peter Rothman

I love my computer. I won't disguise that part of the reason I bought a Macintosh was for the aesthetic of the machine itself and the operating system. This doesn't really strike me as weird, considering that how things look seem to be an important factor in many decisions in our lives. The look and feel of my laptop wasn't the only reason however. Whether or not the operating system is "easier" to use could be debated. I find it is hard to tell when you've been raised on PC, but the golden thing about Macs is the stability. My supervisor just got a Toshiba tablet laptop with a docking station including many bells and whistles including a finger print scanner. It's great except that it's been repeatedly freezing for the past two days. I don't know what to say to people about freezing and crashing these days, as I can no longer really sympathize with them, and have to move to the much more difficult role of empathizer, where it is all too easy to sound phony.

Regardless of how much I love this little machine, there is definitely only a certain number of hours per day I can spend with it. I am using it all day for my job. I can't describe the feeling I get these days after coming home from work, but it's definitely not pleasant.

Saw an advertisement for a Final Fantasy show that is playing Sept. Should be good. The band is essentially one man, Owen Pallett, who plays a violin. He mostly uses a looping pedal to record little bits of what he is playing and then plays on top of it. For whatever reason, I love the little symphonies looping can make at live shows. So amazing to see one person put together complex pieces of music all by themselves. Despite the lack of a mandolin, Trevor has decided to join Sarah and I for the performance.

Otherwise I had more or less a blank day. Just doing some work and sending a billion emails about the LWI.

Well, due to the aforementioned lack of interest at spending any more time in front of a screen. I'm out.

view/edit blog

You can't even get 'strength'. 'Strength' is out now.
It's all 'extra-strength'.
Some people are not satisfied with 'extra', they want 'maximum'.
"Give me the 'maximum-strength'."
"Give me the maximum allowable human dose."
"Figure out what will kill me and then back it off a little bit."
-Jerry Seinfeld, I'm Telling You For the Last Time

There are still maybe only 5 people who I have alerted to this blog's presence....one of whom/who, my cousin Jeffy, has been diligently reading AND leaving comments for me (you other 4 take note). As an experienced blogger, he has left me some good tips. Anyhow, I went back over the last five notes and made some small improvements to grammar and linkage...nothing to really go back and look for. Jeffy's commenting has slowly been inspiring me to stop "lurking" and start leaving contents on his blog.

We (Cortney, Courtney, Trish and I), went to my cabin for the long weekend. We did regular cabin stuff....campfires, swimming, cliffjumping, wakeboarding, quadruple solitaire, etc. Jumping the cliff with Cortney was scary/pretty fun (Cortney is the boy, Courtney is the girl) as I haven't done it for two years. We had a supportive audience on the beach this time (compared to the usual name calling and jeering from the peanut gallery). The weather and the lake had cooled off quite a bit since the week previous, which I found quite pleasant. I had been talking up the temperature of the lake to Trish and Courtney all week, likening it to "soup","bathwater", and "the centre of the earth". Ok, I didn't compare it to the centre of the earth, I just said that so I could tell you that the centre of the earth is apparently the same temperature as the surface of the sun, a "fact" I learnt listening to the podcast edition of Quirks and Quarks, a CBC radio show. I put "fact" in quotation marks cause I'm not exactly sure how one could measure the temperature at centre of the earth...or the surface of the sun for that matter, but I imagine it involves some guessing. I'm questioning whether or not I've talked about this before here, but I've really been getting into CBC podcasts lately. So handy. I've especially been loving the CBC Radio Three podcast, which does a one hour show each week of independant Canadian bands. These shows that have talking in them really aren't the best for trying to do any school/house work, as I find myself stopping what I'm doing in order to be more attentive, but are kickass for long car rides.

Anyhow, the temperature of the lake reminded me of a little trick I had been advocating to Jordan only a week previous that involves lowering expectations and delivering above them. Trish and Courtney, in a condition that appears widespread among females, are chronically cold, so I think they were a little disapointed that the water wasn't a bit closer to their desired temperature...something slightly less than would scald.

Two more weeks of work left and it's defnitely feeling like summer is winding down. It helps that it's cold and rainy outside. No matter what, I'm always looking forward to what's coming up next in my life, although I think I will miss the hours I've been keeping these days. My supervisor said that I had been doing a "pretty good" job of getting my work done, which doesn't seem to be a very glowing summary, considering the "exceeding expectations" comment I got earlier on in my job. Again, I guess I should've paid more attention to where I was setting the bar. Things are looking better now though, as I actually have some things to do (ie- I am currently reliving the joy of procrastination), so hopefully I can dazzle now for the remainder (1st and last impressions are the most important).

string vs grilled

We look like professionals, like we've been playing together for years.
Busty women stop and stare.
Senior citizens sit and shake their heads, gasping.
Religious people fall to their knees.
No one has ever seen anything quite like it.
-A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers

Cortney (the boy) and I went down to Redmond Washington, the (alleged by my landlord) location of the headquarters for the company Microsoft, to see a String Cheese Incident show. We had been debating numerous ways to see them this summer, and with the discovery that we (I), had taken our procrastinating nature too much to heart and missed out buying Spearhead tickets before it was too late- we decided to make the overnight trek down to America. We stopped at the duty free to buy a few beers and upon exiting the parking lot through the only non-tire-shredding exit available, found ourselves in the nexus quick-lane, which we were forced to continue down until we arrived at the gate and had to nip into the regular lane. I'm a pretty big fan of lines, when used properly, and get annoyed at budgers, cutters and the like, but was left with no other option. When we made it to the border guard, he asked us the standard questions and then we had a little conversation that went a little like this

American Border Guard (in a stern voice to Cortney): Please remove your dark glasses.
Cortney: "OK"
American Border Guard: "Did you two go to the Duty Free and then cut into this line?"
Kyle: "Uh, yeah, well, we didn't know what else to do because....."
American Border Guard (while waving us on): "You did the right thing"
Kyle (to Cortney): "I guess we got a free six pack with our $10 skip-the-1hr-customs-line pass."

We decided, after some consideration, that they must have that lane set up in a weird way, but don't want people to use it as a short cut, so don't have any signage, but also don't want those people trying to use the nexus lane (which is some speedy pass of some kind). Either that or cutting lines has somehow become an aspect of the "difficult, but necessary," war on terror. -GWB

The show itself was pretty awesome. Great summer music to dance to in a park. The venue was loosely filled with the authentic style of hippie, you know, the ones that embrace the sacred pentad of hippiness (dreadlocks, tie dye, abstinence from washing, unemployment and polypharmacy). I was forced, yet again, to notice how hippies are always white. I can't remember if I commented on this after the folkfest, but it's true. The only black and asian people I saw at this concert were on stage. The concert ended at 10pm for the neighbours which gave Cortney and I time to practice some disc-throwing and sample the $1 garlic grilled cheeses of shakedown street.

On a sad note, the Kwik Trip styrofoam cooler I had been keeping in my closet was mortally injured as Cortney either put his hand or foot through the lid. The cooler was left at the cabin by some dudes from Seattle, and it gave me some pleasure to know that it had returned to it's hometown (or therabouts) to die.

our aria: kyle's soda

I just wanna use your love tonight
I don't wanna lose your love tonight
-The Outfield, Your Love

Gotta run home to the house bbq peter is putting on.

Just thought I would post this link kurt sent me. We are planning on buying this little badboy for the LWI (Leanne Walton Invitational), this year. Just click on the right to see the Manta Ray video demo. Kurt being able to get us things at wholesale prices at Canadian Tire has proven quite useful.

Here is a picture of Trav, cranking out (it's hand powered radio), my new favourite song- Your Love by The Outfield, at last year's LWI. One of Katelyln's friends made her a cd with this song on it to commemorate the weekend, and due to it's catchy 80's riff, and suitability to "rock out" to, made it's way into many a stereos this past weekend when I was home.