USA times

It has now been over an year that I have been living in USA and the time calls for me to sit back reflect on the past year.
I came here with dreams of a fabulous America of the movies and was immediately both elated and disappointed. Airports did look like from an alien place bustling with activity and people in those characteristic vibrant colors and then stepping out from the airport as you reach towards the heart of the city you expect tall building and people moving around like crazy, yellow cabs and neon signs everywhere. Well, i didn't find any and realised that what we see in movies is but a minuscule part of USA. Nevertheless, the small apartments in large buildings are served with the best of facilities- with wall-to-wall carpeting, air-conditioning, microwaves and dishwashers being standard features (a luxury by my standard of living in India). University campuses are lush green with trees and flowers- almost making you believe you are in one of those Yash raj pictures and on certain given days you can see the scenes of American pie enacted in reality.

Personally, I have grown to understand the nuances of statistics learning statistical packages at no ends. Developed a keen sense of epiemiology (K, I will keep those lines for my SOP). To say that I was taken aback by the class atmosphere is an understatement. Here I am dressed in a formal shirt and a trouser assuming graduate school to be a place where professors would want you to be in the your best presentable form, and I see people coming in to classes in shorts and slippers with their Lunches and dinners!!!
They would rip open packets of chips in the middle of a class, open bottles of coke or just much away biting into apples creating quite a ripple in the class, but strangely nobody used to notice it except me. If that is not enough to startle you, how about you calling the professor by his first name and actually stopping the professor in the middle of the class and asking him a question, to which he replies promptly, and if dissatisfied by his answer you could disagree and openly express it. Now some of would consider it to be taking the student teacher relationship to height of informality but it work. I could get what the professor was saying and did not have to go home and read. Another strange thing that is characteristic of the education here is that books are more or less not wanted- didn't have to sit up one night before the exam getting it my head. Can I ever disregard the "Cheat sheet", my maths teacher from school would faint if she came to know that you could take a sheet with all the formulas on a piece of paper into a exam!

You can see people running and that is not just in the morning or evening, but anytime of the day. I thought that would be because the sun is available for only a small part of the year, but I could see people running out even when it was running or even snow paved all the paths. People are very keen to maintain their health and age is no bar, with even 60 year olds running their heart out. Even in sports you would assume that there will be separate leagues for guys and gals, I was surprised when I was told that its a co-ed sports sports event I had to take part in. I ascribed it to the open mindedness of people in USA and immediately was sympathetic for gals considering them weaklings, but I was to be proved wrong when the gals outran me in skills and in stamina on the field actually making me feel sub-standard. That they were aggressive is proven that I was hit in the face, kicked from behind, elbowed and the most painful of all- hit in the nuts- all by gals. But that is only one part of the country as I can see people who are more than the twice the most obese person I have seen in my country. If they sit on a two seat on a bus, you cannot squeeze in with them. Inspite of being so pathologically obese they just end up eating more. Two sides of America of date. The weekend culture is one thing to relish, work hard for 5 days from 8am to 5pm and then take two days off, and people are in the offices at 8 am in the morning punctual to the 'T' and making it a point to inform others if they were going to get late by even 15 minutes. I have been trying to get there on time but have made a name for myself in being fashionably late to almost all events possible. The best one was when I was late for a formal dinner event by just one hour, and had more than 50 faces staring at me when I did enter the hall.

How many people did you see or talk to in a day in India? No count right? Here I can count the number of people I talk to in a day on my fingers. Being deficient of a social circle does play on you as it is not easy to deal with this after living in a country where people are so intrusive that they would want to know the day you broke your first tooth, if possible.
How I make do for that is by getting on to the net for 24*7 and pinging anybody and everybody I may find online. I have started to be known as online singh. Being on net and a laptop is a feature of life here, and all the assignments and exams I have got till date has ensured that I get more and more used to it. Nothing to be accepted in hand written format, only typed assignments. I wonder when was the last time I wrote anything by hand or lifted a pen. All this has bode well for me as I have met many a people online and on social networking websites who have become very up and close, some I havent even seen in real life ever. But I also have messed up my eyes along with it, all those years of studying in MBBS did not weaken my eyes but 6 months into USA and I have spectcles on my face.

The weather is another part that needs a mention, I had read about it in books about england where people carry an umbrela everytime and the saying, " If you dont like the weather, wait for an hour and it will change" is true. I dont know about England in reality but it is certainly true for this place. You need to check the weather forecast everyday as it changes like a chameleon changing color. It would be a bright sunny morning when you leave the house but by the time its lunch time, the clouds must have already cried their hearts out.  Like today, I came out of the home without checking the weather and so now its raining out there and I donot have an umbrella with me. My language has changed, I have an accent, I say " you know like" in very sentence.

That is it for now, I have much more to say- but that is for later.

Dr Prabhjot Singh
MBBS, MPH (EPI) 2009 Candidate
Saint Louis University

Trip to New York

New York, a city people say you have to be in once in your life.

I agree totally, you have to experience it to know it. I had a memorable time over there for reasons one too many.

Although it's been an year since I have been staying in USA, still before going to New York I was apprehensive as to what will I meet; a thought that had once crossed my mind when I left for Mumbai. At Mumbai I had reached at 5 am in the morning and waited for an hour before I called my brother up. Those were the times when land line was the norm and mobile was still a luxury. He had a PP number and the person concerned did not pick up the call initially, and when he did said there was no one with my brother's name. I had a near sinking feeling cause I knew none in the city and started thinking if I should just head back. Luckily I remembered that I have a sister too in the city and after many calls and PP numbers was able to reach her. That is how my tryst with Mumbai started.

My tryst with New York was also memorable. My host was very punctual and reached the airport right on time. There was only problem though, she assumed that the D terminal I was supposed to arrive on was actually just a slang for Delta terminal. So here I am standing on D terminal looking around frantically for a known face while she was at least a mile away. The airport shuttle came to rescue and I met her in another 5-10 mins. Thereafter the journey to home on NY metro was largely uneventful. Next morning I had a meeting with a professor at the New York University and Yasmin offered to come along as it is very easy for a naivete like me to get lost in the subway system. I was much at peace with myself and was looking forward to meet the professor, but that was not to be. At the subway, the train was crowded and after some people made some space at the door I was able to get in and was trying to get her in. She thought it would be better to wait for the next train and coolly stepped off the train and before I could have reacted, the doors closed on me. So here I am seeing her through the closed subway door from inside the train while she was standing on the platform. The beauty of subway system is such that your mobile phones do not work inside it or on the platform and you are bereft of any way to contact the other person until you get out of it. The train accelerated and so did my hear beat, unsure of where to get off or what to do and I was already short on time to meet my professor.

I did what I thought would be sensible, get off the next station and hope that she will board the next train and that she will care enough to get off or look for me on the platform. Luckily the subway system which was insulated for mobile phones, allowed my brain waves to travel across and I spotted her traveling on the next train. I reached in time to meet my professor and had a lovely and fruitful discussion with her. My way back was largely uneventful or you may say that I got used to my host's darting in and out of the subway nature and could make it to the same side of the subway doors before the doors closed upon me.

Another highlight of the trip was meeting old friends in a foreign land but with the same homely feeling. Same jokes, ripostes and grilling each other, yet never getting offended. Roaming around the streets of New York was no different from being at home. So at peace I was, that I said to Yasmin one day before leaving for Saint Louis," I will be back in Baroda tomorrow." There where people all around yet none around but you had ones that mattered, there were loads of confusing streets and names yet you could find your way, innumerable trains and buses going through many a routes enough to get you lost but you reached places on time. A city with chaos yet an order to it.

I hope to be back in New York soon.

Efficiency tests for doctors

In all other fields we assume that as people work in the field they become more experienced and also get better at their work. Why do we consider that a doctor has to prove himself every year or so although he/she is practicing and actually getting better. Is it because we think that treating patients is detrimental to the brain. Then again how is a theoritical test the best judge to test his/her competence?
People will argue that there are newer drugs being discovered everyday and the treatment regimen keeps on changing everyday- For their kind knowledge- even in USA the FDA does not register more than 1-2 antibiotics per year for all diseases combined. Most of these newer inventions are not available in India till the next 3-4 years and even then are out of reach of the common man. Moreover the art of healing is more about psychology and the trust a doctor generates in his patient and not the type of drug he prescribes.

Then the common refrain- we place our lives in their hands. True, but then you also place your lives and more literally in the hands of an airplane pilot or a train dirver or even a cab driver. Doctors are supposed to know everything- sorry they are humans and have normal human brains which can not retain everything. If doctors admit that they do not know about a particular disorder to their patient- they think less of the doctor and might even bad mouth the doctor in the open. Yet what good would it do to a patient if the doctor would lie to them about his knowledge. Perhaps the heavy price a doctor has to pay for being honest may make some of them go on the defensive and not admit their shortcomings. I do not endorse this behaviour on a doctor's part but want to place the blame equally and squarely on patients too.

Some patients would want to know all the options of treatment that a doctor can offer in their condition, yet again forgetting that a doctor's clinic and his practice is quite different from a restaurant. I agree a patient getting operated upon or treated has the right to decide what should and should not be done to him, but demanding it as a right rather than seeking advice is not the way to go. Either we consider a doctor's practice equivalent to a restaurant where you will be given options and you pick the one you think is good for you and therefore let the blame totally be on you if the treatment does not work for you just like an order may not be upto your taste.

Else place your faith in the doctor and let him practice and hold him for his actions.

A change in understanding of a physician's role and practice needs to be made.

Going veggie shrinks the brain

Going veggie shrinks the brain

"SCIENTISTS have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain - with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage......"

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24336544-23272,00.html

Just a piece of shoddy journalism and nothing more. The authors of the study tried to ink that a vegetarian diet actually implies that a person is not taking adequate amount of Vitamin B12 which is vital for the brain development during childhood and maintenance of neural function thereafter. Yet the newspaper simply forgets that and directly implicates vegetarian diet for brain atrophy. The scientists here have proved nothing more than that Vitamin B12 is vital important for brain which is a fact I have been learning since my 7th grade. I wonder what vested interests would the journalist have to twist this study and try to imply something which the study does not even hint at.

Model Selection

List of items

This section is a brief summary of where you should buy specific items. Note that some items appear in both the U.S. and India columns. This means that you could buy either in India or the U.S. depending on your preference and how much space you have in your luggage. Additional advice and a more detailed list is below the table.

BRING FROM INDIA	BUY IN THE U.S.
Formal clothes (men)	Formal clothes (women)
Casual clothes (men and women)	Casual clothes (men and women)
Party wear	Party wear
Traditional clothes	Winter jacket
Undergarments / Socks / Nightwear	Gloves / Mufflers / Scarves
Light sweaters	Blanket / Comforter
Toiletries	Toiletries
Handbags / Wallets / Purses	Bedsheets / Pillow Covers
Leather shoes	Stationery
Sports shoes / Floaters	Sports shoes / Floaters
Slippers (casual and formal)	Electrical appliances
Pressure cooker + spare parts
Belan (for rotis)
School bag / Backpack
Eyeglasses / spectacles
Selected medicines
Selected food items
Textbooks (certain subjects only)
Namak Dani (for masalas)

Clothes

Before you decide what clothes to bring, please keep these important points in mind. The detailed list below has examples for each category. Items in red can be purchased in the U.S.

>	Quantity of clothes: Make sure you get a large quantity of clothes. You will typically wash your clothes only once a week and if you are busy, once every two weeks. Get sufficient quantities of clothes to last you at least two weeks.
>	Quality of clothes: You will be washing all your clothes together in a washing machine, and drying them in a dryer.  Make sure your clothes have fast colors and will not shrink from the heat of the dryer. Avoid bringing clothes with a lot of zari work or decorations as they will get spoilt in the washer. Wrinkle free fabrics are recommended as you will not have time to do a lot of ironing.
>	Clothes for the weather: The summers here are very hot and humid (as hot as India) and winters very cold and windy. Bring clothes that are appropriate for the weather.
>	Clothes for your program: Each school at the University has its own informal dress code. Engineering and natural sciences tend to have a more casual dress code than Business and Law. It is a good idea to have a sense of what the expected dress code is for your school.

Formal wear (men)     Suit     Full sleeve shirts     Ties (not too bright)     Dark colored trousers	Formal wear should be purchased in India as it is very expensive to get tailored suits in the U.S. Get atleast one white and one blue shirt. Ties should be conservative (solid color or muted pattern).
Formal wear (women)     Skirt Suit or Pant Suit     Formal tops     Black pants	For interviews and other professional activities, you will need western formal clothes which you should buy in the U.S. to be consistent with acceptable styles. For other formal occasions like weddings, parties, etc., it is acceptable to wear traditional formal clothes.
Casual wear (men)     T-shirts     Half sleeve shirts     Shorts     Jeans     Trousers	Most types of western casual clothes that work in India are fine for the U.S. Since clothes are cheaper in India, it is advisable to bring most of your clothes. You can buy additional clothes here depending on how much you want to spend.
Casual wear (women)     T-shirts and tops     Skirts     Jeans     Pants     Capris     Embroidered kurtis	Most types of western casual clothes that work in India are fine for the U.S. Since clothes are cheaper in India, it is advisable to bring most of your clothes. You can buy additional clothes here depending on how much you want to spend.
Traditional (men)     Kurta-pajamas     Embroidered short kurtas     Sherwani	Bring one or two sets of Indian clothes to wear for events like Diwali and Holi and if you visit the temple. Keep in mind that these have to be hand washed or dry cleaned (fairly expensive).
Traditional (women)     Salwar-kameez     Sarees	Bring one or two sets of Indian clothes to wear for events like Diwali and Holi and if you visit the temple. Salwar kameezes are easier to wash, iron and maintain as opposed to sarees. Dry cleaning silk sarees can be very expensive.
Other clothing     Underclothes     Socks     Nightclothes     Sportswear	Bring underclothes and socks in large quantities as you will do laundry only every week or two weeks. Bring cotton socks as well as woollen socks for the winter. Bring light nightclothes for summer and something warmer for winter (even though your apartment will have AC and heat). If you swim or play sports, consider bringing relevant attire from India.
Winter wear     Winter jacket     Sweaters and sweatshirts     Gloves     Hat     Scarf     Thermal underwear	Buy almost all winter wear from the U.S. as they are designed for the cold here. Sweaters and sweatshirts are useful to wear in the Fall and Spring when it is not so cold or to wear under the winter jacket during winter when it is very cold. Preferences vary for gloves, hats, scarves, and thermal underwear. In general, if you are not used to the cold, you should get gloves and a hat at the very least.
Shoes (men)       Sneakers     Black leather shoes     Floaters     Slippers	Get one pair of comfortable sneakers to wear on a regular basis. One pair of black leather shoes to go with your suit is a must. Bring slippers to go with your Indian clothes as finding those is hard here. In addition, bring foaters and slippers for use during the summer months. Usually, there is no need for winter boots in St. Louis. Shoes are readily available here so don't feel like you have to bring a lot of pairs.
Shoes (women)       Sneakers     Formal shoes (close toed)     Floaters     Slippers (for Indian wear)     Slippers (casual)	Get one pair of comfortable sneakers to wear on a regular basis. One pair of formal shoes to go with your suit is a must. In addition, bring foaters and slippers for use during the summer months. Bring slippers to go with your Indian clothes as finding those is hard here. Some women prefer to wear boots during the winter but it is up to your personal preference. Shoes are readily available here so don't feel like you have to bring a lot of pairs.

Toiletries and Medicine

General toiletries     Toothpaste and toothbrush     Shaving kit     Sunscreen lotion     Combs and brushes     Vaseline     Hair oil	Bring minimal amount of toiletries from India, enough for one or two weeks. They are heavy and can cause a mess. Most basic toiletries can be bought here fairly cheaply. If you use something that is specifically sold only in India, like vaseline, bring that with you.
Make-up (women)     Foundation     Rouge	Make up is available here but can be on the expensive side. Shades of make-up sold here are geared towards lighter skin tones, which may not be suitable for you. Also, if you are particular about colors and shades, you may want to bring make up from India.
Medicines     Crocin     Vicks / Iodex     Brufen     Stomach upset medicine     Bandaid     Malaria medicine     Antiseptic ointment	Bring a small supply of medicines with you for emergencies. If you use any ayurvedic medicines, bring them from India but make sure they are new, completely sealed packets. You may also want to bring medicines you take regularly as it takes some time to get a prescription for equivalent medicines in the U.S.

Kitchen and Household

Bedroom     Sheets and pillow covers     Comforter or blanket	Don't bring linens from India. Beds in the U.S. have different dimensions and your sheets will not fit. You should bring just one or two sheets for temporary use and to cover yourself if you like. Comforter should be bought in the U.S. so that it is suited for the cold here.
Kitchen       Pressure cooker     Plates     Spoons and forks     Glasses and mugs     Bowls     Belan     Namak dani	Make sure you get a pressure cooker and spare parts as they are expensive here but are useful for cooking rice and dal. Other items should be gotten in a small quantity (1 or 2 of each) just to get you started. You can buy additional kitchen items cheaply here. Make sure everything you get or buy is microwave and dishwasher safe because you will be heating food in the microwave and washing dishes in the dishwasher a lot.
Food     Masalas     Tea / Coffee     Misc. groceries	You can buy most Indian masalas, dals, and other groceries at the Indian store here. However, they are usually far away from where you live and hard to get to without a car. You can bring a small supply of food for the first few days.
Stationery     Pens and pencils     Notebooks     Textbooks     Scissors, stapler     Hole puncher     Paper clips     Rubber bands	Stationery is easily available here and you should avoid bringing any unless you have spare space (unlikely!). Be aware that in the U.S., they use a different paper size. Also, they use 3-hole punches instead of 2-hole so buy that here.(Walmart is the best place to get stationery from).

Miscellaneous Items

Documentation     Indian drivers license     International Driving Permit           Old academic transcripts     Medical prescriptions     Copies of visa/passport     Copy of bachelors degree	The Indian license / IDP will make it easier for you to get a U.S. license if you plan to drive here. Other documentation may be requested by U.S. Immigration authorities and may be needed for other purposes. Keep copies of your passport, visa, and other immigration documents in multiple places. Medical prescriptions are needed if you want to get equivalent medication here.
Eye & Dental Care        Eye prescriptions	Eye and dental care is NOT included in most student insurance plans. You have to pay an additional amount to get this coverage. Get your eyes and teeth checked up and if you wear glasses or contacts, get lots of spares. Eye and dental care is very expensive in the U.S. Glasses cost in the hundreds of dollars.
Misc. Items     Umbrella or Raincoat     Agarbatti ?     Sewing kit     Shoe polish and brush	Bring these items as per your preference. A sewing kit is useful to repair buttons and small tears.

Tribal Population and Malaria

PhD???

Over the past three four months I have been thinking about what next after my Master's? I had a student loan to pay for and so I had thought I would work for an year in the field and then get back to doing my PhD. However, now with the loan of my head, I have started to envision ideas of getting in to a PhD right after my MPH. It seems a sensible thing to do as I would like to finish all my education in one go and also the fact that my contacts at school could come handy in getting into a PhD program now than they would after an year from now.
The problem also starts there. What is going to be my research focus?
I always wanted to do something to do with infectious diseases and that resolve had grown stronger. I want to explore Malaria and ways in which I could shed some light for better combating the disease. Yet, with each passing day all I come up with are ideas which have already been put to test. I took the GIS class and started thinking that this is a echnology that would be lacking back home and I could use this to develop a probability model for India. However, in the process of collecting data for Gujarat for my GIS class project on malaria I cam across hordes of GIS maps for the whole of Gujarat state and in some cases for the whole country. That left me stunned as I was never expecting the system back home to be so advanced. My perception of the level of competence of health data and infromation in India was totally wrong and now my probability model seems like an idea from the 1990s...
Yesterday I read a mutilevel analysis with spatial cluster dectection for dengue for another class project and I was totally hooked. I have now started to think about using this for malaria hoping that not much has been done with this approach and that it would be useful for the disease modelling. However, I am not convinced as the idea is far from original and therefore is eating me up.
I wonder what it is that you need to present as a research model for your PhD consideration and what level of depths do you need to go to get one. Still going on and thinking what it would be like. Would spend the second part of my summer semester exploring the journals for Malaria.

Today I was accused of being indifferent. Is that true? Perhaps yes. Then why am I troubled? The way it was taken perhaps was not right.
Indifference could be absolute and then it could be relative. It depends largely upon your priorities and what phase of mind are you in. If you happen to be working on a project of your interest (say X) and another important yet not a priority thing (say Y) comes up, what do you do? Of course you end up attending to that Y thing for a while to see if that is not of utmost importance and can wait and then revert to the X thing. Let me not take things of heart and mind so statistically. However, even though your indifference may be relative to some other issue of utmost importance yet people may misunderstand that to be absolute and directed to them in pure terms. That pains.
Even the priorities that we have are not absolute and keep on changing from time to time, some even during the time of one single day. For example what do you do when you are sleepy? Do you go to bed irrespective of the time of the day and the place and position you are in? No you don't, you don't go and sleep anytime of the day you feel the need to be, or else I would never be able to attend any class! Yet you sleep every single day even though you choose not to indulge several times in a day. Do you feel guilty when you don't sleep during the day? Do you not at times consider feeling sleepy a nuisance and yet yearn to feel the opposite at night? When even such carnal urges like sleep are modulated just within the matter of one day, why is it that our other priorities can not change from one moment to the other- perhaps not as drastically as you do in the case of sleep but yet they do wavier.
People would argue that things like sleep cannot be equated with people, especially people who matter a lot to you! Yes and no. Let me first elaborate why no. What sleep is to a person is what we call a carnal urge psychologically- it is a feeling. When you talk to a person, interact with him/her you end up experiencing emotions produced by and directed to your self. When you yearn to talk to a person, you want to do so cause you feel good while talking to him/her and on the contrary an irritating person is not irritating himself/herself but because you perceive that person to be. You think you connect to a person because the same stimulus stirs up similar emotion in both of you, yet it is again what you perceive that it is similar in both cases. In a nutshell, interacting with a person doesn't mean anything else but going through loads of emotions that are not perceived by any one else but you. Therefore, it is not necessary that since you feel good talking to a person at a certain given point of time, you will always continue to do that all given points of time. Even the law of normality has in its inception incorporated a distribution and not a single value- both on the positive and negative side of the mean and includes in itself outliers.

 

Nevertheless, we can not just say whatever I have said above and move on. Undeniable that priorities can waiver, yet people can not live that way. Consider that you may take for granted that whenever you call a certain person, he or she is willing to take up the call and would talk in a ebullient tone with you yet that person may feel totally different on all occasions that you do call him and also conveys you his pleasure and displeasure at each moment. Where will you stand? Would you be able to call that person or not?

Not I will presume. Why? Cause that is what being human is all about. That is what we do as we age. Remember the times in 1st or 2nd grade when you could be angry with a friend and would call him names  at one moment and yet the other moment you would make up with him and start playing along. Those where times when we acted at the spur of the moment. However, you can not repeat anything like this with any of your friends today. As we age we train our mind to sustain an emotion or feeling for a longer time, we try to associate things, situations and people with a certain feeling and that is what determines our priorities. As we age we try and make this a consistent habit. Yet we are still learning and are bound to err, its human. We may want to act as a mature person and say that my priorities in life are more less decided or at least they don't waiver with every spur of the moment decision I make, yet once in a while you may act spontaneously leaving the other person believe that your indifference is absolute even though it was relative to the issue at hand.

One early morning

I woke up at 7 am and got ready well in time to catch the 7:58 am bus to my office. However, my desire not to hurry things up and take them at my own pace inevitably dented my plans to be on time. I missed my bus by a whisker and then there I was standing at the bus stand waiting for the next one which was not to arrive till 08:30 am. The weather, for a change, was good with rays from the rising sun prevalent all around yet the nip in the air reminding of the dreary winter gone past. I could stand there and wait for the bus or take this opportunity to walk down to my office which would be just over a mile from my place. I decided that I should give it a shot and started ambling leisurely, enjoying the weather and the spring blooms. It was a spectacle to see all those trees laden with white flowers and red buds while trees with bare branches providing a stark contrast and reminding one of both the past and the future, perhaps very close to what I am going through in my life- Leaving the past and moving forward towards greener pastures. The fresh air reminding me that spring is around the corner and the icy winter winds are a thing of the past. Taking huge gulps of the fresh air around and a jump in my step I sauntered down to my office engrossed in my own thoughts. It was a lovely start to my morning and a phase in my life.

A changed me

Its 08:12 in the morning, I am in my office and have commenced working. An hour and a half of job and then I will head to my classes. Got a quiz today so read for it till late last night and will study some more in between the classes. Yes, that is me- 'Prabhjot Singh'.
Like most of my friends from medical college even I fail to recognise this guy that I have become. Is it just me or is it USA. I still remember, in medical college I used to barely get up by 8 am, got ready in a record time and drove rashly to get in by the 8:30 am deadline (+- 30 minutes, always + though) inside the ward. Forget breakfast or waking up, still yawning I used to enter the ward and would then sleep through the rotations for the next three hours. Now I get up at 6 am to catch that extra hour to read or get ont to the net and follow some news and by 7 I am getting ready. Not only do I make sure that I have a heavy breakfast but I also manage to pack my lunch too. By quarter to 8 I am out on the street waiting patiently for the bus. Back from my school I sit up and read, complete my homework days in advance rather than waitng for that last hour. I rarely remember when I was able to complete all those 20 histories I was supposed to write in each ward by then end of the rotation. I still remember giving surgery histories in medicine just to complete the number.
What has come over me is beyond me, where is that rash, care hoots about the world, carefree me? Is it my age or this place? A much saner, organised and 'worrying to death' me, who tends to sleep by 11 and gets up at 6.
I think americanism has caught me on the wrong step.

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