The best weekend in a long time

When I come to think about it this weekend has to be the best one in a really long time. Right now I’m sitting in one of the uncomfortable seats in the train, waiting for it to leave to get me back to Stockholm. This week is going to be a bit hectic due to a lot of heavy lessons and travelling. Our spring holiday begins at Thursday and I’m going back home for one and a half week. It's going to be really fun to come home for such a long time but I'll miss my new friends too.

Saturday was heavenly. My girlfriend Caroline bought us VIP-tickets to the lounge at the cinema Bergakungen in Gothenburg. I didn’t know what movie we were about to see until the fancy man in the theatre outfit presented it to us. It was another Swedish production and to be honest I usually don’t think that they are any good at all. This time it was different thou.
The title of the movie was “Änglavakt” (English title: Among Us) and after the movie I had to swallow my low expectations. It actually was the best movie I’ve watched in a really long time.
I totally loved the dialogue between the French and the English men in the park.

Yesterday we celebrated me and my brother’s 22nd and 19th birthday with our big family. I got to eat a lot of food that I have really missed, such as my mom’s homemade raspberry pie.

It actually was the best dinner in a really long time...

Absence of teachers

Recently, our class have started to wonder where the bloody hell our leading teachers are.
We’ve had medical students, finishing their third year of studies at Karolinska Institutet, for almost one month straight now. No offence, they are doing a really great job keeping the level of the classes at an acceptable standard. What bother me, and others in the class, is that Dr. Moshe and his brother Dr. Uri, who are supposed to lead the course with their knowledge of the exam procedure choose to stay home.

We pay a lot of money to get their expertise and yesterday we got to know that neither of them is coming during the second part of the course.
This has awakened a lot of doubt among us which is extremely unnecessary – we have enough to think about as it is. The small uproar started with complains and as far as I’m concerned somebody sent a mail with complaints to Dr. Moshe. Since we pay for a service we must expect to get what we pay for. As it is at this very moment the contract that we signed up to is way out of league. It states that we were going to have licensed doctors as teachers and among them – most of the time Dr. Moshe and Dr. Uri.


The complains via mail and the medical students gave some results. Moshe is coming after our spring break and had suddenly a lot of information regarding schools, exams and such.
I guess it’s as with all companies – the more work others can do for you the better it is. Then you can just sit back and enjoy. Of course I don’t know the reason why Moshe and Uri didn’t plan on getting over here and I’m really not the one to judge – but since we pay for a service we also have the utter right to complain if the service is in some way doesn’t match our request.
Regarding the studies so far I feel that I’m doing really great. There’s a big black hole in the chemistry part thou, we just finished the last chemistry but the part of organic chemistry just don’t want to stick. It’s really boring reading, just a mass of text and structures that have to be grinded and inserted. I really miss the calculations thou. Calculating pH and such is actually pretty fun when you know how to do it.

The anatomy is as good as ever. I actually can’t wait to get to the point where we start our unprepared presentations. And yeah, speaking of which, the presentations handed out this week had yet another unsigned row at next Monday. Topic? Protein synthesis.
What we do is that we send a list of subject around and people that feel like having a presentation sign up for a specific topic. I really can’t see why some seem to push their presentations ahead, I mean if you do it now you just don’t get a good practice and presentation skill you also can fill up your “presentation-quota” when we still have little to think about. Later on we get into the repetition phase and then I really want to focus on that. Regarding protein synthesis on Monday, I signed up for it – it’s a good way of fluently learning yet another system.

Sorry for the massive wall of text hitting your optical nerves, I’m sitting at the train now going home for the weekend after a really nice evening with Jackie and Jeanine from class. We had steak and watched the Road with Viggo Mortensen. Gosh, how I love apocalyptic movies. The footage was really impressive and I’d really like to watch it in 1080i.
The early bird catch the worm – me an Jeanine, who’s going home to Oslo and then further away to London for a weekend, got up at 6 o clock and went to the central station.

My sweet twenty two is tomorrow and my dad bought me high quality headphones that I’m going to fetch at Komplett in Gothenburg on my way home, can’t wait to try them out. Caroline bought us tickets to a secret film at the cinema and I’m really happy that she did. We kind of need that.

5 minutes left until the train reach Gothenburg, without any time delaying troubles, isn’t that surprising..?

2nd thoughts

Oh yeah, some second thought's about my presentation about my brother's genetic disorder 22q11-DS the other day.
It went very well and I could tell that the guys in class were interested throughout the whole presentation that I think took about 30-40 minutes. A long presentation you might think but hey, I left out so many things and it felt like I could talk for hours. I missed some pretty important things as well but I think they got the whole picture.

It was a small presentation about a big syndrome...

I feel like such an insomniac

Yesterday was a lot of fun. Me, Jackie, Jeanine and her boyfriend Sverre, who recently came over from Oslo, Norway, went to Vapiano's to get some pizza.
I also completed both of my presentations the other day and felt so relieved that I had that over with.
When I was on my way home I really thought I'd get one night of proper sleep.

But gosh, I really can’t sleep any more.
Usually when I have this insomnia I tend to be very sick, starving or a complete nerve wreck about something – like the first night in the military.
This is something different. My head is so filled up with thoughts, course material, upcoming presentations and philosophic questions, and the only time I can really, thoroughly think it all through is when I go to bed.
It’s like putting a computer to waiting mode instead of shutting it down. The shell is quiet but the core is still making calculations - my body is sleeping, almost paralysed, but my head is in a high activity state.

I hardly hit any REM sleep at all and my curve should look like a straight line of 'xtc. I usually remember the majority of my dreams and I am often able to share them but lately I hardly dream at all, which is a big loss since I really like dreaming.
Now it is more like I’m processing and sorting all the incoming information during my “not-asleep-nor-awake”-state.
I even invented a new word tonight: “dreamory” short for “dream memory”.
That’s right (!) – It seems as I actually is processing the problem about me being an insomniac during my insomnia. How screwed up is that?

The thing is that this seems to help me a bit too. Of course sleeping is a good thing and humans tend to have this sorting of memory and fact process going on during sleep but when I am in this half awake mode I can control my dreamories, or call it thoughts if you'd like, in such way that I actually learn new things as well as old things.
Besides coming up with a completely new word I also went through my whole presentation and repeated parts of the endocrine system.
Pros and cons, there's always pros and cons. I feel very tired when I wake up and not as thoroughly rested as I normally do. On the other hand I feel enlightened by my own thoughts and the problems I solve.

Starting today I'll take a short break every during the class break just to focus on my breathing and try to relax my brain a bit...

Depressing weather

The snow just doesn’t want to quit falling, now does it?
The spring was just around the corner and now this? One inch of snow and it ruin everything.
I am lucky to have good friends and good music to help me blockade this depressing mood the slush puppy weather brings along with it. Nah, pessimism never takes me far, listening to Hey Ocean! makes me smile again.



I am a fish, I am a fish and I need water...

Happiness, oh the happiness

The last week has been a lot of fun... and boring....
I didn't think the premedical studies could become boring but the inorganic and organic chemistry have indeed lowered that bar.
Compounds here and organic groups there. It fills my head and I just can’t sort them up. I’ve always been good at memorizing things and sorting them with imaginable labels inside my head but this time it’s just too much.

I can sit through those days thou, recently I’ve been filled with this indescribable happiness that just conquered me without any particular reason. I’m not complaining about it, the other way around, it feels great and it gives me energy and motivation.




Time is running so fast lately and two weeks are already gone. We’ve spent them well thou, studying and practicing our skill and knowledge. Organic chemistry aside, the interesting lectures are just lining up one after another; reproductive systems, genetics, synthesis etc.
I’m glad over my choice to have the DNA-synthesis as a presentation. I felt very confident and relaxed while speaking about it in front of the class and I hope I gave them all a good impression. Regarding the knowledge, studying for an upcoming presentation gives me more than just studying without any specific task in front of me.



On Monday and Tuesday I’m going to present the meiosis and mitosis and I’m also going to give the class an interesting lecture about my brother’s genetic disease called 22q11-DS.
I really hope they’ll find it interesting and I’ll focus on the things they don’t already know such as how the genetic defect might strike a person. Hopefully I can get them to discuss some ethics and morale about the genetics – it’s a rather difficult but very inspiring subject to debate.

Stay tuned for more...

Headache, oh the headache

We recently studied the Urinary System along with the Kidneys and the RAAS-System.
For you that aren't too familiar with those systems, RAAS (Renin/Angiotensin-Aldosterone System) and the kidney's regulate the hydration level of the body.
We also discussed the influence of alcohol in these systems and guess what, I think the facts are pretty damn correct.

Since alcohol inhibits the hormone that enable water from being re-absorbed into the system one feel rather mashed up the day after. And today? Today is the day after.
Waking up wasn't too bad thou, sunlight shining right in my face, a friendly blue sky looking down at me and birds singing all over. Okay, the birds were all inside my head knocking on the inside of my skull and it kind of surprised me - I didn't drink that awfully much yesterday, now did I? Guess I'll have to blame it on age and the mixing of different types of alcohol.

The battered me followed Jeanine's example and took a walk in the fantastic weather. It was really refreshing with some air and it made me realize that the spring is pretty damn close. I like the spring, the tension in the air and the greenish nature overpowering the dusty grey season.

I have to get my self together - my upcoming presentation is just around the corner...

Italiano after school

Tonight we went out to Vapiano to celebrate Degol's, Jeanine's and Amanda's birthday.
It is a rather fancy restaurant and we had to wait for about 40 minutes before we even got a table.
It's been a long time since I had really good Italian food, pasta for it's worth but I played a safe card and ordered a pizza called Diavolo. Degol also went along with pizza and in the end it turned out to be the guys ordering pizza and the girls taking pasta. Good choice though, I got to taste some and it was really delicious.



Jeanine also brought a cake to class which was a totally splendid idea. We had cake in the break and it really put a smile on everyone's face.



Next up, party at Jackie's...

Switching devices

My dad decided to buy a new portable PC, smaller than the one he already got and since he's such a great father he donated his Dell XPS laptop for the greater good - by other words to me.
My old laptop was pretty much looking like a battered warrior coming home from the great war - with an amputated optical drive, a shell shocked battery, a scarred wide-screen display and some missing screws.
It did its task fine thou, serving me through a lot of photoshopping, gaming and web surfing, all the way.
When it was first released the good 'ol HP Pavilion was a dominating model, full scale Pentium 3 core with just as many fans to support the exaggerated production of heat. At one point it was as if the fans would made it fly off the desk. Not to speak about the humongous DC-adapter rather referred to as "the Nuclear Plant".
Observe that this is not an act of depression over how bad the laptop was, the other way around, more as describing it with words well suited for a PC of its class giving it a medal of honour for sticking with me when other electric devices tend to give up.


I didn't have high hopes of the Dell XPS m1330 until I read the specs:
2.4GHz Core 2 Duo T7300
4GB DDR2 SDRAM
180GB 5400 RPM SATA HDD
128MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS
Double 6- and 9- cell battery

For being almost two years old is a pretty strong little fellow. The only let down is the 128MB graphics, 256 would be preferred today with all the awesome games coming out but I surprisingly found out that C.O.D MW2 ran without any graphic issues(!), still running on 1024x756px with lowest detail but that's always something to begin with. The low details set usually means that I'm faster than the other players that run their game with full resolution. Pros and cons, baby.

Yesterday was another late return to Stockholm. The train was running about two hours late but I saw it coming. I booked an earlier train this time, and my marginal until the class started was about four hours.
At first the train didn't leave the platform and it took the staff half an hour to repair a broken connection between the cabins. Furthermore halfway to Stockholm the train locomotive broke down, leaving us in the middle of nowhere for about another half an hour. At last when we thought that they'd have fixed the problem the train ran into a rail connection fail.
In total we were two hours late so I spent the time well playing some COD, made study notes and repeated some material.

Another week of chemistry I guess...

Going home for the weekend

The weather is still kind of sketchy and I hope that the trains will go as scheduled.
Last time I travelled the train home to Gothenburg was running 2 hours late and the one back towards Stockholm three days later went cancelled so I had to take the bus for 7 hours.
No fun at all.

This time, thou, I didn't book a X2000 ticket since I knew they had problems with that type of train. It was the right thing to do because today when I checked with the crew they said that all those trains have been cancelled for some time to come.
My Intercity ticket was still valid thou and the train will leave tomorrow at 7:07am just as planned, and if everything goes well I wont suffer any delays.

Coming home to my beloved west coast is always a relief and it's going to be kind of relaxing even if I have pretty much studies to go through.
Dinner with my family and some running around with the crazy cats at home is a treat for the soul and then I can get back to the studies with full potential and with a big smile on my face.

Looking forward to get home for an energy recharge...

Test, confusion and beer

The atmosphere in the class before the test was kinda tense. Everyone had some nerves even if we knew that the test only was a diagnostic test to check our current knowledge.
It was composed of 90 questions in Biology, Anatomy and Chemistry.

I had some apprehensions about the chemistry part and all the pH calculations since it turned out that I messed up a lot of the clacs just the day before.
My misgivings turned out to be just ridiculousness in the end.
We could all agree that the test was composed a bit badly and a lot of the questions were pretty much incomplete, lacking crucial info or stating really weird things that we didn't even recognize.

Even if it felt pretty awkward after the test right before the correction of it, it went rather good. I was amazed to find out that I failed the most answers on the biology part which is, in my opinion, the most basic one. I blame the fact that it was so long since I repeated that. I honestly put more effort in understanding the more recent thermodynamics than repeating the basics of biology, my bad and I lost some points there. After all a total score of 86% is nothing to cry over when the pass limit was set at 60%.



I feel pretty confident and think I can enter the second part of the course with a sigh of relief, concentrating on the next difficulties.

We went out after the class to take a beer and chat about everything and nothing, after discussing the recent accident in the subway (a boy jumped down onto the track to get his lost mobile back and got killed) we changed back to talking about studies and such.

Tomorrow is a new day and I offer a silent prayer for not another day filled with rather boring organic chemistry...