German Christmas Market @ Princes Street Gardens

It’s been a while since I wrote a proper blogpost, apologies. With the advent of Aria, my leetle iPhone 4, I’ve gotten lazier and resorted to micro-blogging on twitter (see sidebar on right). But yes, Christmassy treats in Edinburgh! Went to the Christmas market with flatmate Gillian and her friend Nicola. Walked there, but unfortunately, we got splashed with SLUDGE from the road when two cars sped by…ugh. Gill and I got the brunt of it, but thankfully my black polka-dot coat didn’t show it, and she managed to use this miracle cleaning thing her mum gave her to get rid of the stains. Phew! So much for pleasant drivers…

I was quite excited as it was the first time I was going (first time in Edin, duh), and a couple of days before I’d seen them setting up a Ferris wheel (squeeeal!) and other colorful rides. :) So sue me, I am amused easily.

Behold the Christmas Market! :)) Whee~

Anyway. We arrived and honestly, I was surprised at how many stalls had been set up! Yours truly, being a hopeless city girl, had only previously ventured along the commercial part of Princes Street (cough, Miss Selfridge and The Body Shop) and neglected the gardens portion–never realized how much space was in that stretch beside the road.

Aria :3

So this is just a post for the heck of it, just because I can, from my new toy. Say hello to my shiny new iPhone 4!!! I really really like her. She’ll make a nice pair with her younger sister, Noir the iPod nano! :3 happy family.

Museum Saturday

Played tourist today and decided to go to the (free) attractions in Edinburgh to pass my Saturday :)

My happy tourist get-up for the day :)

The first museum I went to was the Reid Concert Hall Museum of Instruments, which belonged to my university. It’s a small museum–about two rooms in size, and houses unique, varied specimens of old stringed instruments, woodwinds, brass instruments, percussion instruments, bagpipes, etc. I was hoping to see some ancestors of the piano, but apparently those are found at the other museum at St. Cecilia’s Hall (which I haven’t gone to). Next time for those!

Display cases full of the time-worn instruments.

Not knowing where I’m going.

This is not an emo post (the title is misleading)!!

:) In fact, it’s one of hope (and has updates about my life in Edin at the very end, sorry for the long post).

Was doing my devo this morning and something hit me–which I wanted to put down in words. I’m not a Bible scholar, and neither do I profess to be one: so check me out, and if you find anything odd, do correct me and share your thoughts! :)

Naaman's wife bidding him farewell, with slave-girl beside. Image courtesy of Garden of Praise.

 

Last night, at PCCF (Pollock Chinese Christian Fellowship), we were discussing 2 Kings 5– the passage where Naaman, the macho army commander, had leprosy and ended up listening to his wife, who listened to a little Israelite slave-girl, who suggested he go and meet the prophet Elisha back in her homeland to be healed. In short, he did go, and Elisha did heal him, but not how he expected it to happen (waving of hands, thunder, sudden cool sci-fi peeling off of the lepromatous skin which would drop to the ground…). Naaman had to go splash around a 7 times in a stinky river (or so it seemed to him), and his leprosy vanished when he was done.

Cool, right. So what’s the point?

Medicine in Edin + other fun things

Unimaginative blogpost title, I know.

This will be week 3 in Edin. :) Weather hasn’t changed significantly yet. Hope everyone back home is doing great! Am blogging from the uni coms again, so I can’t post any pictures. Do look on FB for my Edin album, though–all the pix have been nicely captioned so you know what you’re looking at. And well, if I don’t know what they are… you won’t know either I guess. LOL.

Classes have officially started, albeit with a “soft” module called vertical themes. It’s much like our good ol’ BS and Comm med in IMU–at least, that’s the general impression I get. People here skip them. Some of the lecturers are quite sleep-inducing, but most of them are fairly engaging and I can… somewhat stay awake. Mmm public health. Next week I start my GIT rotations at the Western General Hospital in Edin. According to seniors, it’s the least well-planned module, the largest in scope, and the most difficult to get through… :( just my luck! Hah. Starting with gastroenterology. Fingers crossed, will be silently praying all the time that I get through it fine. During briefings they didn’t hesitate to share with us how 40 out of the previous year failed Year 3.

Cropping the post so the main page isn’t a wall of text–do click if you want to read on.

Picture Perfect Beautiful

:) New song addiction, thanks to Jobear. Ciara’s Click Flash, if you didn’t know. Been checking out other artists on youtube as well; added to my iTunes playlist some tunes from Leona Lewis, Chrisette Michele, Tamia, Danny Gokey, and Travis Garland.

Jobear came back to KL on Monday, and I don’t think I’ve dragged my sorry moping self out of the house this much in the past month as compared to the past week we’ve spent together.

So we did heaps. of. shopping. Mostly window shopping, though I did find one or two things. Went with mama bear, Rae, and Jobear. Walked around the boutiques in Kota Damansara. On another day, we went to Robinson’s, then also to Empire Shopping Gallery, next to Subang Parade. Today, Mama bear and I went to Charles & Keith (much love because they have my size!!), and we took advantage of their end-of-season sale. 

Jobear, Rae, me, mama bear at Mustard! Cutest boutique ever.

Oh Shopping Days…

Besides sleeping / eating / the occasional going out / facebooking, I’ve been shopping quite a lot. I’ve got this nagging feeling that it’s a continuation of my retail therapy during the pre-EOS5 studying time (i.e. Body Shop, The Face Shop, Borders, etc.).

Where you ask? Well, this last Monday to Thursday, Kara, one of my Canadian friends who is now working in Singapore, came up to visit me in sunny KL! :) Took her all around for a mostly shopping & eating holiday, with the occasional touristy sightseeing thing in between.

Kara & I at KLCC

We shopped in Bangsar, Pasar Seni, Plaza Damas and KLCC. At Pasar Seni I picked up two wooden bangles with ethnic motifs–RM10 each. Really quite nice, I think they were hand-painted. In Plaza Damas, I found two nice new tubes to wear with some tops I already had. Kara did a lot of souvenir shopping, and even got herself a mani + pedi before heading home.

Don’t ask how much I ate… haha.

Then, after she left, I went back to Cat’s Whiskers in Bangsar to take advantage of the crazy sales there!! Half the boutique was 70% off–they were 2009′s stock. Got 3 items, and 3 accessories for only RM65; what a steaaallll. :) Went with Adele & Azelia.

The dress I didn't buy... but am still thinking of. Love the polka dots!

Today, I went out to run errands with mummy and afterwards, we ended up in Midvalley / Gardens. Originally went to redo my eyebrow embroidery at Empro, but apparently the original takes 3 months to be removed before we could do the new one… So I figured I’d forgo that and just do the eyeliner thing instead. Mummy did too. :) Aaaand she bought me a new strawberry yogurt mask from Laneige! Used it tonight and it feels really nice. It smells so yummy, I could’ve eaten it. Mmmm.

Strawberry goodness. <3

If you look hard, you can see my eyeliner tats–it’s semi-permanent. No more smudged / fading eyeliner!

So unproductive these days–I have so much time to pamper myself, which is totally unlike me on normal uni days. I normally couldn’t care less about my appearance; as long as I’m clean, I’d go out and do stuff. Nowadays… I even have time to do my makeup, take extra care of new zits that appear, do my hair, do my nails, coordinate my clothes, use masks… 

I feel so girly-lah.

May not be such a bad thing after all. :)

MOAR SHOPPING THERAPY

COULDN’T RESIST SHARING!

I found a new scent that I loveee in The Body Shop, TCM (went shopping with Rae because they were having MASSIVE sales).

MORINGA! :) Smells like nectar, straight from the flower before the bee gets to it.

Yeah, so here’s what we bought:

ltr, back: Moringa shower gel, Mandarin Orchid EDT, Oceanus EDT / ltr, front: Strawberry bar soap, Starlight glitter eyeliner

Happpehhhh. Mine are the Moringa shower gel, the Mandarin Orchid EDT (been eyeing this one since it came out–was 50% discounted!!), and one of the Starlight glitter eyeliners (70% off!!!). :) Of course, Rae wasn’t planning to buy anything until she saw me pick up massively discounted and awesome items. So she hates me and her wallet is lighter.

ltr: Me (red), Dea (pink) & Rae (brown)

Also gave in to my weakness for cute, useless things and bought these three cloth hand-sewn kitties from a vendor stall, The Cute Shop, in TCM. The uncle selling them was very cute-lah. Anyway, photo fail because you can’t see the brown cat’s face. CUTE RIIIIIIGHT!? <3 We need to come up with a new name, babes. We aren’t really broken dolls anymore.

Jobear: "Looks like the white version of my ball dress."

I’ll end the post with something I liked but didn’t buy, lol. This is a white dress I saw in TriBeCa, BV II. Tried it on last Friday after having dinner with Jobear & Jonbear at DELIcious. Really liked the material and the lace-y details at the midriff, but it was loose at the back, and not something that could be worn on its own. Too thin, and felt like something to wear at the beach (with bikini under), to walk along the sands in the evening. Or a summer dress for melancholic days.

It is increasingly hard to focus, sit down, and study. Two weeks isn’t very much time, yet the urgency hasn’t set in because of the recent summative that just finished. Been finding so many ways to distract myself–thank God the internet at home isn’t working, or I’d be on it every night instead of studying. Oh well. Back to infections and tumors of the male reproductive apparatus, joy.

Breaking the Dawn

Something I don’t usually do, because I sleep through it anyway. HA. (or I end up staying up through it before falling into bed)

Just decided to title the post this way because it sounds cool–not to mention that I’m also currently addicted to the Karmatronic remix of Michelle Williams’ song We Break the Dawn. Found it while going through my old songs to re-populate my playlist. Really like how it was put together.

So the MSK & NS summative was on Thursday, two days ago. Gotta say I was pretty demoralized and unsure of things until the feedback session began–it re-painted a smile on my face after that though. :) Hee. All glory goes to God!! I mean, what are the odds of your friends discussing topics in the library in the hour before the exam THAT ACTUALLY COME OUT AS EXAM QUESTIONS?? Hello!? Something smells, and it wasn’t coincidence. :))))) THANK YOU! And many many thanks to my mum for keeping me alive (by feeding, hugging & praying), and my dad for handling my pre-exam breakdown and praying for me, the stressed undergrad med student.

JONBEAR YOU DON’T COUNT FOR TELLING ME TO NOT GO FOR SUMMATIVE JUST TO MAKE MY FINAL GRADE MORE EPIC! HAHAHAHA. Bodoh. :p Love you lah. Thanks for the hugs when I was emo in the library.

Besides that, little mundane things that have got me through the first studying period were (sorry for the shitty photos, my phone is being repaired so these pix are taken with my China “AIphone”):

Akubear & Melody! :) And many more studying friends in the library (i.e. the Chastity club).

 

Library cafe food. Also, my mummy has been packing TONS of food everyday for me & friends to snack on. Thanks, mummy! <3

Bad Ass Coffee & MAJOR sales at The Face Shop. :) Yay for weekend studying perks!

De-stressing by painting & decorating my nails (and taking advantage of OSCE being two weeks away).

 

Bad Ass coffee pin. How sweet is that? The staff gave me one because they see my face so often, camping at their outlet with my truckload of books & notes. Thanks you guys. :) So sweet!

Right, so one more hurdle left before I can retire from being a phase 1 student: the EOS 5. D: Horrors! June 7th – 10th I shall be trudging through this dark shadow that hangs over the lives of IMU MBBS students in phase 1. A consolidation of all the information we’ve ever been fed (or so industriously endeavoured to self-learn) for the past 2 and a half years. 

K LET’S HIT THE BOOKS. :) Refresh and go!