Full comedy fix

Here you can download the full version of Russell Peters' routine. Now he sends up people from the rest of the world. The link is thanks to a Taiwanese friend, who describes the sketch as "freaking hilarious"!

Note: Please don't watch this if you're easily offended or don't like jokes about race and culture.

Edit: Link is now broken

Comedy fix

Check this out! It's a stand-up routine by Russell Peters, a great North American Desi comic. He focuses on Chinese and Indian stereotypes and is sometimes controversial, but his work is absolutely hilarious! I guarantee you'll be wetting yourself. Let me know what you think.

Weight of numbers

I was just forwarded these pictures by a friend. You know you’re in India when…

Electives advice

Last week, we had a talk about our electives. In our final year at university, we get to spend two months learning medicine anywhere in the world. So, I've got to decide and organise where I'd like to go. I'll be leaving in July 2006, but because the paperwork takes so long, I need to start thinking about it now. The thing is, I really don't know where to go - there's too much choice. Right now, I'm trying to decide whether to go to a developing or developed country. We had presentations from older students who had travelled to New Zealand, India, Thailand, the US, Greece, Malawi and South Africa. Do you think it's worth visiting somewhere where medicine is practised in a similar way to that in England so I can get lots of relevant experience, or to go somewhere where I'll have a totally different adventure and see a different spectrum of diseases? Any ideas would be very very welcome. At the moment I'm thinking about a French speaking western African country, Malaysia, India, China or the USA. Where would you go? Oh, I forgot to mention that we'd also get quite a lot of time to go travelling. :o)

Night-time fun

Last week I went orienteering. It's so much fun! It was a nighthike organised by one of the clubs at College, and my friend Kevin and I entered as novices. We had six hours to visit as many stations as possible, and started off really well. After a few hours though, the beginner's luck ran out, our torch (flashlight) died, and we found ourselves royally lost. Eventually, we had to clamber over some electric fences and dodge a few angry farmers, arriving back at base just after sunrise and half an hour after the deadline. Our team (The Stumblers), lost so many points as a result that we lost our lead, and got the wooden spoon for the last team back. There's always next year though...

Exam update

Today for me is a good day. After all the heartache of Tuesday, I finally think all your combined prayers and all those long nights in the library paid off. The exam today was on 'Neurodegenerative Disorders' and I gave it my best shot. First there were some short answer questions all about regeneration within the CNS, and then an essay on astrocytomas. On the advice of friends from a USMLE prep forum, a while back I bought HY Neuroanatomy and all the main information was there. Thanks so much!

Yesterday's exams were tougher. For some reason I still don't understand myself, myopic me had completely ignored revising head movements, the vestibuloocular and optokinetic reflexes and they came up! I was desperately racking my brains and moving my head from side to side trying to see which semicircular canals would be stimulated when. The afternoon was nicer though, with stuff on schizophrenic hallucinations, alcohol's effects on the brain and Huntington's ethical implications.

I got back from our post-exam get together a couple of hours ago, and feel really refreshed. It was great seeing friends from med school again after being by my shelf(!) these past few weeks. We're all still really tired though. All the revision-time beards had been grown as we moved and most of us could barely keep awake. In the desperation of the time though, I'd started taking Proplus, a caffeine pill. I never normally even drink coffee, so I now can't get to sleep at all. It will allow me to put some more work hours in tonight, though. It's USMLE all the way until ... Monday. That's when we start our nine weeks in the lab, but I should have a lot more free time. The plan is to start with my second listening of Goljan on the way to college, get a couple of hours of Kaplan done in the morning, and trying as many questions done in the evening as I can. Hopefully I too will book that exam date soon. And I'll start updating my progress daily! Gotta be more accountable. Your plans?

Stay well,
Moc

My BSc project

Let me tell you a little bit about my BSc Neuroscience project, which I'll be working on for the next two months. I'll be investigating the role played by a protein, p35, on the development of the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in learning and memory formation. p35 is an important neuronal-specific activator of Cdk5, which plays a critical role in neuronal migration and brain development, and has many neurocytoskeletal substrates. Click here for an abstract of a review paper. Mice lacking Cdk5 or p35 expression demonstrate marked cortical abnormalities, but the effect of p35 loss on the hippocampus has not been extensively investigated. Hippocampal tissue extracts from Cdk5 knockout mice show significantly decreased axonal outgrowth and axonal growth cone morphology, and my short project will investigate whether similar effects are observed in hippocampal tissue from p35 knockout mice. I won't discuss the methods I'll use here as they're quite technical and boring to read through, but please send me a message if you're interested and I'd be happy to tell you about them.

Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day!

Moc