In sickness and in health. And politics.

A few things in life are certain - powercuts, endless re-runs of Masterchef and me falling sick at least once every time we're given a study vacation.

The cold and fever this time round were pretty bad, but while I was lying in front of the TV and secretly thanking God for no longer having to feel guilty about not studying SPM, I found the perfect entertainment to pass the time away. In the news channels of all places. Reality television has never been as interesting as the lower house of Parliament was yesterday!

They had it all - starting with a sentimental intro from the PM about how the nation's "waiting with baited breath for the collective wisdom of this august House". Ryan Seacrest himself couldnt have put it any better. Despite all the buildup, I'm sure that no one besides sick people like me with nothing else to do, fasting 70-year olds in Mumbai and the national news channels even knew what was going on, but then that's typical of a reality show anyway.

There were moments of epic comedy, like when Shashi Tharoor's speech for drowned out for a couple of seconds by shouts of "IPL!" from the background. And then there was high drama, when the Left 'strategically' walked out right near the end of the show (though I personally think they were just sleepy and bored, more than anything else. It was past 10 anyway. The looks on their faces seemed to confirm my suspicions). By now the place was already half empty, because a lot of people decided to go to bed (aka "walk out"), leaving only the Congress and BJP to sit and glare at each other. I suppose everyone else had curfews, and  honestly, which sane person would ever believe them if they said Parliament was working overtime?

Finally, to top it all off, at past 11 in the night, whoever was still left was asked to vote. "All in favour say Aye" was the call to arms. A thundering war cry that sounded more like "Dei!" was what followed. And with that, the Lokpal bill was passed (in Parliamentary language, "the eyes have it, the eyes have it"). If it were up to me, I'd renew the show for season 2 based on just that one moment.

But every good TV show needs a solid twist at the end followed by a black screen with the words "to be continued" in the middle. And this twist came when the second bill did not go through (in Parliamentary language, "the nose have it, the nose have it"). This immediately prompted someone to throw a tantrum and say that it was a sad day for democracy. They say it aint over till the fat lady sings. But in Parliament it aint over till someone says its a sad day for democracy.

Unfortunately as I write this, I realised that I'm feeling much better than I did yesterday, which means that there is, unfortunately, a lot of SPM in my immediate future. Perhaps its not too late to catch another cold from somewhere.

My brain gives me career advice through the years

1^st standard – I’m gonna be a train driver! I’m gonna blow the horn, I’m gonna go fast, I’m gonna take people places, I’m gonna stop at stations, I’m gonna be a train driver!

2^nd standard – Green is my favourite colour. Signal lights are green. Trains have signal lights. I like trains.

3^rd standard to 5^th standard – Too busy watching Nickelodeon to care

6^th standard – Wow physics is boring. I like plants. I like gardening. I’ll be a botanist.

8^th standard – Wow physics is so interesting! I’ll be an engineer.

9^th standard – Who wants to go around pouring concrete and cement together? I’ll be this awesome doctor person who’ll just sit in his chair and not do any work

10^th standard – “Oh hi! Hey you’re bleeding. YOURE BLEEDING! Don’t come near me!!”

11^th standard – Ok so blood isn’t my thing. Heyy! Genetics! That’s got biology, that’s got plants, that’s got maths. It’s perfect!

12^th standard – Botany is stupid.  Zoology is stupid. Biology is stupid. Maths is fun. Physics is fun. Engineering it is.

College application time – WHY are there so many different types of engineering! Everyone’s taking ECE, my friend’s taking EEE, my father’s telling me to take chemical engineering and not even think about civil engineering. And chemical engineering sounds so… um… insanely boring (to put it mildly).
I think I better just take medicine.

1^st year – This is way better than I expected. No lessons about cows and plants and what not.

3^rd year – Oh great, now there are lessons on insects and latrines

Last Saturday – The following is a sequential representation of what happened to me while I was watching someone’s dressing being changed on their first post-op day

I would've been such an awesome train driver.

My ENT textbook just trolled me

The generally accepted definition for epistaxis is "Bleeding from the nose"

But Dhingra's textbook of ENT defines it as "Bleeding from inside the nose" (italics not added by me)

I blame myself. And I blame the machines.

It is now 2.30 am, I have a test on the other side of this morning and I am left wondering why I cant even remember the names of the two essays that I'm supposed to have studied. A couple of reasons come to mind.

1) I started at 6 pm
2) I made notes on the computer and the file I created hasnt been open for more than three minutes at a stretch this entire evening
3) I have the attention span of a fruit fly

But then on the plus side, I found out that the NASA's New Horizons mission could end up being blown to smithereens by debris from one of Pluto's undiscovered moons, that the Large Hadron Collider has not been able to prove the existence of the Higgs boson and that Bon Jovi has been nominated for a People's Choice award.

And that I'm going to fail tomorrow today.

It should be illegal to use internet jokes for non-joke purposes

Victory baby is my favourite internet meme. Here are a few in case you havent seen it already

See? Hilarious.

You know what's not hilarious? This:

The person responsible for this atrocity needs to be excommunicated from the internet.

Nothing lasts forever. Even cold November rain.

Class got over at 12, and I came out to find that it was raining. Actually it was more of a light drizzle, and I could quite easily have cycled home with the cool wind in my face, but no. I had convinced myself that it was raining heavily enough to warrant the use of my raincoat. Mainly to show the whole world how brilliant I was to have thought of bringing it along that day.

It took a good 5 minutes to get it out of the bag, button all the buttons and zip all the zips, but despite a couple of o_o expressions from the patients, I was finally ready to face a thunderstorm if I had to. The problem? It had stopped raining.

Obviously it’d be too much of a pain to remove the thing and pack it up again, so I cycled the whole 15 minutes home with enough insulation to keep a polar bear in a blizzard warm, sweating buckets all the way.

Petition to get me a new cycle

I had *ahem* “parked” my cycle outside the OG department of my college. For those lucky ones who have never been to my college, this is a barren wasteland with donkeys and pigs walking around. I even saw a horse today, but unfortunately I couldn’t stop to take a photo because I was late for class.

So anyway. In this mini-petting zoo that we call a hospital, there are also some people who live (yes, live) right there and sell stuff to people. I’ve never actually noticed what they sell because they’re usually just violently yelling at each other in some other language. They’re kind of unmistakable because they hang their clothes out to dry right outside the OG OP sometimes. I usually don’t have a problem with this, but when I was walking back from the canteen to get my cycle, I was a little surprised to see some random lady draping her clothes ON MY CYCLE.

To be honest though, my cycle does look a little bit like a clothes hanger on wheels. The seat’s tearing, the chain’s rusted and the breaks hardly work (though they make the same sound a plane does when it hits the runway). And if a crow decides to drop a little gift, it usually stays till the rain washes it away.

I think I should get a new cycle. Preferably a mountain bike or something because the roads in Chengalpet are actually only made of little black stones that someone’s very considerately spread out evenly on the sand.

Parents of mine, I know you’re reading.

MORTEIN rat poison: A case report

It was a nice peaceful Saturday evening and we were just sitting down to watch some TV, when a giant monstrosity ran across the room. This was no ordinary rat. Ordinary rats look malnourished. Ordinary rats look like they eat cheese. This rat looked like it ate biryani. Mutton biryani.

It probably took me several hundred nanoseconds to jump up and clear the area. With ipod, laptop and cell phone in hand (and the ENT book on the floor, because really, who cares about that?) I promptly moved to the next room while my grandmother jumped into action, readying the mouse traps and poisons, among which was a cake of MORTEIN.

Requirements:

• One cake of MORTEIN
• One rat, preferably trapped inside a bathroom that is locked from the outside

Experimental procedure:

• Open door
• Blindly throw in the poison
• Close the door

To be noted:

Entire procedure must be completed within 3 seconds or before the rat comes out of the open door (rat-escape), whichever comes first. If the rat has emerged from its confinement, then you, my friend, are in deep trouble. Deep deep trouble.

Ensure that while blindly throwing in the poison, the same does not fall into an open toilet seat, as this will necessitate a repetition of the procedure, and this in turn is associated with a higher rate of rat-escape.

Review of literature:

Based on the information contained on a piece of paper that was packed with the rat poison, I was able to conclude that MORTEIN is meant to be an anti-coagulant which causes rodent death by internal bleeding.

Observation:

The rat was left inside the bathroom for half an hour, surrounded by rat traps and poison. One such rat trap was a kind of cage with a piece of cheese in it, and the cage was supposed to snap shut when the rat ate the cheese. When we looked, however, the rat was found to be very comfortably sitting inside the cage, eating the cheese, and then found to very comfortably exit the said cage, with a full stomach.

On to plan B. This was a rectangular plate with a piece of cheese in the centre, surrounded by a gum-like paste which was supposed to stick to the rat’s legs and not let it get away. The obvious design flaw with this one was that even if the rat did successfully get stuck, you’re still left with a struggling, angry, live, perfectly healthy rat, stuck to a plate of glue. This trap also failed (thankfully).

And now the rat finally decided to eat MORTEIN. The rat was found to be hiding under the washing machine, seemingly disoriented and delusional, and hopefully bleeding into its brain or something. It had been chewing on rusted metal on the stand-like thing that was holding up the washing machine and pooping. A LOT.

Inference:

Two important never-before-documented side effects of MORTEIN ingestion were noted. Diarrhoea and pica.

Possible clinical applications in humans:

• Constipation. However, the side effect of using this drug is internal bleeding and death, but on the plus side, you’ll die with an empty bowel
• Kids who refuse to eat anything. The induced pica will unfortunately also cause the child to eat plastic, mud, pencils, metal (experimentally proven) and dirt* but hey, at least the kid’s eating now

[* list not exhaustive]

Further research into this matter is required.

PS. For anyone wondering how our rat finally met it’s doom, Death came in the form of the next door watchman, whose bravery must be applauded. He gave us a smile and then went into the bathroom with a metal rod in his hand and no slippers on his feet and locked the door from the inside, in true Tom & Jerry style. Some noises and 30 seconds later, he came out holding that cage thing with the rat inside. Though we were curious about how he did it, we did not ask; for when a hero emerges victorious from an epic battle such as this, one does not ask questions, but merely stares in wondrous awe

What I learnt today

1) That electric mosquito racket works on ants too

2) Baby pigs can run. Fast.

So I think this means I have a pet

Some random street dog's decided to live on the doormat in front of the house. It was there when I got here this morning and it was polite enough to move aside to let me open the door. But I guess that was a one time thing. On the way out, it gave me a "You dont really expect me to move, do you?" kind of look.

It smells and it is not afraid of being kicked.

I guess it's time to start thinking of names.

What do you call 25,000 people with nothing to do on a Friday night?

Metallica fans :P

~twitter

A goat just sneezed on me

I did not know this could happen. It was trying to cross the road and I cut right in front of it on my cycle and it went "Achoo".

I almost lost my balance.

CityVille: The farmers got rich and moved to the city to spam your wall again

I didnt expect three days of holidays to turn out to be so unbelievably boring.

So boring, in fact, that I un-blocked CityVille and actually gave it a shot. I now have a city hall and 100+ people living in my thriving city, which is very imaginatively called "My City".

It said it would only allow me to play if I agreed to give it a bunch of permissions, one of which was to mark my unread notifications as "read". I assume that's an anti-spam feature. Spam the person, but dont let them know they were spammed; it's win-win for everyone.

Pity the anti-spam thing didnt also include email, because I've got two emails already telling me that I can claim my very own fountain for free. I'm sure that the city people would have loved a new fountain, but when I clicked the link, it started being very evasive and told me the page wouldnt load or something.

I for one was devastated.

I now have one follower

This is a self-congratulatory post

I actually dont know how to spell omelette without checking google

Dont make my mistake and watch this while having dinner. Theres a very real chance of choking on your food.

I'm just going to post random stuff now

"Gaddafi made you wonder if dictatorship attracts the mad, or maddens those attracted to it"

Edit: Apparently the man's name was Muammar bin Mohammad bin Abdussalam bi Humayd bin Abu Manyar bin Humayd bin Nayil al Fuhsi Gaddafi

Start a band? Too much work. But I'll flick your lyrics, tyvm.

♪Just get you a profile, and learn how to type

Cut up some display pictures, come up with a URL

When you're living in a world that you dont understand

Find a few good buddies, start a blog♪

Decided to read? Big mistake.

I have decided to blog. Mainly because I am bored, as all third year medical students should be. There will be nothing remotely interesting on this page, and if you're reading, I have no idea why you're here.

I used to post random stuff on facebook. But then I went through my friends list the other day and realised that I dont even know half the people I've added. This makes me think too much about what I'm saying.

Then I tried twitter. But then no one I know uses it. So I was pretty much talking to myself, though twitter told me the whole planet was listening.

I went to tumblr, because all the funny image macros seem to somehow come from there, but I had no idea who to follow or how to find those funny image macros that I signed up to see.

Then I finally settled on this. If you're reading, you have decided voluntarily to be spammed by my meaningless blithering. If the URL didnt give you a clue, I'm sure this post did.

So hi.