Winnie the Pooh actually studies for the MBBS

Final Year, Medical School

  Year 5 began with a jump into the deep end: in the midst of sorting out post-holiday stuff, contact friends, and so on, the revisions postings like Paediatrics just came and went with nary any revision on my part.
  And just when I settled down, the Obs & Gynae exams were upon us in November. It wasn't as bad as I had feared - there wasn't that much content, and we had about 3 weeks of pure study break. (The final MBBS was a totally different story!). It was about this time that a loose association of us began to study together at the biochem block (Little did I know of our nickname until much later). That must have saved my grades - notsomuch that we exchanged knowledge, but more that they kept me focused, away from the computer, from distractions.
  I remember the quizzical looks we got from passerbys as we loudly proclaimed to be 3 months pregnant, or to be bleeding from down-there after having sex. Our sense of propriety and modesty sometimes amazes me.

Home
Sweet
Home

Towards the final M.B,B.S., NUS became our first home. The timetable:

  8am: Gerald arrives and finds an empty room. (Or else finds a lonely M1 and chases her out)
  10am: More straggle in: Adrian Loh would setup his mattress, Adrian Tan with his metal kong and 10-pack.
  1pm: Someone would buy lunch on the way in, then Heap Yong would come after lunch.
  2pm: Post-prandial stupor. (aka afternoon nap)
  4pm: The rest would have arrived: Vernon, Jeffery, Dharsh, Buvana, and the party would be in full swing.
    And of course Er Luen with his famous box, containing everything from year 1 to 5 and more.
    Occasionally Jeremy Lai, Shang-Ian, Pei Yuin, Peter, Jiamei and Elaine Tan would come in too.
    I wonder how they managed to get anything done amid the noise and jokes and food. :P
    More often than not, they'd sit in the library or outside. I don't blame them.

  6pm: Our stomachs hungry from studying so hard, we'd eat nearby, or have Er Luen buy back after his swim.
    Or we'd be lazy bums and call for pizza. (Remember Jhaspal's "Pizza Slut" T-shirt? ;)
  8pm: Having lost a few good men to the MSL or their girlfriends, we'd go back to the room and chat some more.
  9pm: Weichern would just arrive and borrow a chair. Ditto for the library gang after it closed.
  11pm: Time for me to go home, sometimes with Heappie or Elaine.
  12am: The rest would stay until some unearthly hour. Even 3am or overnight. Hardcore. :P

  Food was an integral part of the experience - here's a real story. It's not a joke! It has to do with Adrian's banana. Okay, all those of you who started laughing can leave the room now. Here's how it goes.
  We were sitting around in the room as usual, some of us wondering why the room smelt a little bit funny, and some of us just putting it down to the usual combination of leftover lunch, unwashed socks, chilli on the carpet, and the kitten in the ceiling. Me, I couldn't smell a thing. Says something about the places I hang out in. Adrian, from under the table, starts sorting his box or getting a book out or something, when suddenly his face just goes all screwy and turns real green. Me, I still couldn't figure out what was going on.
  Anyway, to cut a long story short, below Bailey and Love, and Davidson's and Apley and ten zillion other books, lies this banana. Or what used to be a banana anyway. I certainly didn't recognize it. Adrian only knew it was a banana because he remembers putting one on top of his books one week prior. One WEEK.
  And yes, it say something about us that we could take that photo below afterwards.

There were a lot of stupid things in the room (Apart from the guy on the left, who was super-nice and unretaliatory because it was Lent). The white board was filled with crude diagrams, quirky memonics, and most importantly, the countdown until the end of the exam. Of course, none of it came out.
One such memonic was for the symptoms and complications of Typhoid & Paratyphoid. The symptoms were "PARATYPHOID" and the complications were "TYPHOID". Or something like that. Anyway, I only remember the 2 "A"s, which stood for "Ache in the head" and "Abdominomegaly". Lucky Adrian Loh got to use it in his Infectious Diseases distinction viva. Me, I'm lucky I never had to use it.

We even exercised during the period! Either that, or the photo below is from somewhere else, which sounds more likely. Anyway, doesn't a good back rub and carrying heavy books around count as exercise? And the poor girls had to walk miles to get to a toilet.

Rubber band
+
Tendon Tapper
+
Mr. Donut
+
Stupid Medics
=
Self-explantory
Story

Somewhat more intellectually stimulating and productive discourse between Elaine, her toy robot, and me.

And then Elaine realized that even the bear had a higher developmental age than me, so I got fired. *sob*

Don't ask, and I won't tell. I'm sure this will come back to haunt us one day.

Final Year, Medical School

Home Sweet Home

Towards the final M.B,B.S., NUS became our first home. The timetable:

Home
Sweet
Home