Japan

After my 26 hour visit to Singapore, we went back to Japan. English is not the primary language over there so I didn't understand anything. It actually wasn't that hard to order food at restaurants since they either spoke some English there or had a menu in English. I went to a bunch of castles and temples which was cool.

One place had a bunch of sacred deer wandering around the grounds. Most of these deer were accustomed to people so you could pet and hang out with them. There were vendors selling crackers to feed the deer. As soon as you buy the crackers, you are swarmed by deer. I was trying to break off pieces and slowing feed them, but a couple were biting my shorts and I just wanted to get rid of the crackers and not feel like I was about to get mauled. One of the deer looked nasty because he was very dirty for an unknown reason with 1 antler and was coughing (tuberculosis?). There he is:

We visited an aquarium there which was actually a good size. The highlight there was getting to pet a walrus. At the end of the show, the walruses walked (not sure if that's the correct term for how they move) by the audience. I also learned that those animal shows at aquariums and zoos are not as interesting when you have no idea what the animal trainer is saying.

On, my last day in Japan we went to a safari park. This was one of the coolest experiences of my life. It was basically a drive-thru zoo and the animals were free to walk next to your car. Giraffes walked right next to our car and stopped traffic. Lions and tigers were also roaming freely. You weren't supposed to roll down windows, but it was necessary to get good pictures at times. At the park, they also had more zoo-like exhibits. Some highlights were the rats swimming with the hippos, feeding the squirrel monkeys and springhares, and petting the wallabies.

Singapore

I know school has started a few weeks ago, but this is my first chance to write something. I will try to catch up this blog in between studying over the next week. Warning: this is not directly vet school related. Anyways, my only vacation this summer was going to Japan, Singapore, and Cambodia for a couple weeks. Research and jobs ate up the rest of my summer.

This was my first international trip. To start off, I flew 13 hours to Japan where I had about an hour layover before I left for Singapore. This first flight was not that bad. The flight to Singapore was 7 hours and the last 3 hours were the hardest. I don't sleep well on planes and I was trying to stay awake so I could sleep when I got there at 2 AM. I was only in Singapore for 26 hours before flying back to Japan. We went to the Singapore Zoo during the day and a Night Safari that evening. The Zoo was cool - white tigers were the best and it's probably right up there with the San Diego Zoo. I was slightly disappointed because I had read about how they used natural barriers instead of fences for the animals and I expected to get amazing pictures of all the animals. Sadly, there were a lot more fences than I expected. The best part was being able to pet the lemurs - they were roaming in the bird and bat area that you walk through. One was just chilling while we were petting it so I decided to start palpating anatomical landmarks. So I started with the spine of the scapula and the borders going to the humerus and I stopped when it snapped at my sister-in-law. Lesson 1: Lemurs don't like to be palpated. Another lemur was walking across a log above the path when it stopped, looked my way, and appeared to be getting ready to leap. There was only this small branch right above me that it surely wasn't going to jump onto. Lesson 2: Lemurs will leap onto seemingly too small of branches. It jumped, landed on the branch and swung into me. It let me pet it as it sat on the branch so we were cool even though it smacked me with a branch.

The Night Safari was cool, but we couldn't take pictures. This was probably the place I read about with the natural barriers and very few fences. It was cool to see the animals do their thing in the dark as they were looking for food and wandering around. However, it was a lot of walking in one day and we didn't see all the animals because we were tired and couldn't find the rest of the path.

Overall, Singapore was cool because it was so clean and green. Granted, there's some harsh punishments for chewing gum, littering, and jay-walking. The Zoo was still really cool and filled up the whole day with no problem. It was a good start to my first international experience.

The Summer is Ending

Oh man, about 3 more weeks until classes start again. This summer has flown by. It was filled with 2 research projects and teaching a physics class. Today is technically my last day for the research program. Tomorrow I fly to North Carolina for a symposium and a poster presentation.

I saw the comments from the students in physics class yesterday. That felt like sucker punch. I knew they could be bad because it was my research projects were my highest priority this summer, not to mention I'm a boring person and I feel bad that they had to listen to me at 8 AM. It was a learning lesson though. I don't think I will be as harsh with my teachers on evaluations anymore. It's kinda funny though because this whole summer I've been saying I'm not a teacher. I was asked to teach because I tutored students in undergrad. I can tutor; I can't teach.

Oh and last week I had to give a 10 minute presentation to the summer research students and mentors. It wasn't the best presentation ever. Then came the questions which I'm pretty sure I answered some completely wrong - my answers were the exact opposite of what I did in my project. My bad.

Even though today's my last day to go into the lab, I know I will be in there a lot more during this fall semester. There's some cool projects coming up, and I have to finish writing my paper and get it published (hopefully that's possible).

So tomorrow I go to NC and get back Sunday. Then I leave on Wednesday for my vacation to Japan, Singapore, and Cambodia. It's a 20 hr flight!! I was wondering what I'm going to do sitting in a chair for 20 hours - but hey that's kinda like studying for finals. This is going to be an experience since the only other country I've been to is Canada and I don't even think that counts. I really don't know what to expect, but it should be fun. The best part is that I get back the Sunday afternoon before classes start. Can you say jetlag? That will make for an interesting week of classes.

Medical Shows

I do enjoy watching the medical shows on TV. They occasionally bring up diseases, pathogens, and other medical issues that we talk about in class. Personally, I like House and now Royal Pains on USA. There's something enjoyable about watching these unusual doctors treat their patients that always seem to figure out the case. However, the more I learn, the more problems I see in these shows.

I was just watching Royal Pains and Hank, the doctor, just performed a non-emergency surgery paying no attention to aseptic technique. He pulled out some latex gloves from a box and used those for surgery. It wouldn't be that hard for him to carry around some packs of sterile gloves and throw on a mask occasionally. I'll assume that the instruments were sterile. I get that it's TV, but that's my soapbox for the day and I still enjoy watching these shows.

A Busy Month

My research project is winding down. Now it's on to writing the paper and trying to get it published. I don't know how hard that will be since our results weren't too significant.

A couple weeks ago I got to scrub in on my first surgery. It was an awesome experience! The hardest part was gowning and gloving, but it was good practice. It was a skin graft to cover a wound. During the surgery, all I really did was cut suture, but it was still fun to be right there and see everything. I was also doing anesthesia for some other surgeries. None of my dogs behaved according to the normals. One dog had low blood pressure throughout the surgery and another was breathing too fast. I still don't know what the ideal dog is supposed to be like under anesthesia. I've also been gaining a lot of experience bandaging wounds. I'm really excited about all of this because it gives me a chance to learn some of these things before I get to clinics.

The last few weeks were quite busy, but things are starting to slow down as projects come to a close. Sadly, this also means that the summer is ending and school will be starting up. I can't believe it's been about 2.5 months since finals. I had said I was going to review material from last semester and look at stuff for next semester but now of that has happened. I guess that's how it goes.

Brain Freeze

I went for a run the other day when it was actually hot in Michigan. I got back to my apartment and grabbed a gatorade from the fridge. I started drinking and immediately got a brain freeze, but I was so thirsty I kept drinking. I'm finding that doing research puts me in a different mindset - the detective mindset. I started wondering what causes a brain freeze. My hypothesis I came up with was that it was from a countercurrent heat exchange between the cold gatorade going down my esophagus and the internal or common carotid artery. The thought was that the blood going to the brain cooled down as it passed the cold water in the esophagus and made the brain feel cold even from a slight temperature change. It sounds good.

However, the next day I was talking to one of the doctors about it and ended up googling it. The real reason is that nerves in the roof of the mouth sense the coldness and go to the brain. Yes, people have done research on this stuff. Apparently, a brain freeze can be avoided by pressing the tongue to the hard palate and heating it back up.

Research

I am spending most of this summer doing summer research at school. My original thought of research was that it would be monotonous and boring and overall the worst experience ever. Once I started, it didn't seem that bad. There was a lot of pipetting, but I got to watch cells grow too.

Now, I like the idea of research - asking a question and then performing an experiment to see what answer you get. Sounds like some fun detective work. However, after my 21 day experiment failed a couple times and I still don't know if I'm going to get any meaningful results, research and I are not the best of friends. I'm not finding watching cells grow too exciting. I do basically the same stuff every day - pipetting, cleaning the lab, and taking pictures of my cells. So I have found research to be very monotonous and interesting at times.

My other job this summer is teaching a class of 7 students. I've only had a couple classes, but I'm starting to appreciate my teachers more. It takes a lot of work to put lectures together AND make them interesting.