Work Expo

So, for anybody who didn't already know, school came to me yesterday and offered me one day's work experience at Musgrave Park Hospital. I didn't have a clue who it was with, what the hell i'd be doing, where i was going, what i'd see & if i'd like it, but of course, me being me, i just said yes so i could actually say i'd done work experience!

8.30 this morning i walked into the hospital, and by around 8.33 i'd been clothed in true Scrubs style and chucked straight into an operating threatre with the Dr. guy who was supposed to be supervising me. He rustled up some anesthetics then ended up handing me a coffee. Now, i don't like coffee, but i had to be polite and drink the damn stuff. That was quite a hard task. Coffee sucks. And what's more, the whole coffee-full-of-caffeine thing did completely nothing for me. NOTHING. In creativeness, i rustled up a quick graph or two on paint:

1. Graph of Alertness vs Time, in what i thought coffee was supposed to do to you:













2. Graph of Alertness vs Time, for what coffee did to me:












In otherwards, it's effects sucked as much as the taste. My alertness was actually going down until they got started on somebody's hip replacement.

Which meant blood. Let me put it this way. Orthepedic surgery is all to do with bones. In my opinion, Orthepedic surgery is just Surgery with Power Tools. SPT for short. Any DIY fanatic who likes blood would love it over there. They use chisels, hammers, drills, screw drivers, saws, nails and clamps to repair people's bones. In a later operation i saw them take apart this person's knee then replacing it with titanium bits. I'll be nice and not get into the details, but what was good was that i didn't feel sick or anything. I just watched with interest as they hammered away and all that sorta thing.

I then got a 2 hour lunch break, where i was given another coffee, and where i spent some of the time in the staff room eating & watching TV, but then i decided to pop back into the theatre to see what was going on. From that visit i found out some stuff about what they drug their patients with. Morphine of course was one. Diamorphine was another. Anybody know what diamorphine is?? If you guessed heroin, then you're correct. If you think the surgeons are junkees, then you're incorrect, as you should've guessed that it's in small amounts.

After lunch i ended up by coincidence with the guy who operated on my dad's knee when he bust it up two years ago. He was doing the exact same repair operation on another guy. This wasn't big bad gruesome surgery though, this was all keyhole surgery, where they make small holes and stick a videocam in. Anyways, this guy who i was with a bit of a legend. The operating theatre isn't serious at all, all the surgeons crack jokes all the time. This guy was no different. His theatre had a CD player chucking out good music in the background, while he spent the operation slagging off his training assistant and making jokes about his Auzzie assistant who were both helping out. Apart from that, there were at least 4 other medical people dossing about the (small) threatre doing completely nothing at all! So many of them do that, they just sit there during operations doing crosswords, or in this case, dancing to the background music. The keyhole surgery was also interesting because it let me see the inside of a knee when it wasn't totally mangled by heavy duty tools. But anyways, it was a good laugh alright. This surgeon told me quite nicely about his work. He told me that if there was a difficult bit in the operation, he would ask for quiet so he could concentrate. Apart from that, he told me that when things were going well, or easy, then everybody just relaxed and enjoyed themselves. Here's to that one.

So, doing all that was interesting alright. Who else has seen stuff like i did today?! Apart from that, it hasn't really swung me any further towards medecine, although if i was going into that i would definately consider surgery. However, i would only ever do medecine if i really really really wanted to, and i don't really really really want to. Nevertheless, surgeons are good fun people alright.

Oh yea, i apologise for all the probable spelling mistakes in that. Medical stuff is damn hard to spell!

Omphhh

One thing i would like to see at swimming training sessions is the presence of music. It's annoying the way they don't, i mean what a way to motivate people like myself. Walking into the pool at 6am to the sounds of Sandstorm by Darude would please me a lot more than walking in to the sound of nothing much at all. Like come on, wouldn't you have more fun swimming to that? Or anything actually, from big bad happy pop songs to rock anthems to Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band to the thumps of the dance classics. They do it other places.

Come to think of it, they did play music once. At Christmas time. We got some Shakin' Stevens at 7am, followed by Slade, Duran Duran & all that sorta thing. But that was on like the 21st December, when Christmas was 4 days away, and everybody was busy thinking about what the big man was going to bring them.

One downside to music at the pool would be that it might screw my concentration at times, i.e. i'd get lost in the music and end up smashing into the wall or something. But who cares?! I rekon the motivation of it would do me better. Or just make the whole thing more enjoyable.

Now i'm just talking randomish crap, so onto other things. If your PC has enough memory & is fast enough, download and run the BBC Climate Change experiment. It runs in the background, doing calculations which will help predict all the climate stuff. I think there are 100,000 odd people round the world doing it, and apparently this is helping the environment, cause it is using less power than their supercomputers use. Even so, it slows down my beast of a PC to a crawl when starting up, which doesn't please myself when i'm trying to get some music through the speakers nice & quickly. But anyways: www.bbc.co.uk/climatechange

Just been watching a lot of Winter Olympics lately, as they make good TV in my opinion. What i like about it is that all the sports done are more like hobbies than jobs, therefore they enjoy it more, and don't need to train til they drop to actually compete. Bobsleigh for example. If you aren't the driver, you just need to push a bit of fibreglass like a tank for about 5 seconds, then jump in and enjoy an 80mph ride down a tube of ice. Everybody from all walks of life do that, which i like. Also, Winter Olympics has Ice Hockey, and that's enough said.

**3 Part Post**

1. Some of my top Chuck Norris facts. If you don't know about Chuck Norris Facts, go here:
   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris_Facts

• The chief export of Chuck Norris is Pain.
• CNN was originally created as the "Chuck Norris Network" to update Americans with on-the-spot ass kicking in real time.
• Chuck Norris can divide by zero.
• It is believed dinosaurs are extinct due to a giant meteor. That's true if you want to call Chuck Norris a giant meteor.
• Chuck Norris uses a nightlight. Not because Chuck Norris is afraid of the dark, but the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris.
• Chuck Norris once kicked a horse in the chin. It's descendants are known today as giraffes.
• The Great Wall of China was originally created to keep Chuck Norris out. It failed miserabely.
• Contary to popular belief, America is not a democracy. It is a Chucktatorship.
• Chuck Norris does not churn butter. He roundhouse kicks the cows and the butter comes straight out.

2. Today i actually looked at univeristy courses! Woohoo! That meant i only looked at Queen's, Trinity, Edinburgh and Oxford. I wrote down 20 courses from Queen's, 20 from Edinburgh, 10 from Trinity & 8 from Oxford. Narrowed down very nicely so far. For those who are interested, here are some of the courses i wrote down:

• Astrophysics
• International Studies
• Aeronautical Engineering
• Structural Engineering + Architecture
• Music Technology
• Artificial Intelligence + Maths
• Physics with Meteorology
• Scandanavian Studies
• Law
• Ethnomusicology

Ok, so im probably not doing the right subjects for half of those, and i'd probably hate doing half of those too. But who cares, i finally did some research!

3. Continuation of the University part. I may go randomly and visit some universities within the next 18 months. If anyone would like to come along for the trip (or laugh), then by all means come along. For the record, i'm not paying for it. Places i'm thinking of visiting are Oxford, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Trinity.

How it all went........

Hopped in the car on Friday morning, got down to Dublin (well, Ashbourne), and spent the next 3 hours hanging about the hotel watching Blackadder DVD's in our room. Then went off for the Friday night session at the NAC, and managed to get ourselves lost in the process. Dublin like, they seem to have divided the suburbs into all sorts of "towns". Examples: Blanchardstown, Buzzardstown, etc.etc. Trust me, there are loads of them! But anyways, the NAC (National Aquatic Centre) is fully amazing. 50m olympic standard state of the art pool, diving pool with about 10 different boards, a fun pool about twice the size of Lisburn's, and then all the usual gyms and all. It's totally class. And damn hard to find too. But yea, Friday night's session i wasn't swimming, so i just dandered about looking around and saying hey to some of the crew from down there.

From the end of that session at about 9pm, we got back to the hotel while getting lost again, and had a pretty lovely dinner in the restaurant. I had a steak sandwich topped with cheese and mushrooms, and potato wedges on the side. After that the 4 seniors went round the block to stock up on lucozade and the likes, and found the full Friday night nightlife in Ashbourne in full swing. The nightlife involves many groups of Skangers (spides) hanging outside the 24 hour Tesco Store, chasing cars and stealing trolleys. To avoid them mobbing us and stealing our goods on the way back, we walked through some random apartment area, and ended up scaling the back wall of the hotel car park to get back in. Interesting.

So after that at about 11ish we hit the pit, and ended up watching.....late night wrestling! It's so fake, but it's funny! Last night Kurt Angle was taking on Triple H for revenge for getting his car blown up or some crap like that. Had not a bad nights sleep, and then started today, the day which i've spent the past week thinking about. Here started the lovely diet i had today. Between 8am this morning and about 9.30pm tonight, all i had was a small bowl of cereal (with loads of sugar), 2 bananas, a kitkat, about 4 bits of pasta, and a complete ton of powerade, water, apple juice, and red bull. Put all that together and you make me hit a sugar high of about 7 hours, which is only starting to wear off now. That can't be good for me! The fact that i didn't eat was cause it'd screw up my race.

Anyways, back to the swimming. I warmed up, then spent the next 3 hours not swimming! In otherwards, wandering about, waiting to race, drinking stuff, and talking to people from other parts of this island. My heat was a doss, because everybody was swimming slowly on purpose. I was way ahead after the first 2 lengths, so i just slowed right down and swum with the flow, and put myself in the final. Now, the final was make or break for the Ireland team. Let's just say i broke it, and ended up coming 6th, in one of the most wrecking races ever. I ended up doing 100m freestyle in 54.16 seconds, which is a personal best for me and was pretty damn close to the rest of them, who were all like 18. The age factor is a problem this year you see. If i was 2 weeks younger i'd have been Intermediate, and i would've either won or come 2nd in my race. But ah well. So, slightly disappointed, but what was to follow got rid of that.

Relay time came after that. Our U6 swimming was mighty annoyed that he didn't make the Irish team (cause he should have), so he was all up for tearing out the relays. As were the rest of the senior team. The heats were easy enough, we just dossed it to get ourselves a central lane in the final. Then came finals time. I know red bull ain't good for you, but we had some anyways and were fully ready for it. The challenging school were called Gonzaga, from Leinster. One of their guys knew 2 of us, but apart from that, they didn't have a clue who we were, and were pretty sure of winning. It was a great race (this was the medley relay), so i took last leg of Freestyle and tanked it like my life depended it. 50m and 23.9 seconds later i hit the boards, and we damn well celebrated. Not just cause we'd won, but somehow we also smashed the 12 year running Irish record, taking 3 seconds off it!
Freestyle relay was the same story in the heats, then we had the final again. I was expecting a 3rd or so in this. I ended up going first, and the other guys managed to hold off Gonzaga for another win. And another Irish record. Now of all i was expecting this weekend, this wasn't it at all. In our true style, we got the party poppers & hooters out there and then. We were all absolutely knackered, but who cares?! We can now call ourseleves the fastest Irish Senior Schools relay team...ever.


A good weekend's work then. It has totally wrecked me, and all the other guys, but i personally don't give a crap at all. It was well worth it, and again it's things like those competitions which are keeping me in the pool right now. I'm sure it's the same with other things - doing stuff like this let's me experience a lot of pretty memorable things, pleasant or not. Getting fully tanked on sugar and adrenaline is one thing. Cruising about the Dublin suburbs trying to find the pool while blasting out Sandstorm in the car is another. Nerves before the race is another. Craic between everybody has to be another. You've probably guessed hanging with people from elsewhere on this island is another. It's all a good laugh in the end.

Cheers for everybody who supported me coming up to this and kept the nerves at bay!! The sugar high is going now........but what we managed to do today was pretty legendary. The above blog is a quick summary of my last 36 of so hours. They have been 36 damn long hours, and i'm loving that.