day four

today is day four of my 8 weeks in india. I'm sitting at an internet cafe at forum (a shopping centre near St. John's). Everything is so new to me. Even using internet in the internet cafe.

India is vert different from Singapore. Firstly, chinese is the minority. everybody thinks that we're from china and they keep coming up to us and say, "CHINA?" haha. the roads are amazing. there is absolutely no order at all. We travel around bangalore via auto-rickshaws which is something like the tuks tuks in thailand. It's is an experience all by itself. The exhaust from the cars and the dust from the ground, plus the never ending honking, makes india truly unique. I think i'll use the horn more often when i come back to singapore.

St. John's Hospital is better than i ever imagined. It has a sprawling campus, almost like a community within itself. It is a catholic hospital. They train doctors here to serve the community. The director told us that only 2 private teaching hospitals in India are losing money, and one of them is St. John's. This is because their graduates have to serve 2 years doing rural postings, serving their people, and after they complete that, they get their post-graduate for free.

I'm posted to internal medicine for 2 weeks. Every morning, i attend ward rounds and join the medical students for bedside tutorial. Seeing the doctors do ward rounds is quite inspirational. Their clinical skills is very good, I'm learning a lot from them. I'm having a backache because their ward rounds last so long everyday, but it's good because they spend a lot of time on one patient. Bedside tutorials are just like the ones in Singapore. The med students make us feel v welcomed and let us participate in class. Had 2 tutorials on respiratory examination. I'm learning much more exam techniques that i never knew existed. They have many interesting cases that we are not exposed to in Singapore. Some examples are, snake bite with ascending cellulitis, pericarditis secondary to HIV, TB TB everywhere...and i think leptospirosis is quite prevalent too.

I don't do much during the afternoons because, just because. =) Half a day is enough for me.

The hostel is very simple but clean. The most amazing part is we have our own attached bathroom! It's just like PGP except no air-con. I finally had my first night of real sleep because the previous 2 nights, we had to squeeze 3 in a room as they did not have enough rooms for us. It was quite a cramp, and our room looked like squatters. I'm bunking with yvonne, jinnie with clara, pinakin with melvin and kok pin with nathan. The guys rooms are much cleaner than me and von's. So weird right? haha. Can't wear slippers into their room but we just wear slipper cos i'm too lazy to mop the floor. So far, i saw 3 rats in the hostel but thankfully not in our room. The guys helped us killed 3 cockroaches and 1 lizard in out room. Mosquitoes. They are EVERYWHERE. If i walk and swing my hand, i prob can hit 2 or 3 mosquitoes.

ok. enough for now. need to go. hope i can blog more often.