Edge To Edge

the last test of the year is finally over and we can get down to the business of solid studying. kinda wish i had more lab time though. ended up finishing off my ridge prep at home with a fixed-blade craft knife in 5min. and the endo... i have some tugback just waiting for signing and i can go and jolly well stuff the stupid molar and go file my lower molar. *sigh*

Clan BDS got off to a rocky start. win to loss ratio is now 2:2 as of last night. got to admit, the people we ran into last night were pretty good though, and i dont mind losing to better players if there are things for me to learn. i got in much better utilisation of an Eul's Sceptre, but my overall Lich play was not too amazing, although early oppo was less than ideal. its hard to intimidate a stand-off character like a Techie early anyway... now we just have to work on some other fundamentals. like early game survival and offensive coordination. the warm-up match we had against the noobie pub-crew was ok as far as noob oppo went though, and i think i might want to consider the Bounty Hunter as my next favourite abusive character. i have quite a nasty sneaky bastard streak. coupled with the divine madness that is BDS_Perio (aka GF) there could be some interesting plays in the making.

I Rely On Probability

its 12mn in the student lounge and my brain is locking up... i am seriously seriously running out of time. need drugs! drugsdrugsdrugs!

the DM seminar was a kinda shocker for the class. just another reminder of how far we still are from thinking like a clinician. but really no point in complaining or hating Prof Chew. frankly, saying that we are paying customers of the university will not make him dummy down the syllabus to suit our inadequacies. if we fall short of the standards of safe and knowledgeable practice, so be it. i'd rather be in here than get sued outside. maybe our class has yet to experience enough failures in life to realise that success is not everything. its perhaps an overused phrase but whatever doesnt kill you will make you stronger. grammar doesnt flow but im tired and i dont give a rats posterior. but back to point, failures shape a person even more powerfully than successes. its not how you fall but how you pick yourself up and carry on that defines what kinda person you are to me.

an aspect of clinic that has been worring the brotherhood is the potential for blowups between certain of our lab partnerships. according to our estimates, we have about 5 potential pairings with issues... guess everyone is gonna hafta adapt to their lab partners styles to a certain degree. it might mean being willing to accept when your viewpoint is not so clinically feasible or significant. or making sure that you give your lab partner his fair share of time if he's behind and you're ahead. being a bit neater with the tray layout. not freaking out in front of patients while assisting. knowing when to step in and when to step back. all the little common sense things that add up. ultimately, i want to graduate with 33 other classmates of the year of 2007 who are all friends...

Somewhere Only We Know - Keane

Sometimes It's A Sad Song

finally got my PI/GI passed. no more starving on monday mornings for me! now all i have to do is look for patients with crap gums... where do i find those? my dad is already on professional management, and i dont think that many of my friends have spare time in the mornings.

Mao got frazzy over lunch when i was talking to him about the face shield orders. i think its been real hard on him, he's tried to get so much stuff lined up for us like the name cards and the shields and the presentation with Dr Vijayan. and it hasnt exactly been running smoothly, what with the class not giving him orders and photos and all promply. show the guy a bit of love, lah. help him along whenever he has these projects by giving him responses fast. and some of those pervert jokes are getting stale.

i cant wait for the holidays to roll around. its taking way too long and im feeling the burn already.

Four To The Floor - Starsailor

The Last Kiss Of The Knife

another week gone by. exams draw close, and frankly it looks pretty worrying. i have no momentum to study, and the extra lessons that pop up after five totally drain me so that i just end up slumped in some chair in the library in fitful slumber. must... have... energy...

after polling class i have come to the conclusion that endodontics is the most hated subject on a class-wide basis. seems as if no-one who is still working on it has any kind of flare for it, and many of our class dont even understand half of what is going on anyway... and that kinda goes for me too. reading the textbook and seeing the studies quoted, it seems as if we really are working with primitive tools in an inexact science. its like... who the hell has perfectly round roots anyway? if there are little blebs of dead meat on the walls, interconnections between canals in a wide roots, they'll never get debrided. and the most we can do is try and file away blindly with the Step-Back Method (Clems 1959) and hope that we get it all. anything with a bigger-than-30-degree curve and we get all spazzy. we need better tools, mon!

anyway... for my rare fans out there here are some little important details that might save your kah chng. esp since the class is running out of molars to do up...

1) when they say work wet, they mean so wet that the pulp chamber is in fact holding a reservoir of water inside.

2) straight line access does not mean just being able to see every single canal without tilting your mirror. it means that dentine shelves and enamel triangles have been removed so that your #08 file goes down the canal without deflection until it hits the terminal bend at the apical third. this eliminates the chances of a stripping perforation high in the canal as you have less bends to work around.

2a) hence the Gates Glidden Drill set is your best friend. followed by Hedstroms. for the timid-of-heart, keep these up in the coronal third. which is where dentine shelves hang out anyway.

3) dont dry-file the canal when trying to get tug-back. re-cap instead. and be very gentle about it. related to 1) and 5)

4) some posterior teeth have very low floors. way lower than the CEJ. please remember your floor height. and stop your cone stuffing acordingly. go too high and you will frustrate yourself by cone-stuffing the chamber instead of the canal. learn to check orifice height from radiographs by spotting for 'fast-break'. this is the point where the root canal suddenly turns lighter as it splits into 2, and hence casts a smaller air/tissue shadow.

5) learn the Tao Of The Apex. an apical stop is an iatrogenic ledge created exactly at working length. it is so damn retentive that even if u use a file size 1 smaller than MAF it will not do further down the canal. an apical seat is a funneling toward the minor foramen. not as retentive as the stop but still amenable to lateral condensation. an open apex means you have just screwed up the tooth by filing right into the PA lesion. this may be achieved by

5a) not checking working length. so yeah, the stop on the file is loose. change stop with that #15 file you just banged up. or check after every few pulls. if not, you may well get carried away and find that you have gone about 2mm further than where you wanted to.

5b) excessive enlargement at working length may result in weakening of the tip of the root where your seat ledges overhang. and if you push too hard this might just end up with you snapping them off and pushing them right into the PA lesion. a sudden increase in the length you can go to with that file is a very very bad sign.

5c) a zipping perforation is created by making many many many small ledges that hook into the foramen of a curved root tip and pull it in-line with the higher part of the canal. this is very bad news. usually due to improper pre-curve and canal flare technique. what you in essence end up with is an inverse funnel narrowing towards the crown.

6) change dead files. files with kinks, bends and thread strips are not only not worth saving, they are dangerous to the patient. they are too blunt to work with and may break in the canal. as soon as you see a file too banged-up to use, salvage the stop and bend the file 90 degrees so that you will never be tempted to use it again.

7) when condensing with a spreader do not pull out the spreader until you have the GP cone measured and crimped and coated with sealer ready to stuff in the space. so you dont know the distance between your stop and cusp tip? estimate lah! make up your first 3 cones to working length. then estimate the shortening in length accordingly. once you hit mid-root, you may re-measure the length before you re-insert the spreader.

8) excessive vertical force may split a tooth weakened by a long soak in bleach. force should actually be directed laterally. use the length of the spreader and force it against the GP to compact it. and wipe your spreader after every withdrawal.

9) burn-off may be conducted a lot earlier than you think. speader depth of 3mm away from desired height is way enough. the GP will flow into the canal anyway and you can compact this with the cold pluggers to a very nice density.

10) 1 drop of eugenol is in fact adequate to do a whole damn molar even if thickly mixed, which is in fact the way. thick, but not lumpy. learn to mix neatly so as not to waste the eugenol. and collect the Roth on the spatula, then wipe off the whole glass slab before putting the eugenol back on. this makes it way easier to work with.

Clan BDS is in formation! the DotA brotherhood are considering changing nicks so as to reflect our profession. still considering what to call myself...

Blame It On My Youth - Jamie Cullum

As I Gaze Through My Window

Shafiq suspects i may be manic-depressive. except that he's more depressive and im more manic. take us, add together and divide by 2 and you might just get a serial killer. i dont think i have it in me though. it doesnt pay well enough.

the conversation i had with Samm on sunday really ended up as self-fulfilling. had a sausage party kinda V-Day dinner. and after that, a bitching session cum girl-spotting round. i guess it wasnt too bad in the sense that it was pretty good just hanging out with Shafiq and Mao. but still not my ideal V-Day. at least it wasnt a hot date with Coltrane, Kumar and Robbins. i guess im still clinging on to the belief that school isnt all dullness and grind. pity it seems like only a few of us hold that view.

funny enough, Carrefour has very nice roses. so.... if you ever need roses stat for whatever reasons, consider them if you're in the area. way better than the wilting wannabes being hawked in school today.

In The Still Of The Night - Cole Porter

If You Let Me Live, Let Me Live In Hope

was sitting down and actually reading the lyrics book that came with my Mayday CD. and im amazed that i can actually read like 80% of it... my family dentist was talking about the importance of dialects in patient handling. and i'll have to agree. like... what the hell is tooth-coloured in chinese? PFM? 3-unit bridge? root canal treatment? if its in mandarin, i'll have a fighting chance (hopefully with some intervention from PJ) but if its dialects im deader than Ned Kelly.

tomorrow's Valentine's Day. and i feel so underwhelmed. blame it on my youth. what a difference a day made... but for now, i get a kick out of you! next year baby...

and its quite fun chaining song titles together to make semi-sense!

Hui Lai Ba - Mayday

Where The Wild Things Are

today was a day that got saved from the usual mundane grind by some artful redirection! skipped orc to do visiting a family friend. its quite fun watching middle-aged ladies bounce off each other in friendly conversation. i got a bit grilled over being girlfriend-less... but getting grilled is just part of chinese new year visits lah. sure beats stoning off 90min in dunearn road...

was feeling a bit of ennui on the way home, so i went out to orchard to breathe the air of freedom. and to avoid washing the car. while doing a flyby of PI, ran into Oldman, an ACJC friend i havent seen in yonks. ended up eating dinner with him, Glen Chandra and Joshua. seeing Barker guys interact is really something else, the sheer joi de vivre that they display contrasts so much with *koffkoff* dental students. in between relating mutual friend's humorous misadventures and all, it was an evening charmingly wasted.

i think the XO Bee Hoon idea is a wipe lah. after seeing the facial expressions of the class when i brought it up.... i wouldnt mind a classier joint seriously, but the wait with any size of dining party may be quite formidable. now i i could get just one person out with me for dinner, that might well be more manageable. but damn hard to actually arrange due to the Mother Theresa principle.

Tangled - Maroon 5

Oranges And Lemons, Say The Bells Of Saint Clements

looks like we've run out of chinese new year holidays. 2 days of relative freedom and cookie overdose. in one of his rare reflective moments, my bro was asking why the heck we do all this. apart from the ang pow capital injection, what is there for us? my 2 families arent too close, and its even more boring with the cousin i used to talk to more stuck in america doing his post-grad. its just another reminder of these people i dont see too much of. and when we do see them, its a reminder of any of the small petty squabbles that stupidly divide the family due to old hurts and whatever. its a load of bull really. at least my mum's side is still quite solid, though not problem free. cant even get the whole lot together for dinner. and since my brother was auditing his ang pow right after visits, we now have the skinny on which uncles and aunties are cheapskates and which are more generous...

had this genius idea while bored out of my wits today. since we couldn get a seafood binge together in time this year, i hereby nominate the Holland Village XO Fish Head Bee Hoon stall for an outing on monday!

1) its affordable

2) its nearby

3) its damn good

4) we can go for dessert at Swensens or NYDC or sth, or even play pool at KAP (yeah right dream on Jon)

Feeling Fine - L'Arc En Ciel

Zai Ni Gu Dan Ni Hui Xiang Qi Shei?

clinics are coming and i need patients. even with the lack of namecards i still managed to get some relatives interested. looks like a potential p/f, a 3-unit bridge and some sundry resto so far. wonder what the paternal side might have in store for me?

time really seems to fly by. it doesnt seem so long ago that we were frolicking under the sun in Sentosa preparing for orientation. and soon the clinics will fill with our patients. guess its time i took a moment to reflect about how ive done so far in the intangibles. what have i experienced that will shape my future as a practitioner. am i patient? do i care? will i know how to act when things go wrong? do i act in the best interests of the patient or to complete schedule? have i been nice to my classmates? does my lab partner trust me? have i been the best person i can be?

v-day is round the corner. people reminisce about the outing we had last year but frankly its gonna take some work to get another one off the ground and that's whats putting people off from having another one. i know i could do with some good company on that day. it ceased being 'just another day' quite a while ago and i really hate spending it alone with new pains and old memories. i miss the sense of knowing there was someone always there for me to talk to at night. someone i could put my arm around to share a tender moment with, someone to spoil silly with little gifts and secret letters. someone to hold me when things were bad, someone to laugh with when things were good. and now here i am, alone and stuck in an emotional state i dont want to be in.

Tango With The Demon Inside

life is a complex thing is it not? the brotherhood has been activated into a rather unpleasant incident relating to our business cards. guess i might as well take the opportunity to lay out, in coherent fashion, what has been going on

1) we need business cards to hand out for clinics. some nice designs have been made up but they lack a certain something like a logo that will give the cards a distinctive identity

2) motion was floated to request for permission to use the Densoc logo. because

a) NUS and NUH logos are not available to us

b) the faculty has no crest of its own

c) we are all members of Densoc

3) Mao went to Rachel to ask permission for usage of the Densoc crest. he was turned down as there were concerns about how Densoc is merely a social body. she also stated that the exco discussed the matter and come to this decision.

4) none of the year 2 or 1 exco members were approached concerning the matter

5) our card designs were submitted to the Deanery for approval. all our card designs. including undisputed card designs as well as both crested and uncrested versions of the controversial cards

6) Mao and Shafiq met with Prof Ong and she told them that the deanery preferred the crested designs aesthetically, and even wanted something that could be used as a standard card for future clinical classes to use. but they were also told that they should approach Rachel again for usage of the crest.

7) Mao, Clement, Shafiq and me went upstairs after school to find Rachel and talk to her. we got Alvin and Bien instead. Rachel had left a little early

8) while we talked to the 2 of them, Alvin laid forth the reason for not having the crest as being that no everybody in his year wanted to use the crest, or even business cards for that matter.

9) as we left, Mao asked him if the whole exco had deliberated on the request for usage of the crest. he replied in the affirmative, but then after a moments deliberation modified his statement to only members of his class having considered the crest issue, further qualifying by saying that such matters did not require a formal meeting

10) the next morning, just before the cleaning and shaping test, Rachel and Alvin came to find Mao in lab2. Rachel asked Alvin to tell Mao their decision. Alvin proceeded to inform Mao that their stand concerning the crest had not changed ie no crest for us. they also informed Mao that they had conferred with Prof Ong and she had said that, in the contrary to (6) only certain designs, not including the crested designs, were approved

11) after lunch Prof Ong came to find Mao. her emotional state could be best described as non compos mentis as she proceeded to lambast Mao for trying to push for the crest in our namecards

and so we have a big mess. i have tried to put out in as objective a representation as possible all that has happened lah.. i have to state that i do not agree with all that has happened or been done concerning both sides. but the reason im sticking with Mao for this is that due to the conflict in statements, his integrity has been called into question. its sad how something so simple has been blown way out of proportion...

and on a lighter note, heres one of the songs that's been running in my mind lately...

_____

I never really feel quite right

I don't know why, all I know is there's something wrong

Every time I look at you, you seem so alive

Tell me how do you do it, walk me through it

I'm following every footstep

Baby on your own you take a conscious step

Do you wanna give it up?

But all I want is for you to SHINE

Shine down on me

Shine on this life that's burning out

I say a lot of things sometimes that don't come out right

And I act like I don't know why

I guess a reaction is all I was looking for

You looked through me, you really knew me like no one has EVER looked before

Baby on your own you take a cautious step

Do you wanna give it up?But all I want is for you to SHINE

Shine down on me

Shine on this life that's burning out

I know, I know, girl you got something

SHINE (shine it on to me)

Shine down on me (I wanna feel it)

Shine on this life that's burning out

Baby on your own you take a cautious step

Do you wanna give it up?

But all I want is for you to SHINE

Shine down on me (just show me something)

Shine on this life that's burning out (you give me something that I neverknow)

Shine (it gonna kill me if you give something away)

Shine yeaaah (I wanna know what's going in on your mind)

Shine on this life that's burning out

_____

so yeah... tomorrow should be an eventful day lah. looking for Prof Ong to sort thing out and soothe bruised egos and whatever. i hate it when this happens.

Shine - Mr Big

*happy birthday PJ!*