First Day @ Work

Gosh I feel sleepy. And my first day at work wasn't even all that bad! OR long!

My day started at 8am and ended at 5pm, which is only a 9 hour day - quite normal really, not at all long. Although I did forget to bring lunch and didn't buy any, so I was a bit hungry the whole day. Lucky my mum convinced me to eat breakfast before I left the house, otherwise it would've been a lot worse.

I've still got to figure out what I want to bring for lunch from now on. Should I just save up some dinner and bring that for lunch? Sandwiches? Salads? One of the nurses today had a nice home-made fruit salad which looked really delicious. Plus I need to go snack shopping so I can bring lots of snacks to work, healthy ones of course, to nibble on whenever I need.

I'm just doing the same shifts as the boss at the moment, and will be doing so for about 2 weeks, until the vet who is leaving actually leaves, just so that I can get used to their computer system, get used to doing consultations by myself and in general just get used to how everything works.

I did about 6 or 7 consults altogether, about 3 were vaccinations while most others were rechecks/follow-ups, there was a dog with a weird bruise thing on the inside of its left hind leg and I had a cat with a possible urinary tract infection (still not sure about this one cos we hadn't collected urine from it when I left).

I didn't need to do any surgeries today, just putting a dog on a drip and doing pre-anaesthetic exams... that's about it. Although there really weren't that many surgeries to do anyway.

All in all, it was a pretty good day, not too busy with consults so I didn't feel rushed or anything like that, and the consults I did weren't too difficult.

However, I still have a lot of things I need to revise before Monday. So, so much to learn!!

A Pretty Boring Australia Day

*Argh!*

Tomorrow's my first day at work... I'm so nervous! I'm still trying to cram as much as I can into my brain before 8am tomorrow.

*Takes a deep breath*

I must remind myself - I need to be confident of myself... I need to be confident of myself... (it's like a mantra!)

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Today is Australia Day and Dru's sister Chew and her husband Richie held a BBQ at their house. The party started at 4pm but I went to Dru's early - he worked on his presentation whilst I revised on alimentary medicine. Then we headed over to Chew's at around 3:45pm.

There were so many people there!!

And everyone was walking in and out with their shoes on. It was like an Asian person's nightmare! Luckily they had wooden floors and not carpet, so cleaning up wouldn't be so bad. The kitchen was getting sooooo dirty, cleaning up is going to be a huge task. I ate so much my stomach felt so stretched.

Dru and I both left at around 6pm, as he has to finish off his presentation while I wanted to study some more.

Now I'm off to concentrate on my stuff once more...!

Nervous

It's my last day at the Fish Shop tomorrow! And I still haven't been paid for last week's work which means I'll be rich tomorrow.... *hehehe*

I've been doing quite a bit of reading and revising for my first day as a Veterinarian on Friday... there's so much I've forgotten which I'll need to know again! I mostly need to revise on my diarrhoea and vomiting (which supposedly is occurring quite commonly at the moment), my cardiac disease work-ups, anaesthetic protocols and dose rates, urinary tract disease workups, amongst many other diseases and problems. I've got all my notes spread out on my rumpus room floor, because it's too hot to study upstairs in my room and the rumpus has the wonderful air-conditioning unit :)

I'll probably end up sleeping here tonight too... upstairs is like an oven right now! Unless, of course, it cools down significantly before bedtime.

Recently, my mum agreed to take care of her friend's cat for 4 weeks while her friend goes to HK for a holiday. Both my cats were upset with the new arrival, called Mimi (except Mimi's actually a boy, albeit a testicle-less one), and actually tried to hide in my parent's and my room and initially refused to come downstairs to eat breakfast or dinner.

Now it's been a week and Melody and Jellybean have settled down a bit, even venturing so far as to sniff at Mimi a little bit. Actually as I type, Jellybean is lying around on her back in our dining room with Mimi a mere 50cm away, also lying down and they're just closely watching each other, which is really great. Mimi actually loves the big cat stand that I bought for Melody and Jellybean, but which Melody and Jellybean don't like. So maybe when mum's friend comes to pick Mimi up, if she wants the big stand, she could probably have it. My mum would think it's one less useless thing to clutter the house.

When Mimi first came to our house, I started noticing that Melody's left eye had started to build up an abnormal amount of discharge. When I examined it, it didn't appear to have been scratched or anything, so I didn't think much of it, although I've kept a close eye on it just in case. Yesterday, I noticed that Melody started to squint her left eye, which is kinda a bad sign. So today, I examined the eye and it's actually quite inflamed along the edges of the eyelid, but still I couldn't see any lesions on the cornea. The conjunctiva wasn't too bad, with only mild signs of inflammation. However, just as a precaution, I took her down to my new workplace so I could do a flurosine stain on her eye to make sure that the cornea isn't ulcerated.

Fortunately, it wasn't.

So I've just put her on some Amacin eye ointment, which is part antibiotic and part anti-inflammatory to hopefully settle whatever it is that's causing the inflammation. I also had her vaccinated. Now I just need to get Jellybean vaccinated too. Then they'll be both up-to-date with their vaccinations.

Poor Melody when I took her to the vet... she moulted so much on the way down cos she was sooo stressed! The nurse who held her was absolutely covered with fur when she'd finished. I felt so bad!

Hopefully Melody's eye will get better and not need further treatment.

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Back in my last rotation out at Warialda, I stayed at the home of one of the women who work at the Northern Slopes RLPB. On her bookshelf was a whole lot of Patricia Cornwell novels which I've always wanted to read but never got around to. Since I had so much spare time there, I started reading the first 3 novels of Cornwell's Dr Kay Scarpetta series.

I was totally hooked after only reading the first novel.

So now I've already read the first 6 books in the series and I've just started reading 'Cause of Death', which is the 7th book. I'm totally addicted to Cornwell right now! She's a wonderful crime fiction writer, although some of the things she writes about are quite horrific and are the stuff of nightmares. I can't wait to buy the whole Kay Scarpetta set.

If anyone's thinking of getting me anything, I would like 'Unnatural exposure' and 'Point of Origin' which are the next two books in the series :P

Hell, get me 'Black Notice', 'The Last Precinct', 'Blowfly' and 'Trace' as well!!! *hehe*

About the Job...

OMG~! I can't believe it, I got offered the Parra Vet job!!!

She wants me to start next Friday! *^-^*

I'm not jobless anymore!!

How Annoying!

I can't believe what happened just now!

Let me tell you the story:

2 Fridays ago, one of the women who work at the Fish Shop slipped and hurt her shoulder (actually she fractured a bone somewhere) and now she can't work for a number of weeks until the bone heals. So since I haven't found a proper vet job yet and I need a bit of money, I decided to be nice, help my boss out and take the hours that the woman was doing.

Last week I worked Monday, Tuesday and Friday, 9am to 6pm. These are the woman's normal working hours; she works these days every week. I waited for a call from my boss over the weekend to let me know whether I'll be doing the same hours again this week.

He never called.

So I called him Sunday night, but he didn't return my call. I assumed I was doing the same hours this week too.

Come this morning, I woke up at 7am, showered, got dressed and arrived at work at 9am sharp. THEN, I get asked why am I at work today? No no, look at this schedule that the boss has done over the weekend - you're only working Tuesday, Thursday and Friday! He never made up weekly schedules before, not to my knowledge anyway.

But hey, it would have been really nice to be told that I wasn't working today at any time BEFORE I actually arrived there for work at 9am!

What a waste of my time and petrol money! >_<

Should my boss make it up to me for my time and petrol wasted? I think he should.

Still Looking for a Job

Gosh, if I'm already so lazy about updating my blog now... what will happen when I finally do find a job and actually become very busy??..........

There haven't been many good jobs going on the market recently (and yes, of course I've been looking!), not on Kookaburra Vets or Vetlink, and I am starting to feel a little worried.

I had a thought today: If I don't find a job soon, I may have to apply at Centrelink for a 'Newstart Allowance'!!

*eeekkk!* I definitely do NOT want to do that!

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Well, I applied for a job at Parra Vet last Wednesday (I think...) and the vet said she'll get back to me by the end of this week.... But the only thing is that she's actually looking for an experienced vet, so it's quite unlikely that I'll get the job anyway. I guess I'll just have to keep looking...

So many of my friends have gotten jobs already, I am getting scared of not being able to find a suitable job soon :(

Please click here for my Fiji blog :)

Huskisson Trip

I'm back from Jervis Bay! But sorry, I actually didn't end up taking many photos on the trip... I was too busy having fun and getting tanned on the beach! Plus relaxing at our across-the-road-from-the-beach house, the sea breeze was soo beautiful.

So Dru, Sung and I arrived at Huskisson on Boxing Day, mid-afternoon. We took so much stuff that Dru's Corolla was absolutely stuffed full with luggage, food and lots of alcohol *hehehe* The Corolla struggled badly up hills as we drove to Huskisson. Fortunately we made it without any huge incidents. The traffic was so bad between Wollongong and Nowra that it took an extra hour to get to our destination.

Every day was just a relaxing day:

1. Wake up at around 8-9am and eat some breakfast
2. Go to the beach at 11am and swim/sunbake for 3 hours
3. Come home and have a refreshing shower
   
4. Get some afternoon snack/late lunch after the beach
5. Have an afternoon nap for an hour or two/play the playstation/read your novel
   
6. Eat dinner
7. Play poker/watch a DVD/play the playstation 'Buzzer Game' and drink lots of alcohol (although this actually starts at around dinner time and continues for the rest of the night)

Some days we did play cricket, badminton or volleyball, but I think it was only on one of the days that the girls joined.

Thomas and Jaime playing badminton.

Most of the time, it was just the boys playing cricket outside. They almost broke a window and also hit a ball into Thomas' car! Lucky it didn't do too much damage.

Dru and Me
(Do my eyes look weird? Cos they do to me!)

That was Dru before a lot of hours spent in the sun at Jervis Bay... Then he went swimming every day.... He turned so dark, especially on his back!!

Dru's dark back

He got so burnt snorkelling in Fiji... all because he didn't want another guy putting sunscreen on his back *rolls eyes* How typical! And now he's gotten even darker...

Chinaman's Beach
(Yup, it was called that)

The beaches were just absolutely beautiful there. I kinda miss them. But I don't miss the amount of sand that gets in the house and on the bed! It was all Dru's fault I swear, he got the sand on the bed. (But he doesn't like to admit it)

We spent NYE at the local Husky Pub. We almost didn't go because we heard that there was a bit of racism there, but we didn't have any problems. Although the people who told us about the racism actually said to us (8 asians altogether), 'Oh my gosh, you actually speak English?' Which was a little bit outrageous. I mean, I know probably not many asians go down to Jervis Bay(??), but surely they've met a few?? I dunno. I couldn't believe there were still people out there in Australia who would say something like that! Totally unbelieveable!

After spending NYE at Husky Pub, we came home and someone came up with the idea to go skinny dipping at the beach across the road... Well, it was originally going to be just the guys.... but me and Marie got talked into doing it too, although we insisted that we should be allowed to keep our bottoms on.


Some photos were taken of the boys' bottoms, but I wouldn't do that to my friends! So that photo is the only one I'll post up :P

We had to leave the house on New Year's Day (yes, I know, how tragic huh! We couldn't even get too drunk cos we had to wake up early) by 10am. We didn't even sleep 'til about 2am. *sigh* it was a difficult morning, and a difficult 2 hour drive back to Sydney. Although we were organised enough to pack almost everything the night before, so Sunday morning was just loading things into the car and putting the finishing touches on cleaning the kitchen and vacuuming the floor (again, since we dirtied it with the skinny dipping....)

All in all, it was a pretty great trip. Relaxing, although uneventful.

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Hmm, 'Memoirs of a Geisha' is coming soon! I want to watch it, but I don't know whether I should in case I'm disappointed by it... which I most likely will be....

Most movies made about books are disappointing :(