The end, and it begins

OK, it's this time already. Got everything packed and ready, said my goodbyes (goodbye actually - only really know 1 person here), and typing one last blog entry since I don't know when I next will have a net connection. It is just so difficult living without the net!

The luggage is huge, no idea how I'm going to lug it around later. Going to call for a taxi, deposit my luggage at the hostel, then take a coach to the airport.

Bye for now then!!

You're kidding me, right?!?

OK, I have 10 minutes before the library closes (i.e. the last time I can use the internet with any certainty).

Passed the evaluation form to my supervisor today, with some trepidation. That man's gotta be kidding me! Overall A grade? "Highly motivated & enthusiastic", he said. Yeah right .. so enthusiastic that today, I actually strode right into theatre wearing street shoes! We were halfway through the operation when my boss looked at my shoes, and then I realised - SHIT. Ran right out and changed into OT boots. Anyway, PHEW. Glad that it's all over!!

Oh, and today's operations were the grossest EVER.

Q: When do you go for an eye surgery, and wake up with a painful mouth full of blood??
A: When the doctor sliced out pieces of your mouth's mucous lining to put INTO your eyes.

Yeah, saw a mucosal graft followed by an amniotic membrane graft in a patient with alkaline burns to the eye. It really looked extremely grotesque. After he sewed the buccal tissue onto the sclera, the entire eye looked like it's swollen - like in severe chemosis. And after that, he put some amniotic membrane (yes, the thing that babies are surrounded with in the womb) onto the entire eye. EWWW.

Alright, just a couple more photos before the start real ulu-ness.


One of the 3 swans in the pond near the hospital.


AH. My search for sundews led me to this lovely wood of Rhododendrons near the hall. =) It's oddly romantic to stroll here alone.

Backlogs

OK, I've been so excited over the plants that I've completely forgotten about life. =)

It's quite alright here right now, possibly cos the weekend's coming (i.e. mom and yx are arriving). Loads of interesting stuff in the clinics as usual, but boss wants me to meet him in theatre tomorrow. *groan*. I know. I said I like eye operations, but if you're the one DOING it.

Anyway it was a total madhouse in the clinics today, and I was spun round and round and got extremely confused. 3 different clinics asking me to go in to see stuff all at the same time, and I was running from one end of the place to the other. Dr. R had a crazy 28 patients to see in the morning itself, and halfway through, Dr. B asked me in to see some retinal stuff. Dr. B is excellent - very very friendly to students, and he asked me to please take a seat every 10 minutes. However, he is so very expert at looking at retinas.

Dr. B: "Come and take a look at this, it's a vitreous haemorrhage and blah blah blah blah"
I peer hopefully into the teaching scope.
FOR 2 SECONDS.
Dr. B: "Excellent!" And he switches off the slit lamp.

Alas! OK, I've learnt to look at retinas really quickly at least. Basically just look at 3 things unless otherwise told to - first the background (obvious stuff like dot, blot and flame haemorrhages, cotton wool spots and exudates/drusen), then quickly at the optic disc (pallor and cupping) and finally the macula (is it grey? Any drusen?). And I've learnt to differentiate between the various layers in the cornea through the slit lamp too .. not bad huh? That comes from my boss being a cornea guy ...

Anyway, I was at the Eye Casualty the other day, and had to resist a terrible urge to giggle. Yes, not unlike that awful first day at AH when The Boss arrived with curry-puff hair and sat right in front of me. The reason? I just kept thinking about one fine day during my ophthalmology posting in NUH, when a doctor stood up, sat back on his roller chair and fell right off onto the floor. HEEHEE.

Beautiful weather

Yx and mom are so lucky, they missed out on all the bad weather! Here's a pic of part of the wooded area I walk through every day. Quite a pretty splash of colours.

Irritability

Arghh .. one of those nights when there's just something unidentified bugging me, and it's making me extremely irritable indeed. From the stupid TV programs to the stupid room to the stupid place. Might be cos of the silly heart problems that came back this evening, it lasted particularly long this time round. And it's a really bad one, I feel breathless just sitting in bed. =( Can't be stress right? I'm going for a holiday. OK, maybe it IS stress. All the planning and shit. Might as well open a tour agency.

Had some comfort food today - finally cooked something decent! Bought a nice rainbow trout and a few other emergency foods to last till Saturday - trout is SO GROSS. It's actually slimy, and I can't seem to wash the slime off! Ended up scalding the thing in hot water before marinating it. Anyway, I made a honey and lemon rainbow trout stuffed with egg and rice (and I pinched some packets of salt and pepper from the dining room to do this). Tasted pretty good!







Had a nice chat with parents just now, needed to talk to people pretty badly today. Something's just not right.

OK, feeling extremely sleepy now, and just received an email that caught my attention. Hmmmmm. Wonder if I have the time to commit.

The Big Day Out

Phew!! All 180 plant pictures all resized, saved and uploaded onto 3 separate Flickr accounts. Thank goodness I prepared them all beforehand. The train journey was plain murder. At the end of it, however, I had no doubts at all that all 10 hours of transport was definitely well-spent. I'm not putting up all the pics I have though, that'll bore you all to death. Just click on the pics to get a larger version. Let's start with the train station!


The inside of Glasgow Central station, it's got lovely hotels jutting out from one of the walls. It's definitely a lovely station, after seeing all the rest. The entire ceiling is made of glass.

Next, the hotel room. It's quite a lovely place, with excellent room furnishings - just the kind of thing I like! And quite a steal for the price. However, they didn't provide any toiletries (except for the usual very fluffy towels, soaps and shampoos and paper), so that was a bit of a nasty shock. I arrived without a shaver, and came back to Glasgow looking very messy indeed.



Dream meal - Thai vegetable curry with rice, a huge baked potato with cheese, and 2 beers. =)Got it delivered from the restaurant next door, and prices are really reasonable - the soft drinks are just 15 pence more than the ones I get in the hall. The beers were really very good, you can taste the fruitiness. I guess it's a nice change, after drinking bullshit like Tiger.


Sunset as seen from my hotel room window. It's around 11pm, and very nice peachy sky.


Meeting the man himself .. Mike and I in the Sarracenia flava greenhouse! Had a really good impromptou lesson from the master himself, and I'm surprised he doesn't own more of the original Adrian Slack cultivars. Slack's a personal friend of his and a hero of mine, and definitely one of the world's best Sarracenia hybridisers. He's now incapacitated, unfortunately, and the price of his second book has shot up sky-high. I received it as a gift from a lovely CPer from Ireland, and somehow misplaced it. Shit. It now fetches a staggering S$2000, no shit.



The works - 3 of his 4 greenhouses!


Looking very lost in one of his greenhouses. I would too, if I had that many plants.


If you think my DIY deioniser and water barrel are quite something to provide pure water for these plants, think again. He's got 16 of these all over his garden, and 4 gigantic 600L black tubs hidden right at the back of the garden. The gutters on the house and greenhouse roofs are filtered and sent by gravity into these water butts, from which he manually gets the rainwater out.



OK, you've got to blow up this pic to see it properly. See the droobles of nectar around the rim at the mouth? This is Sarracenia leucophylla, it's not quite at its best at this time of the year - the most spectacular pitchering occurs around autumn.


For Kenneth .. a field of HOT PINK. A new, very nicely-furry hybrid.


Dionaea muscipula "Spider" - an upright form of flytrap.


The UK National Collection of Dionaea


Dionaea muscipula "G14" - this particular clone has been infected by a peculiar virus that causes a variegated colouration inside the trap.


Sarracenia oreophila in full bloom. OOOOOH! This is the one species I've had a 100% mortality rate with. They are just too difficult to grow. Being a montane species, they require hot dry summers and only pitcher during a cool winter period.


Beautiful "weeds" - those tiny little white flowers you see? Those are Utricularia bisquamata "Betty's Bay", also a kind of carnivorous plant. The traps are hidden underground, but those flowers are just so sweet! A very nice kind of weed to have, and it's all over the place invading the pots! I'm going to get me some of that stuff.


THE definitive collection of red Sarracenia flavas. All these look pretty much the same, but they are subtly different and all are from different localities. Yeah, only freaks (me) will go for the plants' locations.


Nice pic of Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpa, kissed by just a touch of sun.


Adrian Slack's famous and elusive clone of S.flava var. rubricorpa, cv. 'Burgundy'. Look at the rich, wine-red colouration!


Sarracenia leucophylla 'Tarnok' - a mutated form that produces normal-looking pitchers but only shows its true self when it flowers. These multi-petalled flowers are, unfortunately, sterile.


Ahh ... extreme rarity. Only 4 people have this unimposing, normal and drab-looking plant in cultivation (I'm hoping to be next on the stupid waiting list). This is an all-green mutant of Sarracenia purpurea ssp. venosa, var. luteola.


Another rarity - Sarracena leucophylla 'Schnell's Ghost', named after Don Schnell from the states. This is an anthocyanin-free form of S.leucophylla, which means it contains no red pigmentation at all. Not to be confused with var. alba, which is if anything even rarer, since it contains no pigmentation whatsoever except for green.


Adrian Slack's legacy - another elusive (and not so attractive to most non-CPers) cultivar. Sarracenia x excellens "Loch Ness". Most S.x excellens have brick-red flowers derived from its both parents S.minor and S.leucophylla, but oddly enough this particular cultivar produces yellow flowers. The pic below shows both colour forms of the flowers.


Drosera slackii - one of those nasty South African sundews that simply don't grow in Singapore.


Sarracenia x 'Copper Vase' - an exquisite shape and colouration on this rare cultivar.


Sarracenia x 'Red Ruffes' - photos simply don't do this plant justice! Plant originally from Dean Cook (USA), who incidentally was the first person ever I imported plants from. =)


Sarracenia x 'Red Sumatra' - the waiting list for this one is just starting to pile up like mad.


Backlit photo of Sarracenia x mitchelliana.


OOOOH. The Holy Grail of Sarracenia! Sarracenia x moorei 'Adrian Slack'. There's a 50-person waiting list for this plant, and Mike only produces 2-3 extras a year. Crap.


Field of Sarracenia rubra flowers. OOOOOOH!


Yep. Had a really memorable time in Telford over the weekend, and it's definitely the highlight of my trip so far. Yeah, really nerdy,I know. Poring through 4500 different forms of Sarracenia (most of which look exactly the same, as yx will most definitely complain), stalking around the greenhouses to find root-boring caterpillars and Botrytis fungus, talking about plant genetics and debating on the perfect peat:sand:perlite ratio to use. And of course, the man swears by Osmocote while I insist on using 40:10:10 foliar feed. Admittedly, his method works better if you have that many plants to fertilise, but I love tinkling about in the garden - this just gives me an excuse to do that. ;) It's all very satisfying in the end, and I'm finally all the wiser about what works and what doesn't, and good plant husbandry. All of a sudden, I miss my plants too.

Photos are coming!!

Ting, I'm afraid you'll have to put it off till tomorrow morning to show mom and dad the photos I took. Only have half hour from now to grab a lunch and go back to clinic, I've been spending the last 2 hours here in the library resizing and uploading almost 200 photos! =) Will blog all the photos properly tonight when I'm back in the hall (which is tomorrow morning for u).

In the meantime, here's a little teaser for everyone.

p.s. The best is yet to come!!


The Yellow Trumpet
Sarracenia flava var. flava

A weekend of travel

Oh dear, I suddenly realised that there's no one to talk to this weekend! Parents are not around, yx is in China, and Mr. Ye is in Canada. Alas! And for my part, I probably won't have access to the net this weekend either, will be away in Telford.

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Gross. Feeling a little nervous about making the trip into England this weekend .. never taken the train before! Shit. Would have been so much better if I had company!! Also can't figure out how I'm going to settle my lunch tomorrow and my dinner the day after, since I'll be on the train. Brought a Mars Bar and 2 muesli bars in my bag, just in case.

I spent this morning ironing clothes in preparation for the coming week, and walked to Currys to get the HP digicam. It's working well right now, and I saved about £25 from rechargeable batteries, since the camera came with 2 rechargeables and 2 Energiser Lithium batteries. It's rather on the cheaper side, since Currys is having a Bank Holiday weekend sale. Alas! The camera also came with a portable HP travel photo-printer ... shit. I'm trying to see if I can throw things out of the luggage so I won't exceed 20kgs. Looking bleak, unless mom or yx have a few kgs to spare in theirs.

Spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what else I need to settle. It's going to be a flurry of activity next week, I need to settle a lot of logistics before mom and yx arrive. Calling B&Bs up, calling certain tour trips up, finalising the car hire etc. ARGHH!!

TV here is extremely gross, btw. The Saturday mornings are filled with cartoons in 4 out of 5 channels, and VERY slapstick ones at that. They have a lot of talk shows which are FON and freakishly dull. And whatever little real shows they have are like - OMG. To truly understand the state of TV here, just imagine: you have 5 channels, and 1 plays repetitive news ALL DAY (BBC), while the other 4 play Days of Our Lives ALL DAY. Yes, as bad as that. I'm no TV fan, but I know bad TV when I see one. Perhaps it's just the scottish channels?

Bought more microwavable food for tonight, and the following week.

Dreary morning

Urghh .. more bad weather. It's grey, freezing cold and drizzling. Going to be quite a bad weekend, temperatures in the day are about 11C or less with the wind. Had really lovely weather the whole of yesterday though!

Dreading breakfast. I've never been too fussed about eating breakfast anyway, and the rich fare here is turning me off.

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OK, the rain turned into one of those misty floaty things you get in the Nepalese mountains, which was doubly bad - I could feel my corneas freezing up. Reached hospital to find that my supervisor is STILL sick (meningococcaemia maybe?), so I joined the eye casualty instead. Ah hah - pretty doc! The one who wears mini skirt and stilletto-heeled boots to work. She's the equivalent of an MO, and seriously, she teaches well. Usually I get terribly nervous in clinics here, but I was sitting there chatting away with her and she even asked for my opinion once in a while. How cool is that, huh? She's really odd though - writes in block letters, and has a very strange tic.

Summary of cases:
1) Contact lens keratitis, developed toxic epithelitis from preservatives in eyedrops.
2) Type 1 DM with peripheral corneal ulcer and corneal oedema. Demonstrated positive Bell's phenomenon and corneal ulcer later developed satellite lesions.
3) Rheumatoid arthritis with history of ocular hypertension, ?iritis/uveitis and now presents with episcleritis. We did the phenylephrine blanching test, and it really was quite a dramatic change.
4) Man with pHx of rheumatoid arthritis and healed corneal melt now p/w peripheral ulcerative keratitis and corneal thinning, resulting in a "contact lens cornea". Very very nice! Also neovascularisation on the cornea. His RA hands were truly spectacular - one of those prime exam cases. Assisted in doing a corneal scrape. =)

5) Man with pHx of chalazion (S/P curettage), now p/w preseptal cellulitis.
6) Ooooh this case. We had a good time gossipping. =) It's got to be the strangest thing I've ever seen so far. Superficial corneal burns from - get this - a tanning salon! OK, there were more .. but I shan't elaborate in public. Hahaha.

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Anyway, the doc I was with had a Gaelic name. I was so enthralled by this beautiful celtic language after I watched a comedy show in Gaelic yesterday. Lovely-sounding, but as with all other older languages, it did lack some of the newer terms. Internet etc etc, and those were spoken in English. I'm going to try and learn a bit of this before I start touring, since most of the Western Isles and a large part of the highlands still speak Gaelic.

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OMG. Gaelic (it's pronounced as Gaa-lick) is tremendously difficult. I found some online lessons that come with sound clips, and it's so unpronounceable! Shit.

BBC's (touristy)
The Gaelic homepage (grammatical - much more satisfying)
A huge list of similar lessons

Trying to speak it here in the library without people casting me odd looks. Chinese guy + Gaelic = WTF.