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Shep Insert #5

The weekend.

Friday
Visiting Tahbilk Winery. Had a beautiful lunch, a small intake of award-winning alcohol and a casual stop at Nargambie lake again for icecream.

Saturday
Early start to Mt buller, driving through Benalla and Mansfield. The snow coverage was decent but the weather deserved a [-5]. The first experience with snowboarding wasn't as bad as I thought it would be but still gotta do a bit of skiing to cure the 2 years hunger. I learnt that the secret to snowboarding was to pray. The drive down the mountain in the fog was quite dangerous but was rather enjoyable once on the road. Red bull was life-saving. Arriving at 'Home', it felt so touching to have friends cooking for you. It was like having a family that looks after you.

Sunday
Sleep-in day. Very sore after [6 hrs drive & 7 hrs skiing & only 3 hrs sleep the previous night]. Went to Campbell but it closed so went cheap-food shopping at SPC. Welcome back family from Melbourne :)

PS. At night, cars with high beam looked like Batman signal light.

Shep Insert #4

David: Now have a check on the tooth with your tongue. Does the filling still feel sharp or rough?

Patient: I can't feel anything. My tongue is all numbed

David: Should I put my tongue in there and feel the filling for you?

Shep Insert #3

Day 3-5

This is when work gets serious. It's been a slow start, not knowing where everything are in the surgery. It also didn't help to be called in the middle of having lunch because I thought I was going to visit private practice in the afternoon when I actually supposed to be treating patients. Patients are too nice but working progress has been shitty. When your first and second impressions looked so terrible in your supervisor's eyes, is there a chance for the third impression? Whatmore, my patient was treated the next day by someone else and told them how crappy I was. Finding some positives in all that, I had an opportunity to look through a dental microscope. I had trouble focusing under high magnifications but the image was already super huge and clear at 4X. The endo world with a microscope is surely limitless. And how awesome was Guttaflow (only if you know how to clean the mess)? It was almost like squirting Fuji IX down root canals. Working with BOH has been awesome, given that they love my three least favourite parts of dentistry; Scaling, Special needs and Paediatrics. Realising now that BOH is the perfect counter-part I can't live without, I'll be sure to make friends with a few before graduating.

At home, Davin's yelling "drink!!!" or "just sip" became ever more familiar and so the drinking continued among the 'serious discussion' group. Flu has been a Pandemic with people fallen (sick) like leaves. Bowling was the Tuesday night's outing with Nho Hoon topping the scoreboard at 123 points.

Dinners
Tues: Davin's homemade Nando Chicken Burrito
Wednes: Kelly's Pizza
Thurs: Aditi's Lasagne

PS. someone thought food in patient's mouth was a 'squishy' Fuji7

Shep Insert #2

Private Practice

Visiting one of the six private practices in Shepparton, here are some of the pointers.
- Patients are very nice in private practice especially in rural area
- The appointment book is booked out until september, which hints the serious shortage and demand for services.
- I havent picked up a sickle scaler for years
- Patients don't care how much you know until you show how much you care.

Sitting in the surgery overlooking the green scattered trees and bushes outside, turning on the sound of running water, with maybe a few kangaroos or two hopping by, endulging in the sense of tranquility, wouldn't that be a dream?

Shep Insert #1

Day 1-2

Leaving Melb for 4 weeks in Shepparton, it was full of excitement. The drive was fun when you have someone driving up with you, so you concentrate on keeping a close distance instead of just staring blankly at the empty road ahead. We were in Nargambie in no time. The weather was aunshine-perfect and so did the fish&chip by the glittering lake. we were in Shep within 40 minutes, our home for the next 4 weeks. The 'Pod' looks awesome with 4 bedrooms downstairs, 6 upstairs and a bathroom between each bedroom. Went to do grocery shopping and I'm (not)proud to say that our first bill was $292. We also met 2 lovely BOH, Michelle and Maggie which soon became very much a part of our group thanks to the overly friendly Bec.

The First night in Shep began and ended in a typical fashion, involving a few bottles of alcohol. A few ppl had a few too many which resulted in the house being filled with werid random noises and high pitch squealing throughout the night. We woke up to witness a random chair in the bathroom and Twister on the living room floor which hinted much about the unknown nightly activities. No need to say that in the morning there were a not-hung-over-cos-I'm-still-drunk person, a few zombies, a few cases of xerostomia and a few constant yellings such as "I'm indian. I don't get drunk", "... raped me", "I don't remember anything", "I sense the judgemental aura coming from my left" and so on so on.

The second night was spent much on cooking which wasn't too bad except the rice that looked more like mashed potato. There were games of Settlers of Catan, Boggle and Wii Beach Volleyball which saw me retreating to my bedroom with very sore arms. I don't know much of what followed after I left but surely, it involved some 'serious discussions' and Kelly overtaking Bec on the 'Chart' in less than 24 hours.

Status @ 40 hrs
- No fight among housemates yet
- Kelly AKA Squealer
- I S2 Dishwasher

Yes. But no meat

Today while I was working, I had an unexpected sms from my brother.
It was short and sharp to my brother's typical fashion and it said "yes. but no meat"

Now, what does that suppose to mean? I had no idea what he was talking about. so 4 words were what I had to work with.
The 'yes' implied that I asked something of him first and the 'no meat' implied it had something to do with food.
Now the time that I might be getting this kinda msg from my brother would be on weekends when I go shopping and he might've wanted me to buy something etc etc.
I started to think along the line of delayed msg that we sometimes get. I went food shopping on the weekend but didn't remember asking him anything.
So I went through my sent msg history. Lo and behold, the culprit msg, "hey can you eat spicy?".
But that wasn't for my brother. It was the msg I sent to a friend who was coming over on saturday for dinner.
Suddenly things began to make sense. In my family, I call my brother by his nickname which is 'A' and hence he is the first on the phone number list alphabetically.
The phone must have knocked around in my pocket and sent accidental msgs I didn't delete off the compose window.

Nothing more to it than that...except my brother would be expecting a spicy non-meat dinner from me tonight =(