Finally, I have found some time to write! Today is Friday, and class start at 7:15 am! Fortunately for today only. What happened after my last post? Well...
The mechanic came to fix the car. The battery was flat, so it was replaced. Has to be started once a week, run the engine for half an hour. I won't be able to drive it on the road yet. Have to settle some matters concerning the car first. I took it for a spin. It is tough, adapting my driving style from manual, which I drove at home, to automatic. Made me very nervous. Nevertheless, it's very nice to drive auto. Just press the gas pedal! I'll get used to my jitters. I'd better, if I'm gonna stay here for to years, might as well forget about manual driving for the time being. The car is very slow to go up the steep hills around where I live. It has only a 1.5 litre engine. Getting it out of the garage requires some acrobatics too, as there is just enough space to manovere the car out. Noticed a dent on a pipe just uutside next to my garage door, realized it must be from the previous occupier!
We had our first Problem Based Learning session on Tuesday. My group seems pretty decent overall I've seen most of them around, but not on the talking side... until now. One of my friends from Brunei is in the same session as me. Let's call him Mr Quiet. Well, he is quiet, sitting quietly while we blurted out answers and discussed stuff. He also came in late missing the ice-breaking session we had before the tutorial started. Coming late = bad! He said he may come in late for our 2nd session today also... Our PBL tutor is none other than our deputy head of the School of Medicine. Yikes! Better read up more thoroughly. He picked on the person who was the quietest. He didn't know the answer. If you don't know, might as well admit it! Be humble! The tutor then let us have a go at answering. We didn't know either, definitely to Mr Quiet's relief! Something to do with acid-base metabolism. The dude has undiagnosed diabetes, as well as pneumonia. Hyperventilation would result in an alkaline blood pH as CO2 is excessively exhaled. Could metabolic ketoacidosis balance out the blood pH to within normal limits?? We'll see today.
That seems to be the end of the important events. Let's see what happens next!