Monday blues

You have been warned - this is a moaney entry!

This week I finally parted with team Respiratory which I'd been with for 3 months and joined Cardio. For 4 days! I'm slightly regretting switching already. It's always an ominous sign when the ward round lasts beyond noon. Today's finished at 3.30pm. We must have seen about 30 people. Oh well, it's only for 4 days, and then I go onto nights.

The upside of nights is that I generally get a week off afterwards. The downside is I never manage to get leave at the same time as my friends. What's the point of getting leave if there's no one to go away with? Or not knowing until a few weeks in advance at the earliest? This job kinda sucks that way. My ex-flatmate has been trying to get leave in September so that she can be a bridesmaid at her best friend's wedding. She still has no clue if she'll be able to get leave or not. An FY2 at my hospital had wanted to get married in January, but was unable to obtain leave for this. Can you believe it!!

My new landlady in Glasgow called today. Apparently the flat should be ready for moving into sometime this week. If you don't know already, we decided to go with the flat that we'd reserved earlier. I'm looking forward to it! My little pink room in Falkirk will be missed, however. It's been my little place to come home to for the last year.

Links update!

I finally managed to motivate myself to edit my links section... The perceptive person might have noticed this already, but I've added links to some of my friends' blogs. Most of them are people who were my classmates in secondary school between Form 1- Form 5 or even earlier possibly.
I have to thank Yin Hoon aka Granny for being the deciding influence to start blogging. When she visited Edinburgh, she started a blog detailing her travels, which I started following religiously, to ensure she wasn't carrying tales about me bullying her:) Just kidding. I wouldn't have been bothered before this, and none of the friends that I hang out with in uni blog, not in my innermost circle, anyway. Good for you that you've decided to carry on in ''A new chapter''! Other people I have to thank would be Mei Yee aka The Witch, who was one of my dearest friends in school and remains so to this day. I am guilty of being a bad correspondent and I found reading her blog enabled me to look at her life through her eyes. Not to mention Bamboo, and Boon Chew. I have to say, blogging is a great way for ppl to catch up on what's been happening in the lives of friends who are a great distance away. Old classmates, if you know of mutual acquaintances who blog, tell me ok?
When I manage to motivate myself again, I'll search for more friends who blog and add them too. I definitely know a few of those..but it's late on Sunday night and I need my beauty sleep.

Is that wedding bells I hear?

It was turning out to be just another weekend in Edinburgh...the usual dreary rain that made me glad that I was ensconced in my sister's cosy flat..my sister feeding me with all sorts of leftovers from the week ( I have to say I would rather she feed me than not, though:)) and the usual phonecalls that I never had time to make during the week.

I was feeling slightly isolated because my phone, being a Samsung, was dying on me and because I had neglected to bring my charger from Falkirk, I had been sensible and switched it off, only turning it on once in a while to check or send messages.

Today, I turned on my phone and found a text from a close friend who had been on holiday with her boyfriend and just returned.. She had news for me, she said. Immediately (it's a woman's sixth sense) I thought - He's proposed! and texted her back asking if it was true.
An hour later I turned up on her doorstep..and had to hear all about it of course..Now that I think about it, I didn't actually get into the details of what time of the day it was, or if it was rain or shine, etc.. tsk tsk. Don't roll your eyes, this is important stuff!!

In any case, she is now an engaged woman, promised to someone...how grown up! I am feeling positively adolescent in comparison.

If you are reading this, I am supremely happy for you, my dear.

And please wear the proof of your engagement lah, woman, unless you don't want anyone to know about this!!

Flat Hunting Frenzy with a ?satisfying conclusion

It's hard to believe but there are only about 7 weeks left to the end of FY1. On the 6th of August, the familiar migration of doctors to their new posts takes place. It's also the time of the year when you probably do not want to be admitted to hospital! New doctors, fresh out of medical school and still wet behind the ears, embark on their medical careers and I honestly believe that complications, morbidity and mortality are higher then.

In any case, I will be moving to Glasgow and starting work in the West End. With that in mind, I spent the whole of last weekend trawling through the websites of various letting agencies, spent my lunch breaks for the whole of last week on the phone to property agents trying to arrange suitable viewing times, and travelled to Glasgow straight after work everyday in search of the perfect flat. What I learnt was that the majority of property agents will only show flats on Mon-Fri between 9-5pm which can be extremely inconvenient as I work the same hours they do, if not longer. The weather was not the most accommodating either as it rained everyday this last week. Ajeet my flatmate insisted on wearing slippers to view flats so that she wouldn't have to have soaked shoes. :)

There were the disappointing moments such as when an amazing two bedroom flat on Benalder St had been snapped up by the time I called the agency advertising it. There were also eyebrow raising and 'let's get out of here feeling' moments when we saw ancient flats with ancient delapidated furniture which cost the same in rental as other significantly more desirable flats. I've never been familiar with Glasgow, but I learnt a lot about the geography of the West End in the last week just from the hours spent on Google Map!!

11 viewings and many coffees later, Ajeet and I finally narrowed down our choices to a cosy flat a stone's throw away from a major rail/underground/bus exchange and also a supermarket!! Imagine being able to walk in slippers to the shop around the corner to get some milk or eggs. It should also be only a 15 minute walk for me to my workplace. There were 2 other flats that we were seriously considering as well, but one didn't have a wardrobe (built in wardrobes are essential for a girl!!) and the other had two bathrooms, but only one with a shower and that was in the master bedroom. If any property developers are reading this, my advice would be to have the shower in the communal bathroom, and to have built in wardrobes in all bedrooms and to have mixed taps as well..I never understood why hot and cold water taps have to be separate.

We've put in a reserve on the flat mentioned above, but we'll keep looking to see if any better ones come up in the next two weeks. I am determined to have a really nice home for FY2!! Can't wait to move, really.

Exhausted from the long week, I slept the whole train journey from Glasgow Queen Street to Edinburgh Waverley yesterday, waking up at the end to discover an old granny sitting next to me. I looked up and only then noticed a sign on the wall saying 'Please give up these seats for the elderly and disabled'. How embarassing!

A taste of Edinburgh

Last weekend was a whirlwind of events, or so it seemed.

Both my sisters were in Edinburgh, so we decided to go to the Botanic Gardens on Saturday to feed the squirrels. Unfortunately, it was such a blazingly warm day (lovely for us humans in cold Scotland, but not very pleasant to these bushy tailed creatures) that none of them were to be seen outside of their holes in the ground or wherever it is that they live. And after having gone to three supermarkets before managing to find monkey nuts to feed them with!! It was slightly disappointing despite the pretty rhododendrons in bloom :( A few hours later though, when it was slightly cooler we finally saw a few of these mammals scampering about. Some of them came up to take nuts from our hands!! I went home mollified.

Later that night, I met up with Hui Ping and Pei Pei (who I'd not seen in 6 years) at City Restaurant (if you're in Edinburgh, you should probably head to this place to try all the artery- clogging Scottish fare of fish and chips and fried candy bars.) We attempted a drive up to Calton Hill (home to Edinburgh's Disgrace, a giant elephant on top of the hill which was never completed due to insufficient funds) but it was 11pm, and the road leading up was closed after 9pm. We would have parked the car and walked, but there were a group of young 'uns at the foot of the hill who looked dodgy, so we canned the idea.

Sunday heralded the arrival of grey skies. The Taste Festival was being held in the Meadows this particular weekend. FYI, the Meadows is a huge green lung in the middle of the city of Edinburgh (or maybe slightly southwest). It has the most amazing cherry blossoms in spring and is used by people of all ages for frisbee games, jogging, running, rugby practice, tennis and is also one of the venues for shows during the Edinburgh Festival in August. The Taste Festival is a new thing that was first put on last year. There would be loads of top restaurants in Edinburgh participating and lots of lovely food samples to be had. I had been salivating at the thought of going to the Taste Festival this year for weeks now, and was determined to enjoy it come rain or shine. So we bravely set out while it was still dry - look at this pic taken before the onslaught...

but soon after we were drenched!!



Check out the lovely cocktails:


Talented chefs in action:


Marinated wild Scottish salmon, sour cream, orange and dill oil, avruga:



Scrumptious looking selection:


Gosh I'm getting hungry now..will edit this post at a later time...