One Of My Ways To De-stress: Experimental Cooking

Photo credit [link]

Yes, experimental cooking. It’s cooking something you have never cooked before. So for this time, I made blue cheese-spinach-prawn lasagna.

It all began 2 days ago, I have these 2 frozen bags of finely chopped spinach and I don’t know what to do with them. (Initially, I bought them to make baked penne for my friend’s bachelorette surprise party)

I tried to make a spinach pasta sauce out of it. I first melted some butter in a pan, then added flour, mixed them and poured milk and mixed them again. Then I added in the spinach.

(From what I’ve Googled, most of the people recommend to squeeze-dry the spinach after thawing).

Then I seasoned it with salt – pepper  was out of stock :p

It didn’t taste that good. But I didn’t throw it. I kept it in the fridge. So yesterday, after eating sushi at Sushi Planet with Shasha and Dila, I went to the supermarket to buy some cheese (mozzarella) but then I saw the blue cheese and thought of making blue cheese and spinach rigatoni. Then at the pasta section, at first I took the rigatoni box, but then changed my mind and took lasagna instead. Talk about indecisive!

Blue cheese in Poland

And of course I bought the pepper. Most. Important. Seasoning!

When I got back home, I Googled sooo many recipes because I couldn’t find the exact recipe to cook “blue cheese-spinach-prawn lasagna” so I kind of combined a few recipes to make this lasagna.

This is how I made the lasagna sauce.

1. Melt butter in a pan
2. Add milk
3. Add the blue cheese (crumbled or diced)
4. Add salt and pepper
5. Mix
6. Add the spinach ‘paste’ (the one I’ve prepared the day before, and the one that didn’t taste good)
7. Add mozzarella
8. Add prawn
9. Cook and mix well
10. Done

For first timers, this is kind of helpful. You can see how the thickness of the sauce should be:

 

To make the lasagna, I simply used the no-precooking-required-lasagna and I just layered the sauce, shredded mozzarella and the pasta alternately and baked it at 220°C for 20 minutes. And voila!

Blue cheese-spinach-prawn lasagna

Did all these helped to de-stress myself? It did. Partially. ‘Cause I still have the hangover of feeling depressed. Let’s get some SSRI, SNRI, TCA or MAOI y’all!

I thought being 23 is fun. Probably it’s just how I handle myself. And how I look at things. *Sigh* Gotta change my perspective from now on. My perspective on just…everything.

p/s: SSRI, SNRI, TCA and MAOI are groups of antidepressant drugs. I just had my second semester pharmacology oral exam, by the way (which covered drugs for cardiovascular system and central nervous system, thus the antidepressant drugs). And I passed it alhamdulillah.

Aristocrats Don’t Show That They Are Aristocrats

Okay, I know the 13th General Election in Malaysia is coming, but this post is not related to the election at all.

I had Medical Ethics class yesterday. It was the first class, before this there were only lectures. So being in class, we were in a smaller group and we had the chance to talk and discuss. Some of us had to present a topic regarding ethics pertaining to medicine.

The first topic was about favouritism. The situation was about a doctor treating a member of his family first; favouring his own relative to the patients who have been waiting in line. The relative came later than the patients so he kind of cut the queue.

The second topic was about a medical student being too close to a patient. The student was doing summer elective so he had much free time so he decided to just talk with patients. The patient was an old woman and apparently, she has been abandoned by her own son, so she was lonely. The patient told the student about her personal life. And when the assisting doctor knew that the student was getting too close with the patient, the doctor scolded the student saying that it’s not appropriate to do so.

The third situation was about a doctor scolding and yelling at a patient in front of a group of medical students for not bringing the X-ray report. This topic was discussed thoroughly and it was partly about professionalism. Some also commented that probably the doctor was “old school” , that is, some doctor believes that he/she knows best and is always right or thinks that doctors are more superior than patients.

And the fourth topic was about the healthcare system. One of the example was, should a doctor prescribe the expensive drug knowing that the drug is good for the patient although the healthcare system has put some limitation of the usage of the drug. Something like that.

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So, what are all these have got to do with the title of my post? Well, actually my lecturer mentioned this phrase when we were discussing about the third topic. I personally think that it is a really good phrase.

You see, people who are intelligent don’t show that they are intelligent. People who are talented in something don’t show that they are talented in something. People who are humble, don’t show that they are humble.

The word ‘show’ here is leaning more towards ‘show-off’ rather than just show or act.

In contrast, people who ‘think’ that they are pretty and want to be known as pretty, will try as best as they could to look pretty and show off to the world. Be it an inch-thick of make up, or immodest clothing (this is due to the fact that showing-more-skin-is-pretty’ mentality nowadays) they would do that in order to show off to the world that they are pretty.

Some people tried so hard to look rich, even though they are not.

Some people tried so hard to look or sound cool and show off to the world. The place where you can see the simplest example for this is the social networking site eg. Facebook and Twitter. It has became a phenomenon nowadays to show off everything on Facebook or Twitter. If not “look what I just bought” then it will be “hanging out with my peeps at ….” or posting photos of your face everyday showing off what make up you wear today, what clothes you wear today, what shoes and what handbag and the list goes on.

I also, personally think that some of these people (who are showing off etc) are people who feel insecure about themselves. It could be. They feel that they are not pretty enough, so they have to try hard to look pretty and show it to people. They think people don’t see they are rich enough so they have to look rich and show off. It might sound lame but these are the only easy but obvious examples I can think of right now.

The fundamental people need to know is- Who do you want to impress? What matters most to you? As for me, of course it is not the society or my friends or anyone else whom I need to impress but it is God I need to impress. God won’t matter how you look outside, but He looks at your heart. And I think I need to improve myself on this. I need to strengthen this belief because sometimes, I too, do feel like I need to impress people.Well it’s not wrong sometimes but if that thought is always fed, than it will get dominant. And I do not want that to happen. I want to be myself. I don’t want to change in order to get people to like me. But then again this doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t have to improve at all. There has to be balance in everything.

Phewh, I never thought that I would write all of these but since it has been on my mind since yesterday, so it has to be stored somewhere. Besides, I need a reminder about this and I need to be more positive. I don’t know if this is just one of my defense mechanism against being inferior XD

So, not showing off is basically what I want to stress about here. And just be yourself. Allow people to accept you as who  you are. You will be safe and the world would probably be a better place if everyone acts accordingly. Be just. Be fair. Be humble. Be positive.

 

Musculoskleletal System Radiology

Acromioclavicular joint dislocation associated fractures:

• Hill-Sachs deformity (wedge-shaped defect in posterolateral humeral head)
• Bankart lesion (fracture of glenoid inferior rim)
• Fracture of greater tuberosity
• Fracture of surgical neck of humerus

Monteggia fracture: anterior angulated fracture of upper third of the shaft of ulna associated with anterior dislocation of the radial head

Monteggia fracture

Galleazi fracture: fracture of the lower third of the shaft of the radius associated with subluxation or dislocation of the distal radio-ulnar joint

Galleazi fracture

Fracture of distal radius:

• Colle’s fracture: transverse fracture of the distal radius with volar (anterior) angulation
• Smith’s fracture: dorsally angulated fracture of the radius

Do you know?

1. Fracture of hook of hamate is a common injury in golfers and tennis players.
2. Fracture through the neck of 5th metacarpal is the classing ‘punching injury’.

Tibia and fibula frature: Toddler’s fracture & Maisonneuve fracture:

• Toddler’s fracture: undisplaced oblique fracture of tibia/hairline fracture
• Fracture of upper fibula is associated with Maissoneuve fracture (disruption of syndesmosis between distal tibia and fibula)

Angles:

• Boehler’s angle: calcabeus
• Cobb’s angle: vertebrae (scoliosis)

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I made this post yesterday, when I was studying for Radiology exam which I had earlier this evening. The exam was very, very difficult! I read the whole book (well almost, I left out only 1 chapter) but the questions didn’t seem to be taken from the book at all!

I almost gave up during the exam seeing that none of the questions were similar to the sets of past years questions I did. But I continued anyway. I braced myself answering from one question to another.

The results will be posted tomorrow! Whatever the result is, I will accept it. I’ve studied as much as I could, I prayed to Allah, I’ve done my part. I’m just hoping for the best now.

After I got back home, I made apple crumble again. It will be ready at 12am later. Hahhah yeah I know, it’s kind of late. So, bye!

 

The Host (2013)

I watched this online. I started watching it last week. Since this website posted the video in 8 parts, I watched one per day. What can I do..I have an exam coming up. In fact, it will be on Thursday. The subject is on radiology. Wish me luck!

 

Bila Nak Kahwin? – YouTube video

My friends have been posting this video on Facebook lately, a few of them. The title is quite disturbing (LOL), not THAT disturbing, just a little bit annoying because when you’re a Malaysian at my age, you’ll be hearing about people getting engaged, your friends getting married and stuff almost everyday! Okay maybe I was exaggerating. At least once a week. Yeah.

By the way, the title means “When are you getting married?”.

The sad thing is, you can’t be at your friends’ wedding because you are thousands of miles away from home. (Let me check whether the distance is correct). Yupp, Poland to Malaysia is 12,824.1 km which also equals to 7968 miles.

Back to what I was saying; it was like everyday, you will see at least one post of this video on your timeline. The voice in my head kept on telling me ‘You should watch the video.” “It will only take 5 minutes of your time.” “A lot of your friends have been sharing this video.” “Just watch the freaking video!” So I ended up watching the video. And it’s pretty interesting AND hilarious.