Thirteen Rabbits

oh nooooooooooooo everytime i hear an 'old' song that ive played before, i get the urge to pick up my bass!!

toshiya plays so well!

omggggggggggggggggggggg stresssssssssssssssssssssssssssssed
one more day to study for neurophysiology paper!!!!!!!!

nooooooooooooooooooooo
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
my head is going to explooooooooooooooooooooooooooode !!

oh. i forgot. received the parcel jac mailed from NZ. actually received it... yesterday or the day before bah. i cant remember. my head is too full of the brain stuff. (haha does that count as a pun? actually i think puns are one of the lowest forms of humour. the lowest ones of course, are those that arent even funny la! lol )

i am going to chomp on some white choc macademia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

***

white choc macademia ended up being a slice of honeydew, papaya and guava -_- and only 2 squares of chocolate la. (and an episode of most haunted, which hovered between spooky and made-up.) but i ate many many many squares in the day liao. hahahahaha and chips also! cuz parents went to msia again. at first i was wondering where they were cuz no one was home when i woke up at 830am and again at 1130am. so i ate a lot of rubbish :(

i rewrote my notes. seems to be a little more detailed now. hai. the way i study, i just get a rough idea and not much detail. :S
hopefully nothing much about the brain will come out. as in draw the brain, label this and that...

i hope i can rmb my notes. if only the exam had more leading questions instead of general describe-this-and-that questions which make you lose marks because u forget a few points. u know them, u just forgot to include them
hate it when that happens.

i also have a nasty tendency to sacrifice marks because i cant be bothered to verify something that i wasnt sure of. i'll just go 'bah, probably 1 or 2 marks only. forget it la' -_-

i hope my lecturer can read my handwriting. i didnt try too hard to keep it tidy for psychophysics. the moment i read the questions i just wanted to regurgitate everything i knew, so i scribbled :S and my answers were disorganised as hell too. :S :S :S :S

nevermind.
after monday's neurophysiology is general medical science on wednesday! an hour-long MCQ paper or something. and then freedom!!!

damn these exams. i think they are quite useless. because i know i won't remember all the things ive crammed into my head after i finish the paper. (i really take it as a regurgitating session)

retention is probably 5%. such a waste.

Colour opponency

Hi. i am here right now to type about colour opponency. in Diploma, we learnt that 3 cone photopigments account for colour vision. for most people la! kekekekeke the S cone peaks at 430nm; M cone @ 545nm thereabouts, and L cone at 565nm.
if you think about it, how can the M and L cone share such close sensitivities? how can we see the long wavelengths then? what about Red? the answer is in the the head!
colour opponency is what allows us to appreciate 2 million colours and gives us excellent wavelength discrimination. It is responsible for local colour vision, that is stimuli 1-2degrees 'large', seen under photopic conditions, slowly presented at 1Hz against a white/neutral background.
color opponency states that there are 3 channels in vision: the achromatic ('Black-White'), the M-L ('green-red') and B-(L+M) ('Blue-Yellow') channels.
achromatic 'adds' the inputs from both M and L cones to extract information.
M-L is subtraction of L input. B-(M+L) is the subtraction of both M and L inputs.

At the primary visual cortex V1, there are a few types of colour opponent cells.
L/-L single receptive fields: either +L or =L centers with antagonistic surrounds
M/L receptive fields with either +M , -M, +L or -L ceters and antagonistic surrounds
B/M+L receptive fields with +B or -B, +(M+L) or -(M+L) centers and antagonistic surrounds

at V2 there are cells double opponent receptive fields for B-(M+L)
ie respond to either B dot with 'Y' surround, or Y dot with B surround.

to determine the sensitivity graph showing colour opponency, we need a 1degree stimulus at 1Hz against a 15degree white background. adjust the intensity of the target until it is just noticed against the background. do this for the range of wavelengths in the visible spectrum to get the peaks for S M L cones in colour opponency. the peaks should be around 430nm, 555nm and 610nm.

probably.

*************

Weber's Law
walao ehhhhhh i am damn bored of this topic. because it isnt very interesting! i don't know how this is related to rods and cones lei..

Target: 1 degree at 15hz white
background: 10degrees
adjust intensity of target until it is just noticeable against the background. repeat this for a range of bg luminances. plot log L against log delta L. should get a straight line Log deltaL = m logL + constant
weber's constant = deltaL/L = 0.02 for cones, 0.14 for rods.
it means that the target must always be 2% brighter than the background to be detected.
as Luminance of L is increased, there is a decrease in sensitivity (ie delta L must increase in order to be detected), but the proportion is always constant (2% or 14% more than L)

if we did the experiment from absolute threshold to bright we get a line with 5 regions of different gradient.
at threshold, gradient = 0. detection here is dependent on neural noise. stimulus is not seen i guess?
when gradient = 0.5, it is known as the square root law. delta L is sqrt of L. im still a bit fuzzy on the details
when gradient = 1, rods are detecting the target. weber's law is obeyed.
at maybe 120trolands (i dunno! i dunno!), rods saturate, and gradient = infinity.
slightlybrighter, cones are used and once against weber's law is obeyed. gradient = 1. this line will increase until cones become photodamaged. because cones are just stupid that way.

this concludes weber's law because i cant recall anything else.

************

CIE chromaticity diagram.

it is there for a reason! to give a standardised way to specify colours! u can't get more specific than when numbers are involved! X Y Z are imaginary primaries. x y z are the coordinates.
x = X / X+Y+Z and so on.
at the perimeter of the 'fin' are the spectral colours. at the bottom is 400nm BLUE, at the peak is 530? nm green. at the end is 700nm Red. and then in between red and blue is non-spectral purple!
we need imaginary primaries because we want to avoid using (-) addition of colours! because u cannot (-) something that isnt there! eg to get Cyan we add Green and Blue. but adding colours like that will desaturate it. cyan is so bright! we need to (-) red to get cyan. how to minus right? in theory, red is added to the sample~ :S so we have X Y Z la.

ummmmmm

if we draw a curve somewhere near yellow to somewhere past the midline, it is called the...... something plancian? plankton? si mi line la. it tells us the colour a source will appear at different colour temperatures. remember colour temperature? it is the temperature at which a black body will emit light that matches it's source's chromaticity. maybe. im not so good with definitions.
so somewhere around 2770K is Standard Illuminant A (somekind of incandescent bulb). a little further in is illuminant B, the sun. cant rmb how many K. last is illuminant C (overcast sky?) at 6770K.

the straight line rule of CIE. means that when we add two colours. we just dot that area and join a line between the 2 points. -_- such a crude explanation. if u added each colour 50-50, draw a line from W thru the midline straight to the other end of the CIE diagram. that is the colour of the resultant mix. so wonderful eh?
purity = a / a+b

X + Y +Z = 1. so if we have X and Y we can find Z. white (W) is 0.3X, 0.3Y amd 0.3Z.

complementary colours: to find a complement of another, draw a line from A thru W. the wavelength it reaches (B) is the complement.

aaaaaaaand i have reached the end of what i can recall.

*********

i need a miracle with fourier analysis.

****

why, time just flies by when im not looking huh! :\
to think i made it a point to wake up at 9am today! (hoping i will sleep early so i won't be a zombie for morning exams.)

i was distracted. i was looking at the inside of my lower lip and i noticed a lot of blood vessels. fat arteries and veins, and a rather extensive network of capillaries. which reminded me of the conjunctiva, and how i like to look at little red blood cells tumble through the vessels when im using the slit lamp. nope, it has not yet lost its novelty. cuz they tumble mah. sometimes they seem to get stuck (momentarily). sometimes they just whoosh through. very funny. it reminds me of the water flume ride. lol. bump bump!

as i poked my lip and watched the emptied vessels refill with little tumbling red blood cells, at (the same time recalling how systemic blood pressure is measured), i wondered

why do we need such a rich blood supply in the lip???????????????????????

strange mah! it isnt exactly an important area right? it won't be devastating to lose a lip.
.
.
well, maybe a lot of food that u eat will come spilling out... i guess that could count as a tragedy. ok im starting to appreciate the significance of a lip. really, very inconvenient to have water slosh out when youre drinking. have to drink like a bird then.

ahhh and i suppose the walls of the oral cavity (lips included?) are very metabolically active??? hence the in my opinion, over-perfusion of blood?

*

must focus on psychophysics! i noticed the same few questions keep coming up in past Manchester papers. i hope they do this time as well.
weber's law, colour opponency, spectral power distribution, CIE colour diagram, the visual system as a fourier analyser?

damn fourier analysis is giving me a headache. the report is so difficult to read! i tell u, ive gone through the text at least 5 times, and theyre only *just* starting to make sense!

*

my Threadless Tshirt has arrived! just the right size! woohoo! it's so cute! i think jac would love the design!

oh it feels good to finish a paper, even though it wasnt exactly a walk in the park.
i can't imagine how psychophysics and neurophysiology will be like. should be a walk through the cemetary.

wow. 530am already. im still here! damn that after-dinner nap really screwed things up.
good thing is i got a lot of recap done! actully went through the whole semester worth of notes again. but really no mood to go into detail. visual optics is calculation-heavy. only short answer qns, mcq. and the short answer qns are mostly calculations! the ones that test your theory are mcqs and true/false qns! no worries la, right?

the good thing about studying at night is not being distracted by food.
i had dinner at 6. i am hungry now, but i don't have the munchies.
studying in the day, my thoughts are always on food, or spree updates (so i can shop shop shop) or im just plain sleepy.

i wish life wasnt so structured. like how there is a time for everything. (the reason why they call it a day job) i wish i could do things whenever i wanted. go to school at 2am. sleep when the sun is up.
i mean, i think it's a great waste that im a zombie at 2pm, but wide awake at 2am. it's a lot of productive hours gone to waste.

im just pleased it's raining now. rain at night is just so much more awesome than rain in the day. just because it's all dark and cold and mysterious. XD

i finally watched final fantasy. actually i was hopping between AXN and FF and i missed the first 20mins of FF so i don't really know who 'Mother' is or why that guy wants revenge on the world. and i dunno how children are involved in this master plan of his. :S
anyway, i think it is time i got acquainted with the game, cuz now im curious as to why everyone loves it so much. the movie was pretty cool la. some bits bored me. especially the parts with Tifa. oops! and ben likes her so much. i didnt really like her voice. i thought vincent valentine was pretty cool. batman soundalike! hahahahah but i guess that was expected hahahahah i think i should look for the game in a few days. god knows if i will be able to concentrate on revision if i got my hands on the game now!

i fell asleep straight after dinner. that was around 7. by the time i woke up it was maybe 930pm. now i am wide awake. 3am.
i think my body has officially recognised bedtime as 4 / 5am or something.
i wonder if i keep this up for the whole holidays, will i come full circle and end up with a more normal bedtime by the time school starts in midoctober?
it's an idea ive been thinking of for quite a while now. just didnt have time to put it into action. well, that's something to try out during sem break la! i have a feeling it wouldnt succeed though..

im running out of lined paper! why do ppl call it foolscap? it sounds so silly! fools u know. like only fools use it. which is ironic, because we use it for school -_- and the last thing we want is paper that makes us stupid.

oh lookey i found the answer on http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-foolscap.htm

Foolscap has been a standard paper size since the 15th century, when it was first produced in Germany. It gets its name, typically pronounced full-scap or full-scape, from the watermark once used to identify it, in the shape of a jester's hat, or "fool's cap." Foolscap of the standard 17 by 13½ inches was divided into halves, quarters, and eighths to produce other standardized paper sizes, called folio, quarto, and octavio respectively....Foolscap still exists, but is less common than it once was. It can sometimes be found at specialty stationers, and less commonly at office or school supply stores. The term foolscapfoolscapfoolscap is most often heard in England, Australia, and Canada, while in the United States, it is called legal size, which is standardized as 8½ by 14 inches (216 by 356 mm). Since foolscapfoolscapfoolscap is no longer commonly used, modern references to using it are often implicit of excessiveness or long-windedness.

oh? does that mean we should stop calling it foolscap?
Jac should ask Paul if they still call it foolscap in England. i already forgot which part he came from. HAHAHAHA i remember how it went
Me: hey which part of england are u from?
Paul: uhhh u wouldnt know it even if i told you, would you?
and then he tells me the name of some ULU place. it is true. i have never heard of it. i was never any good in geography, but the place he mentioned, it wasnt even sussex of liverpool or manchester. it is some super super super ULU place.
and i promptly forgot the name 5seconds after he said it. :O

rmb that time we made brownies and brought it to him next door? and the super awkward minute cuz his flatmate was also there but we didnt know and only brought Paul's share??? and in my head i was going, oh no no no no no ....

and the time he dropped by in the morning when i was brushing my teeth! cuz i have a habit of ... not staying in the bathroom when i brush my teeth (cuz it's so boring la, staring at the mirror or looking around the toilet or whatever. don't worry, i make sure i don't drip all over the place -_-) and i tried to pretend i didnt see him. i mean, how to entertain a guest when ure brushing your teeth right? bah, thats the problem with glass panel doors! want to hide also cannot! and then he came in and said "u pretended not to see me!!!!!!"
lol ok i know. im quite silly to pretend i didnt see him. especially since we both saw each other thru the glass. i was thinking (hoping) maybe there was a chance he was headed elsewhere XD
note to self: don't try to hide something obvious.

lecturers. sometimes u cannot believe everything they say. of course, most of the things they say are useful. i just mean don't take the things they say literally.
man, so many things u cannot take literally. it is quite confusing.

if someone tells you not to get overconfident about a test, what will you think?
will u think 'oh, is that the impression i give? that i am overconfident? (and i guess in a way, do i come off as arrogant?'
or will you go 'wow, he says im overconfident. does that mean i am really good at this or does he think i only think i am good at this, but in fact im not?'

i keep telling myself not to take things at face value. because that's usually the most worthless bit of information you could get out of a sentence. i wish i had some kind of super interpreter to help me analyse and infer information.

*

i probably saw this on MTV: if youre not interesting, exaggerate.

i might have gotten carried away.
i was probably a more real person in the past. you know, didnt say things not worth saying or that were only half truths. it was important to me. u can say it was a matter of principle. mean thoughts didnt even cross my mind. it was a simple, innocent age of ignorance.
i traded all that for something else. i feel it was a step backwards as a person. it feels like i've let down my younger self, but i cannot go back because i need this in the real world.

it's sad, really.

i am so tired.
oh no oh on oh no oh nooooooo paper on monday oh no!
but the ones that will kill me are on friday and the following monday! because 5qns, 20marks each! a lot of writing involved! and a lot of memorising! noooo!

i hope i get enough sleep. to be honest, it was difficult to concentrate on tuesday's instrumentation paper. i was attempting the MCQ, telling myself 'think, think! analyse!' while another voice in my head went 'haiyaaaaa i wanna sleeeeeeeeep'. i was so tempted to daydream.

ended up sleeping at 6am or sth. pffft. k nvm. sleeping 3-4 hours less is good.

i keep hearing things leh. dunno if im imagining things or what. not voices la. but the sound of electrical appliances. last night something sounded a lot like a girl humming. kinda eerie.

maybe it's just in my head la.

mum emptied my bin for me! yay! can shoot paper balls in again!

what a warm night! yucksssss

my vision really deteriorating. T_T

bad news! i cant rmemeber how to do all the contact lens calculations! what back surface sag, cornea sag, front surface sag! noooooo!

damn. the floaters in my right eye are getting increasingly distracting.
i remember 2 years ago it was a small strand, a few dots.
now there's this huge mass. like a dendritic cell. bloody hell! so central somemore! what the?!
and only in my right eye! the left eye is perfectly clear!
why! this shitty thing in my central visual field! of my dominant eye!
it really sucks! if this was my non-dominant eye i wouldnt complain so much.
i realised ophthalmoscopy/retinoscopy with my left eye is quite dim! at first i thought it was because of the way i help my ret, and with the spectacle lenses, i thought i was just too far from the ret!
but when i was ret-ting with contact lenses on, it didnt get any brighter!
stupid la!

i think i have lousy eyes. i got pretty low density of macular pigment too. maybe if i increase MP, the world might look marginally better. -_-


if i could dilate my own eyes AND examine them at the same time!
well i probably wouldnt see anything la. unless it really is as bad as it looks.

*

instrumentation paper was..... so-so. a lot better than the first. i think with everyone complaining, the lecturers had to do something la. complain to the director somemore.
as usual with papers set by chris, i always end up studying for things that won't come out. really leh. i think chris is just one of those people in the world who is like, polar opposite from me. something like that. ever since poly year one General optics paper....

*
the bin is overflowing with crumpled balls of paper. i feel for the trees.

PERIMETRY!!!!
Short wavelength automated perimetry
blue size V target (large) against a bright yellow background (to adapt the M and L wavelengths)
targets the konio cells
decreased test-retest variability. test duration is long unless with SITA (reduce test time, reduce variability, and increase dynamic range. whatever that means.)
higher sensitivity than standard automated (White-on-white) [SAP] perimetry.
affected by media opacities like cataract

Frequency Doubling Technology
0.25cpd at 25Hz.
higher sensitivity than SAP.
not so sensitive to hemianopia. or something due to small number of test spots
HUmphrey Matrix 24-2, 30-2, 10-2 and 2deg 5deg 10deg targets --> more spots tested so more sensitive to hemianopia.

Rarebit
tiny dots (half MAR), flash for 200ms. very bright. presented 2 at a time. in 30 fields. within 30degrees of VF. each field is 5degrees.
patient response as see 0, 1 , 2.
normal px shld see all.
sensitive to glaucomatous and neurological VF defects.

High Pass Resolution Perimetry
ring targets. high pass filtered vanishing targets.
determine smallest ring that can be seen by px.
i cant remember.........
short duration. sensitive.


Flicker Perimetry
measures CFF or temporal modulation......something.
more sensitive to mild defects. more tolerant to blur and media opacities.
TMP is more sensitive than CFF to glaucoma defects.



THRESHOLDING ALGORITHMS!
Swedish Interactive Thresholding Algorhitm
combination of staircase and modified ZEST.
staircase: 2 reversals. 4dB change until reversal, then 2dB steps.
Probability function assuming spot is normal and other, asusming spot is abnormal.
present first stimulus. depending on px response, create new probablity function. aligned with staricase's estimation of dB.
repeat until 2 reversals, OR sufficiently narrow standard deviation.
reduced test duration. same variability as staricase at edge of defect. decreased test-retest variability.


Zippy Estimation in Sequential Testing ZEST
creates a probability density function (pdf)
first stimulus is mean of pdf. based on response, create new pdf.
repeat until sufficient number of spots tested, OR narrow standard deviation.

Staircase
long duration. high variability at edge of defect.
tends to underestimate threshold be 1dB

Tendency Oriented Perimetry?
threshold of a spot depends on it's dB as well as neighboring points'.
returns same threshold as staircase.
underestimates at edge of defect (defect is shallower than actual. normal next to defective area is lower than actual)
spots only presented once
test duration very short.

OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
my head is so full of whatever now i can't think of anything else. i can feel a tension headache building...

**

Humphrey's Visual Field Analyser.
is damn boring.
SITA, FastPac, Fullthreshold.
24-2. or 30-2.
because in glaucoma, paracentral defects, or nasal step. more defect occur nasally. so no point doing a full field waste time, cause fatigue, decrease reliaiblity of results.
5 size targets. except in SITa.

printout!
catch trials (fixation loss, false positive, false negative)
total deviation plot
pattern deviation plot
Global indices: mean diation, pattern standard deviation, Short term flunctuation, corrected pattern standard deviation.
gaze tracker
raw data and greyscale
glaucoma hemifield test: borderline, w/i normal limits, or outside normal limits.


damn i am bored.

Neurological causes of Visual Field Defects! is a bitch!
optic nerve! circle of haller zinn. posteriorly are the pia arterioles. anteriorly are the posterior ciliary arteries. reduced perfusion in the surrounding ciliary arteries = reduced perfusion at Haller-Zinn --> superior or inferior altitudinal defect.

pre-chiasmal lesions!: RAPD. decreased VA. CVD. optic atrophy after a few weeks. macular fibers vulnerable cuz they are thin and fine. unilateral.

Chiasmal lesions: bilateral.
pituitary gland tumour: large before VF defect. starts superiorly and progresses to infeior VF?????? or opposite? asymmetric. VA affected in one eye if optic tract invovled?? or was it nerve?
do not respect the midline.
heteronymous.
chiasmal blood supply: circle of willis! internal carotid artery, anterior and posterior communicating arteries. anterior and posterior cerebral arteries. basilar artery, although some say that isnt part of the circle. :S

Postchiasmal lesions
respect midline. homonymous.
PreLGN
possible optic atrophy. possible RAPD. possible VA reduction.
not congruous.

LGN: no optic atrophy. sectaronopia. depends on which bloodvessel is affected.
supplied by the posterior cerebral artery , anterior and posterior choroidal arteries. medial and lateral (anterior choroidal) and central is from posterior choroidal artery.

POST LGN: no RAPD. increasing congruity. increasing macular sparing.
Parietal lobe lesion or temporal lobe lesion (pie in the sky)
optic radiations: anterior portion supplied by the ANTERIOR choroidal artery.
posterior portion supplied by the deep optic artery.

Visual Cortex: macular sparing (crosslinking of signals between the left and right, dual blood supply to cortex. large number of fibers for vision from macula). congruous.
unless u get a biliateral occipital lobe lesion. affecting the inferior of the calcarine fissure. then u'll get a bilateral superior VF defect.
blood supply is from posterior choroidal artery (branch of posterior cerebral artery) and middle cerebral artery, which anastomoses with the posterior cerebral artery. i think.

i must not miss a question tmr. bloody hell.
if they printed the questions and answerspace in the same booklet i wouldnt always overlook questions!!!!!

can someone tell me why we use 24-2 for glaucoma and not 30-2?
what causes bi-nasal visual field defect?

thank goodness the lecture notes are useless. if there were possible exam questions in there i will die. die die die die die. because the paper is tmr and i can only say im 50% done. 50% because i only have a vague idea of everything. can't really recall details. damn.

damn. it's ok. it's only 2am.

it's ok. failing is ok.

damn. i hope i can wake up. 9am paper. mean i gotta crawl out of bed at 6am. or latest, 630am.

at least it means i'll be home by noon. then gotta start on the hardcore modules.

2.5 more weeks. cant go shopping till then! i can do it!
i feel a headache coming on.

strange. i cannot access blogger with IE. stupid IE.

i dreamt i kept making typos. a few nights ago. i was chatting on msn and kept typing rubbish. i tried so many times.

i believe it was a dream.

these things, after a few days, i can't tell if they happened or not.

*

scary. scary! instrumentation theory test on tuesday! i am going to implode!
but if i look at enough photos of ryutaro, which is sth that might cause me to explode, the pressure inside and outside my head will cancel out each other! i will be saved!

hai.
hai.
hai.

i havent started on the other modules yet! no no no no no...

my head is full of abbreviations now. TOP, SWAP, SITA, HPRP, FDT! i think i will soon confuse the threshold algorithms with the test names.

ok. algorithms are SITA TOP ZEST staircase
tests are SWAP FDT HPRP Rarebit and Flicker.
why is the SITA algorithm so complicated?

OCT GDx HRT IOL! SLO! FDT!

i even abbreviated the blood vessels! ACA AChA MCA BA PCommA ACommA HZ SPCA!!!

to cut a long story short, im glad pract test is over. i don't care how i fared
i saw a huge floater, but had no idea what it was so didnt say anything until the lecturer prompted me. :S i still find it strange. it was floating in the vitreous, but it had a long dark line running down it's side too? or was it a shadow? i always thought vitreous floaters had whiteish margins, not dark!
missed a naevus. strange. i must have tunnel vision or something. or maybe i have poor colour discrimination. although my subject was a really nice person. her eye hardly moved at all! even though i was shining a bright light in her dilated eye. and retinoscopy was pretty simple (partly cuz i already knew her rx) partly because she'd undergone LASIK and had almost perfect vision.
quite suay that 2 things ive never seen before pop out on the exam itself. couldnt be helped, so im not beating myself up over it.
i was the last to be tested. lecturer seemed in a hurry to leave. :&

next tuesday is a killer paper. i can feel my brain starting to leak information already. :(
why ah why... questions are never straightforward :( i miss primary school exams. i did not like the PSLE science paper though. that was shit. a bit too early to ask 'what are the disadvantages of building a dam'. knn. that's not a fair question to ask a 12 year old!

i havent started revising for the actual exam papers. the ones that account for 90% of the module grade -_- shit man.

new blogskin ! im just desperate for change. it is purple, not pink! and it's a guy, not a girl! a guitarist (Velo) from some band (Moran) i havent heard of.


wheeeeeeee watermelon!!!!!!!!! was surprisingly good. but it's the most freakin expensive watermelon ever. cuz by weight. bloody hell. last time used to be $2 each. now go by weight? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ????

pract test tmr. omg omg omg.

today i fell down the last 3 steps when i was going down the stairs. damn funny. i dragged my feet and tripped myself. lucky i grabbed the handrail in time, so i didnt land too hard on my knees. really, i was kneeling at the landing. very strange position. hahahah lucky no one saw XD i was laughing all the way back cuz it happened so smoothly. -_- very long nv fall down already. feel so silly that i still trip at this age. my knees still feel kind of weak noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!! not again!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i slept the whole afternoon away. nooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i had a very satisfying lunch at Subway and slept like a pig right after! nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!! but i had a very pleasant dream. not quite sure what it was about. it was nice. hahahahaha almost had a heart attack just now cuz i thought i had slept thru to tmr and was late for my pract exam!! when i found out i was mistaken, i went back to sleep -_- it disrupted my very pleasant dream though :(


im going to stop studying neurological causes of VF defects cuz i know if i try any more i will start to mix up facts and dig my own grave.

time to move on to other causes of VF defects and visual field analysis.

omg so sleepy. so sleepy. but cannot sleep.
i think the media player and my bed are the 2 big evils making it so difficult to study.
shit man. shit. net week is instrumentation theory test liao. shit man. shit. i've forgotten almost everything i typed last night! what was that stupid word again? homonymous? what does that mean??????????

wth?!?!

i do remember that parietal lobe lesions affect the superior peripheral fibers so u get an inferior quadrant VF defect. and ahhhh cannot count, confuse left and right, cannot recognise words
temporal lobe lesions affect the inferior peripheral fibers so its a pie in the sky defect. cannot form words, epilepsy, dejavu and hallucinations

and i bet what i just said will NOT come out for the exam! because it's just like me to remember useless things! i can't help it! useless things are more interesting than useful things!
surely what i just said abt parietal and temporal lobe lesions was more interesting than congruity, laterality, macular sparing and whatever, right?

argh. under cycloplegia. but this time not as much, cuz i forgot to occlude my puncta. a lot of it drained out. these eyedrops do not taste nice at all. :( so i can study! heh.

im going to sch tmr morning to practice BIO and wet ret a bit more. really ah. going to die la. i'll be lucky to score 60 (%) for this module :( this 15 credit unit module. :( :( :(

shit man. shit shit shit.

oh. participated in sean's contact lens study thing this morning. $50 easy money. took half an hour of my time. i am so happy. i wish got more easy money like that. hehehehehe very obvious which company's lenses they were. could guess before i went there. it's a no-brainer when there's only one lens out there that meets these 2 criteria.

just before i fell asleep in the afternoon, i overheard this programme probably discovery channel talking abt how the universe was expanding. and awesome images formed in my head (because i was too lazy to get off my bed to watch it). and explaining the meaning of a light year. and how some lady would sometimes write out all the zero's in a light year just to appreciate the distance. and then they were talking about how we cannot see the endd of the universe (as in the very edge) because we are limited by the speed of light. cuz the universe is dunno how many billion years old. and then something about not being able to see anything beyond that cuz the light hasnt reached us yet. and my memory's a little fuzzy now. hahahahah and something about mixing paint. and how the universe is not lumpy. so strange. aha! HAHAHAHHAHA!
i am so nerdy right now. hahahahahahaha!

dejavu can be caused by a temporal lobe lesion leh! maybe. i always wonder if i misinterpret things i read.

more important than the expanding universe, i need to memorise the colour coding for recording during BIO :(

different sources say different things :(

they were airing the history of singapore on discovery channel right? there was a woman named Catherine........Lim? was it?
wasnt she the prof who gave us lectures on liability and going on and on about how we could get sued for like, anything? she likes to say she's a kindegarten teacher so people won't keep asking her for advice cuz if she gave bad advice they cld sue her -_-. in 2 years i attended 2 of her talks and twice she said the same things.

why i always remember useless things!!!!

A scan. B scan. Gdx. HRT. OCT. AS-OCT. confocal microscopy. FDT. ultrasound. are more importanttttttt :( it is very difficult to remember these ittybitty details about machines uve never seen or used. :( :(

i sweeeeeeeeeeeeearrrrrrrrr these floaters will drive me mad one day.

let's take a little lesson on neurological defects causing visual field loss.

Pre chiasmal; Chiasmal ; Post Chiasmal ; Visual Cortex

prechiasmal lesions ie along the optic nerve are unilateral (bilateral only if very near the chiasm to affect the fibers at the anterior knee of willebrand?), macular fibers probably affected cuz their are finer and thinner, pupillary defects manifest, and colour vision defects too, if VA is badly affected. >>>>>optic atrophy only after a few weeks<<<<<

chiasmal lesions are bilateral. heteronymous (i will probably forget this word by tmr) which is a fancy word for saying 'on opposite halves of the visual field' so a 'full' VF remains >>do not respect midline<< usually a pituitary tumour compressing the nasal fibers causing a bitemporal field defect. >VA and VF asymmetric, starts superior-temporally and progresses to inferior-temporal VF<<

Post chiasmal lesions are >>>midline respected, homonymous<,, another big word to mean 'on same halves of visual field' so halfVF is gone.<<<divided into Pre-lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and post-LGN.

pre-LGN lesions will have pupillary defects, bilateral, VA affected probably, incongruous, localised optic atrophy

postLGN: no pupil defects, increasing macular sparing and congruity, no optic atrophy, bilateral. px usually experience things worse than visual defects. if lesion is at parietal lobe: cant recognise visually, can't do arithmetic, can't intepret writing? right and left confusion. superior peripheral fibers affects so u get an inferior quarter VF defect
if temporal lobe lesion: can't form words (muscular) epilepsy, dejavu and hallucinations. pie in the sky VF defect !

visual cortex lesions: macular sparing (due to blood supply, due to large macular representation at the cortex, due to crosslinking of left and right halves) congruous.

aaaaaaaaaaand everything in italics meant i left them out -_- really ah, my memory is shit.

size and shape (to determine congruity), depth, margins, VA, hx and sx, pupils, colour vision, optic nerve head

arggghh im too lazy to memorise blood vessels!

i only just got the circle of willis into my head. don't wanna rmb which vessel supplies the lgn, radiations, visual cortex. whatever!

i just noticed that when i recall things, i end up visualising where the word was in my notes. so i end up remembering random words here and there, with no idea what they refer to :(

wow. already 1 am. gotta crawl out of bed at 6. shit. shit shit.

day dreams are wonderful. and not the waking daydreams. but the kind u dream about while taking an afternoon nap :D :D
i just dreamt that i was halfasleep and dreaming of something. fuuuuuuuunny right. a dream within a dream. and it wasnt even a full dream. it was a halfasleep halfawake dream. in a dream.
HAHAHHAHa!
but dreaming is very tiring.

and half awake dreams make me confuse dream and reality.
in my dream, mum went out. when i woke up, i wondered if mum was home.
i suppose she did go out, cuz i havent seen or heard her around the house.

confusing confusing. i hope i don't do anything important in my halfdreams. confusing it with the realworld would be troublesome.

i am.... sleepy again.

*
generally, i don't like spiders. actually, i saw on TV that most spiders are harmless? harmless as in im not gonna die if one bit me. although if it was radioactive i might volunteer my hand...

i would put my fear of spiders somewhere near where ive ranked fear of drowning. although these are 2 very different things. perhaps it wld be better to put it near fear of all things severed and bloody.

the best kind of spider is a dead one. next are those skinny and transparent-ish / white. so i can't see them. they tend to be slow moving too. yea.

the worst kinds of spiders are the ones that jump. stupid jumpy things. move so fast i can't follow them. one found its way to this table. disgusting hairy freak. i have no idea where it is now. i don't really care where it is as long as it isnt on or near me. please don't crawl into my ear.

i actually imagine that all sorts of insects will crawl into my ear. i heard someone had a cockroach die in his ear once. some guy in a foreign country. ever since i heard that, my life has changed. i feel like sticking earplugs in. plug up my ears, nostrils and mouth. but if i did that i wld probably suffocate.

it is a cruel world.

oh speaking of spiders. i saw a japanese restaurant in Jusco (one of the malls in johor?) that was serving spider ramen. i think it's just ramen with tempura ... squid legs? arranged like a huge tarantula?
great idea man. *gag*

i think the guy in charge of music did a good job this year.
and guess what? finally an NDP song that will not make me want to jump off the building! got a brit band feeling lei..

singapore idol auditions were hilarious. krauser made me laugh cuz of the song he was singing. forgot what it was. oh love the part where the young boy started crying when he saw krauser. that rocked. he probably had nightmares after that.

k thats all for NDP. think we're going to Johor in like.... 5 hours. i need to get some sleep. shouldnt be going, actually. shld be studying :(

there is a page in The Straits Times Lifestyle section where they devote half a column to a fake celebrity facebook page. status updates, fake wall posts etc.

it is definitely one of the worst columns ever. i would expect it in a tabloid, or a teen magazine, or some silly publication, not the straits times. it reads like something a teenager would come up with. not professional at all.

it screams half-hearted. it screams trying too hard to keep up with changing times.

i think a page full of ads would do better than this crap.

u know there's that saying that wearing headphones for 2 hours or whatever increases the bacterial population in your ear by A LOT??

i nv really thought abt it since i never used headphones until now
and now that i do
i realised that couldnt be possible, because under ideal conditions, don't they take 3 hours or so to double their population?

oh microbiology. how it annoyed me when XJ waved the petri dish of bacteria in my face.

i love my headphones. they are so much better than earphones. the difference in sound is just worlds apart. and it blocks out all that outside noise too. so much that sometimes i wonder if im breathing too loudly.


i always say, in order to appreciate the good, we must go through the bad?
im becoming so shit-nerdy, wonder what im getting in return?

damn sian u know. feeling so nerdy. on the train, hugging a thick visual optics book. or reading lecture notes. or doing calculations. scribbling all over the paper.

now i can't nap on the train without feeling guilty, like im wasting time. i feel like im wasting time if i do anything other than study.

so nerdy.

ive got a very nerdy face. i need more eyeliner. and i need boots. hahahahahahaha

bad mood. everyday bad mood. maybe i broke too many mirrors.

definition of stuffy

Main Entry: stuffy
Pronunciation: \ˈstə-fē\
Function: adjective
Inflected Form(s): stuff·i·er; stuff·i·est
Date: 1798
1 : ill-natured, ill-humored2 : lacking in vitality or interest : stodgy, dull3 a : oppressive to the breathing : close b : stuffed up 4 a : narrowly inflexible in standards of conduct : self-righteous b : stiffly conventional : priggish

from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stuffy

when i say the room is stuffy, i mean the air quality, ventilation is bad. if i said it was warm or i was feeling warm i am referring to heat and temperature. did u pass English? thats why when i say switch on the A/C, it's so stuffy, don't tell me to take off my hoodie cuz everyone else is feeling cold. when i reply, that (taking off my hoodie) will make me feel cooler, but it wouldnt make it less stuffy don't tell me to take off my hoodie (because i heard u right the first time) and make me appear like a selfish bitch in front of the class.

wtf.

i didnt say set the thermostat at 16degrees and turn up the fan speed! knn! turn it up to 28degrees if u want! WHATEVER crazy people who don't need to breathe. or have u all grown accustomed to breathing shitty air, with the stupid haze and stifling weather we've been having lately

i am unhappy. i am more than unhappy. went to far east to get a pair of shoes. waited so long for the owner to return from lunch, and then when i returned, she told me she sold the pair i wanted. WTF. im so pissed! super upset u know! i called just beforehand and she said she had them. and when i got there 10 minutes later she told me someone she thought was me bought them. and im like, WTF and i don't quite believe her. i so don't want those shoes anymore.

wasted my afternoon. hate hate hate hate hate! WASTED! HATE! HATE HATE!!!! :@

at 930pm, i thought i was starting to feel sleepy. so i went to bed. by 1030 i realised i had made a mistake. i was so desperate to fall asleep i had taken up a strange kneeling position with my face in my pillow. obviously that didnt work. so i came back here.

fried a piece of prata and 3 nuggets for dinner at 11pm. and read some notes so i won't feel guilty.

it is now past 2am. and yes! i am starting to yawn! yes! yes!yes! yes!

i am so sick of trying to fall asleep!

very stressed. i don't remember the last time i felt so stressed.
out of habit, my mind thinks of eating, but my mouth and stomach don't feel like entertaining food.
damn sian damn sian damn sian.

i cant relate to anything. i cant link anything. i read all these things but nothing makes sense. or they make sense for 1 minute, and ive forgotten it the next.

and i worry about not having enough time to finish the paper. cuz 1.5hours really is crap. it is ok if the whole paper was about calculations, cuz i can't punch numbers quick enough. my fingers get a lot of practice on this keyboard. but questions that go 'describe' or 'explain' will kill me man. AND THEN there's the fact that for MCQ / true/false questions GIVING THE WRONG ANSWER is worse than not giving an answer at all, cuz THEY FREAKIN HELL DEDUCT MARKS FOR WRONG ANSWERS.

k whatever. so this is how UM does it. so many people have gone through it. i'll just suck it up and deal with it.

and then mum was like 'why are u playing the computer all day. why arent u studying.' while i was watching that coffee princ kdrama (good show, btw, do check it out) and i just ignored her.
i have been studying. i study a bit. watch a bit. then study somemore. and at 9pm i knew i was at my limit so i stopped. but i'd been at it since 5 or 6pm goddammit.
and then dad comes along and asks me the same innocent-enough question. but im stressed enough man. so i just shouted at them that just cuz they havent seen me studying doesnt mean i havent. and i know theyre just asking cuz their concerned but iiiiiiiii reeeeeeeeeally can't stand it anymore.

what the hell. mum was watching tv / asleep on the sofa since she got back from work HOW THE HELL WOULD SHE HAVE SEEN ME STUDY? AND DAD ONLY JUST GOT BACK AT 830pm, technically i was revising at that time, BUT HE DIDNT SEE IT!!!!!!!

then again, im not studying for them to SEE. im studying because im seriously worried i will fail. i don't even care if i dont score GREAT i just want to PASS. and it's enough that every fucking minute all im thinking about are the papers and how nothing seems to be going in and how i won't have time to finish the papers. and ESPECIALLY the fact that the lecture notes for Instrumentation module ARE FUCKING USELESS because chris sets questions that he doesnt cover in class. and sure, he gave us these 'extra reading' articles, but it's different when u have someone to explain it to u! shiitttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt and i already did badly enough for instrumentation. just passed my first theory and practical tests. and week after next we have the second tests. and dammit i still suck with the practical work. not to mention i'd probably be recovering from cycloplegia on the day itself. it's no biggie, not being able to see your fingers clearly on an exam day, it's just great, PSYCHOLOGICALLY

uni modules are tough enough as it is why do they have to make it tougher!!!!!

I WANT TO BREAK SOMETHING DAMMMMMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!




















































WHATEVER MAN.