Crow's Nest...

While my computer downloads some stuff i have time to type a few words for my blog. I have been not getting time to scratch my head lately and all because of this damn exam that we call USMLE Step 1. Time is running out and i have still a lot to cover. I have been doing a lot of practice questions and the results are not very encouraging. I can really hope that the questions on that day are easier for me to respond to. I want to be over with it as soon as possible so that i can tend to other stuff in my life. Well, i really don't have any other stuff in my life! I think me and many like me are made to study and cram books. If we are not doing that then we are whining about life. Anyways i have got to go as there is a lot of struggle left at my end. I do need you prayers as this is one thing i have come to believe in so very strongly. Prayers can change fate nothing else can. And once i am done i am looking forward to reading a very very good book, "The story of Philo...

There has been a lot happening on the political and social front of our country. I am trying to keep pace with all the developments but things get difficult with USMLE a month away now. The World Social Forum organized in Karachi didn't get much media hype as one could have expected. Ideologists and socialists from different opinion groups were there and no Govt. wants their voices reaching the audience other than present at the venue. From what I have read it was a very successful event and organizers have claimed that their targets and goals were all met pretty successfully. This will certainly help boost the image of the city which is marred with violence and bigotry of MQM. I am much alarmed at the prospects of MQM in the next general elections. The savage party plans to expand its scope as a national party in the next elections. There is a lot of work going on under the radar to this effect. I am alarmed at the sprouting of party offices in other parts of the country a...

Our famous and not very own but Chinese motorcycle rickshaw. It came in vogue sometime during my medical school years. How can I say that? Because we started getting more road side accidents in our emergency! Anyways it came into Pakistani market somewhere in 2001 and since then it has spread like a plague to every nook and corner of the province of Punjab. All of a sudden in the ensuing 5 years the auto rickshaw has gone out of vogue and out of sight and it has been replaced by this thing that we call 'ching-chee'. What is this thing? Well actually it is a hybrid of a bicycle rickshaw and a motorcycle. Or better put: it is a bicycle rickshaw with a motor. There is more passenger space than an ordinary bicycle rickshaw or an auto rickshaw. If you are in an under-developed city then the driver can very easily accommodate 11 people on one such monster. whether this is due to malnourished and sleek nature of the inhabitants of that city or some other reason remains to be...

There is so much to memorize in medicine that one is at times baffled by the mere number of mnemonics that need to be remembered at any given time. I have been preparing for my USMLE and during that prep I have come across atleast a 100 mnemonics and it is still counting. Its almost that now I will have to develop mnemonics to remember all the basic mnemonics. I have always thought that learning by this way is not the proper way of learning anything. But when you are driven to the wall and have no other option but to memorize everything under the sun then I guess going by mnemonics is the way to go. I am not very good at making very good ones either. I have always borrowed those from others and that seems to be the problem when it comes to memorizing them. I remember that when I was in the third year of my school nothing that I read ever stayed with me. During the exams I used to laugh at the questions for I knew nothing better. Then I tried various things to help me get out of...

The scene is getting intense by the moment. I am running against time here. I am so used to it now that it really doesn't matter in that terms to me anymore. Things don't bother me on that plane. It is the other planes that have gone completely tangential to my life and myself. These are a tad bit worrying at times. Otherwise who really cares how it goes on any test? All is fate and nothing but fate. We can be instruments at the hands of fate and if we are lucky and work hard we can be good instruments. But we can not be fate itself. So why bother beyond a certain point? Why bother at all? I am not preaching any sort of complacency because that is the ultimate sin in my dictionary. All I mean to say is one must have sound and firm ground to fall back on in case it is needed. In my case I need to fall back on a lot of times and that has made me develop a firm belief on the inevitability of inevitable. I did miraculous work just day before yesterday. Did some satis...

"...One last word I owe to The Economist and its readers. I have been accused by The Times financial editor of imparting to The Economist a distressingly pacifist policy. In plain English, I am accused of being a peacemaker. The accusation is not distressing to me. I plead guilty to the charge. It has been my principal object during the past year to prepare the public mind for peace by separating passion and friction from reasons and fact; and if I could believe that I had hastened its advent by one day, and saved the precious lives and limbs that are lost in 24 hours, I should feel myself to have won a prize worth all the titles that Emperors shower on their favourites and Ministers on their supporters. That the negotiation of peace is a difficult task I admit; that the attainment of an honourable and lasting settlement is beyond the reach of a competent diplomacy I deny. That it is desired by all the belligerent nations I feel certain, and the fact that the circulation of The Ec...

I am not performing very well on my tests in Qbook lately. Rather I am too poor to mention. But considering the state of mind that I am in I think I will do better once I start feeling better. Those tests are freakingly difficult. Junaid freaked out of pathology and so did I. I have to really convince myself of their usefulness to attempt one and thats a pretty difficult ask. I am using a countdown timer that I downloaded the other day. It runs on my computer screen just like it would in the original test and gives me a good simulation of the passing time. I am too fast in doing my questions. Just yesterday I finished a test with 26 minutes to spare in the clock. I need to check my speed and adjust it according to the number of questions. Anyways this countdown timer has an option to play a selected audio file at the end of the countdown. I had earlier chosen Led Zeppelin's Stridor. I have a 20 second audio file of the group shouting "stridor" and this serves ...

One bad habit that we pick up when we leave away the good old lead point pencil and take up writing with a pen or a ball pen is that we stop stressing on the dots. Since ink flows freely from the nib of the pen there is no real need to stress that dot on top of the letter i. Just a touch of grace can bring the required result to paper. Its not the same case with lead point pencils where we really have to make sure that the point is pressed hard against the surface of the paper in order to deliver the much required dot. Many people do not like dots on their career pathways Dots can have a bad connotation in the minds of many and thus it is good riddance for those kind of people. They want to live away from this menace as much as possible and just make a passing mark whenever they encounter dots. But I am concerned with the habit of stressing, more than the value of dots, per say. As a child who writes with a pencil we often like to stress on points. We do spend a greater part of ...