Ah, half-dead from doing my writeup. Doing septic arthritis as a long case, but now I'm wondering if I should. Oh, heck it. I will. They didn't give clear instructions on what's to be a long or short case anyway. And it just doesn't do it justice to make it a short case, given that septic arthritis can really be a dehabilitating disease. Got through most of it, and seriously, I did look like a big fat nerd. For some weird reason I did it in the dining room with my laptop, and usually I refer to a book, then replace it on the shelf. In the dining room, I couldn't do that so the books were all piled up around me. Left with a bit on the prognosis and social stuff. Yay! Feeling a little jittery now actually, since I'm supposed to present a case for Prof. Pho on Tues. Need I find a hand case? It's so difficult to find hand-specific things. Oh well. I suppose I could get a ganglion/de Quervain's/ Dupuytren's / compartment syndrome, but fat hope! Hoping for RA hands now, but the HO said that rheumatoid arthritis cases rarely come by. This is bad. Did a tiny bit of pharmacology, and after sifting through all the notes on anaphylactic shock, it just boils down to 1 single piece of information that we need to know - therapy is adrenaline. That's it! Couldn't bring myself to re-revise DM. Thiazolidinediones. Why can't they just allow us to use the short-form Glitazones?!? $^%@#%$ (censored) Right. REALLY need to work hard on it tomorrow, since I probably can't do much on Monday. It'll be spent reading up on my presentation case, in case Prof. Pho char-boils my arse on Tuesday. Dr. Thambiah was a HORROR. But I really learnt loads that day!! =D "Relish the knowledge", said Sir William Osler, and I really did! He was a tad unfair to Errol though, felt really sorry for him. Talking about Errol - anyone checked out his Friendster photos yet? OMG. He's got a half-naked pic of himself on there flexing his muscles. Scary. Gulp. Don't get on the wrong side of him.

Oh freak. I just rambled on and on and on. One thought led to another. How did a writeup link to the topic of Errol and muscles? Hahaha ... thankfully Errol's rather big in frame and tall in stature. I find the small-framed yet muscle-bound guys very, very weird. They end up looking stocky instead, or as yx hilariously put it, they look a little like the Ninja Turtles. You know, those guys that barely come up to your shoulder? I'm guessing it's to make up for their size, but seriously ... there's nothing wrong with a small frame. And trying to look big when you're not supposed to is just plain wrong, IMHO.

OK, enough nasty-talk about nonsense. And enough about work. I did a couple of hours of good, hard work and it's really time to flush it out and be good to myself tonight.

First off, I did some SERIOUS shopping today! My list of purchases: a monstrous piece of live rock, 1L of AquaPhos phosphate-absorbing resin, one spotted boxfish (CUTE!) and a red Linckia starfish. OMG, I got so excited over the rock even though it was at an extravagant $16 per kg. My mom would SKIN me alive if she knew I paid even half a cent for rocks. Will tell her I picked it up from the beach! It has a big palm-sized colony of Favites hard coral on it though, and I'm assuaging my guilt by convincing myself that the coral alone would have cost that much. Was once again extremely impressed by Henry's dedication and quality - this is the first time I bought live rock from him, I never knew that he individually packs each piece of rock and saturates the bag with 100% oxygen to keep the lifeforms alive! Which is, of course, the whole point of liverock. And as a plus, there was one turban snail and one astrea snail that came along with it.

And now for the boxfish. Shall post a pic soon, but here's a preview of someone else's!



Gorgeous, isn't it? I'm praying it'll stay alive, if not for the sole fact that boxfish are notorious for crashing tanks when they die or are stressed, since they release a potent toxin into the water. This black-and-white one is what I have, it's actually the female of the blue-spot boxfish. The males look so different! For some reason, Henry guessed that the starfish and boxfish were for yx while the rock was for me. We had a nice discussion on the observation that girls really love the oddest things. Pufferfish, triggerfish, starfish, boxfish and practically everything that either cannot be kept due to their coral-eating habits, or are difficult to keep. And they bristle at us when we come home with a boxful of liverock or a mated pair of flame angels (what's the big deal with 2 of them? Why don't you buy 2 of different colours?). Haha .. the eccentricities of reefkeepers. Good thing yx's very educated about this .. to the extent where a shopowner once overheard her using reef-specific names like calcium reactor and cocoworms and thought that SHE was the one with the tank. Grrr ...

There was also a tankful of Carberry anthias, which are uncommon in the hobby. Didn't have space in my tank for them though - I'm reserving the last 2 fish for a small powder blue surgeon fish (hahahaha ... SURGEON fish! I shall be naughty and name it after one of our tutors) and an alpha-male dispar anthias. But carberryi's are very interesting though! They come in 2 colour morphs, the usual carberryi and one which mimics the evansi anthias. Their natural ranges overlap and for some strange reason, certain carberryi invididuals later morph to resemble evansi anthias, although not to perfection. Why, I wonder? (Mr. Ye? I crave enlightenment on this subject of mimicry - don't animals usually only mimic things that are deterrent to predators?) But anyway the tank had both morphs, and even then the original carberryi was so much more unique.

This is very, very bad. I grossly overspent today, to the extent where I can't buy a new protein skimmer that I promised myself for X'mas. OK, the X'mas thing is just an excuse, but hey. I need one. To top it off, I discovered my phosphate test kit had gone very wrong. One of the reagents sort of congealed up and gave inaccurate results. May need to fork out some money to buy a new kit. Going to test my calcium later - I made some major changes to my maintenance schedule. Lowered the frequency of calcium hydroxide dosing but started on some anhydrous calcium chloride. Which is dangerous. Ionic imbalance of chloride in seawater.