Monthly Archives: December 2008

Xmas 2008 Reflection

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“I have been quietly going over my old posts and I thought I could review and update this old post about my Christmas experience in 2008.” – Ben

I’ve always been a fan of Christmas. The songs, the presents, the massive feasts. Every year that goes by however I feel that I’m getting less and less into it. When I was a kid I couldn’t sleep the night before Xmas. Now I glance at my watch when I’m up late and night and remember that Hey the 25this xmas….wow. Our family tradition of Christmas when I was young was that no one could open presents unless everyone was up and there for it. Getting up at 5am meant that I had a long time before everyone arose at about 8am. I was lucky in that my mum at least conceded that we could open our stocking presents to tide us over until the main present unwrapping begun. Mostly it was little cool things that could fit into a stocking. One of the more common recurring presents were those gold coins made out of chocolate. I’m not sure, but there is something about those coins that totally kicks ass.

But I digress, I’ve found that now I have grown up, and my family has split that xmas has changed. Change is inevitable, I’m smart enough to know that, but I miss the excitement that xmas once held for me. Now xmas has become a strange festive event. I love giving gifts more than receiving them. I don’t know why exactly, but I love thinking up cool gifts to give someone. I love getting something personal or practical that I know that person wants or shows I know them really well. I like giving a gift that shows reflection, and a true insight into the person. I actually get distraught when I can’t think of anything good to give someone.

I like to think that there is some form of karma involved in the world. If you are good to people, good things will come your way. Perhaps that’s why I like to give thoughtful gifts, in hope that people will appreciate it, and then return the favour. I did pretty well this year. I chipped in with my Sister to buy my Dad tickets to the Top Gear Live in Australia show, which he will love to death since both he and my sister love Top Gear with a passion. I really like the show, but don’t watch it regularly (note, I have all seasons of it ready to watch). I managed to get my Mum and awesome present.

My Mum’s Present
Typically buying gifts for my mum is the hardest thing I have to do each year. I seriously have problems with picking something that I know she’ll love, even though I suspect that anything I get her will be fine. I bounced a few ideas off my female friends and was fortunate enough to score gold with one of them. I eventually settled on getting my Mum tickets to see Eric Clapton perform live in March. Yeah, totally awesome kickass present. She loves going to concerts and I’ve been meaning to buy her one ridiculously expensive present since starting to work full time. I got my dad a sony a100 DSLR the first year of my employment, and I have neglected to get her anything along those lines. So I bought two tickets, thinking that she could pick to either take her boyfriend or me. I pitched the idea to her, and she said that she would actually rather go with me, so I said we could have dinner beforehand and have a good night together.

Other presents
I got my sister the USB thingo for wireless internet with BigPond’s Next G network. Now typically I HATE big ISPs, there is no way you could pay me to sign up for their rip off internet/mobile phone plans. But the problem is that my sister is living in an area which is kinda remote and is only serviced by the Next G network, so we were kinda forced to do it. That and I’m not setting up a dedicated internet for her to use, especially since I haven’t even got the net at my place yet. My dad will pay the monthly internet cost, but I paid for the big onetime payment for the pack.

I also got some presents for my friends this year, which is something I haven’t really done before but I knew I should do it since they’ve been really great to me over the last couple of months. We all went to the Hunter valley for a day trip (where I confirmed my new found appreciation of wine).

My busy Xmas – Part 1: Christmas Eve Slovakian Dinner

My Dad & Sister wishing me a Merry Xmas from Fiji

My xmas adventure actually begins on Christmas Eve (the 24th, and my Sister’s birthday). Since my Sister and Father were in Fiji for xmas, her birthday wasn’t really important this year. I was working until 7:30pm and then went to my mum’s for a Christmas-y dinner. Her boyfriend is from Slovakia and was making a Slovakian dinner for us. We began by having crackers with honey on them. The way he mentioned the crackers being the body of Christ or something made me think of that Catholic ritual in church (insert correct religious term here lol, sacrament?). Then I did something utterly stupid in the name of being a good guest, I ate a clove of raw garlic. Why would someone eat a clove of raw garlic? It was supposedly some way of ensuring good luck for the rest of the year or something. Now I’m not sure about it giving me good luck or whatever it was suppose to be, but it did taste like burning. Raw garlic is painful. This is the first and last time I will ever do that.

Personal Motto: “Try everything once.”

Anyway, the Slovakian Soup that we had was awesome. It could only be best described as a rich flavourful meat minestrone soup, where there were no vegetables besides potatoe, only meats. With a nice dollop of sour cream, the soup was great. Filling. Then moved onto massive Chicken Snitzels, which I couldn’t finish, and then pie. It is sad that the Australia culture hasn’t adopted the awesomeness of the pie. I am very glad that ribs have come into their element, being served at more and more steakhouses with greater and greater quality. But pie is also a great dessert. Perhaps the Australian mindset is too ingrained with the English associations of savoury pies, meat pie, sheperd’s pie etc. Hopefully pies will take off here soon, probably in 5-10 years.

 
My busy Xmas – Part 2: Christmas Day
My xmas day was busy. I woke up, got dressed into nice clothes and rushed over to have xmas breakfast with my mum. Traditionally we always have Betty Crocker muffins for breakfast on xmas morning. I love blueberry muffins, infact I think I’ve had them on xmas morning every year, except for this year. This year mum only got the apple or cinnamon crumble muffins. So she made the apple at my request, but put the crumble topping of the other one on top to invent a new apple crumble muffin, was pretty good. But considering I was going to spend my day eating I paced myself.

 
I opened my presents at mums, a few small things, and then went back to goto fancy xmas lunch with my Grandfather, Aunt and Uncle. We went to our traditional country club lunch and had the best buffet lunch ever. I love food at the golf club, but this buffet was awesome. I started off with: Prawns, avocado, asparagus, and a fresh dinner roll with butter. Then went and had the juiciest roast turkey ever, roast ham, veggies gravy, cranberry sauce and a small mountain of green beans. The green beans were served to me by one of the staff members, and she decided I needed half a plate of them, hence why I didn’t finish them. I then glanced at my watch, saw I needed to leave and quickly went and got some profiteroles from the dessert table. I love profiteroles, and these ones are the best ones I’ve had anywhere. These ones were so good, I actually ordered their chef to make me a massive crochenbush for my 21st Birthday cake. Yeah!

Then I drove straight to work and worked from 3:30pm to midnight. I brought in my massive half a leg of ham and joined in on the work feast. Everyone was suppose to bring in one thing each, and my mum organised to give me the ham. Work was great because everyone was in a happy and festive mood, and there wasn’t really much work to do because it was technically xmas eve in the states, so bonus! I did eventually get hungry and bored at 11pm that night, so I went and cut up a plate of ham and ate that. The breath freshening power of ham!

And that is my xmas story for 2008.

My GAMSAT Experience(s)

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Ok I’ve been told that my posts on Medicine and trying to get into/do medicine have been helpful to a few people. I’ve been requested to do a post on the GAMSAT, and since I’ve done it twice, and stoked anyone reads my blog in the first place, I’ll be happy to oblige them. So this is a post for Sharon, Kim’s sister and maybe Ed.

Preparation for the GAMSAT

Ok it is tough to recommend what to do to prepare for the GAMSAT. I would highly suggest studying up on biology/chemistry/physics. Jump down to my section “My First GAMSAT Experience” to see why not studying science is dumb. The hardest part to prepare for is the first and second sections. It is hard to study English and improve your comprehension of texts etc. I’ll suggest some things that might help below.

Preparation courses for GAMSAT

There are numerous preparation courses available for the GAMSAT, and even though they are expensive, I would suggest doing one. I would immediately warn you that you are going to be cramming heaps of stuff in, and bored by the massive amounts of content you cover in such a small space of time. I did a prep course called MedPrep, and they flew through everything in 6-10 days at 10 hours a day. You actually feel exhausted once you finish.

Brief overview of the GAMSAT

Ok the GAMSAT exam itself is an 8 hour exam with 3 sections and a 1 hour lunch break. There are 3 main sections: English humanities/reasoning, Essays and Science. I’ll go through all of those in more detail below. Basically you are in a massive exam hall, surrounded by a sea of people that are all wanting to become doctors. It’s a little overwhelming to see 1,200+ people all sitting at desks doing the same exam as you.

GAMSAT Breakdown – Section 1: English Humanities/Reasoning

This is a MCQ section, which is good and bad. Good in that the answer you need is in front of you as one of the options, bad in that it is difficult to pick the right answer. Strong vocabulary and English skills will help in this section, along with fast reading and comprehension. Basically you get given passages to read, comics, etc and have to answer MCQs based on your comprehension and understanding of the given texts. Basically you are working against the clock in MCQ questions, so I tend to skip questions I don’t know the answer to immediately, or mark a hunch and come back to it so I can get through it all without running out of time. The only problem with this is when you go back over it and see how many questions you struggled with.

GAMSAT Breakdown – Section 2: Essays

Ah the most dreaded and feared section of the GAMSAT in my opinion. Writing 2 essays within a tight time constraint. The key to doing this is making sure you know exactly how long you have to write each essay and making sure you can hammer out a essay plan quickly without wasting too much time. I learnt most of my tricks with the essay section from the MedPrep people, and I have no qualms about sharing them with you here. Basically you get given a personal/human experience quote and a political/abstractish quote. The first one, the personal/human experience one is generally the easier essay. It is designed to be on topics that everyone can have an opinion on. I think one of my essay questions on this was about Mother’s having their children grow up and the issues involved with that. So basically something everyone should be able to relate too.

The second essay, the political/abstract one is harder in that it is generally on a tougher topic in my opinion. I can’t remember exactly what the quote was, but it was something like;

“One cannot look at the past without missing the present”

How to write the essays. Now this is based on the MedPrep guy’s idea, and I think it works pretty well. The idea with the essays is to produce a quality response/argument over quantity. You don’t need to be writing pages and pages of gibberish if you can condense it into a page and a half. You are given a quote, you then have to identify the theme(s) involved in the quote, what the topic is. Then you have to construct a pro and con version to the theme, and then in conclusion sum up your thought on it. I’ve done this every time, and I’ve never failed the essay section :D

I would highly recommend reading “The meaning of things” by A.C. Grayling. It is an awesome book that goes through lots of good topics like: Love, War, Hatred etc all in miniature essays in about 3-5 paragraphs, and is a really good example of good writing.

GAMSAT Breakdown – Section 3: Science

Science, the decider. The science section is weighted twice of the other sections, so either you sink or swim with the science. The questions in this section aren’t based on knowing the facts of science (eg, there isn’t going to be a question that says; “the correct definition of Boyle’s Law is: a/b/c/d”) but rather it is about seeing how well you can solve a science problem. The biology questions are the easiest in my opinion, though genetic questions can be annoyingly complicated to solve.

The chemistry and physics is the tough part, well at least for me. Asking you to solve the half life of a theoretical substance, or the k constant of an reaction is really tough when your under the clock. I tend to smash the biology questions and easy ones as fast as I can and struggle with the rest of them until my time runs out.

The biggest enemy in the GAMSAT is time, you will run out of time if you stop and stress about a particular question.


My First GAMSAT Experience

I made the big mistake in my first GAMSAT of not studying science. I was just finished my undergraduate degree in Medical Science, so I was cocky that I knew everything and didn’t need to study that. Plus that coupled with the fact I did the MedPrep GAMSAT preparation course, I felt like I had science covered. I was wrong. I actually did pretty well; section 1 = 58, section 2 = 60 and section 3 = 48. Yeah, I got 48 in Science. Failing by 2 marks meant that no where would accept my application and I wouldn’t get interview anywhere. So lame. I decided I’d take another shot, I was so close!!!

My Second GAMSAT Experience

Ok, I studied science this time. Probably not as much as I should have, but still I studied. I got solid marks in all of the sections and was lucky enough to get an Interview with Notre Dame, which was ultimately unsuccessful due to a poor interview, but I was really really close to getting into medicine.

My Tips for doing the GAMSAT

  • Study Science (especially basics in chemistry and physics)

  • Read A.C Grayling’s “The Meaning of Things”

  • Don’t second guess your MCQ answers, unless you are positive its wrong.

  • Do a preparation course at least once.

  • Do your MCQ questions as fast as you can, time is against you in a big way!

  • Don’t stop and work out tough questions, leave them and come back to them!

  • Practise writing essays, get friends/parents to read and criticise you.

I hope you’ve found this helpful in some small way. Please comment if you liked it, have thoughts etc. And I’ll be there doing the GAMSAT again this year in a vain attempt to boost my GAMSAT marks a little higher.

Ball of Confusion

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Well I enjoyed writing my last long ranting post (“Remember, Remember, november“)

and it looked like some people enjoyed it, so here’s my next one.


Life remixed
My life currently under a little bit of turmoil. I’m on a break with my girlfriend of 4 years and I’m moving out of our kick-ass apartment into my grandfathers house. My grandfather is 93 and still amazingly with it mentally, a little bit physically weak from a couple of strokes (leaving him with 18% heart function). I’m moving into a little shoe box room, but I’m sticking my massive 42′ Sony Bravia to the end of my bed, which hooked up with my 360 will be ultimate entertainment. The problem is that I probably won’t be able to have anyone over, which I’ve kinda enjoyed inviting my friends over, having tv/movie nights, druken mario kart tournaments etc.

Merry Xmas!
I’d like to take a moment to wish everyone a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year. I know I’m a little late, but I don’t have the net at my granddad’s place and its killing me.

Super Supervisor
I’ve applied for a supervisor position at my work. It’s not the first time I’ve taken up a leadership position, I was previously the captain of a surf club. I’m pretty good with people, and know lots about our work. I decided since I’m going to be there another year anyway, may as well take on some more responsibility. My cover letter for the job was outstanding. So fingers crossed.

I really really really want this.

imagechan
I came across imagechan.com and have become completely addicted.

I have created an imagechan topic filled with all the best/funniest stuff I find. I have saved a heap of good ones, and plan to host them on here when I can be bothered. I’m going to slowly go through all the images, there are over 5,000 images that are mostly hilarious.

The only thing is that of all the images; 20% aren’t safe for work, of that, half are outright porn, and then there are some particullarly tasteless ones too.

Technoman – “The things you own, end up owning you”
While Fight Club is one of my favourite movies of all time, I am a super consumer. I tend to have some ridiculous amount of electronic gadgetry on me at any one time.

I walk from work to the train, ipod blaring whatever song choice I deem necessary (as of today my favourite has been Snow Patrol’s “Disaster Button” (Youtube link below for your listening pleasure). I then get on the train, whip out my sexy new Sony Vaio laptop and proceed to watch whatever TV show I haven’t seen yet. When I approach my stop, close the laptop, and take the headphones that haven’t left my ears the entire time, and back into the ipod for walking. I also have my phone on me, which I tend to check every once and a while. Do I need to watch my TV shows for the 15 minute trip, not really. But when I move my commute will be longer, and thus it might actually be worth it.

“Disaster Button” by Snow Patrol

iPhone
I want an iPhone. I have been interested in getting one ever since they have been released. My contract doesn’t end until some time in Jan 2009, but I’m wanting one!!!

I’m gonna wait till the end of Jan and see if there are any new iPhones being released/mentioned in the last MacWorld. I’ve heard rumours that they are going to go iPhone Nano, but I would much rather a bigger 32GB model with a bigger battery!!!!

Call of Duty 5: World At War
I’m totally addicted to this game. I was addicted to CoD3, CoD4 and now CoD5. It’s not so much the game itself but playing it online that is the challenge. You play against people that are good at the game, have strategies and methods of play that are unexpected and fun, and you have a reward system for playing more and more.

I was actually doing the beta testing for this game (ie, I was invited to the private beta testing before it went public) and I raced out and got the collectors edition on the day it came out. Why? because unlike most “collector’s editions”, which don’t really offer you much besides some crappy souvenir of the game, this one actually came with a lot of added bonuses. Bonuses include:
- Unlock a level 45 machine gun (awesome weapon)
- A week of Double XP (that means you level up much much quicker)
- Special gold name (meh)

This week is the double XP that I have been waiting for. In two days I’ve gone from being level 36 to level 46. The aim… to reach level 65 and unlock the uber weapon, the flamethrower.

Wiitarded
As you can tell from above I’m a video game fan. I own a 360, have it setup to play online etc. I also buckled a while ago and bought a Wii. When they released the latest version of Mario Kart (Mario Kart Wii) I had to have it and play it. Good little consumer.

But that isn’t the cool thing, I had a bunch of friends over the other night and we all had a drunken mario kart tournament.

Of course since I’ve been playing it the most I know all the tracks back to front, know some tips and tricks that noone else would, and hence tended to be in 1st or 2nd at least. But the good thing about the game is that it has a major element of randomness that helps newer players, and infuriates us more experienced ones. Nothing like having 2 blue shells hit you, then be pummeled by everyone elses weapons because they’ve finally caught you. Or having your sweet victory stolen from you in the final seconds.

Horrible spelling
Just writing this post I’ve never noticed how appalling my spelling is. Thank god for firefox and it’s inbuilt spell checker!!!

Remember, friends don’t let friends use IE.

Would you like some cheese with you whine? (aka, my new appreciation of wine)
I never drank wine before. My good friends have enlightened me to the joy of wine. Actually it didn’t really take a lot of convincing, just a really good Wagyu steak and a red to accompany it and I was set. We also went on a day tour of the Hunter Valley and did a lot of wine tasting. I had been to the Hunter before, but this time was better because I was with people learning about wine for the first time like me, we were all having fun, and no one cared about how much we drank.

Festival!
Not only have I acquired a taste for wine and expensive steaks, but also going to live music. I went to my first real concert a few months ago. Dragonforce. Nothing like a bit of heavy metal to ease your way into the music scene. Some of my school mates convinced me to come allow with them to the festivals coming up this summer. I normally don’t bother with them, as I’m usually working or it’s my birthday. But I’m going to my first festival, Nevereverland. Headlined by The Presets.

[after going] It was great, had lots of fun. I can see the appeal of festivals, but I think you’d have to pick good ones to goto and have a good group of friends with you.

It was insane to see the entire Horden pavilion filled and everyone jumping and going nuts to “My People”.

Heres a YouTube Clip I found:

Twitter
I’m curious to work out how to use twitter. The problem I’m finding is that I don’t know anyone that actually uses it. So i’ve started randomly searching for topics I like and commenting (replying) to their tweets. I hope this is how people meet like minded people on twitter, either that or I’m that weird random person. Oh well.

Internet, ISPs and pain
All three of these are related. I’m trying to move my internet to my new location, and it should be as simple as changing the phone number the ISP has down for my account. No. It’s never simple, It’s never easy, It’s never quick. The new location (my grandpa’s) has ADSL codes locking the phone number from other ISPs. No it doesn’t, my grandpa can barely use a computer, has never been on the internet, never had dial up and most certainly hasn’t set up broadband on his phoneline. I tell them it must be a mistake, but no this is what their system says. I confirm with everyone that there isn’t a number, but a fax line on the phone number.

Why is dealing with ISPs, in particularly iinet, so painful?? I appreciate their stance, but if they did the a good job of looking after their customers, like not making us do the leg work with regards to investigating technical abnormalities or sticking us on hold for over 10 minutes, maybe we’d be more grateful.

I’m seriously considering just giving up on it altogether and just going low maintainence (unwired or something) until I can set up the net how I want to.

Feedback on Medicine application
I went and had a meeting with Notre Dame the other day. It was particullarly good of them to provide me with this level of personalised feedback for an unsuccessful application. I can’t think of any other university that would bother with feedback, let alone speak one-on-one with a applicant.

(for context see: Interview, and subsequent failure to get in)

I’ve actually had some people read up on my medicine related posts and found them helpful. So I’m planning on doing one on my experiences of the GAMSAT exam.

Awesome new iTunes feature!!!
Omg ever since I’ve had an iPod and iTunes I’ve wanted one feature;

The ability to delete a song from iTunes and have it delete the .mp3 file also!

While this seems like a nobrainer, it has taken apple THIS LONG to incorporate this feature.

Assuming you have the latest version of iTunes, and your in your main library section (not a playlist) you just hit delete, confirm you actually want to remove the file (if you haven’t already disabled that) and a new option appears

SEND FILE TO RECYCLE BIN!

Fuck, YES!

Why is it important? Because I have a very particular system with keeping my iPod organised with music I enjoy listening to. I upload new songs and then listen to them when I have a chance, and if I don’t like it, it gets a blank rating and then gets deleted.

Actually, I’ve decided that a rating of 1 star is the new to-be-deleted rating. Because anything I upload and haven’t listened to will be blank.

Whatever, I like to hit Shuffle Songs and hear songs I want to hear!

rant rant rant rant
Ok, I’ll stop now… mainly because this massively long rant has now spanded the majority of Decemeber without me actually posting it.

Happy New Year!
Happy new year, my new years resolution for 2009:

“To keep in touch with my friends better, make the effort to see them, know what they are doing etc”.

.

Tis the season

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A blog post reply to Luli’s “All I want for xmas…” post where I was specifically requested to reply.

I recommend anyone that reads this write their list in a comment, you never know if I have you for secret santa or not!

Even though I don’t particullarly want or need anything this xmas, I have made this list for your entertainment/reply.

My Xmas Wishlist

In no particular order…

The Dark Knight DVD (Joker Cover)
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Another 1TG Mybook Harddrive ($239 @ JB)
for my endless collection.
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WD TV Converter ($199)
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Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe Game for Xbox 360 (~$99)
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Family Guy Season 7 DVD
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New Futurama “Movies”
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“Merlin Trilogy” Book by Mary Stewart
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“Gallipoli Sniper” Book by John Hamilton
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“The Western Front” Book by Johnathan King
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“The Last Watch” book by Sergi Lukyanenko

New Tag Link Calibre S watch (retailing at $3,600)
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Metal Bender action figure (so cool!)
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Beer Hat/Beer Bong
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Very Cool Joker Dark Knight Poster stretched onto canvas.
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Moving

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Well I’m moving again, and hence, no internet access at home.

So my posts will be somewhat hindered until my ISP installs a phone line and my top-of-the-line naked ADSL. I have no illusions though, its xmas and NYE.

Able to blog from work, but technically I’m suppose to be working… we’ll see how it goes.

Finally all moved, took 3 days to do.

How To: Move your iTunes library from your old computer to your new one

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Ok, moving your itunes from one computer to another without losing your ratings, play count, playlists etc is really really easy. All you require is;
- a external harddrive/USB that can transfer your music from one to the other
- a little bit of know how.

The quick version:

1) Copy all your music from one computer to the other INTO THE EXACT SAME FOLDER(s)!

2) Copy the iTunes folder from your “My Documents/Music/” folder (or equivilant) onto the new computer (replacing it).

3) Enjoy.

The detailed explanation if you got confused by the above:

1) copy all your music in the exactly same folder as you had it on your old computer.
I have all my music in C:\music, and it has many sub folders because thats how I add lots of songs at once, so copy the entire contents of C:\Music onto your storage device so that it looks exactly the same. Then you create the exact same folder on the new computer. What this does is trick itunes into thinking nothing has changed.

ie if you have a song located at C:\Music\Matchbox 20 Songs\Matchbox 20 – Bent.mp3
you make sure you have the “Matchbox 20 – Bent.mp3″ file in the
C:\Music\Matchbox 20 Songs\ folder on the new computer.

Seriously it was as easy as dragging and dropping C:\music onto a harddrive.

2) Copy the iTunes library files

By default, iTunes saves all of its files in C:\[USER NAME/COMPUTER NAME]\My Documents\Music\iTunes

Copy that entire file. It has all your ratings, play counts, and any music your copied off CDs via iTunes.

3) Install iTunes onto the new computer

Install and then locate the new iTunes system folder (usually the same as above). Just remember it will always be in the main My Documents\Music folder.

Then delete all of the iTunes folder and replace it with the old one.

Then load iTunes and DONE.

Enjoy.

If all of your songs come up as “cannot locate” error, make sure you have put the files into exactly the same location as they were on the old computer.

I was freaking out because I thought I’d have to manually go through all of my songs, when I realised that I didn’t have my old songs in:

c:\music\

but actually:

c:\music\music\

*phew*

Comment if you liked this!!!

To Alcohol

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“To alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems”

I’ve been hitting the sauce as of late. Occasions seem to be occurring a little to frequently for my bank account to cope with. I should probably be a little less social.


Tuesday Night Drinks

A new tradition of the boys is to go out and have tuesday night drinks. We went to Kingsley’s and had an awesome Wagyu steak and their good house red. Incidentally, the exact same place/meal that resulted in my new found appreciation of wine (that and a fun trip to the Hunter Valley).

After doing our little pub crawl around Sydney CBD, stopping at one place for Jager Nukes (see below), we generally end up at a cheap little pub and spend the rest of the night talking crap and drinking until 2-3am.

Jager Nukes

This evil little creation was shown to me by Francesca. Basically you take a standard Jager Bomb, but add a shot of vodka for good measure. These definitely make for a fun drinking night.

Wednesday Night Centurion

One of my coworkers was successful in getting into medicine and we had his farewell last night. Yes back to back with my Tuesday night drinking. We all headed to the Australian to do the Centurion – drink all 100 of their different beers. You can do this as an individual, or as a group, in one night, or however long you want.

Our company record is 90 minutes, but that can beaten I reckon. In hindsight it’s a pretty clever gimmick for the Australian to pull, 100 beers at $7-10 a bottle = $700-1,000 spent.

So we get there, drink and knock off 87 of the 100 before they cut us off for:
1) being too roudy/loud (official excuse)
2) It’s 11:45pm and they want to close at midnight.
3) The bartender is a complete bitch. Seriously, every time we went to order one of the beers, she’d give us the worst look, then go find it, then struggle to mark it off the passport and basically had the shits. You shouldn’t be a bartender if you don’t enjoy your job, and don’t work somewhere that has a gimmick like that if your a twat.

Ending up at Jackson’s.

“All road’s lead to rome Jackson’s”

Yep, seems to be a common occurrence. No matter the best laid plans, we all end up at Jackson’s. The fact that most places around the Rocks close around midnight, mean that Jackson’s is usually the last refuge for those wanting to push on.

Music, drinking, dancing, singing. It all happened. I was a one man band.

The bartender at Jackson’s was awesome. She made us do shots without using our hands, and while getting the shot into your mouth isn’t hard, its the fact you’ve holding onto a shotglass with your lips while trying to concentrate on swallowing that’s tricky. I ended up coughing while swallowing, shooting a small amount of shot up the back of my throat and coming out my nose. Total class.

Drunken Macca’s Pitstop

Nothing seems to be more appealing than Macca’s after you have finished drinking and wandering around the city. You walk in, select whatever you like and feast upon your deliciously unhealthy meal with all the colourful characters you meet at 2-4am.

This is a habit I need to stay away from, as Macca’s is my enemy and I never like the fact I ended up having it when I wake up later that day. It’s counterproductive to my weight loss “attempt”.

When I left macca’s it was 4am.

Go to work.

“…that means I’ve only got a few more hours then I’ve got to get up and gotta go to work…gotta go to work…go to work” – Homer Simpson

Set 3 alarms to remind me I have to get up and be at work by 11am. Did not enjoy it with 4-5 hours sleep under my belt. It also didn’t help that I had to have a cold shower because our building is experiencing hot water problems. Walked to work with my ipod blaring and sunnies glued to my face. I smiled as Slipknot’s “Wait and Bleed” came up whilst it was on shuffle. Was definitely suiting my mood that I had to goto work on this cold day with a nice hang over.

Got to work, thought I should eat something, and bought a bacon and scrambled egg sandwich. Bad move, it didn’t sit well in my fragile stomach. Haven’t eaten anything since all day.

More to come…

And this is only mid-week, I have a massive weekend lined up with Nevereverland (feat. The Presets and Klaxxons) on Saturday, then a friends birthday drinks in the cross on Saturday night. Then somehow getting to the beach on Sunday morning and then working 3:30pm to midnight… yay. I’m going to be so happy and cherpy on Sunday night.

My poor bank account. I’ve destroyed my last pay check already and pulling money out of my savings to fuel my adventures. I’ll have to ease up a bit and put some more money in the savings to replace it. Damn decemeber… so expensive!!!

Why I didn’t get into Medicine this year

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I had my feedback meeting with Notre Dame today and found out why I didn’t get a spot this year. I completely fucked up the interview!

I was surprised, because I didn’t think I did all that bad in the interview.

The interview mark made a significant part of the selection process, and without a moderate-good mark, you would have had to been freaking amazing in one of the other areas to get a place.

My GAMSAT mark was ok (not great)
My GPA was good (hurray for 3rd year being weighted the most!)
My Supplementary Material/Extra curricular stuff was exceptional

They said that my supplementary stuff was really really good, like top 90th percentile of anyone that applied. So all that lifesaving stuff I do definitely paid off. He recommended including an official letter of reference from the surf club, just to complete my application package for next time.

The interview mark was really reallly bad. He said it was like the bottom 10th percentile. Lame! I always thought I come across really well in interviews and this was the part I was least concerned about. Perhaps I got to complacent about it after all.

What I think I did wrong in the Interview

Basically I answered some of the questions badly and didn’t explore the hypothetical situation questions properly. I recall getting caught out on the “teamwork” question and on both hypothetical questions the interviewer asked me to further explain issues and had to help me along the right path, which isn’t a good sign. I’ll have to do some more hypothetical medical problems. It also didn’t help that I was nervous and had a uncannily runny nose/head cold that day.

I also think I didn’t convey my awesome supplementary side all that well. The interviewers have no idea about who I am, and I’m not a person that tends to brag about their acheivements. I definitely recall feeling like I hadn’t expressed all the cool stuff I’ve done that is relevant to becoming a doctor.

What do I need to improve on?

Basically the interview itself. He said that now I know what the interview is like, I’d be better prepared for it next time. To stay away from paid interview coaching, because they can spot that instantly and its frowned upon. They want to find out about me as a person, not listen to the answers that sound good.

Continue to work, update my CV/personal statement/references etc, keep them all up to date.

Should I resit the GAMSAT?

The academic questioned whether it would be worth resitting the exam again. He said that “most people don’t improve their mark significantly“, maybe a few extra marks, but nothing drastic. He said that if I could turn my 56 into a 59 then that would be a good improvement, but whether I want to resit the 8 hour exam for 3 marks, or the possibility of doing worse was up to me.

I’m not 100% certain whether resitting the exam will make my current 56 invalid. I would hate to redo the exam and score lower and then find out I fucked it up more. I’ll have to look into it and work it out. If it doesn’t hurt my chances I think I’ll resit it one last time.

So, what am I going to do?

Reapply. I’m kinda happy it was just the interview that screwed me up, I seriously think I can do a good interview. I just need to make sure I can get that interview chance again, shouldn’t be too hard since they already selected me. (FYI, they received 800 applicants, and culled it down to 140, so getting selected for an interview is an awesome achievement in itself)

I’m going to investigate whether resitting the GAMSAT is worth doing. I’m leaning towards resitting it, but will have to decide that later.

Do some mock interviews with some people, see if they can help me work out where my problems are.

I’m continuing to work, and have applied for a supervisor position which just adds to my CV and qualifications.

Was my age an issue at all?

He shook his head and said, “why? how old are you.” and then was surprised that I was only 22 and said “shit yeah you are young aren’t you”, he said that didn’t really matter, that all it means is that I can keep applying without stressing as much as other people.

So basically yes, I’m gonna reapply and try again.

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LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK !



“…in success keep us humble and in defeat gracious. Always prepared to give of our best”

The above was something that was going through my mind before the meeting. It’s part of my high school house prayer. Basically a very good adaption of the “peace prayer”. I’m not a religious person, but I appreciate good quotes, good idea and wisdom. Its resonates pretty deeply within me, hope you like it too.

Heres the whole thing:

“Thank you for the self sacrificial example of your son Jesus;
may we be willing to serve and help each other in the same way and in so doing, grow in maturity and strength.

In success keep us humble and in defeat gracious, always prepared to give of our best.

Lord, may we not so much seek to be consoled as to console,
to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved as to love,

for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in forgiving that we are forgiven,
it is in dying that we are born to eternal life”