Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin

This just about sums up how I feel, and why I feel the way that i do about pharmacology..

I know I'm not supposed to write anything here, especially since I should be immersed in pharmacological mechanisms of actions, vasodilators, antiepileptics and so on. However, as I had a short break, and was lurking around on the wonderful world wide web, I could not help but to notice that two of my friends both have written posts about friends just recently, and it god me inspired. to write about friendship:) 

I really appreciate my friends, but sometimes I am not very good at telling them that. Sometimes I get too immersed in something I'm doing, and totally forget about the "outside world" including my friends. You might say I take absentmindedness to a new level. Sometimes i forget all about them for just a bit too long, and it goes awkward when i try to recontact them, my excuse being "I was to busy with my head" Sounds like a mental diagnosis, right? And I get the awkwardness, I mean, usually, when people stop speaking to you for 2 months pr so, you assume that there sis something wrong somewhere.
Luckily most of my friends have gotten used to this by now, and just ignore this little fact.
Anyways, I was not planning to write a post about my absentmindedness; I wanted to write something about how much I really appreciate those I have.

When living most of the year in country that isn't yours, away from your "old" social network and family, you do get more dependent on your friends. When I get upset, I cannot just run home to mum to tell the tales of all my  woes; I would take too long, and I would've forgotten and suppressed all the things bothering me :P

(and yes, of course, I have both skype and msn, but one cannot expect ppl to sit in front of skype the whole day

 and wait for you to call).

Of course, having friends have other advantages to, don't think for a moment that the only advantage I see in friendship, is that I have someone to complain to!

Anyways, being down here, far away from home and the safe surroundings there, being surrounded by the constant stress of studying medicine makes you a bit more dependent on good friends than you otherwise  might be.

So, maybe not very poetic about friendship, but what I want to say is that i really appreciate all of my friends, even though I'm not the best to tell them that, or to keep in touch.

 

Kitty and his plans of world dominion...

Yesterday was a perfect sunny day, as does it look like today will be too..
Kitty took notice of this this morning and woke me up with a loud "MEH" in my ear, trying to tell me that it was breakfast time. Those kinds of awakenings shouldn't be allowed when its a sunday and we usually have to get up at 6:30 during the week days!
Besides, I need my extra sleep when I'm studying for my exams.. Evil creature.
I fed the piece of fur and hoped he would keep his jaws shut.. Alas.. kitty had noticed the beautiful weather outside and was ready for a walk, and not just any walk; it would have to be a walk on the fields..
I tried to ignore the kitty's accusations that he was being mis-treated by us for about 10 mins, but had to give up when he stuck his snout up in my face and intensely miaowed for some 60 seconds.
I found his collar, and he nonchalantly strolled to the door to wait for me to put it on him, eagerly stretched on the door and let out a little "meehp" to tell me he was ready.
Into the car, out of the car. So far so good. Heh.
And the on the fields. Since I studying for my exam in 10 days, I'm naturally a bit stressed and didn't bother going to the normal field, but chose one a bit closer. Kitty was surprised when he noticed this, and did not approve much.
He took a few hesitant jumps out from the car and stopped. Looked at me. Sprinted to hide under the car. He'd heard a thrush..what a wussycat!
Eventually the thrush flew away, and Sparta crawled out. Only to try to run and hide undeer the car every time he'd hear a thrush. Seems like he believes there is a world wide fatwa on him.

Scouting for thrushes

Anyways, after some 10 minutes of back and forth, we had a nice walk in the spring-sun. Kitty even got to chase some imaginary mice and desecrate some abandoned mice-nests, one can only imagine his satisfaction and plans of world dominion when seeing this picture


























Pondering what to do next...

Pharmaexam..

Some time in the winter of 2009 i really thought i could preterm my pharma exam. Then came the stress, and I decided that I didn't want to go though more stress before xamas, and set the date for some time in January.
January came, and I found out that I really didn't manage to study at all. My back was killing me, and I had no concentration left for the books. The result was yet another postponing of my exam date. This semester have been mostly about me trying to negotiate a treatise with my back that would last long enough for me to study enough to take the exams. These days, it seems like we've come to an agreement, and that I'll finally be able to study for my exam, yay!
Me studying for the exam is the reason i haven't been writing much the last week and also the reason why I wont be posting much for the next 2 weeks. After that though, I'll try to pull myself together and start to blog a bit more regular :)

The leaning clocktower of Banska Bystrica

After having spent all of Easter "home" in Martin,on Tuesday we decided to go to Banska Bystrica. We were actually planning on going to Slovakia's capital, Bratislava, but, as I still was deeply comatose at the time we had planned to depart, my boyfriend decided that i needed the sleep more than we needed to go to Bratislava.
I really tried to wake up in time, I did, but, as I couldn't even manage to keep both of my eyes open at the same time, I was grateful when I the option to go to Banska came up instead.
It was raining when we left Martin, but as we crossed the mountains and came down to the valley where Banska lays, weather cleared and we finally had a glimpse of blue sky.

Our first stop was a pan-cakery for a quick breakfast. I quite liked the taste of chicken and mushrooms in a pancake, even though I initially was quite sceptical.
After that, the next stop was the shopping centre Europe, which is absolutely heaven when living in Martin with its scarce range of shops. However, you must not forget that i went there with 2 boys, my boyfriend and Andy; and since democracy has a tendency to influence decisions, our main target ended up being eating at KFC :P ( which btw. tastes quite nice when u only get to eat it 2 or 3 times every year, so i didn't really disagree, I just like to nag :P )
The city of Banska has many sights, such as Churches, museums and even bits of the old castle, but we chose to spend the rest of our stay at a really charming cafe called "Labyrinth".

It had a really nice view over the town square, and as the curious being we were, we soon found out that the clock tower, which is some 500 years old and at the top of the square, actually was a leaning tower, being 40 cm of the perpendicular at the top. Also, we found out that the plague column in the middle of the square had to be taken down during a visit from Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 because it, as it was a religious symbols, was considered to be embarrassing as a background when he was to hold his speech.
Oh how i love the combination of cafe, WiFi, net books, google and Wikipedia, oh, and of course good coffee and cakes !
This little cafe was not only located quite centrally, but had the most welcoming waiter I've met in a long time.
It took him just about 2 seconds to pick up on that we weren't Slovak, and then offered several languages we could communicate with. He even had time for a little chat while he was taking our orders, and after they were delivered from time to time came by our table to check if we were all good! I love good service. As I am the literal cookie monster, I of course had to have cake with my coffee:

I'm sure the yellow makes it quite cancerous, and the heart wasn't made of gold, but sugar, but all in all, even the cake was good at this place :)

Sparta and the killer thrush

Living next to a bus and train-station has some disadvantages. The main being that its not safe for a little, whimsical cat.
This and the fact, that Sparta, our cat, was stolen (but luckily retrieved) after an afternoon stroll on his own, resulted in some restrictions on his out-time.
He still gets to go outside, but not alone. Mostly he only has to wear a collar. I say mostly because, when he discovered the amount attention he could get by clibing up a tree and staying there for 3-4 hours, he cho0se that as his favourite thing to do whenever we went outside.
So, when we take our walks outside our appartment these days, he's on a leash. He doesn't mind, so it's probably not as bad as I feel it is. At lest he gets to go ouside. Besides, in our hollydays, when we go back to Norway, he gets to stay out as much as he likes to.
Nuf about the leashes:P
As you might understand, kitty is somewhat of a semi-outdoorcat, or would you say semi- indoor?
This means that when he's down here, he has some restrictions on his outdoor-time, and should be using it wisely.

One of the things he enjoys when beeing idoors, is sitting in our various windows, hiting them with his front paws and "meeping" and "mraouing" out death threats to the different birds, just as in the video below.
When in Norway, this has quite funny consequences; kitty doesnt really understand that the birdies from the outside cannot hear him when he's standing on the inside in "killer-mode". So, when he can walk around freely, his hunts are not so successfull. Its kind of a give-away when he lies there, miaowing and telling them to die, instead of sneaking up, keeping quiet and catching them. My "mother in law" swears that the birds laugh at him, and i can't help but to agree. I don't know, maybe something in his upbringing go lost when he lost his free out-door-privileges? Maybe one of the things getting lost, was the ability to hunt birds? Cause he has no notion to keep quiet or to hide when he sees a bird, he just runs towards it and mrrs an miaows , joyfull that he can run after it.


In Slovakia, when indoors, his favourite window is one in our office, with a nice view to a lilac bush and a maple tree; the homes of many a thrush and sparrow. He can spend hours there, telling the birds how he'd love to eat them, poking his paws on the window: Although the birds cannot hear him, they certainly see that there's a cat there.
As spring went on last year we started to notice an an increase in the thrush's chirping whenever we went out. I didnt really care, just assumed that it was some warning to the birds around : "There's a cat here".
After about a week i started to notice that within a few minutes after the thrush would see sparta, not only would the chirping intensify, but there would also be more birds chirping the same thing. "How curious" was my thought, and didnt really care untill one day, out walking Sparta on a small patch of grass some 20 m away from out appartment. Kitty was carefully studying a bug, not caring about the obviously annoyed thrushes. I was sitting, plaing with my camera. And then, all of as sudden, a female thrush made a dive, "weird" i thought; and then saw a cat running with lihgt speed into shelter under the nearby parked cars. I didnt see anything, but ai had the feeling the thrush had been trying to attack the cat. But then again, thrushes trying to kill cats? Plausible?
The next day, when we went out, though not expecting anyhing, i was caefull to keep my eyes on Sparta, and yes; as soon as we got out the chirping started, the number increased, and this time, i got to see it: the thrush actually made a dive for the cat. The poor cat was more shocked than I was, and was laying on his back, paws up , and ears flat..What'd just hit him ?
As the days went by, the thrush's agressiveness increased untill a point where that cat would try to run away every time it heard a thrush chirp; and whenever the thrush saw one of us, he'd start chirping like crazy, preparing for an attack,just waiting to se the cat.

Long time, no see...

...So its been a while.
I had visitors from home, and after that, I've been doing so much else.
My visitors were my mum and my granny, who just turned 80 (my granny, that is).
They stayed for 4 eventful days, and left behind them supplies of Norwegian necessities, such as chocolate, smoked salmon and caviar. Oh joy!

The last couple of days before they arrived were spent trying to clean up our appartment, as, well, I wanted to show my mother that I actually can keep things tidy.
Its not as much the joy of a clean house as the pride of the clean house that made me into an obsessive compulsive dust hunter those last 2 days. Absolutely everything had to be perfect. This was my chance to show that I managed to well, manage a household, and that I was doing well and had done some grown up down here in far-away-land :P
(of course, this all has its roots in my astonishing ability to make my room back at my parents house look like its just been some kind of raid or something. I always blame the size of my room (which is barely 8m^2,I swear), and then say that I always keep it clean and tidy down here :P)
Ridiculous thoughts, of course; first of all, I'm not the only one living in this apartment, so i cant take more than 50% of the glory. I would actually think that my boyfriend deserves 80% of the credit :P Second, I'm way to absent-minded to really be able to keep it clean and tidy for more than a couple of hours without the help of my beloved.
And thirdly, and maybe most important, mum knows me, and knows that I'm about the messiest person living on this planet, so I really don't know why I was putting on this show of "perfect apartment syndrome".
Anyways, it turned out quite nice, and has actually stayed that way since, too :)


The visit itself was just perfect. We had just about enough time to see the things we wanted to see, and enough time to relax a bit too :)
We drove around for a bit and got to see Slovakia through the eyes of a tourist, and not a student :) One of our trips took us to the neighbouring city, Banská Bystrica, a very beautiful city which arose some 800 years ago. The main street is impressive, and we found a nice café where we could sit and admire this nice city for a little while :)

The 5th morning my visitors left for Norway, which meant it was time for me to start studying for my pharmacology exam. After a few days, I found that i had to abandon that project, as my back did not comply with sitting in a chair studying for more than 2 hours at a time.
This means that I still have an exam hanging over my head, worrying me, yay! :S
I still study though, just at a slower pace, so I hope to be ready for it in end April :)

Now, its 2 in the night and I cannot sleep because I'm having what surely is the most annoying cough in the world, which wakes me up every 30 mins :(
The cough medicine doesn't really seem to work, so I'm trying my own treatment; I'm simply going to stay awake untill i get so tired I'll wont wake up from the coughing!