Meeting a fellow traveller in theater

Day 3: 

Wake up and breakfast.! Great as always! It was ricey :) R9 later ;)

Steamed rice rolls with sesame seeds, soy and ??liquid peanut butter??

So Blaine and I have been assigned to the Prince of Wales hospital, department of otorhinolaryngology. Our first task as medical elective students was to:

• Pass a test on handwashing
• We knew we had it in the bag because our varsity is all about hand washing
• We didn't meet the requirements
• But that's OK, because we're really good at washing hands (+sterile procedures)

Prince of Wales Hospital, we stay in the quadrangular shaped building on the right

Let's go watch a quick op
After not passing our test, we were moved to a new room. Now both Blaine and I have beds, previously we had been playing Rock,Paper,Scissors to see who doesn't have to sleep on the mattress. We can log into some free WiFi outside on our balcony. People are very generous with their WiFi here because landlines are free. After packing out and transporting our tiny bar fridge which has a few beers and dragon-fruit inside, we continued to the local anesthesia operating theater to observe keenly whatever surgery dish they are serving today.

Today it was a mandibular lymph node biopsy, nothing spectacular just yet. It is interesting to note that this is a government hospital and the standards and organisation here is of the same, in my opinion as South Africa's private hospital. But this is to be expected, considering Hong Kong's strong economy and the fact that most children are raised with the sole purpose in life of becoming a doctor, whether they agree or not. The competition to go to university is gargantuan, this is why schools run 6 days a week, most days of the year. A vicious circle, maybe?

(mid surgery) Hello, foreign friend
In the middle of observing the surgeon scalpling away at the fascia surrounding a frightened mandibular lymph node, I look across from the patient at a new person there. The other 2 elective students here are also South Africans coincidentally, Stellenbosch'ians to be more specific. It was quite fun kicking back and throwing a few Afrikaans words back and forth with someone other than ourselves for a change. We shall share more about our adventures in the time to come. Had a couple of beers mixed with table tennis.

Dai Pai Dong time
Dai pai dong was our next eating experience that was thrust our way by Blaine's uncle. This essentially takes place beneath the extreme high density high rise buildings, and because making your own food is actually more expensive, most of the masses come here for cheap food and beer by the jug.

There are a few culture shocks involved in this:

• washing your dishes beforehand with stinky tea (which you may also drink)
• your clear tablecloth should be messed upon and doubles as a refuse bag
• you are sitting on a plastic bench that probably costs 2c
• eating with your mouth open seems to be commonplace
• spitting out of your prawn shells happens onto the table 

Thanks for taking the photo Blaine

The Dai Pai Dong table

The view behind us

All in all, a good day. Blaine and I are chilling in the flat at the moment because we have rounds in the wee hours, and then we shall be having another tourist day. Life is hard being a med student. ^_^