Asian Medical Students Conference, Hong Kong 2006

Day 1 - Arrived and were shown to our rooms. At the registration counter, my name was listed under 'key to room lost'. What the.... Met all the UK delegates for the first time ever.

Went to have a dinner and met my group members. Chose the name 'ketchup' for our group. I know, we were obviously on a food high. Found out that my room mate is Jammy from Korea! Explained my key dilemma to her and ta-da! she produced an extra key for me... Hrm..now, that's how my key got lost..

Day 2 - Went for the opening ceremony and had lectures where we enjoyed a few hours of sleep
Your average medical student.

Day 3 - Ah, Paper and Booth Presentation Competition! Proudly, I stuck UK's 3 posters up on d wall. What fantastic work! Look at the fusion of colours! I looked around and -------------> O K. everyone's booth had some sort of decoration, pamphlets, pin tags, key chains etc etc to hand out. Laptops were everywhere.... and i turn and look at my 3 posters. suddenly they don't look fantastic anymore. Kinda bare against the white backboard that was provided. Hey, why didn't any1 tell me i was allowed to bring the whole jim gang from UK to decorate my poster booth??? heck,I don't even have the word UK written on d board. In the end, we managed - with a scrap piece of paper and marker pens.

Paper presentation was kinda great. and sweet. til they told us what they were looking for was some kind of anti smoking campaign

carried out in our respective countries. And UK reported on the smoking trends in the UK. O K. Way, way way off topic.

But i think we're unique and do stand a chance to win right?!
Yeah right.

Day 4 - had hospital visits where we interviewed ex smokers. One of them had lung cancer. Due to the fact that most of us did not understand cantonese, the interview was kinda one sided. And this was when I found my new idol. He knew hell a lot about medicine. Tho his english was limited, he could give us a clear picture on what was going on. His immediate diagnosis and conclusions were mama-mia! He was just fab. Ah, K-guys are just great. Shan't go any further...

Day 5 - (am) Went for the cultural bazaar. I was assigned to learn 'butterfly writing' and 'lion dance'. It was rather fun - learning how to write my name in colours and adding pictures in. Lion dance was crazy as well; i can officially beat the drums to the lion dance. and i've mastered the cymbals too.

(pm)Did social services. A stage was set up in some complex in TST and we were given leaflets to hand out to d crowd. Prowling the TST's Avenue of Stars, we had to literally beg people to take the leaflets. It's common understanding that HongKongers DON'T take leaflets. Still, it's our er... responsibility i guess. Part of community service and all that. After a first round of using cantonese to persuade the people, we decided to switch to english. Hey! They actually bother to listen when we speak english! And to the extent of taking the leaflets! It wasn't enough, we still had loads. Oh well. The easiest preys were children. They clamour to get one. The next was probably young teenagers and well, walking with my rather hot korean mate did work towards some guys. In the end, we just stood at the escalator entrance into TST's MTR. and forced leaflets into each person that entered or left the MTR station.

Day 6 - Last day! Closing ceremony was once again boring but i had to go up and give a 1 minute speech on how i found d conference. =) Mumbled a few words thru d mic and waved to d crowd as they gave me a standing ovation. muahahhaa...

That night was themed 'cultural night'. UK had been practising every night since the first night(well, a night off here and there) and we were all geared for our oh-so-british performance. Generally, we are d last to perform again(they go by alphabetical order). Other countries had high powered music and fantastic dances. Taiwan even belted out 'Kiss Goodbye' by Leehom in a really really enthu way. Japan's dance was the one i enjoyed most as the dancers actually looked that they were having loads and loads fun!(and then maybe i had only eyes for er.. certain people. or person) Had a role play in Thailand's performance- i was invited to be their host! - shucks,tho i bit the guy and slapped him a little too hard - had to apologise profusely afterwards -

Now...
It was UK's time of glory..... and we discovered that the Phantom of the opera music did not work. All our hard practise!!! All our hours of slogging!!! DAMNIT. So we performed without it. Not that good, but at least we managed to pull of the rest of the show and also the song 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life' was performed very well, to my standards, save for the bit where we all went off tune and totally messed up. The crowd enthusiastically yelled 'Encore!!!' afterwards (tho of course, we had told them b4hand to do it no matter how bad we were) and we performed that last song again.(together with its off key part)

Day 7 - So totally overslept my check out time as the night b4 was filled with drinking (beer and a shot of vodka mixed) with the koreans and playing all their drinking games and drinking songs. Kinda mental but i loved it.

Oh well, all in all it was an experience to remember, met loads of ppl, had lots of friends... and i have to say, i'm Impressed. Very Impressed by HKU's lecture hall and Medical Library. Much, way , a 100 times better than Edinburgh's.

What have I got to say...
i'm Proud to be a medical student. ( at least that library IS a medical library)