I’ve completely caught up on printing out lecture slides (6 slides per page, double sided – saving on paper, and somewhat on ink), stapled all the pages together, have everything neatly stacked and clipped together. Printed off a reference package, sample midterms (for next week, meep!) and assignment information (due Friday, hello working on an 5% assignment in advanced – it’s 10 multiple choice questions, clearly I’m not too worried). I went downstairs, started printing off some sample midterms and whatnot and then my dad comes in, turns on his computer and then starts asking me questions.

How do I make a new layer in Photoshop?
How do I draw a circle?
How do I make it more blue/white/red/green/etc.?
How do I do [insert something that he's done before]?

Click to read more of this entry.

I’ve been sending time away from the computer lately (I was online for ~10 minutes yesterday!). I counted it all up, and I spent nearly four and a half hours in public transit yesterday! 3 hours for to and from school, then more time on various buses and trains. I completely abused my transit pass, thank goodness I have it though – it would have cost $15 out of pocket if I didn’t have my transit pass!

Going out to dinner last night was horrible. My mom heard about this restaurant on the radio and on a tv commercial. They serve “fusion” food (Chinese food and western foods) but the service was absolutely horrible. We got seated very quickly, and we ordered within like maybe 10 minutes of arrival. After we ordered our food for dinner, it took over 50 minutes before the first dish arrived. We’d called a server over (at around 30 min) to see what was taking so long. She apologized for the wait and promised to go see what was going on. At another time (maybe at around 50 min), we called the (same!) server over again, in hopes of just getting rice or something while we were waiting (it was a 4 person combo meal, so we were supposed to get rice and dessert with 4 different dishes) and she sees us waving, walks over, stops, looks at our table and then just turns around and walks away – without even asking us what we were asking for! Every single thing that was brought to our table that night (including the bill) was brought by the manager, with an apology for the wait every single time. One of the dishes was too salty, the rice was cold (!) when it arrived at our table, the person refilling our tea cups spilled into two of dishes and… well… needless to say, they didn’t get a very sizable tip from us. But seriously, 50 minutes? One of the dishes we ordered was a type of fish with vegetables – which should have been the easiest (and quickest!) thing to cook up. The table next to us was seated after we were, ordered after we had ordered and they got their food quickly, ate, paid and left before we even got anything that we had ordered.

Click to read more of this entry.

So today was day 1 of 2 of my first aid course (Standard First Aid for Health Care Providers – it includes CPR for Health Care Providers) and it went stellar. The instructor is so enthusiastic (instructors are volunteer-based, according from what he said) and everyone seems pretty cool. We had to introduce ourselves at the very beginning and I was the second of the students there so I was all like “…. Hi, I’m Michelle. I’m taking this course for nursing school applications…” (my voice got considerably softer by the end, haha) and then the instructor prompts me with “And have you ever taken a first aid course before?” (Answer: Yes, in grade 10 as part of the gym requirement and in Girl Guides, whoot – but even more years ago!). Everyone seemed super nice, and the course went fairly well. The instructor tossed one of the CPR-learning dummies into the wall, head first,

But yeah, the course has been going great so far. I learned about artificial respiration, CPR (and two-rescuer CPR), basic scene management, cardiovascular disease (and what to do) and how to use an Automated External Defibrillation (AED), which was really interesting to learn (and when my instructor said that they were idiot-proof, he wasn’t lying). Most of it was review from previous knowledge, but the group of people was basically a mixture of two groups: people taking a CPR course (1 day) and people taking the Health Care Provider course (2 days). So we (HCP people) had to learn age differences for both groups, as well as slight differences in what to do for various activities. So it got a little confusing on the test when it got to the very nit-picky details regarding exact ages and such. But overall, the test was quite easy (have another test tomorrow). Definitely liking it though, despite my wrist basically refusing to work after the first round of practicing chest compressions. My left wrist just got really stiff and really warm, which sucked (to say the least).

The most useful advice given to us from the instructor was that if we find someone trying to flag down help on the side of the road to not get out of your car and instead offer to call for help from your car only (and never, ever, ever unlock your doors or open your window more than necessary). Same with finding someone unconscious on say, a train platform – report it to an official, but don’t touch them. He told us so many horror stories of people stopping to help others and then getting mugged and nearly beaten to death, and how he had a friend who tried to help an ‘unconscious’ man on a train platform and the ‘unconscious’ man stabbed him in the leg with an used syringe needle.

I was basically bursting with excitement over the day’s activities when I got home and naturally my parents asked me about the first aid course (thus far). My dad was commenting on how I’d probably get sued for helping someone that needed first aid, and I told him that in BC, there’s a ‘Good Samaritan Act’ that protects people from getting sued for performing first aid (within the realm of their abilities – provided that they don’t take money) and he just shook his head and said “That’s how the system gets more money!”. Oh, and then he asked if I had to use straws at all (ahem, in his words “for cut blood vessels to reconnect them”.). My family has all decided that my father will never be performing first aid on any of us. Because apparently he thinks it’s a-okay to use plastic drinking straws to reconnect cut blood vessels… Guess he’s never heard of applying pressure? Not sure.

Anyways… The course is going quite well, but the last/second day is tomorrow. I did get quite a bit done after I got home from the course (ate dinner, went all “wtf” at my father for asking if we use plastic drinking straws, did an online quiz for my organic chemistry class – yay?, and read a chapter in my psychology text).

Questions:

1. What is the most interesting thing that you’ve learned today?
2. What is something fun or productive that you plan on doing tomorrow?
3. What is a career that you really want and dream about?

Hope you all have a great Saturday and an even better Sunday!