[update] Extra trip to Melbourne.

Today I went into the City of Melbourne, to go to uni. I live about one hour away from uni by public transport. I thought we started today, since the original timetable showed that. But they actually changed it to next week, and I didn't read it carefully, so I came today. I wonder why they want to start it later though; our preclinical year is already only one year rather than two, and yet we start medicine three weeks later than UQ which has two preclinical years. I realize that we have done prerequisites though.

So I wasted a bit of money for traveling expenses by buying a myki pass for a week where I wouldn't actually need to travel. Ah well. At least it was on concession still, so it wasn't too much money. My concession card from biomed expires at the end of February, and "Masters by coursework" students in Victoria, including Melbourne MD students, don't get concession travel; as I discussed earlier in this blog. Nor do any international students. I really hope this will change in the future, to be in line with most other states, where postgraduate and international students are eligible for concession public transport travel.

Anyway. I still got a few things done today. I handed in a few forms in at the Student Centre and got a new student card. I didn't get a new photo though. I didn't feel there was anything wrong with my photo at 17 years of age.

Then I checked out some graffiti artwork of Girls' Generation (소녀시대) member, Jessica (제시카). I read about it online, and it was in Hosier Lane, Melbourne:

It's good to see their influence in Melbourne. I hope they come to Melbourne one day for a concert.

I also bought the workbooks for the Melbourne MD year 1, included with a folder. The folder is quite fancy, although it wasn't that cheap at $40.30.

I also walked through Chinatown today and went to the front of Parliament House just to look at the building. The Brisbane Chinatown is more fancy, with a fancy mall pavement. It might be a bit wider than Melbourne's one, but not as long. Melbourne's one is different among the Chinatowns that I have been to around the world in that cars can drive through. It's harder for pedestrians that way if you want to cross from one side to another.

Anyway, it seems like I will be starting for real next week. A few days left of a break which I didn't really plan for. If I knew that we started next week, I would have enrolled in an intensive course for Chinese at UniMelb's Confucius Institute which ran from January 9th – February 5th, 2012, because as I have commented on this blog a few times, I always thought it was good to learn Chinese, but it wasn't a very urgent thing to do. Ah well, I'll see how things are next year. If I did attend the short course this year, I wouldn't have been able to go to Queensland though.

Money: The universal gift

The holiday season which just passed has reminded me of another issue which affects our lives. During Christmas, birthdays and other times, it is common to give gifts to people. On the other hand, for the Lunar New Year, at least in Chinese culture, it is common to give red pockets filled with money.

Sometimes the gifts received during birthdays and at Christmas time, while given warmheartedly, are not used by the recipient. On the other hand, if the recipient received money to the market value of the gifts, then they could go and buy something else that they really want. In this way, practically, money is usually the best "materialistic" gift. People would either be indifferent to receiving money over something which they were going to buy anyway (apart from the time and effort spent to buy it), but they would prefer money over something they would not have bought normally at the current prices. This is something I learned formally in Intermediate Microeconomics, although it's not something you need to study to know.

Of course, there are some exceptions. For instance, if the recipient of the gift does want something which the buyer has better access to, for instance being a member of an exclusive club or if they already go on an overseas trip to some country which has a particular gift at a cheaper price (or if it's the only place they sell something), then the gift itself would be better than the money used to buy it. But for most things, this is not the case.

It's funny how in birthday or Christmas celebrations it is sometimes seen as being lazy or unthoughtful to just give money. But practically, it can often be the best gift.

E10 unleaded: What to fill your rental car with just before returning it.

Our family doesn't fill up with petrol containing ethanol, even in our newest car which clearly indicates that it can withstand using E10 unleaded (10% ethanol). When the price difference is only a few cents per liter, it is not cost effective in terms of cents per kilometer, since ethanol has a lower energy density than normal petrol.

Credit: Wikipedia; Scott Dial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_density.svg

I recently went on a trip to Queensland though, and our family rented a car. Because the car had a label on the fuel intake saying it could use E20, I thought that maybe we should fill up with E10 with the last fill up just before returning the car, because it is a bit cheaper (in Australia, there aren't petrol stations which sell more than 10% ethanol mixed in). We didn't end up doing that though, since the petrol station we went to last didn't have E10 petrol.


Thinking about ethanol petrol also reminded me of another issue which I haven't talked about on this blog. Using ethanol is renewable unlike the stuff from crude oil. It is almost carbon neutral, and environmentally conscious people may deliberately choose E10 because of this, despite the lower mileage.

However, that is only one side of the story. When you look below the surface, with the current technology, using ethanol is not that great. I'm not talking about your car not coping; if it's a new one with the sticker on it, using ethanol up to the limit recommended should be fine. I'm talking about where the ethanol comes from.

Right now, a lot of the ethanol comes from fermentation of food products such as wheat. If more ethanol is used for running cars, this means there will be less food available, if agricultural production is not stepped up. Increasing demands for ethanol for fuel have caused flow on increases in prices of wheat, and have worsened food shortages around the world. There have been some experiments on converting waste products from plantations into ethanol using techniques such as genetic engineering of bacteria, but so far their use is not widespread.


In the future though, what will cars run on? It seems like electric vehicles are getting better and better, with advancements in battery technology happening all the time. Right now though, electric cars don't seem to have as much range as petrol cars, so they are inconvenient for long trips. Of course, using electricity won't be carbon neutral or sustainable in the long term if coal is used to generate the electricity. Solar electricity technology seems to be improving all the time though, so hopefully in the future it can make up a lot of our electricity needs together with wind without too much cost. Nuclear electricity seems OK for the countries which already have the infrastructure, although when things go wrong, the consequences can be quite hard to deal with.

[update] MD conditional offer turned into firm offer.

A few days ago, my MD conditional offer was turned into a firm offer, and I was notified through email. It was something I expected to happen, since my GPA after 3 years was almost identical to just after semester 1 of third year (decrease by 0.01 points under the way I think they calculate it), but confirmation is always good.

My Working With Children Check card also came by mail recently, which is good.

Right now, I'm up in Queensland. I'm planning to check out a few medical schools (UQ, Griffith, Bond) among other things. I'm actually in UQ Ipswich right now to see what all the fuss is about. There's plants inside the library haha.


Meanwhile, in admissions related news, GEMSAS seems to have released a few more offers within the past few days.

PrepGenie offers a GAMSAT Free Preview Package

Since late December last year, I have been involved in PrepGenie. Right now, they are offering a free preview package, containing one GAMSAT full length practice test, one sectional test in Humanities (75 Questions), one sectional test in Chemistry (40 questions), and one sectional test in Biology (40 questions). You just have to pay $25 to cover printing and shipping costs.

If you're interested, then follow this link to order your preview package: http://prepgenie.com/free-preview-copy/

I have been notified that they will send the test papers within 48 hours of receiving the payment for printing and shipping, and there will be 50 of these packages available.


EDIT to add: They will start to ship packages out on Monday.