Side Effect of Narela: Missing PoTF and Friends
Note: The photos do not belong to me. They are the work of Animesh Ray. Do check his site out for some fabulous photographs. It is 2 AM in the morning, and I cannot go to sleep. As one PoTF favorite after another rolls off my laptop, I feel an myself retreating into a cocoon […]
Protocol Writing Workshop 2012 and Falling in Love… with UCMS!
As residents, one of the most important things that we have to do is complete a dissertation, or thesis in course of our training. This is one of the credits we need to have obtained in order to be eligible to sit for the final MD exams. The basic aim of doing a thesis is […]
Despatch from Narela: Another Rural Posting Experience
It has been quite a long hiatus since I last wrote here, and a plethora of changes have affected my life since then. I hope to write about them sometime, and start writing here on a more regular basis, as before. Tonight’s post comes from a sleepy place called Narela, situated at the Delhi-Haryana border, […]
Ajit Sengupta: Burning Bright
Today marks 2 years since that fateful day when Ajit Sengupta passed away. As one of the many admirers and students of this wonderful teacher, my heart fills with an indescribable heaviness as I sit down top type out this post. As all his students remember, he had a unique posture while teaching. He never […]
Peter Binfield Leaves PLOSONE to Found A Novel OA Journal
Peter Binfield joined PLoS ONE in March 2008, when the journal was merely a new fangled concept looked on with a lot of suspicion. Certain editors were worried that it would become the dumping ground for rejected papers because of its policy to publish all methodologically and scientifically sound papers without any concern about its […]
International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO)
Hat tip to David for putting me up to this. International Day Against Homophobia is celebrated every year on May 17, and promotes the concepts of tolerance and acceptance, which is basically all that “the gays” are asking from society. I have been a long time, vociferous supporter of the gay rights movement in my […]
On Being A Gadfly
Although this is the age of Evidence Based Medicine, in large parts of our country, the “E” in EBM does not stand for Evidence, and more often than not, means “Eminence”. Medicine, for a long time, was resistant to the influx of new ideas. While reading the Gawande article on the History of Surgery in […]
What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger
When Chris Rumble, an American Hockey player aged all of 22 years was diagnosed with Leukemia, he was, understandably crushed. But, he brought together the Hemato-Oncology floor of the Seattle Children’s Hospital together for a fantastic remake of the fantastic Kelly Clarkson number, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It has already gone viral, […]
Indo-Pak Medical Students Romance the Border: A JPMS Initiative
From the press release of the Journal of Pakistan Medical Students, an endeavor worth the accolades: A Peace Initiative: A Group of Young Researchers And Doctors of India and Pakistan bridges the Divide KARACHI: The idea of publishing a medical research journal had been sparkling in the minds of many young researchers from India […]
AIIMS May 2012: Part–I: Nostalgia
First up, a sincere apology to my email subscribers for messing up your email with multiple temporary post mails from Windows Live. Sorry for spamming you, the program went bonkers trying to get a hold of my new blog theme (Nuntius). I hope you do not unsubscribe! What were the emotions that you felt while […]
David vs Goliath: And Dadagiri Forever!
In today’s Pune warriors vs Mumbai match, it was a battle of unequal powers. The Pune team was almost on the verge of pulling out of the tourney and were brought in at the last moment through diplomatic dialogue. Their boycott of the players auctions meant they had to settle for a sucky lot of […]
National Doctors’ Day & The Perils of Being an Indian (Junior) Doctor
“There is no greater reward in our profession than the knowledge that God has entrusted us with the physical care of His people. The Almighty has reserved for Himself the power to create life, but He has assigned to a few of us the responsibility of keeping in good repair the bodies in which this […]
The Passing of Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich died from complications related to rheumatoid arthritis which she had suffered from all her adult life. She was 82 when she passed away last Tuesday. Purported to be one of the most widely read poets of the latter half of last century, her work was marked by its true blue support for feminism. […]
Video: TED & TEDx explained in 70 seconds
Reblogged from TED Blog: This short, sweet explainer from BlinkTower tells you just what you need to know about TED and TEDx — and might inspire you to start your own event! Via TEDxSeaPoint, in Cape Town, South Africa. TED or TEDx need no introduction, but I just had to share this post because there […]
And the AIPG Fiasco Continues
The 5300-odd rankers in the AIPG were breathing a sigh of relief when the notification for counseling for Post Graduation seats was declared, along with dates and ranks and the rank cards were uploaded on the site. It seemed that the concept of online counseling which seemed innocuous on the surface but was fraught with […]
World TB Day: Make Your Own Poster, SHow your Support
Well, its not too fab considering I did not put too much thought into which floating head of mine should go into the image, but then again, more than the image, it is the thought that counts. You can make your own World TB Day poster by going to My Stop TB. It is very […]
TB or Not TB: World TB Day–No More TB
Today is the World Tuberculosis Day. It commemorates the day in 1882 when Robert Koch made the stunning announcement that he had been able to identify the causative agent for tuberculosis – the Tubercle bacilli. Tuberculosis is a disease that has dogged human beings from the earliest times. It has seen the rise and fall […]
Kashi Katha: Row Row Row Your Boat…
I went on a trip to Benares to take an exam and it turned out to be a journey of introspection and self-criticism for me. I was going through a really tough phase in life when I went out to Benares and this trip became a catharsis. There were so many things I realized I […]
Twitter Acquires Posterous: The End of A Good Thing?
As someone who uses email a lot, Posterous was the best way for me to get an online, no fuss site up and running. Writing and keeping up with comments on Scepticemia takes up a large amount of my free time and since blogging is just a hobby for me, Posterous was the ideal no-frills, […]
Game, Set… MATCH!
A number of my friends applied for the USMLE this year and it seems that with every passing year more and more people from my neck of the woods are trying to jump shores. The whys and wherefores of such a radical decision are matters for another post, but the thing is, all over the […]
Another AIPG Controversy
Rumors and hearsay have been a dime a dozen since the bombshell of an AIPG dropped on us and since the results were postponed, there seems to have been an explosion of sorts in the kinds of news just flying around. And like all other med students and PG perspirants, even I have been monitoring […]
MAHE: A Fantastic Test Experience of an Unfair Evaluation System
I took the Manipal MD/MS PG Entrance examination today (aka MAHE) and as it was the first ever online test I was going to sit for, I was naturally a little excited and tensed about it. I managed to work it up to a bit of a useless frenzy last night. But I must say […]
Landmark Order: JIPMER Asked to Reveal Test Paper and Keys
One of the biggest bones that the Indian post graduate entrance examinees had to pick with the system was the (?apparent) lack of transparency in the examination system, One of the things that could have easily ensured a transparent and clean exam would be if the students were handed the question papers and answer keys […]
TEDx Comes to Kolkata
As a part of a bigger TEDx webcast from Berlin, a TEDx event is being organized in Kolkata, at Eastern Metropolitan Bypass. The program is being supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. TEDx events have been organized in India before, especially in Delhi and Pune, a number of times, but it has only […]
Remembering Tinsley Harrison, the Oslerphile Physician
The past few weeks have been very demanding on me and I have not had the best of times, either on the personal or on the professional front. So, today, I took a break from the usual drudgery of life and decided to take a step back and remind myself of the bigger picture of […]
The (Alleged) Rajasthan PG Entrance Fiasco
I was thinking of writing about the postponement of the All India Post Graduate Entrance Exam in order to make time for an online counseling system to be put in place, but I just came across another bit of news that has left me wondering what the heck is wrong with the system. Now obviously, […]
Valentine’s Day Kills!
I wish all my readers a very Happy Valentine’s Day and though I am spending it in a rather sad and loser-like fashion, I hope y’all make a day out of it! I know this is the day when pink sappiness overrules our lives and the loveless ones like myself feel rather left out of […]
Blog-Gone Crazy!
Another blog has been silenced thanks to bureaucratic interference! I first came to know of it from Those Emergency Blues and then read the “main” obituary on White Coat’s Call Room. Here is what WC writes via Tex, the author of the freshly dead blog Weird Nursing Tales: From Tex … After nearly 20 years […]
