Medicine in canada

So my 1st week in medicine is almost over and im glad that it ended up with no big damage to my self esteem :p

So yeah i was assigned to team A in a quiet jewish hospital. My consultant is or shall i say was a big shot ! Hez pretty famous and a graduate of harvard university, hez known to be very sarcastic and pick on students and i was really nervous the whole time but he never really attacked me but definitely he was picking on one of the med stdents in my team. Anyway tomorrow we will be having a new senior, it seems that team leader changes every month ! The new doctor is known to be smart and really good so yay for that! Hope he doesnt pick on ppl too.
So my team is kinda small and things are weird here too
So in medicine, u have 1 staff dr which equals to consultant in kuwait. A senior resident ( hez in his 2nd year of the 5-yr residency program ) , 2 first year residents, medical students in their last year of med school.
So basically our boss is a 2nd yr resident and hez sweet and all bs 7ada mo mal teaching and he talks in a funny way! Ma afham shno yeqol!! And i dont know if this is good or bad but hez been going too soft on me :( i want him to teach me how to do stuff :/ and thenn i got 2 first year residents and they are amazing!! Like so smart and all, ill definitely stick myself to them coz they ARE teacher material and would teach me and stuff. Then i have one med student whoz thaay3 bl6osha! Hez not interested in med so he couldnt care less about what goes on here :/

So imagine!! All the drs in the ward are ppl in their SECOND YEAR RESIDENCY!! Thats crazy!!! Even in the on call, we take charge, year 2 with year 1 and medical students!!!!!! Now that was shockin until i heard the story of their medical school!!

In canada/US, u cant join med school after high school. U need to do a bachelor in ANYTHING inshalla economy! So they spend 4 yrs studying somethin else first ( my senior has a bachelor of mechanic engineering!!!!!!!!!!! ) and then u can try to apply for med school. Now gettin in isnt easy at all that people end up doing masters and even PhD to get in!!! Can u imagine that??? Thats why they are old when they join med school which is 4yrs only.

But again, i cant believe that they leave people in the hands of residents. People who are still studying for their subspeciality :/ but u know, its really impressive how much they know!! THEY KNOW ALOT, actualy they act like real drs !!!

So what happens is that we , the team, see our patients and write plans and then we do a round once a day with the senior who might correct our approach n stuff !!

So ya back to me.. So ya my team been easy on me and i want em to take me seriously coz im still doing my PEAP and once july starts, ill be officially a RESIDENT and ill be in charge of people and stuff :/ so i really wanna take advantage of the quiet environment and stuff to learn as much as i can before the real thing starts. Plus i feel left out :/ its like no one wants to be around me :( they always make plans and then spread out leavin me standing behind and im sick of begging them to give me attention!! Like today for example, ive been here for an hour and no one is answerin my calls or anything!! This is so frustrating!!
And i cant study in the hospital, its too noisy :/

Blaaah

Anyway i got no weekend this weekend! Im on call on saturday! So i go to work at 8am amd get off sunday 8am and probaby sleep all sunday off :/

Im gonna go try to find em now n if i couldnt! Ill just.. Urgh i dunno! Go home??

Sigh

She screamed:WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?
I said: i dont want you to get hurt.. By me ..
And then: and i dont want to get hurt.. By you.

And thats when everything started to fall apart..

my first on call

so here i am, sitting alone in this tiny on call and wondering what the hell am i gonna do ? ive been aconfused and overwhelmed lately .. i mean the system here is so different and im spending most of my effort figuring out the system instead of focusing on the clinical work. but i cant complain because my medical PEAP which i was dreading so bad ended up being not so bad after all.. i mean, i do feel rusty and out of medical shape if you know what i mean but im based on a laid back hospital, not like the old hospital where things were SUPER BUSY AND SUPER HECTIC @@ this one is actually more peaceful and people here are friendlier although its a jewish hospital and i thought people will hate me for wearing the veil. my unit isnt bad too, my senior is like a SUPER BIG SHOT @@ he's known world wide, he;s funny too and the rest of the people here are nice, kinda 6too busy for me but atleast im not intimidated by them. but ive been under stress lately and if you want me to be honest, id say ive created that stress myself . i mean, i still expect alot from myself and i still expect alot from others. i try to beat sense into me every once in a while about my unrealistic self expectation but i cant seem to break the habit of expecting stuff from others . i know that i would do those things to them so why is it so hard to do them for me .. but then, there is this part where you cant force people to do anything and more importantly, you cant force them to like you ... yeah so.. i think im going to fly solo from now on... i just wanna do things on my own , no expectation from others whether empathy, encouragement or anything .. it really drains me out when i feel invisible by others and i cant afford getting all depressed because of that . even my family dont call/ask about me and it hurts so bad .. i dont know .. im not really happy with the way my brain works, it seems to be very hostile against its own self and others . i dont like my attitude .. but then this is one of the reasons i came here .. beside my residency, i wanted time off to work on me , tackle those things that i hated about myself and find peace. maybe i should work on them .. yeah .. and TRY TO BALANCE. so yeah im gonna lay low for a while .. anyway back to real life events here lol .. so yeah its my 2nd day on my medical rotation and im on call. this is the first time i ever have a 24hr on call but it seems like ive been slowing the team down so i think they wont be dragging me out of the call room which means sleeping for me yaaay .. im exhausted .. bso its good news to have a good sleep but on the same time, I WANNA LEARN@@ I mean now im just a PEAP student, being treated as a medical student so im not responsible or anything but once i start my residency on JULY, i will be extremely responsible as in ill be doing CPR, giving electric shocks to save pts lives so its not a joke so might as well learn the system while i can ... so much to do, so much to read, so much to know and little time i actually have ..

Privacy in canada :/

Its been one hectic week, im glad its over! But im not excited about next week either, ill start medicine n im a little bit rusty coz i havnt done it for so long :/
So ill be spending my weekend on studying!

Im a little bit disappointed, i havnt been able to do any of the things ive wanted to do! Ive been busy with work n gettin all settled! I cant wait till i can start workin on my own plans! I wanna cook, i wanna fish, skate , take photos, hike b explore the world but its so hard with this time consuming job. I wanna date too lol so i better find a way :/

Ahhh my psychiary rotation was crazy!! Ppl were so busy that no one was payin attention to me and i did mess up lol BIG TIME!! Imagine that i was following up the wrong pt for 3 days.. The guy had a hard name so i never really called him with his name and i was examining the pt on the bext bed all that time :/ ashwa ena no one found out :/ imagine that ive been discussing wrong finding for 3 days.

Something that is strange here is the privacy!! Imagine! U cant talk to the family without asking for the permission of the patient, u are not allowed to even take history or examine the pt if he had friends/family over. U have to ask if thats ok first! Imagine we went to see this guy so when we first entered the room, we were like hey sir, im dr x from psychiatry department, do u mind if we ask u some questions? And that guy had some one with him. He got angry and kicked us out, which is so expected, alot of people feel insulted when questioned by a psychiatrist but herez the funny part, later on we were informed that hez gonna sue us coz we gave his friend the impression that hez a mental pt! So our mistake is that we didnt respect the pt"s privacy and exposed him infront of his friend by saying that psychiatry wants to check on him! Do u get it?? OMG THIS IS INSANE! We were supposed to ask the pt if its ok to talk to him infront of his friend n if hez ok with it, we would say we are psychiatrists!! Do u see how insane things are here!!!

U are not allowed to bring out of the hospital any paper that has any info about the pts! O bl kuwait na5th elfile ebkobra elbeet :/ !! Any paper that has anythin related to the pt should either fe in the file or SHREDDED!!! Not even thrown in the garbage!! Should be shredded!!!
U cant discuss anythin about the pt infront of other ppl or other dr that has nothing to do with the pt! We cant discuss it bl hallway or elevators or outside the hospital :/

Ya privacy is such a big issue here :/

Anyway, beside the hospital, ive been feeling really bad! I feel all forgotten to be honest! My family dont call me and i havnt talked to mum for almost 10 days.. This feels aweful.. I know i can only blame the time difference but even if we couldnt TALK, how about a message or two.. I really feel sad.. Like people did move on back home..
Maybe i should move on too :( i dont know why i still expect things from others!
Akhhhh those damn expectations.. They will eventually destroy me .. Whether my expectations from myself or from others! They always back fire at me ..

exhausted

i'm really exhausted .. i came here to live .. i wonder if am i gonna be able to do that with such hectic life style.. i didnt come here to be over worked .. i promised myself that im gonna reward my self with the best 5yrs of my life and it should be relaxing amd i should be able to do the things ive always wnated to do .. sigh

hectic life

so i have started working, like somehow official and its been hectic like hell .. before i come home, they told me working hours in canada are from 8am till 5pm but ive been going to work from 9am till 7pm and its been super busy and super crazy !! thing is, after work, u kinda drag yourself back home, u try to eat and maybe de-clutter a bit or watch something and then its suddenly 11pm and you just cant keep your eyes open .. its been a week since ive started workin and i havent studied a bit and its scarying me actually!! because this is not kuwait anymore, in canada, u are a REAL DOCTOR and you have to figure out how to manage the patients .. its really scary, i really need to find a way to study :( so far so bad lol , i mean, there were days when i couldnt see all my assigned patients, there were days when i ws kicked out, there were days when i was very much intimidated by the patients and their relatives because they know so much when it comes to medical knowledge and you feel as if you are being tested .. but the biggest shock is, ive been seeing the wrong patient for 3 days !! IMAGINE !! ive been following this pt, i got the file right but ive been examining the wrong one .. IMAGINE !! 3 days !!! i really dont know how i could recover from that lol so yeah, im doing one week of psychiatry right now .. its a branch of psychiatry called consultation liason psychiatry. its the branch that connects medicine to psychiatry .. so basically we see medically ill patients who has mental illness .. most of our patients are chronically sick, end stage diseases, cancer, non treatable diseases who ended up with mental illnesses like depression, anxiety or even schizophrenia .. ive always been interested in that field but now that im doing it, its kinda depressing ..most of the patients are dieing or really sick ... but anyway i dont wanna judge yet .. so yeah next week, ill start my medical training, NOW THATS SCARY !! true that ive been on my own in psych but i could never kill the patient. in medicine, ill be on my own and i COULD KILL the patient :s the system here in canada is SO DIFFERENT !! first of all, their hospitals are HUGE !! and it has alot of sub-specialties ..alot of impressive branches like memory clinic , smoking clinic , tropical diseases ... etc .. the wards are packed up with different people .. not only nurses and doctors but you also have social worker, psychologist , nurse practitioners ( i think a nurse whos almost a doctor ) , an advanced kind of pharmacists ( pharmcist who is almost a dr ) , physiotherapists, dietitians , sitters , spiritual guidance ... like lots n lots of different people doing different jobs .. its CRAZY !! everything is so complex .. even talking to the patients has its own rules.. like you are not allowed to ask about certain things and you are not allowed to share the patients info with any of his family or even other drs ... its INSANE !! like i said, everything here is so complicated :S alot of people would say its organized but if you ask me, i just think it could be simpler .. for the patients sake :S and yes its so busy that i cant even eat during work ... and i end up having only 2 meals a day, breakfast and dinner so definitely i should be losing wieght without working out .. but that makes me sad because i really wanna work out ..

21 days since i left home

It has been 21 days since i left home, 10 days since dad left and ive been on my own and have to say that i feel .. Lonely already. I did make friends and they always seem to wanna go out and have fun but i miss the parts of me that i left back in kuwait.
I miss my family, i even miss the noise my baby sister used to make, her annoying nagging and the way shez always yelling. I even miss hearing mom screams her lungs out at the maids or my baby sister. When i opened my eyes this morning, i felt so sore when i realized that im in the apartment alone.

I miss my family gatherings, the one i used to force myself into attending them. I miss my friends, i miss my friends so bad.

I can totally see that my new life will be a better life, its promising and i can see me feeling alot happier here than back home but part of me is resisting it, refusing to let go.. More like afraid of letting go.. Even when i know good things are coming my way, im just afraid of moving on..

So far, alot of ppl gave me good reasons to let go, some did it in a good motivating way, some did it in the most painful ways..

I know i should be stronger, i know i should move on.. I know i should let go and leave it all behind.. Start going forward and stop those constant look backs .. But i cant help feeling ths way.. I cant stop the tears and the aching.. I cant stop the self destruction.. I cant stop myself from doing the same mistake all over again

busy week

so its been a busy week .. no wait, not 100% busy but lets just say unpredictable in a way ... im still having problems organizing my days .. thats why i wasnt able to update my blog although i promised myself that id update it daily. so to summarize the last week .. 1. i met one of the kuwaiti psychiatry residents here. lets call him peter because he has peter pan syndrome. he has just finished the program (5yrs) but he's planning to do 1 or 2 yrs for the subspeciality . to be honest, i wasnt excited about meeting him in the beginning, because he just graduated and that makes him my SENIOR and me and seniors dont get along because of my lack of professionalism! so i was a bit hesitant but then after a couple of chats on whatsapp, he seemed friendly and not so prof if you know what i mean. so we met and he took me out for dinner in yorkville ,one of the most luxurious part of toronto, and we talked, we talked alot .. i opened up to him too quickly i think lol, we talked like old friends lol, we even shared an ice cream !!!, it was fun and i didnt feel the need to be professional or anything. plus hes only 29 lol . hes a really nice guy, he looked a bit na3im to me but naah i dont think he's gay! anyway gay or not, he;s a keeper :P . he also loved how hyper/loud i am lol .. thats new :P the best thing about him that he lived all his life outside kuwait, he left kuwait when he was 15 to study so he's pretty open minded and i dont think i need to worry about being misunderstood or being led on :D. p.s: i think i need to do some self control here .. ive never had guys friends before so im acting on my default mode which is the same way i acted with my girl friends lol but obviously, its way too wrong lol oh speaking of guys, one of my old colleagues , B called me the other day around 4am kuwait time and he was upset about his sister needing a surgery and stuff.. i found it a bit wierd, I DONT MIND IT but B is great friend of mine and i dont wanna lose him, he's been calling me and checking on me alot lately, i hope this is out of friendship .. i dont want it to end up like my ex best friend who eventually admitted falling in love with me and thats when things went down the drain :( ohh one interesting thing that peter told me that this year's applications were so impressive. he said the committee here was astonished by how strong the CVs are .. there were people with master degrees, people with alot of research and before the interviews, they couldnt make up their mind on whom to choose.. what happened is that i wasnt part of the original people to be interviewed OBVIOUSLY because of my poor CV and grades but one guy cancled the interview and thats when i got in but i still had to compete with other strong candidate .. the toughest was that suadi girl and the reason why i was chosen over her is that I MADE A MISTAKE IN THE INTERVIEW !! he told me that that suadi girl made a mistake in the interview but didnt admit it and insisted that it was right but in my case, i admitted it was a mistake and i told them that id seek the help of my seniors and thats why they chose me !! lol ... so i guess sometimes lack of confidence and being stupid can get you into places lol .. he also said that i should be REALLY grateful to be accepted because they are planning on reducing the seats for gulf students so the number will be reduced from 3-2 seats every year to 1 and they started doing this by only accepting me this year :S .. wow now i feel lucky . so yep, i got my ID, got my pager and the only thing missing here is my UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO tshirt :D .. i might be really excited about it but i can totally see me crashing that pager because it wont stop beeping lol.. so i spent my 1st day at work doing some sort of computer training .. they have everything recorded on computers and its so impressive, you can even read the notes from other hospitals regarding your patients.. it is so damn impressive but very complicated to. it was supposed to be a 4hr training session but it took me like 24hrs!! it was information overload to me :s and then u get to be tested on it too :s .. the other down side of this system is that its taken too seriously, imagine that ull be questioned if you opened a patient's file who is not yours or if you are a surgeron and you went to read his psychiatric file :S so i dont know .. ohhh even you are not allowed to discuss a patient's case with anyone outside your team or who is related to the case :S .. thats pretty freaky lol so yeah after i finished my EPR training ( electrical patient records), i took the exam and passed it yaay .. to be honest, i was realy freaking out, didnt think ill pass it but i did so im not gonna complain and with this done, i can start working . the worst thing about work is the waking up part! i mean work starts at 8 and waking up shouldnt be a big deal but when your work ends at 5-6pm and u stay up til midnight to talk to family and friends, ull be waaay too exhausted and that 7hrs of sleep will not be enough. here they dont hve any tolerance for abstinence or coming late to work :s so im worried about that .. see my original plan was to wake up really early to jog before work but then i thought this will be painful so i decided to do jogging after work especially that sunset is around 8.30 but im assuming that ill be too exhausted to jog then :S my official first day was really long .. so im doing my PEAP which is 8-12weeks of CL psychiatry and 4 weeks of medicine. so ill be doing 2 weeks CL psych then 4 weeks med then ill return to CL psych again to finish my 8-12 wks. CL psychiatry deals with mental illness in medical/surgical patients .. so its more of psychosomatic medicine .. you deal with depression in a patient with cancer, anxiety with patients of heart attack for example or any mental illness that results from medical/surgical medications/procedures. its an interesting subspeciality that im thinking of doing once i graduate . anyway the unit is pretty small and BUSY! work starts at 9 am and ends anywhere between 5:30-8pm .. ****SHOCKED*** i dont know how exactly things go here but from what ive seen, we come at 9 am and then our pagers start ringing and we go see assigned patients .. as long as we are on duty, we can see anyone .. its not like we have a certain number of patients you know .. so from 9 till 2:30, we see patients on our own then we discuss it at 2:30 meeting and then we have our rounds .. it doesnt sound so hard yeah, but the long hours is the thing killing me ..its a BIG HOSPITAL, really busy so they keep you busy plus they have this huge unit for cancer and those are the ones we mostly see .. so on my 1st day i was shadowing angelo, a 4th yr resident who talked in a funny way , o thought he had an accent but when i looked carefully, the guy had hearing aid on so im thinking that he's deaf or something .. and that got me really IMPRESSED !! those people are FIGHTERS .. although he seems to be deaf, never the less, he lived his life and joined medical school and now he's doing psychiatry .. not only he's a doctor but he chose the field in which he'll be exposed to people everyday.. he didnt feel embarrassed of his funny accent or his hearing aid ..he's a guy worth admiring wallah. bs allah yesam7a !! qa6ni 3ala 9a5ar!! i was supposed to shadow him only but he made me take history and present the case .. he was like: YOU ARE A RESIDENT AND YOU WONT LEARN UNLESS WE THROW YOU IN THE WATER and he threw me in so well lol .. and he was like: today im being gentle with you, by next week, things will get serious !! LOL thats just too freaky lol.. im glad that they didnt tell me anything about being on call and im glad that we have a long weekend here .. so monday is an off day and im gonna use this time to read abit!! they really scared the hell out of me lol so in the unit, there was this suadi guy, hes doing a one month observer ship so he;s like a trainee ..so after work, i was really starving ( didnt eat anything from 9-6:30 ) and i wanted to know about the unit so we went out for dinner and god, i need some self control again :P ..i was really hungry and i was craving pasta and steak so i made him get the pasta and i had the steak and i ate from his plate *buries my head under* I KNOW I KNOW, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME RIGHT !!!!!!!!!! dude i keep on forgetting that these are GUYS and not my old girl friends :S !! omg i have no freakin idea what i was thinking back then :S .. guess when im hungry, i go coco !!! but seriously, bada3t :( anyway that was it ! today, i was supposed to go out, get a haircut, buy a camera and attend a stand up comedy at night but im so exhausted to go out now plus my place is a mess so i need to do some cleaning, AND SOME READING, i wanna finish the hunger game and STUDY A BIT .. AND WATCH NARUTO !! damn i need to do so much in so little time :s AND WORK OUT !! lol i better bounce now and get some stuff done !!

my first meal

since i bought alot of stuff last week that i didnt eat, most of the vegetables are starting to get so soft and mushy so i decided to cook them ASAP .. thing is, i didnt buy any meat/fish to cook them with so whatever im going to do with them, it should be totally vegetarian and the only thing i could think of is soup ... so i made 2 soups, asparagus and butternut squash .. now the asparagus soup looked like a total failure .. you know, ive always been excited about using broth in cooking and when i finally did, i realized it tastes aweful, atleast the veg broth did but i managed to arg3d elwath3 a bit and the asparagus soup turned out to be fine. now the butternut squash aka pumpkin was SO DAMN TRICKY .. i mean, i needed to peel and cube it and it took me like 10 min just to cut it into half !!! then i cut that half into two parts and it took me 45min to peel one of these halves !! IMAGINE!! 45MIN !!! 7aseet elsalfa feeha ena !!! there is no way that everyone struggle with it like i did .. i was so in doubt that i thought that this could be something else and not pumpkin :s.. anyway i googled it and yeah i was right, IT IS HARD TO PEEL IT and alot of ppl do struggle but there are tricks to tackle it .. like heating it up then peeling it with potato peeler or heating it up till the skin is soft enough to be skinned off !! and when i did that, wow things went so smoothly .. damn.. i wish i had googled it earlier ! and this soup had cream cheese with it .. and also it tasted really fine .. too bad that im not hungry .. so the original plan was to FREEZE them and heat em whenever i felt like having soup but freezing a soup doesnt sound right so im just gonna put them in the fridge and then google it tomorrow.. im just happy that i learnt a new thing today :P, how peel a butternut squash :P you know whats the best part about having your own apartment ..walking clotheless and having mail .. walla wanasa.. i strip off the moment i enter the apartment, it feels so liberating :P .. and having your own mail box is also fun, it feels so exciting to open up that box and find mail even when its only bills lol damn its almost 1 am and im going to start working in a day or two ! i so need to fix mys sleep :(

kensington market

YESTERDAY WAS ALOT OF FUN! im glad that i was dragged out !! we went to kensington market .. its like a long street with alot of shops, some are houses with some sort of yard sales and stuff .. it had stuff from all over the world, shops from chilli, mexico, greece, jamaica and lots of other stuff.. and they had this cool shop called blue banana.. reminded me of virgin with all those weird funky stuff bs 3ala akbaaaaar !! and i was so happy that i tagged along because i finally found molo5ia and 7alooom !! WOHOOOO .. i was told that i have to take an 1.5 hour bus to buy these stuff but i found em a few blocks away! IM SO HAPPY !! we had mexican food .. the shop looked like ma63am hendi bl kuwait .. u know.. so .. i dunno .. ud doubt its heigyne and stuff but the food !! ya allah !! the food was SUPERB ! la teqolon chilli's wela taco bell !! IT WAS SO DAMN GOOD !! AND ALOT HEALTHIER !! then we walked around the city and we got lost .. we were walking for hours and hours lol and when we were just too tired to anything, we went to the movies and watched dark shadows by johny depp !! i have to say that i was very disappointed! i really expected more from johny but i cant complain coz my feet were aching and i needed to sit lol and the best thing about the day that i finally got my period *does a dance* its a few days late and been bugging me so im glad that its finally here :D ohh and im coughing and i think im getting sick :s .. 7ada mo waqta... im gonna change in a bit and go to finish my paper work and hopefully start working this week :S

travelling the world

so its sunday and although i really wanted to spend it home .. im being dragged again lol but this time, i dont mind it because we are supposed to go somewhere COOL .. its called kingston market and its supposed to be full of interesting stuff .. just hope this hang out wont be stretched to midnight like last night !! i have finished almost all my paper work, tomorrow i'll need to pass by the postgraduate office and hand in my application and hopefully ill be ready to work by tuesday/wednesday . yeah im kinda getting bored .. i need to start working man, i got alot to do but i really wanna stay home .. i wanna read, watch stuff, think , clean , COOK !!! and i also need to SHOP !! I DONT have clothes for work .. ohhh ohhh since im stuck here for 5 yrs and my chancs of travelling around isnt much, i decided to travel within toronto .. as in .. I WANNA MEET SOME ONE FROM EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY IN THE WORLD and when i say meet.. as in make friends with them .. i really wanna do that.. i think it will be so cool to know ppl from everywhere :D .. toronto is unbelievably multicultural and im sure i can find ppl from atleast 60% of world's countries :D i should go clean the toilet now .. im also started coughing and a bit of diarrhea and no period yet .. only cramps .. AND I NEED A HAIR CUT !! lol .. im such a mess :P

weekend

the past few days been hectic and i hate it! i hate when i feel overwhelmed by others .. its like .. i came here ... all the way across the ocean to live MY LIFE .. but it seems that old habits dont change fast enough and im caught again in the old habit of me trying to please everyone .. although my original plan was to stay home during the weekends, read a bit, study a bit , clean and work on my long-short term plans in canada .. i wanna feel like im finally here !! but no, i was being dragged out, being forced into long long family conversations on whatsapp and skype !! lol I WANT SOME ME TIME !! just a lil .. just to realize that im actually here .. dont get me wrong, i think being busy is GREAT ! it keeps me off worrying and stuff .. but i could really appreciate 3hrs of me time ... so dad has left on thursday.. it got me a bit emotional .. i think he wanted to cry too .. but to be honest, it scared me a bit .. in the past week, i felt like a tourist but with dad leaving, ths whole being abroad thing is starting to feel real .. its not bad .. being abroad and stuff .. but i got my own reasons to be a bit scared .. so yeah i was a bit emotional .. i dont know if its the normal anxiety, my personal reason or the fact that im PMsing .. ohhh my period is 3 days late and its KILLING ME !!! ive been drinking za3tar, mesmar , darseen lema 6l3aw mn 5ashmi and ive been walking alot but still .. i have the cramps and everything but no period :s .. i really want it to come today or tomorrow max .. becaus ei might start working on tuesday and the first 2 days are the worst so i wanna finish them before my long working days start :s so i got to know my lil new group of friends more .. hmmm.. they are kinda harmless and nice to hang out with but i need REAL friends .. i mean, haya is a kid.. she's warm and loving but again, she's like a kid .. plus although we agreed to go see the avengers together, she bailed on me and went to see it wth some one else without even inviting me along ... NOT COOL !! the least thing she could have done is telling me that she;s going to see it with some one else !! mo ana ag3d o an6er o b3din te6la3 shayfta :s .. then we got khlod, she's sweet and stuff .. but she's the party kind of a girl, her kind of fun is not my kind of fun. shes into clubbing and stuff so i dont know .. then we got noor, too quiet and dont know her yet .. anusha is an interesting indian girl but anyway, the group is warm and loving but not the kind that ud run to them if you need anythin!! plus they are like 19-22 yrs old LOL !! i feel like mama 3oda around them lol. yesterday we did something fun though, we had a potluck where each one of us cook something and then we share it over anusha's, we were supposed to help her assemble her new furniture but we ended up going karaoke all night long .. lol it was funnnnnn !! however, i came home with a headache lol . oh the other day we went to IKEA and god, not having a car is such a ma95ara .. it was SO FAR away, we had to take the subway to the end of the line then a shuttle bus and then had to carry all of our stuff back home :s ... OMG EVEN THE OTHER DAY, i went grocery shopping and almost dislocated my shoulders with the grocery bag !! i think it was +5kg !! it was so freakin heavy and i had to walk like a block !! not cool !! not cool !! again, the prices keep on shocking me !!! sheno ya3ni 3 pieces of green peppers eb 6 dollars !! which is 1.700 kd !!!! omg ! i bought like 2 cans of corn, 2 cans of red beans , 3 peppers, mayo , french sauce , oat meal, chocolate and milk and spent like 100 dollars which is 28 kd !!!!! la o payed 2dollars for the bag :s !!! food is extremely expensive here !! even stationaries .. sheno ya3ni 6 pencils eb 13 dollars which is 3.6 kd !!!! the girls were like, buy all u need of stationaries back home .. pencils and everything .. actually, they were like NEVER SHOP HERE !! always shop back home :s allah ye3z el kuwait !! omg, 9eg allah ye3z el kuwait .. everything is so cheap there :s

niagra falls

you know, i feel like my adventure hasnt started yet since dad is still here .. he's doing all the cooking and all the paying and stuff .. and im doing all the showing him around thing .. its good and bad .. the bad side is that i feel as if im babysitting him lol .. i wanna go out and do stuff .. but the good thing is, he HELPED ME ALOT FINANCIALLY walla .. i came here with a saving of almost 5000 kd and i spent almost 4000 kd in less than a week !! o hatha o ana my apartment is ALREADY FURNISHED !! imagine if i had to furnish it :s .. the food here is expensive plus i didnt expect the owner to ask me for 2 months rent, thats like 1300 kd :s .. im really shcoked :S and i thought im going to pamper my self here lol. so yesterday i took dad to see niagra falls .. 7aram, it was a rainy foggy day so he couldnt see much but surprisingly he had alot of fun, he said the best part was the weather !!!!!! he loved the fog and the rain !! wai3 i hated it .. the fog made the place like a ghost town and the rain makes you wet and sticky AND COLD !! but im glad he had fun :D so im still unemployed .. my paper work is taking too long .. ill probably start working next week .. that means ill have a free weekend to do whatever i want .. hmmm fly to new york ?? i wish, but im broke blaaah :s we will see .. i hope things get easier from now on .. im sick of going out and running errands all day long. i want to stay in the apartment all day long, cook me food and read the hunger games :(

moving in

so I DID GET THE APARTMENT ! my agent had to pull a few strings to make it work .. although i love the place but with all these stupid restriction the owner had on me, its making me feel uncomfortable. the first thing i did was buy me a couple of new drinking glasses and i know i might end up buying plates too because im so scared of breaking his stuff .. plus i wanted to hang some stuff and im a bit worried since he'll be poping in once every 2 months to check his place out :S . well the good thing is, im gonna spend most of my time during the first year in the hospital, I THINK ... so the other day, i cleaned the whole place, damn thats not easy .. i struggled with the wooden floors .. its like you cant broom it and if you sweep it, it aint clean too, i even used the vacuum cleaner with no use .. and i used some of the detergents he had left here and i ended up with blisters in my hands :s .. dude these stuff are dangerous :S speaking of my apartment, i LOVED IT, i was so happy with having those high windows everywhere but i discovered that its not a good idea and i discovered that the painful way, you see my bedroom is facing the sunrise so for the past 2 days, i was COOKED by the sun.. so not only sun rays fall into my bed but also heats up the whole place .. according to dad, my apartment will be really hot on sunny days and really cold on cold days .. waaay to go me .. dad managed to create a HOSE for me since they dont use this here .. i dont like it .. he basically connected the shower head to a long hose and the water pressure is REALLY high if you want it hot, and if you want it cold temperature, you can get a low water flow .. its complicated i know .. its like when you increase the temperature, the water flow/pressure increases .. u want warm shower, u;ll end up with a heavy shower .. so yeah if i used the hose with low flow, ill be freezing, yes IT IS THAT COLD , and if i use it with warm water, ill be probably losing my virginity lol too much information eh ? :P you know, yesterday, i was actually panicking and freaking out .. i really felt like cryin .. it happened after when we went and got our groceries .. maybe its starting to hit me , you know the food and such .. or maybe im just PMsing .. i dont know if im home sick yet but i do miss my friends and the gatherings .. ohh i made some friends too :D .. and i asked them about their home sickness .. they gave me an interesting answer, they said after a while, whenever you go home, ull feel left out because you missed out on many things so ull end up feeling bad and home sick as in canada home sick lol .. so eventually going back to kuwait will make me home sick tooo. yea so friends .. i met this young kuwaiti girl, she's really young and sweet, really friendly and warm .. the best thing about it that we have so much in common, she's into japanese stuff, anime, concerts and music, oh she's also the daughter of hessa elshmimri .. a kind of well known yoga instructor in kuwait . i have also been to majlis 5aliji which is a gathering of 5aliji people every weekend .. gotta admit, i was impressed . they are all open minded and stuff, 90% are suadis; me, ahmed and haya are kuwaiti and i think there was a bahraini guy. they gather to do either social activities ( book club, watching documentaries, debate, presentations ) or fun activities ( road trips, movies, picnics ).. they had a debate that day and i managed to WOW them lol, wanasa, i made a good first impression hehehe they all seem fun, the girls even took me out to this ALL YOU CAN EAT JAPANESE BUFFET FOR 20 DOLLAS ( 5.550 kd) and includes EVERYTHING! not just the boring stuff, it has edemame , tampuras, rolls, sashimi, teryaki, different kind of rice and even ice cream .. VERY IMPRESSIVE and u could order 100THING U WANT !! 3aaaaaaaaadiii !! but there's one rule, if u dont finish your plate, ull pay for it on top of that 20 dollars .. wa3lia 3lina bl kuwait, el roll bs eb 6 kd. we went for a walk around the city till midnights and then i had to run back home while the girls actually continued their night out :S .. i think they came home around 2 am :s .. wow sure things are different here ... ohhhh on our 1st day of moving in, the fire alarm was on and all the fire department were here and stuff lol .. what a start .. but it was a false alarm .. they say things like these are very common .. ohhh we also been to marche, a very nice interesting restaurant here .. its like a big restaurant with different cuisines.. they have basically EVERYTHING .. italian, vegetarian, japanese, indian, american .. and you walk around with a card and you have to swipe it with every plate you take and then you pay at the cashier .. so its like an open buffet with FRESH FOOD that gets cooked infront of u :D

day 5

i feel so drained out, mentally and physically .. my whole body feels like it was run down by a truck and no sleep can relief that aching back of mine .. and mentally, i feel overwhelmed .. guess its expected .. new weather .. new experience .. plus with all that walking and stuff .. i just hope my body will adapt quickly .. yesterday was a crazy day .. so i was told early the day that the landlord of that condo is giving us hard time .. then around 4pm, i get a call telling me that i got the condo but i need to finish some stuff before 5 pm !! so i run back and forth like a lunatic from banks, insurance, hydro companies .. i was literally racing time .. i had so much to finish within that last hour and i actually failed. i managed to finish the insurance but coz it was late during the day, the only company i found was an expensive one so i payed 270$ instead of 150$and the hydro closed before i could reach them. the bank could only issue two cheques and the rest of them will be out in 2 weeks. then i had to run to rogers to get the internet and cable. if i did this earlier, i could have the internet today but i was too late and now i have to wait till monday . i decided not to get me cable.. i mean, ive downloaded ZILLIONS of shows/movies/anime/documentries .. so guess ill watch these first! why would i pay 100$ a month when i wont be using the tv much. so yeah thats about it ! ill be moving in in an hour or two . the apartment is amazing , it has modern furniture and everything.. all windows but the owner is nuts .. he had restrictions on everything .. no pets , penalty if i break any of the dishes/glass or anything.. the floor is made of wood so i better be careful when i drag things around .. i dont know, i feel like im going to be tip toping in the apartment .. walla feels like living on eggshells :S .. the good thing is, that i THINK wont be spending alot of time in the apartment since the first year is the busiest .. so guess i dont have anything to worry about .. definitely next year, IM SO MOVING OUT .. i kinda like the complex though so i might try to find an apartment in the same building . ohhh wanna know el qahar .. today i checked the online rental forum and found an unfurnished apartment in the same building .. damnnn .. if only i havent signed that contract, i would have gotten that one .. it looked bigger and definitely cheaper.. and yes i prefer to rent an unfurnished condo because then i can design it my own way plus i wont need to worry about damaging any of the furniture . inshalla next year.. inshalla .. so today, we will be moving in, doing some major grocery shopping .. ill unpack and all and make myself feel as home .. i noticed that i started coughing lately .. i wont be shocked if i got sick .. the weather keep changing here.. one day its freezing cold and the other day is hot as hell. ohhh i need to buy a scanner and printer and start sending those papers ASAP or i wont start my work until next year :s

Stressed.

Im getting really stressed out with the apartment search! Not only my work is delayed coz of not having a mailing address but also all my clothes are still in the bags .. I dont know! Im just feustrated! Now that the weekend is coming, no condo showing will be possible untill monday.
sugh

slow transition

things are going a bit slow here .. i havent fitted myself in yet .. not physically or mentally .. im still jetlagging .. me and dad chena dyay .. we sleep at 8-9 .. and wake up around 6-7 .. keep in mind that 8:15pm is maghreb prayer and 9:30 is isha prayer .. anyway, i dont mind that kind of sleeping, atleast we know i;ll be up early for my hospital . we are still struggling with the apartment .. we found one and we liked it alot but it seems tat our agent has made a mistake .. the apartment was already taken and he didnt know .. so yesterday, we went to see more apartments .. we saw one with great location, a minute away from eaton centre/dundas square ( where all the fun is ) and underneath it, the world's biggest book store .. the complex was full of s3odis .. the apartment was HUGE .. but i dont know why, i didnt like it, although ive always wanted a BIG apartment .. i dont know .. i mean it had everything i wanted , spacious , close to everything and the advantage was having that bookstore but i just didnt feel comfortable .. then we went to see another place , a place that i was hesitant to even go see .. he told us, it was FURNISHED ( im looking for unfurnished ) , it was expensive and it was the furthest from dundas square .. not far from the hospital .. its like 10min walk vs 3-5min walk from the other apartments we saw. like i said, i didnt even wanna go see it but since i was feeling like crap .. i was like WHY NOT ! and im glad i did .. it turned out to be amazing .. i mean, it was full of glass .. had an amazing view .. the furniture was amazing too .. the place looked modern...

the only problem was that the owner of this condo is really restricted .. he made all these silly stupid rules .. such as he will be coming to inspect the place once every 2 months :s .. anyway, im really desperate so i think ill be taking this for one year and then by look for another one next year .. i really love his condo but i dont think i can deal with his rules ... i really need to find a place ASAP because all my paper work needs an address and i dont have one yet and if i dont finish the paper work, i cant start working :s ohhh .. ysterday me and dad met mohammed alswedan .. and he said something that made me really happy .. i dont know if he's just saying that or he meant it, but it really made me happy .. he said during his 7yrs working in university of toronto and interviewing all those residents, no one impressed him during the interview like i did .. awwww .. you know coming from such a person, it really means something .. i mean he's the son of tariq alsweedan and hes been surrounded by all those intelligent people all his life.. so impressing him shouldnt be easy but i did .. wanasa .. im super flattered .. and super stressed now that im under the pressure lol .. naaaah its gonna be fine .. sara enty qadha mo !! ee qadha lol .. so today, ill be trying to finish as much paper work as possible and then at night, im gonna go make some friends ... good news, the weather is getting warmer yaaaay ..

hungry

im really hungry.. like really hungry .. but dad is sleeping urghhh.. its around 7 pm and the sun is out there and its almost 2 am in kuwait .. this is not fun .. i got no one to talk to :( ..everyone is sleeping back home .. maybe i should really make toronto HOME from now on ..

the apartment hunt

finding an apartment isnt looking good .. you see, i was told that finding an apartment is really hard and thats why my friend suggested that i should take over her apartment since she's leaving it.. and we agreed to that .. but she's moving out on august so im supposed to be looking for a furnished short term apartment untill august .. and what i found out that SHORT TERM APARTMENTS ARE NOT COMMON HERE .. most of the leases are for 1 yr minimum .. i could only find one apartment and it sucked .. so plan B is to ltry to find THE APARTMENT .. as in forget about my friend's and try to find a new one .. so today we went to see a couple of them .. we found one right infront of my friend;s building , so thats gREAT LOCATION, its one block away from work .. it has restuarants and grocery stores downstairs .. actually its a very lively place .. the apartment looked good .. not perfect but its good.. but then we faced one problem .. now you see.. my friend's lease ends in april and she was supposed to be kicked out by april but she told the land lord that a friend is coming ( aka me ) to take over the apartment on august, thats why he agreed to extend her 4 more months and they never do that , u either have it for 1yr or ur out .. and they agreed on that verbally. now since i couldnt find any good furnished ones, im stuck gettin me a 1yr unfurnished one so i cant take over my friends apartment . she's afrad that thy will kick her out .. coz the only reason they made her stay is because she's bringing some one in .. so now i dont know what to do .. i dont wanna get her kicked .. hal bent 9eg 9eg ma qe9art m3ay and i cant screw her like that .. dad is insisting to get an unfurnished NOW and not in august coz he wanna make sure that im settled in and everything is okay .. so i really dont know what to do :(

the transition

now, althought ive been dreading this day .. i dont think it has hit me yet .. i mean, yesterday i was too exhausted to even think about it .. but today things are a bit different ... when i first bought me that phone chip and signed those agreement and stuff .. it was wierd .. it wasnt one of those chips that i buy them whenever i travel .. it was a chip that i chose carefully.. tra i love my number lol .. and i dont know .. but what scared me more was issueing a bank account .. u know, sitting there and just talking about those long term plans and stuff .. that freaked me out a bit.. u know .. it is happening .. I AM MOVING IN !!! ohhh speakin of mobiles .. mobiles services here are wierd walla .. imagine that u have to pay for everything .. if some one calls u from a mob or land line, u r charged . u have to buy your internet service and they dont have unlimited service like in kuwait and what shocked me the most is, U HAVE TO PAY TO SEE THE CALLER ID !! what thaaa !! ya the phone company wont display the caller ID if u dont pay for that service .. i ended up signing with rogers .. lets see how much of a rip off it is :P also their banks are wierd .. i signed up with CIBC .. imagine.. i have a limit on how much i can withdraw everyday .. a limit of 500 dollars .. so i cant withdraw more than 500dollars/140 kd a day and if i decided to pay using the debt card, i cant spend more than a 1000 dollar per day/280 kd. THATS STUPID !!! i mean, what if i wanted to buy lots of electronics and that costed me more than 1000 dollars !! WHAT DO I DO !!! so i thought of getting a VISA or master card and they said its REALLY hard to do that if im a new comer !! im very disappointed to be honest .. very very disappointed with such services. i think ill be using my kuwaiti credit card after all.. now, allah yesami7 elly kan el sbab but what i packed, they told me no need to pack warm clothes and when i reached toronto, it was freezing cold ..i was jumping around to stay warm .. dad gave me his xxxL thermal to wear and i had a hoodie on top of a shirt and i was still freezing .. yesterday was hell .. so the 1st thing i did in toronto is go shopping.. now u can shoot me .. i bought me one rain jacket and one regular jacket and god life became so beautiful when i had that jacket on .. seriously .. i was sweating like hell in kuwait and now i cant stand still from the cold !! once i settle in, im going for real shoppin .. yuck .. if i dont, i;ll freeze to death .. i actually feel a bit sick .. i can sense a flu coming on .. dad is already sick .. poor dad :( u know what made me happy the most .. TIM HORTONS FRENCH VANILLA AND BREAKFAST BAGEL FROM ESPRESSO CAFE !!! this morning, we walked all the way to my old hotel coz this is where espresso cafe was located only to find out that it was closed .. i really felt sad coz i was craving it since forever now .. but they had a paper sayin it was relocated and we really walked long for the new location and then i found out that the new place is a block away from the hospital, WOHOOOOO !! im so gonna have that for breakfast for the coming 5 yrs lol .. yeah IT IS THAT GOOD !! im actually hungry right now but dad is snoring and id feel so guilty if i woke him up ...

the flight

so my journey has started .. whats supposed to be the adventure of a lfe time .. i have arrived in toronto yesteday. you know, whether you fly business class or economy , whether its emirates airlines or indian airlines .. LONG FLIGHTS ARE SUCH A TORTURE especially if they are durning the night .. so we flew from kuwait around 10 pm, arrived in amesterdam at 5 am, had a 3hrs transit, flew from there 9ish and arrived in toronto at 11 am . u might think this sucks, but u should have seen the flight i had last time ive been to toronto, we flew at 12 midnight, arrived in amsterdam at 6 am, flew again at 2pm and arrived in toronto at 4pm so believe me this flight is HEAVEN compared to the old one. we took KLM, business class .. i flew business on different airlines before .. i think kuwaiti, suadi ? and this is the 3rd one and im wlling to make a big conclusion .. BUSINESS CLASS FOOD SUCKS !!! they serve those complicated icky stuff .. like raw salmoon .. i dunno what tart .. even their dessert is too damn complicated .. why cant they serve regular food !!!!!!! i swear to god, i was willing to ask the flight attendenat to get me a tray from economy .. hmm i cant remember wat exactly i had .. but there was a breakfast of a tiny piece of hammor ( YES BREAKFAST ) with wierd looking cheese roll, some wierd baked stuff .. hmm they had either pancakes with pineapple ( PINEAPPLE?? CANT WE HAVE REGULAR MAPLE SYRUP :S ) or cheesy omlette .. hmm now i survived the breakfast but what i couldnt survive was lunch .. as appetizer, i had raw salmoon with caviar, i dipped it with everything on the tray ( butter, salad dressing and even the soup ) IT TASTES HORRIBLE .. then they had chewy chicken with herbal, like EXTREME HERBAL rissoto .. u know what i did? i took a bite of this and that and then ate bread and butter .. yeah .. out of these, i only had bread and butter .. walla nzalt mn el6yara STARVING!!! i tried sleeping but i couldnt .. although their chair can turn into a bed with a massage b3d .. but again the lack of privacy and how hard it was, didnt make it comfortable enough to sleep .. bUT DEFINITELY A7SAN EB STEEN ALF MARA mn el economy .. i ended up taking sleeping pill and all i managed to have is 2hrs of sleep, AL7AMDELLAH !! we were lucky when we arrived in toronto, since i have a work permit i had to go to immigration office and usually the que is toooooooooo long but it was empty el7amdallah .. and we managed to get away with our herbs and stuff .. coz usually they ask u to declare if you have any food or anything .. but they havent .. so we got away without laying .. GOD I WISH I HAD BO6A6 BO THORA WITH ME .. urghhh ... we checked in and then i took dad around for a tour .. i showed him the hospitals, where my apartment might be, i made him count all the arabs around lol so he feels safe , i showed him eaton centre .. but dad is really old .. so i couldnt show him the lake and stuff plus we were exhausted .. we havent had sleep for 2 days .. we went for a quick dinner, dad kan meshtehy pizza so we ate at sbaro after that, we met our real estate agent, he took us to see one furnished apartment who sucked big time .. location wise, it was great but the apartment was tiny o teqmet .. we ended up back in the hotel and we fell asleep right away .. est'3afer allah even before maghreb prayer .. we slept at 8pm and the sun was still out lol .. i woke up at 5 the next day .. to be continued .