Ugh. For the first time in my UK life I am falling sick S: I cannot help but wallow in self-pity because I have never fallen sick here before. Here. Away from home. With no family to fuss over me and make me "Take your medicine and go to sleep early. Ling/Bon feel her forehead in the middle of the night hor". Gosh, how pampered. On hindsight, getting sick at home was a really big thing and a sore throat used to bring on the full works of plain porridge/soup, leng yong and "Go and sleep! Go and sleep!" No wonder I would drag myself around the house slurring, "Ngeh... I feel saaaaack..."

Here whenever someone tells me they did not go to hospital because they are not well I either think "Really? I know what "not well" means... I invented the general malaise excuse..." *wigglewiggle eyebrows* or, if it is an honest, conscientious student I just give a superficial "Awww. That sucks!" or if there is a social obligation to make small talk/sympathise more convincingly, add in "Yea you should take the day off! Go home and have a good rest!" but really thinking they are fine.

Now I remember what it is like to fall ill :/

Hai. I had thought it was the overnight living room karaoke-ing last night that had caused my sore throat and the ngiam ngiam feeling in my mouth today. But as the day went on my sore throat has progressed from just sore to the painful-lump-when-you swallow feeling. I've also got a deep and mysterious voice now. The muscle pains (and my favourite excuse of general malaise) just started about an hour ago. Which makes me more and more convinced that my resistance to UK pathogens has finally been breached after my proud 4-year record of not falling ill (here). Will measure my temperature tomorrow. Good thing I earned 150pounds + a thermometer from my bird flu trial.

Ptoomb and Ptiu have died. Huey Ning dug them out from behind the taps using a plastic spoon and wrapping paper roll and we never saw them again. Sania told me that slugs got into houses by climbing up water pipes. I am worried that more of them will come.

There are 2 slugs on my bath tub. The big shit-coloured one is quite active and seems to be growing and has the ability to alter its colour gradient. The tiny diarrhoea-coloured one seems quite lethargic and has not moved from its corner. After a night's consideration, I have decided to name them Ptoomb. and Ptiu! repectively.

Last day in Norhampton. We should be going out for a picnic but the beautiful weekend didnt last and it is now cold and grey and gloomy again. Which is baseline English weather I guess :/ We had a leftovers party in the end. Which turned out quite fun! Played the A to Z game (each of us took turns singing songs from A to Z) and found out that my song vocabulary still lies in the 1990s.

The early days have started... Which is generally nice because long sunny days make me happy and when I am happy I function. But here I am awake at 5.45a.m. because my body is still on sun dial-time and believes this is the appropriate time to be up and ready to face a new day.

I passed my exams a few weeks ago but it seems I am never satisfied. I got over passing really quickly and am now worrying about being an FY.

Today I go back to Leicester for a genetics workshop. Seeing as they are generous enough to have a 10a.m. start I am assuming this means they can afford to end early (: This week has been a fruitless week. No work done + No jogging + No entertainment + Ran out of oranges. No entertainment except that I watched the champions league match with Xinyi yesterday. I think I should watch football more now I am here since there is no longer the need to stay up till 3a.m. to catch them. Not that I ever did that in Singapore. Just that now they are readily available in the doctors' mess/iplayer at the perfect afterdinner-time so I can watch them and and tell my friends back home "Oh yeah I forgot you have to stay up till 3 to watch the match! Shame." And when you are among people who are not ashamed of going "G- g- OH. Ok, ok.. G- goa- AwWwWrraaww. Shithead. Hehe." watching football is really really fun.

Spent the week running away/being scared by our consultant. I am convinced she has Graves. Or at least has some degree of hyperthyroidism. She is skinny + female + middle-aged/oldish + very anxious + uptight + has proptosis and exophthalmos (I checked from side view). Her eyes do scare me. They are So. Big. And they stare at you as if to pop out of her head. I think they are trying to escape from her too because they can't stand the stress either. Last week she walked in on me talking to her patient (on purpose) and went

Fake smile, "Hi! Hi! Oh. Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt!"*stare*

She then smiled more and nodded, "I just wanted to check how you were." *starestare*

I have a picture of her in that scene but my scanner is still not installed.

To be fair, she stares at everyone though. It just scares me.