I saw a neurosurgery at Dr Hasan Sadikin Hospital in Bandung yesterday, 16th Feb 2017.
It was a supratentorial Sphenoorbital ? meningioma and craniotomy+cranioplasty was being done.
I was wondering if the electrical signals of cautery had any effect on the person after operation is over.
Reasons -
Nerves work on depolarization and repolatization, which is electrical activity.
We know about electrical shock therapy is psychotics as a therapeutic intervention.
This is my second last day in Bandung and I feel this is the perfect time to share my experience
For Indonesia -
Visa : You can avail of Visa on arrival (VOA) by paying 35$ for 30 days permit.
Advice - keep all necessary documents (passport, invitation letter, card or acceptance and confirmation, Aadhar card, travel insurance, health records, health certificates, return ticket etc) along with you, in your boarded baggage not checked in baggage.
They don't accept payment by card. So keep cash with you.
Immigration officer at Bandung charged me 510,000 for visa and gave me a receipt of 35$ ( And I'm still wondering how could I have confirmed the exact conversion rate at that time. Probably the officer charged more from me. But I don't think anything can be done about this.)
Just keep 600,000 cash with you when you arrive.
Language :
Download the offline app called "English Indonesian dictionary". Doesn't use data and app size is small.
Good is you just want to see meanings of random words you see while walking or on notices, menu cards, coupons, tickets etc. Downside is that this translates individual words only. You will have to resort to Google translate for better conversation.
Sim cards:
I had bought matrix sim card from Mumbai. But it wasn't very good.
Matrix probably has tie up with local company called "Tri" or "3" in Indonesia and their network is not up to the mark.
You'll get 3G at prominent places in the city but there will be pockets of "no network"
Money :
I had used an Axis bank forex card which is preloaded with money. Convenient but the minus point here is it will charge 2$ extra for every cash withdrawal.
And 0.03% extra on every transaction (ATM or POS machine)
For cash, better to get it converted from India. Since when I had enquired at a local money exchange shop (Dollarasia in Sukajadi, Bandung) they quoted me a price which was twice more expensive.
To give you an idea,
I got around 150 IDR against 1 INR. They quoted 95 IDR against one 1 INR.
(the actual bank rates are around 195 IDR for 1 INR)
Socket :
It's slightly different. Only 2 pins can be inserted unlike 3 pin plugs that we have.
I couldn't use my oneplus2 adapter since the pin was short. However, Samsung and Apple adapters work well.
Travel :
Download "Go-jek" and "Grab" when you arrive. And "Uber" you might have already.
These are the most popular transportation apps.
Unique feature is the two wheeler taxis like Go-jek or Uber-2 wheeler, that is cheaper than an Uber Car.
Be aware of local "Ojek" which is the traditional way of transport. They will always charge more than what you get on these above mentioned apps.
Food :
Non vegetarians, you can try chicken, beef, squids, fish, prawn, lobster, octopus etc.
If you don't want beef (sapi = cow)
You can also find authentic Chinese and Japanese restaurants here.
For vegetarians, all the best 😂
Nasi putih = plain rice
Nasi goreng = fried rice
The only traditional dishes I could eat were - Gado-Gado, Lotek and Cupchay.
For snacks - Tahu (tofu) and Tempe can also be eaten.
Say "pedas" if you want it more spicy.
Culture :
A lot of people, including teens smoke. People smoke while driving. Even your car / Angkot might just decide to smoke while driving, which can be quite disgusting.
Alcohol is a no-no in Islam however you'll find pubs at certain areas in the city.
Tea (Teh) is what everyone drinks morning to night. You may even be given one for free along with lunch.
At all the restaurants I have been, the waiters have always asked me "what would you order for drinks? Tea?"
And the tea by default is the Indian tea. It's without milk.
Entertainment : amongst Indonesian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean movies - Bollywood has a very special place here.
Almost all the people must have seen "kuch kuch hota hai" here and "chaiya Chaiya" song had become a big hit here. So don't be surprised to here Aashiqui songs being played when you are shopping or at a cafe.
They have a lot of respect for Indians in general.
Past history : Indonesia was colonized by the Dutch. So you'll find their architecture here in old buildings.
Even the Japanese had colonized Indonesia for 3 years (maybe thats why so much of Japanese influence)
Numbering : Lentai means floor.
They don't number from Ground floor. The ground floor in Mumbai (or India) is first floor here. When someone told me go to the "second floor", I climbed one flight of stairs and couldn't find anything more above it. Because the "first floor" was actually their second floor.
Tipping :
Thankfully it's not required at any restaurants. Most of them add a service charge and I haven't myself done or seen anyone tipping at restaurants.
However, (this will be new to you), every time I see a car parking or leaving from the gate, a local person will be standing to help or assist you in parking and will make other cars wait to make way for your car. In this case you should tip that person from 2000 to 5000 Rupiah. Even if the parking was not difficult, these persons will just come and stand near the drivers window to get money and still people pay!
My Bandung experience -
For those who didn't understand the photo :
Background Statistics -
A normal distribution curve is symmetrical bell shaped curve bla bla bla, which I'm sure you know
Skewed curves are seen when the distribution is not symmetrical. It can either be Skewed to the left or the right (see picture)
Now imagine a Skewed curve, depicting the average income of a person and the number of people.
When it's a Gaussian curve, you'll see that - the majority of the people will be in "middle class", some will be super rich and some will be poor.
Now what if that is actually not true? Our graph will get Skewed. This can be of two types.
1) most of the people have an income higher than the average. Mode is greater than the mean.
This is called Skewed to Left, because the graph dips on the left side. And as per the convention, left is also the negative axis. Thus we also call it negative skew.
2) similarly, when most of the people have their income that is less than the average, and very few people own a major chunk of wealth, we call it right skew or positive skew.
And here comes the Eureka moment where you compare them with ideals and philosophies.
Left wing socialists / communists to right wing capitalists.
I'll leave it here for you to ponder over it, gulp it and ruminate it 😉
It's another morning when my hands involuntarily grab the daily newspaper, trying to skip a few pages of same news about worldwide protests against newly elected POTUS Trump, the page about personal finance has incited interest in me of late.
After the monotony of news regarding scams and the updates of upcoming polls, this page refreshes me with the Serotonins of happiness after learning something new - Personal Finance.
Woah bro. Calm down. Now we are going into the territory where every biology student treads with fear. Finance, Economics and Statistics.
Today's article talks about diversification of portfolios. But everyone knows the nature's secret of being able to keep the species alive.
The nature is working all the time to make infinite minute adjustments in the genotype, to adjust with the environment. The nature is perfecting her art since 5 billion years now.
She has a mechanism of cell division called "Meiosis" that allows genetic transfer of information, allowing the offsprings to be genetically superior, evolving continuously.
Even our HLA haplotypes, the MHC antigens present on our WBCs are so varied and diversifed already, that should a catastrophic microbiological attack happens, atleast some human being will be immune to it to propagate our species further.
Now that's a Micro-"surgical strike" indeed
Like the most other thoughts, even this one originated from the bathroom!
All of us were inspired by Ranbir Kapoor in YJHD, and must have had a thought of roaming around the world, traveling to the must - see places around the globe. Who wouldn't want such a kind of life.
Given a chance, even I would have chosen that. The travel show hosts, air hostesses, pilots, Navy ship merchants, globe trekkers, adventurers, even monks did that matter! are the people who get to visit the maximum number of new places. An addition that I'll make to this list is a doctor.
The essence of traveling isn't just taking photos of those places and uploading to social media. You may very well use Google Earth and Google 360 for that.
The true essence of travel lies in connecting with the place and the people, knowing their culture and traditions, understanding their way of life. And who else can achieve all of this, better than a doctor?
Few weeks ago I was walking through the corridor of the old building when this young chap with huge spectacles, unkept Hair, checked shirt and a loose formal pant approached me asking where is the radiology department. I just decided to take him there rather than just give the directions. On the way I happened to ask him what does he do and where is he from. "I'm doing MA in Hindi from Ruia" was his reply. And then we ended up talking animatedly about Mr Premchand and I told him whatever little I had learnt about him in school.
Such instances, I m surprised, are engraved in my mind...given the fact that I don't even remember birthdays of my friends.
Looking forward to meeting more interesting people in my life. Looking forward to being a good doctor and Traveller.
Exams!
These are systems in place since ancient times. Conducting an exam is very similar to doing an experiment.
You do an experiment or a trail to separate salt out of water. You need a suitable experience or a test for that. You can choose to distill the water or evaporate the water.
Or suppose you wish to separate iron particles from sand. You hover a piece of magnet above it.
Similarly, you wish to segregate the able from the less able student, for which you need to do some experiment or some examination. But please note, you can't use distillation to segregate iron and you can't use magnet to get salt.
In the same way, you cant use drawing as a test or a criteria for picking out good dancers. And finally, you can't use MCQs to choose the better doctors!!!
Keeping that aside, the pattern of exams for their respective specialities has been more or less constant. Physical tests for being in army, memory based tests for science, calculation based tests for engineering, logic based tests for IQ, grammar based tests for language, etc
Coming back to the corollary, very few new experiments or methods of segregation have been devised recently. So I thought about a new test for finding out the "street smartness" or pragmatic approach of a person.
We can ask the person to define very simple and trivial things. And mind you, things like
- thought
- dream
- soul
- love
- sky
- magic
- death
- to be alive / to live
- good and bad
- sleep vs coma
- aim vs objective
- wind vs air
- friend
And more and more things can be added to the list, forever.
Asking a person to define these things for you, will give you an insight into the thinking of that person. It may help us to "judge someone" better.
Till then, kindly comment if you know of more such words that are difficult to define but everyone knows about it. Thanks!
Each of us have our own unique story to tell. Some people can go on for hours even while talking to a complete xeno homo sapiens.
Similarly, each cell, tissue and organ of the body has a story to tell. All we need is some one to listen to. Here are some examples :
The debilitated person - that's similar to agonised women who scream their heart out when given a chance to talk about their sufferings. It's a pain that keeps troubling you forever and won't leave you at all. It's a sign that your cells are dying!
The shy person - These people need to be made friends first before they open out to you. You have to tend to them with care and only expertise and patience is the key here. These are diseases that need a high index of suspicion before you are able to diagnose them.
The drunk person - you give them 'Madeira', the "elixir" of happiness, ie lots of alcohol and they ll speak their heart out. Not remembering later what they said. That's like radiologists putting dyes and enhancing the contrast of the lesion to make the pathology clearly visible.
The confused person - they say yes when asked in public if they have a problem but later it turns out that they did it only for someone's sympathy. These are biological 'false positives' as we like to call them.
The hidden person - these people don't put their fingers up when asked in front of the whole classroom if they have a problem but will try to hide under the desk when the problem arrives. These are biological false negatives.
And finally the happy person - they are the healthy cells and tissues of our body
As you saw, the stories of the pathology is as varied as the stories of different people. What we need are better clinicians to find out the shy people, good radiologists to know more about drunk kind of people, better pathologists to help us weed out the confused and hidden people and better public health doctors to improve the quality of public health.
I would end by appreciating the contact role of all of these, as pathologists and radiologists who learn, study, read, understand, interpret, translate and convey the results from the language our cells speak, to the language we speak.
PS: the last sentence was the thought I had while appreciating the role of pathologists and radiologists during the multi disciplinary meetings in a conference at Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai.
