Tuesday, June 28, 2011

AK 2011 Excitement!

The AnimeKon 2011 weekend is just four days away! I'm excited! Last year, I tried not to go with high expectations and I guess it was a good thing because I wasn't entirely pleased. The organisers managed to score some hit points with me after responding to my critical blog post about my disappointments and, as this is the second year coming, I've raised the bars of my expectations.


The organisers of AnimeKon have been so kind to seriously take on my few opinions over the past year as they vigorously planned for this year's 2-day events. I know they've done their best to improve things a whole lot so I'll be looking forward to those.

I have all intentions of getting my Canon VIXIA back out of its bag and kick up the old vlogging. It must've been building up some dust over the past 6 months! I've been meaning to do one or two over the past months but never really get to it, for some reason. I've actually somehow reached 101 subscribers! I know it's not much compared to other popular YouTube folks, but it's a big deal to me. =] I'm quite happy to have your subscription and will certainly make greater efforts to create new videos for those who are interested.

So, who's going to AnimeKon 2011 this year? Are you as excited as I am? I'll be there both days this weekend so if you stop by, do say hi!

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Olympic Day 2011

Today was Olympic Day 2011 with the theme "Move. Learn. Discover." It's an event in which the sports clubs/federations in Barbados come together and showcase themselves to the general public and encourage participation in the sports of their choosing.

As a past member of the World Taekwondo Federation and the Barbados Fencing Club, I get the lovely choice of who I want to join...not that it really matters. For some reason, the fencing club doesn't have as many members as it deserves because fencing is a pretty great sport...I guess it's just not popular enough here so we tend to represent them at Olympic Day to help build their numbers.

Once upon a time, I used to be involved in various sporting activities like swimming, badminton, taekwondo and fencing. At one point, I was even doing the former three at the same time! That was a time when I was lovely and young and, as you can imagine, fit. I've certainly lost all my fitness and the youthful finesse that comes with it. Of course, being 21, I'm as youthful as an adult can be ;). But this loss came along with my starting of medical school...I gave up each sport one by one...first badminton (because I played for the secondary school I went to moreso than with a club), then taekwondo, swimming and, lastly, fencing. I love all those sports though! As I lack the aggression, fencing and taekwondo weren't exactly my forte but I had good form and got great workouts from them both. I was perfectly average in all these sports...not particularly amazing at any...probably because I lack speed. Hmm...I wonder how much more awesome I could've been if I had the speed to go with my form?

Well, regardless, today I got pretty active. I joined the fencing team for an Orienteering race of some sort. Apparently, that's a sport. Did you know that? It's something like a treasure hunt. It involved a whole lot of walking and running around that tired me out! Sports enough for me. Haha. I also got to play a little badminton again! Oh, how I missed it. It's been 5 years since I last played...I think.

All in all, I had a pretty great day with my friends. Honestly, I meant to get my phone out and film for a vlog but...you know...for some reason...that didn't quite happen. Sigh. I need to make a far greater effort at making a vlog this coming weekend because...it's a full weekend of AnimeKon 2011!

Friday, June 24, 2011

Phlebotomist in the making

Well...I'm not really a phlebotomist (person who takes blood) in the making. Today in Barbados, we had HIV Regional Testing Day at various locations around the island to encourage the population to know their HIV status as it is a disease that has relatively high prevalence in our country.

This is something that happens every year and the organisers at the Ministry of Health usually request the help of the medical students for blood taking. This is what I spent my entire day doing.
I probably took blood from about 50 people or so...maybe a little more. At the location I was stationed, we had about 165 people participate. I very willingly volunteered to be phlebotomist because I really wanted the practice of taking blood...it's something that will be required of me in the years to come and I wanna be able to be agile about it...quick and smooth...in and out...and hopefully with as little pain and as few sticks as possible. I certainly haven't mastered it yet but I'm definitely a whole lot better and somewhat more confident about doing it. Yay!

On another note, I watched the Life In A Day documentary that I was talking about before. To someone without much interest in it, I guess it would be pretty boring because I watched it with my Mom and she fell asleep 20 minutes in. I thought it was a pretty interesting film. It was definitely a really nice thing to see how people spend their days around the world...a very culturally diverse film, for sure. It astounded me that a Korean man was determined to travel around the world by bicycle and has not even been the slightest bit deterred from it because of the 5 accidents and 4 surgeries he's had. All he said was "there are a lot of careless drivers"...he visited 190 countries! He's gotta be fit. Haha. If you're interested in that kind of thing, you should give it a watch...it's an hour and 34 minutes, I believe.


And now...my weekend!

Monday, June 20, 2011

Life In A Day


Almost a year ago, I created a video to participate in the Life In A Day YouTube collaboration movie, a documentary of what July 24 2010 was like all around the world, directed by Kevin Macdonald.


I received an email later in the year to inform me that my video was in the top 100 videos chosen for the movie. Unfortunately, my Mom wasn't too keen on me being a part of it and so I never signed the release forms =( I wasn't too pleased about it but I've moved on. But, to think, there could've been a little piece of me in this movie! Aw well.

I think this'll be a fun watch. I haven't seen it yet but when I do (hopefully sometime this week if I find the time), I'll let you guys know what I think of it. I hope you'll watch it too and let me know what you think as well!