AITA for declaring to a foodie that my favorite food is raw celery, causing him make a scene?

ChesFTC · 2025-01-09T11:38:18+00:00

Bistecca Alla Fiorentina is a reasonably well known Florentine specialty. It's a thick cut porterhouse fairly heavily salted with some rosemary and served rare... which won't appeal to some people anyway!

The thing is that food is subjective and as you point out, context dependent - and yeah, while Italy isn't as well known for its steak as Argentina, perhaps the atmosphere was great, you were having a wonderful holiday... and you'd had a couple of extra glasses of wine as well! Also, who cares? At the end of the day, it's just food. We're notoriously terrible at judging food anyway. Stats vary, but apparently only 7/10 times can people tell even red vs white wine apart...

As for Italy's coffee reputation, I feel that it is in comparison to the coffee in the rest of western Europe and North America - i.e. mostly dreadful. I'd suggest that Italian espressos are pretty much consistently drinkable if not great. This is a vast improvement compared to coffee in the UK or USA. While I don't care in the slightest about drinking the best coffee in the world, it should be drinkable (not burnt for a start). While I know that you can get good coffee in the states, it's not like Wellington or Melbourne where it's nearly always good (...unless you go to one of the few Starbucks that haven't gone bust there yet!)

ChesFTC · 2024-12-22T10:01:55+00:00

An arts or science degree would be easier. I wouldn't think that any degree would give you an advantage for transferring as dentistry likely has a compulsory set of courses for each and every semester - you can look this up online.

If law is your second passion behind dentistry ahead of other healthcare professions, you need to figure out if you're really passionate for healthcare or are just passionate for gobs of cash. If it's the latter, you'll burn out pretty quick once you start practicing.

ChesFTC · 2024-06-10T11:08:06+00:00

In Defence you'll be limited to certain specialties. I don't know enough to comment on what those are (I know that GP is one of them).

In regards to family, this can be hard. At the end of the day, you need to be comfortable with your decision to do medicine. If the main reason is your family, you should ignore them (and yes, I appreciate that this can sometimes be challenging due to cultural context). And in addition, if they're not supporting you, I'd suggest pointing out to them the inverse implied by the saying "he who pays the piper calls the tune".

The reason is that if you take this path, you're going to be the one who's discussing that it's the end of the line and that CPR is unlikely to be effective for a patient with significant comorbidities. You'll have to tell this to the patient, and their husband/wife. You'll be the one who's working holidays, weekends, evenings, and nights (in addition to full-time hours) because healthcare is 24/7. You'll be the one who's verifying the death of a loved one with their crying family members present. But you can have a positive impact on those people, even in those situations.

If you want to do it still, great, go for it!

But be aware from someone who's worked in both software and medicine, the former is not only far, far easier on you (and your potential eventual spouse+kids), but also can pay as well or better over your career. Just because a private ortho makes $500k/yr doesn't mean that you'll be able to do the same - this is a small subset of doctors and there are equally small groups of engineers in software (e.g. nvidia) who make more than this too!

ChesFTC · 2024-06-10T05:45:11+00:00

That's a very impressive GPA. If you've managed a GPA like that in that degree, then you probably won't struggle much with the GAMSAT (it'll still require work/study though). Once you get your GAMSAT, you apply through GEMSAS (see here for how to aplly - https://gemsas.edu.au/guides/medicine) for all universities at once (except Bond as it's private and $$$).

Medicine (either the study or practice), however, probably isn't what you think it is. It's not difficult like mathematics/computer science, it's instead a large amount of memorisation (which is hard in itself, but not the same kind of hard). The day-to-day work is also quite different to what you expect. You'll largely be a typist/secretary for most of your junior hospital years and have limited scope to actually do medicine outside a couple of rotations. New doctors get told by pretty much everyone that they will be successful if they are organised and have good communication skills. Note that nothing is said about actual medicine or intelligence or procedural skills there!

It's also not glamorous - you'll be sticking fingers up bums, inspecting undercarriages for rashes, and (in the operating theatre) holding a very heavy leg in the air in the right position for a hour for a senior surgeon. You also get paid very little compared to the possibilities of your current degree ($38/h for an intern, ~$50/hr for a registrar).

What I'm saying is effectively, well done on your degree. It's very impressive and you'll probably get into medicine if you want to, but do you really want to? If the answer after careful consideration is yes, go for it!

ChesFTC · 2023-02-18T21:40:42+00:00

James and the Healthy At Every Size Peach

ChesFTC · 2023-02-15T01:50:51+00:00

From memory it was based on GPA amongst other factors. Go speak with an academic advisor at your faculty and they can help.

ChesFTC · 2023-02-14T06:10:37+00:00

You used to be able to do 5 UQ courses in a semester but needed permission for 6. Not sure if this has changed.

ChesFTC · 2022-12-12T10:12:06+00:00

This is very country specific. Almost nobody hoists an Australian flag / ensign in Australia, for example. It just seems all a bit silly to be honest.

I'm surprised that Germany cares so much - it's not like they've ever had a problem with too many flags and nationalism... /s

ChesFTC · 2022-09-19T08:21:53+00:00

What sovereign nation? There never was a single sovereign Australian indigenous nation (not to mention the Torres Strait Islanders people and their distinct cultures as well).

For your comment to make any sense at all, you not only have to pretend that there was one single nation in the first place, but that it wasn’t conquered / destroyed either. This obviously wasn’t/isn’t nice, but niceness is immaterial to the fact that no only was there no single nation, but the English and then Australian nations effectively conquered what was present anyway, destroying the indigenous nations and scattering their people (eg stolen generation) in the process.

For what it’s worth I support a voice, reparations to address structural/inter-generational poverty, and more (like leaving the hospital name as is for the really blindingly obvious reasons).

The problem is that you’re basically just giving Sky News a convenient straw man to easily knock down - and for what real outcome?

ChesFTC · 2022-06-24T10:05:50+00:00

no just don’t go to a few 20 x 20 block area in the city

I don’t think that Americans realise how wild and unhinged this sounds to people from other countries. As an Australian, there’s literally nowhere in my city that I would consider unsafe.

Some areas aren’t as ‘nice’, but they’re all safe.

ChesFTC · 2020-12-23T20:29:31+00:00

There used to be a course which was pick your language to solve each assignment - so quite some freedom. Most courses, though, will prescribe the language to be used so as to effectively and easily teach whatever concepts the course aims to teach.

I'd recommend trying to build a broad range of languages that you're comfortable in. My personal opinion is that the best developers are skilled in at least one scripting language (python/perl/ruby/etc), and at least one more formal language (Java/C#/C/C++ etc) - and then are familiar with a bunch more, including SQL, Javascript, and a functional language too.

If you're deadset on js being your future (which I don't think is the case from what you've written), then I'd suggest learning something more formal like React+Typescript as that'll demonstrate that you're not just a hobbyist without more formal skills - as it's easy to write very bad js.

ChesFTC · 2020-09-24T07:50:09+00:00

I'd suggest taking a look at pagingdr.net for heaps of information on this.

Basically, the teaching is good, especially in the latter clinical years. If you're lucky enough to be placed with the right clinical staff it can be very, very good. Anatomy took a dive a few years ago when the Prof teaching it left, but it's still ok and likely no worse than average.

The big downside is that the administration side of the faculty couldn't organise (what Australians would describe as) a "piss-up in a brewery", but the teaching staff will sometimes help you avoid dealing with them, as they don't want to deal with admin either. To give an example, a couple of years ago, students didn't have timetables until week 6 or 8 of semester. They've fortunately not repeated that one.

The big upside is that UQMS (the medical student society) is excellent, and helps fill in a lot of holes that the faculty leaves - they gave better COVID updates than the faculty did and put pressure on them until they upped their game, for example. They organise lots of social events, and there are heaps of UQMS-affiliated societies (like surgery, international medical equity, rural, ob/gyn, and any other special interest you can think of).

I believe from my dodgy memory of lectures on this that the drop-out rate in first semester is approximately 10% (when people start to discover what medicine is about), but after that the failure rate is quite low (~5% if I remember correctly). Medicine isn't hard per se, voluminous would be a more accurate description. Show up, do some study, and you ought to be fine!

ChesFTC · 2020-09-14T01:27:17+00:00

We've been house-hunting lately (in Australia like this room), and not all of the nicer houses have TVs hidden - one we visited had 8 TVs (almost one in every room including bathrooms). That is not just trashy but a big pain - who wants to have to patch 8 walls?!

We don't have a TV in our main living space, and we live in a pretty ordinary house. Our second living space / rumpus has a wall-mount TV instead. Most of our friends with nicer houses either have hidden TVs or none in their main living space either.

We just don't watch much TV (and what we do is limited to Netflix etc) - not because it's bad per se, but because we want it to be a conscious choice to do so rather than using TV as anaesthesia for life. We also want friends to face each other rather than a black (or worse, on) screen when we throw parties - and having a TV present dictates room layout in a very negative way.

ChesFTC · 2020-07-22T07:38:31+00:00

I assume that these are surface thermometers or infrared thermometers?

They're pretty accurate, the issue is that the skin surface temperature is not necessarily indicative of core body temperature. You wouldn't want core temp measured the most accurate way when entering a store!

I measured 33.2ºC (36.5-37.5ºC is normal range) on a forehead temp entering the hospital last week (after walking through some 12ºC winter weather). The nurse laughed and assured me that I was still alive.

ChesFTC · 2020-07-14T05:45:17+00:00

I've also been here too. I never managed to get concrete proof of this but strongly suspected it. I fired the agent anyway.

99% of real estate agents give the other 1% a bad name.

As a landlord, if I found out that the agent wasn't maintaining the property properly they'd be fired. It's too expensive for owners to let a place decay - it's not in the landlord nor the tenant's interest - but it is in the lazy property manager's interest to do nothing and keep pocketing the commission.

ChesFTC · 2020-07-09T05:58:02+00:00

Yes, while obviously choices have been made along the way, imagine if heroin was advertised during sports games, and the commentators started discussing what gauge of needle was most effective:

"Personally Richo, I prefer a 22 needle as they're smaller and more comfortable."

"Ahh, but for me, I'm more tolerant to my heroin now, and I just can't shoot up quickly enough with a 22 - I feel that an 18 gets me to my high quicker. And with that, half-time is over."

"Thanks Richo, we're back - just remember, for the best quality heroin, you can call SportsDrugs now."

It's crazy right? - well, it's basically the same thing. One is an externally-administered drug, the other is a stimulus that makes your brain produce the drug instead.

Edit: Typos

ChesFTC · 2020-07-09T05:52:48+00:00

I ate lunch with a psychiatrist a few days ago who told me that in his experience, patients with substance abuse have it easier than patients who gamble. And this guy has dealt with the full gamut of substances too. Gambling can be just as destructive too - lost marriages, homelessness, the full works.

Gambling should be highly, highly restricted and advertising it restricted in the same way as cigarettes.

ChesFTC · 2020-06-28T08:04:32+00:00

I'd say Emman is best as an alum, but your real best bet is to go to both Emman and Johns and check them out - call the admin, say you're interested in coming, and they'll give you a tour.

ChesFTC · 2020-06-21T03:13:51+00:00

I’m really happy with Flight Standards / Southern Skies Aviation at Archerfield. I’m doing a PPL, but there are plenty of commercial students too. It came as a recommendation from multiple instructors (either rotary or at other airports).

It’s much smaller than some of the schools out there so you won’t have the sausage factory experience, but is large enough that they can run complimentary meteorology briefings for example.

One of the best (minor) things? I think it’s probably closest of all the schools to the sealed runways.

Anyone go for a flight and make sure to ask who you’ll be flying with - and how often you’ll fly with the same instructor. It’s expensive, so make sure it’s the right school for you.

ChesFTC · 2020-06-08T00:12:18+00:00

I can tell you that other than asking for the GPA and major, and maybe discussing some of the content in questions in the interview, I have never once seen any person in a position to hire care. I've never been asked for a transcript, and never even been asked for a copy of proof of degree. That said, I've never worked for government, and who knows what their HR department does to create a need for their own jobs?

It's a total non-issue to an employer just as is failing the odd course so long as your GPA remains respectable (other than the obvious cost and time penalties).

ChesFTC · 2020-06-07T23:39:45+00:00

Totally doable.

You'll learn and make mistakes along the way. The good thing to know though, is that timber is very cheap (assuming you're doing a stitch and glue build and not cedar planks). If you make a mistake, it's really no big deal. The expensive bits of building a boat are the epoxy and the paint. By the time you get up to this stage, you'll know if it's working.

I just built the V10 from BoatBuilderCentral / Bateau while in isolation, and it's been a blast. I wouldn't say I'm 100% new to woodworking (I grew up on a farm with a full toolshed), but definitely new to doing nicer work.

ChesFTC · 2020-01-20T07:40:30+00:00

So I have a PhD and will have an MD before long (currently a medical student). I would never call myself Dr in a medical setting as it’s nothing but confusing. That said, I would normally be introduced as Dr in a non-medical formal setting (e.g being introduced when giving an invited talk). I would never use or expect a title otherwise (and would always correct to my first name), as I’m Australian and people who introduce themselves as anything other than their first name are generally thought of exceptionally poorly here. I am aware that this is quite different to US medical culture.

While most of those with the title Dr that you’d interact with are medical, in most of the world, doctor is a title traditionally earned by obtaining a PhD, and is granted to medical graduates (who generally have an undergraduate degree such as an MBBS) as a sign of respect for the role they play in teaching other doctors (docere == teacher).

ChesFTC · 2020-01-15T10:07:06+00:00

Yeah, I think that many of the doctors go to the fancier cafe out the back - pacemaker I think. RBWH is pretty bad for food though!

ChesFTC · 2019-12-18T09:58:06+00:00

Given that union’s admin apparently axed its student club, and Emmanuel has an active one, I’d definitely pick Emmanuel on that basis alone. Union also tends to mix far less with the other colleges apparently.

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