NUS Pre-Enrollment Checkup + B&J Free Cones Day

I left the house early at 11.50am, and took a 10min walk to the busstop along AMK Ave 3 opposite the train station. My bus 74 arrived after a 10 minutes wait and there, i squeezed into it, which is packed by students. It was not known to me where these students belong to since the bus is taken by students from 4 varsities - NP, NUS, SIM & SP, my guess was ngee ann poly. I alighted at Bukit Timah Road in front of Mad Jack and took bus 151 all the way to Yusoff Ishak House - NUS where i was supposed to meet Nelson and Yongbo. We scheduled our pre-enrollment medical checkup today as it coincides with Bens & Jerry Free Cones Day which we indulged in after that. We had lunch at Subway because Nel felt like eating bread. I observed that the compound was rather quiet, probably due to a one week term break or study break which i was informed of by Jas.

After lunch, we made our way to the health centre which reminded us of our days as medics in SAF medical centres. We registered ourselves at a separate booth and had our height, weight taken and eyesight tested. Afterwhich, we proceeded to have our BP taken, where i commented on the inaccuracy in using an electronic BP cuff. Urine test was next where the medic professionalism in me set in to remember on taking midstream sample. A CXR was done which reminded me of the last one i did years ago in CMPB. Finally, we were reviewed by a lady doctor who tested my normal brain functioning (the PEARL, no nystagmus, no dipliopia, etc), my stomach (abdomen soft non tender, no voluntary guarding) and also my cardiac functions (hearts lungs clear, S1S2 no murmur, no creps, breathe sounds equal bilaterally). I can actually recall all these things from my 1.5 years of medic mopa experience.

We started to talk medical stuff while waiting for each others' turns and the conversation turned out amusing. We strolled down to the science bookshop where i intended to buy an inorganic chemistry book. I dismissed the intention after noticing that the price was not stated. Again, it was an excuse for my procrastination.

We took a train down to Cathey to have our free cones. It was Ben's & Jerry's Free Cone Day and thus we shall not miss out the annual fun. Upon arrival, we were rather shocked by the influx of students that formed a homogeneously long queue. The thing was, Jas and her friends happened to be in the mids of the queue and her friend whom i do not know offered for us to cut in. However, being rather moral or infact, scared that the back people may complain, i declined politely and walked to the next outlet at Raffles City. The queue at Raffles City was much tamer as i would described and we got our cones within 30 minutes of queue. Students in uniformed formed majority of the queue as usual and i was then, joking to the rest that i would deliver a complain letter to the MOE on schools releasing their students too early. Ngiap and Jonathon joined in half way through.

Finally, we had our ice-cream and we ate it down with sense of satisfaction after a long queueing up process. However, not having enough kick of it, we decided to queue up for the second time. We finished our first cone though and remove all evidence that we already had our free cone to avoid others putting us in the bad light. Nonetheless, it was shocking that many students in the queue infront or behind us were still in the mids of their first or second or third or whatever number of cones. Having chocolate brownies flavour for my first, i went for chocolate macadanium for my second cone and both were equally good.

After the ice-cream indulgence, we walked to Marina Square where Nel supposedly said he wanted to eat something. He did not in the end and we went home. I took a one hour bus ride home on service 162. It was a fufilling day. The only regret i had was to procrastinate at the point of buying my second reference book - Atkins & Shrivers Inorganic chemistry. If only i had bought it.