An effective gloving or not

When I was in medical school, a microbiologist pointed out that the dirtiest part of a public toilet would be the door knob or door handle with the reason that the cleaner would clean commode and toilet floor in a particular time interval. But nobody would not bother to clean door knob that all toilet users need to touch it after their business. He claimed that million of germs could transmit from that source.

Based on above knowledge, I may be obsessed, I sometime see currency notes, which may have passed in the hands of hundreds of people before it comes to my pocket, as a kind of toilet door knob from the health point of view. I really don't know if there are harmful germs on £5 and £10 notes. But I believe that food handlers should not touch currency note while foods are being prepared.

I like Subway sandwich for many reasons. It is fresh. I can choose the type of bread and ingredients. I can order to toast it or not. I can select the salads and sauces (Mustard is my fav). It is also a good practice that food handlers are instructed to put gloves on while working.

Unfortunately, I came across a shop somewhere in Britain, which has been in sub-standard, in terms of hygiene although sale persons were on gloves.

When I got there, there were two sale persons in that Subway shop. I ordered BMT with Hearty Italian bread. The first person's job was cutting the bread and putting the meats inside, before toasting with cheese. After that, the second person put salads, which were cucumber, pepper, onion, iceberg as I chose, finishing by spreading with sauce. Then, it was packed. What was next!

The next step was that the sale assistant took the money with his semi-wet gloved hand, operating the machine and returning the change. When I got out of the shop, he had been dealing with next customers, repeating the same steps.

Any comment welcome.

If someone wants to know the actual place of this branch, I would be happy to tell for the sake of Subway customers. Just drop a comment.

Spreading sauce


finishing sandwich making


Holding the machine with food preparing hands, concentrating on digits


I was taking the change

Continuing medical education

A couple of years ago, my relative from Burma was visiting Britain, staying at home for a month. He noticed I was reading medical books and journals as my hobby or my task or whatever it was described.

"Work hard, Steve. Study harder to get a higher level"

His expression made me surprised. I was not preparing for any exam. I was doing a routine thing as a doctor. But in his eyes, I had to keep reading books because I still needed to learn a lot. He treated me as a student, patronising me a lot. I did not explain too much why I had to read books while working at hospital in Britain. I felt it was not worth doing so. He was just a visitor going back to Burma in a few weeks.

Basically, it is compulsory in Britain that all levels of doctors, from first year medics to consultants and professors, to do "continuing medical education" while practising. We need to keep updated with recent developments and advances in medicine while refreshing existing knowledge and skills. That is part of the duty of a good doctor. We are entitled with study days and leaves for that purpose. We need to attend education meetings and conferences .

I am wondering how a consultant physician from Burma seeing patients till late evening after working from 8Am to 4PM at hospital, would have a chance to update his or her knowledge. At the same time, I believe if patients and their families in Burma found out that their doctor keeps reading medical books, they would not trust him/her any more with the thought that our doctor had not got enough knowledge yet , but still studying. They might move to new doctors.

I still remember my early career when I ran a private clinic in Insein, northern part of former capital city, Yangon. I treated minor illness with pills and I did not request too much laboratory tests. There was a specialist clinic nearby. At that point, a funny thing was going on. The local people had been spreading words, saying that the specialist doctor from that clinic had no idea how to treat without blood tests and claiming that that young doctor, it was me, was much better. Every evening, there had been a long queue in my clinic.

Next, it is disappointing that there is a poor referral system in Burma. The doctors want to keep their patients with them for some reason, regardless of the conditions. My aunt has a sleeping difficulty and anxiety , and a cardiologist has been treating her with sleeping pill for many years, instead of referring to a psychiatrist or counselling service. Again, from the patient point of view, if they are advised to see other doctor for a different problem , they may think the referring doctor is not efficient. I heard several similar stories before. So we can't blame doctors' way of practice in Burma. But I believe general people would need to be educated. At the same time, the authorities concerned need to make sure the referral system in Burma running smoothly and effectively for the sake of our patients. Reinforcement may be required.



Friday afternoon Library at the hospital I am working


Evidence based Medicine corner


Reading a medical journal

Bournemouth and Brownsea Island

Previously, we intended to go to Isle of Wight in this weekend. But the plan was changed and today we headed towards Bournemouth which is a nearer place. Late summer saw the crowd of locals and visitors walking in the shopping centre and sea front of Dorset’s coastal resort town. As I expected, its town centre was not too much different from the counterparts of other English towns. There were usual shops and stores. I popped in to Borders book shop to buy Jamie Oliver’s Italian cook book as my colleague recommended. The interesting thing was that there were only pop, rock and some classic CDs on the music shelves. No R&B and Rap songs for some reason. Perhaps, it needs some more time to get updated to a world class cosmopolitan place.

It was within a walking distance from town to the sea front. After passing through a park, where there was a huge balloon, raising visitors 500 feet into the air to view the English Channel and Dorset countryside, we saw a rather small pier. Cloudy sky was not a perfect weather for beach lovers. But there were a few people swimming. Some were enjoying with surfing boards.





Brownsea island is the largest of the islands in Poole harbour with 500 acres. With £10.50 per head boat tickets, we had an opportunity to lean Bournemouth’s long sand beach and cliffs on our way to the island. Other boats and yachts were also around with different directions.



Now the island is under the control of the National Trust although it was private island in the past . It is naturally beautiful.



View Larger Map

The National Trust website said:

Peaceful island of woodland, wetland and heath with a rich diversity of wildlife

• Fine walks and spectacular views of Poole Harbour
• Home to the endangered red squirrel
• Famous for being the birthplace for Scouting and Guiding
• A haven for wildlife, including Sika deer and wading birds
• Trails and Tracker Packs for young smugglers and explorers
• Escape the noise and stress of modern life and discover nature in this unspoilt setting

I believe it is worth visiting there at last one time.

If you want to see the full set of photos, click here

Thank you

Menu

These days, I don't have too much blogging time, so I am just sharing lunch menu of my hospital restaurant for the week (24th August 2009). Foods are rather cheap, but reasonably good.

Monday Lunch Menu
Starter
Home Made Celery Soup
Main Course
Roast Pork & Apple Sauce
Steak and Mushroom Pies with a Rich Gravy and Puff Pastry Topping
Breast of Chicken with a Wild Mushroom & Madeira Sauce

Vegetarian Option
Cauliflower Cheese

Dessert
Chocolate Sponge with White Chocolate Sauce
Rice Pudding
Selection of Cold Sweets

Tuesday Lunch Menu
Starter
Home Made Vegetable Soup
Main Course
Grilled Gammon with Pineapple
Chicken Curry with Rice / Chips
Beef Lasange

Vegetarian Option
Vegetable Pasta Bake - Fresh Vegetables and Pasta topped with
Breadcrumbs and Cheese

Dessert
Fruit Crumble with Custard
Rice Pudding
Selection of Cold Sweets

Wednesday Lunch Menu
Starter
Home Made Cauliflower & Broccoli Soup
Main Course
Roast Chicken and Seasoning
Beef Wellington with a Red Wine Sauce
Pasta Carbanara - Ribbons of Tagliatelli with a Mushroom and
Smoked Ham Cream Sauce

Vegetarian Option
Homemade Forest Mushroom Quiche

Dessert
Apple and Sultana Sponge with Custard
Rice Pudding
Selection of Cold Sweets

Thursday Lunch Menu
Starter
Home Made Watercress Soup
Main Course
Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding
Chicken Korma - a Spicy but not hot Curry in a Creamy Sauce
with Almonds, served with Rice / Chips
Fried Cod in a Home Made Batter with Lemon Wedges

Vegetarian Option
Mushroom and Spinach Lasagne - Layers of Pasta, Button Mushrooms
and Spinach in a White Wine Cream Sauce

Dessert
Fruit Crumble with Custard
Milk Pudding
Selection of Cold Sweets

Friday Lunch Menu
Starter
Home Made Tomato Soup
Main Course
Shepherds Pie
Faggots in Gravy with Mushy Peas
Braised Steak with Mushrooms. Shallots in a Red Wine Gravy

Vegetarian Option
Mushroom & Red Pepper Stroganoff

Dessert
Apple Pie with Custard
Rice Pudding
Selection of Cold Sweets

Updated (26/08/2009) 20:30





Restaurant

My food and others eating


Lunch (Vegetable pasta with chips and pea ) not my main meal

Updated 27/08/09 -09:30

Night off break fast: my fav British breakfast with eggs, bacon, sausage, baked beans, mushrooms and pudding ( Ma KOM တို႕စားတဲ့ ထမင္းနဲ႕ပဲျပဳတ္ေတာ့ မလြမ္းေသးဘူး။ ဘယ္တုန္းကမွလဲ မၾကိဳက္ခဲ့ဘူး။ .)

Emotional intelligence

When I was young, I still remember that people emphasised the importance of IQ (Intelligence Quotient), assuming that it was one of the key predictors of academic and financial success. But these days, people have more talked about Emotional Intelligence (EQ). So I just did a quick research about EQ. The followings are the results.

What is Emotional intelligence

Emotional Intelligence (EI) describes the ability, capacity, skill or, in the case of the trait EI model, a self-perceived ability, to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups. (Source)

Emotional intelligence is the unique repertoire of emotional skills that a person uses to navigate the everyday challenges of life.(Source)

Emotional Intelligence is the ability to identify, use, understand and manage emotions. (source)

Research suggests that a person's emotional intelligence (EQ) might be a greater predictor of success than his or her intellectual intelligence (IQ), despite an assumption that people with high IQs will naturally accomplish more in life. (Source)

Goleman identified the five 'domains' of EQ as:
1. Knowing your emotions.
2. Managing your own emotions.
3. Motivating yourself.
4. Recognising and understanding other people's emotions.
5. Managing relationships, ie., managing the emotions of others. (Source)

Two aspects
• Understanding yourself, your goals, intentions, responses, behaviour and all.
• Understanding others, and their feelings. (Source)

For decades, a lot of emphasis has been put on certain aspects of intelligence such as logical reasoning, math skills, spatial skills, understanding analogies, verbal skills etc. Researchers were puzzled by the fact that while IQ could predict to a significant degree academic performance and, to some degree, professional and personal success, there was something missing in the equation. Some of those with fabulous IQ scores were doing poorly in life; one could say that they were wasting their potential by thinking, behaving and communicating in a way that hindered their chances to succeed.

One of the major missing parts in the success equation is emotional intelligence, a concept made popular by the groundbreaking book by Daniel Goleman, which is based on years of research by numerous scientists such as Peter Salovey, John Meyer, Howard Gardner, Robert Sternberg and Jack Block, just to name a few. For various reasons and thanks to a wide range of abilities, people with high emotional intelligence tend to be more successful in life than those with lower EIQ even if their classical IQ is average. (Source)

Emotional Intelligence Test (click here)

After a brief reading about EI, what I understand is that it is a skill someone needs to develop or improve the personal ability to control newly emerging (own or others) emotions triggered by external stimuli, without reducing normal thinking power , while brain is working well in its maximum speed for further plans. To be honest, I must say I still need to learn more about this social science topic.

Thank you

For the time being ခုတေလာ......

I just imitate what some bloggers did lately. Here is the result.

ခုတေလာ......

ခုတေလာ ေတြးေနမိတာက
£ rate getting better?

ကိုယ့္ကိုယ္ကို ျပန္ဆင္ျခင္မိတာက
Too much whisky

က်န္းမာေရး
Neck ache because of KOM's cbox

ဖတ္ျဖစ္တဲ့စာအုပ္ေတြက
Dirty, sick, X-rated & Politically incorrect Jokes (Uncensored!)
The Mammoth Book of Insults

ေရးေနမိတာက
Complaint letter to the National Rail

ေရာက္ေနျဖစ္တာက
Evening walks around cemetery

နားေထာင္ျဖစ္ေနတာက
Fifty Cent: Massacre

ရြတ္ေနမိတဲ့ကဗ်ာက
My Gun Go Off (Curtis, 50 Cent)

ျဖစ္ခ်င္ေနတာက
Jet pot winner

စားျဖစ္ေနတာက
Roast Duck and Red wine

သနားေနမိတာက
Single moms

လြမ္းေနမိတာက
Amsterdam

ေမ့ေလ်ာ့ပစ္ေနမိတာက
Dying people from work

ခါးသက္ေနမိတာက
My medical doctor life

တမ္းတေနမိတာက
My missing Lamy pen

ၾကိတ္ၿပီးခ်ီးက်ဴးေနမိတာက
Bill Clinton (affair with Monica Lewinsky and recent successful attempt to get 2 journalists free from N. Korea)

ၾကိတ္ၿပီးအထင္ေသးေနမိတာက
Fish paste eaters
(လူမုန္းမ်ားေအာင္လို႕ ေသခ်ာေျပာသည္)

ဆႏၵမရွိတဲ့ေနရာ
Ex-capital Yangon

ဆႏၵရွိေနတဲ့ကိစၥ
Boat trip

မုန္းတီးေနမိတာက
Motor cars and Windows Vista

ခ်စ္ေနတာက
M..

စိတ္ပ်က္ေနမိတာက
Labour government and Prime Minister Gordon Brown

စြဲလန္းေနမိတာက
Gangster movies

သေဘာက်ေနမိတာက
My new 100% organic shirt

လိုအပ္ေနတာက
New BMW

ေတာင္းေနမိတဲ့ဆု
to become a Tycoon, instead of a rubbish doctor

ထပ္ျပန္တလဲလဲေအာ္ဟစ္ေနမိတာက
F...............

ဝန္ခံခ်င္တာက
Lying myself

My shopping basket

Someone's shopping basket may show his or her eating style while reflecting the social status, belief and place of origin to some extent. In many occasions, we can also learn the hobby and interest of a particular person .




If you check the items I bought from Tesco today, you can see easily I am an average person who keeps cat at home. Lentils and beans mean I am something related to Indian sub-continent or Mexico. You may notice eggs at about centre. Of course, I normally buy free-range eggs as I do not support the way caged eggs are produced.








On the other hand, free range egg production is really nice in my eyes. This is the picture from North Creek Farm.

Plagiarism Mania

What is Plagiarism?

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to "plagiarize" means to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own : use (another's production) without crediting the source.

Plagiarism is a serious fraud. Some journalists have ended their career as they stole someone else’s work. There were many students who had to leave university after submitting an essay with missing reference. Most schools have been using plagiarism detector software.

It was an earthquake in the journalism world. 27-year-old Jayson Blair, who had been one of only two African-American editors in the history of the University of Maryland's Diamondback newspaper, and had been hired as a full reporter at the New York Times at an impressively young age, resigned only 6 days after first being accused of copying a story from another newspaper.(source)

Later, it was discovered that he had a bipolar disorder which is a serious mental problem.

Above article I came across for some reason made me remind a Burmese blogger and her scandal. Apparently, she(he) was bitterly criticised by a lobby of people who found out her copy works. Personally, I like her blog posts which are pretty entertaining. At the same time, I tried to help her out. At this point, my thought was that if there is any strong relation between plagiarism and some mental or personality disorder.

Basically, psychiatry is an interesting speciality, explaining a variety of mental and personal disorders, although, I believe, there are many areas the psychiatrists have not explored yet. (Click here for Who classification of mental and behavioural disorders). (Easy view on Wiki)

In my attempt to establish “the repeated plagiarism” as a psychological condition, unfortunately I could not find any relevant publication or paper available on free Internet sources while waiting for a reply email from my friend, who is a psychiatrist. I think it can be added under that heading of Habit and impulse disorders, together with

• Pathological gambling
• Pathological fire-setting (pyromania)
• Pathological stealing (kleptomania)
• Trichotillomania
  

Can we call this condition as Plagiarmania or Plagiamania or Plagiarism mania?

Probably, the treatment option would include cognitive and behaviour therapy, rather than criticising and shouting in an uneducated manner. Own GP would be helpful this point.

Basically, no body is perfect in the world while some proportion of healthy looking persons may have a mild form of personality deviation. Who knows?

By the way, if someone wants to check own personality disorder privately, click here.

Thank you

All the best

Speed boat trip in Cardiff

Wales, which had 2.9 million population in 2001 census, is one of the countries in the United Kingdom. Cardiff is its capital city. When I got there, I felt I was in a foreign country. I think the Welsh people look slightly different from English with more rounded face. The Welsh language is what I can't predict what it means. But we can still use English. Basically Wales is a really nice place to me.


Welsh flag


An example of Welsh

We are on 5240 feet long Severn bridge . on M4 motor way to Wales


Here are some photos of Cardiff Bay

A swan diving for fish or what I never know.

This speed boat attracted me to buy a ticket for next trip

ready to take a ride, nice


We were just boarding


We're just leaving the harbour.

In a couple of minutes, the boat got faster with a loud music. I thought it was flying over the surface of water. Sometime it jumped. Many occasions, it turned suddenly. We all screamed.

At the end of the trip, I had to wait for a few minutes my hearing and balance to come back. But I was really a nice experience.

For those interested in some Wales photos.

Anyway, I can tell Wales is not my country.

Clay, Pool, Hardy and A Harbour

This morning, I was doing a minute research about clay as an attempt to find out the history of the Blue Pool encouraged me to do so.

Ball clays are kaolinitic sedimentary clays, that commonly consist of 20-80% kaolinite, 10-25% mica, 6-65% quartz. They are fine-grained and plastic in nature. They are mined in Devon and Dorset in England. They are commonly used in the construction of many ceramic articles.

The ceramic use of ball clays in Britain dates back to at least the Roman era. More recent trade began when clay was needed to construct tobacco pipes in the 16th and 17th century.

The name "ball clay" is believed to derive from the time when the clay was mined by hand. It was cut into 15 to 17-kilogram cubes and during transport the corners of the cubes became rounded off leaving "balls".

It can be said that the Blue Pool is one of the historic places of past time clay business.
The Blue Pool is a lake in the Furzebrook Estate, a 25 acres (100,000 m2) park of heath woodland and gorse near Furzebrook in Dorset, England.

The pool is a flooded, disused clay pit where Purbeck Ball Clay was dug from the 1600s to the early 1900s to make smoking pipes and tea pots.

I must say the place was amazing. Well maintained. At the same time, it looked natural. Tall pine trees were growing well, beautifully guarding the blue lake. Birds were singing. It is claimed that there are wild animals inhabited , such as rabbits, badgers, squirrels, deer and sand lizards. It was drizzling. So I did not have a full range of chance to explore the area.

A request for the wood ant. British people are kind enough to save ants and their work.

An ant nest (British wood ants there)

The color of water ,which is varying from green to blue, is due to clay particles.

Pine trees

You can see the Blue Pool photos I took yesterday.

Well, I went to Hardy's home before going to Blue Pool. To be honest, I did not know Thomas Hardy until a friend of mine from Bath mentioned about his name and novels last month.

Thomas Hardy(2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.

This is what he was described in wikipedia.

According to the Thomas Hardy society founded in 1968, he was born at Higher Bockhampton near Dorchester. During his lifetime he composed nearly a thousand published poems and wrote fourteen publised novels including ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’ and ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’. He died in Dorchester on 11 January 1928. Much of Thomas Hardy's work is based on Wessex, the South and West of England.

Unfortunately, when I got to Hardy's cottage, where he was born and raised, now under the management of the National Trust, it was found out that the small museum was not open for the public. For some reason, opening days are from Monday to Thursdays and Sunday only, what I leaned later. Why not on Saturday? Still misery. Anyway, I had a chance to walk around nice and quiet surrounding woodland area. I saw some families with their dogs enjoying the place like me.

Hardy's cottage

cute tiny wild fruits, close-up view (ရႊန္းမီအတြက္လက္ေဆာင္)

Here are some more photos of Thomas Hardy's birthplace.

After visiting above two places, I headed to Poole harbour to take boat photos. As it has been 6 PM, all deep sea boat services had already finished.

Full set of boat photos here

Reference:

http://www.bluepooltearooms.co.uk/index.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy

http://www.hardysociety.org/