“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”

21st February 2007.

This marks the first day i step onto the land of the Aboriginals once again, down southeast at the city of Melbourne at 0615am. It marks the beginning of my 2nd year as a student at Monash University, Clayton, reading medicine and surgery in the preclinical years. This will prove to be the culmination of all the preclinical material before we hit off to the wards.

University

But that aside, the reason why i have set foot on Australia a week earlier is because of 2 other committments apart from the didactic study of medicine. (1) Orientation Week 2007, Monash University (2) Transition Residential Weekend, Faculty of Medicine.

(1) O Week: I am the elected Activities Officer for the Singapore Association of Monash at Monash Uni Clayton. Someone has to be the O-Week festival table for SAM so that freshmen can sign up to join this fantastic social club. It is not an exclusive to Singaporeans club as some might misunderstand. And since i am going to be involved in the Transition Residential Weekend, i thought i might as well come back and help. Great turn out today, we managed to get 30 people to join our club!!

(2) Transition Residential Weekend: Thursday will be filled with a training programme for guides like me. This is a camp at Philip Island Adventure Resort to help the new year 1 medical students transit into university life, and a medical student life. It aims to introduce them to the faculty, seniors and the course itself. It definitely helped me get into a right frame of mind last year when i was a year 1, and this is my way of giving back. I hope i will be of help to some.

Physical

I came back to my new home at Gardiner Rd and went for a short run around campus. Only lasted 15min. Well Confucius, a Chinese philosopher once said “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.

This is my single step for the eventual Gobi March 2007 which i hope i can take part with my brother and sister. My brother missed it last year as he was returning to Singapore from Bermuda following a change in job.

Spiritual

At night, i headed over to the Heah lodge, courtesy of Nathaniel, a year 4 medical student at Monash too. He is doing obgyn now at Box Hill. We had a Bible Study and it was definitely a good meaningful lesson on Christ’s great love for us as His children, and how we ought to be love Him back, and one of the surest ways of doing so is by obedience. Obedience to His teachings, His commandments, etc etc.

Conclusion

It is a packed day with lots of aspects to it and a great day to kick my academic year off! It is off to a flying start and i do pray it stays this way!