AMSA Convention 2007

Two days after returning from Kangaroo Island was the commencement of the annual AMSA convention 2007 at Adelaide Convention Centre. Since this is the first time I attend such a convention, I was quite excited and looking forward to the activities in the coming week. Well, it started with registration and welcome session on Sunday, and all the programme actually started on Monday.

Basically there was a main hall where there were stalls set up by various medical appliances suppliers e.g. Welch Allyn, some book companies, medical insurance agents, royal college of general practice etc. Then there is another hall where talks were conducted (mostly in the morning) and other smaller rooms for elective workshop in the afternoon.

(Violet and I at the Convention hall just before the start of another talk session)

Among the many speakers for the morning session, I was particularly impressed by Dr Sally Cockburn (commonly known as Dr Feelgood in Australia) who is a health communicator and journalist and Li Cun Xin, the author of ‘Mao’s last dancer’. For the afternoon sessions, there were different workshops like cannulation, basic and advanced suturing, talks etc going on at the same time, catering for different interests of conventioneers.

(Violet and I learning intubation at the Defence Force medical team stall)

There were lots of other intervasities competition such as debates which were held during lunch time everyday. On Thursday, there were more intervarisities competitions going on. It started with Medical Emergency Challenge in the morning, followed by sports day event in the afternoon. Ok, the sports day event…hmh…don’t get misled by the word ‘Sports Days’. Ok, they do have tug of war, but other than that, there’s nothing else commonly seen in a real sports day! the meddies from different universities fight for the Cascade Cup and Pipps Cup, which basically is the alcohol drinking relay competition. Well, that’s the Australian meddies culture…(didn’t bring my camera for the sports day, so didn’t manage to capture any of those funny moments). There were also Research poster competition, photography competition etc.

Oh ya, other the day programs, they have night social events in different pubs every night. Well, simply not my cup of tea, so didn’t go for any of those other than the gala dinner on Friday night.

(Chang Yang, Xuan Ni, Violet and I at gala dinner)

All in all, I think attending the convention is an interesting experience, which one can hardly get in Malaysia. And I think that the Australian Medical Student Association (AMSA) has done a really great job in organizing such a huge event every year. It’s never an easy task to organize a one-week educational event for 1000 participants. Apart from the successful convention, I think AMSA has been a very powerful and influential organization which represented all medical student in Australia and fight for medical students’ rights. Imagine having a student organization activity room in the Parliament House. Imagine getting your voices heard in medical school related policy making (e.g. number of places for new medical students each years etc). For sure, such thing will never happen in Malaysia and not even to mention having an annual medical student convention or even simply having a national student organization that represents all medical students in Malaysia.

Kangaroo Island: Day 3

Woke up early and drove back to the jetty at Penneshaw as Herng Yee, Ru Hui and Xiang Ying were to take the early morning ferry back to Adelaide. After dropping three of them at the jetty and returning the car, Violet and I pretty much spent the day around Penneshaw and took the evening ferry back to the mainland.

(Frenchman’s Rocks, just next to the jetty)

That’s pretty much about my Kangaroo Island trip. Coming up next, will be my other 10 days spent in Adelaide.

Kangaroo Island: Day 2

Waking up early in the morning, started our exploration of the south coast of Kangaroo Island. It’s a more compact day and we visited more places compared to the first day. We started of with Vivonne Bay, claimed by Sydney University researchers as the most beautiful beach in Australia. But for me, it’s just one of the many other nice beaches in Kangaroo Island, can’t see anything significant that makes it the most beautiful beach.

(Vivonne Bay)

After spending a short while taking pictures, we went to Kelly Hill caves. As we reached there pretty early, the tourist guide only brought 5 of us around the cave. It’s quite a nice cave but again, not something very impressive. Worth a visit though.

(Kelly Hill Cave)

We drove along the South Coast road and stopped by yet another picturesque beach, Hanson Bay.

(Hanson Bay beach)

Some quick photographs and headed off to next destination, Hanson Bay Koala walk. Basically there’s nothing much here other than 2 rows of trees, which accommodate over 20 koalas. And he koalas were all hiding and camouflaging on top the trees and we had to stretch our necks, looking upwards to ‘hunt’ for them all the way through the few hundred metres walk.

(One of the few Koalas we found)

The following destination, Flinders Chase National Park is the major site that one must not miss when visiting Kangaroo Island. It covers a wide area of conversed park in the whole West coast of the Island. And it’s where the two stunning rock formations, the Admiral Arch and Remarkable Rock are located. The Admiral Arch is a spectacular rock arch formed by erosion and there are lots of New Zealand fur seals playing around that area, where is the Remarkable Rocks are a group wind sculptured granite boulders.

(Admiral Arch)(Remarkable Rocks)

At the end of the day, on the way back to Raven Cottage, we thought of stopping by a grassland and have a walk only to be chased by the Kangaroo. We kept running around the car and ended up hiding in the car and watching Kangaroos through the windows. What an experience!

(Kangaroos surrounding our car)

Had pasta for dinner again, then played card games before going to bed. A tiring yet interesting day!

Kangaroo Island: Day 1

It has been ages since I last updated my blog. Winter break is over and everyone has started the new semester. Most friends have blogged and posted photos about their interesting winter holiday trip around Australia. I reckon I am the slowest of all. But then seriously since the last post, I hardly have time to actually sit in front of my laptop and wasting like what I am doing now. Okok, to keep things short, just a brief description about my 2-week stay in Adelaide (plus one photo at each tourist site) followed by other interesting events since I came back to Melbourne.

As mentioned in the previous post, Violet and I flew to Adelaide on 26th evening and reached there pretty late at night. Stayed over at her aunt’s place for the night (infact for our entire Adelaide trip) and headed to Kangaroo Island early morning the following day, with another 3 friends (Herng Yee, Ru Hui and Xiang Ying). It was a pretty long journey, roughly an hour of bus ride from Adelaide city to Cape Jervis jetty and another 45 minutes ferry cruise to get to Penneshaw, the major jetty in the island. After picking up our pre-booked car, we headed to Cape Willoughby light house. Well, nothing exciting over there other than the long bumpy muddy unsealed road heading to the very far east corner of the island with one solitary white tower and that’s all.After spending the long day driving, we headed to Seal Bay along the south coast of the island. well, this is much more interesting. It is the natural habitats for the Australian Sea Lions. And it’s amazing to know that, they actually live on a 6 days cycle (going out to the sea and swim and hunt for food for 3 days and coming back to rest for the next 3 days). As it is getting dark soon, we headed to our last destination for the day, Little Sahara. Left my camera in the car so didn’t capture any photos there.

(Seal lying on walking trail)

After a tiring day, we headed to our accommodation only to find ourselves almost lost. Apart from having no street light around in Kangaroo Island and being completely unfamiliar with that area, the cottage we rented was so ’secluded’ that it’s not directly at the road side. There is only a little sign ‘Raven Cottage’ at the road side (which we could hardly see in the dark), with a narrow path next to it, continued with boardwalk leading to the cottage. Anyway, I like the cottage a lot which is very cosy. Had some pasta for dinner and played monopoly before going to bed.

(Raven Cottage)(My cosy fairy-tales-esque bed room in the cottage )

Stay tune for Kangaroo Island Day 2 and 3…