House Quotes (1)

Few quotes from the medical series "House" that I find extremely interesting. Some are funny, some are insulting, some are pedagogical. Either one is what makes the series successful.

Dr. Foreman: Isn't treating patients why we became doctors?
House: No, treating illnesses is why we became doctors. Treating patients is what makes most doctors miserable.

Dr. Foreman: He probably just moved. Nobody stays perfectly still for their MRI.
House: Yeah, he probably got restless and shifted one hemisphere of his brain to a more comfortable position.

Dr. Wilson: You will lie, cheat and steal to get what you want, but you're incapable of kissing a little ass?
House: Well, we all have our limitations.

Dr. Cameron: Men should grow up.
House: Yeah, and dogs should stop licking themselves. It's not going to happen.

House: This ray of sunshine is Dr. Lisa Cuddy. Dr. Cuddy runs this whole hospital so unfortunately she's much too busy to deal with you. I am a board-certified diagnostician with a double specialty of infectious disease and nephrology. I'm also the only doctor currently employed at this clinic who's forced to be here against his will. That is true, isn't it? But not to worry, because of most of you this job could be done by a monkey with a bottle of Motrin. Speaking of which, if you're particularly annoying you may see me reach of this. It's Vicodin - it's mine, you can't have any. And no, I do not have a pain-management problem, I have a pain problem. But who knows - maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm too stoned to tell. So, who wants me? (everyone stares) And...who would rather wait for one of the other two guys? (everyone raises their hands) Well, I'll be in Exam Room 1 if you change your mind.

House: What's wrong with her?
Dr. Cameron: Him.
House: Him, her, does it matter? Does anyone think it's a testicular problem?

House: No. There is not a thin line between love and hate. it is, in fact, a Great Wall of China with armed sentries posted every twenty feet between love and hate.

Dr. Wilson: I love my wife.
House: You certainly love saying it.

House: You told me you hadn't changed your diet or exercise. Were you lying?
Samantha: Lying?
House: Does your husband have high blood pressure?
Samantha: My husband?
House: Yeah, see, if you're going to repeat everything I say, this conversation's going to take twice as long.

Dr. Cuddy: When I hired you, I knew you were insane. I will continue to try and stop you from doing insane things, but once they're done....trying to convince an insane person not to do insane things is, in itself, insane. So when i hired you I also set aside $50,000 a year of legal expenses. So far you've come in under budget.

House: Go ask him what he's on. When he says nothing, have him pee in a cup.

Dr. Cameron: I apologize if I looked like we weren't devoting our full attention to your daughter, but I assure you that we...
Mrs. Simms: Oh please, save your pathetic insincerity for your boyfriend.
House: You're wrong. She is in fact pathetically sincere.

House: Even if I'm Dr. House, physician-patient confidentiality protects me from annoying conversation.

Dr. Cameron: What happens to everybody lies?
House: I was lying.

My Review on House MD

This show centres around the misanthropic and condescending doctor, Dr Gregory House. Although he is well-known he relucts to treat patients and worse, he refuses to see patient. His reason? Simple. He assumes everybody lies. Which in reality pretty much true. I lie before. Everyone lies before. For the first three seasons, Dr. Cameron, Dr. Foreman and Dr. Chase are members of his team. Dr. Cameron always believes that the patient's family or lovers trust the patients. Especially regarding romance. She thinks romantically involved couples trust each other implicitly. Nothing to be judged. Nothing to be questioned. Too bad for her. It might affect her professional views. Dr. Foreman always disagrees with what House says and Dr. Chase, on the contrary, agrees with whatever House says.

Then there are another two characters. Dr Wilson is an oncologist and House's only friend. He is the only one House feels happy to confide in. Their background is complicated and explained in the episode "Birthmarks", my favourite episode so far. Dr. Cuddy is the hospital administrator. She is in charge of everything about the hospital. While Cuddy has the power to shut down the entire building and stops House from making impromptu moves on patients, she is too vulnerable to House's convincing lies. Dr. Cuddy is also House's doctor while House suffers from thigh muscle infarction, which is why he is having the cane and popping Vicodin

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At the end of season 3, House fires all of his team members. First episode of season 4 is by far probably one of the most interesting episode. Cuddy pesters House to hire a team, in which House refuses, and he remains headstrong even when his intimate friend, Wilson, badgers him to have the interviews. Trying to prove that a team is not needed, House accepts a case and diagnoses the patient alone. Hence, the title of the episode is "Alone". Although he manages to find the underlying problem, Cuddy makes him realises that a team would have diagnosed her earlier. Eventually House realises that, and begins to hire a team. But before he hires a team, he creates a game, where 40 people who come for interview are the games. Those who get the diagnosis correctly stays, those who don't, leave. But of course, House, being a misanthropist and pain-in-the-ass, is picky. He makes arbitrary moves and fires whoever he wants to fire, without an appropriate reason.

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Amber is named "Cutthroat bitch" because of her trait. She is annoying, but you'll find otherwise if you finish watching season 4. I'm not giving spoilers here. Eventually House narrows them down into 3 people: Thirteen (true name kept secret), Kutner and Taub. They are the ersatz 'Cameron, Foreman and Chase'. Their personality are completely different compared to them. Later, Foreman, because of violating hospital rule, gets fired and keeps being blackballed. He has no place to go and Cuddy, showing sympathy, hires him to be her 'eyes and ears' of House. Cameron becomes the head of ER and Chase becomes a surgeon.

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"House's Head' and "Wilson's Heart" are by far the highest rated episode in the series. In "House's Head", the episode opens with House realising himself suffering from amnesia. He then finds out his head is split open and he needs medical attention. Upon leaving the strip club he is unable to remember how he got there, he sees an overturned bus, and remembers he was on the bus. He remembers he saw someone dying, but he can't remember who specifically. This episode ends with a cliffhanger. "Wilson's Heart" continues where "House's Head" ends.

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Personally, I like this show. The first episode I watched was Sleeping Dogs Lie, in which the patient who hasn't slept for 10 days remains awake after popping down a bottle of pills. This scene engaged me. I wanted to know what the lady is suffering from that caused her to be unable to sleep. And it turned out to be Bubonic Plague. At first I dislike this show because I find this show quite similar to Medical Investigation, another medical series which unfortunately doesn't survive long.

House contains a lot of jokes. For example:

Dr. Foreman: I should sue you.

House: I'm pretty sure you can't sue someone for wrongful hiring.

House: You know another really good business? Teeny tiny baby coffins. You can get them in frog green or fire engine red. Really. The antibodies in yummy mummy only protects the kid for six months, which is why these companies think they can gouge you. They think you'll spend whatever they ask to keep your kid alive. Want to change things? Prove them wrong. A few hundred parents like you decide they'd rather let their kid die than cough up forty bucks for vaccination, believe me, prices will drop very fast.

House: Another reason why I don't meet patients. If they don't know how you look like, they can't yell at you.

House: I fired you.

Kutner: No you didn't.

Amber: He fired you. You're number 6.

Kutner: No, I'm number 9.

House: I approve of your shamelessness. You're still fired.

Jokes and the medical mysteries are what keeping the show alive, and now it has run for 7 seasons. The seven season is being aired in United States right now. Too bad Malaysia is not airing this series. Except Astro. I wonder why they never air this show, maybe because the show is full with jargon and the subtitles writers aren't able to translate them? Too bad for Malaysia. And yes, I'm being patronising.

As I watch this show I learn a lot of medical knowledge. For example, I learn the adrenaline is called epinephrine in the hospitals. Epinephrine overdose can cause cardiac arrest. I know that eating pork can promote the growth of tapeworm, or specifically neurocysticercosis in the brain. I know we can be allergic to light, it's a genetic disease call erythropoietic protoporphyria. I learn that an undigested toothpick can steal a person's life. I learn that a woman who exceeds 40 years old should not be pregnant or else risking the foetus's health (lowering expectation, like House did) and the mother will too suffer from maternal mirror syndrome. I also learn that when the brain is surgically split into two, a person may suffer from alien hand syndrome, a condition in which the hand seems to have a life on its own. And it may unbutton a shirt without the person's knowledge. And I know how horrible scurvy can be and I know that vitamin B12 deficiency causes guilt. What troubles me is I never dare to write 'guilt' as a symptom of deficiency of B12 in biology.

But of course, many medical errors are being done in the series. There's a website where a doctor writes reviews and post it. Apparently House doesn't know the difference between cardiac arrest and heart attack. Many more. The more season is produced, the more errors begin to show. That's the con as the show progresses. But I still love the show. I voted this show as the best show ever in history, and I hope this show survives without the jokes growing less.

Queensbay Mall

7 October 2010

This is going to be short.

PMR sucks for third formers, but it definitely brings joy to all form 4 students. As form four students, we are given three days holiday due to the lack of classroom.

As agreed, I'm going to Queensbay Mall today. Initially I thought only 5 or 6 people are involved. But as it turns out, more than 15 people are involved. The first group and the group I joined is 4S4 students while the second group is T class students.

We go there by a bus. The seat is comfortable.

When we reached there the mall is still closed. Guards are dutying outside, forbidding everybody excepts workers from entering. But teenagers are impatient, the T class students 'infiltrate' the mall and we do likewise. It is 15 minutes before the opening time, and nobody is in the mall. So we wandered around, playing hide and seek with the guards. LJX and CCY nearly got kicked out from the mall. Luckily, nothing untowards happen.

Then we go down and grab a meal. By 'meal' I mean 'McDonald'. I am not a fan of fast foods because the foods are exorbitant. Reluctant, I buy the cheapest set they have. But the cheapest food is still considered expensive compared to food outside.

Then we go skating. I pay RM18 for the game. When I first put the...umm.....shoes on, I lost balance. I nearly fell. So does everyone. And you'll never guess how many times I have fell. It hurts. I might have stunted growth later.

After one round, and multiple falls, my leg begins to hurt. So does everyone's. But mine's different. My skin has been rubbed off, and blister grows. I'm pretty sure I'll suffer on Friday. Because of that blister, I cannot continue skating. So sad. So wasting.

They continue to skate until around 1.00pm I couldn't endure anymore. My stomach is basically screaming for food. I tell them I leave (alone) and try to grab a food. I go to Chicken Rice Shop and order chicken rice and pepsi, and the service there deserved endorsement. Their service is good, servants are hospitable.

Shopping alone is, surprisingly, very enjoyable. After I eat I continue to walk around, even though I am alone. I walk to Popular and buy a bottle of water. Cannot find the books I want, I go to Borders instead. While I'm at Borders I found another book which is not in my list, but since I'm not a Borders' member I walk back to Popular.

Ok, if you frequent Queesbay Mall you will realise that I'm a nincompoop. If you don't know why, try to find out why.

At first I wanted to buy Dan Brown's 'The Lost Symbol", but before I pay for it my eyes caught another book. It's Audrey Niffenegger's 'Her Fearful Symmetry'. Every since I read 'The Time Traveler's Wife' I begin to be obsessed with her books.

Eventually I go back to the skating land and CCY says she is hungry. Nobody accompanys her so I agree to keep her company. After her lunch we go to Borders. I'm totally mesmerise by the books there. So many choices. So many books, and the best part is: the books are unwrapped and seats are available.

After that we go to Pizza Hut and meet SYJ and others. They order their lunch while I help them to eat whatever they can't finish. Ok, here's some thing: my wanting for food is insatiable. And no, I don't have a tapeworm. I just have a high basal metabolic rate. Or do I have a tapeworm? Maybe diphyllobotrium latum??? Forget about it.

After that they decide to board the bus, go back to Pacific and enjoy bowling. While me and CCY, afraid of being yelled at and stuck at the annoyingly long traffic jam, we leave around 4.00pm

And CY, you have an effervescent family. I envy your family's effervescence.

Triumph!!!

Forget everything for now. I finally got a credit for my ICAS english test. I scored 32/60!!

I know the result is pathetically low, i only got about 54% of the questions right, but still I show improvement. Something I have not foreseen. This is good enough!! On cloud nine!!!

Next year my aim: at least 40/60 correct! (I wouldn't want to aim distinction, I'm lowering expectation).

Oxymoron

Have you ever heard of oxymoron? If you have, you might have learnt that oxymoron is something very interesting and very unique that you'll find yourself engage in it. As for me, I love oxymoron, that's why I post this article here:

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Oxymorons express ideas with two 'opposing' words.

Check this out: "...faith unfaithful kept him falsely true." This seemingly contradictory sentence (reminds me of Dzof Azmi's "Contradictheory" in StarMag) listed as an example to elucidate the meaning of "oxyomoron" (Concise Oxford English Dictionary/COED, 1995), has long fascinated me.

The term "oxymoron" is in itself an oxymoron - a Greek derivation from oxus ("sharp") and moros ("foolish"/"dull"). An oxymoron is: a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction (COED, 1995; P978); or more simply stated: a phrase that combines two words that seem to be the opposite of each other, for example a deafening silence (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary/OALD, 2002;P908)

By the way, with a measure of qualified success, the term advanced learner is also rated an oxymoron.

All who are "mad about English" (and those caught in a love-hate relationship with it) will willingly vouch that the versatility of this quirky language stretches to infinity and beyond. It would therefore, make me a perfect idiot/moron if I tried to give you an exact estimate or a detailed summary of the stunts this language can pull. Yet being in active retirement, instead of doing nothing, I thought to explore a brief survey, this fascinating facet (oxymoron) of my favourite language.

After my shamelessly proud public courtship of "Partners in rime" (MOE, Aug 4), which now seems to appear invisible, I thought to make a brief foray into how this linguistic partnership can turn, as quickly, from rhyme to "crime" - partners they remain, yet strange bedfellows and honest cheats, in an act to tease - and hey, they deliver, that much is easier!

So, taking the only option available, I signed on the dotted line for an amicable divorce from my earlier liaison. Yes, why not? A divorce court with its sometimes pretty ugly proceedings comes to mind. Never mind the unequal justice. If you happen to be a local celebrity, you also reap while portions of negative gain like good gossip in the form of loud whispers of disparaging remarks. All of which leaves you feeling half-naked, both inside out. So, don't go making a deliberate mistake of courting an undesirable attraction in the first place.

Well, it all sounds vaguely familiar because an absurd truth of life is that it is a paradox. A "paradox" sits at a close distance to an "oxymoron" because of shared commonalities. In that, it is a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement, even if actually well founded. A common example to illustrate this is "more haste, less speed". Go figure. Another may be: It is a curious paradox that professional comedians often have unhappy personal lives. (OALD, 2002; P918)

Good grief! Clever fools aren't we? See how we almost always use exact opposites to make our point. Even trading secrets and affectionate insults in the name of friendly argument. A fine mess, actually. At times you feel numb just thinking how we relish pitting clearly ambiguous expressions against each other to create a typically unusual effect. A planned surprise, that's what it is, really! Clearly, we have already made an accurate forecast of its intended effect, of which we are almost certain. What a quite scream! A controlled chaos that celebrates our plying of this pliant body of language. My educated guess? It is an obvious secret shared by all conniving language lovers.

Permit me now to run on auto pilot for some randomly organised contradictory pairs scopped out from all of one days' (Aug 29) newspaper: artistic chaos, free gift, constructive criticism, organised mess, unsung heroes, bad/ill health, fair trial, casual intimacy, school vacation, home school, immediate future, minor disaster, science fiction, real potential, reality TV, and I best come to a rolling stop now but not before adding the ubiquitous road safety cautionary accident alert (if you are alert, you can avoid accidents, surely), to my found list. Of course, you can tease out a day's worth from any newspaper, any day.

Then there is Aloha - a Hawaiian expression used both of "hello" and "goodbye". It is popularly said to be the only self-contained (single) oxymoron. However, thanksgiving be to English, the classic language known to celebrate both theory and then "contradictheory".

I know you can think of thers besides eggplant and pineapple. With no intent to be rude, there is also the butt with its colloquial backside. Not forgetting wholesome is another English stand-alone oxymoron. It is a word wrought with bittersweet memories of how my (wholesome) love for the language was nurtured by a father who spoke impeccable English and who taught me early to pessimistically optimistic.

Before I say Aloha then, I don't mind confiding that my fetish for shoes saw me purchase a genuine replica of a catwalk designher pair. Dzireena Mahadzir with her "Sense of Style" would approve, knowing my easy problem - I may be an active retiree who enjoys tax relief, but one who is also afflicted with financial immobility. That should bring me to a full stop.


Written by Lucille Dass,
Adapted from The Star (Star Two), pg19, 29 September 2010

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Mad

The time table has, again, changed. Now we (by we I mean 4S3) have a new add.maths teacher (oh yes, again!). The identity of the new teacher is still a mystery, but most of us believe she is TRS, 4S2 Add Maths teacher, because my current teacher (our 5th add.maths teacher, exluding LGL who helped to teach us although it wasn't incumbent upon him to do it) will be teaching 4S2.

So who's our new add.maths teacher?? It's still a suspense. DAMN!

Break

My sister comes back from Kampar after spending weeks studying. She came back yesterday and we went to Sushi King to have lunch today.

The price there was exorbitant, but that didn't baulk my mother. She continued to binge on sushi, indulging herself in the world of Japanese cuisine while me and my sisters tried to swallow the bowls of rice which were deemed inedible for us. If only peristaltic movements were voluntary I would have swallowed everything down. I hate to waste foods, but shoving them down hurt.

Believe me, the bowl of rice were awful and the soup was HORRIBLE! I guess I'm not that into Japanese cuisine. The rice had a taste and the cucumber was like....I don't know....and the soup was obviously a bowl of water with a packet of chemicals.

And guess what, I saw TPS. She was there with a boy, whom I seriously doubted is her son. That boy is way too young to be her son. Maybe it's her grandson, but then it would make her too young to be a grandmother. The gist: the boy's identity remains undisclosed.

RM67++ were spent for lunch. The price was freakingly expensive, but to some people it is just a princely sum of their money. Horrible. People now are too LIBERAL with their money.

Speaking of wasting money, here's something my mother saw: a receipt at the ATM machine early in this month stating that RM50 was withdrawn and RM2 was left in his/her account. A person usually receives their allowance early in the month and he/she had only RM2 left! How can he/she survive?

Back to the topic.

Next we went to Pacific. No very crowded there. We bought some DVDs and breakfast and yoghurt drinks and then left.

I saw many Malays buying foods. Are they seriously going to wait until they buka puasa, or are they going to break a fast? I'm still wondering.....