A little rant about dental hygiene

I just had my teeth cleaned. It was the same as every other time except this time I didn't brush my teeth beforehand. Well I brushed my teeth beforehand (as in before breakfast), but not right before I was leaving. I decided to do this after I realized the pointlessness of the whole thing. In what other service industry do we try to do the service on ourselves before we go get the service? Do we cook a little something up before we head off to the restaurant? Do we trim the grass before paying someone to mow the lawn? Do we vacuum our carpet before we get professionals to clean it?

We are going to get the teeth cleaned because the dental hygienists are better at it than we are (or at least have better tools...painful, painful tools). You are not going to wipe away the many months of coffee, tea, tobacco, soy sauce stains with one brushing session right before you leave. Some might say that it is a courtesy to the people who will have to look at your mouth/smell your breath for 30 minutes, but that is their job. If they really mind the sight of dirty, rotting teeth and bad breath why did they decide to do this for a living? And don't even get me started on the whole flossing thing. I get it, we are supposed to do it. We all have floss containers at home from every time we've gotten our teeth cleaned before. Can't you tell if I have been flossing by looking at my gums and how they bleed at the sight of that sharp claw like instrument? There's no point in asking if I've been flossing regularly and then telling me that I should after I've made up my excuse as to why I don't. If there's anything I've learned from pharmacy, it's that guilt trips never work.

Chick-fil-A ads are disturbing

I don't know if any of you have seen the recent ad campaign by the American fried chicken chain: Chick-fil-A. Here is an example video:



Now at first glance, this is a clever commercial with anthropomorthized animals. However, if you think about what you're seeing here, I think it's quite disturbing. Cows are asking us to eat chicken in order to save their own lives. Are we supposed to feel better exclusively killing and eating chickens for our meat? How are the cows better than the chickens and why do they deserve to be saved? It probably doesn't matter anyway. Most people in the US will probably still eat beef and chicken, sometimes on the same plate (and don't forget pork.... mmmmm, bacon).

Cliches exist for a reason

Now that most of my friends are a few years away from graduation, people are thinking about what they will do and who they will be in the future. From what I've seen, we probably couldn't even imagine what we'll be doing when we're older. People change careers or get more advanced degrees all the time. Do you feel unprepared for your future job? Maybe it's because you are. Certainly I haven't learned everything about pharmacy in my 3 years of study so far. Cliche #1: You are always learning. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the 10 000 hour rule in his book Outliers. Basically, you have to do something for 10 000 hours to do it really masterfully or to become an expert. The 10 000 hr rule is an indicator of 2 things: Cliche #2. practice, practice and more practice and Cliche #3: time flies when you love what you're doing. There's something worthwhile in every job. Find what it is and maybe, just maybe, you'll want to spend 10 000 hours doing it. At the very least, spend the 10 000 hrs outside of your job on a hobby or something (I'm aware you've probably accumulated the 10 000 hrs on video games already).

I'm back!

It's been 2 years (of hard pharmaceutical studies) since my last post. What has happened in this time period?

A quick Google search provided the results:

2010:

January: Earthquake in Haiti, subsequent outpouring of support

February: Olympics in Vancouver (while I was in Hawaii). Nothing like the feeling of tropical sand between your toes to get you exited for the big luge final.

March: Something sunk a South Korean navy cruiser. Everyone blames the North Koreans. Who knows. If there is a God, I can imagine him yelling "You sunk my battleship!" to Jesus.

April: Deep Water Horizon explodes, releasing crude oil into the oceans.

May: Greece gets bailed out. Everyone has forgotten about the earthquake in Haiti.

June: FIFA world cup.

July: Wikileaks publishes 90 000 documents on the war in Afghanistan.

August: OK. I give up, I just realized I still have 17 months I have to do.

Anyway, expect me to update this thing a little more frequently now. I'm still trying to get to $100 from Google Adsense for chordoma research.