“Please, don’t let me down this time. I’ve come a long way to just fall back into line,”
I’ve just had the loveliest weekend ever. The past few weekends of being here, I’ve basically been at home sleeping and recuperating from the week. Been getting work done, organising myself and sorting life out for medschool, really. This weekend though was the celebratory weekend of the end of internal medicine for the year. And so I decided to take the weekend off. My first stop was Shrewsbury. I got all dressed in a little black number and packed my gym bag for a night of pub crawling fun in the quaint little town of Shrewsbury, which is a town west of Stoke on Trent. It’s beautiful, picturesque and the streets are all cobblestones with lovely little pubs around every corner and nice decent looking restaurants as well. I stayed over at my mates, Will and Raessa, the nicest socialite couple I know so far! And their place was like a lovely hotel, just by the hospital site. What surprised me at the pub crawl were the nice ambiences in each and every one of em. None of them were smelly or sleazy. The lighting was superb, the dress code was a golf-theme and it wasn’t just med students but consultants, registrars and junior doctors. Talk about your posh booty call for the picking! For those that don’t know, most folks are looking for some nice kinky fun on pub nights. It’s the one acceptable time where all English folk are allowed to let that stiff upper lip relax and embrace the potential of a good drunken shag – or something of the same nature anyway. I say it as it is 
After some dancing, romancing and being a drunk brown woman, I met an interesting junior doctor who reminded me a lot of Alex. Clad in the same vampire-like black-trench coat, with curly brown hair, he quizzed me on renal medical emergencies that presented to him when I told him I was a lowly medical student. Much pleasantly to my surprise, I answered his questions correctly and way better than any fourth year could. Not to blow my own trumpet but honestly, with the way medschool’s going, I’m going to take every compliment I can get and be over the moon about it! It was rather funny to be quizzed on a care pathway when holding a bottle of WKD in one hand and a double shot of gin and coke in the other.
Talk about doing medicine the English way. I had to spend a good 20 minutes trying to convince a pair of cute bounders that I was 24. First time in my life has that happened here! Also, I was pretty sober than most of the people in that building. After that, we headed off to a take-out to meet some women who thought I was exotic (because I’m Malaysian) and headed home to crash. For some reason, Will saw fit for us to have a strong shot before we crashed. I couldn’t down it cuz of all the food in my belly after all that takeout. 
* The next morning, Will, Raeesa and I had a bit of a lie-in. Their apartment was lovely! And it was student accommodation at that too!
We only started our day proper after 12pm and had a nice student lunch of beans, fish and wedges before Will drove us down to Birmingham for the German market. We popped by Will’s house before we headed and there and boy was it a gorgeous place! It was so homely and his room was the kind of room I’d have always liked to have! I’d have taken a picture but I think he may have found that a tad too creepy
After a quick dinner at Yo Sushi at Self-Ridges in the Bullring, we headed for some Christmassy fun! Off we went to the German market. We met Saira, Brian, Serena and Zaw there and spent the next few hours perusing the stalls, trying just about every bit of authentically-german food ie foot-long frankfurters, chocolate-covered fruit, freshly-baked doughnuts (best thing ever!) and hot mulled apple juice (the boys had wine).
I picked up a few gifts for Alex, Ash, my mum and grandma before we all headed off to Starbucks to gorge on their splendiforous Christmas coffees! A lovely wrap-up for the weekend before we all went our separate ways. I boarded the last train from Birmingham and returned to sleepy ole Stoke before midnight. Altogether, I had the perfect weekend getaway to celebrate the end of Internal Medicine. I hadn’t been out of Stoke in ages and catching up with Will and Raeesa was lovely! I had missed them loads and they were wonderful hosts. Thoroughly enjoyed myself, suffered all of Sunday and had a bit of a post-wonderful-weekend hangover this Monday morning. But hey, it was goooood. Up next on my list of adventures will be:
- Amsterdam
- Manchester for Cloud 23 (something like Sky Bar in Trader’s Hotel KL)
- Shopping in the Bullring when the new food court opens! :p
Ah. It feels really good to enjoy yourself after 8 weeks-worth of hard work! More pictures to come in subsequent posts!
