one-eye blindness (no, it's not the title of a song/poem/90s rock band)

It's been a pretty full-on week and surprisingly enough I got a lot done which I'm very happy about, my biggest achievement being that I am now a proud owner of a New Zealand driver's licence! It's only a learners, I grant you, but you have no idea how much agony I've been through these past five years, always having it at the back of my mind as something I should do but just utterly dreaded doing. I don't know why I have to learn to drive -- in the grand scheme of life, learning to drive would be at the bottom of my 'to-do' list if I had a choice. I would rather move to a large city (ie. NY, Boston, London) where they had an extensive public transport system (making it impractical to have a car) just so I could avoid this whole fiasco. But I've finally done it. I have to admit there were times when I thought this day would never come. I passed my theory test but funnily enough, I failed my eye test!


Looking down into the microscope-like eye testing machine:

AA worker: Can you please read for me line 6 of column 3?
Me: Huh?
AA worker: You see the rows and columns?
Me: Yeah...
AA worker: What letters do you see in line 6 of column 3?
Me: You mean column 2?
AA worker: No, column 3.
Me: But there are only two columns...
AA worker: Do you not see the third column at the right? Yeah, you're going to have to get a certificate from an optometrist before we can issue your license.

Me (thinking): What the --!?! What just happened?

So I wasn't expecting that. But it turned out okay. I've known for a while that my right eye is basically blind and my left is almost perfect -- together I see fine, but I had to get it certified first. I'm considering getting contact lenses for just my right eye. Apparently it's more common than you'd think!

Looking back at my 'to-do' list from the beginning of the week: Learner's licence? Check. Starter for 10? Transformers? Check, check. [I absolutely loved Transformers!! You'd think a movie with talking robots would just be stupid, but man, I just had this giant grin on my face throughout the whole movie. It was great! Reminded me a little of Armageddon (Michael Bay??).] 1984? Check. Well, not finished, but major progress.


"As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man's brain that was speaking; it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in consciousness, like the quacking of a duck." - From '1984' (George Orwell)

All in all, a good week! :) Now I'm gonna enjoy my last weekend (even though I'm working tomorrow morning) before I have to head back to med school.