I left home early today, despite that fact that it was my free day. Had to go down to the National Skin Centre as I had made an appointment with a specialist the day before. The reason, my corn. It was a layer of circular, hardened skin on the ball of my right foot that had appeared around 2 weeks ago. It hurt every time I applied pressure on it and the GP referred me to the skin centre for some specialized treatment.

I had left around 1 hr 15 mins, thinking that it would give me enough time to reach there earlier. Boy, was I wrong. I got lost! Novena MRT had 2 exits and I had to find the one with the bus stop.

In the end, I found myself outside Tan Tock Seng Hospital. The sign had indicated that this was the way to the skin centre, but there was no such building in sight. I turned around and walked through the Novena Square shopping centre, located directly above the MRT station. I assumed that the bus stop was in front of it. I was wrong.

In the end, wasted 10 mins wandering around before returning to the control station area. I FINALLY saw a sign that pointed to the bus stop and, heaving a sigh of relief, I went to the ground floor to find myself standing behind a bus stop. However, the time was already 8.45am.

21 finally arrived, and I hopped on happily. I sat in it for some time, keeping my eyes peeled for the building with an enormous pink thumbprint logo that I had seen on the Internet. At one stop, the bus stopped in front of a building that resembled an office building or a power plant. It was only after it moved off that I happened to see the logo and the sign, conveniently placed facing AWAY from the road. Grrr... what's the point?!

So I travelled further down and had to WALK all the way back. In the end, I was 10 mins late. Luckily I managed to register myself and recieve a queue number before the 20 min grace period After that time, if I were to come, I would be seen only at the end of the session!

I finally got to see the doctor, and all he did was take one look at the corn, scribble and type, and tell me that it wasn't a corn, but a wart. (I paid the guy 54 bucks later and I was like WTH I wanna be a doctor took get to earn so much money just by telling me that my corn was a wart but anyway...) Apparently, it was a viral infection and had to be treated with liquid nitrogen.

Apparently, the procedure was meant to freeze the virus to stop it from spreading. If not, the corn/wart/thing would increase in size and could possibly swallow up my whole foot. I might even have to have it amputated then! Even so... treating it was one thing, treating it with liquid nitrogen was another.

Remember all those science demonstrations that you see on television shows or at the science centre? Well, I suddenly had a vivid recollection of one in which I was watching a guy in a lab coat place a delicate red rose into a tub of that bizarre liquid.

When he pulled it out, it looked perfectly identical.

However, when he slammed it onto the table, the flower was so brittle that it immediately shattered into a million pieces!

So I didn't exactly feel comfortable as I sat outside the treatment room T3, located a short distance away from the consultation rooms. The nurse greeted me, then told me to sit uptight on a bed. After I removed my shoe and sock, she inspected the thing. It looked grosteque, like some alien creature attached to my skin. Taking out a sterilized blade from a packet (it looked like the blade of a penknife, but smaller), she began to whittle away at the pale dead skin around the perimeter of the sensitive central region. After it was considerably smaller, she took out a cannister that resembled a small fire extinguisher. Then, she aprayed the freezing solution directly onto the area.

The sensation was weird, a mild numbing feeling that began to sting a little after a while. Apparently, she was supposed to spray the liquid nitrogen for about 10 seconds, until there was a visible layer of ice on the surface. After the treatment, I signed a survey form, then left for SMU.

I crossed the road and took 21 on the oppsite side, and ended up at some ulu bus depot. Gawd! As I walked along the road next to some unknown housing estate, grumbling that it just wasn't my day, I managed to flag down a taxi and left for SMU.

I reached the SESS bulding, crashed down into a GSR and did some work. Pat came to join me later, then we left for lunch. After that, I went for my comms meeting, which was one part work, 2 parts crapping with my partner, Jessie Ann.

In the end, went home at around 7pm. It had been a long, hard day. I didn't bother attending the SMU opening ceremony as I was dead tired. According to Pat, who was dragged by some friends, the place was crawling with police officers. People even had to remove their belongings from nearby lockers, just in case some JI member decided to plant a WMD in one of them and blow up our PM.

It was so wondeful to get home and shower! Haiz... to rest too. Changed my blogskin but I'm not sure if I'll keep this sunset one. It doesn't seem to fit me so well.