What's happened, Gautama, the Buddha, you heard of him, everybody heard of Gautama? So Buddha is not his name, his name is Gautama Siddhartha. He became a Buddha, so he is not the only Buddha in the world, there have been thousands of them and there still are. So Gautama was sitting in a large congregation of people one morning, an early morning, earlier than this, okay, a man arrived and stood there in the shadows. This man is a great devotee, he is a devotee of Rama, you heard of Rama, not Rami, Rama? Rama is one of the most popular deities in India, if you do not already know this, in India we have 36 million gods and goddesses, it's a very rich country. So he is a great devotee of Rama. The devotees in India, not now and not everybody, but those who take this seriously, they will not utter any other word than the name of God that they believe in. So if they want you to come, they'll say Ram Ram, if they want you to go Ram Ram, if they want something Ram Ram, no other word but Ram.   You kept God like insurance, just in case something goes wrong, I have also paid my premium.  But this man invested his whole life in God, total. Age is passing away, little doubt has come. Other people here who don't believe in God, nobody, no leftist, only one, what's your name? John. Only John, nobody else?  If you invest just ten minutes in a week, then you will not get this doubt, it's all right, what's the problem? If you invest your life completely into God, then within three days doubt will come. I am wasting my life just doing this and there are other people who don't believe, see look at this John, he doesn't believe, for him also son comes up in the morning, for him also flowers blossom, from him also life happens, looks like he is having a better time than me, it's a little doubt, he knows there is God, just a little doubt. Now there is an Enlightened being here, he wants to confirm. But after being a well-known devotee for a long time because he did not just go to the temple, he built many temples. At this stage in his life, how to ask whether there is God or not now? So he came early morning, stood in the shadows there and asked this inevitable question, is there God? Gautama looked at the man and gave a clear, emphatic, no, here this large congregation of disciples, this has always been a struggle in their mind, is there God or no God, is there God or no God, oof, one big relief, whenever they ask such a question to Gautama, he just becomes silent, he doesn't say anything. For the first time he gave a clear answer, no God, joy spread across the congregation. Just the struggle, is there God or no God is over, the Enlightened one has declared that there is no God, the message spread across the town. Through the day celebrations happened because, just imagine the freedom of it.  Life is completely yours. So through the day celebrations happened, everybody is in great joy. The evening once again the congregation is sitting, another man came, he also standing in the shadows. This man is a Charvaka, Charvaka means, in India there are groups of people who are known as Charvakas, these Charvakas are out and out materialists, they don't believe anything other than what they can see. Probably this is the only culture that allows this. You will see actively missionaries of God going from village to village, spreading their God message and missionaries of no God going from village to village, arguing with people and proving to them how there is no God. Probably this is the only culture that allows that anywhere else they would be killed. So if you want you can spread God or if you want you can spread no God. This is true democracy, you know. This has been there like this for thousands of years. People come and set up arguments in the village and they prove to you how there is no God. So this is an expert Charvaka, whatever kind of believer you are, if you talk to him for ten minutes he'll prove to you no God, for thousands of people he's proved no God, no God, no God. Age is passing, little doubt has come. Suppose there is God, when I go there will he leave me? And all these believers say that he's got all kinds of torture equipment up there. So because I went about proving to everybody that he doesn't exist, he may torture me much more. He knows there is no God. He's proved to thousands of people there is no God. Just a little doubt, now there's an Enlightened being here, he wants to confirm. So he appeared there in the evening. And he asks the same inevitable question, is there God? Gautama looked at the man and said, yes. Once again turmoil started, morning he said no God, they were all really happy. In the evening he says there is God. So what's the game Gautama is trying to play? See if you believe there is God or if you believe there is no God, you're in the same boat, you believe something that you do not know. I believe this, you believe that, doesn't make any difference. You can believe whatever you want, yes? Everybody can believe whatever they want. They need not have anything to do with reality as such. If you see I do not know, the longing to know will arise within you. If the longing arises, the seeking arises, if the seeking arises, the possibility of knowing exists.


And Bird Republic continues to get your top voices from across the country. Today on this edition of Lockdown Questions, we have two imminent ENT specialists joining me on the broadcast are Dr. E.V. Raman. He's the ENT and director of Children Airways Center, Manipal Hospital. Dr. Raman, I want to come to you, especially when it comes to cases of children. Yes, go ahead, please. Right. So we've been the silver lining in the whole thing is children don't seem to be affected as much as adults and when they get affected, the severity seems to be much less. Although we have recorded very young children, even a newborn testing positive for COVID, but the outcome, the prognosis, what happens later is much better in children than in adults. As you know, and since the travel history, etc., etc., is much more in the elder age groups and also the people who are immunocompromised, we are seeing lesser number of children having these problems. Right, but are you getting cases at this point where a child is suffering from cough, cold or fever? What is your advice to those parents and in such cases are children given the advice to go in for a COVID-19 test? What are the kind of cases you're receiving? This is what I was coming to. You see what happens in India where we don't have definite referral patterns. Most of the patients having cold, cough, fever, land up with the ENT surgeon, ENT specialist, both adults and children, and children do have many more upper respiratory infections as a general rule. And so they land up and the parents do get very apprehensive. And fortunately for us these days, we also have specialized fever clinics in these hospitals. So anything that is suspicious of COVID, we request them to go there because the testing facilities are to be targeted because we don't have enough resources to test everybody. So clinical examination is done basically and the children are screened in these fever clinics. And of course those suspected cases we do take the swabs and sent it across, which again is not so easily available. It takes a while for the reports to come. So the other aspect is there are some children who come with emergencies. So we get children with foreign bodies in the airway track, which are the genuine emergencies and you have to take care of these children. And when we take them to the theater to remove the foreign bodies, both the anesthetic team, the other caregivers in the theater, all of us because we are most exposed to aerosolized material which comes up from the respiratory tract. And as you know, the viruses are mostly concentrated in the nose, the nasopharynx, that's the part behind the nose, and at the back of the throat. So the potential to infect others is much more. The team also has to take care. So with limited testing facilities, we have to have the suspicion and as per the ICMR, the government guidelines, some of them will have to go for testing. But the period of burden as of now is not much. But as I said, children do get upper respiratory infections more, so we'll have to be on the guard and take care of them. Oh yes, very important word coming in there that the parents have to be on the guard, even when it comes to the kind of symptoms that the children are showing. We'll talk more on that. But our viewers who are beginning to call, our first caller is Vinod. He's calling from Noida. Vinod, what's your question? Actually, my question is not related to, you know, COVID-19, but actually this is related to my throat problem. Actually, it is very long back. Actually, I have taken a medicine. I mean, my fever or cold feel. So I took medicine. All right. All right. We get your question. And Dr. Ido, if you can take that question to also touch upon the point of whether it is advisable to take self-prescribed medicines? No, not at all. This particular symptoms, which you have asked for, this is not very, go ahead. Yes, Dr. Raman, you make your point after which Dr. Singh will come to you. Okay. Okay. So this feeling of some kind of irritation in the throat, constant throat threat sharing, and then foreign body sensation in the throat is not uncommon in patients in general. This could be multiple reasons. It could be just some allergy. It could be due to some acid reflux or it could even be due to some kind of an infection. So whatever the reason is, we need to get more history, examine the patient and treat that person. But to consider all kinds of throat irritation as something leading to COVID, no, definitely not. We need to look for the other symptoms. And these things, generally off the cuff, I can tell you that good hydration, constant sips of water, preventing dryness of the throat, avoiding anything which is acidic, sour, spicy, ice cold, giving a good three hour gap between eating food and lying down, and get your allergies treated, or sometimes you can get what is called as a post nasal drip, which comes from the sinus and drops down the back of the throat and causes irritation. So of course, anti-allergic medication could be used. Having said that, whether we should self-medicate or not is important. See, many of the common garden illnesses do become all right in a week, 10 days time. And at that initial stage, in case you take some over-the-counter medicines, nothing wrong with it. But if you don't improve in the next three to five days, please go and meet, or if you get worse, please go and take a doctor's advice. And what we are doing, if I may add one more point, is now we don't want you to come and crowd the ENT OPDs because we have enough work here. So what our hospital, for example, has done is we've introduced the concept of teleconsultation. So we are taking care of people like you with teleconsultations so that we are still accessible to the large group of people who are very worried about their illness, wondering whether it's COVID or not COVID, including for their children, etc. All right. I believe, Dr. Raman, the next question is coming from for you. Dinesh is calling from Bengaluru. Dinesh, what's your question? Dinesh, if you can just reduce the audio levels of the television screen and then put your question. My name, which is showing in television, can you make it Dinesh Perikal? Yeah. All right, we'll do that, Dinesh. But what's your question first? Are doctors available? Yes. My question is about the vaccine. Yes. What about the vaccine? Vaccine is still a long way off. That would be the ideal panacea at some stage or the other. Yes, Dr. Raman. Go ahead. It's a slightly distant dream at this particular moment. Right now, we need to reduce the disease burden and make sure that we don't have large numbers over a short period of time where the health systems are strained. But the ultimate level would be probably apart from herd immunity, which has been talked about. That means a sufficient amount of the population gets infected. They develop an immunity. But then what we need is what is absolutely vaccine is the solution. And the problem about vaccine is it does go through the procedures where it has to be tried in subjects. Then finally, we'll have to prove the efficacy and finally improve it. So between 12 to 18 months, every day we read in the relay press that the vaccine is around the corner. So I think it's going to take at least 12 to 18 months. If it comes earlier and if I'm proved wrong, I'll be very happy. All right. Also, our next caller from Bengaluru itself, Parth. Parth, if you can take your question, please. Yeah, hi. Can I ask Dr. Raman the question? Because I think I'm treated in hospital only. Dr. Raman, good morning. Hello. Yes, please go ahead. Yeah. Dr. Raman, I am suffering from a rare disease. Hello. I'm suffering from a rare disease and for which my both heart and kidney are affected and I have to take infusions every 15 days. And I do take that in Manipal Hospital also. Now, my question is that being put on running, it creates a lot of cough on throat. Now, the problem is with this COVID going on and we have to go out for some shopping or other. Sometimes you get a fear that have I got COVID or it is just because of running the medicine going on now. And that is something which is a little scary because we have got a little bit of susceptibility regarding the immune system now. So what do you say, sir? Yes. See, anybody who's on with comorbid conditions like you is more susceptible to the COVID infection. And if everybody is taking the right precaution and if you take double the amount of precaution, it would be worthwhile. Meanwhile, what was the medicine that you said you're on? I couldn't get it. I'm on on dranitrile. That is one for my throat. Then there's one ferocious type that is Okay. Okay. Uric acid and for cholesterol. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, yeah. So you just need to be doubly careful or everybody should be careful and you should be careful as anybody else because of your constant visits to hospitals and treatment, your immune system is not as efficacious as others and that's the All right. We have a lot of calls coming in and we are moving slightly faster on this. Anil Sharma is also calling from New Delhi. Anil, what's your question? Doctor, good morning. Actually, from last one week or 10 days, I developed pain in my right ear. And I have no symptoms of throat infection or cough and cold. Nothing is there. And the pain is so much that when I eat something, I feel very difficult. And because of lockdown, I cannot move outside and know if it is working general opi-dori and p-opi-dori. So, can you suggest some medicine so that I can get some relief? Doctor, Raghun, you'd like to take that? Yeah. From what I understand, your pain is there when you are swallowing. Is that right? Pain in the ear is there when you swallow? No, no, no. You have pain? I have pain in general. Okay. Otherwise also. Okay. So, there are multiple reasons for your pain. One could start off from hard wax onwards to infection in the external canal skin to middle ear infection, etc. But since you don't have a cold, maybe it's not a middle ear infection. But if you are having any pain on touching the external ear, then you need to definitely take some kind of a pain reliever. If it doesn't improve, I'm afraid somebody has to see you or you can seek a tele-consultation and they can probably help you out because it's difficult to prescribe medicines on that. If you don't have a cold, maybe just a painkiller. And if you think you have block tears due to wax, you can use some wax dissolve and drops for now.


Hello, this is Professor Stephen Esherman here. I'm here to talk to you a little bit about shells, the periodic table, and an introduction to atomic orbitals. So I'll start off here. If you can just remind you of the connection between shells and the periodic table. Here's the periodic table. Here's the first row, which has one shell. Second row has two shells and so on. And what next topic I just want to tell you about then is that shells are actually made up of things called orbitals. So inside each shell there are subdivisions of the electron cloud that are called orbitals. And an orbital tells you where you're likely to find a particular electron. They come in lots of different sizes, orbitals do, including one that looks like a sphere like this one here on the right, which is called an s orbital. And this is just a schematic way of showing that there is an electron that's in that orbital. In this case there's only one electron in that orbital and since the maximum is two, as we'll see in a moment, we would call this a half filled s orbital. Now if there's two electrons in an orbital then we draw two arrows pointed in opposite directions and so here's how we would describe a filled s orbital. And there are lots of more orbitals on every atom. Most don't have any electrons and we would just call them empty orbitals. So there is this idea that a maximum of two electrons can fit into any given orbital is the first part of a principle that's called the poly exclusion principle. So let me flesh that out a little bit for you. The idea is that every electron is actually said to be spinning and turns out electrons can only spin in two directions like you know counterclockwise and clockwise if you like.  And here's the deal is that electrons if there are going to be two electrons in the same orbital they have to be what we call spin paired which means that they have opposite spins. So that's why I put two opposing arrows here in this s orbital. It's a filled orbital with spin paired electrons. Just as a counter example this doesn't happen because they have the same spin. That's not allowed by the poly exclusion principle neither does this, same problem and here's a bigger problem that we've tried to cram three electrons into that orbital and that's not allowed by the poly exclusion principle. So I'm just going to take you for a little tour over some of the elements in the various rows. So back to that diagram here's a here's the first row or period of the periodic table. It turns out the first shell only has one orbital it is an s orbital it has a name it's called the one s orbital and therefore the first shell has a maximum according to the poly exclusion principle of two electrons provided there's spin paired. Now since that is the only shell and it is the outermost shell because it's the only shell then those electrons that are in that orbital that one s orbital are called valence electrons they get a special name. Second row okay so here I've drawn two shells and I've drawn here there's the inner shell that's the first shell it still only has one s orbital it has two electrons but now because that's not the outermost shell they get called core electrons and here we are in the outermost shell it's just two of all of them uh in the second row um turns out that shell has four orbitals which means it can hold a maximum of eight electrons again to the do the poly exclusion principle. Those are now going to be called the valence electrons because they are in the outermost shell and the electron the orbitals that are there there's one two s orbital that's a sphere and then there are three 2p orbitals that are shaped like these double dumbbells. Now um just a kind of a point I don't know if you notice about this but when we are talking about going thinking about a one s orbital and then in the first shell and then now we've gone to the two s orbital in the second shell uh they look the same they have the same shape but um generally the orbitals get bigger uh as you get to higher shells and in fact that's why the shells are bigger that's because their orbitals uh are bigger. All right um I also just need to have a little caveat here that depicting shells as concentric circles is a little bit misleading because again I'm going to go to neon here which has two electrons in the first shell eight electrons in the second shell for um a total of 10 electrons so there's two here two here and then a total of six here those are the 3p orbitals. The fact is they're all piled on top of each other so it's not really concentric rings it's really a big old dense ball of of electrons but it's still convenient to write them as those concentric circles. All right let's go to the third shell uh third row I mean of the periodic table uh that has electrons in shells one two and three so all the electrons in the first and second shells are now going to be called core electrons the electrons in number the shell three are called valence electrons and uh uh they are once again it's a now a three s orbital that three refers to the shell just like the previous ones did and now we have 3p orbitals and uh and so for a total of eight more electrons and you can count two for so on um and uh so here's another point it's really to kind of keep your your yourself organized on this I recommend that you copy this general order energy ordering diagram into your notes and memorize it and it's energy on this axis here's that first shell which has a 1s orbital here's the second second shell which has those four here's the third shore uh shell that has uh also four orbitals we're going to ignore those guys there for the moment and let's see oh well and there's an idea that uh we've used so far but have it named is called alf bow and alf bow is the mental process of assigning electrons to the lowest available orbitals while honoring the poly exclusion principle so the result of that is this kind of a shorthand called an electron configuration and here the electron configuration we would just call it one s with a superscript two that means there are two electrons in that one s uh orbital uh which is helium so a math pseudo mathematical way of saying that would be the electron configuration of helium is one s superscript two now alf bow usually results in the lowest possible electron uh atomic electron configuration something like this called the ground state because it is the lowest energy uh state of the atom um that's not to say that other configurations are impossible they are certainly possible but they all get called excited states and i'm mentioning this because um back in the 1800s uh Heinrich Geisler um put together this sort of uh this instrument uh which consists of a tube it had some various gases in it he was able to apply voltage to the two um two electrodes on either side and then discovered that when he did that it would glow okay and you're kind of familiar with this because neon signs uh this is basically the neon gas that's in in uh in a geisler gas discharge tube now not all of the light that comes off in those situations is visible to humans uh some of them uh some of the photon some of the light that that that comes off is uh is is in the infrared range which we can't see and some of it might be in the ultraviolet or the x-ray range i'm going to talk a little bit about how that happens so here's back to helium and its ground state and uh here's just that same diagram and so here's helium just sitting there as ground state electron configuration but now we're going to zap it with some with some voltage and what happened was you can see that that electron down here got bumped up way upstairs to this 3p orbital so now it's new electron configuration looks like this 1s1 3p1 okay now it's an excited state so it doesn't stay there uh it will that electron was there and now it might drop down to a slightly lower uh orbital which in this case is a 3s orbital so that's its new configuration and uh and when it does so it emits a little flash of light which we're calling a photon now the color of that emitted light i mentioned isn't always in the visible range it totally depends on the energy gap from where the electron was to where it's going so if the energy gap is between 1.8 and 3.6 electron volts which is the unit of energy the emitted light is visible to to humans and there's lots of gaps possible so there's lots of colors of light that you might get out of a out of a geisler discharge too now we can out bow all the way up to neon we could say um all right so helium had two electrons here but neons got eight more electrons to its element number 10 so it has 10 electrons so we could pop two here and then a total of six there and so if you want to think about what the ground state electron configuration could be you could pause write it down and that is what i get the same electron configuration of neon the same as helium followed by two electrons in the 2s orbital and six electrons there now we could even out bow all the way up to argon so we could say okay argon has 10 more electrons because it's element um sorry eight more electrons because it's element 18 and if you want to think about what that might be all right i think it's going to look like this it's going to look like the same as neon build uh core there followed by a couple of electrons in that 3s orbital and then six more there let's see the next orbital up in the diagram is after argon there's a 4s orbital that's in the fourth shell you can hold two more electrons so that would be elements 19 and 20 and by the way we're here there was argon and then we're at potassium and calcium 19 electrons and 20 electrons you could probably figure this one out but there's potassium it's looks just like argon with one electron in that 4s orbital and calcium got two there electron paired let's see um the 3d is next because you can kind of see here but i'm still going to reference it to argon in other words uh there the next set of orbitals is a set of five d orbitals this is what they this is what they look like and so now we're over here on what are called the transition metals let's see uh scandium i would say well it looks just like argon plus two electrons in that 4s plus one electron in that in that 3d because uh because scandium is has 21 electrons


2nd and 10, Whitehead back to pass, has time, looks over the middle, intercepted by the Mustangs! It's number 24, Zach May, across midfield, across the 40, May down the farts sideline. 25, 20, 15, they're not gonna get him! Zach May! A touchdown for the Mustangs! Just like last year, the Mustangs, starting a new streak with interception. Zach May takes it to the house. An absolutely tiptoed the sideline downfield. I thought he was gonna be out somewhere around the 30 yard line. Somehow stayed in bounds along the far sideline and then turned on the Jets to get past every monarch's player. Zach May, pick six, his first interception of the season. Mustang defense, with their first points of the season and glad that gets to extend all those superlatives for the Mustangs. That is now 46 straight games with a turnover.


For centuries, India was the fabled land of untold riches. It attracted travelers from distant lands, across the seas, deserts, and some of the highest mountains in the world, the Himalayas. The Himalayas gave the country many rivers, the Yamuna, Indus, and the most sacred river of all, the Ganga. Along these rivers, great civilizations flourished. They date back to 2600 BC and are evidence of sophisticated and well-planned cities. One of the oldest democratic republics in the world is at Vaishali, a prosperous and thriving town in the 6th century BC. The Nalanda University in the 5th century AD was a major center of learning, attracting students from as far away as China and Japan. Ayurveda, astronomy, mathematics, surgery, meditation and yoga were disciplines that had early beginnings in India. India is also the cradle of many religions. The oldest is Hinduism. Hinduism is essentially a way of life that can help to understand the eternal truth. It attributes divinity to nature and all things living. Jainism and Sikhism were all born here. Later, Islam and Christianity came from the West. All were assimilated effortlessly into the religious and social fabric of the country. These have given India a kaleidoscope of colorful festivals. Besides travelers and missionaries, invaders too came to India. Some made it their home. The Mughal dynasty was started by Baba in the 16th century. It lasted about 300 years and greatly influenced the culture of the country, especially its architecture. The Taj Mahal still stands today as a symbol of the love and passion of the emperor who built it, Shah Jahan. But by the middle of the 19th century, the weakened Mughal rule was easily overthrown by the British. The British had been coming to India as traders since the 15th century, but that trade became secondary as their ambitions of imperial expansion grew. The takeover was made easier because of the number of wealthy but warring Maharajas in the country. A country with a fascinating diversity of terrain and magnificent wildlife. In 1911, the British set up their new capital in Delhi. The British rule deeply affected the self-esteem and morale of the country.  Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi returned to India from South Africa in 1915. From the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, he met with leaders and freedom fighters. He gave the world the concept of ahimsa, a non-violence, and used non-cooperation to overthrow foreign rule. Under him, the freedom movement gained momentum. And on the 15th of August, 1947, India became an independent nation. Post-independent India struggled to create a modern, democratic and secular nation. Self-sufficiency in food and overall development were priorities. The panchayat system tried to ensure that democracy began at the grassroots. Women were given 33% reservation so that they too were involved in decision-making. Special laws provided job opportunities for women and the underprivileged. Education gradually became the goal for people across the country. But perhaps India's greatest achievements in the 21st century are IT related. These have helped to bridge distances not only in India, but have also brought the world closer. Once again, as before, travellers are coming to India to explore opportunities in trade and investment. As the world's largest democracy, India's rich human resource of young trained professionals are helping to give the country one of the fastest growing economies in the world. And yet, perhaps it is its unique heritage ever present that still defines the essence of India.


Nubbin surgery did not go well. Hi friends, I have disappeared from the internet for a couple of weeks because I had surgery on my leg and hands down it was the worst surgery I have ever had. I had a really bad allergic reaction that kept me in the hospital for like six days. Pain has been awful. And I have been having a rough time. On the upside, my friends have been doing an incredible job of taking care of me, making sure I eat, occasionally see the sun. Also I've taken up digital art to keep my brain engaged along with watching every single episode of suits. I don't know why I chose that show, but here we go. I'm still in very active recovery so you probably won't see my face here until I start feeling better, but I just wanna pop in and say, hey, I'm alive, I made it. Hopefully it will be worth it in the long run because this experience has been less than ideal. Look at this sticker, it's accurate. Super grateful for the support that I've had and now I'm gonna go take another nap. Ah, see you guys soon.


So first of all why are you here? So you see upside down there put it upside down because it's that important for me This is there's not a didactic lecture series. So I'm not going to stand it and give you a lecture now in the beginning In the beginning I might do it because I ask you questions and you don't know the answer I'm going to say one or two things or if no one around the table really knows and I know the answer Which doesn't always happen. I'll tell you the answer, but that's not the point You're not here to be spoon-fed your postgraduate student So when you at your age now someone who's on main campus It's already a postdoctoral student Contributing massively to their field and you're just little kids running around drawing blood filling in forms phoning for beds You know, there's a great discrepancy between what's happening here and what happens in the real world is a very artificial world medicine And really to be in your shoes and still get a lecture with a PowerPoint slide and being told I think that's absolutely ridiculous So that's not going to happen. Yeah, it's not why you hear the second reason why you're not here You'll see there. That's also supposed to be made as you're not yet to pass the exam Now that's not what we're trying to achieve here and I'll get back to that as well. You're here For one reason because you've got to go home and study We're gonna somehow make you do that but not study to pass the exam study to be a doctor proper surgeon or urologist or whatever and That doesn't happen just studying for an exam being able to regurgitate Which you know and by next week you've forgotten that this is the point completely and that's how this world unfortunately is set up But that's just wrong what I want for from this exam is for people to love the idea of knowing stuff learning where you know stuff is to open the books and read and pay attention in the ward and be in the ward and get some work done You know various stuff that you go through But that should not stop the time that the exam is finishing when you pick it up again for the finals When you start studying and something is terribly wrong with that picture that surgeon I don't want anywhere near me or my family when I'm sick and it's urgent. I really don't and to do for it for exams to create that kind of Situation we just trying to study for the exam. That's just wrong.  You're not just gonna You know, no things you've got to you've got to work at it Last perhaps reason why you here is it's easy for you to think about something you see something in the ward We do war downs or you see a patient walk away. You think about it And you might know the answer, but that's quite the different thing from there from vocalizing And that's the training part of the training bit as well. You've got to learn To take the knowledge in your head and vocalize it I can Going to work in walking into the exam and that's the first time you hear your own voice That's just wrong. You are going to stutter and you are going to say bad things and you are it just doesn't work So after this is done You've talked so much.  It's only 20 minutes times two So it's not that bad So just the exam, you know, you're gonna do the MCQ Initially people were quite against the MCQs But there's a lot of literature out. There's a type of literature that you won't be reading because you're in to pass your exams I shouldn't say that now to become a good surgeon But the MCQs there's a lot of literature out on there to show that it is if not as good as Better in testing higher cognitive function than a short or medium or long form question The problem with that literature is that literature that research obviously gets done on very properly set questions It's not just pulling You know 200 MCQs out of a hat and making people like that and doing research on that to show if it takes cognitive function or not So those are very select questions You can imagine that when the research is done on these things and that's not the same in this exam This exam is just the college keeps on asking people just to submit questions And it's South African safe questions. It doesn't come from those UK books and all of those. It's local stuff But as we stand out as of now, there is no quality control on those and we know for instance in the last exams You know, it was women with prostate cancer, you know, it was that bad this apparently the spelling mistakes were, you know, the grammar Spelling mistakes. It was horrible. So That's you know, that that's just the worst part of it But second worst part worst part of it probably is that none of us doing these exams Setting up these MCQs have been properly trained how to do it. Well, I think we can man That's part of being a surgeon You think you can do everything because you can do one thing that what the medically means you can do everything else which is just nonsense so Even though it's been shown to test I order cognitive function I'm not convinced in our setting it does and I'm not convinced that a student who passes the MCQs actually knows they work I don't know if it's always indicative of you knowing your work And you know, some people do fail it and I think to myself when I interacted with that person I personally knew what he was doing and then he or she and then they fail the MCQ and that for me is a clear cut You know indication sort of that the MCQ did not properly test that person something else was going on And there's some people who are always quite amazed by the MCQ because I thought they knew nothing So, you know for us extrapolating the research that's out there on our MCQs. I'm not not quite convinced and Furthermore the way and it's not going to change by the time you do your finals is the first world is really moving towards a competency-based Examinations of competency-based team and that's not what we do local No one knows how you can operate by the time you've done No one knows if you're a good doctor if you interact well with patients if you can communicate well if you have the correct the levels of sympathy empathy and Most of all we don't know how you can how you operate because no one ever judges that And especially the finals even the interaction you have with examiner there. That's purely subjective evaluation of your knowledge You know, and that is just I mean that is now being I think in most first world training Institutions has been shunned the way we're doing it. It served us well in the past, but World has moved on from this. Okay, and the reason for me is just to diminish the power that the exam Hold over you. You know, let that go the way that we examine still in this country. It's old-fashioned Useless type of examination. Okay, so rather prepare yourself to be a good surgeon and Buy product of that would be that you pass us these two silly exams. That's the line wait for you Okay, with time I know like you still in Bosch is signing up for can meds can meds is a way of training Which is really being accepted in most you know in many places in the world as a proper training methods and Evaluation methods and we've got a long ways to get there but still in Bosch I know is signing up to the can meds method comes from Canada and it's really Training a 360 degree or full Specialist as opposed to this very Small goal directed way in which we do but so the MCQ you've got a pass As I say and our setting is not always indicative If you know your work or not So if you fail that little hurdle just try the next time it really isn't indicative whether you know your work or not Our role is something different.  It's not a piece of paper You're sitting in front of someone who can actually laugh in your face, and that's not that's where the the stress comes in Okay So that's a whole different interaction and that will will will exercise here as if there's no tomorrow You're really when you walk in there You should be so well trained in handling that situation If you didn't attend this and just went in there versus attending this there should be a big big difference So the subject matter what you know, that's on the website And the colleges website what the subject matter is for this people the examiners go way beyond what's on those Webpages, okay, this is a very open in that exam. They can ask you anything and some some examiners go way overboard I think last time people asked about research into pediatric surgery and Some funny thing about that. I think you know kind of exactly with a silly example perhaps there are many more examples of people going way outside of that But that doesn't mean that's incorrect to do that When we sit Beforehand and we get our brief in the morning before we start the goal of that exam is just to identify the candidates Who we feel are safe to carry on to the final exam or they need six more months of experience? That's what we that's the goal of that that exam And that means people might ask stuff that is outside of that But usually if you paid attention while you were in the world, it shouldn't be too much of a problem Even if you didn't meet that get yourself a good textbook So the text stands for you know, any of these big green fields Any of those textbooks obviously the select chapters in that the chapters on trauma the chapters on wound care wound healing, you know, those generic chapters They always form a good basis. There's multiple open educational resources these days go and Metscape Any of these websites even on YouTube search for lectures on on a topic and I'll get to why I want you to do the whole lot in the review articles It is fantastic if a candidate can quote Randomized control trial that was published two months ago an exam, okay, but they just too many of those You know, if you can do that be very Be very sure that you're quoting things correctly because usually they examine a rate that You know, you use it with different eyes than you or she and you might get into trouble So if there's one thing you have I really advise you to do is get some good review articles On each of these subjects textbooks are old they get old quickly in the review is instead of you having to go search for all these Things it's it combines that all in one for you know, nice little article So where do you find these articles that's on PubMed? I've given you a Link there that you can type in that takes you to a YouTube tutorial made by PubMed itself on how to do a proper PubMed search and we have time for some groups who've actually stepped by a computer and she did it this particular training videos on mesh Headings, you know what mesh headings are? medical subject headings It's a much better way of searching specifically for some like review articles if you just type in your search term how many irrelevant things come up and It's usually just a page after you stop that the good one was but you you must have because you didn't go to the next page You're fit up Okay, there's a way around that to get to the good stuff with stuff that you're really interested in that she's using Mesh headings as a short little tutorial on how to use PubMed to get to what you want and with 10 results as opposed to 2483 okay, I Want to just touch on what to wear on the day at UCT We've got a standing tradition now that everyone wears the same thing at the exam It's a beautiful thing to see people know it's that's a thing now speak to people before you So men you're gonna wear a black shoes black trousers and a black blazer so black suit There's a thin metal strap in it. I always don't want to see it.  Republican or Democrat anyway?  Okay Properly covered up properly professional You know Something that can compare with a with a with a proper suit and it's gonna be all black and you have no choice in the map I will force this issue. I tell you now it's a tradition and it's so nice beforehand and even after it while people's People are waiting or when we come in as examiners. There's a used to people and they all they're all dressed professionally and You know with some regard for what's going on some respect for for the whole process. So there's no negotiation on there There isn't Done.  You wait for that person to Get up and Try and shake your hand Otherwise, you don't don't put your hand up because you know me. I don't shake hands to start off with I just look at you and I say sit down and it's like really awkward But it doesn't get you any bonus points neither does smiling or making a little joke or going Or you know doing some funny thing People do the weirdest nonsense when they walk in there It's ridiculous to see and by candidate number 20 that really gets irritating You know and actually doesn't buy you but actually the tax from You know from what you're trying to create there So we'll go over that in quite a bit of detail how to walk in what to do Don't just sit down, you know That sort of indicate towards the seat someone will say sit down, you know, but don't make it awkward It's natural because after all of this exercise, you're gonna walk in there and have a discussion with a with a colleague about a few topics That's the whole idea.  That's the strong You're walking with that attitude. It's lost the candidate It's so beautiful to see someone come in there who's relaxed and they have a discussion with you It's very easy to force someone even Seving them to be in a much higher standing than you to force them into a discussion There's a question answer question answer question answer then you've lost Not lost you can still pause okay But to force that kind of discussion issue that is that is a most beautiful thing to see on this side of the table I cannot tell you what an impression that creates Okay, those are the candidates that do well. So that's what we're gonna try and do So how do you fail? So I'm you know if everyone else from other universities watching this sorry for them, but from this university no one fails None of you are allowed to fail It's not allowed either. This is as much as not wearing proper black suit on the day is not allowed failing is not allowed So what happens, you know, how did you get into mate school? Well, at least a my time I think it's still in your time You were you know one of the clever kids in school. Otherwise you didn't get into mate school Okay, the really clever kids of course went to study maths and physics but anyway, the second tier people got into medicine as you put it that way and And you all did well who didn't do well at school. You know somewhere along the line.  Huh? Why suddenly now you're afraid of failing you were the most of most people First in their class or whatever as people come to study medicine usually Okay, and or even if you weren't the first second third whatever top 10% whatever now suddenly worried about failing What happened between those days and today what changed?  So what what's gone wrong?  I failed to understand what went from you being a top student now for you to be worried about failing Something's really wrong. Is the word really difficult? For crying out loud studying medicine is easy. Tell me what is difficult about studying medicine? What is difficult about? Hmm if I asked you something moderately difficult, you know, give me a Derivation of the oil a Lagrange equation Takes a bit of thinking takes a bit of brain power Me asking you the cause of something or you know what you would treat this with how the hell is that difficult? Medicine is not difficult. I failed to understand I You can train anyone to be about as really not that difficult Where it becomes difficult is you don't have enough input data to make a proper decision to have a good output a good outcome And you can take exact two same people with that exact same thing do the exact same thing to them And you'll have differing outcomes because we don't understand medicine to a deep enough level yet we still playing around on the surface You're not always going to have a good outcome Okay, and if you're not always going to have a good outcome Then that's what makes this a bit difficult. That's what makes this makes this a bit difficult Okay, but there's nothing difficult about it You've got to memorize a few things facts and somehow make a few connections and we'll talk about those And you just got to spit them out somehow either to the exam. There's nothing difficult about this Really go study physics or something hard and that's difficult. This is nothing I do not understand the concept of failing this Okay so Other things other way people fail is to say something like that's how we do it Locally, okay, remember we're dealing with a bunch of surgeons here surgeons are not good people may I said it's for the record It's gonna be on YouTube everyone working here this, you know, we're difficult people That's what makes you gives you the ability to do this job Something about your character made you decide this which is different from someone else's character Okay, some way some way there's something going on, but anyway So you might not like what the way other people do it We're very fond of the way that we do things again might be different from what it's done We know examiners from and he might or she might take exception to that because there's some underlying issues going on Okay, so it's a man met up last resort to say we do that locally Who's not to say that the one thing you do locally is eminence based as opposed to evidence based A lot of what we do don't kid yourself is still the eminence based in every institution the people who go straight up against evidence Because in their hands something else is better and they'll stick to that You know and that happens all over the show and it's silly to think it doesn't happen here So so never say but we do it that's not good We answer that question because that is what is stated in the literature that is the proper and Reason behind you deciding on that answer Not because it's done local okay most of what we do obviously we purpose the correct thing But then fall in that trap people sometimes get into arguments with a with a and then and then you know human factors stop playing And that's not between you and the examiner. That's not a good thing Okay, so I never ever say that's what we do locally no matter how right it is That's not an argument for you choosing that answer you read it some way There's some backup for you for having chosen that answer and then you'll see the big letters They what people fail is because they succumb to the pressure of guessing Because you think if you say if you don't know the answer you're going to fail That is not why you fail this exam. You fail this exam because you show the examiner I'm willing to take the risk and guess and hope that I guess correct And I just said to you that we sit beforehand and we decide we let people pass if we feel that they are ready to go on to the Finals if you are willing as a surgeon and training to guess at how to treat the patient you think you're gonna pass So do not ever succumb to trying to get an answer out because you feel you have to otherwise You're gonna fail because under those circumstances you're gonna guess incorrectly and what now all the examiners Season as a person willing to take chances with patients.  That's why people fail. It's the biggest reason for failure so many many many times in this course we're going to Learn I'm gonna drill it into you have five seconds if you cannot come up with something when in five seconds You are going to say I don't know No one has ever failed because they said I don't know it does not Happen you do not fail when you say I don't know and you don't have to say to make those exact same words You've got to play the situation. You might say I don't know the next time I'm you know, I'm up against this this issue, whatever You know, I'll have to check up on that, you know plate Just play the situation But it's gonna come down to the fact that you say I don't know the first thing that happens that examiners starts pushing For that for that until you start guessing and guessing wrong and so then you've lost You look and stay back in the eye who stayed back in there You say I don't know you make them understand that we stop the bus here because it just goes downhill from there Because they won't let it go because now you start answering incorrectly and they go deeper and deeper and deeper and your hole This goes deeper and deeper and deeper Okay, so no one if you don't know you don't know it is not the end of the world It is not an embarrassment embarrassment or some reflection on you No one walks in there knowing everything and the guy who tells me I'm gonna go check up I've got no issue with that guy and That brings me back to why this these exams are such in my view is not a good way of doing things is that if I asked you Just regurgitate for me the 16 causes of this or regurgitate for me the T&M classification of that does that does that make You a good surgeon in any way So unfortunately you are gonna get questions that are not proper questions Okay, if you tell me no, well, I can't remember the classification of that But it's something that's up on a placard up on the wall every time you walk in Why the hell must I ask you about that and why must I fail you if you don't know if you can just look up there Anything that you can quickly look up on an app Why must I ask you to regurgitate that what I want to know from you is do you understand the concept? Can you deal with this situation? That's a proper question Unfortunately, not always going to get proper questions in the exam You know this these are not this is not a structured thing. We're not there yet with a college where these things are done fully assessed full, you know done in a proper fashion and Objective as opposed to subjective. We're still going to do a subjective test. Okay You don't know you don't okay, so tips on learning very quickly These are things that happens to you normally The first time you walked into med school and to anatomy class or whatever you heard something for the very first time Never knew that that existed you can take that for anything in life the first time you hear about something just before that period You were unconsciously incompetent. You didn't even know that you didn't know about this now you hear it for the first time Now you become Consciously incompetent at least you know that you don't know At least you know about it and you go through it a couple of times and then you become consciously competent That's usually the level of these exams You have to think about it and recall it from memory and and then you do it for many many years and become second nature Like the first time you bought your new phone and you had to learn that new operating system now You don't even think about it your fingers this goes to the now you're unconsciously competent And that's why it's so easy for consultants to do or dance and ask all sorts of things and ever But I've seen it 10 million times as part of their being they are unconsciously competent Okay, it's good if you can get to that kind of level for the exam But most of the time you're gonna get stuck by conscious competence. So how you're gonna get there?  What is that? Blue sticks on him of learning starts at the bottom first you see something and you're trying to record it. That's the remembering Once you've remembered a lot of stuff You can start integrating a little bit and you can understand it somehow From there you start applying it you see patients and that knowledge that you have you can apply to you know How to treat this you know what stuff to write up, you know what dose to do that You know what I need to start you apply this knowledge and then Eventually you get to this you can create new things You're not just working on something someone told you but you know in a new situation Which you've never seen before but you can you can integrate and create a new solution Or you can evaluate what someone has told you and you can tear it apart a button analyze it and think why? Why is it so I don't agree? I think you know you're at a much higher level So how do we go through all of that the first thing you have to do is you learn something? I don't know if you know how your memory works. We'll give you a short physiology Lecture here, so it's those two never make the land hippocampus Did you know you know how you how you record stuff into memory that we tell you quickly because it's important It'll help you study so where's the amygdala system front of the hippocampus and hippocampus is in the middle between the two so your recording device is Like a video recorder like on your phone that can record video audio, but it can do more It can record smell touch and also the thing is the video recorder can't that sits in the hippocampus But it's got to be switched on so the amygdala sits there And it's like in a fight-to-flight mode all the time and then it says who something important is coming and it wakes up The hippocampus and says start recording otherwise things just goes through how many times have you done stuff? You can't remember that you did it because the hippocampus was never recording from the hippocampus It then goes wherever it needs to go to be stored. Okay, so the make the lot tells the hippocampus a start recording and What does the hippocampus require for you to take in what is happening there and convert that to memory and that recording? It requires focus in other words You can't look at your phone you can't sit in the class and then your mate shows you something or You watching TV while studying, you know There's very good evidence to suggest that multi-tasking even though females think they can no one can multi-task your hippocampus Can as a single stream that it takes it cannot take two streams? Okay So focus is important. So who knows how long your hippocampus can actually record While focusing in tense we've got 15 minutes on the table. How long is a normal lecture in class? No, so what we've got 15 minutes on the table. Do I have another do I have another 20 minutes to have another? 30 minutes Okay, we've got a little buggy there, but 20 minutes you cannot record for longer than 20 minutes. That's it glucose up cellular structures up nothing gone Okay, that doesn't mean you can't sit for in a lecture for an hour But the lecture proper lecture will not go beyond the 20 minutes and somehow break In some form of fashion changing the discussion laughing a bit making a joke taking people somewhere else Just giving that odd few moments and then starting the recording again And remember in a lecture usually you're not constant focusing for 20 minutes.  Okay, so you learn first But now so it's gone through that recorder now. It's got to go into memory and there's good research to show how that works as well So what is memory? It's just neuronal pathways with interconnects. So the electricity goes to do to do to do to do to do Between all those connections a bunch of chemical reactions and that's that chemicals moving across or sodium potassium moving across a membrane There's nothing more than that Let's not go into all sorts of other other things. That's how your memory works your pure, you know chemical machine Let's stick to that And when you form these connection pathways, there's also good evidence to suggest those neurons actually get thicker and thicker They become well insulated easy for like too much easy for electricity passed down there So you can change your you can change your whole being you react to certain stuff Just because those pathways are well well-willed and those neurons are quite thick and now you believe you have a certain character And you respond to certain things certain ways nonsense man, you can change it It's difficult to form that new pathway, but you can through for habit formation It's this new pathways that gets but this is what you must do here So how do you do that? How do you make those connections? How do you make those neurons go go thicker? First of all think about learning there's some stuff that you know right now You know that you studied some way you heard some way and you remember naturally and try and think about how did that come about? What was the situation? What was happening at that time that made me? Remember this and that's why one of the things that this pertains to is how you study will study differently Some people like late at night some people like getting up early some people like all sorts of Situations that plays to this Think about when you were successful before and remembering stuff think about and trying to recreate that Don't try a new way now study if you're starting studying now a way to fit in with your Schedule of doing woodlands and being on call bugger that try and remember when last you were successful when last It was easy for you to remember something and recreate sort of trying to recreate that scenario That helps The other is think about the for instance things like when you had aha moments You know when something clicked for you when something clicked for you those neuronal pathways connected And try and when you read some stuff try and make you know create those aha moments in some way Okay, for instance, I was asked that and what other day why I saw a patient You know, that's not oh now I read it. Yeah. Oh, that's an aha moment You know you remember that stuff much better than just reading through and highlighting Okay Another point is it's been well shown now that if you write notes It helps in your memory much more than typing notes. So this computer in the classroom typing is not as good as it's actually physically Right, okay, it adds to a muscle memory and all of that. I can't remember. I heard it Little it's some way, you know, it's much better than typing. Anyway And also build on prior knowledge when you bought your new phone You had an older phone so you really knew something so you just added a little bit You didn't learn the new phone all over and before that there was a push button phone in your house And if you know as old as I am there was a phone that you actually had to Turn the little wheel on and before my time There was a thing that you have to turn and then someone answered and you told them what you wanted But this is one knowledge building on the next knowledge. Okay, you've already got a substantial amount of knowledge try and hook stuff Onto what you know before so these are all just little tricks And then the last and probably most important one is it's also been shown You must take in the same knowledge in different ways and that's why I said where do you get all the stuff that you have to study So if you read it you heard it from some way and you watch the video on it or you read three different papers on it Three seems to be the minimum that you've got to get the same Subject into your head in three from three different sources At least three different sources It also makes it much easier to to form from that upper campus into long-term Okay, so try not just Get knowledge on ventilation from one book and one lecture or what I tried to same subject different different ways of getting it in Okay, so Some more tips and tricks social social learning and we're social beings If you discuss something with a mate or a situation like this You heard someone else say something something happened there We laughed about it or whatever you walk into that exam you remember that moment Okay, social learning is much more important than all is probably more important than this sitting on your own You've got to do it on your own But discussing this even you know outside of this room But especially in this room you have a lot of social interaction that really helps Then there's lots of evidence on the music We all learn different music. I'm funny. You know all know I love physics and medicine I teach that as well and I'm quite involved with with that at university as well So if I do physics I've got to listen to classical music and a very specific kind of classical music if I do maths on the other hand It has got to be pumping dubstep acid You know, it's really gonna You know, it's got to be a heavy Beat to it music and that's weird, but music you know music has been shown Then there's got to be some fun aspect to this because to do this against your will and this just becomes a ball in a chore It's not gonna work You know, so it's got to be some fun aspect to it and even here we're gonna have a few laughs Light competition is quite important and that's a very important for being here because you're all gonna see You're gonna see how he does he's gonna see how she does and that's competition and I want you to push each other because Some way from around the stable. I want look after the exam. We sit there in each candidate gets discussed in the exam We sit in the room and we wait for the marks to get put on a computer. They bring it in put it on the screen Like it will be in the big room there because exam is here We go to each and each in every candidate and we can see who did the best so it's got to be one of you That will not be from another university Okay, and each of you've got a push, you know to be better than the other one as well specifically. Yeah I want to see you trying to compete with you trying to compete with you.  That's what builds memory. That's not what bulls me man It's it's a retrieval So when you read it the second time try not just reread it again Try and retrieve it from memory from the previous time. So it's not repetition. It's Retrieval and re-retrieval and After three times you get a drop in your return on investment So to go through it for the fourth time and fifth time and sixth time is not as good But it's not just pure reading that sentence over again. It's trying the second time and the third time to retrieve it from memory so it's a retrieval aspect and There's also good evidence to show that Between two episodes and I mean you read it now and you're gonna read it the second time or trying to retrieve it The second time you've got to have a spirit of sleep in between the two that has been shown to be much better than doing it This morning and this afternoon There's something that happens doing the sleep doing your sleep between your hippocampus and then in your own pathways which trying to to connect that source things out for you. Okay, and It's being studied to such a level now that it's also now knowing that that happens in the last hour of sleep Not doing the whole night of sleep and that is why setting your alarm and waking up by alarm clock in the morning is not good Okay, because you don't get that natural last hour. So how do you get that natural last hour? You don't watch TV until 12 o'clock at night. You got a bed early Okay Now in our lifestyle and medicine specifically surgery. This is a difficult thing but I mean it has been shown to be so that But it's best if you have that natural last hour of sleep Okay, so you're gonna have to go through things at least three times before now in the exam It's not just pure repetition try and do the retrieval thing and try and get sleep in between So don't try and study the one thing especially when it gets close to the end They're trying to go through stuff so many times. There's no return on that investment. I can tell you now There's evidence for that Okay, and then this little actions for you know, what you've got to do from here on and as this developed little habits As I said think back to when it was successful for your all past your primary Before that obviously as I said you did well at school something happened there for you to be successful at the most memory game You know so, you know try and stick to those but do this a bit surely because it this whole thing that Depending upon small little steps, you know Don't get to a stage where this whole thing becomes too overwhelming And you feel like you haven't got enough time left then not a postponing the night the next time And don't fall into the same you know make the same mistake You've got a long time now from now to the exam do a do a little bit every day being you know You've got to you've got to Do some work here. Okay, and you don't have to do three hours a day If you do a little bit each day Suddenly you look back and you look what I've been through. You know, you've done a hell of a lot Okay, but that is some habit that you form and some Ritual that you have that you just do at least a little bit every day Don't let a day go by that you haven't done and it doesn't mean. Oh, well, it's too late in the day And I have to put in at least three hours. Therefore. I will do nothing You know if there's ten minutes left Then you ought to do that ten minutes because you feel better after that ten minutes Then you will feel after they're doing nothing And if you do nothing and nothing and nothing and nothing the feel bad about that nothing and nothing and nothing compounds it doesn't just Cumin it compounds and then after this whole thing becomes so ridiculous and so and such a negative experience You know and that you know, you're not gonna get the best out of yourself So the whole thing about this is you know each have an ability know what that ability is It's just to get that maximum out. Don't leave lots in the back in the tank Why would you leave some reserve in the tank? You know just just do the best that you can here You know, don't leave something don't leave unplayed cards on the table. Just do it or why not try? You know, why not let's move away from just trying to pass this exam to see how good How well can I do? Let's push this to the max. Just do it once in your life Even if you don't do it for the final just do it for this exam prove to yourself how good you are and let's leave this Oh, I'm gonna pass. I'm gonna fail me. Let's just leave that alone. It's not gonna happen. Okay, and you've got to reward yourself There's got to be some oxytocin release after even if it was just that ten minutes because that's all you had today But hopefully a bigger session in this thing But have some release after that if you release oxytocin by some form of happy happy feeling reward Okay, I mean some of these sessions is quite tough. You'll see now You're gonna walk out.  You know something you've got to have that bit of release or reward For that and then again lastly make me proud first of all because my head's on the block and it's been now As I said, you weren't here. I've been going at this for more of four or three years now I mean those guys are that we started without doing their finals There's quite some time and it's been successful. So you're not gonna let me down Number one say secondly, don't get yourself Okay, it's actually the other way. Don't get yourself down. This is a don't leave cards on the table You know why why why do you want to why do you want to do a half past?  It's actually it's a nice It is empowering to have knowledge. It's empowering to be faced with a problem or do water and the consultant are something something And you actually know it as a stain as opposed to standing there making a little joke smiling You know trying to get the tension off of you.  You know, why why must it be like that rather know the answer that's It's enjoyable to know the answer. There's an enjoyment to knowing stuff It's empowering to know which feel good So study in that light not for this Old-fashioned exam that you have to go to unfortunately you have to go through it. So but let it be a side effect of You know this little side issue of the rest, okay


Hi there, we'll do another edition of Tuesdays with Corey. I'm back with the existing person Jeff Still breathing still breathing still here still quite humble. Thanks to my lack of action Introductory my Salutation as it were the the the alive Truth It's accurate today. We are going to be spending more time on Azure functions Azure functions and serverless or just as a function pretty we're just gonna focus on Azure functions So what are we so you there's some newness there is one to talk about there is this is this is Fairly hot off the press So one of the things with Azure functions, so we mentioned it in the last episode, which is we haven't watched You need to definitely. It's about it's about a minute of value with seven minutes of garbage So with that So one of the challenges that happens when you're dealing with Azure functions in general and serverless functions This is it unique to Azure is what if I have a process that is complex or long-running and I need to Manage that entire process now before I even go further We showed you in the last one as your logic apps, which is a phenomenal thing to orchestrate across different functions And it does have some capabilities like looping. Yes, but there are still some patterns like If you have a big file that comes in and let's say you have a thousand customer records And you need to go split all of those thousand of records into individual executions You'd like to not have to pull it in every time and then aggregate back in yeah So if you do this by hand today or even with logic apps, it can get very complicated So there's a new piece of functionality for Azure functions called durable functions beautiful. Got it. You got it You nailed that I did and so what durable lets you do is write an orchestration piece all within your function So this is in C sharp no visual designer you code this thing, but it can run Forever it can run as long as you want and it's managing the state and making sure like oh, hey I just spit out a thousand so it doesn't have a time limit for how long it runs. That's right Really the key point. Yeah, okay, and you said C sharp but not exclusively C sharp or exclusively C sharp great question So so and I actually don't know the answer which is what it is scary So there's two pieces to kind of a durable function application One are the actions that you take like go process this record Those actions or activities can be written in any of the languages supported by Azure functions So JavaScript Java C sharp for the time being the orchestration piece the thing that tells you what to do Can only be written in C sharp, but we are working on making accessible for other languages Okay, so you viewers tweet us and let us know which languages you would like to see first Is that fair? Well, I mean I'm kind of landing canceling the whole show now. Yeah, that's fair But C sharp is a beautiful language, please sweet Please tweet us back the Recommendations that you have for languages. Yeah, I have I have I'll have some words with these guys Yeah, please proceed so I'm gonna show you a quick sample app right now just to show you what that one of these looks like So this one's kind of a fun scenario. I have here on my desktop. This is my phone messaging app Okay, because what I wanted to do I know and we weren't invited The functions guys never get invited What I wanted to do here was I I don't know if you've heard of crypto currencies. I haven't eat like Bitcoin Yeah, yeah or Ethereum Again, I'm not seeing very well. Yes, you really kill any on the Asian acting one of the things I wanted to do is Can you watch the price of a coin like I want to get an alert? I want to get a text message alert if Bitcoin crosses a certain threshold or if Ethereum crosses a threshold So I wanted to do this serverlessly and what I wanted to do actually just show you now I'm gonna send a text that says like watch Bitcoin to tell me if it crosses. I don't know $15,000 for right now. I'm sending that text It's firing off an Azure function what you're gonna notice is it's gonna send me back a response here that says We're now watching this coin for you So what you'll see is it actually responded back to me and said hey I'm now watching the price of this I will send you a text message alert if it crosses it and if you want to stop watching text this now I don't want to just watch for five minutes I actually want to watch for like a week or two weeks to know like when should I sell on my stuff So what's powering this behind the scenes is a durable function? Okay, so this is the durable function behind the scenes and this is what the type of stuff you can write So I've been able to write in this durable orchestrator This while loop that says continue to do this action while my the current price is less than the price that I set and While the timeout hasn't been reached because I set a timeout I only want this watch for like a week and if it's more than a week and it doesn't cross it just it's quit working But I like I'm watching Bitcoin here. I could just as easily say like hey Stock market or like go ping my site or watch a newsfeed or like any type of watch or something where I'm spinning up a worker So I sleep for 15 minutes wake up give the current price and just keep doing this Again, we I should have probably prepped on this question at a time Why would you use this versus? Like building your own service right like if you're gonna run it for this long period of time And it's just kind of sitting there right like is it still serverless. Let me see I mean, let's get into some theory. Yes. Yeah for sure So the interesting thing about durable functions behind the scenes is it actually only is running And you're only getting billed when an actual action is taking place. Okay, so when I say sleep for 15 minutes here We actually scale down to zero. Oh, interesting. Yeah, we get rid of everything So it is very much in people's so while they do have durable functions These types of listener some types of functions It's very important for people to be smart about how they put their sleeps in because if they're or their wait periods Sure, because if they are gonna do these wait periods, they're not gonna get charged So that then makes it sort of an ongoing ongoing cyclical event. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's fair That's fair way. Maybe you haven't thought about it. I've learned something today So the the reason potentially do I do this is one like I can have this long-running process without having to worry about Managing to make sure like is my server alive all the time is my service And then there's patterns that like if you're using functions like here I'm doing a loop maybe I'm just orchestrating a call to a bunch of different functions like if you're familiar with like dependency injection where you want to have a bunch of dependencies, but Dynamically call them you can do that dynamic kind of dependency of functions thing here and have it be serverless So this thing's running but at the same time because it's only waking up every 15 minutes It's still super inexpensive and if I went crazy and I started watching for a bunch of coins Like now I want to watch to see if Cori coin, which is a hot new coin on the market is What's that now a billion so I'm gonna see if it crosses two billion I could go and set up a bunch of these watchers and it's gonna be able to dynamically scale to as many as I need So now it's watching Cori coin, which probably threw an exception behind the scenes unless this coin actually exists But yeah, so that's that's durable functions There's there's it's a more advanced feature of Azure functions for sure But if you are using Azure functions, if you want any sort of orchestration that this might be the right fit There's a few patterns that we recommend. This is really good for we've got some good samples out there But I did want to show it because it can be a powerful tool when you want something serverless But you need it to be a little bit longer or more Stateful than a traditional ephemeral function like that. We're there ephemeral. That's nice. Yeah That was the word of the day today I Pull him back from peewee Herman You didn't even know that was for my time for my time. Oh my goodness. Anyway. All right. Well, this has been I mean really fun Thank you No, thank you back again So, okay, so we should expect So very cool. So basically again these durable functions be able to take advantage of Sort of ongoing functions yet still pay for as you use it which is super valuable and been different from if you set this up as a Service that's running like on a VM or what have you? Yep and You can have it run back-end code. That's any of the languages this front-end code is Dot net only that's correct. Yeah, but we'll be supporting other languages in the soon future in the soon future There you go. All right, and thank you so much for having and thank you guys so much for joining I hope this was a fun show for you as much as it was for us and We'll be we'll be in touch. So it is up in a Azure TWC hashtag at TWC ask questions ask his comments And we'll get back to you. So with that have a wonderful Tuesday. Bye. Bye You check the battery system Thanks, thanks. No, I mean, it's worth our time. Thanks a lot, right? I'm talking about The bank robber was denied a bank The scorpion was denied I owe I owe what I owe. What are you doing that durable functions? Durable Make sure you're doing that Durable a lot of people get stripped up. They say durable durable not that's not what this is That is something else. That's actually a beautiful a beautiful soup With rice and chicken durable functions from assemble This is durable durable function Jeff you've stopped and started a new recording now


Alright everyone, first off forgive me, my voice is not 100% still, it's a little bit better than yesterday, blew it out a couple days ago during the livestream, is what it is, and we're going to be talking about some Skyward Sword HD stuff today. And if you and my kids in the background, I apologize as well, they're playing, what am I going to do? It's the weekend, things get nuts in my house on the weekend. That being said, I am giving away a copy of Monster Hunter Rise and two $20 Nintendo Switch, PlayStation or Xbox Gift cards. To enter head down into the description of the pinned comment, that's three total winners this month, I wish everybody luck. Now, here's what's awesome about Skyward Sword HD, it's one of the best Zelda games ever made, in my opinion. But really, I have an issue with the way Nintendo is marketing this game, and I don't think they're doing this intentionally, I just think it's not the best way to do it. Now this is a personal opinion, this is a discussion piece, you can feel free to disagree with me, and that's okay. When they announced Skyward Sword HD, they mentioned how elements of Breath of the Wild began in Skyward Sword, stamina meter, as an example, the sailcloth, etc. And they're not wrong, and I thought this was okay to mention it at the time to create some familiarity to Breath of the Wild players and give them a reason to maybe, hmm, let me see where these things started up. But the problem is, this marketing is continuing after the announcement, and I'm a little bit worried it's going to taint people's experiences with Skyward Sword, a game that already has tainted experiences back in 2011. Here's the tweet put up by Nintendo of America a couple days ago. Did you know the original release of the Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword introduced features like a stamina gauge, upgrading gear, and descending using a sailcloth, these elements were later adopted in the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild.  That's not how Breath of the Wild works, you can upgrade your fortabilities like Stasis Plus, Magnesis Plus, but like your actual gear doesn't really upgrade, you just get new gear. That's not the same thing Nintendo. Getting new gear is not the same thing as upgrading gear. So that's a little weird, it's actually gonna probably show people a feature they wish was in Breath of the Wild, I'm just saying they wish you could repair gear. But what I think is really interesting is that the way they are showing this off, right? So they show the stamina meter. Okay, yeah, they show Link's sprinting, that's how it works in Breath of the Wild. But then they show him climbing the vines. It's creating this expectation that these elements in Skyward Sword work in a similar fashion to the way they do in Breath of the Wild. And it's gonna lead to a lot of Breath of the Wild gamers being frustrated with Skyward Sword. And I felt like they probably already were going to be in some ways, but at least don't create the expectation of mechanics. And I think that's what Nintendo's doing here is by relating the two games and reminding people again, I get what they're trying to do, they're trying to advertise the game, but they're also in a way almost subconsciously over promising what Skyward Sword is. Skyward Sword, by the way, is a fantastic Zelda game, one of my favorite Zelda games in the whole series. That's why I mentioned before it's one of the best games. Yeah, it's in my top five. But here's the thing, these features don't work in Skyward Sword anything like there's almost zero relation beyond the sprinting ability from Link. The stamina meter does not work pretty much at all like it does in Breath of the Wild outside of sprinting. There's literally no correlation at all. It's not even why even bringing up kind of thing. Upgrading gear doesn't work that way in Breath of the Wild at all. It's not even comparable. The ability to catch bugs, right? Like they have a screenshot here. You guys saw earlier, it shows Link holding a bug, caught a bug. It doesn't have anything to do with cooking. There's no useful, and then obviously the worst thing is mentioning the sailcloth. Now they didn't show it off in the screenshots in this tweet, but they bring it up again, descending using a sailcloth. You just drop straight down. It's not like a parachute. It's not like the glider in Breath of the Wild. You literally just drop straight down. There's no other use for it. You just drop straight down.  Like it doesn't work that way in this game. It's very limited in how you can use the sailcloth. And I feel like that's going to frustrate people that enjoy the freedom of Breath of the Wild. And yes, this game is in Breath of the Wild and doesn't need to be, but making these associations, as a one-off mention when you announced the game to me was fine, but to continue to bring up these associations is an advertising point to Breath of the Wild players. It's just people are going to play this game and be significantly disappointed it doesn't work like Breath of the Wild, because Nintendo is almost creating expectations that elements of Breath of the Wild are in this game. When really, that's not how this game functions. Yes, you can argue the initial ideas maybe began here, but that's it. It would be nice for them to emphasize that a sailcloth in Skyward Sword is nothing like the item in Breath of the Wild. It would be nice to mention, oh, we have a stamina meter, but like it's nothing like, oh yeah, you can climb in this game, but it's just like all the others, all the games you can only climb vines. You can't just climb anything and for some reason they attach a stamina meter to the climbing mechanic, which I thought was dumb in the first place since Zelda never needed that before the climb vines. In Breath of the Wild, I don't mind it because you're climbing cliffs and everything, but yeah, it was weird. It was a weird addition at the time for Skyward Sword. And yeah, you can capture bugs and that's cool, but I mean, you can in Twilight Princess as well. Don't see anybody caring about that. I just think that Nintendo is entering dangerous territory where they're going to sell a lot of copies of Skyward Sword HG. And there's already been pricing controversies and all that, but Skyward Sword HG is going to fly off shelves. But I think it has a chance to sour people's trust in Nintendo in a certain way. Like when Link's Awakening remake came out, it wasn't going to sour any of the Breath of the Wild stuff because it's just a fundamentally different game, but it's going to just top down all that jazz. No one expected when you looked at Link's Awakening, you didn't think, oh man, this is Breath of the Wild. Like, no. When you look at Skyward Sword and it being a 3D, you know, game, there's this expectation that the last 3D Zelda game I really dove into was Breath of the Wild. And now I'm good to play Skyward Sword and it's a blast from the past, but also, hey, it's a major Zelda game. And hey, they keep mentioning all these features that began here for Breath of the Wild. And hey, none of these features remotely work anything like they do in Breath of the Wild. To the point that you can argue these features existing in Skyward Sword are not relatable to Breath of the Wild at all. So I don't know, it's a situation where I don't, I like these features. I like being able to upgrade your slingshot, upgrade your bow, upgrade items in Breath of the Wild. I like upgrading the shields as an example in Breath of the Wild. I like that. I like, or Breath of the Wild in Skyward Sword. I like, you know, some of the stamina thing with the sprinting. I like the sailcloth in some instances in the game just for quick dropping down certain levels. But at the same point, it's very restrictive. It works nothing like it does in Breath of the Wild. So I just worry that this game that I feel is amazing is they just fix the motion controls, which people are still going to struggle with, but they just fixed the motion controls for people who don't like them. And now they're pushing Breath of the Wild players to buy this game with expectations of certain features being there from Breath of the Wild, which aren't really existing. I'm just, maybe I'm overthinking this, but personally I'm very concerned that this is the marketing route Nintendo is going. You guys let me know down in the comments below because, hey look, if you play Breath of the Wild, I haven't played any of those other games. I'm telling you now, Skyward Sword is great. It's nothing like Breath of the Wild. Don't buy into the marketing. Oh, these ideas started technically true. Also, they're nothing like they are in Breath of the Wild. So don't have expectations that stamina works the same. That item upgrades are the same. I mean, they're not even in, I literally don't get the item upgrade comparison because in Breath of the Wild you just get new items. You don't upgrade existing ones. Not really. Not really.  Alright folks, I'm Nathan Roberts from Nintendo Prime, thank you so much for tuning in and I'll catch you guys in the next video.