So what is Adelaide like?
Having spent most of the last week, and probably the next few weeks too, walking around the centre of time looking for a mobile phone, bank account, rent deposit etc, I’m getting to know the main couple of streets. The centre is 1 mile square, surrounded by parklands, with all the streets on a very imaginative grid. The main shops are on one street which is round the corner from the hospital, with a few familiar names (Body Shop, erm, that’s about it actually).
The house is in suburbia-central. Many of the houses seem to be bungalows of a variety of ages. The older buildings are a strange mixture of Wild West Frontier and Victorian Station Building. Particularly the race –course, part of which looks like you could stand and wait for the 20 past 12 Flying Scotsman service, while the other half looks like, well, Doncaster race-course.
Anyway, the house was built in the 70s, kitchen, lounge-diner, 2 bed, utility room, small yard. That’s the estate agent bit out of the way. It’s quite nice, and the really great thing was arriving to find that the Landlady (Jules) had left sheets, bread, milk, loo-roll, soap and, most importantly, tea-bags. Which was really sweet of her. More than my tenants get (which was a torn-off scrap of paper saying “stopcock”, pointing to how to turn the water on).
Actually, the rental agent was quite amused when I saw her on Monday with a list of questions – where are the stopcock, the meters and the boiler. Although to be fair, I wouldn’t have found the boiler as it’s on the wall in the yard. The biggest drawback to the house – the boiler isn’t connected to any radiators. Nor is there double glazing. So while the days aren’t much different temperature-wise to how June was in Britain, the evenings are cold. Very cold. And there’s no loft space in the house so the ceilings are very high. The Aussies are complaining about the cold too, to be fair.
I’d better mention work, I suppose. This week has been spent filling in forms, pretty much. Monday I went in, met Sue who is the secretary / mother hen of the department, and had a quick tour of the dept. I then went into town to buy a ball of string to make sure I can find my way out when I venture into the dept alone.
The day after I had to see the Medical Board. They are in North Adelaide, which is kind of annexe to the city centre. Deoendant on buses, I arrived early so went for a coffee (something they are very big on here). I found a café run by Italian-Australians with a sign-writer scrolling
“Welcome to Café Vagabonde. You are now one of the Family”.
I left before becoming assimilated.
The Medical Board interview was quick, although they didn’t like one of the bits of paper from the GMC. Apparently if I hadn’t opened the envelope it would have been OK, although if I hadn’t opened it, how would I know what it was? She couldn’t answer that one. Anyway, I had to phone them that evening so lets hope it worked. Otherwise I’m not starting work on Monday.
I spent yesterday at the departmental teaching and today chasing the IT department, although I still haven’t managed to get on line properly either at work, or home – where I’m waiting for the phones to be connected so I can sort out broadband.
Today I got shown where the Malaysian and Asian doctors go for lunch – as I said, there has to be an upside to being so close to town. Evenings and weekends, being close to town is definitely not a good thing for an Emergency Dept (ED).
And my challenge for the rest of the week / weekend is to find transport so that I don’t have to get a taxi home at midnight when I finish a late shift.
Having spent most of the last week, and probably the next few weeks too, walking around the centre of time looking for a mobile phone, bank account, rent deposit etc, I’m getting to know the main couple of streets. The centre is 1 mile square, surrounded by parklands, with all the streets on a very imaginative grid. The main shops are on one street which is round the corner from the hospital, with a few familiar names (Body Shop, erm, that’s about it actually).
The house is in suburbia-central. Many of the houses seem to be bungalows of a variety of ages. The older buildings are a strange mixture of Wild West Frontier and Victorian Station Building. Particularly the race –course, part of which looks like you could stand and wait for the 20 past 12 Flying Scotsman service, while the other half looks like, well, Doncaster race-course.
Anyway, the house was built in the 70s, kitchen, lounge-diner, 2 bed, utility room, small yard. That’s the estate agent bit out of the way. It’s quite nice, and the really great thing was arriving to find that the Landlady (Jules) had left sheets, bread, milk, loo-roll, soap and, most importantly, tea-bags. Which was really sweet of her. More than my tenants get (which was a torn-off scrap of paper saying “stopcock”, pointing to how to turn the water on).
Actually, the rental agent was quite amused when I saw her on Monday with a list of questions – where are the stopcock, the meters and the boiler. Although to be fair, I wouldn’t have found the boiler as it’s on the wall in the yard. The biggest drawback to the house – the boiler isn’t connected to any radiators. Nor is there double glazing. So while the days aren’t much different temperature-wise to how June was in Britain, the evenings are cold. Very cold. And there’s no loft space in the house so the ceilings are very high. The Aussies are complaining about the cold too, to be fair.
I’d better mention work, I suppose. This week has been spent filling in forms, pretty much. Monday I went in, met Sue who is the secretary / mother hen of the department, and had a quick tour of the dept. I then went into town to buy a ball of string to make sure I can find my way out when I venture into the dept alone.
The day after I had to see the Medical Board. They are in North Adelaide, which is kind of annexe to the city centre. Deoendant on buses, I arrived early so went for a coffee (something they are very big on here). I found a café run by Italian-Australians with a sign-writer scrolling
“Welcome to Café Vagabonde. You are now one of the Family”.
I left before becoming assimilated.
The Medical Board interview was quick, although they didn’t like one of the bits of paper from the GMC. Apparently if I hadn’t opened the envelope it would have been OK, although if I hadn’t opened it, how would I know what it was? She couldn’t answer that one. Anyway, I had to phone them that evening so lets hope it worked. Otherwise I’m not starting work on Monday.
I spent yesterday at the departmental teaching and today chasing the IT department, although I still haven’t managed to get on line properly either at work, or home – where I’m waiting for the phones to be connected so I can sort out broadband.
Today I got shown where the Malaysian and Asian doctors go for lunch – as I said, there has to be an upside to being so close to town. Evenings and weekends, being close to town is definitely not a good thing for an Emergency Dept (ED).
And my challenge for the rest of the week / weekend is to find transport so that I don’t have to get a taxi home at midnight when I finish a late shift.
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