Not more drinking....

Where am I to? (as someone said to me the other day. After all Plympton is near here. It would fit).

Gradually sampling the cuisine. Difficult to talk about work much. All is not well in the state of Denmark (which is actually probably a bit unfair to the Danish girls who are very good Drs). There’s some unrest among the consultants, a lot of politics (internal and imposed from the Health Board). So it’s not the happiest of places, and not the happiest of places if it’s taking a little while to settle in (which is what I thought might happen). So I got dragged out for a meal and whinge by Conrad (the other Sen Reg) and his wife Chris who didn’t really get a word in over the moaning. To one of those “breezeblock” places that looks like a transport caff but does very good, cheap Thai food. A bottle of wine (Rockford’s Alicante Bouchet – only 10% ABV and slightly sweeter, it’s a very pale red which tastes of strawberries. I’ve drunk a fair bit of it with various people) and an ice cream later and the world is a better place.

BTW I’m not trying to namedrop – this is just the only chance I have to remember the names of the wines.



Anyhow, there was a consultants’ meal arranged on the Friday night. I had an office day, so first I left early to go to the gym which is only 4 floors above the ED. Friday nights there are no classes so you get almost personal attention from the trainer it’s his empire really). I’ve not had time to go back this week, and it’s only surprising that I haven’t had a text asking where I am. Then I popped into town. I’ve been desperately searching for a dress for the Christmas do – now I’ve found the dress (in a boutique 30 sec walk from home) I need shoes. So I saw some green shoes a month or so ago, but obviously they’re not in the shop anymore. Try the outlet store (out by the airport). By the time I got out there it was 1800 – and obviously not late night shopping. So back home, which is closer than from work, quick shower and back out. By the time I got there it was just before 8. It was a Japanese restaurant two doors down from the curry house. We ordered about 45 min later when it became obvious that several people weren’t going to turn up – including the guy who organised it. Hmm. But the food was excellent (I had the sushi / sashimi / tempura platter).

In the name of wine tasting, the next day I was up at 730 to go to the Barossa. There were 7 of us – 4 from the rowing club, another friend of someone and Karen who is the mother of one of the Danish girls who sadly had to work. So we’d hired a minibus and driver, which is apparently a very common way of doing it.


There were 6 wineries, which is probably about one too many, unless you follow the traditional tasting order and just go for sweet wines at the last one. By the end the taste buds are saying “Yep. That’s wine all right” but not much else.

There are so many wineries in the Barossa, and most of them produce good wine. So the only way of distinguishing them really is the service at the cellar door. So the first seemed friendly, until the wine host spent 10 minutes ignoring us to talk to a friend. The next was busy, but we had to go as one of the girls is having her wedding there (held in the barn among the barrels). After that we were early to the next who suggested, fairly rudely, we go away for 20 min – so we had a bit of a walk across the creek, thinking that this wasn’t going to be fun. Anyway we did go back and (predictably I guess), we had the wine host to ourselves who explained all the wines (which were probably the best of the lot) and did much business as a result.

Lunch at another, then to Jacob’s Creek. Which is big, busy (given it was a Saturday), and impersonal. And I’m sorry but all the ones I tasted were still slurpin’ wines. As I said, the final place we just stuck to the sweet wines, which I’m a bit fussy about but had a great Tokay which tasted of sultanas and raisins (so a bottle was bought to go with the Christmas pud), and a Grand Tokay which was crying out to be drunk with treacle pudding.

When we got back, we went for an early dinner in Chinatown (ie a small stretch of Gouger St) and I cycled home. Sober enough to cycle by then.

Sadly I was working the next day, and in fact today (Friday) is the first day off since then. Which I am spending cooking, cleaning and shopping in between writing this. But I’ve had a couple of good shifts this week, so that's good.

Christmas Shopping

Too hot to go anywhere so I spent last weekend spending my hard-earned. Actually Friday I spent money on me. Or to be accurate, 4 new tyres for the car. Nice to be going round bends, rather than across them.

I am going round my friends and family (well the husbands) with a pair of bricks next year – not only Christmas, but children born in December too! You know who you are. At least I suppose I can put everything in a limited number of parcels.

The decs have been up in Burnside (over the road from home) for a few weeks now – v unimaginatively green and red. Holly and ivy just aren’t right. Not with the Jacaranda trees making the world purple where it should be green, and hibiscus all shades of orange. In the middle of Rundle Mall is a 15-20’ Santa, and Body Shop are selling their seasonal Cranberry and Spicy Plum flavours (both are pretty special actually, just well - wintery).

It is just wrong, sandals and summer clothes, with the shops playing songs about “dashing through the snow” and pictures of jolly elves in snow shoes. I was talking to one of the shop assistants (lots of shopping done in Myer – John Lewis equivalent – as there were a lot of money-off offers) who was ranting about the inappropriateness of it all. So if Aussies agree, you wonder who is making the decisions. And all at the same time as I’m looking for a summer dress for the Christmas Dinner.

Anyway, five hours later, wondering round town in the heat and my shopping is nearly done. At least the Sally-Ann weren’t polluting the air like they were in Brisbane (I hate brass band music). And now my lounge floor is covered with wrapped presents waiting for me to find the time to get to the Post Office to send them half-way around the world.

Enough.






On Sunday I thought I’d have a wander down to the craft market at the Festival Hall. Like I said, it’s strange how you spend lots of time in one place then don’t go again because you keep going to another.

So I seem to be going to the Festival Hall a lot. First for the Opera. Figaro. A very bizarre set (slightly Gaudi-esque, apparently - although I’ve not been to Barcelona). The singer playing Figaro was excellent (used to be a brickie), and even made the famous Figaro song make sense. As well as some very amusing silent players in the background who, in a very silent movie way, gave life to the production. People do dress up here to go to the opera (although that may have been because it was Saturday night). Then the craft market – which is very small but has a couple of very good stalls, including one with really unusual jewellery. Bought one piece; will probably be going back there.

After that I walked along the embankment, which takes about 3 minutes, before rushing home to dump the car and walk to Norwood where I met up with Ina. She’s a Danish anaesthetist who has decided she wants to be involved in starting EM as a specialty in Denmark. So that was a very pleasant couple of hours with a bottle of wine (Grant Burge Sauv Blanc), before staggering walking home to go to bed to get up at silly o’clock for work on Friday.

Some pictures of Adelaide

And then what?

Well it’s now getting too hot for walking – most of the parks close if the temp is to be over 30, which it was for the best part of 2 weeks. Plus work has been busier – back to having the corridors full of patients again, no beds in the hospital. About the only thing we don’t have is 10 ambulances outside waiting to unload. Every other hospital in the area can close its doors to relieve pressure – we don’t and we receive patients from most of the rest of the state, too.

The junior doctors have changed over – at least here they don’t all change on the same date, but they do seem to change very frequently which means that you are in a state of working with very green staff quite a lot of the time.

So what else have I been doing? I’ve been promising to learn to dance for a long time, so I started Salsa. Only 3 sessions so far – it’s fun, and good exercise. Plus it’s only a 15 min walk from home. The steps so far are simple (I didn’t say easy), but obviously the bit I am struggling with is the idea that I have to follow the man in every move (even when they get it wrong).

What else? After a particularly hard day (which was the junior change-over, but on a Wednesday when teaching was on so no registrars), a few of us went to the pictures to see Death at a Funeral. Funnier than I thought, in fact completely barking-mad, (although I suspect it wouldn’t stand up to a second viewing).

I’ve fallen in with a bad crowd. We went for a curry Monday, are going to the Barossa wineries on Saturday. The pay-off is that I am being tempted. No, pressured even. To go rowing! Some of the girls want to get an ED boat together, although the chances of getting everyone there at the same time are, I would say, pretty small. Anyway, so when I’ve got time I’ll probably give it a go.


Yet again I’m working Christmas. It’s getting to the stage where I’m not particularly bothered about it, actually. Anyhow, a few of us talked about getting together for a traditional meal sometime beforehand. And somehow I agreed to make a Christmas pud. I wasn’t even drunk at the time.

It took a day, and several supermarkets to get all the ingredients together. It is so wrong buying suet when the outside temp is over 30. I mixed it up in the evening so I’d have a day to cook the things. The recipe (handily I had one) said 6 hours. So 7 hours later and they are still boiling (I’d quartered the quantities and then divided into two). I took one off the heat – still sloppy. 1130 pm, I gave up and went to bed. God knows how much longer and they are going to need. And how much more alcohol I’ll need to put in to make them edible (they taste OK so far, but…)

And these are some random pictures of Adelaide - the festival hall abd embankment are surrounded by lots of sculpture.

Who knows, it may even mean something?

It's nice to have a working computer again (touch wood)

Doesn’t time fly... and all that?

I can probably skip over the week after the gig. Rapidly. Fairly busy at work, and I’ve never liked coming home from a holiday. Plus a cold that wouldn’t come out and wouldn’t go away.

So the next big thing was teaching on an EMST course. That’s ATLS to the rest of the world. Only 9½ yrs since first being asked to be an instructor, but I’d always been too junior. (Felt a bit like always being too young for the DofE at school.)

Anyway. After several days preparing the lectures, and being slightly unsure exactly how the whole thing was going to differ from the course back home.

I flew to Brisbane on Thursday evening – thankfully, considering I had left work after 0100 on Thursday morning and back into work for 10 the same day, Brisbane is a whole 30 minutes behind Adelaide. At leaast that was what I was telling myself to make me feel better. A 2 hour flight, I got to the hotel at 10. It was so much more humid.

The course started Friday, with a faculty meeting at 7:15. The hotel reckoned it was either 20 minutes, or 3km to walk to the hospital so I left at 6:30, not wanting to take any chances. Given that the hospital was the big building on the hill I could see as soon as I walked out of the hotel... (see photo above - hospital on teh extremem right) Anyway I stopped at Hungry Jacks (aka Burger King) for coffee. I’ve obviously discovered where you go in Australia to find men.


It turns out the course is pretty similar to ours. There was one other ED doc teaching, the rest were all surgeons. (I gather it is unusual to have that many). The candidates were mostly surgical and GP trainees with one (brave) physician. Bizarrely ED trainees don’t have to do it.

The days were long. In the first demonstration (how not to do it) I was the victim – theatrical make-up and fake broken bones, drunk and abusive (I love playing that part). I had to die. I survived the second time round. The lectures went fine – after all the stressing about how to fit the material into the time .

The course dinner was Friday night at a (-n apparently famous) rugby club. So famous I can't remember the name. The after dinner speaker was a fascinating anaesthetist (no jokes about oxymorons) who had done mountain rescue in South Africa. Proper mountains, hanging from 30 year old helicopters (and taking photos) in minus 10 degrees. Amazing.

Next morning wasn’t quite such an early start, in fact a couple of us were given an hour off while the surgical skills were taught. There was a big thing about how this “wasn’t an animal lab”, which is very rare here. I have never done a course where there are live, anaesthetised animals. I’m glad.

Saturday afternoon was spent in the blazing heat, lying wedged half under a rubbish skip in a very dusty loading bay. While groups of candidates tried to pull me out, roll me out, carry me out (less of the jokes about weight reduction surgery, thank you, you weaklings). And by the time we’d done it four times, I was having great fun arguing with Amanda (who had “run me over”, “followed me”, “been stalking me” etc etc). It was all videoed so that the final session on Sunday was a prizegiving and lets-all-have-a-laugh clips show.

Obviously we had to eat on Saturday night, too so it was the faculty dinner. In a posh (at least the restaurant thought it was) restaurant on the pier. Nice fish, shame they forgot to cook my order. So time to drink lots of wine. Then five of us went on to another bar. It was about 1:20 when I looked at the clock as I staggered in after an interesting taxi ride, with a driver who swore he knew where he was going. So much so that he drove past two hotels, and only managed to get to the front entrance of my hotel after a lot of yelling (and a very high speed U-turn).

The course finished Sunday, and for once I was not involved in scenario testing, but invigilating the exam (or reading yesterday’s paper – call it what you will), and doing one of the discussions. After the prizegiving for the extrication exercise, the course was over. To be honest I nearly blew the instructor thing. I’d been seen drinking water when we went out Saturday night. I’ll know next time.


Anyway, I had a couple of hours to kill before the plane in the evening so I went into town. Luckily Vijey was going through town so I got a lift in. Most of the shops in the centre were open, but I was carrying my bags and a very heavy manual and after finding a train timetable (no useful buses from the bus station, but a very handy transport information booth) I wandered over to the museum. Mainly because I knew I’d find a bag-drop for an hour or so. Strange place. Lots of exhibits set out for children (you are this big, a kangaroo is this big), and then a tiny corner where a case of Pacific island artefacts were next to some Etruscan ones, between a case of old bottles from a landfill site and someone’s private collection of Staffordshire pottery. And all next to the stuffed animals. Upstairs was a bit of an exhibition about the Aborigines and Torres Strait islanders which was interesting but a tad repetitious, then downstairs were Queensland Icons (a surfer and some XXXX), and a display on “How we Move Around.” There were two old planes and a fire engine. And a lot of empty space. I’d better not get asked to review the museum for the local rag. Don’t think I’d get paid.

After that it was back out into the grey, hot humidity and I walked along the South bank (closed for construction mostly) with its tiny patch of tropical garden and Vietnamese pagoda, then through the Uni to the Botanic gardens (= Park) and it was time to get the train. Thankfully as we got to the Airport, there was a slight breeze and it got slightly less muggy. Still tired, plus hungover, all I wanted to do was sleep on the plane. Opposite me, however, was Kev. A very loud, not especially bright, brickie who was on his way to work in Wagga via Adelaide with his group of mates, who almost invited the whole plane out drinking on Hindley St that night and, by the time we were waiting to disembark, was trying to sell his mate Andrew to the highest bidder. (At that stage we knew Andrew’s entire life history, propensity to get airsick etc.).

I was home and in bed less than an hour after the plane landed.

What I like about Aus

- The cheese
- Wine
- Greengrocers / the fruit
- It's socially acceptable to wear shorts to work
- Women can wear hats without being thought to be A) manic or B) have a personality disorder

- The language: