After a long time away I’m back to it. Both here and elsewhere. The last month has been full of studying, feeling helpless and going nowhere, exam writing, time off, trying to rest and trying to make sense of it all. The exam was a gong show, with almost everyone doing poorly. I did hear a rumour of someone getting a grade in the 80s but it has yet to be confirmed. My colleagues around me were surprised when the person mentioned that “they knew someone” who scored like that. That gives you an idea of how the class did.
While studying I didn’t feel like writing much, as each day seemed the same for so long. Then I kinda dropped off the habit and here we are! I am back into class now, even tho the rest of the students at UQ are now on break. It’s great, cause like in January, we have the campus nearly to ourselves. We are doing the nervous system these weeks, which are pretty packed sessions. I’m glad we didn’t have a long break like last time, as it was very hard to get back into it after being away.
This is my 500th day in Medicine. It feels like every other day, except that it’s noon and I haven’t left the house. I got out of bed, put on a hoodie, made a coffee, and sat down to my desk.
My life is exciting. That’s why I’ve been writing so much about it lately.
Ever notice that, in any group of students, of those who have their laptops out in class, at least 90 percent of them are Macs? Even tho they make up 10 percent of the computer market, they are absolutely dominating it when it comes to showing off.
Compared to most people, I have a rather complicated, if not sophisticated phone system. I won’t go into all the details now, except to say that one of the features is time based control of my calls. If you are calling me from Canada at 5 am my time, your call usually goes straight to voicemail. This is designed so people don’t have to worry about time when they call, but also to stop callers that don’t know from waking me up.
Just recently, there was a 5 day window where that system wasn’t working, and calls were put straight through (I knew about it, but needed to have it that way to make the calls work). After months of the system diligently blocking nobody, three callers decided to jump through the temporary loophole to wake me up. Two of them were related to the recent election in BC, but they don’t know me, so it’s tough to blame. One was from a person who clearly knew I was in Australia, and needed my credit card number for a medical journal subscription. So she rang me up at 3:30 am! Anyway, phone is back in order and that can’t happen any more! Helps me sleep a little better. And no, I don’t need a ride to the polling station.
So… Feel free to call anytime. If you don’t know what time it is here, don’t worry about it, you can’t call at a bad time.
My Monday morning lecture on gastric pathology is a bit of a comedic scene. There are people in here wearing jackets, with the hoods up! There is even a guy wearing wool gloves. Where did he get them from I wonder? Anyways, it is so cold it here I am almost shivering. I guess I’ll have to go outside to warm up.
There are tiny ants here. Everywhere. They can, and do get through the screen door. They walk all over my kitchen counter, my desk and my bed. I have given up trying to kill them all. I think that’s impossible. They were here last year, and then they went away. I’m assuming they will again. It’s to the point that they come and go as they please, even from under my shorts and shirt. You get to choose between fighting them and your own sanity.
I love the experience of reading a used book. There’s something about thinking that the pages have been experienced by someone else that makes it interesting to me. I look at the words and wonder what the other person thought when their eyes passed over them. Recently I have started reading “The Great Divorce” by C.S. Lewis. I was given the book by someone close to me. The book is very interesting to me, and it is basically a fantasy about what what it would be like, as a citizen of Hell, to take a trip to Heaven.
Physically the book is in great condition. I noticed that there was one page that had the corner folded over. When I received the book, I assumed that this was just a random stopping point, an easy way of marking where they were. Maybe this is still true, maybe that’s how this corner was folded. But then I wondered if there was another reason. As I read through the pages, there seemed to be nothing that would warrant flagging for its own sake. Then, at the end of the page marked, I read this:
“Ye cannot in your present state understand eternity…” “… But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on Earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. This is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say ‘Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences’: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say ‘We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,’ and the Lost, ‘We were always in Hell.’ And both will speak truly.”
This is a great part of my Joy. I am living at the very beginning of eternity.
Happy Easter everyone, I hope that the time was spent with family and friends. Sadly, in these expatriate days, I do not spend my time with family. Last year, I did, which was great, but that was a long time ago now. To add to my reminder of that time, I even went out to dinner to Ahmet’s on Thursday. It was a good friend’s girlfriend’s birthday, and lots of fun.
It has been raining all weekend, especially today, in which I have not gone far from the house. Earlier in the weekend, I took a run up to see an old friend who lives on the sunshine coast, and try a little fishing up there. It was no good for fishing, despite the number of hopeful fools on all the docks, jettys and beaches. The water was just too dirty I think. There were some pretty major floods in the last few weeks, especially some down south in NSW and on the sunshine coast. I think all the runoff just made the water too turbid to have any luck with the fishes. I might add that I still did catch a fish, the only one of the trip. 
The size is somewhat irrelevant. John, my housemate and I headed up and spent the night at a friend of his from Uni.
With Easter over now, I am staring at the last run down to the mid year exam, and all that involves. I hope it will be ok.
I copied this from http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html It’s not my own work at all.
All this talk about “stimulus packages” and “bailouts”… The G20 just decided to spend another trillion on supporting the falsehood that is the free market share system.
A billion dollars…
A hundred billion dollars…
Eight hundred billion dollars…
One TRILLION dollars…
A few photos from our trip last week. We had the week off classes, following the end of a block.
We went out to North Stradbroke Island, which is directly east of Brisbane, about a 45 minute ferry ride from the coast, which is about an hour drive from where I live.
In the photos you can see who was there, Bec A, Bec M, Carol, Tim and myself. We squeezed all our stuff into Carol’s car and walked on to the ferry so it was cheaper! Then on the other side we shuttled back and forth to the campsite.
It was so good to get away, and get out there. The weather was perfect and the place more so. I bought some fishing gear, hoping to toss it in the water. I had so much fun doing it, and am really glad I did. We had some minor success as you can see in the photos. We ended up eating a little of our haul that night.
Also on the trip, we went to two lakes on the island, creatively named Brown Lake, and Blue Lake. They both lived up to their names. The water was warm enough to get in and stay in, and we ended up swimming all the way across Brown Lake and back, which was probably 1 km across. Blue Lake was at the end of a 1 hour bush walk. When we arrived we were able to surprise a middle aged couple of skinny dippers.
Tim had to go back earlier than the rest of us, so we stayed another day after dropping him off at the ferry. We ended up just relaxing, swimming and had a fire on the beach at night. Coming home was tough, after a few days away from all the realities of life, it was quite a downer to get home. I think that just speaks to how great it was to have gone.
You can see the photos in larger format by clicking the link.
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