worldupsidedown

I mostly bothered people to have their photo taken, gave injections and drew faces on balloons in the name of keeping children occupied today. It wasn't hugely productive, but then when was the last time the last day of a placement was actually spent working? Outblocks always end a day early, it's the law.

I did see Chris pierce someone's bellybutton though...it's apparently another of his random sidelines, on the basis that lots of people get infected when they get it done, and someone once asked him to do it for them...so he did. Now loads of people come in and ask him for it. I swear there's nothing that man wouldn't try once, including veterinary medicine (alledgedly at least....I'm thinking more than a pinch of salt is needed with most of his stories...hehe).

And now my tummy hurts. I think Fran is poisoning me in some desperate attempt to keep me here. Either way I'm going up to Sydney first thing tomorrow morning for 6 days of fuuuuuuuuun! Which means that I probably won't be posting on here again until I get back to the UK on September 6 to update things for my stay in Sydney (sounds like a good thing to do while fighting jetlag to me).

Hope everyone is ok and having fun and stuff and that those who got them liked their postcards and I shall see you back on the side of the earth where north is cold and water swirls the right way in the plughole :)

Way not to give patients any faith in you at all no. 236: stabbing yourself in the finger with a sterile needle before you get anywhere near them. Oh dear. I still say the cap was on it tighter than normal! And I gave the injection properly (with a clean needle, hehe) so ha!

How embarrassing.

After work we went to the quarry for photos. By which Fran meant "to the pretty park next to the quarry", but then you should never really listen to what she says because she's probably talking about something totally different anyway. Everyone else was in normal everyday clothes, Siobhan turned up in this pale lemon yellow dress. Frankly I was expecting disaster, being next to a river, but it didn't happen. We got some really good photos actually, but I nearly punched Liam in the face. He won't stop pulling my hair and punching me in the arm and nipping me and trying to take photos of me and burping the alphabet in my general direction...I can only assume this is what today's 12 year olds do in the name of romance. He's a nice enough kid I guess. The rest are all lovely - Diarmuid especially, he's just awesome.

Other exciting thing of the day was the lunar eclipse. The moon went red. And I spent the whole day telling the Aussies how that was soooooooo 5 months ago, and Britain was sooooo over lunar eclipses. They may be 9 hours ahead, but cosmologically they are well behind. (And I can already hear Ali singing the title of this blog over and over to himself and anyone who'll listen ;) )

I did a smear today, seems they're saving all the best jobs for my last week here. At least the weather is good - seriously, even the Aussies are saying it's nice now. It has to have been in the upper 20s earlier on. Niiiiice. And sunny. I could get used to this, but rumour is I'm leaving for Sydney on Thursday morning. Ah well, hopefully it'll be nice there too.

We went over for dinner at Melinda's. Yum. Liam told me I'd hurt his heart when I said I was leaving soon, haha. Apparently we're going out to the quarry along the airport road tomorrow night (me, Fran, Melinda & the kids) for photos. If people don't hear from me in the next few weeks then can you phone the Australian police and let them know where my body is?! I mean - a quarry, for photos?! Apparently there may well be tarantulas. Fran's all excited about it, because she's been wanting to show me proper spiders for a while now (I'd rather not, thanks), I just think I might need to have her committed over this because that sort of attituse definitely means there has to be something wrong with her! Yuck, spiders. The thought of tarantulas just wandering about the place REALLY creeps me out.

Me & Fran went to lunch in a place which was either called Central Tilba, Tilba, or Tilba Tilba depending on what sign you believed. It's a small town south of Narooma, and the whole place is National Heritage protected. Which seems to mean that everyone has to paint their little wooden house a horrendous colour. But lunch was lovely, in some quaint little cottage with this view out over the valley. Apparently they used to have sheep, and the tree used to be smaller. Amazing insight from Fran there.

We drive back home the back way, which out here means on the dirt road through the rainforest with kangaroos (which I suspect would do a bit of damage to a car, and they're certainly not shy or intelligent) hopping across the road in front of us. On the one hand it was very cool and picturesque but Fran's habit of stopping dead in the middle of the road because she's lost ON A STRAIGHT ROAD or to show me the buffalo in a field is a bit unnerving...me with my silly concern about other traffic and all.

I'm going to get a rabbit and call it Trunketabella, after a creek south of Moruya. It means "place of meeting waters" apparently. I just think it sounds like it could almost be a pretty girl's name but then some Australian got their hands on it, and twisted it. I'd call the rabbit Bella for short. Awww.

I haven't a clue why I didn't go earlier - this place is absolutely amazing. They let me HUG a WOMBAT! I really really want one! I suggested to the woman that I take a couple home with me to start a colony in the UK but she wasn't having any of it. No fun at all. Birdland's an animal sanctuary in Batemans Bay, which does have a lot of birds in it. I made friends with a peacock who kept following me about and displaying his feathers. I refused to give him my number. And there are millions of these birds that look like a turkey gone wrong (they might have been some sort of guinea fowl, I don't remember) that follow you about trying to steal the food out of your pocket - they're so persistent they even kept following after I threatened to have them roasted. One of the best bits is an enclosure where you can go in amongst this....uhhhhh....herd? of kangaroos. There must be 30 of them, and they surround you so you can't get out without giving them all your food haha. Soooo cute. There were quite a few with joeys in their pouches....soooo cute. Then at the very end there was a display of the snakes (diamond pythons) and I got to queue up with all the children to hold one, which promptly tried to disappear down the back of my trousers, and then THE WOMBAT. They really were made to be hugged. Though they have an amazing way of killing dingoes - when chased they dig down into the ground (their backside is essentially made of lots of bone) so the dingo can't get at them, then they crouch down so the dingo runs in on top, then they CRUSH it to death against the roof of the tunnel! Now that's creative. Seriously, they're stupidly cute though. I want oooooone!

Dinner at Tim's was nice, though once more people tried to feed me avocado. People over here are obsessed with the horrible slimy things. Dinner was lovely though. His daughter, Ellie, is sooo funny - she's the one they adopted from Thailand when she was really little, but she spent 20 minutes pretending she really did know where England and Scotland are, until she finally gave in and admitted she didn't. She doesn't stop giggling either, and just randomly sings theme tunes and songs from adverts. Tom and Jan (Tim's wife) are lovely too.

A bit of a quiet day. Pretty much all I learned is the shoddy state of GU medicine around about these parts, and some interesting viewpoints on STIs. Tim invited me to dinner tomorrow night, which is nice. His son, Tom, is coming home from boarding school (reeeeaaaally common out here, which is weird) for the weekend, and his daughter and wife'll be about too so that should be nice. I like Tim, he's hilarious.

I passed out for the first time this placement. I was stood in the room mid-consultation with two old people and their son, a new patient consultation and it was going oooon and oooooon and it was hot and stuffy in there and I was a bit dehydrated....then I started feeling a bit weird and had to sit on the floor. Oops. Everyone apparently thought I was just tired of standing up! Haha. As soon as the door was opened I ran out and Patty looked after me, awwww. She even set a timer for when I was allowed to stand up....the lengths I'll go to for a liedown in the middle of the day...

I got my assessment form filled in today - apparently I'm "delightful" and "intelligent". Not hugely surprised about the rather patronising "delightful" with the slightly backwards attitudes among some people around here, but I'm sure it was intended as a compliment. Ah well, at least I passed.

Tim said he'll probably have me over for dinner on Saturday. His kids are coming home for the weekend, and they're watching the football and having a barbeque so it sounds like (after hugging wombats in the morning) it might be my Aussie-est weekend yet.

I went to try on that dress I mentioned ages back. It is lovely, a gorgeous sea-green sort of colour. It's long at the back and it's sort of gathered up short off centre at the front, to just above knee level with a gorgeous sparkly silver brooch. And really, it's a lovely dress...but I think it's meant to come to knee level or slightly below and I'm just that liiiiiittle bit too tall. So bye-bye dress. I guess I'll have a look about in Sydney, and then there's always the Monsoon sale at Christmas! ;)

I was in uni this MORNING. Impressed? I was.

Seriously, that's the most exciting thing I did today. Pointed out to some woman that her kid was fine. I also sneaked my assessment  form into Chris' pigeonhole so he can find it in the morning and with any luck I will be somewhere else so I don't get abuse for giving him work to do! Haha.

I am feeling a lot better now. Still a bit tired, but ah well.

I woke up with my alarm, felt rubbish, so slept again until 2pm. I think I was comatose.

So basically I've done nothing but sleep and watch nonsense on TV all day. I do feel better than I did though so that's a good thing. I have a bit of a headache, but I'm going in tomorrow (you know, last week, feel I should make the effort!).

I have a cold. This sucks. It's not too bad, but I really thought I'd got away with nothing what with all the patients coming in with sniffles, but noooooo.

Ah well.

I didn't really get up to much - got up, checked out, met up with Sally & Katie and pointed them in the direction of the shops in St Kilda, then had to head back to the hostel for my bus to the airport. The bus never came, and I ended up paying $54 for a taxi. Boo. Which then proceeded to drop me at Terminal 1, while I needed Terminal 3. Loong walk to where I needed to be.

I was expecting to get a bad headache on the plane what with my sinuses being all bunged up but it wasn't too bad, and a little boy offered me some of his sandwich to make me feel better (I didn't accept, but he was ridiculously cute).

I spent the rest of the night watching TV. Nice.