Lost Ones

Heart
A barren landscape
Of windswept ice
Frozen over, hardened
Waiting for the sunlight
Of a smile

Soul
A black hole
An empty unknown
A vortex of blackness
Waiting for the stillness
Of peace

Mind
A swirl of leaves
An autumn landscape
Of colourful confusion
Waiting for the wisdom
Of heart and soul

Chicago

I know I'm in London but last night Sally and I went to some theatre on the strand and watched chicago:) It was quite funny and I didn't mind some of the songs that were left out of the movie. They did a much better job of "Mr Cellophane" then the movie did and their orchestra people were very cool. They had a smallish one but they all played more then one instrument and would swap between them. Plus they did fun little things and interacted.

I'm actually procrastinating. I know it's hard to believe. I came to the library to quickly check my email before I went and saw a patient.... I really had better go see them... Perhaps I will write more later.

Peace

Its light, graceful tendrils coil round me
Pulling my limbs to a stop
Here I can let go
Away from all I know
Demands of people
Tugging in all directions
Forgotten
A brief respite
I would not like
Too long to dwell in
But for now
Revel in

Solid Gold

Sometimes the trouble is
We don't want to be free
For it seems to us
In our feeble state
Our chains are beautiful
But like Houdini
We must sink or swim
Leaving heavy links
Behind us

Calamity Jane..... or Rebecca

It is funny that here in London I have somehow become completely brilliant at calamity. Now I actually haven't had an awful day today, it's been a good day really. However there were still things that went wrong. Hard to imagine that now as I sit here drinking my egyptian mint tea and eating my natural orange lindt chocolate (imagine jaffas but with really yummy chocolate in them). First off was as I was travelling to uni when I had the sudden realisation I'd left my wallet by the phone - not a big disaster, I had a tube ticket (which is how I'd manage to get so far without my wallet) and I could survive without lunch. Surviving without lunch would have been easier perhaps if I'd taken the time to eat breakfast this morning... However then I went to an outpatients clinic where the consultant and the other doctor were really very friendly and saw some interesting patients. Had a chat about drugs and the genetics of epilepsy blah blah blah, but I enjoyed it. Mentioned to the other doctor there (I think the consultant persons underling) that I'd forgotten my wallet, she insisted on lending me money so I bought lunch. Called my registrar on the ward, she was busy, went to the library etc came home.

Then I'm sitting at home and I notice something odd about my watch. It has a new trick. The second hand stays completely still for four seconds, then it skips forward four seconds. So it's keeping time, but doing it in a rather sick fashion...... I'm only a little worried as I've been playing with the date a lot. I can't make it change at the right time, so i'm never sure if it's actually displaying the right date - which is quite a pain. I hope it's not dying on me (hopefully just a battery). I blame Sally. I think it caught a virus off her watch, which also has had little fits of dying lately (although possibly it has retired now).

Blaming Sally is fun (she's not here, so I can get away with it).

I think that's all really, I guess there wasn't really many calamities today.... but who knows what tomorrow will bring?

A full day of messing things up

Well apart from being humiliated in front of a room of 30-40 medical students/doctors/electives/who knows today, I have managed to also screw a few other things up as well. Knowing that things weren't exactly going my way today I decided to cook Sally and myself dinner (for her side of the story go to appletopping). So I decide in the lack of recipes and matt I'll have to cook something that never fails - honey and mustard chicken. Seriously, it doesn't matter if you can't quite remember amounts, you just stick in mustard, honey and curry powder and it just tastes delicious. Only it turns out that nothing is unbreakable. It also turns out that if you go into the supermarket, look at an unfamiliar range of mustards and think to yourself "how different can mustard be" you're wrong. English mustard isn't mustard. I opened it up stuck it in the pan and the overwhelming smell of wasabi came to me. This is because english mustard is horseradish - which isn't really what I was going for!!!!!!!!!! Honestly, who puts wasabi (which is effectively what it was - just yellow not green) in a jar and calls it mustard!!! BLOODY ENGLISH.

So I messed up dinner, we managed to eat it but Sally will never understand the joy of honey and mustard chicken. Then I quite accidently decapitated our sheep. That's all I'm saying on the matter and I think it should be Sally's job to vacuum him up.

It's not been a brilliant day for me...

London Underground Train

Stand closer, move up
Our personal space lessens
The press of bodies
The steam of rain
London underground train

Eyes down, avoid gaze
Balance book, bag, umbrella
Read, but don't miss stop
Russell Square again
London underground train

PS

For another soon to be "studying in London" blog - click here

Catch 22

Oh to be invisible. Don't you hate it when you go to a lecture and it's actually one you can learn from - that is it's clinically useful, but you realise you can never go back? You may wonder why I can't go back. It's simple really, they ask the audience questions. I don't like questions. It paralyses my ability to learn, I sit there thinking "make me invisible". It hasn't happened. I shall have to consider the going back thing, I mean it was quite useful. Oh well, I have to read up on some stuff and then go see a patient to present on the ward round tomorrow. *sigh* I guess doing work is kind of the point, very difficult to remember though!

Thwarted

I am being thwarted today. It is a day full of it. The thing bothering me the most right now is their keyboards aren't exactly the same, so everytime I try to do a capital letter, I type a backslash! The @ key is to the right of my pinky as is the # key. But lets start at the beginning (although it is only 9.30am here so truth be told, I guess I can't call it a day full of being thwarted.

I woke up this morning and went to the bathroom and washed my hands, washing my hands worked for three seconds, then there was no water. I tried all the taps in the house, no water. I rang the Porter - the whole area doesn't have water, happened sometime last night (hopefully it happened after my clothes were washed but I can't be sure, so I'm acting in good faith that they're clean). This means: I can't have a shower, or a cup of tea, or a glass of water, or clean my teeth or wash my face. All I have to eat is toast, and you can't eat toast without fluids, so I get dressed, put my shoes on and call my parents, say hello, and decide to go to the pub, I figure I'll just have enough time for it. I start for the door, and I hear this rushing noise. I go back and turn the tap on - there's water! But now I literally don't have time to have a shower (I feel so crap for not having a shower), so I wash my face grab a cup of tea and two pieces of toast then rush of to uni. DAMN IT EVERYTIME I TRY TO PRESS RETURN I TYPE #!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, rushing to uni has turned out to be the big waste of time. I got here paged the guy who said "I don't have time now, come back tomorrow morning" and he doesn't answer. So I page the registrar. He's on a ward round, he says page this other registrar. I don't have their pager number so I ring switchboard and get it and then page them. Then the SHO or whatever they're called from the day before finally returns my page. He's on a ward round too, I should try paging him at 2. Not that there is nothing for me to do between now and then, there are lectures - BUT I COULD HAVE HAD A BLOODY SHOWER!!!!

Oh well, hopefully the day improves.

The cool thing is that they have two computers in the library exclusively for the use of elective students and clinical attachments. And it's in the old books room, so they like to keep the temperature and humidity all stable and you shut the door and you're all on your own surrounded by cool old books. It is nice in here.

London - day 3 and 4

Well these titles really couldn't get any more boring but I'm tired, really tired. Want to hear something gross? The pollution in the underground is so bad that when you come home after a particularly bad day, your snot is black! I guess I should be grateful that my body is obviously working towards filtering it out. Yesterday I can barely remember what Tink and I did. We went to a really pretty park that had lots of fountains and rose gardens and stuff like that. We tried to go to harrods but it was shut. We did something else as well but I can't remember what.

Today I started my elective..... Got my introductory tour, went to a lecture. Went and paged my res (or whatever they call them here in England), but the team was on take and so he didn't have time to see me, said I should come back tomorrow. Had lunch and hung around to go to another lecture. Got lost trying to get there as it wasn't in the tour (or in the institute of neurology complex), went and met Tink and Fiona and went to Harrods. Now if ever there was money to be spent, that could be the place. Sally don't worry I will happily do any of this stuff again, but my confession is that we did get crispy cream donuts. We just couldn't help it. There is so much stuff there Matt would love. A whole thing of copper saucepans and whisking bowls. The food section has fresh quails, wood pidgeon, and other birds. Lots of yummy things. And the chocolates.... We bought pasta and pesto to have for dinner and all this anti pasto stuff (parma ham, salami, olives, sundried tomatoes, pickled onions etc etc) however we were too full after the anti pasto to have the pasta (especially due to crispy cream donuts.

Why am i so tired? I'm going to bed I'm sorry.

London - day 2

Okay, well yesterday was probably a more interesting day to talk about, but I stuffed that up by writing about it when I had no time to be excited and really expand on it, so I think I'll just forget it. Today we went to two street markets. Stuffed if I can remember their names though. Still it was fun, I ate carribean food or something and there were lots of stores that I'm seriously considering buying presents for people from. The difficulty today was, I couldn't help doing little conversions in my head. So I went to buy toe socks, but 5 pounds is like $12.50! So I didn't. I did however buy some blue suede doc martins boots. So I always look down at my feet and start singing that song that starts "Put on my blue suede shoes and I boarded the plane, touch down in the land of the delta blues in the middle of the pouring rain". Anyhow, I'm actually sleepier then a bear in winter, so I must away.

London - Day 1

Julie and her friend Fiona (who has a broken leg) met me at the airport. We caught the tube to where I'm staying where I had a shower and then we were on our way. we went and walked along the thames and I saw London bridge and the tower of london and a few other things that I forget. We ate at a french type cafe down there. We then caught the tube and went and saw Westminster abbey and buckingham palace and st James palace (and possibly some other places that I can't remember). But best of all we went to St James Park and Hyde Park. Where I saw cute little squirrels (that fiona and julie hate because apparently they're just pests) and all these cute birds. Which meant I had to buy a bird book so i could say what they are. I unfortunately don't have much time now because they're on their way over. I fell asleep at their house when we got home at about 5.30 in the afternoon. Not surprising as I didn't sleep much on the plane. We also went to these markets and they had yummy looking figs and so we bought some and I had figs with proscuitto type ham for breakfast (grilled). This is a short version of the events because as I said i don't have much time. I can't wait for Matt to get here. There is so much to do and so many things I know he's going to be excited about!!!!

Singapore

Here I am in singapore. Watched two inflight movies. "the terminal" and
"the stepford wives" but I have to admit that I missed the beginning of
both of them. I tried to do some study and I was almost successful.
I did have the little screens in the back of the chair and the interactive
menu and tetris and everything. There were some who doubted that I would.
Since getting out of the plane I have sat down for 30 seconds - that's how
long it took me to eat the sushi. Duty free alcohol is so cheap, I think
I'll get some on the way home when I go through singapore again. I'll
leave all buying in singapore till then. This is a very mundane, boring
blog but I don't have the brainpower needed for a more high power one. I
flew over parts of australia I've never visited. The houses looked like
monopoly houses and the rivers looked like veins. The trees looked like
mould, particularly on the little islands. Mostly I flew over clouds.
Well it's onward to england. I think I'll have a nap when I get back into
the plane. Well my flight is boarding in fifteen minutes and seeing as
it's a whole 2 minutes walk I might head that way.

soon to pommyland

Well I'm off to pommyland in two days. Exams are over and it is all good (I didn't do well in them, but quite frankly I'm so glad it's over I just don't care, in 6 weeks when I get my results the relief of being finished will have ended and I'll be upset). At first it will be Tink (see above link) and then the wonderful sally shall be there:) The only sad point on the horizon is 3 weeks of separation from Matt:( But I'm sure I can convince Sally to make tea for me..... Can't I???

The other day I was in the bank with mum and dad getting some traveller's cheques for england and I got a call from matthew saying he was going to an autopsy. When I hopped off the phone, without thinking I said to mum and dad "Matt's going to an autopsy to collect a brain for the dark side". Now just to explain, Matt's doing a PhD and he works in two separate labs, so to clarify where he'll be for the day he'll say that he's going to the dark side (which is the biochem lab) or he's in his normal lab. And it's just what I automatically say. However I think it made the bank person think I was a little scary and my attempts to clarify and make myself sound normal didn't help (phrases like "I've never been to an autopsy, in fact I've never even seen a dead body that wasn't all full of formaldehyde"). Oh well.

I think the film we just developed is probably dry, so I might wander away to do contact prints.