It was just another Monday morning and I was striding hurriedly down the Degraves-Flinders underpass, rushing to catch my train out to Heidelberg. I did however (albeit barely) realise that there were three buskers compared to the usual one. That thought had just flitted across my muddled, slightly grumpy morning-brain when suddenly a couple of guitars started playing and two of the three buskers began a beautiful, well-harmonised version of The Everly Brothers' classic "All I Have To Do is Dream". Before I could stop myself, I felt a big cheesy grin come upon my face. I looked up (from my highly exciting shoes) and found that the tall grumpy looking (and slow-moving guy) in front of me was looking to the source of the music with the same unabashed yet slightly-embaressed grin that was plastered on my mug.

I wanted to stop and pop a golden coin in their battered opened cases, but with my train fast approaching and the sea of harried commuters between me and them, I merely silently thanked them and carried on.

"What exactly was I thanking them for", I pondered in the subsequent train ride? Was it the beautiful rendition of a classic in an unexpected setting? Or was it the innocent memory that it conjured up, of my then-little cousin Eddie sitting by the radio and painstakingly writing all the lyrics of this particular song out so that my mum could teach him how to sing it (imagine if he had picked a Queen song!). Or maybe it was just that on a Monday morning, someone would gently remind me to Dream. To in the rush, take a couple of minutes to renew my state-of-mind with either a daydream of the future, or just to let my mind punt down the canals of Venice, and stop at a bougainvilla wreathed hotel. The lazy appreciation of it's uniqueness and sepia-toned thoughts of romance, still clear despite time, through my mind's eye.

Well, it's certainly changed my iPod playlist this morning. From indie-rock to oldies. Currently, Johnny Nash's "I can see clearly now the rain has gone". How cornily apt.

A Sobering Thought

Was just having a chat with a friend of mine who has been an intern for a month regarding choice of careers in medicine.

Her philosophy (based on her experience on the ward so far) was,
"In the end, the choices you make are going to decide who's life you're going to have on your hands. Do you want that life to be a 90 year old terminally-ill man's, or that of a 8 year old kid?"

Well, the only 2 things in med so far that have excited me are Obstetrics & Gynaecology and Paediatrics. I'm not prepared to give up my life for the O&G lifestyle, which pretty much leaves Paeds.

It's definitely making me think twice about Paeds.

Hopefully when I start working, some other branch of medicine will enthrall me.

Weekend in the country

It all began on our last Friday in Yea (small town about 2 hours from Melbourne) where I was sleepily seated in one of the three town's GP's practices watching the GP passing judgement on yet another skin lesion and awaiting my morning hit of coffee which I had sent Dave (my rural health partner) out to get. An hour into the consultation, with my eyelids getting heavier and heavier, Dave pokes his head into the room in between patients and says, "Err Sue, I think we've just been evicted from the caravan park". Now, a proclamation like that usually conjures up images of shiftless bogans in wife-beaters, wives and 58 squaling children after a night of drunken revelry. But let me explain.

We were being put up in a little cabin in the town's caravan park next to the river which is famous for it's snakes. Thank goodness no snakes ever crossed my path on the morning treks to hospital. But anyways, it turned out that it was by mere virtue of complicated miscommunication between the caravan park owners, the rural clin school and ourselves, we were being booted out that day due to bookings not having been made. We were expecting to stay for the weekend, but we had to get our stuff out of the caravan in an hour.

With the prospect of nowhere to stay, we gave one of our rural clin school classmates (who's name also happens to be Dave, henceforth to be refered to as Big Dave) a call and he kindly invited us to his parent's farm in Alexandra (next town across) to spend the night whilst the rural clin school in Shep sorted accomodation out for us in Shep.

Well, forward 2 days and it looks like the eviction was the best thing that happened to us in our rural rotation because Big Dave's house was far superior to our caravan, his parents were lovely and Big Dave gave us the full country tour including a BBQ on their front lawn which overlooked some beautiful mountains, an afternoon out on his dad's boat complete with round biscuit (like an inner tube) and water-skiing. He also took us for a spot of rock-climbing up Sugarloaf peak. There were bits on that trek when we were climbing up rocks with nothing between us and the bottom of the mountain but thin air. No harnesses, ropes. We had to traverse a little cave-tunnel thing which could have potentially harboured a family of snakes escaping the heat. Yes, I hate snakes. All in all a pretty challenging climb up.

But here are the photos.






Wouldn't you be inspired to cook marvellous things with a view like that?

Well today, muscles that I didn't know I had are aching and anything more complicated than typing invokes much pain. Although, call me a sadist, but it's good pain!