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We went grocery shopping today and after weeks of looking at all the election advertising, almost all of it was gone.
Apparently the industrious little candidates and their helpers had taken most of them down overnight.
The amusing thing however was that there were still a few Labour signs up and about, and I had to agree with Simone when she suggested that perhaps the reason for this was that all the labour camp were still recovering from the celebrations from last night.
In our electorate it seems that the Liberal candidate is going to beat the labour candidate on the day, however if effort counted for anything then it should be a raunaway labour landslide.
Pretty much every day now on the way to and from work there are people on the sides of the roads with “Your rights at work” shirts on waving campaign posters for Kevin Rudd, the local labour candidate, and union propoganda, I mean policies, in general.
What’s most noticeable however is that while the Labour guys are always there, I’ve never seen any of the other party’s candidates being supported in this fashion, and it makes you feel that perhaps no-one loves the other guys enough to make the effort of standing in the rain and shine waving their placards around for them. And if the labour followers are that enthusiastic then surely this guy must me amazingly inspirational and far more worth voting for than the others…
At the other end of the spectrum however has been poor John Howard, who has finally reached the point where he can’t think of anything compelling to say and so can only resort to the frankly pathetic “You should be afraid of change, so you should vote for me again (although I can’t think of a more convincing reason why you should otherwise do so at the moment…)”. Even Simone who’s a lot more Liberal party tolerant than I commented that it was pretty pathetic.
One of the phrases that I picked up shortly after moving to Australia to study medicine was “She’s so cute she’s look good in a Hessian sack” (which one of my female friends used to describe one of her younger and at that stage thinner friends).
This summer I find myself constantly reminded of that saying, not because all the girls are cute (although I suppose you see a few good looking ones around), but rather because the current fashions seem hell bent on testing the notion by producing garments that are only a small technicality away from being actual honest to god real life hessian skirts and tops. They are seriously ugly and completely unflattering to every person I’ve seen them on and yet like hamsters to a cliff edge young girls are all over the place in them because they’re “the new thing”.
Now whatever my views are on moronic consumer sheep behavior I think the main point which has been shown is that the adage is clearly false, as I don’t believe that I have seen anyone (no matter how cute they may be) who has actually managed to look anything other than foolish in those particular variants of hessian sacks.
The other day I ran into a question on the college’s practice question bank, which amused me:
A surgeon is planning to mobilise the stomach into the chest to form a conduit after an oesophagectomy for cancer. Which blood vessel will she preserve to maintain its vascularity?
It shouldn’t strike me as surprisingly progressive in this day in age where graduating med classes are 50-60% female, but the colleges have traditionally be quite, well, traditional, and so it was to my mind an amusing and positive indication of acceptance of the changing reality.
A book of the diaries and letters of Mother Theresa of Calcutta has just been published, and people seem surprised that she had what sound like pretty major crises of faith at various points in her life. It’s funny how people like to see things as absolutes. She was a famous woman of faith, so she must have had a constant internal belief that was guiding and self sustaining in spite of all the terrible things she saw each day while working with the urban poor of calcutta. All this really does is make her seem more remarkable, because in spite of her periods of doubt and uncertainty she continued on her path, and did what was right, and needed doing.
The whole thing should serve as an inspiration to others, although I also think this should serve as a little guidance for anyone of significance in the catholic church. She asked that all her letters and documents be destroyed after her death, but just as they later did for John Paul’s letters, they church ignored her wishes and forbade their destruction on the grounds that they may provide insight to assist in the process of her becoming a saint.
I think that you simply have to take a leaf from Hermes’ book on managing your affairs after death. (“Like my granny used to say back in her tar paper shack on Montego Bay “If you want a box hurled into the sun, you got to do it yourself”, (God rest her zombie bones).”).
Last week while I was doing nights we had a few mornings where everything got under control at about 5am, leaving us with a few hours to tidy up loose ends and get ready for the 7am rush (“I’ve just woken up and my
On one of those mornings I wandered out into the ambulance parking and out to the road. The Cairns Hospital looks out across the bay, and so it was rather a pretty moment, with the sun rising, the cool wind blowing gently, and the birds singing from the many trees nearby.
With all the natural beauty it took me a while to recognise the insanity also present in the scene: Dozens of people were up and taking brisk morning walks alone the shore front.
Now I was up at 6am because I was rostered and paid to be. They were up and active voluntarily.
Quite clearly they were insane. Pity there were no beds available in our mental health unit…
For years it has been apparent that if money was the driving ambition in our careers we should have avoided poorly paying careers such as law or medicine, and instead trained as electricians, plumbers, builders or air conditioner installation people.
I was however amused the other day when we had to get an electrician out to look at our broken stove top, and at the end he said that he’s have his secretary call and sort out a time to come and replace it.
I suppose that it’s not exactly unexpected if you actually think about it, but until you do it seems a little instinctively incongruous that your friendly local tradesman in his dirty jeans and ute also has an office somewhere with it’s own secretary.
When I was summering in Canberra one of the refreshment options at the hall of residence we were in was this lurid green cordial. We referred to it as “violent green”, as in, “would you like a glass of green?”, or “violent green anyone?”.
Since starting my ED term I have discovered that the hospital also stocks violent green, and I have found that every time I have a glass of it I have the most vivid olfactorily mediated flashbacks to the fun and games that was my superb summers in Canberra.
Who would have thought something so simple (and bad for you) could have such powerful effects.
One of the things they tell you about in Med school is the ability of certain medications to give you a metallic taste in your mouth.
Previously I had always though: “Metallic taste, that’s not that bad. I wonder why they make such a big things about it”.
That changed a few weeks back. With lunch I inadvertently had a glass of water that had come out of a copper pipe and it wasn’t until I’d finished most of the glass that I noticed the blue tint to the water and then started to taste the metallic taste. As the afternoon wore on I’m not sure if the taste got stronger or if I just became increasingly conscious of it, but it became highly unpleasant. Drinking water or tea didn’t decrease it. Eating didn’t decrease it. Even brushing my teeth didn’t help things. Eventually it disappeared (overnight I think), but it quite startled me just how unpleasant a situation it had been.
Another thing I suppose that I can learn to take people a bit more seriously about when they report it as a symptom…
It’s been a while since I last seriously studied, and I had forgotten the true power of procrastination.
Once more (as always) the housework is getting done, the blog is being maintained, my computer files are getting (re-)organised, and more people are being emailed to (although any number is likely to be above my previous level of close to zero, and does not necessarily represent a huge increase in that activity overall).
I haven’t quite resorted to exercise, but I’m sure as the temperature drops towards the middle of the year that too will come into play.