Week 29 - ACOing & Commenting

Thursday #30 – for the 4^th morning in a row, I woke up this Thursday at 4.30.  Since arriving in Melbourne on Sunday night, I seem incapable of sleeping through the night – it doesn’t help that 4am coincides nicely with Dominican afternoon and DTM getting drunk at the cricket and texting me.  After going back to sleep for another couple of hours, I got up and had a shower whilst The Italian made me eggs for breakfast.  The apartment may be tiny and our room so small we fall over trying to stand still between the bed and the wall; but I could certainly get used to having someone cook me breakfast and dinner.

After breakfast we hopped on a tram like the good Melbourners we are and headed off to ACO to get our clinic on.  Despite being the 4^th day of our 2 week placement, this Thursday was our first day seeing patients due to us somehow fluking a cruisy timetable and a public holiday.  We were a little scared after hearing horror stories about the supervisors and the marking down here, but after my first two patients I was feeling invincible, sitting on an average of 7.75/10 when we need an average of 7 to pass.  We headed up to the staffroom and enjoyed some pesto chicken rolls (pesto was making its 3^rd of many appearances in our week since The Italian had cooked up pesto gnocchi on Monday and pesto chicken on Wednesday) with fried rice on the side.  No one admitted it but we’re pretty sure everyone up there had some serious food envy going on.

After lunch it was back to seeing patients and discovering that I am a far better optometrist in the morning than I am in the afternoon.  Turns out I’m not so invincible after all as I watched that average drop.  With one patient cancelling on me I headed up to the library to make use of the free wifi and go on a facebook commenting spree since The Vice President had put up photos of her recent trip to Cuba.  When The Italian finished up we headed home and she cooked us up fettuccini with pink sauce.  I was hoping for a more Italian name and am still not sure what she meant when she complained it “didn’t really taste pink” but I do know that she made her sauce from scratch and got a whole lot of pasta stuck to the bottom of the saucepan in the process.

After dinner we watched some TV, enjoyed our nightly tea and Tim Tam and headed to bed ready to do it all over again on Friday.  Not the most fun Thursday I’ve had but a different one, particularly temperature wise, as I found myself in freezing Melbourne for uni – a shock to the system after beaching it up in Barbados.

Week 28 - Story-telling & Driving

Thursday #29 – this day kicked off with an early start on a mattress on the floor of The BH&G Fan’s bedroom.  She was heading off to the gym before work and I was heading off to Guide Dogs Australia for a uni assessment.  After showering and dressing and downing a quick brekkie, I managed to score a lift to Guide Dogs with The Dean on his way to work.

Once I was there, I was met by The Shortie and The Greatest Shavee – not my usual uni partners since The Italian and I had been split up for this placement, but still exciting as we’d had clinics together last year and hadn’t realised how much we’d missed each other’s hilarity this year.  Ok well they hadn’t realised how much they’d missed my hilarity.  I dazzled them with my incompetence and somehow came out of the day with them thinking I liked looking at pictures of chickens on the internet, just for shits and gigs.

After a text from The Hot One alerting me to a facebook tagging, I had to catch them up on my life story, the recent holiday and DTM.  I then listened as The Shortie tried to compare her own life to mine.  Sure there was a man and he was o/s but that was pretty much where the similarities ended.  Her story wasn’t even funny and certainly didn’t involve duck backpacks as mine had.  The Greatest Shavee almost wet herself when I mentioned my soccer skills and then we reminisced about clinic last year where I had somehow been described as the elite athlete of the group.  I can’t be sure if “elite” was used at the time but I’m pretty sure it was implied.  Her memories of that clinic – “oh yeah that was so funny, you were apparently an athlete”…come to think of it I haven’t missed clinic with her all that much.

After finishing up there (about half an hour late due to my own inability to shut up when discussing myself) it was time to drive home before heading off on a long drive up north.  When I got home, M-Dizzle and I chatted as we ate the pretty m&ms I had bought in New York and I wondered why I had bothered spending so much money on overpriced chocolate just because they were nice colours, when she and I were the only people who would ever see them.

Then it was time to drive up to The Farge’s place on The Central Coast.  With no idea where I was going, I relied on my phone’s GPS to get me there.  Big mistake.  My phone decided to turn itself off 3 times before I got to my final destination, and eventually died when I was about 5 minutes away from his house.  The last thing I heard was “at the next roundabout turn” and I hoped I would be able to wing it from there.  After some pizza and pasta I fell asleep on the lounge and tried to blame it on jetlag.

As far as Thursdays go it certainly wasn’t as exciting as NYC or Barbados but it was definitely a step up from some earlier ones.  It was stressful drive north but the morning’s laughs made up for it.

Week 27 – Beaching & Goodbyeing

Thursday #28 – this Thursday was the first day we could actually sleep in on our holiday as the 5 days of cricket had finally come to end (with a nail-biting win for Australia no less!)  Naturally we both woke up earlier than we would have had the cricket been on (this could in part be due to the fact we had eaten ridiculous amounts of food the night before and neither of us had been able to sleep properly).  Despite being awake, DTM and I took our time actually getting out of the hotel – meaning we had to miss our usual bagel, egg & mushroom breakfast.  Not a problem though, as we were both still struggling from the eat-a-thon the day before at the cricket and at dinner.  We had consumed more fries that Wednesday than 2 people should ever consume in 1 day.

We eventually headed down to the hotel bar, ordered an early lunch and then went for a swim in the pool.  We’d had big plans for using the pool that week, but a mechanical bull riding injury at the cricket on Day 1 had resulted in a rather feral ankle wound for DTM which stung in the chlorine.  Poor baby.  He manned up for our last day in Barbados though and humoured me with a swim in the pool.

After our swim it was off on a walk to find Chilly Moos – the much hyped (according to guide books) ice-creamery that was apparently quite close to St Lawrence Gap but had alluded us thus far.  I had spotted a sign a day earlier so we were confident we would finally get to sample their ice cream delights.  We tracked it down, picked our ice cream flavours, our mix-ins, and our toppings then watched them smash them all together on a cold stone slab.  The verdict?  In my opinion not as good as Cold Rock (though that could be due to the fact my usual order there involves Tim Tams which obviously aren’t on the Barbadian menu) but as DTM pointed out, it worked out cheaper than Cold Rock so perhaps it won based on that.  Either way, it felt only appropriate that DTM and I would spend a Thursday eating large amounts of ice cream – the only thing missing was the free movies.

After our ice cream we checked out some souvenir shops before I finally managed to convince DTM to go for a quick swim at the beach – if only so we could say we had actually swum in The Caribbean.  It’s no secret that I am not the biggest beach fan out there.  My issue lies mostly with the sunbaking aspect.  I am not made for baking and am perfectly happy if a visit to the beach involves getting in the water, getting out of the water and leaving.  Something about my red hair and freckles just means I don’t really enjoy lying in the sun – it feels very unnatural and skin-cancerish.  What I hadn’t realised was that the super tanned DTM was also not a beach fan. 

I had assumed his lack of keenness earlier in the week was due in part to his (allegedly) agonising foot injury and also because any spare time we had was spent at the cricket or drinking rum…often both.  Turns out I have found someone who is less keen on the beach than even I am!  I tried not to laugh at him as he looked genuinely afraid of the tiny waves and felt very bizarre being the beachier person in the team.  It caught me off guard as he had sent many annoying beach photos whilst he was in Phuket and I was studying in Sydney and so I had expected that he would want to get his beach on and I would have to confess that it wasn’t really my thang.  It would seem that my dislike of sunbaking and like of swimming is the complete opposite of DTM’s desire to lie on the sand and not go near the water.  And despite this we were both keen for a Caribbean holiday…

We headed back to the hotel where it was time to pack ahead of our flights to NYC & Trinidad.  DTM managed to offload a bunch of his crap into my suitcase as well as randomly hiding a few things in there.  I caught him do this a couple of times and so far have uncovered a koala keyring and a photo of him – strange man.  We then spent an hour or so chilling out on our balcony and finishing off our rum (him) and champagne (me).  As a side note, the fancy French champas had come courtesy of Legs 11 and The Farge Of Legs 11 but DTM was content with beers and rum so I'd had to drink the bottle myself.

Eventually it was time for me to say goodbye and DTM delighted in giving me a hard time for ditching him.  I tried to argue that it didn’t count that my flight was Thursday night and his Friday morning because I was still going to arrive back in Sydney a good couple of months before he was so I couldn’t really be held responsible for leaving him behind.  He seemed unbothered and just kept saying how he couldn’t believe I was leaving him again.  He was cruisin’ for a bruisin’.  I hopped in a taxi and made it to the airport with plenty of time to board my flight to Trinidad.  I got there at about 10.30pm and had a couple of hours to kill before flying to New York just after midnight.  

It was a very relaxing Thursday but also a tough one as 3^rd time around the goodbyes are not getting any easier.  It seems inevitable that next week’s Thursday back in Sydney will be a step down from the past two.

Week 26 - Newing & Yorking

Thursday #27 – I woke up this Thursday to a text from The Bad Influence remarking on the fact my move to the East meant I was no longer hanging around Manly when he was out getting his drink on.  I set the record straight and informed him that the reason I wasn’t hanging around Mantown that Thursday evening was because it was only Thursday morning in New York and I was just waking up.

After what felt like an eternity on the plane on Wednesday – 19 hours of flying to arrive 7 hours after I left, I was surprisingly not too tired and not at all jetlagged come Thursday morn.  The Weather Girl and I had decided on an itinerary and this Thursday was to be my downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn day.  What I didn’t anticipate was that the damn Statue Of Liberty would take up most of my day.  For a kinda ugly once-was-copper-now-is-green giant lady, she sure can pull a crowd! I got the subway downtown, lined up for ages to buy a ticket, spent another 90 minutes lining up to board the ferry, did a quick loop of Liberty Island, took a few million photos of the statue and then lined up some more to head back to Manhattan.

Once I got off the boat I figured I needed to get my New York on and indulged in a giant pretzel some dude on the street was selling.  Not content that that was healthy enough, I opted for the hot cheese filled pretzel and ate it watching a bunch of black guys do flips over the top of a few rather scared looking audience members in the park.  After taking in the unexpected performance in Battery Park, I headed off to find Wall St and Ground Zero.

I stumbled across some free wifi at Bowling Green so a quick skype chat was made to DTM (who was using the free wifi at Bob Marley’s house) to organise how, when and where we’d be meeting up in Jamaica on Friday morning.  I then carried on my way; found Wall St, took some pics of the street sign, checked out the New York Stock Exchange, wandered around to where the World Trade Centre used to be, got snap happy with the pretty tulips in City Hall Park (those New Yorkers sure do know how to do a park) before heading off to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.

I’d already decided there was not going to be time to see anything in Brooklyn but figured I could still squeeze in a sunset walk across the bridge before getting the subway back to take in an (off-) Broadway show.  Bridge done it was time to go see Rent.  The Weather Girl had seen this when it was in Sydney a million years ago and as a result I had heard the soundtrack over and over again and decided a long time ago that I was going to have to see the show for myself.  When it started I realised just how much I’d heard that soundtrack as not only did I know key songs like Seasons Of Love but I also knew from the first beep on the answering machine that the next line would be “That was a very loud beep, I don’t even know if this is working Mark! Mark are you there? Are you screening your calls? It’s Mom.”

When the show finished at 10.40 it was time to haul arse back to the Upper West Side, collect my luggage from my hostel and get a cab to JFK so I could make my 2am flight to Jamaica.  A rather massive Thursday but one which I somehow (thankfully) managed to stay awake for.  Thursdays without free movies are looking up!

Week 25 - Doctoring & Snoozing

Thursday #26 – I perhaps jinxed myself last week by saying it couldn’t be bad two weeks in a row, as this Thursday I woke up and decided uni wasn’t an option.  Having been to a doctor on Monday night and getting a prescription for my bronchitis, I spent this Thursday trekking out to another doctor (this time my own and not some dodgy medical centre dude who never even introduced himself) so that I could get a doctor’s certificate to justify my day off uni.

After a bit of excitement in the morning when I spotted some footage of myself 6 years ago being replayed on TV; I headed back north to sit in the doctor’s waiting room for 40 minutes.  Finally I got my certificate, a new prescription and some funky nasal sprays which I am still not sold on.  I’m assured that spraying saline up my nose will help clear my sinuses but can’t help feeling like it’s a bit unnatural to recreate the gross sensation you get at the beach when salt water goes up your nose.  Needless to say it has been a less than enjoyable process squirting the salty water up there multiple times a day.

After seeing the doc, I went over to The BH&G Fan’s house to have a nap before driving back home.  The Dean was also sick with bronchitis and similarly keen for a nap and The BH&G Fan had a uni lecture to listen to herself, so it was agreed all round that quiet would be appreciated.  It seemed a little ironic then that that would be the exact time The Lawn Mower would rock up to do his thing for a couple of hours.  After a bit of a snooze I hung around waiting for The Marge to get home so I could say a quick hi before heading back to The ‘Bra.

It seems risky to make this claim again but I know for certain that next Thursday will be a step up from this particularly boring one.  Watch this space…