Week 51 - Shiring & Cidering

Thursday #52 – woke up early this Thursday and set off on the bus to meet The Italian at Central.  With no time for weetbix due to the alarm going off stupidly early, I managed to sneak in a cheeky bacon and egg roll when I got to the station. 

We’d agreed to meet a little early to give ourselves plenty of time to find the practice we were attending that day.  The one time all year that I had entrusted The Italian with the task of looking up where we were going, we found ourselves in Miranda.  The part-time-hairdresser-part-time-barista flirted with The Italian as she ordered her coffee and we couldn’t help thinking she had perhaps overshared when telling him where she lived and that she would be working in the hood next year.  We set off down the street to find The Optometrist/Dermatologist/Skin Cancer Guru and were impressed to have made it there 10 minutes early.  We were less impressed to see the big “we have moved” banner and had to quickly haul arse back to Gymea.

This was all a little too much Shire and a few too many trains for my liking and it was decided that The Italian would no longer be looking up where we had to go.  When we got there we were only 5 or so minutes late and The Purple Receptionist seemed unbothered by our tardiness but confused in general by our presence…apparently The Optometrist/Dermatologist/Skin Cancer Guru had told her that students had finished coming for the year.  Surprise!  With a hectic morning, we sat in and watched probably close to 20 people having skin cancers cut out and some having them frozen off.  We tried out best not to faint and at one point, when caught looking a little pale, The Cheerleader’s Mum sent us off to have a cup of tea or coffee in the kitchen.  We interpreted this as our chance to raid the Tim Tam jar.  Special thanks to The Italian for looking woozy.

Most of the patients were unperturbed by our presence and happily stripped down to their underwear in front of us.  There was some confusion when we explained we were optometry students and not in fact training to be dermatologists, but this was fairly reasonable given that we ourselves were confused by what we were doing there.  Watching people get their face chopped up and seeing bits of skin floating in specimen jars hardly seems relevant to prescribing glasses.

After a massive Portuguese chicken burger lunch, we enjoyed a relatively quiet afternoon and managed to end the day with some free sunscreen samples.  Score!  We were given the option to stay on until 6 but after explaining where we lived, The Optometrist/Dermatologist/Skin Cancer Guru decided it would be wise for us to avoid the train at night.  We felt safer already.  I headed off to DTM’s and enjoyed a couple of ciders before we headed off to Chatswood to hit up the RSL for some dinner and drinks.

Dinner ended up coming in the form of KFC as DTM was keen to try the new crispy rods…much like all the other KFC chicken products but with a large stick through the centre – genius.  We got decidedly tipsy at the RSL before heading back home to have another drink and watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  It was a Thursday a little out of my comfort zone (given it was largely spent with 80 year olds down to their undies) but nonetheless a good one since DTM had arrived home the previous day.