Sinagapore Slings and Tropical Storms

Hello from Singapore!

We're sitting at the airport, waiting for our flight. We arrived 3 hours early to get past any delays, but fortunately, Singapore is much more organised than the UK and so we have had 2 hours and 45 minutes to waste in the airport. This must be the coolest airport in the world. It is really chilled out and has a pool, spa, and multiple shopping opportunities.

We've had a really good time in Singapore. The weather has been consistent, with intense heat throughout the day, which climaxes with a thunderstorm each evening. We forgot our umbrella for the first few evenings, and of course, when we remembered it, it was sunny.

Despite the obligatory virus which infects most of the aeroplane passengers via the recycled air, we managed to see quite a lot of Singapore. The most striking thing about it was how clean it was. Britain could learn a thing or two.

Auntie Alison, you'll be glad to know we tried a Singapore Sling (although not in Raffles, as we ran out of time). Ian, with his magnetism for girly drinks with pink cocktail umbrellas and sparklers, had this one of course.

We also went to Singapore Zoo, which is kind of like an open plan tropical rainforest. It gives the illusion of animals without fences (although if you look closely, you can see the odd well-camofluaged electric one). They had this bit which was dedicated to tropical crops, and they had the cutest little baby pineapples, which grow on stalks. I wonder how the manage when they get any bigger, the stalks looked so fragile. I guess they just topple over and the pineapples grow on the ground.

Singapore Zoo are onto a good thing, as they shut up at 6pm, and have a Night Safari at 7.30pm, leaving a good hour and a half for tourists to eat/drink. We did this, and saw these Indonesian dancers with a clear death-wish performing various scary acts involving burning torches. The night safari was excellent - you board a tram and go through a tropical rainforest and see all the nocturnal animals who are usually asleep in screened-off cages during the day. They had gentle lighting (otherwise it would have been a bit of a boring trip in the pitch-black rainforest) to let you see the animals. My favourite was this cute deer-type creature called a Mouflon - they were gorgeous! Ian liked the flying squirrels, and the tigers. They had white tigers, which were great to see - they had pink noses and blue eyes. I don't usually buy into zoos, but ones like this, where they have loads of space and an active interest in conservation can only be good. Interestingly, there were a couple of rather bemused-looking Polar Bears. Wonder what they made of the heat? Random fact : Singapore Zoo has the first polar bear to be bred in the tropics!

We're off to Sydney for a few days before hitting Canberra to find some place to live. There's not much time to write here, as the internet time is divvied up into blocks of 15 minutes and so I lose everything in the next minute if I don't post. I don't have time to check the spelling (this keyboard is rubbish, and keeps sticking). Singapore has been a bit low on internet cafes, but Australia, home of backpackers, is bound to have plenty. I'll write more about our time in Singapore when I'm not bound by time constraints. See you in Oz!

About to go!

It's the morning of our departure and Dundee is not living up to its reputation as Scotland's sunniest city. In fact, it's chucking it down with rain. Which made cleaning out the car even more pleasant a task than it would normally have been.

We had the grandparents and Auntie Alison, and even a shock visit from my brother Kenneth, last night. We are about to go to Grandpa's again though, as there are still remove essential items in there, e.g. a coat, Haematology book in language I can understand.

Mum and Dad are coming to Edinburgh airport with us to say goodbye. We're meeting up with my sister Kirsty for lunch which should be nice.

The Australian Foreign Office have caused our itinerary to change somewhat, after issuing a statement that there was a high threat of terrorist attacks on Bali, so after multiple phonecalls, we've managed to bypass that, and will be in Singapore for 4 nights and then Sydney for 3. Everyone who has been to Singapore says it's great and there seems to be loads to do there. Sydney should be cool as well, although I've been reading some rather disturbing reports about vicious and innately defensive Sydney funnel-web spiders. Apparently, they are really aggressive, and build their nests at head height, and jump out and you and bite your face. I wondered if this was just Dave having a laugh, but there are various pictures on the web (haha) of black and chunky spiders rearing up to expose some pretty nasty looking fangs. Accordingly, we are staying in the centre of Sydney, as they're supposed to live in suburbia. Although I don't let Ian kill anything in the UK, he's been granted permission to do so with any spiders he might see.

We have managed to get the suitcases down to 22kg each, which is only 2kg over. Actually, Ian has to be the one to take credit for this. How will I survive without my multi-coloured wardrobe? I have taken the sad decision to leave my pink stethoscope behind, and opted for the sensible black Cardiology stethoscope.

The Australian periods of employment are different to ours, and so we will arrive when they have 2 weeks left. I will be starting off in a big Geriatric Department for 2 weeks, doing General Duties, i.e. they don't have a vacant post for the first 2 weeks, so that should ease me in gently. I'll be doing 3 months of Haematology after that, and they still have to work out the rest of the rota. We don't know exactly what Ian will be doing yet.

Oh well, Dad ought to be home from the hospital soon, and then we can get a lift to Grandpa's. Although, Dad does seem to exist in his own little version of time, once he's inside that hospital. We have quite a lot of Tesco vouchers which expire before we return, and so Mum and I are going to Tesco to purchase her favourite wine so she can drown her sorrows.

Dad's arrived home, and his OCD is taking over with the need to have everything precisely on schedule, so we'll leave you here and see you in Singapore (which is apparently in the grip of a Typhoon)! Wish I'd taken the Ward 8 nurses up on their offer of Temazepam.....

More Technological Advances

I'm very excited as I've managed to post links, which involved lots of linking web addresses into meaningless (well, to me anyway) letters and numbers. They are at the right hand side of this thing, and I've posted 3 links. I still have to figure out how to do those URL thingies though, where you click on a link and it goes straight to the website. Ah well, too much, too soon.

One is to the Canberra Hospital and it tells you what goes on there - pretty self-explanatory.

Another is to Naveen's Page - Naveen was one of the SHOs I worked with in Dumfries and has a page which periodically plagiarises Dr. McMahon's entries, interspersed with the odd smattering of Dumfries life.

The 3rd is MJM Wardrounds, which is written by Dr. Mike McMahon, a Consultant Physician/Rheumatologist in Dumfries Infirmary. Memorable for a special mention in the BMJ, this blog replaced most of my Thursday nights (and as these were the Junior Doctor Nights out, was invaluable for my LFTs). For anyone preparing for the MRCP (and indeed, anyone doing General Medicine), I cannot recommend this blog highly enough. It's got some great links and tutorials and Podcasts (where MJM gives tutorials which our computer masks with white noise) and I find it really good, as it makes you focus on one subject closely and you learn it really well. Approximately 5 junior doctors are given a paper to read (usually a medical article written in easy-to-read English)-and a
2 minute tutorial to prepare e.g. Operative intervention in Aortic Stenosis. These are presented during a 30 minute coffee break to MJM and Dr. Jones, one of the other Ward 10 Consultants (both milk, no sugar). As you start speaking, MJM activates a timer which emits a loud 'BEEP, BEEP, BEEP' noise at 2 minutes.

We have Alex, Ian's younger brother with us tonight, who has journeyed up with Ian's Uncle Trev to nick Ian's guitars and is currently drinking him way through our remaining alcohol. I managed to book flights from Sydney to Canberra tonight, so that's another thing sorted.

A worrying development on the MMC front is an email I received from them the NES Head of Communication today, who hinted that we would probably have to fly back from Oz to the UK for any interviews we might have for August 2007, in March/April 2007. This would kind of suck, as a) my family are coming out to see us then b) flights to the UK are not cheap c) it's not the best news to tell the Canberra Consultants, although they all seem really nice and as it's a 1 in 14 (surely that can't be right?) on call, it's still worrying to have to wait until MMC decide to tell us in Feb whether we need to come over or not and not to be able to tell them anything concrete. Still, we're going up to Dundee tomorrow to hang out with various people and on the way, we're stopping off in Edinburgh to see my friend Catriona and her son Oliver, who is 4 weeks old - can't wait.

Us

This is our attempt to publish photos.

First Posting!

Well, this is our first attempt at posting, so it's more to see whether we are able to be nerdy enough to manage this. We've decided that mass emails into nhs.net is probably not the way forward and have decided to join most of our friends and set up a blog. Obviously, it had to be pink.

Because of the mess that is Junior Doctor Training in the UK, we have been unable to secure posts as doctors in the UK, and have accepted posts in Canberra, Australia for a year. Ian will be doing Emergency Medicine/ITU/Medicine and Claire will be realising her dream by being a Haematology/Oncology/Palliative Care Registrar with some General Medicine (so as not to waste all that MRCP knowledge) thrown in. At least, that's what we think we're doing - we still haven't got the rotas through, but this is what the hospital and recuitment agency assure us we will be doing.

At present, we are still trying to pack up the house and force the mortgage company into a decision re selling/renting the house. 9 days to go - fantastic.