The Chronicles Of…

I love the Australian Medical system or whatever you want to call it…

Last night Caleb slipped in the bath and put a gash under his chin, he’s doing ok with it all, cried a little naturally, but seems to be right with it all.

Anyway so we were tossing up between the hospital and medical centre so we give the medical centre a call and they said they’d let him straight in to their treatment room (which looked like a small hospital type setup) because it may need stitches.

So I take him down and show my medicare card, all is good, this way sir, then we wait a little while and go in, the doctor decides that glue stuff they use these days will do the job so he does it.

Then, please sign here sir, and I’m on my way, no need to reach for my wallet…

To think that it’s the same anytime you go to hospital, even if you have a baby and stay for a few days, it’s fantastic!!

I love Australia.

I’ve been pondering things that matter lately and here’s one I think I need a little more input on.

When you shout Marco are you asking a question or making a statement?

I need to know if when I’m yelling it out I should be putting an upward inflection on the end of the word, thus asking a question, or end it with a exclamation mark, a statement.

The way I see it the rule is that you have to respond Polo in a audible voice so that would kind of suggest to me that it is a statement. You’re not asking them to respond but rather telling them they have to yell Polo.

If it were a question I kind of feel that you wouldn’t be obligated to respond, for instance someone might think that you have just asked a rhetorical question, or they may not answer as they might think you were directing your question to someone else.

What do you think?

I just realised something, it could be an unfinished sentence, maybe it’s not followed by a question or exclamation mark but rather 3 dots, you know … do they have a technical name?

In the laws governing the English language are you technically allowed unfinished sentence’s?

It’s all waying just a little too heavy on me for my liking…

(that wasn’t an unfinished sentence but rather a trailing off… which has confused me more…)

New computer has been ordered, will be here next week hopefully, then maybe I can get back to blogging and living online a little more.

Unfortunately as good as they seem a Mac was still out of the budget, even a refurbished one..

…have been long.

Lots of lectures, and plenty of ‘inspirational’ talks that usually involve the words “…and if you aren’t prepared for that, then you may as well go home now…”. Very helpful, I’m sure. Having said that, a number of the instructors are very good, and seem to genuinely want us to pass. They provide the necessary resources and give us helpful feedback which allows us to make progress as we learn. Some, however, appear to see us students as getting in the way of their ‘real work’ (whatever that is).

I’m fairly nervous about certain aspects, mainly the physical components, based on my previous non-successes as an ‘athlete’. For some reason no matter how often I tell myself (or am told by others) that I’m improving, and will continue to do so as long as I work hard at it, I am often caught thinking the absolute worst of myself, which in turn affects my performance. I think it’s a case of “I believe, help me to overcome my unbelief.”

My appetite has gone through the roof (so to speak), and I’m eating huge meals three times a day. I’m doing plenty of exercise though, so hopefully I won’t turn into Jabba the Hutt any time soon. I’m also finding that I’m absolutely exhausted by the end of each day. We get up pretty early, so I’m seriously contemplating bed by about 8:30 each evening. Tonight I thought I’d sneak in a quick blog after dinner(although the internet connection is very dodgy – it’s taken me quite a number of redials to get this far), before I do some study for an hour or two. I want to stay ahead of the pack in terms of my readings, and I think it’ll help me to feel more confident overall. I just have to be careful not to become too absorbed in the course, and lose perspective on what’s really important in life.

There are some pretty good guys down here, and a few of us who did the first sessions by correspondence have managed to get accommodation in the same area. We each have a little cabin with a private bathroom, desk, wardrobe, fridge, and bed. I bought a kettle, so my tea addiction will be well indulged. We’re pretty lucky, as most people are in ‘dorm towers’, which aren’t as private (shared bathrooms etc). We’ve been trying to make a point of looking out for each other, which is really helpful. So far we haven’t met too many of the rest of the class, but hopefully that will come in time.

It’s really cold here, and I’m told it gets MUCH colder than this over the next few months. We’ve been given permission to wear gloves in the mornings, as long as they look ‘professional’, so I might be doing some shopping on the weekend. We’re very fortunate that we’re allowed to make ourselves so comfortable, as I’m sure in years past they weren’t so accommodating.

OK, enough from me. I should do some reading before I fall into bed.

Given Chris’ recent blog…

lemonade scones

Let me introduce to you LEMONADE SCONES!!! Woohoo!

OK, brace yourself, this might be hard to remember…

• 3 Cups of SR flour
• 1 cup of thickened cream
• 1 cup of lemonade (shweppes, no frills, whatever…)

1. Stir it all together in a big bowl (settle down, get off the speed, don’t over mix).
2. roll the dough in a bit of flour (less sticky)
3. Mould the dough into whatever shape you want your scones (triangle, round, etc…)
4. Throw it in a preheated oven (205 degrees celsius) for about 15 minutes
5. Eat scones with jam and cream.

Presto.

(Politely stolen from Matt & Alison Nutt [AKA: The Nutts] with permission)

I’m in the process of getting ready to leave town (for my uni course) for a few months, and I’m finding it quite difficult. I’m having to buy things to take with me, and work out what needs to be packed.

Although I’ll be able to come home on a semi-regular basis, I know that it’s going to be difficult to visit everyone that I’d like to on my weekends at home, so I’ve been trying to make a point of seeing the ‘right’ people over the past few weeks (those I thought I’d miss the most, or whatever). Hasn’t always worked out, but such is life.

I got a laser printer (discounted because it was the last one in the shop), and I was surprisingly excited about buying an iron. I spent far more money on that than I would have expected to, but I’m told it’s “the best one on the market, currently”. Which I assume means that it’ll be obsolete in about 45 seconds.

I’m finishing up at my jobs, and the church is taking us out for dinner tonight which is nice. The Uni didn’t make a similar offer, but then again I’m only a casual there, and they couldn’t care less.

Anyway, I’m starting to feel a tad nervous with all this preparation going on in my life, and my ‘new life’ is probably going to be fairly challenging. I’m just hoping that I can keep this sort of thing in mind, and in action:

24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26 Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. 27 No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. (From 1 Corinthians 9)

So, if you’ve been following my twitter over the last half hour or so you will see that I have just baked a batch of scones. I was hungry and wanted something remotely dessert like, ok supper like then, whatever!

I decided on the scones and went looking for a recipe, naturally I started at the “Cooking, a commonsense guide” which I got from the ladies at work when I got married, and I’ve heard older women give it to young guys all the time.

Anyway, so Nat tells me that there’s an easier recipe in the handwritten book.

So I opened up to the scones recipe and all there was was a list of ingredients. So I excused myself and said this might be a silly question but there’s no instructions what to do so… ummm… what should I do?

Just throw them all into a bowl and mix it.

So I thought no worries, I’ll throw it all in and find the largest, fastest, electric beater I can, maybe even the electric whisk, that thing can go fast!! So it’ll be done in no time…

In a moment of stupidity or something I mentioned this, and she said no, you have to mix it with a knife. A knife!!

Ok, Ok I’ll do that, but that wasn’t written down…

I went off, did that, and surprisingly it was finished in no time, so then I thought I’ll just put blobs of the mixture on a tray and whack it into the oven.

Once again I mentioned this for some reason… She may me knead it and cut out circles with a glass.

Again not written down…

Allegedly if you don’t knead it they come out with large air bubbles or something.

Not written down…

So I’m thankful for the ‘easier’ recipe, but it turned out to be a list of things to put in it, but that’s about it…

This reminded me of another time…

I was going to make pancakes for breakfast, so I went to the handwritten recipe book to find the one she got off her sister, but all I see is blank pages and other recipes.

So I ask what the deal was, she said she thought it was in there, so I went to get a piece of paper to write it down but she stopped me and told me it was so easy that there was no need to write it down, (but still every time I make them I have to ask her again), and I had to go back to her a couple of times to ask what else went in it.

Anyway the list of ingredients were:

• Blah blah blah
• Blah Blah
• 2 cups of flour
• Blah Blah
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• Blah Blah Blah

So I put all those ingredients in, then when I went to cook them they seemed a lot less fluffy then normal and when I queried this with Nat she asked what sort of flour I used, naturally I said flour, normal flour. She thought I was silly, she thought it would be obvious that I should have used Self Raising Flour, I said you never said Self Raising, she said but they’re pancakes, I said yeah?

Then in my limited knowledge I asked isn’t that what baking powder is for?

Ahhh Ha! I was right… but there was a but, you still need the Self Raising Flour.

Anyway, I think my point overall is that somethings aren’t commonsense to others even if they seem so to you, especially when the other person is out of their depth doing something not in their area of expertise or experience…

For the last few months I’ve been dreaming LOTS, there was even a period of about a week where I dead set felt like I had been dreaming all night long, even though I think I’ve heard you normally only dream for a really short time it just seems longer blah blah blah… anyway I would wake up in the morning and remember most of the dreams I had that night. It was good and almost felt like you’d just been watching DVD’s all night long which was kind of fun cause I didn’t have much time to do that when I was awake.

None of them were really all that bad, actually most of them were about quite nice and not me trying to not be killed. A lot of them would also involve friends or other people I know, we’d be just hanging out or interacting in normal ways, nothing weird at all, or as in one case we would be driving somewhere in the shire.

Anyway I was with some friends recently, mainly female, and I went to tell them I had dreamt about them, but then realised that would sound really awkward and a little weird so I backed away and didn’t say anything…

But I did speak about some other things regarding dreams, I told them how one day I was wondering whether or not you could change your own dreams, I couldn’t see why not, I’m mean it’s your mind, so I gave it a shot and found that you could. So now when I’m dreaming and I think about it I try to change things.

This is especially fun when you realise that you can’t die so therefore you can do anything you want. I was speaking to someone else who also discovered this which was good because people thought it was a little weird.