Baggas' Blog

As a doctor I often find myself getting annoyed at people who compromise their health by being unreliable at taking their medications. “How hard is it to remember to take 2 tablets a day?”, I ask myself (or 17 tablets a day for many geriatric patients)

Well since being on antibiotics I’ve forgotten to take my tablet at least 2 times (that I’m aware of anyway) so I’ll just go away and stop talking now

Just changed the font in this journal so it’s a bit easier to read, at least for the two people I know of who occaisionally glance at it

Work’s still nice and relaxed. I’ve just finished reading the daily papers, which for some reason weren’t delivered until after 6pm.

Looking forward to going swimming with my boy tomorrow, although it sounds like he might be starting to get a bit sick as well. I really really hope that the rest of my family don’t catch what I’ve had. I am feeling a lot better today though.

Well there goes my pager – better go see what they want this time. EDIT : twas a phone order for Paracetamol – how hard was that?

Can you tell I’m not working particularly hard at the moment?

Just watching Ten news at 5. It’s been an interesting news day. Firstly the leadership crisis in the Australian Labor Party – from the way some of them were talking it sounds like they’ve virtually given up on winning the next election and just want someone who’ll stop them from going backwards and losing more seats (ie Kim Beazley) A bolder strategy would be to take a punt on one of the new generation. I’m not a Labor supporter but I think probably Mark Latham has the most to offer – at least he’s continually coming up with new ideas and challenging existing thinking (even if at times he goes a bit extreme)

Next interesting story was the take on Thanksgiving in America. I thought George W Bush’s covert mission to Iraq was kinda cool (even if it probably was more of a carefully contrived publicity stunt, secrecy and all). The next person mentioned was Hillary Clinton, visiting Afghanistan (in the interests of balance I suppose), and finally and most importantly the stars of the New York thanksgiving parade were no other than The Wiggles! – I love those guys but it’s gotta make you wonder what kind of statement we are making to the world when our most well know exports are The Wiggles and Steve Irwin (and maybe Russell Crowe, who’s new movie I’m really looking forward too, btw)

Ok this post is getting a bit long, especially when no-one’s probably going to read it anyway. I’ll just finish by mentioning the news story that has just been on – the demolishing and rebuilding of Kwinana High School – a long overdue next step in the continuing renaissance of that suburb. As an ex-resident of the area I’m very pleased. Hopefully it will give the youth of that area a much needed boost and positive influence on their future.

Oh, and Go Australia for the Davis Cup! And good luck to Ricky Ponting in his test captaincy (he’s got some pretty big shoes to fill)

Now I’m off to get dinner before my pager starts going off.

Here is the cover of Time Magazine from my birthday :

Click to see larger version

The democratic convention 1976? How disappointing. Could have been something a little more exciting. I don’t even know who that is on the cover (I wasn’t really that in-tune with US politics on the first day of my life I’m afraid) I would have thought that Jimmy Carter would have been the star of Democrat politics at that stage but that picture sure doesn’t look like him. Actually he features on the cover from the week of Jennifer’s birthday.

Anyway if you want to have a look at what was on Time in the week of your birth then click here – it only goes back as far as 1923 so I have to apologise to my readers aged over 80

Picked up ‘The Two Towers’ extended edition DVD yesterday on a 15%off special day at K-mart.

After reading this article which I surfed to from Phil’s Blog I just can’t wait to sit down and watch it! Although some purists panned The Two Tower’s cinematic release, I actually quite enjoyed it as much as I did with FOTR. However if the improvements are as great as the article says it’s going to be astounding. 2/3 of the way through and I already am close to rating The Lord Of The Rings as the best movie trilogy ever, above Star Wars and The Godfather.

I’ll have to try and convince Jennifer to watch Fellowship with me again real soon in preparation for watching The Two Towers DVD, and then for The Return of The King on Boxing Day. Just wish we were in our new house already so we could watch it on my big TV and with my new 150W speaker system to do it justice. Still, we’ll get to do it all over again with a big marathon next November when The Return of The King extended DVD set comes out

I finally received my Diploma of Obstetrics yesterday, so now I’m not only qualified to practice Obstetrics, but I’m entitled to put some more letters after my name – so now it’ll be MBBS, DRANZCOG. That’s as many letters after my name as there is in my name itself (excluding my middle name) – lol.

Won’t be doing obstetrics next year as I change practices after 6 months but I’m keen to try and get back into it the year after and start delivering some babies again.

It’s nice to see in politics that all the major parties are fighting about Health, and are willing to throw heaps of money into that area in an effort to win votes. The government seems willing to compromise and spend as much as it’s going to take to get it’s package through the senate. This is not only good for the general public as health consumers, but it’s also going to benefit me directly as a future GP, since every increase in the medicare rebate per patient means an increase in my future income. Won’t help me much in the next 6 months when I actually take a huge pay cut but then after that I should start to see some improvements. While on the topic of politics it will be interesting to watch how things pan out with regards to the federal Labor leadership today – it looks like Crean is on the way out, but it’s not at all certain who’s going to replace him.

Also found out that I’m going to Rottnest Island for 3 days in January to do a Wilderness Emergency Medicine Course, which should be interesting. Plus I’m sad to admit for a Perth boy that this is my first ever trip to ‘Rotto’ – long overdue.

Only 15 more hours of work to go today. Still feeling sick although perhaps slightly better again. Unfortunately it looks like Jennifer might be starting to come down with something – I really hope it’s not the same thing as I’ve got. Luke went over 7 hours between feeds overnight so hopefully that’s a sign of things to come. Owen was well and truly sleeping through the night by this age. I’m sure I had something more important to write but my mind’s gone blank, so maybe I’ll be back later…

Time to try and find myself some lunch I think.
I’m feeling okay today though not 100% yet. Fortunately my clinic for this afternoon is cancelled so I might be able to have a bit of down time before doing ward cover tonight.

Back at work today, and now I don’t feel so bad about taking the last 3 days off, cos I still feel like crap, walking around with a fever and a headache – I probably should have stayed home today as well. I’m going to try and leave early this afternoon when I can find someone to cover for me.

Good to have a new addition to my LJ friends list – welcome aboard.

Once again they’ve made a fair bit of progress on our house – it’s almost looking liveable. Today the painters continued their work, the plumber put the toilet in, the tilers started constructing the bathrooms, the blinds people measured for our blinds, and the floor of the carport was laid. They’ve done more work in the last 3 days than they have in the last month before that. A glimmer of hope that we might be in before Christmas… I’m telling myself not to get too excited though. Anyway here’s a picture – you can see the blue colour of our gutters :

Hopefully I’ll be well enough to go back to work tomorrow.

Still off work today, although I do feel slightly better, possibly due to the antibiotics I started taking last night.
I do hope to get back tomorrow though – I feel bad taking this much time off. Still working a 2 day week won’t be too bad. I do have to do a 16 hour shift on Friday.

Things are happening quite quickly on our house. The painters are there today working on the gutters, and they’ve laid the concrete floor of the carport. We’ll go later and take some pics so I’ll put one up here tonight. Still doubt we’ll be in by Christmas time though – probably mid January.

I’ll just mention the reply feature on this journal – if you’re reading feel free to comment on what’s been said or just say Hi. I’d encourage people to sign up for their own journal too so you can take place in discussions via email and write your own daily stuff if you want. Just email me if you want to know how.

Also a reminder about the video I put up yesterday. I don’t know if anyone’s seen it as yet but take a look and let us know what you think, especially if you’re in a place like Sydney (for example) and haven’t seen Lukey before.

Just a quick note – I’ve just uploaded the first ever video to baggas.com.
Just click on the new Videos button on the menu and it’ll take you to the new Videos page, where there’s a little clip of Luke.
The page needs some fine tuning but it’ll do for now.

Hint : if you don’t have broadband internet then right click the file and Save As.. and watch it all once it’s downloaded.

Anyway we’re off to have dinner. Ciao

Actually things went well in the end at the GP’s – the doctor I saw was really nice.
Maybe I should go more often – nah probably not cause I don’t enjoy feeling this crap.

The boys are both asleep so I might enjoy this peace and quiet and get a bit of sleep myself.
Owen’s off to my parent’s place this arvo which should further enhance the recuperative atmosphere here.

Sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s. I’ve been waiting for 40 mins and they’ve only just come and told me they can’t find my records. Arghh!

Off sick again today. I can’t remember the last time I had two sick days in a row but I genuinely am feeling pretty crook. In fact I’m going to go to the doctors this afternoon for a sick note, which is another thing I haven’t done in a long long time. I just hope Jennifer and the boys don’t catch this off me.
Jenni and the boys have just gone off to playgroup at church which should be fun.

Finally had some progress on our house yesterday. They’ve finally put the doors on and locked the place up. Also all of our benches (kitchen, bathrooms), shelves and internal doors got put in and the plumber started working. Apparently the painters are coming today to do our gutters etc.

Also yesterday the data cable for Jen’s phone arrived from Hong Kong so now we can use her camera a bit more to take great pics like this one :

Woke up this morning feeling even worse, so I took the day off work. Feeling slightly better now, but there’s still no way I could have gone. Jenni’s just gone to take Luke to the doctors for his check-up/vaccinations etc so I might get my guitar out and have a play for a bit. Among many other things that’s one thing I’m looking forward to when we finally get our new house – having a room where I can have my guitars and close the door and play regularly. At the moment I just have my acoustic but once we’ve moved I’ll be able to get my electric back (needs a new set of strings though) and my amplifier (if I can pry it back off my little brother) – then it’ll be Rock and Roll baby yeah!

Today’s been a pretty good day. Went to church this morning after having missed it the last couple of weeks (due to a wedding and work). It was great although my voice is still wonky so I couldn’t sing very well. This afternoon there was a session for new people explaining the philosophy and vision of the church and how it all works. This was great as it was all in keeping with our own values and opinions on these things. We’ve been trying to get along to one of these sessions for months now but I’ve been working every time it’s been on.

Just watching the final episode of Australian Idol, all about Guy Sebastian, which has been great – he’s such champ. Looking forward to when his album comes out.
Back to work tomorrow after this incredibly brief sabbatical. At least next weekend I’ll actually have both days off. No more weekend shifts until after Christmas actually which is good. Anyway that’s enough – it’s taken me half an hour to type this much.

Work, work, work – nothing too stressful, just running round the hospital doing bits n pieces. The problem is I never get to sit down for more than 5 minutes without my pager going off. Some of the nurses at this hospital make excessive use of the ‘text-page’ feature on the computer system here where you can send text messages to a pager. I’d much rather they actually call me up and talk to me about what they want. I just got one of these messages 2 seconds ago – it says “meds to be written pls asap” but doesn’t say who needs them done or what ward they are on or even a number to call back on so it’s a completely useless message – what a waste of time! It always seems it’s the nurses on the other wards where I don’t have my own patients that are the most annoying, one ward in particular.

During the only 25 min break I had so far today I read about a quarter of this book which is not bad so far. If I finally get a bit of spare time I might finish it later.

Last night was good – went out for dinner with a few friends which was really enjoyable. Oh I’ve been paged again – better go. More later.

I have Laryngitis, so I’d better not say too much…
But I will mention the highlight of my day, which was receiving an MMS message on my phone with the following picture :

I can’t tell you how much better that made me feel

I’ll write more tomorrow, during my long shift at work, if my voice has recovered by then…

Woke up feeling a bit crook this morning. I had a head-cold kind of thing which has improved a lot but the worst thing is my voice, which alternates between sounding deep and raspy (imagine the ‘Australian Fast Bowler’ from Skithouse saying “Howse it Goin?”) and sounding all squeaky like a 13yo boy whose voice is breaking. Unfortunately, this has coincided with the day of the week in which I have to do the most speaking to people – 2 clinics and a ward round. I’ve often been told I don’t look old enough to be a doctor (it’s wearing a bit thin after 4 years) but now I don’t even sound old enough! Except when my voice is in it’s low hoarse phase and then my voice sounds like a dodgy peson that you don’t want hanging around a children’s hospital – lol, cough splutter…

Going out for dinner tonight which should be nice although I don’t know if I’m going to be the best conversationalist. Tomorrow I’m stuck at work from 8am-11:30pm which is a bit of a bummer – feels like I haven’t really been home much in ages.

Well all’s well that ends well they say and I was very pleased that our man Guy Sebastian came out on top as the Australian Idol. In what often seemed like more of a popularity contest at times it was great to see that in the end it was the most talented person who got rewarded (with the possible exception of Paulini) And he gave credit to where it was due also. I look forward to hearing the music that Guy puts out and the impact he can have. I hope they give him creative input into his music and don’t try and package him too much. He’s a great talent that needs to be allowed to run free to a certain extent. He could easily become Australia’s answer to someone like Prince (or is it “the artist formerly known as…” I’ve lost track. Anyway…..

GO THE ‘FRO!!

Sorry about that long last post, I guess you can tell I love The Beatles
Although it may appear otherwise from my posting in here, today’s been a moderately busy one here at work, running around doing bits and pieces, covering once again for other people. Would much prefer to be at home though hanging with my wife and boys. Jenni sent me an MMS today with a cute picture of Luke which I now have as the background on my mobile phone. The camera on her new phone (Motorola e365) is a bit better than the one on mine but we have no way as yet of getting the pics onto the computer – I’ve got a USB cable on order to do this so you should start seeing the results on here in a week or so.

One hour to go..

Not sure how to feel about this project. Can you go back and rewrite history? or should a classic album by the world’s greatest ever band be held sacred and left alone, despite it’s failings? Let it Be was never even close to being The Beatle’s best album but it’s still a classic by anyone’s standards.

I decided to get out my copy of the original, Phil Spector produced album and listen to it back to back with the new, back to basics edition. Firstly I must say that the reproduction on the new disc is amazing – everything sounds so crisp and clear, like you’re in the studio with them. The vocals are more raw and in your face, especially on the more rocking tracks like “I’ve got a feeling” and “One after 909″
It really does have a much more of an ‘unplugged’ spontaneous feel to it, despite being removed of all the little bits of speech and banter, including the conclusion where John says “On behalf of the group and myself, thankyou and I hope we passed the audtion” which always struck me as being a perfect end to The Beatle’s final album. Through a re-ordering of the songs, a different perhaps more sombre conclusion is made by finishing up with the song ‘Let It Be’ which loses nothing in the new treatment and perhaps gains an even more uplifting feel by being given more space to breathe. There’s also a different, prolonged George Harrison solo in the middle, which lends to this more spartan feel. The re-ordering of songs not only sends a message in it’s conclusion, but also with it’s beginning, starting off with ‘Get Back’ which still rocks out hard, and expresses the purpose of this re-issue and what the band’s original intentions were. Other stand out tracks are ‘For You Blue’ which never really grabbed me before but has a much more imminent feel in the new version, ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ which is a great addition, and ‘Across The Universe’ – this has always been a great track but it shines like never before on this new version. Stripped back, just John’s vocals over George’s playing, it sounds amazing, such an intimate performance which fades off into infinity at the end..

‘Two of Us’ I probably prefer on the original version. The new one sounds nice and crisp, but I don’t think they got the mix of the harmonies quite right – Paul’s voice is too loud on the new one. This is a shame because this was possibly the last great Lennon/McCartney duet. As for ‘The Long and Winding Road’ which is certainly the most altered song on this CD, it’s hard to say which is better because the difference is so vast – it totally recreates the song. I guess for me the definitive version will probably remain the original, purely because that’s part of The Beatles’ heritage for better or worse, with it’s sweeping orchestral arrangement. The new one is like an interesting alternate take on the song but will never really replace it.

I guess all up this album will go to occupy a similar place in The Beatles canon to the anthology series – an interesting “what might have been?” project which in many places does surpass the original but the fact remains that you can’t change history and the original Let It Be should still retain it’s place in The Beatles legacy – this revisionist effort does not replace it, however it does help us to once more appreciate the songs, and what an amazingly coherent wonderful band this was, even in the midst of their disintegration.

Jennifer (the social conscience of our family) showed me this great website tonight where you can help contribute to a good cause just by clicking your mouse. In fact you can choose a number of good causes including child health, world hunger, and breast cancer. I’ve put some icons advertising the sites on the front page of www.baggas.com, so just click on them to check the sites out….

thechildhealthsite.com


thehungersite.com

I love ebay – it’s so addictive browsing it and seeing what cool things are on offer. The problem is that way too often I get tempted to bid on things I don’t really need. Fortunately I rarely win so it’s okay.

Tonight I’m approaching ebay from the other side, as a seller. Since we’ve got new phones I’ve listed my old one on ebay, and I don’t need my modem for my Palm pilot anymore since I can now use my new phone as a wireless modem.

Here’s my listings :
Phone
Palm Connectivity Kit

Feel free to bid if you like

In other news we visited our house today to find that they’ve finally made some progress – they’ve done nearly half of the plastering and put in all the glass windows and sliding doors. It’s still going to be at least january before we can move in but it’s good that it’s finally starting to look like a place that could be lived in.

I’m very much in favour of technological progress – I love playing around with my computers, PDA, mobile phones, DVD and other gadgets, as Jenni would no doubt testify (and probably bemoan). Yet sometimes computerising things in the name of “progress” can be a backwards step. A good example of this is the discharge summary computer system at this hospital. A discharge summary is like a letter which goes in the patients file and is sent out to the GP explaining why a patient came to hospital and what happened there including tests and treatment. It’s a very important thing as it helps the GP know what’s going on and also helps you find out quickly what happened last time by looking in the notes if the patient comes back. In the past all the hospitals I’ve been at have had a handwritten summary where you fill out a triplicate form. This is quick and easy and it means the patient can often take a copy home with them when they go, and hand it to the GP. The new computer system is a slow laborious piece of software which takes 5 times as long to do, and never gets done until at least a week (often months) after the patient has gone home, meaning the GP will rarely get a letter before they see the patient next. Many times the patient will represent to hospital for whatever reason and there is not a summary in the file. It’s a huge waste of time, very inefficient and defeats the purposes of what it’s there for. What is usually a small part of a resident’s job now ends up taking many hours of sitting in front of a computer screen each week. And I’m fairly computer literate – I hate to think what a burden it must be for those that aren’t. Anyway enough ranting for now. I might go and try to find someone to cover for me so I can go home soon Might do some ebay selling tonight..

It’s a bit frustrating at work today. We’ve done well and managed to get our patient load down to very small numbers (although we’re pretty much on-take for the next 2 weeks so that won’t last long). I’m due to take my half day today but I have to wait around til after this meeting at 1pm even though I’ve got bugger all to do now. Can’t even be conscientious and work on my pile of discharge summaries as the computer system is being upgraded today. I’ve already read 2 papers, a couple of chapters in my book, and payed a few bills. Would much rather be at home with my family or out doing productive things, like trying to get Jennifer a new phone.

Well it’s been relatively busy today. I’ve probably spent more time working than not so that’s a bit unusual. Nothing too stressful though. A few admissions and loads of blood tests and IVs (which I’m so far having a 100% hit rate with)

4pm now which means I’ve now passed the halfway mark of my shift. Only another 7 or so hours to go. Anyway I’ve just been called to go see a little baby so I’d better head off. I’d much rather be at home with my own babies though… speaking of which Luke was weighed by the child health nurse the other day and weighs about 4.9kg which is great, he’s really growing well… all we need now is for him to learn how to sleep.

Long day at work today – 8:30am-11:30pm or so. Thus far it’s been pretty settled. A bit of a busy hour between 9 and 10 doing lots of blood tests (no phlebotomists on a Sunday for some reason?) and IV cannulas and prescribing various medications, and since then it’s been nice. Had my first coffee of the day and read a couple of papers. Hopefully the pace will stay nice and sedate for much of the day.

I’m looking at getting another camera phone for Jenni tomorrow so we’ll have twice the pictures on here after that. Hopefully the phone we’re getting for her will be a bit better quality photos too.

Was flat out today. I was covering for another 3 doctors’ patients in addition to my own. I had 3 different clinics, 2 ward rounds, mutliple admissions, IV cannulas and other problems. All afternoon my pager didn’t stop for more than 5 minutes at a time and the funny thing was 95% of it was not for my own patients. It’s probably the busiest day I’ve had in quite a long time but still a good one. The good thing was it sped by quite quickly. I’ve got a brief respite of a day off tomorrow before going back for a 16hour shift on Sunday, the first of a 7 day stretch.

Right now we’re watching some of the deleted scenes and other special features from Ice Age, which is Owen’s favourite movie at the moment. He watches it at least once a day at the moment and is already starting to come out with some of the lines from the movie, most notably the line where Ray Romano says “I’m not go – ing” – picture Owen using his arm as a trunk and mouthing those words with his hand and you’ll get an idea of what he does. Actually he went to bed an hour ago but we’re still watching the DVD cos there’s nothing but crap on TV on a Friday night. Burke’s Backyard? No thanks!

Luke’s really smiling heaps now – he seems to recognize his mummy & daddy too and gives us big grins when he sees us.

He’s a bit of a cheeky boy though isn’t he?

Meanwhile big brother Owen is busy watching Buzz Lightyear on the TV.

Not too busy to come and give his baby Luke a kiss though

Finally got away on my half day this afternoon and had a pleasant afternoon shopping – among other things got a few more Christmas presents and the Indiana Jones DVD collection at a bargain price. Owen behaved very well in what was a very busy K-mart, although he did insist on telling the people in front of us in the queue at the DVD counter to “get out the way” Other than that he was the epitome of patience.

The concept of the ‘half-day’ is one of the little known traditions on hospital medicine. Since we all work so hard (don’t laugh – we do sometimes) and often do after hours and weekend cover, we are usually granted one half day off a week. Most hospital docs are pretty good about it and try and help each other out by covering other people’s pagers while they go on their half day (and when we skive off at other times too). My half-day was supposed to be Monday but I was stuck working late so I’m taking it today. It was looking pretty promising for the first couple of hours this morning but that was the calm before the storm that hit about 11am when I had all of a sudden 2 simultaneous ward rounds to do, 3 pre-operative admissions, a few discharges and some other patients to get ready for surgery. I’ve only just finished running around like a looney for the past couple of hours. In fact part of the reason I had my calm period this morning was that my pager was broken – even though it looked like it was working it wasn’t receiving the pages that the wards were sending me every 5 minutes, whilst I obliviously sipped hot chocolate and read the morning papers (ahhh speaking of papers that reminds me of something – I’ll write about it later as I really should be leaving now before my pager goes off again) I feel a bit bad for the person that’s covering me as I have so many patients and he’ll probably be paged a lot, but then again I’ll be covering for me and him (ortho/plastics) and another general surgical resident and ENT/Opthalmology tomorrow afternoon so that’s probably around 60 patients all up, so I don’t feel so bad about going now. Okay, so bye.

Quite a pleasant evening tonight. Got home at 5:30 to find both my boys still asleep.
Luke was sleeping on the couch looking extra cute :

After Owen finally woke up he was very excited to find that I had decided to take the family to Hungry Jacks since they’ve just opened a new one near where our house is being built. We ended up spending quite a while there – it was a fairly pleasant restaurant and Owen enjoyed playing on the slide and sharing my ice-cream cone.

Remember I mentioned about winning that 8 CD collection of the Paul Colman Trio, well after listening to them over the last week I’m so glad I did – they are a really awesome band. Check them out if you get the chance. Some stand out tracks include Run, Fill My Cup, The Banquet Table, and Turn among many others.

Still at work, another 5 hours to go nearly.
It’s been a busy day, I was given the unpleasant surprise in the middle of the day of being given a complete extra ward to look after in addition to my surgical patients. I am now the burns unit doctor as well, which is a bit of a worry as I don’t have a lot of experience in this area (though that’s probably a good reason for me to be doing it – you’ve gotta get experience from somewhere…)

Anyway things have settled down a bit now so I took a look at Phil’s Blog, one of the sites I like to visit regularly. From there I found a link to this little character quiz, which you might want to check out if you’ve got nothing better to do. Here’s my result :

ELROND

A stern yet benevolent organizer who often knows best, your wits are keenly
fixed on aiding efforts you deem worthy.
Now at this last we must take a hard road, a road unforseen. There
lies our hope, if hope it be. To walk into peril to Mordor.
Elrond is a character in the Middle-Earth universe. TheOneRing.net
has a short biography.

I was pretty happy to get Elrond – not only is he a classic LOTR hero, but I can also put on a pair of dark sunglasses and a suit and double as his alter-ego Agent Smith from The Matrix, surely one of the coolest villains around.

Well I was just about to go sit down and watch Frasier, but some other doc has just walked in here and changed the TV channel on me without asking – Grrrr!

lol

Started my new job today in Paediatric Surgery and so far it looks like it’s going to be fairly good. It’s always nice doing a surgical rotation over Christmas time as the patient load tends to drop off quite a lot. Because I was training to be a surgeon for a couple of years I’ve ended up doing surgical jobs every year in summer which has meant lots of relaxing days at work. The only year I didn’t do surgery at Christmas was when I was working in ICU and even that was quiet – half the unit was closed down and we used it as an indoor cricket pitch

Unfortunately for me I’m on ward cover this evening which means being stuck here from 8am to 11:30pm. I have to do those shifts every 6th day – the next being this coming Sunday which means I’ll have to miss church again. Jennifer’s brother’s wedding was on yesterday which was very nice, although I missed much of the ceremony walking around with Owen at the back to stop him from talking the whole way through and telling the celebrant to “be quiet, naughty man”
The kids actually behaved quite well under the circumstances and it was a fairly enjoyable day.

Anyway, time for a coffee (the first of many today…)

OK, some thoughts on the final installment of The Matrix trilogy. I’ll try not to give too much away but if you haven’t seen it you may wish to skip this entry…

True to form, this movie left one with more questions than answers. It’s funny to think how confused a lot of people were after seeing the original Matrix a few years ago. In retrospect that now seems the most easily comprehensible of the trilogy. I’ve read several criticisms that this movie leaves behind the philosophizing of the second movie and is more of a straight out action movie. This is partly true, but in many ways unavoidable as it was always going to be a movie about the final climactic conflict and therefore was bound to contain battle scenes and action on a grand scale. It doesn’t shy away from the head scratching philosphical and quasi-spiritual questions though and as with the second movie continues the Messiah theme (with a quite overt metaphor in the final scene) and again explores a bit of the free-will/choice vs predeterminism question. Where the second movie seemed to finish with a very calvinistic view about fate (as purveyed by ‘The Architect’) in this final film it is choice and free-will that triumphs. Unfortunately we are left no closer to finding an answer to the original question posed by Neo in the first move, “What Is The Matrix?” – this seems to become less and less clear as the series progressed. The word Jennifer used to describe it was “obtuse” and I thought that was quite apt. Still, if you’re happy to go away without having everything nicely explained and tidied up at the end then the movie is still a rewarding experience.

On more technical matters the special effects and action scenes were once again incredible. The acting wasn’t all that superb but that’s not unexpected though. In terms of characters Neo progressed well, Niobe was impressive, Morpheus was a bit of a let down in this movie, the Chinese dude was very cool and of course Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) stole the show.

Anyway enough of that for now. It’s late and I have a wedding to go to tomorrow. If you haven’t seen the movie and you’re a Matrix fan then you need to see it – some may be disappointed and some won’t. It does kind of leave a lingering sense of dissatisfaction and a longing for answers, but then that’s pretty much what life is often made up of, so maybe that’s not such a bad thing…

Okay, I’ve just put up the beginnings of the newest page of photos, starting with Lukey’s Pixifotos.
Check it out by clicking on the Photos link in the baggas.com menu and then going to October.

In other news wotif.com has $1 specials on hotel rooms all this week, starting Monday 10th. Check it out and see if you can score a bargain.

Anyway we’re off to the movies now. Cya!

Having a great day so far today.
First thing this morning we went down to Pixifoto and picked up Luke’s photos which we had done a couple of weeks ago. They turned out really great. I’ll put them up in the photo section of this site in the next day or so, but here’s a sneak preview…

I was going to leave this at just one but I just can’t resist sticking up another one of my boy :

We’re off to see The Matrix : Revolutions tonight with friends which should be good. It’s the first time we’ve tried going to the movies since Luke was born so it will be a test. We already watched the first two Matrix movies on DVD this week in preparation for it.

In other news, not much going on with our house – I think they’ve done about two days work on it in the last month It’s looking increasingly like there’ll be no chance we’ll be in by Christmas.

Only two more days to go in my current job before switching to surgery next week for the rest of the year. Next year I’ll be starting working as a GP down in the south or Perth, only 10 minutes from my house. It’s going to be very novel working that close to home after 10 years of commuting an hour each way.
I’m also going to look into perhaps doing some casual ED shifts next year as well to keep my skills up and more importantly to try and maintain my income, so we’ll see how that goes.

It worked!