Baggas' Blog

You can think and say what you like about President George W Bush, but you have to admit the guy has a sense of humour (or at least his speech writers do!). Check out this entertaining speech from the Radio & TV correspondents dinner in which he pokes fun at himself, his opponents, and especially Dick Cheney. Can’t wait for the Dubya gets his Groove Back pop-up book

I think sometimes we are so spoilt to love in the Google age – so much that when Google will not give is the information we need it can be incredibly frustrating. Been a busy morning of patients today I’ve been trying to find some information about the opportunities/requirements for Australian GPs to work in the USA, yet haven’t been able to find any clear info. Also trying to find info on Australian medical business structures and tax has only been marginally easier. Getting sick of my searches finding results above car races as well – lol.

Time to give Google a rest and get back to work I guess.

We’ve had a sudden change in the weather here in Perth the last few days – it’s suddenly gone from being quite warm summery swimming type weather to cold nights and chilly mornings. The fact that we have just changed our clocks back to normal time after a few months of daylight savings only makes the change in weather seem that much more dramatic.

However there has been one bonus amidst all this. I normally wear shorts to work throughout summer and well into autumn, however it’s been so cold this week that I’ve switched to jeans, and not only that, but this morning was so chilly I retrieved my warm jacket from the spare oom wardrobe. When I got to work I felt something in the inside pocket of my jacket and discovered a pair of glasses! Now last year I lost my glasses and had to purchase a new pair (from 39 dollar glasses.com) – well now I’ve found my old ones and have a spare set. Not that I really ever wear my glasses as much as I should do, still it’s always nice to find something you thought was lost.

For any of you who doubt that the Ukelele can be cool, check out this awesome video by Jake Shimabukuro. I came across it while searching for the music/lyrics to one of my favourite Beatles’ songs, and was absolutely blown away. Makes me want to put my guitar down and pick up my uke, aside from the fact that I’m a total novice on the instrument. Anyway check it out – this guy is phenomenal!

Owen is five and a half, but to date has never had a proper bike. So on Friday we went down to the local bike shop and got a nice shiny red one for him. And I was half tempted to get one myself – they had some very cool looking bikes in there. Considering I do vitually zero exercise it might not be a bad idea.

Anyway once we got home, Owen got straight on his bike for a trip to the local park, with Luke trailing behind on the old tricycle….

Slacktivist: All the good music

Just watched a YouTube video on the Slacktivist blog that was annoying, sad, and yet bizzarely entertaining at times. Entitled “Satan’s Tool : The truth about contemporary Christian music” it is comprised of excerpts from a sermon given by a guy called Alan Ives. His thrust is that there are certain elements in the music itself that make a song ‘ungodly’, no matter how Christian or biblical the lyrics might be. Specifically he focuses on aspects of the rhythm such as the Boogie-Woogie (think Chopsticks), back-beat, and break-beat, that are so wrong. I’m sure glad he hasn’t visited our church – he would be horrified at some of the ’sinful’ rhythms we play. And what he would make of my amplified, distorted Les Paul guitar and the Jimi Hendrix effect tone I was using yesterday I shudder to think!

As Fred, the slacktivist pointed out, what is truly incongruous about this clip is that Ives is actually a fairly talented multi-instrumentalist with a reasonable singing voice, and when he gives examples on piano and guitar of the evil music styles we should be avoiding, he actually seems to be perversely enjoying himself. As Fred says :

Alan Ives desperately wants to rock. Standing at the piano, demonstrating the insidious way that boogie-woogie rhythms have tainted sacred music, he seems to be teetering on the brink of letting loose his inner Jerry Lee. Ives’ presentation reeks with the scent of frustrated musician — frustrated not by a lack of talent (he seems at least competent at the three instruments he plays in the clip), but by the fervent belief that God doesn’t want him to do what he seems passionately to want to do.

I think God wants us to worship him in whatever style we feel most comfortable, whatever helps lift our hearts towards him the most, be it Gregorian chant, old time rock n’ roll, or modern techno or metal. There is no single musical style that is inherently godly or otherwise. Obviously there needs to be compromise, since a metal church would drive certain people away, just like a church which does only the drawling 4/4 march tunes espoused by Ives would drive others away – however we should appreciate and validate that not everyone will want/be able to worship God in the same way that suits us. People like Ives are just another example of those ‘crazy Christians’ that turn people away from church.

PS – speaking of music, I committed the ultimate error a guitarist could make yesterday. I rocked up to church complete with my amp, effects board, music & leads … but no guitar! Was kinda embarassing to have to dump my gear on stage and drive home to collect my axe. I’m blaming the change back from daylight savings for messing with my brain – lol.

One of the great things about having the Foxtel-IQ recorder now for our pay TV service is that I can scan through and record shows and movies that I’ve previously missed seeing at the cinemas or on DVD. In the last two weeks half I’ve watched 4 good movies.

The Island – Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johannsen in a futuristic sci-fi. This movie was nothing earth shattering, but an enjoyable enough way to spend an hour. Once you get your head into what’s going on it’s reasonably predictable.

Saved! – this movie is set in a Christian High School in the USA. Some Christians may find it insulting or sacreligious but if you can get beyond that it’s actually a biting social commentary on evangelical culture (admittedly quite an extreme version but there’s enough reality mixed in there) with messages on hypocrisy, loving your neighbour and getting the right priorities. Well worth watching.

Kingdom of Heaven – another religiously themed movie which speaks to issues of religious tolerance and missing the point. This one is set in Jerusalem during the crusades and stars Orlando Bloom. Plenty of action, brilliant battle scenes but enough background drama and exploration of the characters to make this an excellent, well balanced movie.

Elizabethtown – another movie starring Orlando Bloom, who I think is one of the most likeable actors today. This is a feel-good romantic comedy about a failed shoe designer who travels back to a small town in Kentucky to arrange his father’s burial. It’s a comedy with a dash of moralizing and large heapings of sentimentality…. sounds a bit dodgy on paper right? Well I’m surprised to say I loved this movie. The characters are engaging, the dialogue is fresh, the humour is original, the music is fantastic, and it closes with an extended road trip through middle America. I’m even more inspired to want to go on an American road trip myself now!  Great movie.

Had a couple of dreams last night which I still remember. The first was that it was this weekend, post the election in NSW in which not surprisingly Labor had won. What was odd was that a Federal election had been also held, and we were waking up on Sunday to our new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. I don’t know if my dreams are prophetic, but at the moment it’s looking increasingly like that one will come to pass. Rudd’s latest move, by abandoning his opposition to the sale of Telstra and promising a huge investment in high speed broadband access, is a huge potential vote winner. Hopefully the coalition will try to match or beat it and we will finally end up with decent internet no matter which side wins … which at the moment, unless Howard can find a rabbit to pull out of his hat, looks like it will be Rudd…

The other dream I had was less topical, but probably more weird. I was at a huge mega-multiplex cinema with my family. Firstly Owen and I were playing in the foyer on one of those 20 cent games (you know where the 20c coins slide of the edge of a moving platform and you drop in new coins to try and push them over – I love those games) and we had won so many coins we had to get an empty large drink cup to hold them all. Then we went to the counter to buy our tickets, but then some bad guy was chasing us and we had to run all the way to our cinema to get away from him. Luckily we escaped him and got into cinema number 43 before the movie started, still managing to retain the big cup full of 20 cent coins. And it was a really massive cinema too, considering they had at least 45 there! But that’s all I remember. Weird?

Yesterday me and the boys, along with my dad, brothers and their families, spent a great day at Adventure World, Perth’s main amusement park. The kids are now starting to get old enough to go on more of the rides and get a lot more out of the day, especially Owen. Luke was not to be outdone however – even though he was a few centimetres too short he managed to sneak onto the Bounty’s Revenge swinging ship ride. And he enjoyed it just as much as the rest of us. Here’s a taste of the top day we had…

Edit : apologies for the picture quality. It was perfect before I uploaded it (took over an hour to do so) but now it’s a bit pixelated. Still finding it difficult to get really nice quality videos on YouTube, despite searching through any number of forums and trying a few different software programs. If anyone has any good hints I’d love to hear them…

Well it’s just me and the two boys for the next few days until Sunday, as Jenni is currently half way across Australia on her way to the Colour Women’s conference in Sydney. She’s worried about leaving her boys but I’m sure we’ll be fine – they’ve talked me in to taking them to the Fun Station after school today and we are going to Adventure World with my family on Saturday.

The only tricky part will be if I get called to the hospital after hours for deliveries etc (like last night at 1:30am) but I have a backup plan sorted out if that happens. It’s only tonight and Thursday night that I’m on-call so the chances of being called are low.

Another busy day at work today. I only did 3 days work this week but I’m still well and truly ready for the weekend. Having two difficult deliveries in the last 24 hours has probably added to my fatigue. Not that I feel bad though – saving a couple of newborn lives is always a good thing, and in both cases I was able to make the decisive contribution. Many times when the birth is straightforward it feels like I don’t contribute much (particularly if the midwife calls me after the baby has been born) but it’s times like these that I’m reminded that my role as the doctor is valuable and necessary.
Nevertheless, the weekend is most welcome, although perhaps not super restful… This afternoon I have to pick the boys up, sign up Owen for soccer this year and then go to the Fun Fact’ry. Then we are going out as a family for dinner to celebrate Jennifer’s birthday. We’ll probably go on some kind of family excursion tomorrow (? the zoo) and then maybe just the two of us go out tomorrow night if we can get a babysitter. Church on Sunday I’m playing guitar both services (acoustic this time – I usually play lead but it’s nice to have a change on occaision…) and then off to lunch with my family.

Now that I look at it, the weekend doesn’t look all that restful at all – but hopefully should be enjoyable. Just gotta get through the next four patients without any major dramas…

Just uploaded another video to YouTube. This one is from our trip to Uganda last year. When we visited the Sanyu Babies Home, Owen and Luke got to join the babies’ song time. Not only is it very cute, but it demonstrates just what a good job they do at looking after these orphan babies. Hope you enjoy it!

Another quiet day at work today, although I have a patient in labour at present so it’ll probably get busier.

Thought I’d play around with my mobile and YouTube to give you a sneek peak into the place where I spent most of my day’s – my consulting room. The quality isn’t perfect as it was filmed using my Palm Treo, but I hope it’s clear enough to get a bit of an idea of what my room looks like. And it’s relatively tidy at the moment too!

Just took a walk outside to grab a snack from the hospital kiosk, and man is it hot!

Just going outside feels like walking past a big bonfire. According to the Weather Bureau, the Perth temperature is currently 41-42 degrees Celsius. I’ll check again in an hour or so because my guess is it’s going to get ever hotter.

Can’t wait to get home and jump into the pool.

(Note : I assume the Chinese word in the picture means ‘Very Hot’ – for some reason when I entered “hot” into Google images to try and find a picture to accompany this post, all I got were pictures of women?!? I kinda like the Hong Kong Observatory picture though…)

Yesterday was a super hot Tuesday here in Perth with the temperature hitting 42 degress Celsius. Luckily for me I had pre-arranged the day off to get my car serviced and for the Foxtel man to come and so I ended up being home most of the day, of which a lot was spent in the pool. Today is forecast to be just as hot but I haven’t been outside since I got to the surgery this morning so I can’t verify that. Will be jumping straight back in the water when I get home though.

For now, let me give you my weekly round-up of what’s happening in my world…

READING : for some reason I haven’t had much time to read over the last week or so, but the book I’ve started most recently is Jeffrey Sach’s The End of Poverty – this is a book on global poverty and the economic causes and possible solutions. Only read the first couple of chapters so far but it seems really good.

WATCHING : for a couple of years now we’ve had Foxtel, which is a Satellite pay TV system, but haven’t really made good use of it, aside from the kid’s channels. Partly this is due to the fact that when we sit down to watch there often doesn’t seem to be anything appealing on, and if there are good shows they are not on at a suitable time for us. Primarily this is a symptom of the time delay, since Foxtel is based on Eastern Australian time (ie. when their prime time shows are coming on at 8PM, it is still only 6PM here) – well now these problems are solved for us. Yesterday we had our Foxtel unit changed over to the new Foxtel IQ which is a satellite receiver box which contains a hard disk recorder. This means we can now scan the guide for the programs we want to watch and with the press of one button set them to be recorded. You can record two programs at once and even playback a third recording at the same time. It also allows pausing and rewinding of live TV which is handy. This, combined with my use of Windows Media Center for recording free-to-air digital TV, means we now have no excuse for missing anything on TV (aside from the little fact that we have very limited time to watch it…)

WORKING : first day back at work today after 4 days off and it’s been psycho. Funnily enough though virtually all of my consults have been one of three things – pregnancy, babies (most immunisations), and mental health. I got considerably behind this morning, mostly due to the latter, but managed to catch up so I was only 10 minutes behind at lunch time. On the obstetric side of things, after a quiet month in February, things are starting to get busy again. I have a number of inductions booked in over the next week or so, which has been a bit tricky co-ordinating since Jenni is off to Sydney next week. Still it’s all good – helps keeps me busy and helps pay the bills.

Also today I was given a free electronic blood pressure machine, courtesy of the government and a drug company. I vaguely remember filling out a form a couple of months ago for it, and it was delivered today. Very nice $1500 machine – I normally prefer to check BPs the old fashioned way but this machine is the best I’ve seen. Nothing like another gadget to keep me happy. Might be the last for a while though, unless more freebies come along – I’m now on a serious financial-restraint effort. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyway that’s enough, I’m getting a bit behind again. I would mention what I’m eating today but there was no drug lunch so my stomach is empty! Oh well, time to keep plowing along.

I’ve spent a lot of time this weekend doing my tax from last year, which has been a scary and sobering experience. Even though I have an accountant it seems I still spend as much time on this as ever – in fact I think I need to try and get more out of them. I’m sure my finances could be organised much more tax efficiently and advantageously – and the bottom line is I need more money to pay this huge tax debt and hopefully also still be able to afford our big overseas trip planned for the end of this year. Until they give me any better ideas I’ll still to this simple plan : earn more & spend less. I’m already starting to do the former, working longer hours and delivering more babies – now I need to focus more on the latter, which has never been our strong suit.

Amidst all this tax work, I’ve now completely moved all of my spreadsheets and related documents online. Previously I would keep them all on a USB memory stick, which I’d plug in to which ever computer I happened to be working at (home, office, or laptop). Now I’ve put all my files into Google Documents, which is great. It allows me to edit my files in Excel and Word formats, with all the main functions of the desktop applications (at least all the functions I use anyway) yet I don’t have to worry about a computer crash or being on the wrong PC – all I need is an internet connection. I think from now on I’ll be using Google more and more for all document based work. Internet applications are the way of the future, as I believe even Microsoft have started to acknowledge.

If you’re not from Australia (especially Western Australia), you probably won’t get this cartoon from today’s Weekend Australian newspaper, but I thought it was one of the most incisive I’ve seen in a while, considering how toxic former WA premier Brian Burke is at the moment. The biggest question about this scandal is whether it will ultimately force a state election, but the sad thing about that is that even if an election were held, the Labor government would very possibly still win, considering how inept our state Liberal opposition are. Anyway, it makes for interesting news, if nothing else.

(I don’t think it comes through clearly on the image, but the prisoner in orange is David Hicks…)

Got a super long 4 day weekend this weekend. A couple of weeks ago I cancelled my appointments for next Tuesday so I could get a few things done, without realising that Monday was a public holiday for Labour Day. Bonus! I’ve never been much of a union or labour movement supporter but I’ll take the day off anyway (although I get no pay for public holidays – as a small business it’s basically no work – no pay for me).

Today we’re heading down to Mandurah this afternoon for a bit of shopping, hanging out and maybe some dinner. Windows tells me it’s going to be a fair day, 27 degrees Celsius, so should be nice.

Blogwise, after it being inactive since I installed Vista (and for a while before that too), I’ve fixed the recent iTunes section in the left sidebar. Basically this is a plugin which displays the last few tracks played in iTunes on my PC. As you may notice, currently it’s chock full of country music – still really enjoying Alison Krauss, Keith Urban and the others

Just came across the most recent statistics for Bible sales from the Christian Booksellers Association of America, which is based on the number of Bibles sold in January in the USA and Canada :

I must admit I’m a bit stumped by this. Why on earth is the KJV so popular? The language is so archaic that it’s virtually impossible to read, and it’s textual basis has been significantly eroded by more recent discoveries. I guess there are plenty of cheap KJVs out there so price might be a factor, but then again it’s possible to score a decent paperback NIV or other more modern version at a very low price so I doubt that’s a major reason. Could it be due to the influence of weirdos like these people, who believe that the KJV alone is the infallible and inspired word of God in English? I always thought these sort of people were more fringe fundamentalists and would never have imagined that they held enough sway to drive a 400 year old almost unitelligible book to the top of the sales lists! I don’t think I even own a KJV aside from the one on my Palm Pilot, which I downloaded for free when I got my Bible software – but I rarely even look at that version. I do have a couple of NKJVs in print form, but although the ‘Thees’ and ‘Thous’ have been removed I still find the style a bit old fashioned and hard to follow at times.

I guess the sad thing is that millions of people are buying (and reading?) Bibles which they would probably find difficult to understand. Could the language be a major barrier for them to be getting the most out of what they are reading?

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It’s all about me [Hismethod]

I’ll refrain from posting another YouTube video today, but I can still link to someone else who has posted one. Bruce Chant has a funny clip on his blog which is an “advertisement” for a new worship CD “It’s All About Me.” For anyone who was around churches in the 80s (and perhaps some churches today?) you’ll find a lot of the songs familiar, though with a twist. It’s humour, but there’s a message underneath for those who have ears to hear…

The Dawkins Confusion – Books & Culture

- this is an excellent article by philosopher Alvin Plantinga, discussing Richard Dawkin’s recent book, The God Delusion, which has got a lot of attention in the last few months. Plantinga systematically and very effectively deconstructs many of Dawkin’s arguments. I’ll confess I haven’t read Dawkin’s book (I’ve got too many other, more interesting, books piled up waiting to be read) but this article is well worth checking out for anyone who has read it, has been involved in discussions about it, or is even vaguely aware of it.