Baggas’ Blog

Over the last couple of days I’ve uploaded a big bunch of photos onto my flickr account. I’m about halfway through the ones from our recent trip and will get the rest online over the next couple of days. So far there’s a whole lot from Hawaii, Disneyland, and London. Take a look at my Flickr Page here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/pbaggas/

Well another week is drawing to a close. I know this sounds cliched but they seem to be going faster and faster. This week has been pretty good. A few babies born, a couple of minor emergencies sorted out. Kids are doing well at home - Owen has done great on his school homework. Jen has still been unwell, due to a combination of morning sickness and a bad cold, but we were treated to a nice dinner prepared for us by a friend at church earlier in the week, which was a big help. On the leisure side, I’ve been reading a biography of C.S. Lewis, playing a bit more X-box 360 than usual (which isn’t hard since I hardly ever play at all - Owen uses it more than me), and of course discovering Facebook. Now this might sound lame, but I’ve also been watching the Fedex site tracking a package sent from Florida on Aug 27, through Tennessee, Honolulu, Sydney, and now Perth. Hopefully it should arrive here before I leave work this afternoon. It’s nothing special, just some HDDVDs I ordered, but I just love a good shipping tracking site, don’t you?

This weekend I am on-call for obstetrics, which I greet with my usual feelings of ambiguity. I really can’t be bothered working and would love for it to be a quiet weekend, especially tomorrow for Owen’s soccer finals carnival. However this is my first on-call since being back from our trip and may be my only one until November (since it is now only 5 weeks until I leave for my next trip to Uganda) and since these on-calls are where I can earn a bit more money to help pay for bills and time off etc I kinda need for it to be a bit busy. Anyway, we’ll see what happens. I guess I’ll choose to be happy either way.

Anyway there’s a drug lunch calling so I’d best be off. Have a great weekend!

So I’m still mucking around with Facebook. I have to say I really like the interface and the amount of content apps you can easily put on it. The other thing, which I guess is what facebook is really all about, is that it is quite easy to find contacts. A very quick and easy search around last night has led me to discover a bunch of old mates from med school, a couple of whom I’ve had a brief chat with. These are people I haven’t seen in years, so facebook really does help you connect. Also it can log into your email address book and search for Facebook contacts from that. I plugged in my gmail details and it managed to find a few contacts in there too.

I can understand why people may want to keep their facebook private so only their friends can view it, but I still wish we at least had the choice of making it publicly viewable. I still think this is probably the biggest flaw of facebook. So for those of you who haven’t got your own facebook account (yet), here’s a screen capture so you can see what mine looks like (the top portion of it at least - there’s heaps more stuff below) - click the picture for a larger image…

• 1226 - playing around with Facebook. Waiting for the drug rep to arrive with lunch #

Alright, now that I’ve been fiddling around with my Facebook for much of the afternoon I’ll share a few preliminary thoughts.

Firstly facebook is very easy to use, and there are heaps of cool apps you can add to customise your page - I’ve got ones which feed in my blog posts, link to blog friends’ posts (who are facebook users), display flickr photos, Library Thing books, a travel map, my X-Box Live Gamer card and more. Within a very short space of time I’ve got the page looking pretty cool…. but …..

…. unfortunately you won’t be able to take a look at it,  unless you sign up with Facebook that is! As far as I can tell (and please someone correct me if I am wrong), the general internet public cannot view a facebook page - you can only view someone’s facebook page if you are a member yourself, and are an approved “friend” of that person, or are in the same regional “network” on facebook. Maybe I’m not quite getting the point of facebook - I thought it was kind of like a more sophisticated version of MySpace, where you can quickly construct an online presence, throw up some content, and connect in many ways with other people. All of this can be done (and quiet nicely) on facebook but if it’s limited only to other users then that takes a lot of the shine off it as far as I’m concerned.

But I’ll keep fiddling with it. Maybe there’s some kind of privacy setting I’ve missed somewhere but I can’t see it at the moment. The only settings I can find seem to just allow you to restrict access even more tightly, not less so. Once again, if any other facebook people have thoughts on all this, please let me know…

Allow me to get a little bit political for a few moments … It’s good to see that health has finally opened up as a bit of a battleground for the upcoming election, after a couple of fairly quiet years on the health policy front. This was sparked off by Kevin Rudd’s headline grabbing “policies” of a federal takeover of state hospitals and something called GP “super clinics.” There’s been plenty written about the former idea and all the potential problems associated with it (including maybe an increased GST) but not much press on the Super Clinics. Like most of Rudd’s policies to date, it seems to be a flashy title designed to beguile the public and make Rudd seem like a sensible man of action, yet has very little substance behind it. As if building these new clinics is going to address the problems of a nationwide doctor shortage and overcrowded emergency departments. Where are they going to get these doctors from? If they manage to attract doctors to shift into these practices (and so far the only “incentive” I have seen mentioned is a $15,000 payment which really won’t attract many GPs at all, especially if these clinics are to be bulk-billing clinics which would actually reduce most GPs’ income)… but even if they can attract GPs to work there, aren’t they just shifting the problem from one place to another, making it even harder to get appointments in the practices the doctors woul be forsaking? When there’s only a limited pool of doctors, building new clinics won’t go a long way towards solving the problem, they need to add to the pool of doctors… HOW? only two possibilities spring to mind - one is increasing the medical school intake, which the Howard Govt has already done, but which is a long term solution only since it will be years before these new docs are practicing. Or secondly increasing the amount of foreign doctors allowed to work here, but this is both morally ambiguous (since we might be “stealing” doctors from other countries who need them even more) and slightly dodgy politically (after the recent doctor terrorist scare) and medically (since it’s hard to assure the quality of medicine practiced). So Super Clinics is all headline (don’t you just love the word “Super”!) but no substance. But hopefully it will have the effect of upping the ante and making health a bigger issue in the upcoming election. Hopefully the government can come up with a better plan than Rudd’s efforts so far.

I never bothered to get a MySpace, and don’t even really know why I bothered to do this, but I now have a Facebook. At this stage it looks like quite a well set up, elegant, and versatile application, but I don’t know how much I’ll be using it.

For the time being though, to keep it fresh, I’ve added a plugin so my blog posts here will automatically be posted there also. That way at least I’ll have a bit of dynamic content instead of a stagnant facebook - so long as I update this blog that is. Anyway, if you have a facebook yourself, let me know your thoughts on it, and please add me as a friend. I only have one so far (thanks Rodney!) Oh and I found there is a group for Five Senses Coffee, so I’ve signed up for that. That’s about all I’ve gotten around to so far.

Discovered this personality test over at Hamo’s blog. Seems reasonably accurate, as far as I can tell. Visit MyPersonality.info to sign up and do the test yourself, and let me know how it goes Or click on the box below to discover more about my personality results…

slacktivist: Prayer

In this post Fred mentions the unbelievable story of a crazy Southern Baptist Pastor who asked his congregation to pray for the deaths of two leaders of a “separation of church and state” organisation for asking the tax office to investigate him after he endorsed a political candidate on the church’s letterhead. Firstly, although I don’t agree with this kind of church supported political endorsement, I think these activists are being a bit pedantic for attacking this church over that kind of thing. But what is really insane is this pastor and his flock praying for the deaths of these guys because of it. Can you ever imagine Jesus (you know the guy who said “turn the other cheek” and “pray for those who persecute you” - Matt 5:44) praying such a thing or encouraging his disciples to do so? As Fred suggests, this sort of thing is what we have come to expect from Muslim extremist leaders and their fatwas - it should not be coming from a Christian pulpit. Only gives ammunition to the “all religions are bad” type athiests.

However, I do like the recent quote he gives from Barack Obama on the utility of prayer :

OBAMA: I believe in the power of prayer. And part of what I believe in is that, through prayer, not only can we strengthen ourselves in adversity, but that we can also find the empathy and the compassion and the will to deal with the problems that we do control. Most of the issues that we’re debating here today are ones that we have the power to change. We don’t have the power to prevent illness in all cases, but we do have the power to make sure that every child gets a regular checkup and isn’t going to the emergency room for treatable illnesses like asthma. We may not have the power to prevent a hurricane, but we do have the power to make sure that the levees are properly reinforced and we’ve got a sound emergency plan. And so, part of what I pray for is the strength and the wisdom to be able to act on those things that I can control. And that’s what I think has been lacking sometimes in our government. We’ve got to express those values through our government, not just through our religious institutions.

This is what real prayer involves - prayer and action. Asking for God’s help not just to miraculously change the world, but to change us and hence change the world through us. Now that’s real, sensible, Christian talk.

Glad to be coming to the end of the working week. It hasn’t been too bad a week, lots of colds and flus, lots of minor procedures today for some reason, only one life and death emergency the other day which all worked out okay. But it’s my first full 5 day week for around 2 months so I’m glad to be approaching the weekend.  Next weekend is my first on-call since being back, which may not be a bad thing to help pay the bills, and to start saving for my time off in October on the next Uganda trip. Have had a few emails over the last day or so from various people regarding the medical team which is a timely reminder that I need to start thinking about it and getting organised. Especially I need to start brushing up on my tropical medicine again - I might get out the cool African medicine textbook I picked up last month in Uganda.

Also today I was dropped off two big boxes of Lego which I bought off eBay from a guy in Mandurah. It was nice of him to drop it in to me at work, saving me a trip to pick it up. Also, in addition the the one box I had bid on, he threw in an even bigger box of Lego he had found. So it looks like me and the boys will be busy building stuff this weekend I used to love Lego as a kid and we are all pretty enthused about it after visiting Legoland. They had a cool “pick-n-mix” shop where you could fill a bag with lego pulled out of these little bins, kinda like a lolly shop. Anyway, better see my last couple of patients and then get outta here.

Fantastic quote I read yesterday from St Gregory of Nyssa :

“Concepts create idols, only wonder understands anything”

I just love that phrase, “only wonder understands” - it really captures the centrality of a sense wonder and mystery that we all too often lack in our modern world, a sense that gets diluted by concrete concepts and a scientific view of the world… It would also make a very cool blog title, or album title, catchphrase, whatever.

Ben Witherington: Hermeneutics– A Guide for Perplexed Bible Readers

Great post this from Ben Witherington, giving a few basic principles to keep in mind for Biblical interpretation. His three main guidelines are :

1) ‘What it meant is what it means’.

2) ‘Context is king’.

3) Genre matters.

Very sensible stuff and well worth reading through. He gives some entertaining illustrations along the way. Be prepared to be motivated to do more in-depth bible study though rather than settling for a superfical reading.

It seems there are some problems with this blog not displaying correctly in some older versions of Microsoft Internet explorer. The columns are not always lined up properly and the Right sidebar seems to be getting lost completely.

I’ll do my best to try and get this fixed but in the meantime may I suggest trying to download Microsoft Internet Explorer version 7 (get it here for Windows XP) or even better, download Mozilla Firefox, which is a much nicer browser. Not only will it make this page display properly, but it will enhance your entire web browsing experience

Laridian Electronic Publishing » PocketBible for Windows Now Available

Laridian are my favourite Bible software company. I used their software on my Palm, now I have it on my PocketPC, and now I can have it on my Windows PC also, with the release of PocketBible for Windows. The beauty of this is that all the various Bible versions, commentaries, dictionaries and other books I have purchased from them can now be viewed on my PC without having to pay for them all over again. All I have to do is login to their website and re-download the versions for Windows, saving me hundreds of dollars.

Also they have a version for the iPhone coming out next week. No word about a Mac OS version though…

EDIT : I’ve also created a file which contains our church Bible reading plan for use with Pocket Bible. This is a great plan which takes your through the OT once and NT twice each year. You can download the installer file for Pocket Bible for PocketPC here . There is no installer for Pcoket Bible for Windows but you can get the plan in there by copying the “lbk” file in this zip file into the directory where your other Laridian Books are installed. I’ve also discovered this can be done for any other Laridian books for PocketBible for PocketPC, even the ancient ones which don’t have a Windows installer available for download…

DreamWorks, Paramount drop Blu-ray - Home Entertainment Articles | Digital Life

I’ve been prevaricating on this issue for some time, especially since Blu-Ray were seeming to be getting the upper hand in the HD DVD format war, but now major studios Dreamworks and Paramount have declared they will be releasing their movies exclusively on HD-DVD from now on. So for movies like Shrek The Third, this will be the only format. I still think the battle is far from over, but it’s about time for me to dip my feet in, especially since the cheapest of all HD options is an add-on drive for the Xbox-360 at less than $200. Actually there’s a bit of a groundswell behind Xbox now - they’ve lowered their prices, added HDMI in the newest consoles, have MSN support now, and have some good games coming onstream. The latest we are playing is an oldie but a goodie - the classic Prince of Persia, downloadable on Xbox live arcade.

Happy with my home PC at the moment - put an extra 2 Gig of RAM in last night which has made a big difference in terms of speed and stability. Combined with my internet speed boost last week it’s made the Vista experience much less frustrating, although I’ll still be watching with interest the results of ob1’s foray into the world of Apple.

Here’s the first photo of the latest member of our family, who we expect around the 12th of March next year. I nearly had a heart attack today when Jen’s doctor who did the scan (who’s a friend of mine) rang me up and said congratulations on the triplets! Fortunately for all of us he was kidding…

Ten weeks and one day today by the ultrasound date.

WesternAustralia.tv

It’s often hard for locals to get enthusiastic about Western Australian tourism. We love living here but if you ask us to tell someone why they should visit we don’t find it particularly easy. I’m not sure why that is but I know I felt a little bit of that feeling when talking with our friends in the US recently. I think a couple of the big challenges to WA tourism stem from our geography - firstly our isolation means you really have to have a good reason to go the extra mile (or 2000 miles) to travel here when visiting the Eastern states, and secondly the vast distances involved within WA mean many of the potential tourist draws may be thousands of kilometres apart.

The above site (which I found on Rodney’s blog) goes a long way towards addressing this ineptitude on our part. It’s ostensibly a tourism advertising site, but features heaps of cool videos which demonstrate what a great place WA is. If you’re a local, check it out and remind yourself of how lucky we are to live in a place like this… and if you’re not a local, check it out and you’ll want to become one

Here’s a sample…

Up until today I have been with the same internet provider, iiNet, for about ten years or so. From a small Western Australian company to one of the biggest ISPs in this part of the world I’ve stuck with them, usually a loyal and satisfied customer.

Over the last year or two, however, I’ve become increasingly frustrated with them. Firstly with their continuing failure to upgrade my local telephone exchange in Warnbro to enable high speed ADSL2 broadband (despite almost every other exchange in Perth being upgraded), and then with the steadily eroding value of their plans for ADSL1 broadband.

Today, after all this time my relationship with iiNet is finally over. After a bit of web research I have jumped ships, changing to a faster (though still ADSL1) plan with much more generous download allowance on a company called aanet. And so far I’m very happy. The plan is very good value, the application process was painless, and the changeover went very smoothly. From my 512/128 connection on iiNet I’m now on a 6912/384 connection and it is sweet. I can download files in an instant, watch YouTube videos in real time with no delay waiting for it to download. I just wish I wasn’t such a loyal customer and made this change a long time ago.

Note : this now means if anyone has an @iinet.net.au email address for me or Jen you need to change it. Just use our first names @ baggas.com and it will find it’s way to us. Thanks.

As I keep telling everyone it’s good to be home, although I’m less enthusiastic about being back here at work today. Looks like one of my patients will be having her baby later today also, so it’s not even a gentle ease back into work. Nothing much seems to have changed though. I’ve been here 2 hours and already half of my patients have either been late or not turned up at all.

We arrived home from Sydney late on Friday night and have spent the last 3 days unpacking, catching up with family, and starting to get the house organised again. I’m aware of the need to be organised as it’s less than 2 months now before my next trip to Uganda, which will be more full-on two weeks plus of medical work. I’m sure that time is going to fly.

Overall it was a great trip - we went to some cool places and spent time with some great people. It was good to be able to relax a bit in Hawaii last week since by that point we were all getting a little tired, especially the kids and Jen. I’m totally sold now on the concept of a tropical island vacation As for the round-the-world trip idea it might be a few years before we attempt such an ambitious trip again, especially since we have a new baby coming in March next year and we would want to wait until that child is 3 or 4 before we were to travel on so many flights. So for the next couple of years we’ll keep our family holidays within Australia or nearby countries. Having said all that I really loved visiting America so I do look forward to getting back there at the first opportunity.

OK, time to go check if any of my patients have showed up…

Final day of our trip today and we’re looking forward to being home in a few hours. At the moment I’m on an internet kiosk in the lobby of our hotel in Sydney whilst waiting for a taxi to come and take us to the airport. We arrived here last night after a 10 hour flight from Honolulu and spent the morning having a quick look around Sydney. Caught a ferry from Darling Harbour to Circular Quay, took the obligatory Opera House and Harbour Bridge Photos, walked into the city, relaxed in Hyde Park, browsed the Queen Victoria Building shops, and then caught the monorail back to Paddy’s Market’s which are directly across from our hotel. A very rushed day in Sydney, but not a bad one. The weather here is absolutely perfect although I’m afraid the forecast for home in Perth doesn’t look so pleasant.

The few days we had in Hawaii were great. It’s such a beautiful place that I look forward to visiting again. The first day we spent in Waikiki, hanging around town and then on the beach. The next day we took a drive to the North Shore, had a swim and snorkel in Waimea Bay and then drove clockwise around the island of Oahu back to our hotel in Waikiki. Certainly it was one of the more scenic drives I’ve ever had - so many beautiful beaches and spectacular mountains. On the third day we went to see the memorial at Pearl Harbour but the wait was over an hour and the kids were too tired to endure it, so we ended up going into Downtown Honolulu for a while and then spent the afternoon swimming before a wonderful dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, as recommended by my mum.

Anyway our taxi should be here in a minute so I’d better go. Next time I update it will be from home :0)

Aloha! This morning I awoke to find myself in Hawai’i, and so far it is living up to expectations – beautiful surroundings, perfect beaches, friendly people. After another sub-par American Airlines flight from LA (they had the five of us, including 2 little kids, seated in five randomly separated seats – this time it didn’t take too much time to fix it) I was exhausted last night, and couldn’t wait to collapse into bed, after hauling the luggage up to our rooms and consuming the obligatory Hawaiian pizza.

This morning I woke up, pulled open the blinds, and I was in paradise. This is the view from our hotel in Waikiki…

We decided to take a leisurely stroll through the streets of Waikiki, had breakfast, and did a bit of shopping at a local market. Waikiki is very reminiscent of the Gold Coast back home but somehow feels a lot more relaxed and less frantic. I’m not sure if it was because it was Sunday morning but there weren’t too many people about, except on the beach itself, which is where we will be heading after lunch. The other thing that surprised me about Waikiki is how compact it is, once again compared to the Gold Coast. There’s only two or three streets between the beach and the Ala Wai canal, and the length of the strip is only a mile or so.

The other thing I found amusing was that driving the streets of Honolulu and Waikiki last night felt somehow familiar, and then I realised it was because of my Xbox 360 game, Test Drive Unlimited, which is set on Oahu. I now realise just how authentic that game actually is. I could have brought the map out of the game box and it would have helped me get around here. I look forward to taking a drive out in the countryside tomorrow and taking in some of the scenery of this beautiful island

I suppose I should also recap on the last few days, since it’s been a little while since I last blogged. Thursday we went to Disney’s California Adventure Park, which was surprisingly good.Much quieter than Disneyland itself but with a heap of good things to look at and some great rides – the best of the ones I went on were the California Screamin’ roller coaster and the Grizzly River Rapids ride. Friday we took it fairly easy, did a bit of shopping at a huge mall in Orange County – South Coast Plaza, and took the kids to see the new movie Underdog, which was excellent.

And that’s our plan for the next three days we have in Hawaii – take it fairly easy. Spend some time on the beach, take some drives around the island and mostly just relax. I don’t know if we will get around to see the big tourist sites like Pearl Harbour since the kids probably don’t have the energy and patience at this stage of the trip. Any suggestions for things to do or places to visit from Hawaii veterans out there?

Today we again went to Disneyland, and this time had a much better day than we did on Saturday. It was a bit cooler and less crowded (although we ended up missing out on the Nemo ride since we didn’t want to spend two and a half hours in line). Overall we did a lot more rides and had a great time. Owen once again got to take part in Jedi training - now he has fought both Darth Vader and Darth Maul, and we watched the Disney parade which was nice. Best ride of the day was Splash Mountain. Tomorrow we hit Disney’s California Adventure park.

For now, here’s a few photos from our time so far in California - from Disneyland, Legoland, and in Hollywood. I’ll leave it up to you to work out which is which…