fuck. dropped my cash card somewhere in london bridge station today. whenever you make a departure from your usual routine, you just know that something bad will happen.

made a trek all the way to canaray wharf, where i knew that there would definitely be a branch of my bank still open at lunchtime on a saturday. found out that there had been no activity on my account since i dropped the card.

wandered around canary wharf for a bit, taking in all the new developments properly for the first time in a long while, including cabot place west & cabot place east, canada place and the newest part of the docklands shopping experience, jubilee place. dont often get to be in this part of town. needed to kill some time anyway, before meeting up with narayan and heading into the west end for sarahs birthday party.

its pretty damn impressive how canary wharf has really come alive in the last few years. i remember when the whole of docklands was just one big industrial wasteland, before the regeneration began. then there was a phase of growth, but the skyscrapers seemed cold and the whole area, although new and flash, still had this bleak feel to it, with no real sense of community at all. but today, the place is buzzing! people everywhere, not just business types, but local residents too... out shopping in the vast mall complex or simply sitting in the many green areas that have sprung up in between the office blocks. the park on top of jubilee place was particularly impressive. reminded me of one of the city parks in taipei. in fact, with the hot and humid weather today, there were times when i felt i was back in taipei.

food of the day:

turkey, swiss and cranberry sandwich, £4.50, specials board, port of call, jubilee place, canary wharf
posted by Chas at 23:53
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
man! just my luck!

the one time that i go out the night before, so i get into work a little late and dont have time to see my preops before they come down from the ward and what happens? i get bollocked by the boss for not knowing my patients. the one time. sheesh... just my luck. still managed to deal with all my cases without any problem.

finished the day with acute gynae again. i was assessing the patients beforehand and this gynae registrar shows up. i didnt really get a good look to see who it was, but just handed her the notes for the patient id just finished with and carried on with the next. she asks me "so have you finished with this one chas?". wtf? "...with this one chas?"...

now im very good with peoples names and faces, but this colleague clearly knew me and i didnt seem to know her... this never happens! so i keep quiet about this for a while, hoping that something will click in my memory bank. until of course my boss asks her what her name is, for routine recording in the anaesthetic note. turns out this gynae reg behind the mask (that ive been working with on and off for the past three weeks she says!) was actually zara, andys daughter from med school! im like her uncle! small world or what! she even had the cheek to then tag an extra case to the end of the list!

food of the day:

m&s still water with natural strawberry and aloe vera, 500ml, 85p
posted by Chas at 23:29
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
right, another productive day and now off to a night out with niven and the guys from my old unit. should be a big one...

did a couple of good gynae cases this afternoon on my own. all pretty straightforward.

just heard in the last few minutes that mark hobson has been charged with those two double murders from two weekends ago (twins claire & diane sanderson and james & joan britton). pretty impressive to do four people all in one weekend. caught last weekend after sparking the biggest manhunt in the country for a long time. hes gonna go down...

food of the day:

only a ham & cheese salad torpedo roll. didnt have enough $$$ on me at lunchtime today. =(
posted by Chas at 18:14
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
well, finished early today. woohoo!

spent the whole damned day in day surgery. started with ortho in the morning and have just finished todays acute gynae list. did most of these on my own. not bad huh?

now to head into town to get something to eat and see what i can get at the next sale. missed the harrods sale (ended saturday), so dont wanna miss this one...

food of the day:

skipped lunch today, morning list overran. disaster! =(
posted by Chas at 17:04
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
excellent. a pleasant journey home from work via the scenic route today, taking in the sights and sounds of evening rush hour in docklands on the dlr.

another interesting case today (another one this week?)... some obscenely fat bloke over 200kg going for a gastric band, on a special heavy duty electronic bed needing 4 theatre staff to push. havent even got to airway management yet...

posted by Chas at 01:01
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
interesting case today...

got called down to resus (as duty anaesthetic registrar) to assess a bloke with a skull fracture that needed a head scan. emergency department had asked for airway assistance, as this dude was altered and thrashing around or some shit. as it turned out, he had clearly reached a peak in his fluctuating level of consciousness and was totally lucid and cooperative when i got to him. we snatched at the opportunity to take him to scanner without the need for intubation. nice one.

posted by Chas at 22:40
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
woohoo! just got back from seeing howard jones again! awesome! the dude is a GOD. period.

started out today by hooking up with simon, fishy, nat and janaka again, to complete the weekend meet. janaka had told us all to meet at this authentic sri lankan place that he frequents, sekara on lower grosvenor place, just round the corner from victoria and buckingham palace. the sunday buffet was ok, for a reasonable price, nothing special really. simon headed back up to scotland and we sat around in st james park for a while after lunch. fishy still had his pack of papers on him...

later on, headed to dagenham. yes, i know... wtf and all that... but hell, if howard jones is playing a date in london, however crap the venue, im FUCKING THERE. was gonna try to get up to newcastle for his gig there next month, but seeing as how i found todays gig, there probably wont be a need to head up north anymore. so yeah, the annual dagenham town show...

he played a shortened standard electronic set, including the prerequisite "what is love?" and the now familiar shaz sparks lead vocals remix of "all i want". cuz this was a relatively small open air gig, we were able to get to chat to him at the end. caught up with three of his more obscure backroom albums from the merchandise stall that i was missing, got him to sign his exclusive "piano solos for friends and loved ones" release. not one to bullshit, i got straight to the point...

me: you need to put out sheet music. all these years ive been playing your stuff by ear...
hojo: yeah, but that way you put your own interpretation into it.
me: but some of your chords are really hard to get!
hojos bro: well, we should think about that actually.

yeah right. wont hold my breath.

interesting:

animals on the underground.com

posted by Chas at 23:51
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
well, all in all, a long but useful day.

although not a member of the snug, i went along to the snug meet, which could equally have been one of the dnuk meets that i usually arrange, except for the fact that they didnt want certain people to be there...

after meeting in leicester square, simom, chloe, fishy and i waited at the all bar one for janaka and natalie to arrive. i then led them all down to galileos on haymarket for a late lunch. someone had mentioned italian, this place is always pretty good. chloe had already been planning to go to agent provocateur on this trip to london for ages, so fishy and i parked ourselves in some soho pub while she showed natalie how to blow an obscene amount of money on pants. meantime, simon went to dump his stuff at his overnight hotel and janaka buggered off to some lame concert that he had promised to attend.

after regrouping, interspersed with dinosaurs and various other animals from fishys stable, chloe had to catch the last train home out of london and we moved along the road to all bar one on cambridge circus. natalie insisted on dancing to 80s music, so we finally ended up in this really cheesy place, club! fantastic at sound in leicester square. imagine a club full of hen group slappers in their veils and bunny ears (wtf is that all about anyway?), all tarted up and screaming in gravesend accents, all with unfeasibly straight hair and parading blatant evidence of a distinctly reduced gene pool...

still, one should not let that detract from an excellent blast from the past evening of bananarama, belinda carlisle and bryan adams. was really good to see simon and chloe again too. as for fishy and his packet of papers... awesome. a successful meet. =)

food of the night (in typical on the way home from clubbing style):

preserved egg and sliced pork congee

posted by Chas at 04:11
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
man, northern line was severely fucked tonight... no service at all from the hospital for some reason. had to use the bus instead. took over 3 hours to get home. ugh...

handled (sic) another bbr* today. talking of breasts... some 18 yearold student from dover called sarah peter has put her 36dd left tit up for grabs (sic again) on ebay to fund a business studies course at university. she offers "unrivalled, complete and total access" to this left breast for a day to a whole week, depending on which source you come across. "i didnt have anything else to sell. but a mate said i could make a fortune out of my boobs and my left ones perfect so i thought, 'why not?'". "if it goes really well i might let you feel a right one as well". hmm...

bidding started at £1 and had apparently reached £290 after just six hours, with a target of £500 on a 10 day listing.

suckers! there are so many cheaper ways to feel a right tit...

food of the day:

cold roast chicken, coleslaw, chips

listened to:

a real blast from the past this... "hold on", wilson phillips! i forget just how great this track was! by total chance, i see that their new album "california", the first for ten years, gets a uk release very soon, on 9/8/04. ill definitely need to check this one out.

thinking of:

- looking forward to seeing chloe and simon again this weekend
- coming soon, ever closer... the olympics! woohoo!

----
* bbr = bilateral breast reduction

posted by Chas at 03:38
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
man, they dont ever tell you this, but you sweat like a pig in heat in the endoscopy room! i had managed to get myself assigned to todays ercp* list (dont ask!). dunno whether it was a combination of bad (no) ventilation in there and wearing heavy lead, with warm weather outside...

was sure glad to get called back out to recovery to sort out a desaturating quadriplegic from earlier in the list. turned out his asthma had flared up bigtime with the stress of the procedure. eventually settled and his sats picked up.
 
lets hope i dont have to go down there again soon...
 
food of the day:
 
a tasteless hospital lamb korma. a shame really, cuz korma is relatively easy to do.
 
----
* ercp = endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography
 

posted by Chas at 18:33
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
phew! took down a whole bunch of quite big gyn onc cases this morning back to back... felt really good. can feel the confidence growing.
 
food of the day (drug lunch):
 
m&s sandwiches (including some seafood crabstick salad combo filling, which was pretty good actually)... and only sandwiches. where the hell was the sushi? not gonna use heliox then. stupid woman.
 

posted by Chas at 13:22
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
ugh... bastards. got spoofed by the staff canteen today. a very rare occurrence indeed needless to say, but harsh nonetheless.

the menu said "indian lamb casserole", which i took to mean some sorta lamb curry. even looked ok on inspection. piled it on high in the usual way and headed for the checkout.

i only had five minutes before my afternoon list, so i sat down and tried to do this dish fast... turned out to be DAMN HOT for a hospital curry, with NO FLAVOUR other than heat. worst of all, there was NO LAMB, just lumpy brown sauce! spoof! argh!!

food of the day:

disappointing. very.

posted by Chas at 18:26
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
ok, so i took down a big hemicolectomy case virtually all by myself this morning. brought him back up fine and took him to high dependency. nice one. couple of small trauma cases this afternoon.

weather still shit today. rain, gale, cold... coldest july day on record or something. anyhow, i will brave the journey home...

hmm... "erotic gherkin", the popular description conjured up for the new swiss re building in the city of london. opened earlier this year. just who the hell comes up with these things?

food of the day:

tesco peppercorn infused salami and tesco parmesan coated salami (found in anaesthetic department kitchen fridge, left over from yesterdays sevoflurane lunch)

posted by Chas at 19:07
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
another busy day. not one, but two open jejunostomy tubes, together with a renal transplant. not bad huh?

was in the unit staff room the other day... cant recall who started it... was probably jelena or someone, but the convo moved to kids movies and disney movies in particular. man, id never thought about it like this before, but get this... these movies should be banned! appalling! why? cuz disney movie content is rife with SO MUCH FREAKING CHILD ABUSE!

- young girls being tricked into eating poisoned apples by ugly witches (snow white and the seven dwarfs)
- mothers being murdered in front of the childs very eyes (bambi)
- childhood best mates betraying each other (the fox and the hound)
- princesses cursed to die at the age of 16 by evil fairies (sleeping beauty)
- the trials and turmoil a boy has to go through to prove himself worthy of actually being a real boy (pinocchio)

the list goes on! and as for dumbo, man...

walt disney was a sick bastard.

watched:

"election" (alexander payne dir, mtv, usa, 1999). missed this at the cinema, on tv tonight. glad ive now finally seen it, was actually pretty good. ive always liked matthew broderick.

food of the day:

pork, apple and mustard casserole, rice

posted by Chas at 01:01
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
weather was pretty good this afternoon, so headed into town after work. chilled out in a trafalgar square that was packed with people all just umm... chilling out after work cuz the weather was pretty good i imagine. *shrug*

then it dawned on me... today was london formula 1 parade day! thats why there were so many people in town this evening. id totally forgot! grr...

a brisk walk towards lower regent street met with resistance along pall mall, where a mass of people had congregated trying to catch a glimpse of the teams and drivers involved, despite the fact that the parade was clearly over. never mind. a good promotion today aside, we all know that london wont ever get to host the british grand prix. those that think london can become another monaco, not likely. you can just see the uproar over disruption to the city and lack of public safety. the british are so good at picking bones at anything britain could take pride in. either that or therell just be a plain apathy, where noone gives a shit. nevertheless, one can still hope.

wong kei was busy tonight, no doubt because of the influx of visitors to london today. appeared much more like how this place used to appear years ago, with queues out of the door, not often seen these days.

listened to:

"whos david", busted. listened again more closely... never realised how harsh the lyrics are!

food of the day:

roast duck soup rice vermicelli and wonton soup noodles
posted by Chas at 23:00
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
OMFG...

EURO 2004 CHAMPIONS: GREECE

predicted. deserved. imho.

final score: portugal 0-1 greece

posted by Chas at 22:59
go ahead, roll the donut!

 
logged another couple of lmas* today, together with another gas induction on a cardiopath for a bone marrow.

another awesome game tonight, the second semifinal...

czech piled on the pressure during the second half, in what is now their usual way, loads of late attacking after a boring first half. but wtf... the greek defence were SO FUCKING UNBELIEVABLY TIGHT! i had always thought alessandro nesta was the best defender around... man, i dunno how they did it, but they totally locked out baros and koller.

then that killer header by dellas off a corner in added time at the end of the first half of silver goal extra time...

well, if not czech winning in the final as i had previously been adamant about, then it could only be the team that beat czech. so in my mind, greece will now win over portugal on sunday. simple as that.

final score: greece 1-0 czech republic, silver goal

food of the day:

turkey, bean & tomato casserole, rice

----
* lma = laryngeal mask airway

posted by Chas at 23:51
go ahead, roll the donut!