As the Venn diagram of readers of my departmental newsletter (approx 150) and readers of my blog (numbers undisclosed but there’s an < in there unfortunately) barely overlap, I feel confident that there will be no pushback if I cannibalize today’s editorial for the purposes of my blog and enabling me to publish it before we sail out of range of my vodaphone data.
“As my cruise ship toiled it’s way through a wind tunnel towards our capital city this morning, I thought “who would want to live here??”, but as the clouds parted and we came into the sheltered harbour, I started to feel happier about my chosen place of domicile. For one thing, it doesn’t have the furnace like temperatures of Australia. Ok, they can play cricket, but does that help you when you’re on fire? No, it doesn’t.
My daughters and I are in the middle of a cruise around New Zealand. I’d been concerned about the week’s weather reports for a while – not to mention last week’s volcanic eruption – but it has actually been a very pleasant and easy experience. A simple and relatively cheap way to see our beautiful country. I didn’t realize, but you can actually join and end your cruise at any point you like – so we could have caught the ship from Wellington last week and got off today, instead of doing Auckland return. It took me forever just to drive up to Taupo last Friday, and that was with no traffic (yes, I snuck away a little early from my mornings OPD, I will confess). It’s just a much longer distance than I realized – google maps can only tell you so much. However, we enjoyed the chance to catch up with old friends and family up in Auckland. (Yes, I am a JAFA). And today, while other visitors are exploring our environs, complaining about the wind, and clogging up the cable car, I am at home, doing my washing, mowing the lawn (it’s gone wild), and writing my very last editorial of the year. No matter that the room appears to be pitching and yawing as I sit here, due to my obviously well developed sea legs. I was informed somewhat firmly by our departmental 2IC last week what my New Years resolution is going to be – learn desktop publishing – so expect to see some less polished and rather erratic formatting of your newsletter some weeks in the next year. I was somewhat chagrined to discover how much time and effort (my last co editor) was putting into publishing the newsletter before she left. It never looked like particularly hard work to me… the corollary is, of course, that the other editors will be stepping up their written inputs from now on. There’s no reason I should be the sole mouthpiece of this venerable organ.
I don’t know what the changes to anaesthetic technician training is going to do for us on the ground, I hope nothing negative for all of our sakes. On the other hand, the introduction of the Da Vinci surgical robot to a hospital near you can only be a positive thing, right? I’m anticipating better surgical access, lower blood loss, and improved anaesthetic control of music choices, for starters.
Thank you once again to everyone who has contributed to the newsletter this week. Your input is what makes this newsletter great.
This is the last edition of the year, we take a festive fortnights break now and will return on Friday 10th January. Am expecting many reports in the vein of “what I did on my holidays”
Thank you all for your support this year. Please continue with contributions and feedback. Many thanks to my co editors for all your (obviously under appreciated) hard work over the year.
Seasons Greetings, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.”(sorry to take so long to close those speech marks – I hope I haven’t traumatized anybody).
I didn’t mention I also walked the dogs while I was at home. I actually met some people from my cruise whilst doing so – I knew they were tourists by their inevitable cruise ID lanyard, and the fact that they said “lovely dogs!” rather than “put those bloody dogs on a lead!”.
My co editor had to google JAFA.