~tomcarpenter

Hello all.

Just a quick journal entry to displace that one from hideously long ago...

Anyone else notice how the smells have changed all of a sudden with the season? Also at this time of year my house gives off this spooky rattle that comes from different parts of the walls at different times just as I try to go to sleep. When it starts doing that you can't help imagining how many people have lived/died in a house this old...<shudders>.
Then the sleep paralysis comes. CHRIST that's scary.

Ooh also...first photographic commission lined up - getting paid (yes, with *real money*) to cover the school leavers' ball.

Must return to this b*tching Death of a Salesman coursework before the ol' Writer's Block comes back for another week...

I've been back a week now but haven't got round to putting anything on DevArt.

The trip was great, except for those 'oh shit' moments where you realise you're on the side of a mountain and there's a thunderstorm, the rain is closing in, and you're carrying what you thought was a walking pole but is actually a highly efficient conducting rod. Erp.

The trip was full of similar moments, when it dawns on you you inadvertantly offered to buy a prostitute a drink when trying only to buy one for yourself and the drunk man you're talking to in Russian is not going to go away and is suprisingly agile considering his wooden leg.
Continuing on the theme it's always nice to watch these things happen to other people, like watching the said drunken man grope Chris D., or watching a middle-aged Chinese woman in Beijing repeatedly offer James H. 10 Yuan (just over a dollar) for the use of his body. Aheheh.

'Course the trip wasn't *always* like this, and to prove it I have some pictures which should be ready sometime next week.

Tomorrow I leave for a month-long trek in Mongolia. No idea how i'm going to keep under the 20kg baggage limit...

I'm equipped with 20 rolls of film and a Nikon F80, so I should bring back at least a few decent shots of "the land of the blue sky".

So don't expect anything from me for a while.

See y'all in a month or so.

Well i've finished my weeks's work experience at the JR now, an experience that was on occasions fascinating and on others mind numbing.

They took to calling me "Doogie" behind my back, because Ashwin the SHO said I look like Doogie Howzer off "Doogie Howzer, M.D." - an old series about a 12-year-old boy who becomes a doctor. It must have been the white coat...

Anyway, the videos of open heart surgery didn't put me off, so it looks like the career of medicine may well be mine...

Since they couldn't find anything to do to i was sent around the hospital making up questions for a quiz for future medical students. Met up with Char too, which was nice, who's been working in the research building. By the end I was reduced to questions such as: "On level 8 there is a door. What is written in the small circle in its top left hand corner?".

Anyway, everyone was very nice, and frustrations with the bureaucracy of the NHS management were more than evident. Under a new directive, all the bins in this MRSA-fearing hospital will be emptied every 2 weeks. Oh well...

Anyway, I leave for the Mongolian outback in a week's time. I should bring back a *load* of pictures due to some handy Kodak film sponsorship! The best will go up here.

Quote of the day:
"The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease."
-Voltaire

Woohooo 100 views!


One hundred (presumably satisfied) customers: