After the Bunny Slope, It's the Double Black Diamond

I'll be in a small town called Dalby for the next three weeks. Dalby is about two hundred kilometers west of Brisbane. The town was practically dead when I arrived yesterday. All the shops were closed except for a couple of convenience stores and petrol stations. Then I remember in rural Australia they still have no-trading Sundays. The few places that do open on Sundays boldly advertise "Open 7 Days" in front. Yup, there's no mistake that I'm doing my rotation in a rural place now.

I'm spending these three weeks at Dalby General Hospital with James, another Year 3. In the morning, we dress in our normal clinical clothes of shirt and tie and walk into the hospital. We introduce ourselves to the consultant (that's what they call their attending physicians here). "Take off your ties, you're making me look bad," the consultant tells us. Sheepishly, we take off our ties to mock protestation from the nurses.

After morning rounds, it's clinic and A&E (Accidents and Emergency, it's what they call their Emergency Room here). The first patient that comes in has a cut on his hand that requires suturing. "Have you done suturing before?" The consultant asks us. "On a pig's foot." I answer. "Good, you can do the suturing on this patient." Cool! I start to prep but have no idea where anything is. It wouldn't take a second for the patient to see that we are new. But he just sits there stoically. "Brave guy," I think to myself while the nurse helpfully lays out the
tray. I put on the pair of sterile gloves. The consultant talks me through the steps to anesthetize the area and prep the wound using aseptic techniques. With that done, I start the suturing. I hesitate for a bit, trying to find a good spot to place the needle. With a flick of my wrist, the needle sinks into the skin. It feels pretty much the same as the pig's foot - same amount of resistance, same amount of blood oozing out. With that initial hesitation over, I now just imagine the hand as the pig's foot I sutured last week. With each knot tied, my motion grows more fluid. Before long, the five stitches are in. I clean the wound, then look up at the consultant. He gives a nod of approval. All right! That wasn't too bad.

So just like that, after last week's hand-holding on the bunny slope, we find ourselves staring down the double black diamond with the coach pushing us off. These three weeks are going to be crazy, but it's going to be an awesome learning experience.

Rural Rotation: Prep Week

We get up, have breakfast, go to this lecture and that talk, have activities, have lunch, have more activities, then go back to the dorms for dinner; after dinner we sit around a fire, make s'mores and sing "Kumbaya." The next day: repeat.

Okay, I made up the part about sitting around a fire and singing kumbaya, but the rest of it was true, and it was very much like summer camp. That made up the rural rotation prep week for about thirty of us Year 3 med students. I'm glad we're starting with such a cruisy week, because I definitely haven't gotten my brain back in medicine mode yet.

We got to learn and practice all kinds of practical skills like plastering, using a defibrillator, injection, intubation, scrubbing for surgery, cannulation, venipuncture, and my favorite, suturing. Some people came from nursing background or already knew how to do some of the things, but for most of us, it's all new. We were like kids in kindergarten learning to tie shoe laces for the first time. So it was good that we had pig limbs and mannequins to practice on. Everyone knew that next week when we start our rotation for real, we'll actually do these things to real people. Poor rural patients...

The week flew by fast. We headed our separate ways this afternoon and will be scattered throughout southern Queensland for the next six weeks. It's a long weekend with Australia Day on Friday. Better rest up, because next week is the real deal.

Starting Third Year

With the summer break behind me, it's time to get ready to start Year 3 of medical school. The first two years of med school were mainly classroom-based studying. This and next year will consist of clinical rotations. Each rotation runs for eight weeks, with one week off between rotations. This year's five rotations are: rural, surgery, mental health, GP, and medicine.

At the end of last year when I found out that international students were allowed to spend a whole year at a rural location, I jumped at the chance and got a spot at Hervey Bay. I wanted to spend a year at a rural hospital for two reasons: one, to see how medicine is practiced in regional/rural areas; two, to see if I like living in a rural area. I want to stay in Australia afterI finish med school. As an international student, chances are that I will be allocated a spot in a rural area. It would be much better to find out now whether this rural thing is for me.

Hervey Bay (pronounced "Hahvee Bay"), situated 300 kilometers north of Brisbane, is a town of 50,000 people. Anyone who has been to Frazer Island would have stayed in Hervey Bay. It's a spread-out, laid back town that makes the pace in Brisbane seem hectic. The population, as I was told, consists mostly of "newly weds and nearly deads," with a healthy proportion of backpackers thrown in for good measure.

Compared to capital cities like Brisbane where an efficient public transport system makes it effortless to get around without a car, public transport in rural areas is sorely lacking and a car is definitely a requirement. So after my housemates and I moved out of our house, I looked and found a car. It's a little Daihatsu Charade with a three-cylinder engine. I am sure there are ride-on lawn mowers in the States that have bigger engines than this car. But at the same price as a return flight from Brisbane to New York, it's a steal.

The med school will give me free accommodation for the whole year. I will be living in a house with other third-years. Yesterday I drove my new (well, new to me) car with some of my stuff up the coast to Hervey Bay. It almost felt like freshman year in college when I moved into the dorms.

We had an orientation session this morning. Doctors from different departments came to give little talks. From the way they talked to us, it felt like they were already recruiting us to stay and work here. At the end, I almost wanted to jump up and start working. Okay, not quite, but I am sold. Hey, Australia, how about a permanent resident visa, huh?

I am taking off for Brisbane tomorrow. Even though Hervey Bay will be my home for this year, I won't be living here until March. My first rotation, which starts next week, is rural rotation. I don't really know what to expect, but I know I will be sent to two small towns, Dalby and Chinchilla, in outback Queensland. But first I will spend one prep week in Toowoomba. After living out of a suitcase for two months, I will move to Hervey Bay for the rest of the year.

Cycling Trip Recap

I stepped out of the Brisbane airport two nights ago and expected to be hit by the wall of air thickened by heat and humidity that hangs around Brisbane all summer. But no, it was actually cooler than when I left in late November! Did Australia move south by a few degrees while I was gone? Not that I am complaining, but saying this is unseasonably cool is an understatement. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts. I am sure it will heat back up pretty soon. Summer is only half over.

During my trip to Vietnam and Malaysia, I anal-retentively logged all of my expenses. It is a habit I picked when I was traveling through Australia and Asia a few years back. It gives me a way to gauge the cost of traveling through a particular area and helps me set a realistic budget for other trips. Today I tabulated the expenses for this trip.

In Vietnam, I averaged US$11 per day on food and accommodation. With everything else thrown in, the average came to US$20 per day - right on target. Despite staying at the cheapest places I could find and eating street food most of the time, I never felt like I was mistreating myself (except maybe one time at a hotel where I couldn't quite tell if the rooms weren't for rent by the hour).

I posted a picture early on that showed the setup on my bike: rear panniers with a clip-on front container for valuables. Riding in Vietnam makes it easy to pack light.

These are the things I took on my trip:

Clothes:
- a light fleece jacket that packs small
- 2 T-shirts
- 1 short-sleeve cycling shirt
- 1 long-sleeve cycling shirt
- 1 pair of fast-dry pants that zips off at the knees (doubles as shorts)
- 1 pair of light-weight normal khaki pants
- 3 pairs of underwear
- 3 pairs of socks
- 1 pair of shy shorts (cycling tights with a loose-fitting nylon shell)
- 1 pair of sneakers
- 1 pair of thongs (the kind that goes on your feet, not the kind that goes up your crack)

Toiletry kit:
- shampoo in a small bottle
- soap
- facewash (the one luxury item I brought)
- toothbrush and toothpaste
- floss
- contact lenses and contact solution
- cotton swabs
- chapstick
- nail clippers
- deodorant
- razors and shaving gel
- hand cleanser
- DEET

Tools and spare parts:
- Adjustable wrench
- hand pump
- a multi-tool
- 2 spare inner tubes

Other stuff:
- flashing tail light for riding at night
- headlamp for riding at night and for blackouts
- alarm clock
- silk sleep sack for sleeping in beds of questionable hygiene
- guidebook (Lonely Planet's Cycling Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia)
- book of detailed maps of Vietnam
- Vietnamese phrase book
- Shadows and Wind (a book on the current situation of Vietnam)
- my Konica Minolta Dimage A2 camera and battery charger

The list looks long, but everything together weighs about thirteen kilos, including the clothes on my body. I put everything in plastic bags before packing them in the panniers. The few days when I got rained on, the panniers were completely soaked through. But the system worked well, my clothes and everything else stayed dry.

During the trip, I had to wash my clothes on a daily basis, but I had a very efficient way of doing laundry. Now, this works only if the bathroom floor was clean enough that I felt comfortable walking in without shoes (most places I stayed at had clean bathroom floors). I would step into the shower with my clothes on, then soap up. I would then strip off, throw the clothes on the floor, and stomp on them as I showered. By the time I finished, the clothes would only need a quick rinse and voila! Shower, done; laundry, ready to dry. By the next day, the cycling clothes would normally be dry enough to wear. If they were still a little damp, I put them on anyway - they would be soaked in sweat soon. This method served me well. I would always have fresh-smelling, if not the cleanest, clothes to wear.

And that is the secret to a successful cycling trip.

Last Stop: Kuala Lumpur

Going from Melaka to Kuala Lumpur is like time travel. Two hours of of bus ride takes me out of the quaint and twisting lanes of Melaka and dumps me straight into the snarling afternoon rush hour in KL that would make an Angeleno proud. If I weren't here to visit Andrea, my friend from high school whom I haven't seen in quite a few years, I think I would buy the next bus ticket to somewhere, anywhere.

Andrea is teaching at an international school in KL. Anyone who is a teacher ought to give this teaching abroad gig some serious consideration. I never knew any teacher who could afford the kind of lifestyle these ones have: an apartment with an office and a guest bedroom, cleaned weekly by a maid; the ability to support various habits, whether it's shopping or fine dining; and generally living large. It is such a contrast to the usually overworked and underpaid profession the world over. It seems that the international teaching circuit consists of a pretty small group of teachers. Maybe the thought of living in a different country is enough to deter most people? That is something I will never understand.

KL is the last stop on this trip. It is such a young city compared to Melaka, there is not a lot of historic sites to see. And it suits me just fine. Items on the agenda for these few days: sleep in, catch up with Andrea, walk around town, and eat street food.

Well, the trip is almost over. I will fly back to Brisbane in two days. It has been a lot of fun, exactly what I needed to end last year and start this one. I feel like I have given my mind sufficient rest and am now ready to tackle the challenges that await me this year. Whatever may lie ahead in Year Three of medical school...

View of the Petronas Towers from the Observation Deck of the KL Tower

The Petronas Twin Towers

Interior of the National Mosque

Minaret of Masjid Jamek

One Variety of Orchid at the Orchid Garden

The Bustling Petaling Street in Chinatown

Garland Maker in Little India

Beautiful and Fragrant Garlands for the Gods

New Year's Sale at the Sari Shop

Lord Murugan Stands Before a Hindu Temple Built into the Limestone Caves at Batu Caves

A Line of Ganeshes

"Oooh!"