Lost and Found

After numerous phone calls back and forth between myself and the New Zealand Airlines baggage center in L.A., my bike was finally located, flown to L.A., and delivered to my place today. It apparently had never left Brisbane in the first place. Arghh! That's five days from the time I left Brisbane to the time they delivered the bike to me. I am glad it turned up again, but I really hope they do a better job and actually put the box on the plane when I leave for NZ at the end of December. I don't want to spent a quarter of my time in NZ holed up in Auckland waiting for my bike.

Hey Little Dude!

My nephew Ethan is almost eight months old. When he first saw me at the train station, he wasn't quite sure how to react, but warmed up to me after a couple of hours.

He is so cute - when he's not crying.

The Long Way Home

I am packing, not for going home, but for my cycling trip in New Zealand on my way back to Australia. Going home is the easy part, packing-wise. I am sure I have some clothes left at home to wear, but packing for the cycling trip requires a lot of planning, much more than my cycling trip to Vietnam last year.

Packing for a cycling trip to Vietnam was so easy, I did it in half an hour. In Vietnam, food was good, cheap, and everywhere; cheap accommodation was also found everywhere. So it was like a catered trip. New Zealand, on the other hand, is much more sparsely populated and things are not cheap. So I will have to bring all of my camping gear, making the packing a bit more complicated. So I take out my packing list for a cycling trip and my packing list for a camping trip, get a box from a bike shop, and get to work.

And, with my bike taken apart and put into the box and everything else in a duffel bag, I am ready to go.

Auckland from the air

My flights from Brisbane to L.A. via Auckland are uneventful. After clearing immigration at LAX, I stroll over to baggage claim. My duffel comes tumbling down the carousel, but my bike is nowhere to be seen. I stand and wait by the odd-size baggage area. As the baggage area clears of people from the flight, I know something is not right. A brief chat with the baggage guy confirms my suspicion: they have lost my bike. Well, at least they have lost it now, and hopefully not when I am in New Zealand and needing my bike a month from now. I fill out a form and walk out of the airport terminal unencumbered.

Next, at the train station, I find out that train tickets to Fresno are all sold out for the day. Oh, right, it is the Sunday after Thanksgiving - everyone is traveling. It did not occur to me to book my train ticket ahead of time; I didn't think that many people actually travel by train in the US. Apparently I was wrong. So I crash the night at my cousin's place.

On Monday morning, with train tickets in hand, I board the bus for Bakersfield. I have to travel by bus over the mountains north of L.A. into the Central Valley of California, then pick up the train in Bakersfield where the train line starts.

Twenty miles out of Bakersfield, the train comes to a halt. After a while, the speakers crackle to life. The conductor announce that a freight train in front of us had hit a truck at a crossing, someone was killed, so we have to go back to Bakersfield. In Bakersfield, the bus takes us around the site of the accident to Wasco, where we board another train. Six-and-half hours after leaving L.A., I finally get to Hanford train station, where my mom, my sister, and my little nephew have been waiting.

I am finally home! But my bike is still lost, sitting somewhere in Brisbane, Auckland, or LAX.

Black Friday Frenzy

It is three o'clock in the morning, snow is falling, covering everything in sight in a light blanket of ghostly white powder. The faint moonlight reflects off the snow, casting eerie shadows on the long line of people waiting outside the store. The line of people have been there for a while now. Some are covered in heavy blankets, asleep but mindful of their surroundings lest someone cuts in line, some are huddling together, some are stomping their feet to wake up their frozen toes, some are sipping on cups of fast cooling coffee. Just one more hour before the store opens, inside is what these people have been waiting for, something so essential that people would forgo their dinner the night before just so they can wait at the head of the line. As the clock strikes four, the doors to the store clank open. The people surge forward, eagerly lurch inside, and elbow their way through before everything is sold out.

This may sound like people in the Soviet Union waiting in line for bread, but it is actually how I imagine the scenes of people waiting in line for the Black Friday sale in the United States.

I was reading the news online and came across articles describing the frenzy of shopping the day after Thanksgiving. I couldn't help but notice the parallel between the bread lines of the Soviet Union and the "electronics lines" of the United States. In both cases, line are created when demand outstrips supply. The main difference is our "electronics lines" are formed voluntarily. The demand is not for basic necessities of life, but perceived need created by advertising and our way of life. The lengths people would go to "save" money are astonishing: missing Thanksgiving dinner, braving the cold, risking bodily harm, and generally enduring self-inflicted misery. Is buying something you don't need for half off really saving money?

Later, Hervey Bay

I didn't think I have that much stuff. But after I put everything in boxes, backpacks, and bags, the spread in the living room starts to get me worried. I may not be able to fit everything into my little car. A second trip - an extra eight hours - is looking depressingly likely.

Not one to be discouraged, I fold down the backseat and start putting boxes into the car. One after another, bit by bit, every inch of room gets filled by my stuff. At the end, as if defying the laws of physics, all of my crap is crammed into the car. I can even see out of the left rear-view mirror!

So with the car packed to capacity, I drive out of the Hervey Bay Maryborough Road for the last time.

Whoa, We’re Halfway There!

Woohoo! Exams are over, and I am a free man for the next two months. How I need the break, especially after such brutal exams yesterday.

The exams were in Bundaberg, a little over an hour away from Hervey Bay. They were horrible. I must have looked terrified while I was sitting in the lobby of the hospital waiting to get called in. Nurses, wardies, and everyone else who walked past me stopped to tell me, “It’s not that bad.” After an excruciatingly long wait, I was finally given my patient. Then the rest happened so fast, I hardly noticed that time just flew by. At the end, the examiner said cryptically, “I’m not allowed to give you feedback at this point. But enjoy your break and I’ll see you next year.” Yeah, hopefully not in the same scenario.

I spent the rest of the day stewing over little details that went wrong in the exams and every answer that I got wrong or needed prompting for and the awkward silences when I didn’t know what to say, until the evening when I got together with a few of the doctors from the medical team and had mulled wine. Ah, alcohol, I am so glad we are friends again.

Today’s plan: pack up everything I own into my car.

Tomorrow: drive to Brisbane.

Sunday: fly out to California.

Next Wednesday: off to Washington, DC.

And that’s just the plans for the next seven days.

It’ll be a good summer break.

Waiting for the Execution

Tomorrow I will be taking the exams for medicine rotation, and I am feeling restless, unable to concentrate, and in complete sympathetic overdrive. Studying? So over it. I have been staring at the pages of my books and nothing seemed to have gotten through. This afternoon, feeling like I was getting nowhere with studying, I went to the pool for a swim. After jumping into the pool, I felt like my arms were made of putty and just wouldn’t cooperate to allow me a good swim. After splashing around in the lane for a half hour, moving like I’d just learned to swim, I gave up and walked back home.

I don’t know why I am feeling so nervous. You’d think after having taken so many exams in my life, it wouldn’t be a big deal anymore. Maybe it’s because the whole exam is live, as opposed to written like almost all of the other exams I’d taken before. Maybe it’s because my grade for the whole rotation will be from the exam tomorrow. Or maybe it’s actually excitement from knowing that I am one day away from a two-month holiday.

I take my pulse. Forty-eight per minute – pretty normal for me. Maybe I am not that nervous after all. But my palms are sweaty and have been for the last three days. I feel like I am waiting for my execution tomorrow, watching the clock tick away, dreading the inevitability of it but, at the same time, looking forward to when it’s over.

All right, no more studying. I am going to watch some video clips on Youtube and hopefully I will get tired at some point.