Where's the Seafood in Hervey Bay?

Ok, so you live in a place next to the ocean, I mean the beach is within walking distance. Is it too much to ask for a decent selection of seafood? Why is it that I've yet to find a shop with a good variety of fish and seafood? I actually had better luck down in Brisbane. I guess the fishermen can sell their catch to Brisbane at a better price than they can in a small town like Hervey Bay. So I'm left with having to check the fisherman's co-op every now and then for their intermittent delivery of fresh catch. Arghhh.

I'm in luck today. The fisherman's co-op just got a fresh load of fish this morning. I picked up a giant whole red emperor. For dinner tonight: steamed red emperor in ginger and scallions with silverbeet cooked in garlic, served on a blend of jasmine and brown rice.

Shut Off Your Brain and Cook

Another reason I like to cook: it's my down time. After a full day of racking my brain while being quizzed by registrars, consultants, and tutors, cooking dinner allows me to turn off my brain and tend to the much simpler tasks of chopping vegetables, turning knobs on the stove, and pushing buttons on appliances. If you see that vacant look in my eyes while I go to town with a knife on a cutting board, make sure you keep your fingers away from the business end of the knife - because you've just caught me in outer space.

Tonight's dinner: leftover baked lamb sausages on a bed of bok choi fried in garlic with steamed baby potatoes and yam. Oh, and a salad, which is too big to include in the picture.

My Personal Chef

I like to cook, not for cooking's sake, but because I like to eat. Living on a shoestring budget though, eating out is definitely out. I am unwilling to be on a Big Mac diet or subsist on frozen food. So the cheapest way to have real food at home is to buy unprocessed food, slap on an apron, and become my own Jamie Oliver. On nights and weekends, my kitchen becomes my lab where I experiment with different ingredients and different methods of cooking. Sometimes the results border on barely palatable disasters, but other times, they do taste pretty good, if I do say so myself - and those I file under my repertoire o' edible experiment.

Tonight's dinner: broiled herbed mullet on a bed of new potatoes and garlic zucchini.

Water, Water ... Anywhere?

Australia, currently having the worst drought on record for most of the country, is really desperate for water. Water restrictions have been in place around the country for a few years now. Brisbane just started level 5 water restriction yesterday, which means people can only water their gardens during a small window of time on alternate days and there is to be no car-washing. The city council is encouraging people to restrict their daily water usage to 140 liters per person per day. Lake Wivenhoe, the main reservoir supplying Brisbane with drinking water, is down to 20% of its capacity. If rain doesn't come, level 6 restriction will come into effect by September, which is very likely by the looks of it. The summer has come and gone, and there hasn't been enough rain to make much of a difference.

Up here in Hervey Bay, things are a little better. We're only in level 3 restriction. Sprinklers are out, hosing down the driveway is out; but watering gardens and washing cars with buckets are still allowed. That's a such a luxury compared to Brisbane. The way it's going, though, it'll only be a matter of time before the restriction level goes up, especially when you consider the fact that Hervey Bay is the fastest-growing city in Queensland.

While all this is going on in southern Queensland, it's been the other extreme in the north. Only two months ago, northern Queensland got deluged by cyclones. Many regional cities in the north got flooded and crops destroyed. Looking at this juxtaposition of waterworld in the north and cracked lake beds in the south, I can't help but wonder: are we looking at the progress of global warming or is this a coincidence? Either way, we don't have the luxury to wait until we know for sure.

I'm an Uncle!

I became an uncle today. My sister in California gave birth to Ethan, who weighed in at 7 lb 11 oz and 19 inches. It was too bad that I'm at the other side of the world and couldn't be there to see my brand new nephew. Congratulations, Lisa and Peter. And, congratulations to me.

The Obesity Epidemic Up Close

Australians are fat! I know it's a gross generalization, but the sad statistic is that Australia has an obesity rate second only to the fattest country on earth - the good ol' US of A. I know there's a fat-acceptance movement out there to make obesity less of a social stigma. However, even if it becomes socially acceptable to be fat, it will still be a huge problem for these people medically. From these two months of seeing patients, I've come across more fat patients with obesity-related problems than I care to remember. Both yesterday and today, I've been in surgery with two morbidly obese patients whose problems wouldn't have been there if they were within normal weight.

Yesterday I assisted in a circumcision. No, it wasn't like the routine mutilation of healthy baby boys for non-religious reasons that's still widely practiced in the US. This was a man in his late thirties with diabetes, too heavy for the operating table whose capacity was 140 kg. He had so much suprapubic fat that his penis was completely surrounded and swallowed up by it. Because of that, he couldn't keep it clean and kept getting infections. Circumcision would be part of the solution, but as long as he has that much fat around his penis, there will be plenty of skin folds for bacteria to grow and cause more infections. My job was to push down on the fat around his penis so the surgeon could perform the circumcision. If he weren't so fat, this would have never become a problem in the first place. I don't know, but if I were him, there might be a point when I might think, "Gee, I think maybe I should lose some weight," like when my penis turned into a vagina, or maybe when I could no longer pee standing up?

Today I watched a hip replacement surgery on a woman. Again, another morbidly obese patient. The anesthetist couldn't find a vein in her hands or arms to put in a cannula; they ended up putting in a central line through the jugular vein in her neck. Her obesity put her at very high risk for general anesthesia; a spinal block would be much safer for her. But it took two anesthetists to dig through her lower back to put in the block. Surgery was delayed by over an hour because of all the difficult prep work. To have adequate access to her hip joint, the surgeon had to make an incision twice as long as a normal one. Even with her hip wide open, the surgeon had to dig in there like he was working with his hands down a well. The surgery was successful, but she was at a higher risk for postoperative complications and her new joint wouldn't perform as well for as long.

Those two were just the latest of a constant stream of overweight and obese patients I've seen over the last couple of months. I know they are extreme examples. I don't want to blame the victims, but only if obese people are totally helpless victims. Yes, there are things, like genetics, that are beyond control of the person when it comes to obesity, but they've got to take some personal responsibilities - there are so many things people can change and manage to control their weight. Of course it's not easy; if it was, there wouldn't be overweight people. It's not about going on a diet to lose 5 kilos to fit into that dress for a wedding, it's about changing the lifestyle to gradually get down to a normal body mass index and keep it that way; it's about not losing a leg, not going blind, not dying on the operating table unnecessarily!

All right, I'll get off my high horse now.

Tsunami Alert!

It's 9 am, I'm sitting at the break room with the surgeon, waiting for the first case of the day - an arthroscopy. A nurse walks in and asks casually, "Did you hear about the earthquake off of Solomon Islands? Now there's a tsunami warning for all of Australia's east coast."

Wow, tsunami warning for all of the east coast. That's a pretty big deal. Hervey Bay is right on the coast - the beach is only a twenty-minute walk from where I live. So if a tsunami hits, Hervey Bay will definitely get some serious damage, and the hospital will definitely see some serious action. Luckily Fraser Island just off the coast will take some of the blunt if one comes our way. If an underwater earthquake happens in the Pacific, a tsunami may hit California too. But I'm sure my family in Fresno, being 200 miles inland, will be safe and sound.

So we go through the day like usual. The nurses update us on the news in between cases. At the end, it turns out to be nothing. For Australia anyway. People in the Solomon Islands are not so lucky. They did get hit by a tsunami, with a death toll of twenty people now.