Aint that the truth

"There's nothing like the deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons"
- Stephen Chbosky

An Unforgettable Amnesiac

A tribute

Thanks for the science H.M.

And so it comes to an end

In roughly 24 hours I'll be graduating from medical school - a place that seemed so distant only a number of years ago. There have been highlights, and lowlights, but mainly highlights that are bulleted below;


Year One

• A new city, a new home, a new challenge
• Little Miss Pushkin - an awesome, life long friend, made in the 7th week of first semester
• Topping the first exam - yeah, I still got it
• Falling in love with a little city called Venice and other European adventures
• Russian boy - and all the wonderwalls he brought my way
• Anatomy lessons and anatomy lessons spent at the favourite coffee shop
• Myer Melbourne - the job begins
• What's the story, morning glory?
• Getting drunk and not going out
• Desperately missing the old city, the old home, the old challenge, old friends
• The year of Optus Free Time

Year Two

• Where it finally felt like I was studying medicine
• Falling in love with Guyton - best medicine book to date
• When the Italian coffee shop stole all my hard earned money
• More time at Myer - 14 hour shifts in boxing day
• Little Miss Challah - with her amazing house, her quick wit and warmth
• Becoming even closer to the best buddy
• British Boy - part the good
• Jack Johnson, Xavier Rudd, Donovan Frankenreiter, Ben Harper
• Sandy
  
• The year of group projects - some good, mostly bad
• Study sessions on my bed room floor
• Kicking booty in the osce - thanks to little Miss Pushkin's father
• The wedding, to end all weddings, not mine
  
• Incubus

Year Three

• British Boy - part the bad
• Evil surgeon in the evil hospital - who endlessly made me question why I was doing this, whether I wanted to do this and almost had me quit. Almost.
• The biggest mistake of my life - choosing to do something when every fibre of my being screamed at me to turn and run the other way. I finally did, and am so thankful.
• Realising that I was so much better than the slag and the doormat
• Being completely cluless at hospital, not realising how much I didn't know and losing motivation
• Returning to the home city for Little Miss Lawyer's milestone birthday and craving so badly to just stay there
• Walking around a circular paradise with my first, uncomplicated love and realising just how far I had strayed
• Searching, desperately searching, for me
• Meeting MIB in the last days, realising that the mistake needed to be ended

Year Four

• Realising how amazing medicine could actually be - spending 20 hours at hospital to watch a baby being born, going home and returning 4 hours later to do it all again and never resenting it
• Meeting a doctor who truly made me believe that I had potential and who could make a difference
• The MIB saga - good and the bad
• Worring over exams, electives and other things beginning with e
• Endless conversations about eternity
• Several trips to home city, with friends who truly are home
• Death cab, Elbow, Kings, Jason, Colin, Wallflowers - the endless soundtrack to my life
• The wedding to end all weddings x3
• Gossip Girl - best show ever.
  
• India - majestic India - feeling my roots like never before
• Finding my self and throwing out the rubbish at the same time

Year Five

• Going rural and loving it. Encounters with Little Miss Sunshine and World's best resident
• Finding a new love - working under pressure in the Emergency Room
• Adventures in the true Asia - funny times, good people, great hits
• The birthday to end all birthdays and the return of MIB
• A cold winter in Melbourne, the warm arms of MIB and saying a sorrow/sweet goodbye/maybe sometime later to MIB
• Jason Mraz - best concert ever. Falling in love. Meeting my co-wife.
  
• England, baby!
• The Cambridge adventures - memories to be treasured for life, photos that are to be destroyed ASAP
• The girls of Cambridge - and making friends with the most unlikely of people
  
• Yale Boy - and truly realising just how unfair life can be sometime. Having faith and hoping for a better ending whilst carrying out life in as pragmatic a way as possible. Being even more puzzled by the universe
  
• The cheeky one with whom I may have had too much fun with. Cherishing phone conversations re: eye make up removal, sorting out one's life and realising just how awesome one is. Awesome.
• The West Wing - best show ever.
  
• Honours, baby!

So many more adventures, so many more lessons not outlined here. But this young woman is not the same as the bright eyed, naive 17 year old student who entered medical school hoping it would be something like the show Scrubs.

Words of wisdom

Forgive early, kiss slowly, love wholeheartedly, laugh loudly

Found

In my inbox this morning from an Eli a hop, skip and an ocean away via Pablo Neruda.

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

Change has come to America

Amazing.

An excerpt from his speech via the NYT.

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time,” Mr. Obama says, “tonight is your answer.” “It’s a long time coming, but because of what we did on this day, at this defining moment, change has come to America,” he says.

He framed the journey of the civil rights struggle through the person of a 106-year-old woman in Georgia, Ann Nixon Cooper, who voted today.

She was “born just a generation past slavery” but for many years couldn’t vote for two reasons, he said, shifting the attention slightly off the matter of race: “because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.”

The vivid historic symbols were hers: “She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that ‘We shall overcome.’ Yes we can.”

He shifted the focus again so that her story was not solely about race.

A man touched down on the Moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination,” Mr. Obama said, conveying the passage of time.

And then this: “And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.”

Amazing

True dat.