We’ve arrived safely and stepped foot once again onto British soil. I was a little miffed the immigration officer didn’t say something along the lines of “Welcome Home”, but still felt a sense of familiarity back on the throng of Heathrow. Fortunately my parents were on hand to provide taxi service and reassurance to two weary travellers and we are safely ensconced back home. It’s strange that although Grist Hill Cottage was my home for many years, it hasn’t been for at least 10, so it is a strange feeling of belonging and yet not.

Anyway this was just a quick message to say we arrived and I have a UK mobile number now. I’ll send it by email to the usual people (to whom - thanks for sending through your numbers). If I’ve left anyone off the list, let me know through the usual channels and it will appear in your inbox forthwith.

Off now to wash that airport smell off and make myself feel a little more human. More to follow …

I’m currently writing this in the lounge at Changi Airport, Singapore. It’s a quarter past one in the morning (local time) and we’re flagging fast. Of course, our presence here means the leg from Sydney to Singapore has been dealt with, arriving last night. We went straight to the hotel, having not had much sleep on the plane. As per protocol they stuffed us with food and hard liquor, so the only thought on our minds was sleep on touching down.

This morning, having had some much needed kip, we set out to wander round Singapore. I haven’t been here since 1992 and a great deal has changed in the meantime. Buildings seem to be popping up everywhere and practically everyone seemed to be glued to their mobile/mp3 player/PSP. I remember Singapore being a repressive police state when I was last here, and we were given dire warnings about not dropping litter, not chewing gum in public and always dressing conservatively. It would appear that some of the rules have relaxed in the interim, but the cleanliness of the streets still puts London to shame.

The only other item on the agenda was to fulfil a cliched dream. You come here and not have a Singapore Sling in hotel that founded this world-famous cocktail. Cheers!

It’s not long now till we leave for Doha and then onto Heathrow. Blighty here we come!

We have four weeks, four very busy weeks in the UK, with arrangements made to catch up with many of you. It will be quite hectic, but we plan to fit in as much as possible, including making up for missing last Christmas and a few birthdays while we’ve been in Aus.

In our absence the cats will be incarcerated at a charity cattery. I feel a sense of guilt over abandoning them again, but we have been promised they will be well cared for. Hopefully there won’t be too many tantrums and arguments since they will be sharing the same run. Tonight they have been given a special dinner and plenty of attention in the hope they don’t forget us in our absence.

We arrive in London next Thursday and will look forward to many reunions over the following month. I’ll try to keep our progress updated with some photos along the way.

Earlier in the current Olympics my colleagues razzed me about their superior medal count despite the smaller population. However in recent days we have been had some welcome, but unexpected, successes. In fact the current gold medal tally is greater by some margin. It remains to be seen whether the British athletes will maintain this momentum, but it is nice to see your nation doing well.

It makes little difference to me where we are relative to other nations, but the Aussies I work with seem to still have a competitive chip on their shoulder when it comes to beating the Brits. Perhaps this comes from a desire to rid the colonial shackes or because they are used to winning the Ashes, but it does seem they consider us the most important yardstick to surpass.

If this is the case, then I’m not above enjoying their discomfort, but know there is still time for this current anomaly to reverse.

The cats have been booked into quarters at the Animal Welfare League for safe-keeping while we’re away. The organisation is a charity which supplements donations by charging for boarding animals. I hope they will be up to looking after snooty Milly, simple Tilly and the Scaredey boy. We’ll leave them with familiar items and food to make their stay more pleasant. We’re not too worried though as they survived their quarantine hold.

Our respective annual leave allowances will kick in soon. One of the upsides of the civil service is the generous leave. I accrue 3 days a month, and it rolls over year to year. Having not used much of it last year, even with this holiday, I will still have over a month’s worth remaining. At some point in the future we’re hoping to go to New Zealand and possibly also Tasmania. At the rate I’m accruing leave there will be no problem getting time off.

Otherwise it’s just a simple matter of making sure the papers are cancelled, doors locked and contingencies made. We’re also hoping to have a few tastes of Adelaide to take with us, but not wine as it has rather become coals to Newcastle. There is just one stretch of shifts at the Royal Adelaide to complete, and then we fly out 2 days later. We’ll be having a short stopover in Singapore on both legs to ease the timezone transition.

All being well news and pictures from our trip will appear here on a regular basis.

Today I wandered down to the shopping district of North Adelaide to pick up some post and buy lunch. While there I noticed a new gym is due to open in the North Adelaide Village Shopping Centre.

This is only a kilometre from our house, whereas our current one is more than 8km. This means I will be able to walk or cycle there easily rather than relying on the car. It is also located between home and the hospital, so I can go straight there after work. Hopefully this should act as a good incentive to get back to my previous level of fitness which has slipped somewhat since I’m only able to go on my days off at the moment.

The best aspect to this move will be exercising in comfort when the summer heatwaves return again. Of course I will have to leave friends and familiar instructors behind, but I’ve become a bit of an expert in change over the past year and half!

Looking forward to seeing you all in three to four weeks time.

The patient was a middle-aged man who had collapsed for no obvious reason, so needed to be taken to a tertiary hospital for investigation. It was a new experience to visit a hospital with very basic resuscitation facilities. Their “casualty” was a 3 bed room for less sick patients and a single bed “resus” room. Very different to the huge departments I’m used to in big city hospitals. The local GP had done a great job in stabilising the patient, so simply had to transfer him onto our equipment and prep him for transport. The hospital lacked scanning and pathology lab facilities so we were rather in the dark as the exact diagnosis.

The trip itself was interesting since the weather wasn’t exactly great. It was only a hour away, so we went in Rescue 51, one of the 3 helicopters available to us. Aviation enthusiasts might like to know it’s a Bell 412, essentially a refitted and upgraded “Huey” military helicopter, most commonly seen as a troop transport in Vietnam movies.

On the way there and back we flew through several storm clouds and it got a little choppy at times. Fortunately, as before, I didn’t find the turbulence too upsetting as the helicopter doesn’t lurch up and down, rather shimmies sideways. It was also a new experience to see rain going sideways as we flew through the cloud base and see a rainbow in mid-air.

Fortunately the transport went well and we delivered the patient safely to the RAH ICU. I was on duty on the unit today so discovered various investigations had proven bacterial meningitis. His prognosis may not be good in the long-term, but he will fare better in the RAH than he would have done if we hadn’t picked him up from Waikerie. I just hope it will all be worthwhile.

P.S: I forgot to take any pictures after we landed in Waikerie, but you can see the rest of the trip there pics here.

BODYPUMP™ 67 is another strong and challenging release. This quarter the focus is on communicating the workout factor participants will get from each track. Instructors do this by coaching the specific weight selection, training objective and exercises used.

Check out the new take on some old-school bicep training and a new Plank Crunch to challenge the core stabilizers. And watch for the chance to increase your weight selection in several of the tracks so you can get stronger, faster.

The music is a classic BODYPUMP™ mix that features Heavy Rock from Finger Eleven in the Chest Track, with E–Type’s Eurofighter next up. Pink is in the house with one of her biggest hits for the Triceps Track, followed by a wild and cheeky Bon Jovi number for the biceps work.

So, cruise into the workout in the Warmup and get the feel of the steel with a mix of Deadrows, Wide Rows and Deadrows With Underhand Grip. Then challenge your legs using a high number of Bottom Half Squats while keeping perfect form. The strong beats of Jan Wayne?s Piece Of My Heart will lift the commitment level of the workout. Enjoy the ‘X–factor’ in a wicked Shoulder Track and the Plank Crunch that rounds out the workout in the Abdominals Track.

BODYPUMP™ 67 is an awesome class that’ll leave you feeling physically exhausted but emotionally empowered!

I keep change in my rucksack. Usually it’s just a small number of dollar and two-dollar coins amounting to little more than $10. This stash was intact last weekend when I took out a dollar to pay for a can of soft-drink. However when looking in it yesterday for some change, there was nothing there. I haven’t taken anything out in the interim, which means only one thing could have happened. One of my supposedly reputable colleagues decided to help themselves to my bag, while it was left in a locked office only accessible to registrars. I wouldn’t have minded if they had asked and would have offered a loan readily. Instead some lazy sod, who couldn’t be bothered to walk down to the cashpoint, stole from me.

The second example was a conversation I overheard between two of my colleagues last week. They were discussing how to obtain a “crack” so they could fraudulently use a piece of software. I wouldn’t have been so bothered if they were talking about a Microsoft product.  Now I know that theft is theft no matter how large and wealthy the victim, but Bill Gates’s empire was built on systematic suppression of competition, unscruplous business practice and gross overcharging on their flagship Office suite. As an aside, no-one should pay full price for Microsoft Office. Get it cheaply through a Home User Program or use OpenOffice, an open-source alternative that will open, edit and save documents in Microsoft proprietary formats and, best of all, is FREE!

Instead my colleagues were talking about iSilo, a document reader program for portable devices. Their attitude annoyed me because:

1. you can try the product for free for a month, and if you don’t like it, simply delete it
2. it is written by a small independent software company
3. the licence only costs 20 dollars.

It is a sad indictment that well-paid doctors are searching for ways to screw a small company out of such a measly sum of money.

Perhaps those Grumpy Old Men are on to something.