First ride yesterday since moving back to Melbourne. I know, it’s disgraceful.

Interesting, to say the least.

Riding on Glenhuntly Road with Ash, who was leading. Quite busy with cars parked on the side. A car was double parked, ready to parallel park. I slowed down in order to go around the car. Little did I know that road bike tyres and tram tracks don’t mix. My front tyre became stuck in the groove of the track and I went A over T, falling onto my right side. Luckily the car coming the other direction was about 30 metres away and travelling slowly. Managed to get up straight away and ran to the footpath with grazes on my right hip and knee.

More importantly, the bike seemed alright. Scratches on the brake lever and handlebar, and my right handlebar is bent inwards slightly. However, I continued riding about 15 more kilometres, a little worse for wear. Nice abrasion, especially on my hip.

Do you guys recommend that I take it to a store to get the bike checked out? Everything seems to be working fine. Does the handlebar need to be straightened?

Time for you to get married.

Friday 8 February 2008, 11:23pm:

This occurred after having dinner at Docklands. I was on-call at the hospital and Ash and I were heading back to the hospital as I needed to see a patient. I was driving along Princes Highway near Monash University Caulfield Campus when I saw, at about 50 metres ahead, a 4WD T-bone a Ford Falcon who ran the red light. As I drew closer to the scene of the accident, I saw a motorcyclist on the ground. He was moving, trying to get up but couldn’t. Ash then said to me that I had to stop to render assistance (probably fearing that I wouldn’t stop because of the medical emergency incident on the plane where I had asked her if I should help).

I then pulled the car over to the side of the road and the two of us ran to the guy who was lying on the ground. He was conscious and talking which was a good start. There were two plump annoying ladies standing around. One was just calling out to the crowd in general, “Someone call the ambulance, someone call the police. No one touch him.” One fat lady then annoyingly started bumping me out of the way; I believe this is called ’shepherding’ in AFL football. I then told her I was a doctor and she began apologising profusely.

I then had a chat to him and he had said that his leg was bent to the side and he had straightened it. I tried to reassure him and so did other people who began to bring bottles of water to him. A Chinese guy even had a can of Cadbury drinking chocolate in his hand! I told them that he shouldn’t eat nor drink anything in case he needed to go for surgery that night. Some people were helpful bringing blankets and a pillow to him.

The patient was lying with his knees bent. As I continued to talk to him, this Indian guy came along and was about to straighten his knees; I quickly stopped him from touching the patient!

The ambulance and police arrived not long afterwards and I had to help lift him onto an ambulance trolley on which they wheeled him into the ambulance. At this stage, one of the plump ladies mentioned to the officer that she didn’t mind if they kept the pillow, on which the patient’s head was lying,as it had only cost $2 at Ikea!

The ambulance officer asked me to have a look at his leg after they cut off his pants. It was certainly deformed and he may have had dislocated his knee which is a medical emergency (it can threaten the blood supply to the lower leg). The ambulance then drove off to The Alfred.

This is the first time that I’ve had to help at an accident. Luckily he only had a single limb injury (with which I deal very frequently at work) and not had a problem with his airway nor conscious state (with which I’m not as familiar).

Top marks to Ash who helped direct traffic around the accident!!!

Hopefully, this is not a trend for the year!

I’m back, Baby.

Packed our Adelaide place from the weekend before and all through the past week. Took ages to do.

Ash and I drove off from Adelaide Saturday afternoon and stopped overnight at Coonawarra, South Australian wine country. Finished the rest of our leg Sunday afternoon to watch the Australian Open Final.

I’ve got time off this week to settle back in and unpack things. Gotta stay at parents’ place while waiting for Carnegie house to be vacated.

Adelaide was a good place to work and we bought a great place there. However, socially it was a little sleepy.

It’s good to be back home…

This is a ‘virus’ with which I’ve just been hit.

You computer geeks probably know all about it but as a lay person, I needed to do some research on it.

This is a ‘rogue antispyware’ which downloads itself on your computer and pretends to scan your drives. It then falsely claims that you have a lot of viruses on your computer and forces you to buy their program. There are a lot of people out there who have sent their credit card details wanting to buy this fake antispyware program but have received nothing apart from a lighter wallet.

When Malwawre Alarm produced a pop-up on my laptop (while on ESPN website), I knew that it could be fake so I clicked to exit the program. However, even if you click on the “Cancel” (or equivalent) button, it won’t stop downloading. Anyway it installed itself and as a result, my computer ran very slowly and it got rid of my desktop background picture. I still can’t change the desktop background from a blank screen!

Anyone know how to fix that?

I’ve since been on ESPN again using other computers and Malware Alarm has popped up a couple more times. I clicked on the “Close (X)” button and that did the trick.

I’ve run Ad-Aware on my computer and I think that it’s now free of viruses. Only problem is the desktop background picture.

I hate these f#(k3r$ who commit these crimes. They ought to be whacked.

This occurred about 5 hours after leaving L.A airport heading home, on our recent trip to USA. There was an overhead announcement asking if there was a medical doctor on-board. I turned to Ash and asked if I should volunteer. She told me, “Of course you should!” I was a bit guarded because one of my bosses had told me how limited resources are on the plane. Anyway, I rang the bell and a steward came to me and asked me what sort of doctor I was. I told him, and he asked me to follow him. He told me that someone was having a seizure.

Ashleigh reckons that from that point, I took some time to put on my shoes. I think that she’s right because I do remember trying to remember the best way to treat seizures as it has been at least 5 years since I’ve done so! I then followed the steward up the stairs to Business Class. At that point, an Obstetrician/Gynaecologist joined us too.

As I was walking up the stairs I was thinking about my management plan if the patient was still fitting. Simple things first, of course! ABC’s - Airway, Breathing and Circulation. If he was still fitting, I’d need to administer a benzodiazepine, although I don’t know if the plane would have it.

When we reached the patient, he had already finished fitting and was confused. He was otherwise fine. A nurse was with him talking to him at that stage. I hung around for a little while giving advice as to how best he should be treated, ie., whether he can eat, whether he is allowed to go back to sleep. One of the staff then asked if we should take his blood pressure; I agreed. As he went off to get the sphygmomanometer (blood pressure machine) I realized that I hadn’t used one for 5 years! I usually read the blood pressure from the charts or used an automatic machine which gives you the blood pressure with the press of a button!!! However, after a little thought, I quickly remembered how to take a blood pressure using the manual machine! Anyway, I wasn’t needed for that task as the Obstetrician/Gynaecologist took the blood pressure! I hung around for a little while longer just making sure that the patient was OK.

Twenty minutes later, I returned to my seat and continued to watch the documentary about how the company Apple was saved by the iPod (very interesting documentary, by the way!). About an hour later, the steward presented a bottle of champagne to me, thanking me for my help! I was a little embarrassed about it as I didn’t do all that much (except for providing QUALITY and PROFESSIONAL advice)! Another few hours passed and the steward again returned with vouchers for use of the Qantas Club lounge! I was still embarrassed about it! We did use those vouchers at Sydney Airport which was very nice!

I had pretty much forgotten about the incident until two weeks ago when Mum rang me telling me that she had received a letter in the mail from Qantas. They thanked me for my “professional advice” and mentioned a few other flattering sentences! There was also a $200 voucher attached for use when buying airline tickets! Very flattering and embarrassing!

So from a small incident, I managed to score a bottle of champagne, Qantas Club vouchers and a $200 voucher!

Not bad for a humble Orthopaedic Registrar…

On our recent US trip, we purchased Broadway tickets on the Internet via Ticketmaster website. Yesterday my credit card bill came and I found that I had a charge of US$9 under the name “Entertainment Rewards”. I didn’t know what that was so rang American Express who researched it. It seems that when you use Ticketmaster to buy tickets, you’re automatically signing up a subscription with Entertainment Rewards, which is a company that offers vouchers for restaurants, hotels, etc. Apparently it’s in the small print. This subscription costs US$9 per month!

Very, very dodgy!!!

Anyway, American Express were kind enough to refund the US$9 and I cancelled my membership with Entertainment Rewards.

I Googled “Entertainment Rewards” and it seems that a lot of people have been ripped-off by them too!

Glad to see that I’m not the only one!

Happy birthday, Dude.

(Short and sweet)

Here are a handful of photos from our recent North America trip.

As of 3 February 2008, TYP will close its Adelaide branch due to lack of members.

Currently, TYP Adelaide only has one member. The sole member is thought to be quitting in order to join the busier Melbourne branch which has a grand total of four members.

The Adelaide branch member, who cannot be named for legal reasons, stated, “Uh, I just get a bit bored of riding around by meself (sic). There’s no motivation there, you know, dude? I try to, like, spur myself on but there’s nothing quite like riding with others. I hope I don’t, like, get hated for closing down the Adelaide branch and I hope the Melburnians don’t beat me up for it.”

When asked about finding work in Melbourne, “Yeah, man. I’ll take what I can get. I got two good hands and am learning to have a good work ethic so I should be right, mate. Don’t like to wake up before midday, though.”

The member stated that he had to finish the interview at that point mentioning something about “needing a piss”.

It has been a long and lustrous history for TYP Adelaide, lasting for eighteen months and will be sad when it closes in three months’ time. However, looking optimistically, TYP Melbourne will further strengthen its membership by 25%.