out n about

It is now the month of Syawal, and as expected, there weren’t any traditional forms of celebration when it was ushered in on Thurday. After all, I was busy at work and it was also my last day of Stroke/Geriatrics medicine. The day, on the whole, was spent tidying up the loose bits on my old ward, along with a self-conducted orientation tour of my new Lower GI surgical ward.

A few of us went out for a celebratory dinner on Thursday night though. In retrospect, it was rather surprising that we hadn’t gone out together as a group for a meal/night out prior to that. I chose an Italian restaurant called La Pergola, which came highly recommended and was listed in one of those restaurant lists as being one of the best Italian restaurants in the country. And I wasn’t disappointed – the food was definitely the best Italian I’ve had the chance to savour outside of Italy itself.

The restaurant had a homely, rustic décor and we spent a good half hour chatting with the owner, Mauro, who emigrated to England ages ago. He’s quite an interesting character who counts a number of consultants at my hospital, Phil Collins and Gary Lineker as regular clients.




We went out for drinks after that, and surprisingly were able to wake up in time the next day (surgery sucks ‘cause the ward round begins at 0800, which means you have to be at the ward around 0740 to ensure everything’s in order). We also had a mess party that night, which started with a pool competition around 1830. A winner was eventually announced around 2300, but he wasn’t too pleased to find out that his prize (a bottle of wine) was opened by one of the other docs. He was thus presented with an empty bottle.

After that, a few of us headed out to The Concrete, a rather classy club that I was surprised to find in Carlisle. We danced (in various silly ways)’till the club closed. It was quite amusing to watch all these medical professionals make fools of themselves, but I’m under no illusion that I didn’t look rather silly myself! When we got back to the hospital, we were still pretty wide awake, so we ended up playing games ‘till it was about 4 in the morning. By that point, I was converted into a huge fan of Faithless, and until today I’m still humming along to The Killers’ ‘I’ve Got Soul But I’m Not a Soldier’, a song introduced to me initially by Sweetie.




Saturday and Sunday were spent meeting up with my Weegie buddies. Managed to get a few comics I’ve been searching for, along with the TB bag that I’ve been hunting for these past few months. Spent the evening celebrating Em’s birthday by bowling (I proved my ‘excellence’ at the game with a couple of double-digit scores), eating (Oja prepared a Raya meal and we got a fantastically rich chocolate fudge cake from Peckham’s) and watching a movie called Ella Enchanted or something like that. A movie that made me want to knock my head against a brick wall more than a couple of times. So, it was a big Happy 21st to Em, and a big congrats to Oja on her upcoming engangement.





The trip back was uneventful, except for the fact that the trip was on a bus rather than a train since they were busy with railway repairs or some shit like that. Now it’s back to surgery, which I’ve yet to like so far. It’s early days yet, but I doubt I’ll be changing my mind anytime soon especially with the organisational mess that it’s in and a number of nurses who steadfastly refuse to take bloods, insert a venflon and even take an ECG but find it necessary to bleep every house officer for the simplest of things. Somehow, the phrase ‘fucking stupid bitches’ was uttered by my mind a few times today but here’s hoping I’ll either develop a tolerance or the girls in the next shift have more than a double digit IQ.