The Adventure Continues...

Rants, raves and random observations from an itinerant epidemiologist.

  
100 in 1000
  1. Spend a week up a mountain learning to ski
  2. Visit Karoline's place in Moravia
  3. Hold a conversation in Czech (only)
  4. Drink 500ml of each of the following beers:
    1. Pilsner
    2. Staroprammen
    3. Budvar
    4. Velke Popovice
    5. U Fleku
    6. Gambrinus
    7. Krusovice
  5. Respond to at least one GOARN request (WHO and MSF are also acceptable)
  6. Travel across the Atlantic
  7. Return to South America
  8. Read a book to, or with, an impressionably aged child
  9. Participate in one NanoWriMo Challenge and come within at least 10,000 words of the goal length
  10. Have my nose pierced
  11. Have my next tattoo drawn
  12. Purchase the perfect jeans (x 2 pairs)
  13. Attend a spin class 3 times a week for 8 consecutive weeks
  14. Bake Viv's cheesecake
  15. Make David's casserole
  16. Make David's Chicken Cashew-nut Stirfry
  17. Invite 4 people who don't know one another too well to dinner
  18. Ride from Vienna to Venice on a motorbike (pillion acceptable, those less desirable)
  19. Attend a book group for at least two books
  20. Go on a choir weekend (learn and perform difficult piece in two/three days)
  21. Visit Madame Tussaud's (in London)
  22. Take an architecture appreciation course
  23. Join an all-girl group and sing a solo
  24. Publish in a scientific journal (top two authors)
  25. Cook a duck or other 'waterfowl'.
  26. Locate the Al-Timimi's from Doha Veterinary Practise
  27. Have a pedicure
  28. Maintain a Brazilian (ouch) for three months.
  29. Find a trustworthy Czech hairdresser
  30. Treat my inner-6-year-old twice a week (at least)
  31. Do the liver-cleansing diet properly (12 weeks)
  32. Don't eat out for one month
  33. Find a flat and flatmate
  34. Purchase one Joseph sweater
  35. Purchase one of the following pairs of designer shoes (they MUST also be COMFORTABLE, and be able to be worn with 4 different outfits and 2 types of occasion): Jimmy Choos, Manolo Blahniks, Christian Louboutin (Ebay or 2nd hand are acceptable)
  36. Send 5 books to the booksphere and track them.
  37. Go hanggliding
  38. Read 10 'classic' books (from 1001 Books to Read before you Die)
    1. Moll Flanders
    2. Everything is illuminated
    3. Madam Bovary
    4. Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance
    5. Catch-22
    6. Odysseus
    7. On the Road
  1. Run (non-stop!) for 5kms outside (preferably in a street race thingy)
  2. Send Christmas Cards on time
  3. Make a collage/mural out of street lights on my wall
  4. Buy a bed, build it, and sleep soundly in it
  5. Go to Africa
  6. Host an 'event' (classified as and when)
  7. Organise a 30th Birthday Party
  8. Wear a costume
  9. Sing on stage
  10. Buy a painting that evokes memories of Prague (cannot involve queues!)
  11. Learn a god-damned card game that stays in my memory (other than fish/snap)
  12. See sunrise. Be sober. Have woken for it. Excludes months Nov-Mar
  13. Take a walk and flip coins at each intersection
  14. Win something
  15. Draft a will
  16. Take a roadtrip
  17. Go to Italy already
  18. Sea Kayak around Abel Tasman Park (NZ)
  19. Get plants
  20. Take a train to another Eastern European Destination (accession countries are acceptable) alone preferably.
  21. Get UK to give me a provisional motorcyclists license and simultaneously get a 'card' license.
  22. Go SCUBA diving again - at least two dives lasting 30mins each.
  23. Go to a dentist. *sigh*
  24. Do a Czech Wine Trail. And live to tell the tale
  25. Make an 'outbreak emergency kit'.
  26. Go to bed prior to 11pm every night (inc weekends) for four consecutive weeks.
  27. Marvel over lack of tiredness
  28. Dine at a Gordon Ramsey restaurant (or Nobu)- preferably for free.
  29. Bet on the nags
  30. Do something for charity (applying and getting a 'red card' will count)
  31. Walk along the Champs Elysee
  32. Do 100 sit ups in a row
  33. Do 50 pressups (arms in tight)
  34. Make branston pickle (or nearest substitute)
  35. Cook something 'new' and 'adventurous' at least once a month
  36. Find a mentor
  37. Be a mentor
  38. Learn what mentoring is all about
  39. Meet an online person in real life
  40. Resist the flirt. Once. Just one night. It's okay if people don't immediately succumb to my natural charm. Really it is.
  41. Spend time at a spa (spa towns in the CR don't count)
  42. Send a care package to someone
  43. Get a Tata Bojs CD
  44. Take a French/German/Dutch course and SPEAK THE DAMNED LANGUAGE WHEN I HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY EVEN THOUGH IT MAKES ME SOUND LIKE AN IDIOT!
  45. Order new contact lenses.
  46. Make a list of things I take with me when I pack for different occasions
  47. Eat lobster. Prepared by someone else.
  48. Back up the blog
  49. Put everything onto an external hard drive
  50. Find a DDR mat and console and 'dance, I say dance!'�
  51. Go to the beach and lie on the warm sand. For an hour. (with sunscreen on, natch)
  52. Take and complete a course in either: Tango, Salsa or Flamenco
  53. Join the Municipal Library of Prague
  54. Move to another country
  55. Go to a live concert of a band I actually like
  56. Pay off debts (student loan excl.)
  57. Send thank you cards for every gift I receive (other than the gift of happiness, blah blah blah).
  58. Get an agent (literary or theatre)
  59. Go to a sports bar without cringing, by personal choice
  60. Ride a rollercoaster
  61. Hold a snake
  62. Spend a day wandering around a museum (not art gallery!)
Hump day.
Friday 15 September 2006
What with everything going on at the moment, my poor wee body (not as wee as I’d like it to be) hasn’t had sufficient energy to do it’s thang…which is, in itself, yet another cause for concern. Can’t say as it’s got any reason to not be ‘shedding’ (so to speak), and I can’t recall having any angelic visitations of late. I hate it when my body decides (overriding my intellect, clearly) that I AM actually stressed. Pah. Can’t understand why:

  1. Teleconference with the coordinators to discuss progress (or lack thereof) with projects in the training site. Outcome reasonably good:
    1. I have to draw a timeline for each project (ie. write a list of deliverables) and my boss will add the timeframe given the feasibility of achieving those deliverables. Since I have 12m2weeks left of my training (!!!), and we can’t even meet the Ministry of Health to discuss one of the protocols until October, I’m thinking that that particular project will stumble and fall even before the starter’s gun goes off.
    2. Meanwhile, it looks as though I might sort out my outbreak needs in another country (unless something good happens here). Since I’m supposed to gain ‘skills’ in things like ‘responding to initial call’, I can suspect that it’s not gonna happen here! (when all I can do is say “good morning, how are you? Pleased to meet you. No, he’s not here, maybe [time]. Thanks. Goodbye.”. Good with languages – that’s me!
    3. There’s a possibility of working with modellers and statisticians elsewhere for some time-series analysis (I have NO skill in it: I can barely type it coherently). But I have to send the list of data collected here to my coordinator (HI!) to see if we can come up with a ‘question’ to ask. It’s not the IDEAL approach to science I guess (usually you start with the question…but that’s in the utopia of ‘scientific reasoning’) which sounds pretty good.
    4. Salary issues are actually an issue for the program, so now that they know, they’re going to apply some pressure to make sure that the CR does it’s bit in this European programme. This is good for me personally, as it means there’s a possibility I’ll be retrospectively paid the 3898E that the Insititute said it would have paid me by now. Yes folks. Nearly 4000E (after tax!).
  2. Spinning was fab. Stringy-blue-eyed-boy now jokes with me and the girl who sits in front of me (with the longest plait in the world) as we’re “the regulars”. When he does this, since I can’t add anything useful to the repartee (hell, I can’t even understand what he’s saying) I just smile and nod. Which makes me the inane nodding spinner. Ha ha. As if you didn’t already suspect.
  3. Returned to office to find my rimless glasses. While in UK recently, I may have gotten a little ‘tired and emotional’ and folded out my sofa bed ONTO my glasses. They, understandably, handled the pressure as well as I did. So we had an emergency dash to Specsavers, who saved my – er – eyes. The specs (cracked and broken beyond repair) were, um, beyond repair. So Mum (thank goodness she was there) coughed up a credit card and bought me a pair of replacements. Since they did a ‘two for one’ deal, I got two types. The rimless ones couldn’t be done for AGES – so my brothers girlfriend sent them to me. The other ones were TOTALLY different – thinish, rectangular, brown thick frames.
    1. And do you think ANYONE has noticed different glasses?
    2. Did they f*ck.
  4. Went to check on Dad’s vitals (last message was he couldn’t hold food, was sleeping a LOT, and had blood in urine – of which there wasn’t enough) and couldn’t find phone. Odd.
    1. Searched. F*ck. Phone missing. Gone. Not in gym bag (purposefully – wanted to disappear for a few hours). Not in office bag. Not in any of the 8 desk drawers. Not in any of the three shelves I have. Not in any of the BOX FILES on the three shelves. Tried calling it: voicemail immediately. WTP? It has battery, and I never turn the damned thing off. ??!?!? Asked boss. Nope, he hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t heard it.
    2. Checked e-mail with scowl on face. And….
  5. I’M GOING TO BRAZIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fan-flipping-tastic. My abstract for Avian Influenza outbreak was accepted for the TEPHINET conference in November. So, I’ll miss my dearest bro’s 25th birthday – but, at the same time, I’ll be in BRAZIL. Did you read that? BRAZIL?
    1. Wrote to another cohort member: congratulating her. She asked where my phone was – she’d been ringing for the past hour but it kept going to voicemail. Suspiciouser and suspiciouser.
  6. Went to heat lunch: saw boss’s wife who asked if I’d found phone. She and her officemate had been in the office all the time and no strangers had been in at all. EXCEPT for my boss’s youngest (15) son. Great. I’m gonna keep quiet on this one, because my boss isn’t stupid and I know he would have leapt to the worst conclusion too…so I’ll see if the phone reappears mysteriously. I’m just glad I’m such a geek, I’d reproduced my SIM onto a replicator before I went to Slovenia, and Vodafone replace a SIM card with the same number each year. Now if I could just get some good hardware…*off to Ebay*
posted by Nomes @ Friday, September 15, 2006  
1 Comments:

  • At 8:44 pm, September 19, 2006, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    "angelic visitations"

    Heehee... when I read this I thought you said "angelic vibrations", and I thought it was a great euphemism!

     
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