This Week at the Hospital

A worrying moment - Processed some specimens this week from the sexual health center at the hospital. These requests only have the age and gender of the person on the request form to protect the privacy of the individual. It is worrying when you see requests for an 8 year old and 16 year old to be tested for STDs. Both female. Also worrying is seeing a test for HIV on a 25 year old.

A scary moment - I was walking into one of the wards carrying some bottles from haematology when a loud alarm went off and red warning lights started flashing from the ceiling. Before I could move, the sound of thundering feet from all directions came towards me. Doctors, nurses, wardsmen - every hospital employee in that ward was running towards where I was standing. A man in the room I was about to enter had just crashed and everyone was running in to save his life. Turns out the items I had with me were meant for him. Nothing was more real to me at that moment as I acknowledged the frailty of life and how close I was to seeing a man die.

A painful moment - Walking home on Wednesday, I was brought out of my reverie upon hearing low moans and howls. The sounds I heard resounded with grief and loss. I looked for the source of the cry and saw a grown man crying with so much pain onto the shoulder of a supportive friend. In that moment I felt his pain and his loss, bringing tears to my own eyes.

If you want to know how morals are really measuring up in our society, work at a hospital.
If you want to see true human nature stripped of all pretence, work at a hospital.
If you need to be reminded of how everyday is a gift, work at a hospital.

cheryl

Canberra Airport Open Day - Qantas Breast Cancer Awareness Flight

Alex is a big fan of commercial airlines. Today was the Canberra Airport open day and there was no way he was going to miss this opportunity of being up close to the big birds. You would think with all the travelling he does every year he would be less interested but nope, the boyish glazed look of joy still shows itself when the prospect of being close to a plane presents itself.

The crowds at the Open Day

Naturally I wasn't quite as keen and asked to be dropped off at the Direct Factory Outlets to do a spot of shopping while waiting for him to be done. Little did I know, the day was going more interesting than shoes, clothes and accessories.

To cut the story short, Qantas (Aus carrier) was doing its part to support the breast cancer research fund raiser and had organized a mystery flight for the day. Alex booked us a spot on the flight and off we went. It was AUD 50 for 50 minutes in the air with refreshments and all. I reckon it was a pretty good deal with the plus of it being for a good cause.

Our flight tickets. It actually says Mystery Flight!

The plane chartered for this fund raiser was a Qantas Dash 8. It was all done up in pink to commemorate the breast cancer campaign.

The plane only ascended to a max of 10000 feet and that gave us a great view of the landscape. We flew over 5 towns outside of Canberra, them being Yass, Cowra, Cootamundra, Young and Wagga Wagga.

View from the plane: River flowing into a dam

More landscape

The Qantas logo from our window

We were given pretty nice refreshments for a 50 minute flight. In our box of goodies were a nice pink muffin, macadamia chocolate, some tomato crackers and olive dip. Coffee and tea included.

The pilot conducted the flight without the aid of the usual navigation systems. We believe the old school method of maps were used hence the flight path was a really different ones, giving us some really good views of places we otherwise wouldn't normally see from air. This also gave us great views of Canberra as we landed. We flew over Belconnon, then the city followed by Woden, Tuggeranong and Queanbeyan.

Canberra

At our seats

All in all it was a good day. Good fun, a nice change from the repetition of weekly activities.

cheryl

My Evil Potato

My pantry is so very stocked up that I sometimes forget the items I have got in there. I did some checking the other day and found this...

My evil potato and its less evil brother.

cheryl

Overheard...

At the hospital, a lady on her mobile telling her friend, " I can tell you this. I have an allergy to anything that has salt."

An allergy to salt? Is it possible?

If it is true, I would feel really sorry for the lady. Just think of the number of foods that has salt in it. Everything! Without salt, there is no countering of sweet and sour tastes. A corner of the tongue left to lead a very lonely, unmeaningful existence. She wont be able to taste a majority of seasonings. No soy, no chili sauce, no tomato sauce, no canned foods... etc etc etc. This makes it so hard to eat out.

No salt? So so difficult


cheryl

A Very Silly Me

A foreword to all of you who know Cheryl Yu :) ... please do not let the post below lead you to think that Cheryl has lost all her sense of logic or wisdom. Friends who have known me and my antics will know that the below is not characteristic of me. AT ALL. With this said, I shall now share what I now call as the silliest mistake I have made to date.

I decided on making 'Fu Chuk Yi Mai' for dessert today. In case you don't know what that means, it is a dessert that is made of barley and beancurd. I have never made it before on my own but I do know how to make it. My mom used to make it for us as we were growing up.

Part of the recipe calls for the use of pandan leaves to make the liquid fragrant. There are no pandan leaves in my corner of Australia so I bought pandan essence from the Asian store. The bottle holding the essence is opaque (can't see through it) and in my hurry, I had quickly opened the sealed top, poured out a teaspoon of it and before I knew it, had chucked the 1tsp liquid into the pot.

This is the result.

Lesson learnt today, pandan essence is GREEN.

Imagine my horror the very moment I dropped the liquid into the pot. I was completely helpless, couldn't do anything to reverse my actions and for a moment, actually considered my options of adding other things to make the green disappear. You know, basics of art. (BLUE + YELLOW = GREEN) ( RED + BLUE = PURPLE )

Therefore I was thinking ( ? + GREEN = COLORLESS) and nothing came up. I sheepishly then told Alex that he will just have to swallow green for dessert. Hahaha..

Take a closer look at the picture. By the time dessert was served, even the barley was green!

So I'm sharing my piece of new found knowledge here. Pandan essence is green and if you need to subsitute the actual leaf with essence, use vanilla essence instead. Looking back, I should have known that the essence will be green. Pandan leaf is green mah... so logically the essence will be green right? Silly billy......

Yeah haha. Laugh at me. I can picture the rolling on the ground and the thumping of the table :) Oh and I must add, the dessert tasted completely right. It was just the wrong color.

cheryl

Floriade 2008

We went to Floriade during the day a week before the flower fest ended. I have been told that at the end of this fest, the flowers are cut and given to charitable homes. I was quite literally demanding that Alex take me to this before it was all over. Our weekends have always been busy and we hadn't had the chance to go. Alex wasn't terribly keen on spending time walking the gardens (typical male :p) but this is also because its held every year and he has seen a fair share of it over the years.

Anyway, off we went on Saturday and I must say, the weather that day was just awful. It was sunny, then windy the next and before we knew it, it poured. I suppose its like Melbourne weather but really experiencing it when all I wanted to do was enjoy flowers... definitely threw a lemon into my mood. Still, we took many pics...

There were many people out that day despite the weather. Sunny one moment, dark and gloomy the next.






Flower shots up close coming up... I love the bright colors.

Field after field of flower beds. The air was sweet smelling with the heavy scent of moisture right after rain.

There was a lake right in the middle of the park and flowers had been planted around the lake. We were there at the right time as a mother swan swam up with her swan-lings. Is that what you all baby swans? I assume the same as ducklings? Haha.. someone correct me here.

Anyways, the pretty little things were still furry. Grey and cuddly. Soon they will lose the soft grey fur and upgrade to the dark feathers mama has. They were swimming so close to the bank that I was so tempted to reach out and touch them. Alex was behind me yelling " Don't go so close ah honey!"

I then turned around and caught this picture on the camera. Will probably have to frame this shot up. Alex rarely poses :)

I keep thinking the shot of me below is reminiscent of some movie scene. Girl sitting on a bench in some park with flowers in the background. I just can't figure out which movie this is.

We were about to leave when I saw this flowered up cow. It was such a hit with the kids.

As we left, the sky turned dark once again. It was a day of all weather conditions but at the end of it my lemon had turned into lemonade.

cheryl

A Surprise Find

Last night, I tried searching for Alex-Cheryl on Google and found that our search result position had dropped from being #1 on the 1st page to #3 on the 2nd page :) Anyway, I had found something else instead. A surprise read.

http://timthinksthat.net/2008/07/13/alex-cheryl/

Thanks for the mention and the pics Tim :) I have not been reading as many blogs as I used to back in Penang when days were made shorter at the office by reading interesting write ups.

Have I missed anyone elses blog entry?


cheryl

Floriade NightFest

As mentioned in a previous post, Canberra has a yearly affair in spring called Floriade. Its 3 weeks of colorful, flowering tulips and other perineal flowers planted in a huge park, open to all for free. This event draws tourist and interstate visitors to Canberra each year. This year, the theme was 'Films that Shaped Australia' and for the first time, the park was open at night with colored lights and films screened for 7 nights in a row. Each night featured a different film and unlike the day access, the nightfest required a purchase of tickets. It was AUD 15 per night.

We chose to go on a Saturday night and it was a good thing that we bought tickets way earlier. We later found out that our night was fully sold out and there were some who were waiting outside the gates for the off chance that people would want to sell them their tickets.

Watching the movie in the open was great fun. Huge screen, much grass, surrounded by tall trees in the night, rustling of the wind... can I describe the ambience any more? The crowd was very responsive. There were loud exclamations extolling the virtues of the actor, cheering the actor on, voicing agreement to some action the actor had taken and loud clapping when the show ended. I had made chicken burger sandwiches, guacamole, packed some crackers and soft drink. After finding a little patch of green grass to call our own we settled down to eat and watched the show.

Here are four of the pics we took. Not very good pics. It was dark and we had problems with shaky hands :)

We watched Strictly Ballroom that night. I didn't know it was an Aussie film before that night. A very popular film - that's why the tickets were sold out.

cheryl