Neuroendoscopy

On Friday and Saturday Charlie gave a Course on Neuroendoscopy and he had invited me to come and watch as well. I was really lucky to get that chance, because the participants had to pay AUS 2700 for that course, well they also got to work on cadaver heads, but just having the chance to listen to talks given by very well trained and great neursurgeons was really interesting and even though I did not get to do things on my own, I still got to watch and appreciate the anatomy. It was definetely a worthwhile experience. I also had the chance to talk to some of the Neurosurgeons about what it is like to be Neurosurgeon in different countries, because many of them have trained and work in different countries all over the world - very interesting.
Friday night all the participants and instructors were invited to have dinner at a restaurant overlooking the harbour and the operahouse... It was amazing! The food was great, the company was so much fun and I really enjoyed a great night. For some reason there were also some fireworks going off over the Botanic Garden and since I love fireworks that just made the evening more special.

Saturday night was Mardi Gras in Sydney. It's a big Gay/Lesbian festival with a parade throughout downtown. Me and the sister of the German Neurosurgeon tried to go and see some of the parade, but it was too crowded downtown. People were standing on chairs and there were up to 6 rows of people standing at the side of the street, so no way for us to see anything... We just got a glimps when we walked past the emergency area, where they wouldn't let people stand/stop.... It was really colorful. Many people were dressed up - appearently the goal was to use as little fabric as possible to just barely cover the most essential parts of the body..... and some preople just shouldn't have done that.... ;) We did not stay very long, because we did not see much anyway and so we ended up spending more time waiting for a bus than actually being downtown. Since some of the main roads downtown were closed for the parade the busses had to detour, but it was nowhere visible how that worked.... First we had to let a few busses pass on the downtown, because they were already too crowded and then on the way back we waited at a bus stop where got dropped off, but appearently the busses took a different route back than they did downtown.... After about 20minutes of barely any busses passing by we figured that out and walked towards a different street where the busses did show up, but once again we had to let about three pass until we finally got onto one that would actually take us back - it was an adventure!!!!!! And it seemed as if the entire town was partying. I just wish I'd seen a little more of the parade, because I think that would have been fun, but prior to the event people kept telling me about Mardi Gras and whenever I asked where a good spot would be to watch the parade and not just the people around, because I did not care about the crowd and the partying on the sidewalks, nobody would give me a satisfying answer. So that was a little dissatisfying....

Today I slept in! And I got to sleep in, I did not wake up from earplugs or noise. This new room is wounderful! The scrub nurse from Charlie's theather wanted to take us to a Korean barbecue for Brunch.... well it turned into a lunch.... We wanted to meet at 11 in front of the hospital, but one of the nurses did not show up till about 11.40!!!!! She kept calling and telling us that she will be there "shortly", "in 10minutes", "soon", "almost".... Time is just a very different thing in Australia.... 10minutes past the meeting time is still on time and that might even been 10australian minutes...
The food was amazing. It was spicy, but I did not get the hickups, even though later during the day I felt as if it was going to burn a whole into my bowel.... It was really spicy, but really, really great. I love the variety of asian food that you can get here and most of it tastes really great! I wish we'd have that variety in Germany as well. That is one thing that I will definetely miss - all the little asian restaurants...
After we had finished lunch, which was not just tasty, but also a very interesting social experience - because people are just so very different when they are not at work and I did get to know them a whole lot better - it started to rain, not just a little bit, but really bad rain. I still went to Bondi, because I had only been to the beach there and it was supposed to be a nice shopping area and I felt like wandering around for a little while, but rain was really bad, so I ended up in a big mall and the book store.... That was still very nice, even though I did not get to see a whole lot of Sydney this weekend and didn't do quite as much walking around. It was a quiet weekend and now I will start to read my new book "Life in his Hands" (A story about Charlie)....