I Start Driving
23 December 2001
It's almost Christmas here and I have a few new photos I thought I'd make into an e-mail. Preparing for Christmas away from home is a little despiriting at times, particularly as most of the Americans we have met are going to their families elsewhere in the country for the weekend, so it will probably just be Robert and me and a few friends visiting during the day.
We are set up to videoconference with family in Melbourne for Christmas, so there will be some company of an electronic sort. Everything else in San Francisco is pretty expensive which makes fast Internet access (DSL) relatively cheap by comparison.
My license finally arrived. This is significant because it is used as a defacto identity card here; all credit card purchases and entry into pubs etc. requires a photo ID and the ID they expect is a California driver license. The other major significance of the license is that it allowed me to join City Car Share
Today we used a Beetle to bring groceries home. Two weeks ago it was a wagon for getting the Christmas tree. Here Robert is trying to duck out of the picture while bringing things in from the car. It means we can shop at Costco. I should have taken some pictures there as it's a remarkable warehouse of products in large boxes. I ran into Gerald Wluka there today which was something of a surprise as I hadn't seen him for at least seven years but he was still quite recognizable; he was two years ahead of me at Melbourne Grammar.
The major achievement at work has been that they finally allocated me an office. I share it with two others and it's miles away from the operating rooms and the lab I work in so I probably won't be spending much time there. It's in an old building across the street from the hospital which is very cold at the moment, but it does have a good view. Here I am (in silhouette), with the Golden Gate in the distance. The day surgery centre is the building impinging on the left of the view.
We had a tree-trimming party (of sorts) after getting the Christmas tree home. It is a Douglas fir, quite unlike the trees used in Australia with much shorter needles which it drops on the floor constantly. This photo was taken using the timer (hence the odd framing). Michael Zornes and Kelvan Howard are between Robert and me. Dwain Skinner, one of the anaethesia trainees from the hospital, also came over but isn't in the photo.
By the time we had finished the tree this is how it looked. There are no presents under it as I had trouble watering it and managed to soak one of my present for Robert in the process. Since that we have put the presents on the hearth (there's one visible at the left of the picture). The tree looks quite small in the picture: it's 6'6" however. Lights for Christmas are a big deal here, even with the electricity prices, and there are plenty of houses around with thousands of lights visible from the street. Our tree is very modest by comparison with two strings of lights.
I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas. Apologies to those I haven't sent a card to; we haven't sent many cards this year. I'll have some holiday pictures in the next month or so and I'll write another e-mail then.
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We are set up to videoconference with family in Melbourne for Christmas, so there will be some company of an electronic sort. Everything else in San Francisco is pretty expensive which makes fast Internet access (DSL) relatively cheap by comparison.
My license finally arrived. This is significant because it is used as a defacto identity card here; all credit card purchases and entry into pubs etc. requires a photo ID and the ID they expect is a California driver license. The other major significance of the license is that it allowed me to join City Car Share
Today we used a Beetle to bring groceries home. Two weeks ago it was a wagon for getting the Christmas tree. Here Robert is trying to duck out of the picture while bringing things in from the car. It means we can shop at Costco. I should have taken some pictures there as it's a remarkable warehouse of products in large boxes. I ran into Gerald Wluka there today which was something of a surprise as I hadn't seen him for at least seven years but he was still quite recognizable; he was two years ahead of me at Melbourne Grammar.
The major achievement at work has been that they finally allocated me an office. I share it with two others and it's miles away from the operating rooms and the lab I work in so I probably won't be spending much time there. It's in an old building across the street from the hospital which is very cold at the moment, but it does have a good view. Here I am (in silhouette), with the Golden Gate in the distance. The day surgery centre is the building impinging on the left of the view.
We had a tree-trimming party (of sorts) after getting the Christmas tree home. It is a Douglas fir, quite unlike the trees used in Australia with much shorter needles which it drops on the floor constantly. This photo was taken using the timer (hence the odd framing). Michael Zornes and Kelvan Howard are between Robert and me. Dwain Skinner, one of the anaethesia trainees from the hospital, also came over but isn't in the photo.
By the time we had finished the tree this is how it looked. There are no presents under it as I had trouble watering it and managed to soak one of my present for Robert in the process. Since that we have put the presents on the hearth (there's one visible at the left of the picture). The tree looks quite small in the picture: it's 6'6" however. Lights for Christmas are a big deal here, even with the electricity prices, and there are plenty of houses around with thousands of lights visible from the street. Our tree is very modest by comparison with two strings of lights.
I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas. Apologies to those I haven't sent a card to; we haven't sent many cards this year. I'll have some holiday pictures in the next month or so and I'll write another e-mail then.
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