Getting Life Back Under Control
22 July 2018
In April Jay’s parents came to stay with us again. It was a welcome visit and I had enough time free to accompany them to the Vic Market and some of the other tourist haunts they like in Melbourne. They had a morning with my mother and we also had dinner with them and my aunt and uncle. They spent the middle part of the trip on a cruise from Melbourne to Singapore before flying back to us for a week.
I had two travel commitments while they were visiting. One was a day in Sydney for a committee meeting reviewing a portion of the Medical Benefits Schedule for the Commonwealth Government. It was surprisingly convenient for a national committee that they book a room inside the terminal at Sydney airport and we gather there for the day before flying home without having to deal with security as we never leave the gate area.
The other travel was also to Sydney for the ANZCA Annual Scientific Meeting for a week. I knew this would mean I was away when Russ and Lorraine left. The surprise was that Jay was sent at short notice to Google I/O in California (the conference with the computer “Duplex” booking a haircut on the phone) so he was also away from the day they were due to fly out. They made their way to the airport without problems.
My Sydney conference was a fairly good one with some new research and recommendations which will affect my practice. It was combined with the RACS surgeons’ meeting which always tends to lift the level of interest and the standard of both meetings. I had my evenings free so it was good to have some meals with friends in Sydney: Beau and Jim.
It is 30 years since I entered Melbourne University and Trinity College. This year there are a number of reunions. Jay came with me to the one for Trinity College. We sat with the people I have stayed friends with from college including David and Sarah in the picture and also Kate and Liz. There were quite a few people I was interested to talk to after so long, including Rachel in the picture and Carl McCamish. Jay was very sporting to come along to an event with so few people he knew. I was surprised how lawyer-heavy the group was; I didn’t realise quite so many of my contemporaries were studying Law. In November we have our Medical School reunion which coincides with the 50th anniversary of the opening of the “new” medical school building in 1968.
We went to several shows in the Comedy Festival this year, including Lano and Woodley’s “Fly”. It was interesting to see Hannah Gadsby’s “retirement” show from last year which we found so confronting (in a good way) still touring and getting a very positive review in the New York Times as well as a Netflix special.
We also found time to attend the Dreamtime game between Essendon and Richmond this year at the MCG. It will be one of the last times we can use my father’s guest ticket: next year I’ll be buying visitor tickets for Jay. There is inevitably some unfinished business left when someone dies; in my father’s case this included two houses on which renovation work was almost finished (as well as his own house). Renovation work was his favourite hobby in retirement. Fortunately there was not an unmanageable amount of work to be finished.
The house in North Melbourne was largely dealt with by Keiran, the grandson of my father’s friend Tom who works as a builder. He has completed most of the remaining work and with help from my sister we have now engaged an agent for a planned auction on September 15.
We have had to get our hands more dirty with the Prahran house. My father was using part of it as a workshop. Jay and I spent a large part of our free time on weekends for the first half of the year working here. My cousin’s family have agreed to rent this house on a long term lease, so my cousin Phil helped with the work as well.
There was a small amount of finishing work to do (such as installing a dishwasher) and lot of material to remove (about 10 cubic metres or 2500kg of building materials and refuse) and I am very pleased that the house is now ready to occupy, so they will move in on August 18 and we will have our weekends back.
I have also spent quite a lot of time getting a handle on my parents’ financial affairs. Because of my mother’s dementia she is unable to help with this. The worst of it has been the seemingly endless requirement for certified copies of everything to be given to everyone. I hope to be able to hand over a fairly orderly set of records to the accountant to prepare the tax returns for both my parents and my father’s estate.
In May I said goodbye to Yasutaka Konishi, the Japanese fellow I have been supervising on Friday mornings doing upper and lower limb blocks for two years at St Vincent’s during his regional anaesthesia fellowship. He’s now better at most of the blocks we do than I am, so it’s time to go back to Japan.
Over the last months I have felt a strong need to reduce my work commitments to make room for the other things I need to do. After reflecting on the satisfaction I derive from the various parts of my work, I have resigned my remaining clinical sessions at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital as that department has progressively eliminated most of its anaesthetic teaching, which is the work I find most fulfilling, and at the same has generated almost all of the administrative headaches I encounter throughout the nine hospitals where I work. I will miss my RVEEH ophthalmology colleagues but most of them I also see at the nearby day surgery.
At the start of July, the plaque for my father’s memorial was ready. My sister and I interred his ashes in the Garden of No Distant Place at the Springvale Botanical Cemetery next to a Prunus prunus (plum) similar to the ones he had chosen for the yard at the Prahran house. His remains will be incorporated into the plants over time.
In four weeks, while my cousins move into the Prahran house and the agent shows people through the North Melbourne house prior to auction, Jay and I will travel to Europe for a few weeks to have a break from what has been a tiring year. We are very much looking forward to it.
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I had two travel commitments while they were visiting. One was a day in Sydney for a committee meeting reviewing a portion of the Medical Benefits Schedule for the Commonwealth Government. It was surprisingly convenient for a national committee that they book a room inside the terminal at Sydney airport and we gather there for the day before flying home without having to deal with security as we never leave the gate area.
The other travel was also to Sydney for the ANZCA Annual Scientific Meeting for a week. I knew this would mean I was away when Russ and Lorraine left. The surprise was that Jay was sent at short notice to Google I/O in California (the conference with the computer “Duplex” booking a haircut on the phone) so he was also away from the day they were due to fly out. They made their way to the airport without problems.
My Sydney conference was a fairly good one with some new research and recommendations which will affect my practice. It was combined with the RACS surgeons’ meeting which always tends to lift the level of interest and the standard of both meetings. I had my evenings free so it was good to have some meals with friends in Sydney: Beau and Jim.
It is 30 years since I entered Melbourne University and Trinity College. This year there are a number of reunions. Jay came with me to the one for Trinity College. We sat with the people I have stayed friends with from college including David and Sarah in the picture and also Kate and Liz. There were quite a few people I was interested to talk to after so long, including Rachel in the picture and Carl McCamish. Jay was very sporting to come along to an event with so few people he knew. I was surprised how lawyer-heavy the group was; I didn’t realise quite so many of my contemporaries were studying Law. In November we have our Medical School reunion which coincides with the 50th anniversary of the opening of the “new” medical school building in 1968.
We went to several shows in the Comedy Festival this year, including Lano and Woodley’s “Fly”. It was interesting to see Hannah Gadsby’s “retirement” show from last year which we found so confronting (in a good way) still touring and getting a very positive review in the New York Times as well as a Netflix special.
We also found time to attend the Dreamtime game between Essendon and Richmond this year at the MCG. It will be one of the last times we can use my father’s guest ticket: next year I’ll be buying visitor tickets for Jay. There is inevitably some unfinished business left when someone dies; in my father’s case this included two houses on which renovation work was almost finished (as well as his own house). Renovation work was his favourite hobby in retirement. Fortunately there was not an unmanageable amount of work to be finished.
The house in North Melbourne was largely dealt with by Keiran, the grandson of my father’s friend Tom who works as a builder. He has completed most of the remaining work and with help from my sister we have now engaged an agent for a planned auction on September 15.
We have had to get our hands more dirty with the Prahran house. My father was using part of it as a workshop. Jay and I spent a large part of our free time on weekends for the first half of the year working here. My cousin’s family have agreed to rent this house on a long term lease, so my cousin Phil helped with the work as well.
There was a small amount of finishing work to do (such as installing a dishwasher) and lot of material to remove (about 10 cubic metres or 2500kg of building materials and refuse) and I am very pleased that the house is now ready to occupy, so they will move in on August 18 and we will have our weekends back.
I have also spent quite a lot of time getting a handle on my parents’ financial affairs. Because of my mother’s dementia she is unable to help with this. The worst of it has been the seemingly endless requirement for certified copies of everything to be given to everyone. I hope to be able to hand over a fairly orderly set of records to the accountant to prepare the tax returns for both my parents and my father’s estate.
In May I said goodbye to Yasutaka Konishi, the Japanese fellow I have been supervising on Friday mornings doing upper and lower limb blocks for two years at St Vincent’s during his regional anaesthesia fellowship. He’s now better at most of the blocks we do than I am, so it’s time to go back to Japan.
Over the last months I have felt a strong need to reduce my work commitments to make room for the other things I need to do. After reflecting on the satisfaction I derive from the various parts of my work, I have resigned my remaining clinical sessions at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital as that department has progressively eliminated most of its anaesthetic teaching, which is the work I find most fulfilling, and at the same has generated almost all of the administrative headaches I encounter throughout the nine hospitals where I work. I will miss my RVEEH ophthalmology colleagues but most of them I also see at the nearby day surgery.
At the start of July, the plaque for my father’s memorial was ready. My sister and I interred his ashes in the Garden of No Distant Place at the Springvale Botanical Cemetery next to a Prunus prunus (plum) similar to the ones he had chosen for the yard at the Prahran house. His remains will be incorporated into the plants over time.
In four weeks, while my cousins move into the Prahran house and the agent shows people through the North Melbourne house prior to auction, Jay and I will travel to Europe for a few weeks to have a break from what has been a tiring year. We are very much looking forward to it.
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