Quick-Fire Travel
07 January 2018
The last part of 2017 was overshadowed by my father becoming ill again from his myeloma and also the tiring and corrosive national survey on same-sex marriage. At least the marriage survey ultimately resulted in the legislative change which should have happened without such drama years ago. I participated reluctantly in the campaigning; helping to change the formal position of one of the public hospitals in which I work to a “Yes!” was really the only bright spot.
We had the distraction of some quick-fire travel, with three trips over four weeks. I travelled to Boston for Anesthesiology 2017, the meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. It was a good conference with plenty of interesting material and I had an opportunity to see old friends and colleagues from UCSF as well as some socializing with those from Australia who were there at the same time and having dinner with Terry, an old friend from SF.
On the way home I stopped in San Francisco and stayed with Jay’s sister’s family in Palo Alto. It was good to see two of his nephews and also friends in the Bay Area: Dwain, Kelvan, Yoav and others I bumped into at the gym. I also got reacquainted with Chloe (pictured), who has been seeing me on these conference trips at least since 2009.
I was back at work for a week before we went to New Zealand over the Melbourne Cup weekend. It was a short trip to the South Island but Jay had packed a lot in: we did quad-biking in Queenstown, I bungy jumped again after 27 years and we were very lucky with the weather at Mount Cook.
We went by helicopter to the Tasman Glacier for a hike in warm conditions but with fresh snow. It was spectacular. I made an album of some other photos from the trip.
When we got back to Melbourne it was Jay’s turn to do a shortened week of work before he left for Stockholm for Frostbite Dev Days, a work conference. He took the opportunity to see a few of the tourist sights in Stockholm to help plan our itinerary for next August when we might visit Scandinavia. While he was away, Jay missed the Latin Festival which is held near our house.
At the start of December we went to see a rodeo to which my sister had bought us tickets. It was an international bull-riding competition. It was certainly something outside our normal range of activities and quite fun to watch.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas we had people to dinner for a hybrid of the two. Jay cooked roast turkey and lobster mac’n’cheese which were very successful. It was also a first outing for the shorts which were part of our outfits for Christmas Day.
I prepared a roast dinner for my family at my sister’s house of Christmas Day. The suits propelled that picture to first place in my “most liked” photos on Facebook with over 100 likes (really not impressive by Facebook standards). My father had been quite sick and we were grateful that he was able to leave hospital the day before and so make it to Christmas at home with family.
We both had the week after Christmas off work, so we went to the Boxing Day test as well as doing some shopping and other post-Christmas Summer activities. Coming up is the Summer season of parties and Midsumma Festival activities followed by Mardi Gras in Sydney.
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We had the distraction of some quick-fire travel, with three trips over four weeks. I travelled to Boston for Anesthesiology 2017, the meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. It was a good conference with plenty of interesting material and I had an opportunity to see old friends and colleagues from UCSF as well as some socializing with those from Australia who were there at the same time and having dinner with Terry, an old friend from SF.
On the way home I stopped in San Francisco and stayed with Jay’s sister’s family in Palo Alto. It was good to see two of his nephews and also friends in the Bay Area: Dwain, Kelvan, Yoav and others I bumped into at the gym. I also got reacquainted with Chloe (pictured), who has been seeing me on these conference trips at least since 2009.
I was back at work for a week before we went to New Zealand over the Melbourne Cup weekend. It was a short trip to the South Island but Jay had packed a lot in: we did quad-biking in Queenstown, I bungy jumped again after 27 years and we were very lucky with the weather at Mount Cook.
We went by helicopter to the Tasman Glacier for a hike in warm conditions but with fresh snow. It was spectacular. I made an album of some other photos from the trip.
When we got back to Melbourne it was Jay’s turn to do a shortened week of work before he left for Stockholm for Frostbite Dev Days, a work conference. He took the opportunity to see a few of the tourist sights in Stockholm to help plan our itinerary for next August when we might visit Scandinavia. While he was away, Jay missed the Latin Festival which is held near our house.
At the start of December we went to see a rodeo to which my sister had bought us tickets. It was an international bull-riding competition. It was certainly something outside our normal range of activities and quite fun to watch.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas we had people to dinner for a hybrid of the two. Jay cooked roast turkey and lobster mac’n’cheese which were very successful. It was also a first outing for the shorts which were part of our outfits for Christmas Day.
I prepared a roast dinner for my family at my sister’s house of Christmas Day. The suits propelled that picture to first place in my “most liked” photos on Facebook with over 100 likes (really not impressive by Facebook standards). My father had been quite sick and we were grateful that he was able to leave hospital the day before and so make it to Christmas at home with family.
We both had the week after Christmas off work, so we went to the Boxing Day test as well as doing some shopping and other post-Christmas Summer activities. Coming up is the Summer season of parties and Midsumma Festival activities followed by Mardi Gras in Sydney.
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