Light Switches and Hot Water Taps
I got up this morning in the hotel and came home from work today to our house here in Winton. Vicki and Liz had moved all our stuff after the Cantlebury's left this morning. The house is a "really cute" little 3 bedroom home in the center of town. It has high ceilings, huge windows with great light, and is full of comfy couches and nice furniture. I'm sure it will be a very cozy, pleasant lodgings for the next 5 months. This house got me thinking about physics.
Now the "Many Worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics states that since each event in the universe is indeterminate, and there is no predilection for one event to happen over another at the quantum level, that each event spawns two universes, which exist side by side and differ only in the outcome of the particular event. In one universe Schroedinger's cat lives; in the other it dies. This has led many science fiction writers to build stories in "alternate universes" where outcomes were different. (e.g. "Hitler won WW2", or "the Black Death killed 95% of the population of Europe"). What the heck does this have to do with our new house?
After being in country for over 2 weeks now, it is sinking in that I am not a tourist, bound to go home one day soon. I will live in this reality for the next 5 months. And it is a reality that is both very familiar, and disturbingly different. Power outputs have 3 prongs. Light switches turn on when you push them down. The HOT water tap in the sink is on the right side about 99% of the time. Rarely does a sink have a union tap where the hot and cold water mix; almost all sinks have separate faucets on them. We drive on the left side of the road here, shift gears with the left hand, and turn on wipers (located on the left side of steering column) when we mean to signal a turn (located on the right side). "Windshields" are 'windscreens", "insurance" is a "cover". You can be sure that medicine is different here also.
Since we've arrived in Winton, and I've now started work, I will strive to carefully watch the tone and style of this blog. New Zealand is different from the USA; that's obvious. I am not a tourist any longer. I am a guest here, hosted by very nice people who are working hard to make me feel welcome, and who need my skills. And a guest should follow certain rules.
When I was 11 my parents put me on a plane to Finland, by myself, to spend 8 weeks with my Mom's college roommate (who had been an exchange student in the U.S.) and her family. My Mom gave me a diary to keep, and in the beginning she wrote some advice for me, and repeated words of wisdom and love on every page. The most important things she wrote, I found, were "Don't compare", and "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all".
As a guest here, I will try to follow this advice. I would never want to upset any of my hosts in Winton, and I certainly want to keep patient confidentiality and be professional. So you shouldn't read anything bad or upsetting about Winton and my hosts in the following blogs. I will not write anything about clinical encounters until I get guidelines from my sponsoring doctor. As with most blogs, this will be mostly, narcissistically about me and what I am feeling and experiencing with my family. It is not intended as a "cross cultural comparison" or critique. For example, I can understand that there is a good rationale for having 3 big prongs on the plugs here; the voltage is 220. Physics tells us you are less likely to get a heat related short if the area of the current-carrying conductor is big. Tea water heats up very fast with 220 volts and hair dryers really have POWER because of it. Is it better or worse? I'm not comparing; I am just collecting observations, like the 19th Century naturalist in Timaru collected butterflys. Is a brilliant blue Amazon butterful better than a honeybee? The question makes no sense; it is not correctly put. I have to remember that I will not always understand the reasons that Kiwi's do the things they do. I'm not that smart. One needs to accept that it is just their way.
So I intend to share my observations, and try not to make conclusions. I ask you, my reader to also try not to compare when you read this blog. Things are different in other places, that is all. You will read nice things about my hosts and my host country; just as I hope a Kiwi doctor would say nice things about Iowa if they were a guest in the chilly Midwest. I know that I will look at things at home with new eyes when I come back, and be a different person. (But note that if I stayed at home however, this would also happen.) The attitude to strive for is as the Zen master said, when returning from a visit to a sacred forest: "The high mountains! The beuatiful waterfalls! - They were nothing special."
An academic Family Doc and his family's adventures on a 6 month working "sabbatical" in New Zealand.
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Winton, At Last
This will be a delayed post, as I don't have Internet access here yet, but I want to keep up to date.
Saturday and Sunday were spent traveling down South from Christchurch to Winton. Its about 600 km, so we did it in two days and took our time. Saturday we stopped for Lunch in Timaru, visited the Rose gardens there on the waterfront, and enjoyed the South Canterbury museum. The museum, free, is another New Zealand "hidden gem". It has great displays about the natural history of the area, as well as great pictures and artifacts from the pioneer eras. One of the local surveyors in Timaru was a great Victorian naturalist, and he amassed a stunning collection of butterflies and minerals- unexpected in this small town. Continuing down the coast to Oamaru, we checked out the penguin colonies there, but discovered they are only seen at dusk, when they return from the sea. We took the coast road south from there, through Kakanui, a really cute seaside town. The coast there is a grass covered bluff overlooking the beach. We pulled over to just look at the ocean in the afternoon light, and discovered a pod of 3 of the endangered and rare
Hector's dolphins just playing in the surf. They were plaining body surfing in the waves, and occaisonally leaping out, having great fun. Just after this we rounded the bend to find a farmer driving his sheep down the road to a new pasture. The sheepdogs were amazing, responding to whistles and calls of the farmers. 
Our next stop was Moeraki, home of the
famous boulders. We walked down the twilight beach in a stiff wind, to explore these strange, surreal rocks. Vicki thought they looked like a someone had dropped giant golf balls all over the beach. We rolled on into Dunedin at nightfall and found a nice hotel. Sunday we slept late, then drove out to the tip of the Otago peninsula. The drive was spectacular- Dunedin has a wonderful natural harbour. At the tip of the peninsula is an albatross colony and seal colony. The wind was howling and the sea bashing the cliffs- but we saw two huge Royal Albatross soar up overhead. Liz got some great pictures of the Hooker's sea lions at close range (10 feet). The road then took us inland over kilometers of pastureland. It was a beautiful, clear blue day, with the green pasures filled with white sheep. We arrived in Winton about 4pm and found our hotel. Mr. Frasier, a member of the local hospital board met us and welcomed us. He asked me to report to the medical center this morning at 9 AM for orientation.
I was really nervous this morning. Its been 12 years since my last "first day on the job"; plus this is another country and medical system. I arrived to find that my supervising doctor had suddenly had a death in the family, and left this morning for England for 3 weeks! There were two other locum's docs in the office, one of whom I am replacing, so it was his last day. I was introduced to everyone in the office, and then Dawn, one of the nurses, gave me 2-3 hours of orientation to the forms, charts, and computer system. Because of the crisis, I was asked to see patients beginning this afternoon at 2. We did have a special "morning tea" at 1045 AM, which the office threw for the leaving doc , and Vicki and Liz came over and met everyone. I had time to review the charts of the afternoon patients and when 2 pm came, I started in. There are a lot of differences in medical practice, which I may blog about later. But the patients were very nice, understanding as I looked up all the drug names, struggled to master an I-Mac based computer system and filled in for their absent doctor. I only deleted one progress note accidently before saving, and I kept fairly well to (an admittedly light) schedule, seeing about 8 patients between 2 and 5:30 PM. In a word, both the patients and I survived my first day. And everyone was really nice and glad to have me here. And it was fun.
VIcki and Liz spent the day exploring the town; the library, the pharmacy, and some of the shops. We will be staying here in the motel for a few days until the practice can turn the house around. They will figure out what Liz is going to do for school or classes here, and I've given them the job of finding out about Internet access. It is great to finally be here after so much planning, and they are both happy to "get out of the car". We put 1400 km on the campervan, + 600 on the rental car; so 2000 km in 11 days.
This will be a delayed post, as I don't have Internet access here yet, but I want to keep up to date.
Saturday and Sunday were spent traveling down South from Christchurch to Winton. Its about 600 km, so we did it in two days and took our time. Saturday we stopped for Lunch in Timaru, visited the Rose gardens there on the waterfront, and enjoyed the South Canterbury museum. The museum, free, is another New Zealand "hidden gem". It has great displays about the natural history of the area, as well as great pictures and artifacts from the pioneer eras. One of the local surveyors in Timaru was a great Victorian naturalist, and he amassed a stunning collection of butterflies and minerals- unexpected in this small town. Continuing down the coast to Oamaru, we checked out the penguin colonies there, but discovered they are only seen at dusk, when they return from the sea. We took the coast road south from there, through Kakanui, a really cute seaside town. The coast there is a grass covered bluff overlooking the beach. We pulled over to just look at the ocean in the afternoon light, and discovered a pod of 3 of the endangered and rare
Hector's dolphins just playing in the surf. They were plaining body surfing in the waves, and occaisonally leaping out, having great fun. Just after this we rounded the bend to find a farmer driving his sheep down the road to a new pasture. The sheepdogs were amazing, responding to whistles and calls of the farmers.
Our next stop was Moeraki, home of the
famous boulders. We walked down the twilight beach in a stiff wind, to explore these strange, surreal rocks. Vicki thought they looked like a someone had dropped giant golf balls all over the beach. We rolled on into Dunedin at nightfall and found a nice hotel. Sunday we slept late, then drove out to the tip of the Otago peninsula. The drive was spectacular- Dunedin has a wonderful natural harbour. At the tip of the peninsula is an albatross colony and seal colony. The wind was howling and the sea bashing the cliffs- but we saw two huge Royal Albatross soar up overhead. Liz got some great pictures of the Hooker's sea lions at close range (10 feet). The road then took us inland over kilometers of pastureland. It was a beautiful, clear blue day, with the green pasures filled with white sheep. We arrived in Winton about 4pm and found our hotel. Mr. Frasier, a member of the local hospital board met us and welcomed us. He asked me to report to the medical center this morning at 9 AM for orientation.
I was really nervous this morning. Its been 12 years since my last "first day on the job"; plus this is another country and medical system. I arrived to find that my supervising doctor had suddenly had a death in the family, and left this morning for England for 3 weeks! There were two other locum's docs in the office, one of whom I am replacing, so it was his last day. I was introduced to everyone in the office, and then Dawn, one of the nurses, gave me 2-3 hours of orientation to the forms, charts, and computer system. Because of the crisis, I was asked to see patients beginning this afternoon at 2. We did have a special "morning tea" at 1045 AM, which the office threw for the leaving doc , and Vicki and Liz came over and met everyone. I had time to review the charts of the afternoon patients and when 2 pm came, I started in. There are a lot of differences in medical practice, which I may blog about later. But the patients were very nice, understanding as I looked up all the drug names, struggled to master an I-Mac based computer system and filled in for their absent doctor. I only deleted one progress note accidently before saving, and I kept fairly well to (an admittedly light) schedule, seeing about 8 patients between 2 and 5:30 PM. In a word, both the patients and I survived my first day. And everyone was really nice and glad to have me here. And it was fun.
VIcki and Liz spent the day exploring the town; the library, the pharmacy, and some of the shops. We will be staying here in the motel for a few days until the practice can turn the house around. They will figure out what Liz is going to do for school or classes here, and I've given them the job of finding out about Internet access. It is great to finally be here after so much planning, and they are both happy to "get out of the car". We put 1400 km on the campervan, + 600 on the rental car; so 2000 km in 11 days.
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