Jacques

These are unchronological, being from SA - but he's a diamond in my life - so I really like them. From a personal perspective, the second one, somewhere in the Knysna forest, is apt for it's halo.

 

Sunday morning with the patient

A great night last night - I thoroughly enjoyed the drugby - hope you watched - all sorts of reasons to feel pleased about the performance.  I tried the flash thingy inside today, it's definitely better outside (in the sense that the light bounces around the room anyway). 

But it was a happy breakfast with the patient, who was cheered even further by the arrival of his mate Jules who came to hang out - much appreciated. His mate Liam from down the parking lot made him a card - how cool? Are kids getting nicer?

 

Portraits with the new home-made thingy

The light is really really nice I think - especially given how simple and mobile the thing is (unless of course the wind is blowing - in which case I would imagine it to be unuseable; here is Dana above, and Jordan below

We went to Tracy and Simon's last night for dinner.  Courtney and Simon are off to New York today - superexciting for Courtney.  She's done really well, and has just been made a prefect (I think they have a different name for this, but this is the word that I understand) at the Aussie International School for next year - which is fitting - because she is a great human being.  The heavenly Brett and Carrie were there for dinner too - I think the Free's are one of the nicest possible families:

Courtney and Allie

And finally Jordan again with Daisy (a labradoodle - very cool dog I must say - cause of some considerable envy in the case of Evan and Aiden.

 

A new flash contraption

When I remember that perhaps I should do something other than work - and I mean that more mentally than anything else - I've really slid into this one-dimensional work-think-and-do only mindset - UNHEALTHY AND BORING - I occasionally diversify by reading a blog that Jens showed me called Strobist - which is an off - camera flash specialist lighting blog.  I like it particularly because it's full of stuff that you can do and make yourself.  Recently I saw a feature on it for a think called a bouncewall - which looks like this:

It's a smart little thing really - because it allows you to use your existing flash, still mounted on your camera, but produce an off-camera, diffuse light source - which looks much better than a flash shot.  You might be able to do this in a room by bouncing your flash off the roof, or off a wall - but outside you can'd do that - so you either need to walk around with your camera in one hand, and a flash in the other, arms stretched out - or you need one of these.  So Ithought it would be pretty simple to build one - the only vague complexity was findijng a plastic ball mount for the board - and attaching the two - this allows the board to rotate infinitely in terms of positions.  We have a long weekend this weekend - Saturday to Tuesday inclusive - so I made this my weekend mission (along with Trauma Unit 101 of course).  I got the ball out of a pvc ball valve, which I cut open in order to liberate, and made the rest out of pvc pipes (less groovy than the original's quite graceful S - but perfectly effective).  The result looks like this (somewhat awkward getting it to take a pic of itself):

Which might look a bit homeade joe - but it produces some pretty cool light and pictures as you'll see from the photies that follow.

A terrible wound

Aiden managed to fall out of a tree, and land on some rocks.  I cant explain how in doing this he managed to make a hole this size in his upper thigh - but he did - and it's been quite an experience.  He was at a mate's house, who promptly called the domestic worker (good thinking) who promptly called an ambulance (good thinking too).  So Aiden got to ride in an ambulance to the hospital, where they x-rayed him, cleaned him up and sewed him up (not without some serious discomfort, I might add). 

The next day we took him to our doc who took the bandages off and found this blend of stitches and steri-strips holding him together below - bleeding quite a bit still too - so she said there are not enough stitches here - and added another 4 to stop the bleeding.  That whole process took an hour and a bit - more wailing and discomfort.  Infection is the big risk, so we have to change the dressing every day - which means that all the pussy scabs get pulled off each time - the whole palava takes an hour - because the poor little oke is endlessly begging for a break, a rest, basically any respite.  I've tried to explain to him that there is no value in a delay - it just draws out the inevitable - but perhaps that is something that he's still got to learn from this whole thing.

Any way - I'm hopeful that the whole thing has really taught him something - and that would be to consider what you are doing (rather than not do things).  I dont have a good track record of this in my life - and have crashed in various ways as a consequence, bicycles, motor-bikes etc - so perhaps I'm naieve, and the whole thing is that you can't really anticipate everything.  I did, in an attempt to explain what I meant, ask him if he'd climb a tree over a pond full of hungry crocodiles.  He said not.  But that's the thing - we all might just - it's such a rush looking down at all those big lizards, after all.

I'm going to be spending a fair bit of time with this leg, so I'll whizz you a couple of updates as we go along - particularly since I've recently built a new flash system - more about that to follow.  Hope the quizzes wrapped themselves up in a helpful way - will give you a ring later to find out how.