Masala Dosai in Helensburg...

Weekend is a new concept for an average Indian in a small town. My father or his father would have never had any idea of what is a weekend and how to make a holiday. During my long years of medical training, no differentiation of any lind was htere in between sundays and mondays. We worked all days and we never had any problems about it.
In this new land, weekend is a thing of importance. Finding new things to do every weekend is essential. A question on monday "How was your weekend?" has to be answered decently. So something had to be done.
This weekend, Saturday we had been to Kiama through Helensburg. Kiama is a 100 odd km far coastal village known for its blowholes. Blowholes are holes in the seaside rocks. When a high wave hits on this rock, a sort of negative pressure is created which pushes water with high force which looks like a wonderful natural fountain.
We set out in the morining first heading for the temple at Helensburg.Sri Venkateshwara temple at Helensburg is a beautiful hindu temple with shrines for Chandramouleeswara, tripurasundari, sivasubramania swamy, lord venkateshwara, andal, mahalakshmi and ofcourse navagrhas.
The drive to helensburg seemed a little too long but the day was good, traffic less and we reached the temple by around 11 ish. The temple is beautifully built looking new but I learnt it 's beeen there for a coupla decades now. The ambience of the temple made me nostalgic. We had a wonderful darshan of all the deities and headed towards another important part of the program - having breakfast at the temple canteen. The canteen as i see is manned by volunteers and serves authentic south Indian food. I am proud to proclaim myself as dosa addict. So we ordered masala dosa, pongal and chetan was fond of vadas. Though I had been having sumptuous south indian food at Chethan's house, the temple food was one even Chethan was looking upto. the dosa kept upto the expectation and the pongal exceeded it.
We left the temple by noon and headed towards Kiama. On the way we stopped at thte Bald point for breathtaking views of the sea and mountains. then we stopped at the Nan Tien budddhist temple. It is a beautiful chinese buddhist temple with a pagoda, main shrine, canteen, museum, library and a training center. The teachings of buddha appear everywhere in the temple. We spent some time there and left for the blowholes.
The trip was worth for the views of the ocean we get at the Kiama seashore. the blowholes were throwing a spectacular water show. We stayed there for while and drove back to Sydney.
A weekend worth telling everyone on Monday.
Hey, wait. I roamed around on sunday too. Visited the Bondi beach. forgot the battery for the camera. went intot he waves. Strong surf. it was good. in the evening visited the famous Sydney murugan temple. A temple run according to tamil customs by the srilankan tamil community. A very divine place.
I had been to the temple with Kumar anna and his family, good people from the part of India where I belong to. They took me to a Srilankan restaurant for sdinner. had kothu parotta, vattalapam and cocnut juice.
A good Sunday.

Shoulders and Elbows and Shoulders and Elbows.....

This whole week in Sydney has been busy...busier than in Christchurch I should say. The last week conference was very eventful.Lots of learning, lots of great men talking, newer instruments and implants, meeting new people and dining too. This week Monday I had been to royal North shore private to observe Prof Sonnanbend and Jeff Hughes. Prof had two small cases - SADs. I saw Jeff doing an open OK procedure. It is a good surgery for big osteophytes around elbow with impingement pain. Afternoon clinics I was with Prof Sonnanbend. That was again a good experience. Tuesday morning Marter Hospital. List with prof. we had a reverse shoulder, one stabilisation and one ac joint debridement. The reverse was for cuff tear arthropathy. depuy reverse. Prof was magnanimous to allow me to scrub in the case. The case went on well. the critical thing is the exposure of glenoid for putting in the glenosphere. The nest day ...two lists one in public and one in private...Prof did a revision in which he did a reverse removing a hemi, and a latarjet. Jeff did two replacements, one zimmer reverse with bone graft and one smr total shoulder again with bone graft. then he did one capsular release of shoulder and two elbow scopies one synovectomy and one osteocapsulectomy.
Thursday i went to Prince of Wales to watch Jerome goldberg. He had eight cases on list. The re were two pec major repairs, two open cuffs in which one was subscap repair,one scopic cuff,two stabilisations and one massive cuff for which ad arthroscopic repair was done. the last case was done by John trantalis an upcoming shoulder surgeon trained in Canada. Jerome is a wonderful man and a great surgeon.I am taking hos trough repairs with me. Friday was a day in clinics with Ben and evening surgeries with Ben the highlight case being a malunited proximal humerus for which he did a tuberoplasty.
The week has been really good.

The five course meal

The venue was the Quay restaurant, acclaimed as the best restaurant in Australia. It was night, the harbour bridge illuminated by an arcade of lights and the magnificent Opera house with its brightened mystic sails making reflections in water. The restaurant overlooked the circular quay, the harbour bridge and Opera house in the background. We reached the place it was busy already. Tables had been arranged such that people can sit in small groups and chat through the whole dinner. I was reminded of our conference dinners in India. Food cooked and served in big containers, heaps of people queuing up with plates in their hands, the small fights sometimes on alcohol and meat, the quarrels with bartenders of some senior people after they come under influence, I should concede that a concept of a "dining experience" is not popular in India. the Indian instincts of competition and urge for survival shows up in every instance, be a conference dinner or crossing road.
We were a bit late so we found most of the tables were already full and people were busily engaged in talking to their mates on the table. We managed to find a place in one of the tables. The tables seemed cramped with lots of glasses . I sat down to take a closer look. There were five wine glasses all in different dimensions, five knives on the right side and five forks on my left. A piece of bread was kept on a small plate onto my left. There was butter on the table and only enough room to rest our forearms on the table after all that crockery display. The waiter dressed in black suit asks" Could we start with a glass of sparkling wine gentlemen?" We nodded in approval. Little did I know that five different types of wine are to follow after that. I started cutting the bread piece with a small knife kept along with it on the table. It was not very special but suited the wine nicely. One of the Indian Australians sitting next to us started talking. He talked about his training in Bombay and his mother telling about the lot of rules she had to follow in Sydney as compared to Mumbai. He said at the end of the day he missed something which he thought would be there if he was in Bombay. i felt a city life could be no different in any city. May be he 'll find driving little better in Melbourne where he lives, may be the power never goes off, may be he can drink tap water, but the rat race ids the same. Keeping pace with others in spending in one of the major drives for earning money in a city. You have to dine in a new and a bigger restaurant every weekend, you will have to switch to better cars, you will have to move to better areas and you will have to have a holiday home.These things keep you busy running behind money. we feel comfortable or feel happy transiently on achieving these goals but soon a bigger desire enters our minds and torments us, threatens us of failure and drives us to our extremes to attain it.
The waiter asked if we had any special dietary requirements and we answered in affirmative. Chethan would n't take pork or beef and Iwas a vegetarian. He said we would be getting eggplant fry for our main course as it contained meat.
I came to know that the dinner is called Degustation dinner. A suiting wine precedes every course of a meal. The servings went on till 11 30 pm ending with a coffee.
Sydney does teach me new things!

On Manly Beach and double decker Electric trains.....

Flying trans Tasman over the Pacific in the day is a good experience as you get to see the varied landscape of New Zealand starting from nicely organized cultivation fields to mountains with the rivers flowing in between, bending and stretching out along their course, the snow capped peaks come into view after some time the spongy looking milk white clouds hugging the shoulders of these magnificent mountains. To me, the mountains look as if they are alive and conscious. I look startled at the majesty and strength they display.
crossing the Land, we enter the endless ocean. Water, water everywhere....I doze off on my seat listening to Ilayaraja on my ipod as the flight heads towards Sydney. As we approach Sydney the beauty of nature grips you again. Sydney is a beautiful harbour city. Sea finds its way to the center of the city. The natural harbour is one of the great gifts to people here i suppose. The flight takes a turn on the sea and prepares landing and it looks as if we are landing on the sea when just just before touching ground the patch of land with runway comes into view.
After airport formalities I headed to the railway station. I was not expecting Sydney to be this big. I had always imagined cities outside India to be very thinly populated and slow and my imaginations were confirmed in Christchurch where you hardly find more than five passengers in a normal city bus and you could find no one on road after 9 pm.
I was taken aback to find a striking similarity of Sydney to our metros. People looked very busy, most of them had mobile phones in their hands seriously grazing through stuff even when they were getting into train. It looked as if everyone was in a race. I thought "oh! This is another mad city where people keep running not knowing where they are heading". I saw three storeyed metro trains full of people. this was the thing I was afrais of. Big cities! the run! the rush and competition! Ok...I reached Chethan's place...wonderful young couple who are taking care of me very well.
the conference (for which I had come) was in Manly. manly is a beach area and the hotel where the conference was happening overlooks the sea. I was captivated by the beauty of the sea and beach when I reached Manly the next day morning. The bus services are good and i again find it similar to Chennai. Buses are a lot lot better. But again, this is another city. City which adverises about call girls and escorts for two full pages in local newspapers, city where ferry is one of the public transport system to got to job everyday, city where i find more asian faces than white faces!
The first day of the conference was good..workshops from various companies...new devices good things! Met Mr.Hong and he is happy taking me for his fellowship in Hamilton. Let's see how it works out! I have this problem of getting up early coz at Christchurch we are two hours ahead!
tha's why i am writing this
may be i'll write more in the two weeks I am goin to stay here.
bye!

New Learning everyday...

Attended Bhagavatham class at ISKCON temple today morning. The class was at 7 am. I had gotten up, bathed and got ready for the class in my White long kurta and veshti...the dress I love the most!

Wearing the veshti itself connects you immediately to your rich culture and heritage and reminds you that you are the son of the greatest civilisation of the planet.

The class was well attended according to Christchurch standards...20 people in the morning cold...most in sarees and dhoties....wearing thirumann on their foreheads...mostly white...very few Indians.

The importance of faith in a spiritual master was the topic of discussion today.

Good points came out in the class. the constant eagerness to liberate oneself is the most important stimulus for oneself to seek God. In that seeking, one need not get frustrated at one's inability to overcome vices, one need not feel guilty, instead one should feel humble and surrender to god and allow him to take care and accompany in the journey.

One should have a strong conviction about doing his duties.

Hope I follow some of these in my daily life. I should probably have the japa mala in my pocket all time and whenever I feel there is spare time which I feel is getting wasted i can at least chant!

I read a book on Gandhi yesterday. It is a pity that I come to know so much of Post Gandhi Gandhian movement in India from a foreign author and from a library in a foreign nation.

The book introduced me to Vinobha Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan and narayan dessai and Bhoodhan movement and other such very relevant stuff which are still burning problems in post independence India.

sadly enough, our history books stop with pre independence Indian history. Nobody had taken any pain to teach us post independence as sixty years of experience has already passed with India not reaching any better heights than its neighbor, more populated but definitely more advanced than us.

Youth of today have to be taught more about leadership and responsibility and about the recent mass leaders and how they stood strong in principles. I am strongly convinced that Gandhian way is the only way ahead to solve problems of disparity India is facing now. the villages becoming empty, rising urban poverty, failing agriculture...these are all parts of a vicious cycle...which can be disrupted only by proper planning and concentration on policies which will not give victory immediately but will definitely make a stronger India.

I am now reading a book on Jihad, the shade of swords...a compelling history of jihad and its present state written by a Indian Muslim author.

Will write when I read more.

Hari Aum Tat Sat.