Ramen club: Ramen Zundo

The first rule of Ramen club is: one shall eat ramen and only ramen.

Ramen Zundo in World Square is a small space in one of the side alleyways, the shopfront decorated with lanterns that are often seen in Japan. I had the Mount Chashu ramen - couldn't go past the cheesy name! It comes with a choice of base soups, this was the white (original tonkotsu). Black (with garlic oil), red (with chilli miso), soy and double (half tonkotsu with half chicken soup base) are also available.

The roast pork here is quiveringly divine with long strips of jellied fat that slide down well. The ramen base is thick but not as sticky as Gumshara's, stronger in flavour than the average tonkotsu. Though not quite traditional, I really liked how sprouts and cabbage injected some vegetables into the dish.

I like this one. Round one: success.

Dream: OJ in microwave = exploding broad beans

It is early morning in this dream, it is just becoming light outside. I'm heating up some orange juice in the microwave, except it's contained within a saline bag.

I contemplate the thought of vitamin C absorption by the bag once it's been microwaved, as it spins around.

Ding! it goes, followed by a whining shhhhhhh... noise. I open the door and the bag explodes.

My housemate is standing next to me and the top of his hair is completely blasted off, leaving the sides untouched. I can't help but laugh because it is so hilarious. Then I apologise profusely..

Then we are in the next scene, where we are sitting in a lecture theatre, listening to a talk comparing oral and IV contrast in cardiac surgery.

And I think - since when did they use contrast in cardiac surgery anyway?

Then we are walking home and the time is late afternoon. It has just rained and a pleasant scent of fresh grass is in the air. As we come to a corner, I realise that the house we live in is the house on this very corner.

It's a huge old wooden house with peeling weatherboards and chipped paint. Set slightly back from the street, there is a heavy hedge at the front which is made of broad beans. I marvel at these broad beans which are ripe and plump, almost like they are ready to burst out of their pods.

I can't resisting picking a pod and popping the beans in my mouth. It explodes in a sweet juicy mess and I exclaim to my housemate how delicious the broad beans are.

The police are coming! He says, nervously looking down the street. How will we explain the explosion this morning and all those broken windows? Panic grips his voice.

I think for a moment, and say maybe we can just tell them, that the broad beans got too ripe and we didn't have time to pick them, so they exploded!

Then I woke up.

Brisbane & Byron

You know you are in Queensland when the hospitals have banana vending machines, maybe it should have a big warning sticker on it for renal patients.

Fancy dark chocolate mousse cake with mandarin jelly from a French patisserie Le Bon Choix in the city.


When I typed "food Brisbane CBD" into google, Urbanspoon presented me with a top 10 list which I can't remember any of, but one immediately caught my eye - Bun Mobile! (Every time I said this out loud, someone would mishear this as bum mobile).

So on Friday night after our course, Johanna drove us around the burbs of Brisbane until we found the Bun Mobile.. and where else would it be parked but be outside Kevin Rudd's office! So we sat on the pavement outside KRudd's office and ate our fluffy white Chinese-style buns stuffed with burger fillings like pulled pork and beef with chorizo.. what a perfect Brisbane dinner.

The next day we went to Byron and stopped off in Gold Coast for lunch. This was the ridiculously crispy roti with smoked salmon and tahini yoghurt (their name, not mine), which was delicious if a little small..

When we got to Byron Bay, we ran down to the beautiful Tallows beach (at the Suffolk Park end), where the sun had migrated to just the right place on the horizon to give these lovely long shadows.

Sunset bathing the town in a golden glow.

Sunrise the next morning.

An almond croissant from the Suffolk Park bakery, where we discussed vaccination and obesity.. thought we might get stoned to death by all the hippies there!

Another view of Tallows beach from the lighthouse headland. At the lighthouse we saw so many whales it was incredible - there was a mother with a calf who were frolicking just a few hundred metres away from the shore, and some kayakers had gotten so close up to it I thought they might just get flicked by the whale.

Waffles with fruit, greek yoghurt and honey from the Byron markets.

We went up to Bangalow for lunch, which was such a lovely little town away from the hustle and bustle of Byron, which felt like it had grown way too big for its own good. We had trouble deciding between the Town cafe and Utopia, but in the end decided Utopia looked more airy and spacious. Our waiter was so ridiculously friendly I wanted some of what he was on.

This was the excellent handmade papardelle with chilli crab and basil I had there - it was so good it made me want to go home and make pasta myself.. more on that another day. 

Memories are so strange

If something happens, and you form a memory of it, but then you forget it completely and no longer have awareness of its very existence, does that mean that it's the same as if it never happened?
If you then remember it some years later, when you find something random that triggers the secret path to that memory, and it seems so hyperacute, how is it possible for that lost moment to surface so quickly?

Why is it that even if you try really really hard to hold onto something, you still inevitably forget some things that you really really don't want to forget, because it was part of you.. but it's gone, and there's nothing you can do about it.

I feel like Watanabe, except I'm not yet 37 and not yet experienced a descent into Hamburg, but the feeling is exactly the same.

As time goes by, it gets harder and harder to recall him. The sound of his voice, the feel of his skin, the warmth of the feeling of being in love. At the beginning, it took a second, then a minute, then several.. and now even with the utmost concentration it feels as if one is looking through a fog and those memories are fuzzy in the past. 

Now I understand why we desperately wanted to affirm that we loved each other, because somehow we knew it would come to this.. that we would forget, and that it would all fade. Like ripples on the surface of water, once it passes it's as if the ripples were never there. 

But they were, and you were real. I have just moved to another place in my mind.

Dream: a riot in East Timor and stroke diagnosis with kava

In this dream, I'm attending a conference on developing world medicine. The venue is in a large swanky hotel in Dili, East Timor - though it appears modern, on closer inspection it's actually somewhat rundown - bits of paint peel and there's light mould growing in the corners.

We are in the conference room, and whilst having a tea break, see on TV that it is the day of the Timorese election. There aren't many people at this conference - 20 at most including a handful of local doctors. We watch the TV together intently, as the votes are counted.

Suddenly the TV coverage switches to the street, where there are people protesting in the street. We decide to go outside to see what is happening for ourselves, but when we get to the lobby of the hotel, we find the heavy doors closed and surrounded by security guards.

I go up to my room and from its window, I can see people rioting in the streets. It looks violent, with the distinct smell of burning tyres and short bursts of gunfire. People lie in pools of blood on every corner, and police tear around with large gas canisters spraying groups of shouting men.

There is an announcement on the PA system for us to re-attend the conference room. When we get there, the man who appears to have won the election (against whom everyone is protesting perhaps?) is standing on the podium. He starts a long speech about how he, as the newly elected president, will bring peace and prosperity to the Timorese people. He is the owner of this swanky hotel and he plans to take western money spent at the hotel, and give it to the poor.

Bullshit, I think. Another dictator in the making.

Suddenly he collapses and lies motionless on the ground. A few of the doctors from the conference and I go up to the stage and check on him - he's breathing with a good volume pulse, but is profoundly unconscious.

We start debating how we should get him to a hospital for a scan of his head, as it looks like he's had a stroke. Two of the doctors start saying he needs a CT angio! no, he needs a MRI. Someone points out that there is no MRI machine in the whole country.

A local doctor comes up with the idea that he has an ancient X-ray machine he was using as a museum exhibit item at the conference, a sort of show-and-tell item. He thought that we could maybe use it to do a contrast study. Another doctor suggests that we could use the local kava, which is apparently extremely radio-opaque. One of the president's bodyguards produces a bottle of the stuff, which is crusted with dirt and looks extremely dodgy.

It is a white liquid as we pour it out and down a funnel into a long metal needle we have inserted into the president's femoral vein. The first doctor snaps the X-rays efficiently, and soon we have a handful of images which develop slowly much like film. When the pictures come out they look amazingly like CT scans and I immediately spot the basilar artery thrombosis.

Look, he has basilar artery thrombosis causing posterior circulation stroke! I say to the crowd. We need to get him to a hospital for embolectomy.

The security guards step in and say that there's no way we can take the president to a hospital. Then I wake up. 

Hiram: moving out of the nest

We went to pick up Hiram on a sunny Sunday when the Guide Dogs association had their annual open day. Hiram and his brothers & sisters were part of the dog demonstrations where the trainers showed them off for their maximal cuteness value.

Of course we wondered which one of them we would get! Afterwards we headed over to the puppy pen.

And there was one lazy puppy sleeping whilst the others played around him.

Then there were two.

And then there were three.

The fourth to come was particularly pale and we thought this was our one because the trainers told us we had a light coloured one.

One of the six puppies had already gone to their home, so this is all five that were in the pen at the time.

This lazy puppy didn't even wake up for food!!

Time for a drink.

Training to sit.


All along we thought we had the super white one, but I secretly wanted the one that was sleeping the whole time. In the end when we were about to take our puppy home, the trainer came and picked out the sleepy one and he was ours after all! Hiram said goodbye to his brothers and sisters, and came home with us.

2 recent dreams: A touchable cloud and anaesthesia for prisoners

A touchable cloud

In this dream I was at the resort on daydream island - I can picture it so well, with the faint disinfectant smell in the corridors, the slightly dark corners, the mild tang of mustiness in our room. Sim and I had attended the  bedside critical care conference here last year, and everything was just as I remembered it.

I was walking along the corridor in a hurry, and the place was deserted. I knew I had to get back to my room because I had to get changed to go on a trip to a beach somewhere.

As I walked, I realised I had no idea which room I was in, so I started looking around for something to prompt me. I walked past the stairwell where you can see the pool just next to the building, but strangely there was no-one in the pool. The sun shone brightly and the surface of the water glimmered.

I paused there for a second. The sky suddenly darkened and I looked up to see the rapid approach of a large rain cloud. It was thick, dense and grey, signifying the imminent onset of rain.

I thought for a moment that maybe our beach trip was going to be ruined. Then I realised the cloud was coming down towards the earth like it was going to smother the whole resort. It was moving sideways as well as downwards and as it got closer, I could feel a whoosh of cold air brush my face.

I reached out and touched the cloud as it moved past me. I could feel it just in my fingertips, a roughness that resembled unprocessed wool. Then I felt an edge and realised that I was holding the edge of the cloud in my hand.

Then I woke up.


Anaesthesia for prisoners
In this dream I'm moderately old, maybe around 50.

I receive an email from someone, which says that the newly elected government has deemed that prisoners have no human rights and thus will no longer receive free healthcare under this government. I feel suitably enraged.

The next scene, I am inside an operating theatre and I intuitively know that I'm inside a jail. Everything is absolutely ancient - the ventilator is operated with rusted levers and a bellows that sticks to the sides of the canister, there's halothane in the vaporiser, everything looks non-disposable.. It's a scene from the developing world of yesteryear.

I realise that I am working with a volunteer surgeon as a volunteer anaesthetist, and we are operating on a man's lung cancer. The surgeon tells me with great regret that the cancer is too far advanced and that he wouldn't be able to cure the man, but if he had been there just months before he may well have been able to complete the operation.

We exchange angry words about the government, and finish the case. We walk outside and join some other volunteer surgeons and anaesthetists, and discuss our next mission. As we leave the jail, it is quite dark outside. We go in separate cars to the next jail, and it starts raining along the way. I'm in the car with a handful of other doctors, but I seem to be only interested in looking out the window.

When we get to the other jail, it is on a hilltop surrounded by huge fences. I wonder if it's a super maximum security jail, then we pull up into an empty carpark. We look around for the entrance but don't seem to see any. The rain is quite heavy and we are all getting soaked.

Finally a guard points us around the corner, and when we get to the entrance it's actually a large noisy bar full of tourists. The entrance to the jail is through a bar? I think in the dream, but we need to be sober to keep operating.

Then I wake up.