You know how the weekend is supposed to be when you relax, and catch up, and get your life back in order after working hard all week? In theory at least you should feel refreshed.
It’s now Sunday night and I’m bloody exhausted. This is despite the fact that I had an afternoon nap on the couch. And despite the fact that I didn’t do all that much today except go out for lunch with some friends.
After my recent lunchtime experience at the Tap House Hotel (excellent roast), I invited four friends to join me for lunch there.
Unfortunately today the roast was a little tough. I’m guessing it had been carved a little too early. The rest of the meal – two plates of antipasto and a swathe of chocolate deserts – however, was excellent.
They’ve done a terrific job on the upstairs renovation of this wonderful old pub, without the need to resort to polished boards or faux-Irish fittings.
Tap House Hotel
It’s a very comfortable place where you can have a meal and then retire to some nearby couches to finish off that last glass of wine or beer.
I’m hoping for a good night’s sleep tonight, as the week ahead is reasonably busy.
I didn’t expect to be eating hospital food today. I didn’t expect to be eating anything at all. From Monday’s breakfast until this morning, I haven’t been able to keep anything down, due to an extended bout of vomiting. I’ve thrown up at least half a dozen times.
It all started on Monday morning when the first thing I did was vomit. It was after waking, and a dizzy experience where “the room went spinning round”. Thankfully, I didn’t follow in the footsteps of the great song “The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan” and “climb to the rooftop when all the laughter grew too loud”.
Further bouts of dizziness followed by vomiting continued throughout Monday, as I wrote about in my previous blog post. On Tuesday morning, my friend Andrea read the post and dropped me a quick message, checking in on my welfare. I replied quickly, asking if she could visit.
“I think we need to call the ambulance,” she said as she arrived at my apartment. By the time she had arrived, I was in a pretty bad state. I had already vomited in both bedrooms, the bathroom, and the lounge room. I was also unable to get up off the floor, as I was instantly dizzy, and vomiting followed shortly after. When I opened my apartment door for her, I was flat down on the ground, and without my prosthetic leg.
We called the ambulance, described the situation, and they offered to send a team of two people as soon as possible. While we waited, we chatted, and I also called a few people at work to explain the situation.
When the paramedics arrived, they were quick to diagnose the possible cause – Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo – though noting neither was a doctor.
Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is a disorder arising from a problem in the inner ear. Symptoms are repeated, brief periods of vertigo with movement, characterized by a spinning sensation upon changes in the position of the head. This can occur with turning in bed or changing position. Each episode of vertigo typically lasts less than one minute. Nausea is commonly associated. PPV is one of the most common causes of vertigo. BPPV is a type of balance disorder along with labyrinthitis and Ménière’s disease. It can result from a head injury or simply occur among those who are older.
The diagnosis was later affirmed/confirmed by the doctor at St. Vincent’s Hospital Emergency Department. As with my previous experiences at the hospital, I can’t speak highly enough of the speedy, careful treatment I received. There was even a friendly, recognizable smile from one of the medical staff who recognized me from my time at Sacred Heart Rehabilitation. “James, I thought we had told you to go home and never come back,” she said with a laugh.
The doctor gave me some medication and performed a number of physiotherapy-like exercises on me to reduce the dizziness. Slowly moving my head from side to side, there were moments when I thought I might vomit again, but thankfully did not.
In the “short stay” area of the Emergency Department, there was only one other person, so we were well looked after by the staff. Our part of the department was incredibly quiet, in stark contrast to what must otherwise be quite a busy area. The peacefulness of the space was also an observation shared by a woman I was sharing the room. The discussion which later revealed I have worked (distantly) with her daughter for over a decade. We chatted briefly when she came to pick up her mum. Small world, eh?
BreakfastLunchDinner
Today I had further visits from a physiotherapist and a doctor who also confirmed the diagnosis, took me through some exercises, and gave me a sheet to take home with things I will need to practice.
The modified Epley maneuver
I also had a CT scan, which confirmed nothing unusual except for the “expected impacts of aging.”
There was a moment the other night, Good Friday night, at around 11.00pm, when I stopped for a moment and marvelled at how quiet it was. Though there’s normally a low level traffic rumble where I live, it was almost eerily quiet. Though other people like to leave Sydney for the Easter Weekend, the peace and quiet is one of the reasons why I like to stay around.
With four days off, I’ve enjoyed catching up with mates for beers, going out for meals, and having afternoon naps. Today, I even had a late morning nap.
And this afternoon, I paid a visit to the White Rabbit Gallery, where there’s a few “mega works” this time, including a video work featuring two large screens, projecting a piece called “The Long March – Restart” which I liked very much. I love how even the people viewing the work have taken on a “video game glow” in the photograph I took on my phone.
Heading over there, I was also a little overwhelmed at the amount of construction activity underway in Chippendale. Though I work closeby, and am therefore in the area at least five days a week, I hadn’t really noticed it. Everywhere, it seems there’s an apartment block springing up.
On world-scales, Sydney is both a small and large city. Much larger than many European capital cities, but much smaller than some of the mega-cities of Asia, such as Shanghai, Tokyo and Beijing. Within my lifetime, Sydney is likely to become as big as Tokyo is right now, but by that time I’ll more than likely be living back in the country-side.
This is in no way some kind of anti-immigration post, and I’ll delete any comments here that proffer any kind of racist rant, but I quite like Sydney at around the current population, and especially around Easter when it’s nice and quiet.
I have been away from work for the last two days with some kind of weird hayfever/summer cold kinda thing. In fact, I felt so shit I was on the verge of cancelling my planned visit to the doctor to have some potential skin cancer spots identified. It would be all too confusing I thought, to turn up coughing and spluttering. On top of that, there’s the sebaceous cyst which has recently re-appeared on my back, almost seven years after it was surgically https://thelimbshift.com/2012/02/02/26-36-46/ removed. “I’m here for the skin cancer spots”, I told my doctor, though mentioning the other ailments.
All those years of being a pasty-faced boy growing up in the country, combined with a red-headed ancestry makes me a prime candidate for skin cancer. “I diagnosed myself thanks to Google”, I told the doctor, adding, “But I thought I should get them properly checked”. She agreed with my analysis. So yeah, a couple of spots to be frozen off next week, or maybe cream, as I also suffer with keloid scarring. The 1991 appendectomy scar is still with me now, appearing like it happened only last week. Nothing to worry about, though she added “But with your skin, I think we need to hook you up with a dermatologist”.
Combined with a case of summer flu, I was feeling a bit down today. But then my friend Kate called, and asked “I’m in Surry Hills. Where are you?”. We caught up for a late lunch and a chat, which made me feel soooooo much better. She’s an awesome photographer, and here’s her photograph of my feet where you can spot the skin cancer spot (or at least one of them).
As a 45-year old, single gay man living in Surry Hills, I can assure you my interest in meeting and dating single women between 25 and 45 who live in the United Kingdom is virtually non-existant (unless of course they’re looking for a marriage of convenience in exchange for an EU passport!!). And yet for the last few weeks I’ve been receiving a daily email from a UK dating website informing me of the many women – over 200 at last count – who have viewed my profile and who would like to meet me.
At first I ignored the email as some kind of spam. But when they became more and more regular I finally got the shits and wrote to match.com informing them of the situation. The problem you see was that seamus_a_481 had signed up to his match.com account using MY email address. So even though he was presumably logging in and out with his own username and password, I was getting the daily email notifications.
I was also able to access his account. All I had to do was click on the links in the emails I received and there I was inside his account. If I was morally bankrupt I could have made changes to his account details. In theory, I could have also written a reply to any of the women who had written to me, though of course, I didn’t. Not exactly what you would call a secure site.
As soon as I wrote the email to match.com I got one of those automated replies which indicated my problem was going to be forwarded to a consultant for resolution. Yeah, right.
Eight days later and I was still been receiving those daily emails. Although it had been kinda interesting, I felt it was morally wrong to let it continue any longer. In particular, I was concerned for the women who were corresponding with a bloke who was either a) an idiot who didn’t know his own email address or b) an idiot who was deceiving them.
And so I wrote an email to match.com saying I was disappointed at their lack of response and was planning to go in and delete the account on their behalf. Unfortunately it wasn’t so straightforward as I also needed his password to delete the account. So I called them up and spoke to a nice man on the phone who was able to help me do that.
So in summary, a big thumbs down to the James O’Brien in the UK who was using my email account to sign up to a dating site, and a big thumbs down for match.com in the UK for having an automated reply which said they were going to respond and deal with the issue but didn’t even after eight days. It took a phone call from Australia – thank goodness for cheap international calls – to get any action. And a word of warning about the dangers of signing up to a website with someone else’s email account.
Having seen Au Pair, Kansas the other day and all of its faux Swedish-ness, it was great to see a real Swedish film, as part of the Mardi Gras Film Festival.
“Fyra år till” (Four More Years) tells the story of two Swedish male politicians with contrasting lives and viewpoints who fall in love. From the right-leaning Folkpartiet, there is David who is thought of as a potential future Swedish Prime Minister. From the left-leaing, Socialdemokraterna there is Martin who also has a bright future ahead of him as Party Chairman. The contrasts between the two are further emphasised by the fact that Martin is completely out as a gay man, while David is a fairly closeted man who is actually married to a woman. She knows he is gay, but doesn’t seem to mind, since they have politics as a common interest.
It’s a classic love story in many ways, as you see the two come together, fall apart, and all the while you’re hoping they’ll end up together by the end of the film.
It was a good film which my friend and I both enjoyed very much, particularly with all of the very specific Swedish cultural references which we both laughed out loud to, but which may have gone slightly over the heads of a few of those attending.
At one point, for example, David asks Martin how many men he has slept with. Although I can’t remember the exact wording of his very funny answer, he replies by equating the figure to the number of seats held by the different political parties in the Swedish parliament. It would be like saying, more than the Greens, but not as much as the National Party (or something like that).
There’s also an ongoing reference to the 1980s/1990s Swedish pop band, Ratata. I guess the closest equivalent would be Savage Garden. Ratata and Mauro (the lead singer) provide the soundtrack to the film, which was enjoyable, as I like their work very much.
One of the really terrific things about the film was the role of David was played by Björn Kjellman. He’s one of Sweden’s best known actors, and who I first became familiar with from his role as a transexual in the film, Livet är en schlager (Life is a pop song), which was a wonderful film about an “ordinary” woman who wins the the Melodifestivalen, the Swedish finals which lead to the Eurovision Song Contest.
Björn has an encyclopaedic knowledge of Melodifestivalen, and was actually a contestant in 2006. I think he and I could become good friends.
It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m at work. The last week or so has been a blur. As it was a week dominated by work, I’m struggling to remember much of what happened, aside from work.
As for my social life? The highlight, I guess, was going to the Central Coast last night for the monthly dance put on by “Coastal Connections” at the Wyong Tennis Club. It was a last minute decision to go. I was sitting at home watching the new ABBA DVD, and was reminded of a quote from “Muriel’s Wedding”. When I lived in Porpoise Spit, I used to sit in my room for hours and listen to Abba songs. But since I’ve met you and moved to Sydney, I haven’t listened to one Abba song. That’s because my life is as good as an Abba song. It’s as good as Dancing Queen. It was the sudden realisation that I live in Sydney, my life is pretty good, and that I should not spend a Saturday night alone at home watching “The Bill”, that made me decide it was time for an adventure. So, I called Graeme, asked if he wanted to go and we caught the 5.17 from Central Station.
As inviting as the nearby caravan park looked, Graeme had booked accommodation at the Central Coast Motel, just down the road from the Wyong Tennis Club, where the dance was to be held. We were told it was about 800m from Wyong Railway Station so we thought it would be okay to walk. It wasn’t. It was quite a long 800m through parkland. nyhow that was okay. We booked in, watched a little of “Perfect Match” and then, thanks to the Wyong Tennis Club Courtesy Bus made our way to the dance.
We realised almost straight away that we had arrived far too early. There were still traces of the so-called normal tennis club crowd enjoying their roast dinner and poker machine activities. We sensed straight away the guy on the door wasn’t too happy about the two crowds mixing, so he made a big point of us having to be signed in by a member. After fifteen minutes or so a couple of lovely ladies arrived. We explained the situation. They signed us in. And so there we were… we played Keno, we drank beer, we chatted and waited… and waited…and waited. And then finally some other people arrived.
Overall it was a good fun night and we spoke to quite a few locals. Some of them were quite lovely. Others were quite insane. Some of the boys were cute, the music was mostly Top 40 style pop, which went down a treat – they played “Crying At The Discotheque” and the beers were cheap. What more could you want?
Graeme has a different “take” on things. Unpublishable, really!!!
