Carrick to Calgary

Well, tomorrow is a Big Day for me, on paper at least.

6 and a half years ago (01 August 1998) I was appointed as a Specialist Registrar in General Surgery and was assigned one of the coveted 'training numbers' (there are about 25 in N.I. at present, and it works on a one-man-in-one-man-out principle, so there aren't a lot to go around). It seems like a long time ago now, and I've been round quite a few corners since then in research, in various hospitals around the place and now in Canada. When you start training, you get a CCST date (Certificate of Completion of Specialist Training ('planned finishing') date, which is usually 6 years or so away from when you started, give or take a little time spent in research, etc. It gives you a target to aim for, and also stops you from hanging on forever as a trainee. After 6 years you should be fully trained ("fully cooked") and it's time to get off the training merry-go-round, move on and give someone else a go.

You need 2 things to become a Consultant:

#1. You need to pass your Intercollegiate Examination in General Surgery (ICE exam). I passed this in Feb 2004.

#2. You need to complete your 6 years of Higher Surgical Training and be awarded your CCST. My date is 01 Feb 2005. Which is tomorrow.

Yikes! So if I was at home, I would already have applied for my 'piece of paper' (the actual CCST Certificate) about 3 months ago, and I would now have it in my wee hot hand, and be able to tout myself around for consultant jobs. As I'm in Canada for the next 17 months or so, I don't need to have the CCST and so I haven't applied for the piece of paper yet, but I'll hopefully be getting all the paperwork for it together in the next few months. As it turns out, there aren't any fantastic posts up for grabs at home at the moment, so I'm not missing out on any great opportunities by being over here for a while.

But in spite of all this, tomorrow is still a Big Milestone. It marks the end of my time as a trainee, and the start of the next stage. Time to take off the 'L'-plates...

Just a quick update to let you know that we have just put our calendar of upcoming events online at Apple, so you can figure out when we're going to be in town and when you might like to come and visit us, so we don't get ten people turning up at once! Book your beds early, it's going to be a lovely summer!

J&P

News just in from the third official at League Division Roy:
....
[imagine the teleprinter typing away here just like it used to around quarter to five every Saturday]
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Shocked fans stood at silence today around the water feature at the Rhanbuoy Close ground as the news came in of the Polish Plums plunge to 15th in the table. Meanwhile, delight abounded at Conservatory End at the Milebush Park ground, as Robbo's Robbers vaulted over the Plums to the coveted 14th spot. The Rocky Mountain Rovers injury worries continue as they remain at 24th, and the Calgary Visitors' spell remains unbroken as they hang in there at 6th. It's a funny old game...

The second and final Fantasy Footie Transfer Window is now open and it's time to brush up the Squad That Used to be Bound for Cup Glory But Is Now Bumping Sadly Along the Bottom. It's been a pretty rough winter for this 11-man squad, and I don't think the Calgary weather has really suited their style of play. Injury and under-performance has haunted the side for the last few months, transforming them from the glory days when they were Kings of the Losers to the current sorry state when even Robbo's Robbers has left them in the dust. The side is sitting in the 24th slot (of 28) on 559 points, well adrift of the Robbers (16th, 651), the Plums (12th, 688) and the Visitors (770, an incredible 5th). So how did we come to this sorry state? Well, here is the team run-down at the moment. Bear in mind that at present the side is down to only six men, with four players on the injury list and one having been unceremoniously sacked just in time for Christmas...

1. Transferred-in goalkeeper Petr Cech the Czech has been doing much better than that duffer Cudicini and has amassed 76 points for the side, a tidy sum, so no room for complaints here. The papers are saying he's boring (601 minutes of play since he last conceded a goal), but if he keeps his record up, I'm happy to be bored.


Cech - boring?

2. Arsenal's defender Lauren (what is his first name - not even the Arsenal website knows for sure!) has been out on the injured bench for the last few weeks after his knee gave way. His last few weeks have been marred by squabbling over next year's contract - he wants longer than the year he's being offered, and is making noises about a move to Real Madrid. He's expected back on the pitch later this month however, so we're expecting some more action in the latter part of the season to add to the 66 points he's garnered so far.


Lauren - moody?

3. The Big Swede, Villa's Olof Mellberg is still playing but has definitely gone off the boil, being stuck on a season's total of 60 points, a pretty poor total for not even being injured!


Mellberg- off the boil?

4. Chinese International Sun Jihai & the big Nigerian Joseph Yobo have been struggling all season to hold the side's back four together, and it's fair to say that they've failed miserably. Yobo the Everton yobbo has pushed the boat out to a full 18 points all season, while Sun Jihai is off the Man City side with a bad knee injury and may not be back at all, making it unlikely for him to exceed his 21 points so far.


Sun Jihai - bad knee

Yobo - underperforming


5. Keeping 36-year old midfielder Youri Djorkaeff on the side last time around was a calculated gamble which has spectacularly failed to pay off. Bolton failed to renew his contract at the start of the season, and he was signed late by Blackburn, on a just-til-January contract. Since then he's only played 3 times, sustained a hamstring injury and was ditched by Blackburn over Christmas. Nice work if you can get it, my son. Since his retention at the last Transfer Window, he's worked hard for rack up ZERO points, making a princely sum of 3 points in the season. Well, that was 3.5 million quids well spent.


Djorkaeff - end of the road?

6. Newcomers to the midfield, Jay-Jay Okocha (Bolton) and Jermaine Jenas (Newcastle) have settled in fairly well, although Jenas has taken the lion's share of the points, with 58 to his partner's 29, even under the pressure of skippering Newcastle in the absence of the injured Alan Shearer. Here's hoping for a late-season rush of energy from the pair of them.


Okocha - more to come?

Jenas - the new Shearer?

7. Strikers Paul Dickov (Blackburn), Mark Viduka (Middlesborough) and Nicolas Anelka (Man City) started the season strongly but have faltered in the middle section due to a rash of injuries which have left Dickov alone up front wondering where everyone else has gone... The three have notched up 228 points between them, which is over 40% of the team's total so far. Anelka is currently on the physio's couch with a 'mystery injury' requiring 'extensive scanning' to diagnose severe back and groin pain, although hopefully he will be back in action again by St Valentine's Day. Speculation is rife that he'll be off to Barcelona or Fenerbahce next season, though... Viduka is currently also laid up with a hamstring problem, and is expected to be off until the start of February. So we're down to one striker! Dickov is the team's top point scorer on 95 points, almost at the ton, and is single-handedly keeping both Blackburn and the Rocky Mountain Rovers out of the relegation zone. Hopefully he'll not be on his own in the box for too much longer...


Dickov - keeping the dream alive

Viduka - hamstrings a problem

Anelka - mystery injury

And so the time has come for parting of the ways... it's time to sharpen the axe and get chopping!

First up for the chop:


Sun Yihai (Man City, an inflated 2.5 million) - Whop!

Second:


Yobo (Everton, an overpriced 2.5 million) - Whang!

And last:


Djorkaeff (Blackburn, an incredible 3.5 million) - Whoops!

There we go - three duffers dealt with and 8.5 million quid in the manager's pocket. Now to find some new blood....

First up from the Sunday Leagues are the defenders, Everton's skipper Alan Stubbs and his team-mate David Weir (a snip at 2.0m each). Both are scoring well on points this season and are in the top 10 defenders so far (Stubbs is 6th on 106 and Weir is 10th on 89). If they can keep it up for the rest of season they might just pull the side out of the doldrums.


Alan Stubbs - ex-Celtic man

David Weir - a bookable offense?

Actually, looking at these two guys, they do look a bit rough, don't they? I mean, would you fancy trying to get the ball past these bad boys? Or meeting them in a dark alley? Watch out...

The last member of the Magnificent Eleven is midfielder Shaun Wright-Phillips of Man City (4.5m), who is the second top point-scoring midfielder this season at an impressive 146 points, recently scoring against both Arsenal and Crystal Palace. He squeaked it into the squad over Chelsea's Irishman Damien Duff who's just behind on 129 points.


Shaun Wright-Phillips - better than his dad?

And so there we have it - a new first eleven for the rest of the season, right to the bitter end, with all the heartaches, injuries and relegations which lie ahead. And three of the Final Eleven still have the big question mark of Injury hanging over them... Will Viduka make it back to scoring form? What about petulant Lauren's knee? And can anyone tell Anelka what's the matter with his groin? It's all downhill from here...

Final line up:

GK Cech Chelsea 4.0m
DEF Lauren Arsenal 3.5m
DEF Mellberg Aston Villa 3.5m
DEF Stubbs Everton 2.0m
DEF Weir Everton 2.0m
MID Jenas Newcastle 3.5m
MID Okocha Bolton 3.0m
MID Wright-Phillips Man City 4.5m
STR Dickov Blackburn 3.0m
STR Viduka Middlesborough 5.0m
STR Anelka Man City 6.0m

Sunday night here, and the Chinook winds are sweeping over us, driving the temperature up. Yesterday it was -23, today -13 and right now (9pm, watching part 5 of Himalaya) it's a balmy -2.5. We've just been barbecuing and it's positively tropical on the deck. For the last few weeks anytime the back door is opened, P will immediately shout "Shut that door before you freeze the house" but tonight it's so warm that we've left the door open to facilitate barbecue access. We even went for a walk around Tuscany today, for the first time this month!

We were down in Kensington yesterday for a few hours and we saw something for the first time that we'll never forget. The Bow River starts up in Bow Lake, north of Lake Louise, and then joins with the Kananaskis and the Ghost Rivers before reaching Bearspaw Dam which is close to Tuscany. It then flows through the city of Calgary, picking up the Elbow River on the way and it flows on east, all the way to Medicine Hat and the South Saskatchewan River and thence on further east, finally emptying into the vast expanse of Hudson Bay and the Atlantic. So it you drop a Pooh-stick into the Bow River in Tuscany, it could end up washing up on the shores of Donegal (if you're lucky).


The Bow River

In the summer, the Bow looked like this:





At the moment, up in Tuscany and the North-West, the river is sluggish and slow-flowing. Patches of ice stretch out from the banks and the main flow is full of mini-icebergs:



But further downstream the river is wider and shallower and the flow is slower and it looks like this:





The whole thing is frozen solid for as far as the eye can see! Wow! And the pressure of the water flowing underneath and new ice forming creates heaps of ice on the banks, like the ice is trying to climb out:





The ice is pretty thick too, although no-one is brave enough to walk on it:



The height of the ice makes it look like the bridge is sinking into it:



We had to wrap up warm yesterday, though, as it was still pretty cold:




The weather has been very cold and very dry recently, which makes the snow and ice do funny things. At the moment, it looks like the streets have been littered with big slabs of old polystyrene slabs which have been ripped up and dumped in piles here and there:





The snow and ice do funny things to the digital camera too. This was our first attempt at a 'river photo':



and this was our second:



Odd, eh?

And lastly, don't miss the latest blockbuster at Xtra-Vision, Northern's Eleven (provided by Mel). And if you have any information on the robbery, please phone Andy Garcia, or Martin McGuiness.

It's 6pm here on a Thursday night, on the second day of the Big Freeze of '05. Yesterday's blizzard cleared at about 9am, and I went to work while P stayed home. It was -27 all day, with only a little snow lying, but with the high winds the windchill was down to -40. The Jeep got plugged in all day in the car park to make sure it stayed warm, as you can't really expect your car to start when it's that cold. The walk from the car park to the hospital was pretty nasty - it's just amazingly cold, and it starts to seep into you after only a few seconds. You can feel your leg muscles starting to slow up, the feeling in your fingers goes even though you have gloves on, and the wind tries to get in under your toque to nip at your ears. You have to breathe through your scarf to protect your nose and face from frostbite. After 2 minutes, you really want to be indoors again, fast!


Plugged in (as soon as you arrive)


Plugged Out (Home Time)

The city is coping OK, though. Most people have managed to get to work, and most patients have got in for their operations etc. A lot of schools have been closed for the rest of the week until it gets a bit warmer. There have been a lot of car accidents and burst water mains and at least one person has died from exposure downtown. There was also a big fire in the north-west (in Bowness) yesterday, and several firemen had to be treated for exposure. I drove past it on the Trans-Canada while it was burning (flames up to rooftop level), and it took several hours to get it under control - how can you put a fire out when the water is freezing in the hoses? Our trusty IN/OUT THERMOCLOCK (TM) has finally met its match, though. It got as low as -23.5 and then refused to go any further. Then it decided it was all too much and switched to --.-



Today was even colder again, if you can believe it! The Jeep said it was -35 on the way in to work, with a windchill down to -45! Yowch! The drive in was OK though, no fresh snow, and another rapid run into the hospital.



Everyone's furnace (aka boiler) is on all the time, as you can see:



We've been getting some spectacular sunrises these last few days:



and sunsets:



So we're expecting it to get a little warmer over the next few days, maybe warming up to a heady -20 by the weekend, heading for single figures next week and then maybe into the positives for a day or two if the forecast Chinook arrives this day next week (+5: Wow!)

We've also received proof copies of the new notes designed by the Northern Bank - have you seen these men? Please call Crimestoppers if you have any information, contact Families for Northern Bank Justice or phone Mothers of the Disappeared Tenners.


Something for the Volunteers


The Royal Bank of Martin