from the hip

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong
-Mahatma Ghandi

Heading home tomorrow. Despite the slackness of my employment, it still feels good to be off work for a week.

Today I got to spend some time on my own seeing healthy pregnant women, measuring s/f heights and getting doppler heartbeats. It's fun to see patients who don't have a chief complaint.

At the clinic, I mostly spend time with residents, and they are always saying things like "You don't have to be keen with me" or "Quit pretending you're busy, We know you're not" and sometimes "Why don't you just take off". I'm fairly confident that they aren't trying to insult me or get rid of me, and are just trying to be helpful. I guess they are probably feeling a little overworked and underpaid and wish they could go home themselves, but I haven't had to "pretend to be keen" yet in medicine, which is probably something to be thankful for.

I did a little reading on Wikipedia yesterday about the history of Israel. I read a book a few years back called "From Beirut to Jerusalem", an autobiography of a Jewish New York Times reporter stationed in the middle east. It was an interesting read and informative to a certain degree, but I don't think I really gained as much as I could from the book, due to my lack of a knowledge base. Anyhow, I would highly recommend Wikipedia for any general synopsis, especially for current events. I usually find that trying to figure out what's going on using conventional news sources is very problematic. I've actually become alot less enamoured with news in general this year. I found that although I might know what was happening in the world, I wasn't really learning anything or really understanding what was going on. This really hit home when we turned on the news after being in the woods for a week during our Bowron trip. I think there were three news articles on the radio (CBC); Mad Cow, Bombing in Iraq and Softwood Lumber dispute. I realized how much news about Iraq I hear and how I know nothing of what's going on there. How many American troops are there? Are there any other countries involved? Is there an Iraqi police/army? What powers does the Iraqi government have? What powers are being retained by the Americans? I didn't know the answers to any of these basic questions. It's difficult to retain knowledge without context. From the number of times I've heard there's been an escalation in violence in Iraq, I would have thought it would be full blown civil war by now.

Anyhow I started that paragraph talking about Israel. I fully didn't realize how young of a country Israel is. I also didn't realize that Palestine was a colony of Britain initially and that it was the UN that partitioned the country up. I won't go on, but it's an interesting read if you have a moment. The situation really is a mess. With such a history of violence, and the current set back in the peace process, a stable situation for that part of the world seems a long way off.

Well, I will be incommunicado for a couple of days now. Next post should include a photo of me on the dock in the sunshine.