Jan 28th: Lucknow

Today was one of our first presentations to the whole hospital, or as many as we could get together, it was to introduce the first topic to the group on better approach to meetings and decision making in meetings. I feel it was very well received but the famous 'Indian Head Wobble' is very confusing for a westerner, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. Some questions were asked which is a good sign and several people asked for the materials afterwards.

It is very entertaining to interact with the nurses they are all very young and giggle terribly whenever I say anything, I think they remember how much pain I was in on the chili fiasco. They generally start working for Aravind hospitals when they are 17. They leave their homes, often in villages and move to Madurai for the first year to be trained. After that there are a further two years of training before they are fully qualified. Taking the girls that young is hard for the girls but it allows them to be better educated and have a career. If they were to stay at home, for the most part, they would have to be working and would unlikely receive no further education.

They have an awful lot to do with the success of the hospital, without the nurses (or MLOP's as they are called) the surgeons would not be able to be as productive as they are.

It is funny being addressed as Sir all the time, either good morning or afternoon. I think that I would like to carry this on when I get home. Do you hear that ladies, ha ha.

A birthday celebration was had at the end of the presentation, actually looking back that explains why everyone came they knew that they had to listen to me but were promised cake afterwards hmm.

My phone needed to be topped up again so an excuse for another adventure in a phone shop. Its a pay as you go phone so I thought that you would be able to buy a scratch card from anywhere and use it. You can but only in the state that you bought the phone in. So thats like buying a phone in Scotland but not being able to recharge it in England. You have to get to an easy charge center. Thankfully Diljo and Kanagaraj came with me so were able to sort it out.

We went out for dinner at night, myself, Diljo, Kanageraj and Biswajit. We went to a hotel that had a really good restaraunt and had a bit of a boys time. Some pictures for you.

I had a couple of beers tonight, their Lager is really really good and pretty strong, up to eight % in a 650 ml bottle!! There is Kingfisher and Howards 5000 (I think it was) but they were really good so I go to bed a little fuzzy for the first time in a few weeks.

On the way there I finally saw a traffic accident. In fact I was in one. We were turning into the hotel, our indicator was on and we had started to turn. All of a sudden a bit of a thump as someone on a moped decided that he could do an Indiana Jones through the quickly shrinking gap on our lefthand side. THUNK. There was no way that he was going to make it. Thankfully the speeds are generally pretty slow so no major harm done but he was well pissed off.

I see that the traffic on the web site has calmed down to real values. So it looks like the culprit has got bored of messing with my head.

TTFN