January 10, 2018
I had told Adam that I would come by his place at 10:00am, but I had a fitful night and finally sleeping for a few hours, tossing and turning for a few, going back to sleep for an hour here and there. Around 8:00, I fell asleep again and awakened at 10:15.
Adam was fine with it. I quickly got dressed a walked quickly to his apartment. This would be my last day in Brisbane, and it was set aside for him to show me the medical school.
When I got to his apartment, we picked up an apple in the workout area and went to the garage to get his car. We drove to the University of Queensland campus and parked in the garage where he usually parks when he takes his car. He tells me he can take the bus from his apartment in 8 minutes, but he also wants to show me the hospital he has classes in, and it will be easier to drive from the school to the hospital then take the bus back to his apartment to get the car.
The campus is spectacular with a large central park like quadrangle surrounded by shaded covered walkways held up by arched columns of light brown stone. First, he shows me a state-of-the-art classroom that must seat 400 medical students with beautiful wooden, individual seats going to several levels. On one side, there are tall windows providing natural lighting. Behind the lecturer, there is a massive screen where Adam says the prepared power point like lecture is displayed. The professor has the capability to add notes to the display as the lecture progresses perhaps in response to questions. The entire class is filmed and laced on the Internet available for students to download and watch again as many times as they wish or for students who missed the lecture. Adam says that more and more students choose to simply listen to the lectures this way and either never attend class or rarely attend class live.
Adam then shows me different types of the study rooms set up for the students. The tables and the chairs can be adjusted for height. There is a projector that can project anything the students want including of course the lectures that they may either listen to as a piece or speed through to hear the explanation of a particular topic.
We walk back to the car and drive to TRI, a hospital that the med school has a presence in. It seems new but that may not be the case. It has an open architecture that would not be possible in Colorado because of the cold months or in New Orleans because of the oppressive heat. There is an outdoor covered restaurant where the ceiling is four or five stories above the tables with plants and trees around the sides. There is a designated area separated from the hospital with a glass wall and glass doors that are scored with the University of Queensland insignia and name. In this are also area set aside for the student to study and smaller classrooms.
These areas as in the med school were empty of other people. Class doesn’t begin again for three weeks.
After the tour, Adam takes me to “The Fish House”, his favorite restaurant. It is a small place that has a cooler with fresh fish filets of different species displayed at the counter. Adam chooses Salmon and I choose Barramundi, an Australian fish I am familiar with. The fish comes with chips and salad or a larger order of chips and no salad, or a larger salad. There are four salad types in another cooler. One is seafood salad that is full of crab meat. I choose chips and salad. Everything is excellent and we talk about coming back for dinner, it was that good.
We drive back to his apartment and Adam says he would like to get some studying in, and we can walk to a library that he wants to check out as an alternative place to study near his apartment. We walk toward the river and there is a beautiful library on the left just past the bridge across the street from the huge casino that is housed in what was once the treasury building. It looks like a government building. It must have four stories.
The library is a perfect place to study, and we find a countertop at the top of the steps with electrical outlets for laptops to plug into and free Wi-Fi. We are all set up and I am getting a lot done while Adam is working in a coloring book. It’s an ingenious coloring book that teaches the anatomy. The student decides what color to use on what part, fills in the square next to the part’s name in the table, then colors that part with that color. There are also paragraphs of text on each page making comments on the anatomy. We are both working hard and getting a lot done when the library closes at 6:00pm. This is not good. This library will be of little use to Adam with the short hours.
On the way back, he suggests that we take a look at a community college nearer to his apartment guessing that it will have a library. We hit the jackpot; the community college has a pretty good (acceptable) gym that is only 6 AUD a week for students and recognizes Adam as a student even though he is not a student there. This compared to the “gym” which had almost no equipment we looked at yesterday that wanted 40 AUD a week.
The library is not open but will be during the semester. It closes at 8:00 pm again not the best for a student who will be studying long hours.
We walk back to his apartment and decide to go back to the Vietnamese restaurant we went to a few nights ago. I want the garlic shrimp and vegetable dish that I had the other night. He orders a beef dish that is quite tasty. Both are served over rice. Neither of us finish our orders so we take the leftovers back to his place and I go back to work on my opening statement that still isn’t coming together the way I would like it to. Around 23:00, we get the leftovers out from both nights and finish them off. It’s after midnight when I walk home. The plan is for me to return at 8:00am and he will drive me to the airport.
January 11, 2018
When I get back to the hotel, I decide to take my shower then and skip it in the morning, which is now not that far away.
I have another fitful night with the fear that I will again sleep through my alarm, this time with devastating consequences. At 5:20am, I give up trying to sleep since I will need to get up at 6:45am and as tired as I am, I may very well sleep through the alarm. It’s not so bad as it will maximize my chance of being able to sleep on the flight. There is a chance I will hit it right and defeat jet lag, which is always worse flying east as I will be doing.
I go to Adam’s apartment early and we decide that we should say goodbye there. I will take an Uber to the airport. I know because of the time I left last night that he didn’t get a good night sleep either.
We have a very loving goodbye and I tell him I might come back in August, which cheers him up. He is lonely in Brisbane. When we get downstairs, the Uber is just pulling away. Adam’s replacement phone will not arrive until tomorrow, so we are not able to stop him. We decide to hail a taxi. We do and I give Adam one more hug and a kiss and I’m off to the airport.
The taxi driver asks me what I think of Trump and do I think Oprah could beat him. He is an older fellow and seems very knowledgeable about America politics. I tell him what I have been telling everyone. If the Democrats don’t change their tune on immigration, Trump will be reelected. He makes a comment I have not heard before. He says that America is freer than Australia and gives the example of a probable cause necessity for a policeman in the states to stop and frisk or ask for identification. He says Australian police have more latitude to stop a citizen on the street and he resents that.
I arrive 2 hours 15 minutes early for my flight. I am very tired. There is an extremely beautiful young woman waiting for the same flight and I enjoy an occasional glance at her. She has a very beautiful face, with a long thin body; my guess 5’7″, blonde hair, blue eyes.
I get back into reworking my opening statement when I notice that it’s 10:45 and my flight leaves at 11:30. No one is at the gate!! I run to the gate; it has been moved!! Fortunately, the new gate is right next door.
The flight is to Auckland. There I change planes and fly to LAX change planes again and fly to Denver. I am leaving Brisbane at 11:30am on the 11th and I will arrive in Los Angeles at 11:01 am on the 11th.
Once on the plane, I take out my computer and continue on the thought I had when I quickly closed it to get on the plane but soon get sleepy and fall asleep. I put the computer in the pouch on the back of the seat in front of me and I forget to put it back into my pack when I get off.
I realize my mistake almost immediately but by then they will not let me back on the plane. I am to go to the International Service desk and “if” they find it, it will returned to me. I say “IF??!!” You got to be kidding, just let me get back on the plane. The answer remains no.
I run to the International Service desk and there is a very slow moving line. I am beside myself. I catch an Air New Zealand employee and buttonhole her. She does some checking looks at my boarding pass and tells me to go to the gate for my flight to LAX and “if” the computer is found it will be brought to me there.
Not sounding good. I decide I am not leaving NZ without my computer. An Air New Zealand agent comes to me and says the plane has been parked on the other side of the airport, as it is not needed for hours and it will not be cleaned for hours. He says someone needs to be driven out to the plane board it and look for the computer. I am under the impression that my flight will leave in 30 minutes and he reassures me that it is at least an hour before it will leave. It’s a little late.
He comes back and tells me that there is a man on board and my computer is NOT in the seat pocket where I left it. I tell him then I want to call the police immediately someone has stolen my computer. He walks me to the phone, and I am talking to the police when he walks back and says a closer search has produced the computer.
For the first time in a little over an hour, I can breathe a deep breath. It will be returned to me at the gate. I return to the gate and in a short time, I have it.
The plane leaves after 7:30pm. There is nice young man who is on his way to go to school at UC in Boulder. We have a short conversation. He is from Sydney. He tells me that in the last few days, Sydney was the hottest place on Earth and that it was so hot they had to close part of a highway because it was melting. I am a little reluctant to take out my computer but eventually realize that it’s silly. I will not make that mistake again anytime soon, so I take it out and write up the last few days.
I watch two movies and sleep very little. I am hoping to arrive in Boulder exhausted and get a good night’s sleep in my bed thereby defeating jet lag.
At LAX, my bag comes out last. I remember from the flight over that it’s a long walk from the international terminal to the domestic and I will have to go through customs and then recheck my bag. I had three hours for the exchange now I am down to a little less than two hours. The procedure is quicker than I thought, and I don’t need to formally recheck my bag there as there is a bag drop off for continuing flights. Still I must walk to terminal 7. It’s quite a ways a way. I enter Terminal 7 at 12:30. The flight to Denver boards at 12:40. It takes off at 1:30 pm. I should be fine. No more stress but I am running out of gas bug time.
I have a window seat and there is a nice black lady on the aisle with her 4-year-old granddaughter in the middle seat. The kid is cute and friendly.
DIA finally, totally exhausted. Michelle picks me up at the airport and I have trouble staying awake on the ride home. A hot shower and I’m dead to the world.
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