ÿþ<HEAD> <title>Eric's Archive</title> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Eric's Journal, the irregularly updated journal of Eric Lis"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="eric, lis, emperor, aerica, aerican, journal, eric's head"> </HEAD> <left><font face="Times New Roman"> <font face="Monotype Corsiva,Bernhard Modern Roman,Unicorn,BellGothic,News Gothic MT"> <center> <big><big><big><big> Eric's Archive<br> Entries 521-530<P> </big></big></big></big></font> <I> Those who forget the past<Br> Are doomed to reread it.<p></i> </center> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/index.html">More recent</a><BR> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/501-600/531-540.html">Entries 531-540</a><BR> <a href="#530">Entry 530</a> October 14 2008<br> <a href="#529">Entry 529</a> October 11 2008<br> <a href="#528">Entry 528</a> October 8 2008<br> <a href="#527">Entry 527</a> October 5 2008<br> <a href="#526">Entry 526</a> October 2 2008<br> <a href="#525">Entry 525</a> September 29 2008<br> <a href="#524">Entry 524</a> September 26 2008<br> <a href="#523">Entry 523</a> September 23 2008<br> <a href="#522">Entry 522</a> September 20 2008<br> <a href="#521">Entry 521</a> September 17 2008<br> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/501-600/511-520.html">Entries 511-520</a><BR> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/archive.html">Archive</a><BR> </blockquote> <HR> <a name="530"></a> <U><B>Chisasibi, Day 28: There And Back Again, Again</b></u><p> <I>From August 25th to September 19th, Eric was in the town of Chisasibi, in Northern Quebec, working at the local hospital. While there, he kept this Diary.</i><P> And so, at about 2:30pm, September 19th, Mrs. Eris Lis was issued his boarding pass and climbed onto the small plane back to Montreal, via Waskaganish and Val d'Or. It was a bittersweet parting... sweet to be returning home, bitter that it hadn't happened three weeks earlier. <P> My last day at the hospital wasn't too different from any other day. I went into the hospital for about 8:30, checked on the one patient of mine currently admitted, had a half-hour meeting with the doctors, and spent three fours working in the clinic before going for lunch. It was a bit of a long morning, because I'd been on call until midnight the night before and, true to my luck, after having had three quiet nights on call, my very last on call at the hospital was spent running non-stop between trauma patients and critically-ill babies without pause for a full six and a half hours. None of this could dampen my enthusiasm on this Friday morning, of course, because every time I felt tired, I thought to myself that in a few short hours I'd be home, and my energy levels spiked back up. The morning passed quickly and painlessly and before long lunch was finished, my suitcase was at the hospital, and I was off to the airport and on the plane. I can hardly describe the feeling of elation as the plane took off; I was not merely rising into the air, but rising away from Chisasibi and going home. <P> The trip home was about the same as the trip back, only backwards. We made two stops on the way to Montreal, each at a progressively larger and more modern airport. Takeoffs and landings were painful and terrifying at small airports but got easier and easier at the modern ones, such that landing in Montreal was quick and painless. They served a pleasant dinner of some sort of turkey slices and an odd spiced bread, which was edible if not as tasty as the ham sandwich we got on the way up. I actually was getting kind of airsick by the end of the trip, but even that couldn't dampen my enthusiasm. In the last few minutes of the flight, as we began to recognise Montreal buildings -- the Olympic Stadium, the One Thousand, my own apartment building (which I'm pretty sure I saw from the air, though I might have been imagining it) -- I felt a pure and unfettered joy the likes of which I hadn't felt since... well, to be honest, since less than two weeks prior when I got that email from Weird Tales magazine, but it was a pure and unfettered joy none-the-less, and those come along rarely enough in life that we have to enjoy them while they last,<P> Don't get me wrong: I had a good time in Chisasibi. The doctors were all fantastic to work with, the trailer I stayed in was very comfortable, and I really lucked out getting a roommate who I really liked and got on well with, and who mostly kept to herself and stayed the heck out of my way. The food was fantastic and the work was easy. I didn't really dislike Chisasibi and by no means was my stay unpleasant. The simple fact, though, was that it wasn't *home.* It was a joy to live in a cold environment of the sort my forebearers evolved to live in and it's heavenly being only a four minute walk from where I work, but Chisasibi was not and likely could never be my home. Chisasibi was a fascinating learning experience because for the first time I was exposed to a culture I truly could not understand. I am Lis, the Fox, and Yakov, the Deceiver; my father, and his father, and likely his father and his father before him have all been tricksters to one degree or another. They lived with words in their mouths and jokes in their hearts. They were open men, men who communicated well. When they felt affection, they showed it openly. When they had something on their mind, they talked about it. When they had a story, they told it, and told it well. My father owns a pharmacy; it has suceeded in large part because he talks to his customers, knows them, socializes with them. His father owned a cigar store; it was a major neighbourhood hangout, where kids laughed over comic books and adults talked about their troubles. The spoken word and the shared laugh is in my blood. Myself, I am a writer and a joker; perhaps the greatest joy in my life is when I hold a captive audience of my friends and colleagues, weaving words into meaning for their appreciation. The Cree are a proud people, with a strong culture and a strong sense of tradition. I have tremendous respect for the sense of connection I saw between them while I was there, and for the incredible respect for family that they had. I was astounded by how strong the bonds were between many of the Cree that I met, and I have nothing but the greatest admiration for their ability to work hard to rebuild their communities after the centuries of abuse they endured at the hands of Western society and the Church. But, as a people, they don't show much emotion, don't talk much, don't share their thoughts. One month was not enough time for me to learn how to live amongst a people who prefer to answer a doctor's question with a non-comittal shrug rather than a half-hour's ramble; I don't think ten years would be. I've met people from many different cultures and seen what life is like in a handful of countries, but I've never before met a people I felt so distant from. In part this is all because of the fact that the first language of many of my patients was Cree and not English, and it's never easy to communicate in your second language, but I met plenty of people this month who are fluent in Engliush and still don't talk, as a general rule. I don't get it... I respect it, but I don't understand it. There's nothing wrong with being the strong, silent type, but I couldn't live in a town where everyone was like that. I need to be among people who tell stories.<P> Also, the Cree people as a whole are very present-oriented, whereas the Jewish people tend to be very future oriented. Perhaps this is why Jews are more prone to complain and worry than Cree are, but it also explains partially why Jews, as a population, are healthier. I'm a schemer, always planning for today as well as laying plots and plans which won't come to fruition for another decade. I don't understand people who live in the moment, and that's also why I don't understand the world views of a lot of the more impulsive people I know in Montreal and have known for years. <P> All that being said, a little chaos and confusion is healthy in our lives. I'm a better person for having gotten a fifty-thousand volt culture shock. But I'm also a better person for being back in Montreal where I belong. Back home, with my computer and my penguin. This is where I'm meant to be and where I'm at home. It's good to be back where I rule. There's an Empire out there that isn't going to tyranically rule itself.<P> Final tally for the month: While there, I finished five novels, two textbooks, and close to twenty movies, and even went to play badminton for an hour with my roommate at the local highschool, because there was nothing else to do.<P> Observations of the day:<BR> 1: By all the gods of light and darkness, it's bloody good to be home.<BR> 2: It says something about me that I didn't feel like myself again until I'd set my hands back on my own keyboard.<br> 3: Comfy as my bed in Chisasibi was, it only had a single thin blanket. My bed at home has a huge and thick comforter you can really wrap yourself up in, and I can't describe how much I'd missed that.<P> And that's more than enough about that. We now return you to your regular content. Fnord. <HR> <a name="529"></a> <U><B>Chisasibi, Day 25: But At What Cost</b></u><p> <I>From August 25th to September 19th, Eric was in the town of Chisasibi, in Northern Quebec, working at the local hospital. While there, he kept this Diary.</i><P> On my second to last day here in Chisasibi, my last full day here, I've been thinking about what it cost me to come up here. I don't mean what it cost me in terms of uncollected XP or lost productivity from being in my own home -- that would just be depressing and doesn't bear thinking about -- but rather what it actually cost to be here and what it cost me personally to stay here. The doctors who come here like coming here, in part, because the pay is better; if a doctor spends seven days here, as most of the visiting doctors do, they qualify as having worked for seven full days, plus extra hours due to occasional evening clinics, plus on-call pay because all visiting doctors work at least one and sometimes more 24-hour shifts, *plus* they're paid half again more than they're paid for the same work in Montreal as a rewad for providing care out in the regions. We medical students don't profit quite as much as that; as with all of our rotations, we pay for the priviledge of being out here, plus expenses. On the other hand we don't pay for housing while we're here or the airfare to get here, and there's actually a stipend of some 300 dollars to pay for our food and entertainment; this might actually be the only rotation I'll do in medical school on which I'll make a profit. As of writing this paragrah, I haven't yet checked the math, so I'm just as excited to find out as you are.<P> While I was living in Chisasibi, my expenditures could be broadly split into three categories: food, housewares, and entertainment. Entertainment is the easiest one to calculate, because I didn't spend anything on it. There are actually some fun activities to do around here, but I didn't take part in any of them, so that's a chunk of money saved. When I came up here I brought with me a stack of five novels, my music collection, and some thirty movies; this was all stuff I'd paid for previously, so cost me nothing. The vast majority of my leisure time was spent reading, writing, or watching movies, with some time spent socializing with other students and doctors here, none of which I paid a cent for. Sure, at times I might have longed for something different or more stimulating to do, but if nothing else, you can't beat the price.<P> Then comes housewares. The transit where I was assigned comes almost totally stocked by the hospital. I didn't have to buy any dishes or towels or what have you, which would have made things rather more expensive (and annoying). I could have bought a mug to resolve my tea-related troubles, but in the end, didn't, finding my measuing cup to be quite satisfactory. About the only thing that I did need to buy in terms of housewares were paper towels, toilet paper, and laundry detergent; I don't use fabric softener, but if I did, there was some provided already, probably left behind by a previous tenant who'd bought more than they'd needed. All together, about 26 dollars got spent on housewares, which got conveniently split up by myself and my roommate, so call it 13 dollars give or take a bit. In all, one might say I overpaid, because of each of those items, a fair bit got left behind at the end of the month for the next tenant(s) to use. I don't begrudge them that, though... I got my money's worth from them, and if just as happy if I can make the next person's life a bit easier. May they be a good enough person to deserve it.<P> Then there's food. The whole month, I spent about 97.19 on food at the grocery store, the vast majority of which was spent solely on breakfast foods, particularly milk and juice. Most of the food here, of course, has to be shipped up from way down South -- it's about a 16 hour drive here from Montreal, to put shipping costs into some context. This money covered bread for the whole month, about 8 liters of lactose-free milk, six liters or so of good quality orange juice, a container of margarine, some fresh fruit, some canned fruit in syrup, a box of cereal and some crackers. It's not that bad a price, I suppose... a bit more expensive than I'd pay for the same products in Montreal, but not shockingly so. A big expenditure was bottled water, which I would absolutely never buy in Montreal, but given that I've got a sensitive gut as it is I didn't want to take any chances with the local tap water. What kept my food bill from being much higher was, of course, the hospital cafeteria, where I ate lunch and dinner almost every day for about 4.20 per meal. My stay in Chisasibi is 28 days, and my eating at the cafeteria began with lunch that very first day. I had a couple of meals with the other students where we cooked ourselves, and a couple of meals with doctors and others where they paid for the food, and dinner is paid for by the hospital for each of our on-call nights, but at a decent estimate, it's likely that I spent about 172.20, give or take about 8 dollars, on meals there. I stand by every penny; I've eaten marvelously well here, and their desserts have included some of the best cookies I've ever eaten. Finally, I ate at the town's restaurant once -- not the brightest thing I've ever done -- for a total of about 10 dollars. All together, let's call it 279.39 on food for the month. Back home, where I can buy generic products and buy food when it's on sale, I almost never spent more than about three dollars per meal, and my full grocery bills for the same four-week period would almost certainly be under two hundred dollars, but on the other hand, I've been eating bigger and more varried meals up here, so maybe you get what you pay for.<P> So, if 13 dollars were spent on housewares and 279.39 on food, and everything else I used or consumed was paid for, the whole trip has cost me approximately 292.39. My stipend for this month is 325 dollars, so I'm still making about 30 dollars of profit for having been here for four weeks. Since I make precisely no profit and in fact lose quite a lot of money for every month that I study in Montreal, this is actually a pretty good deal, and so I feel better about having come up here. In fact, since I've still got a bit of time here, I might even go to the local general store and take a look at their toy section, and let the Quebec government treat me to a new action figure or boardgame. <P> Mind you, those profit numbers turn around a little bit if you take into account that while I was here, I was still paying rent, phone, and internet on an apartment in downtown Montreal that was only getting used a couple of days per week by my housesitters...<P> Observations of the day:<BR> 1: Despite the fact that I'm eating more and eating less healthy while I'm here, my weigh hasn't changed at all. I really wish that I better understood how my unique digestive system works.<BR> 2: The toy section at the local store is sufficiently disapointing that I'll likely just come home with the extra money. To their credit, though, a significant number of the toys there are comic-book action figures.<br> 3: Huge flat-screen TVs and computer monitors appear to actually be cheaper up here than in Montreal. I don't think my stipend would cover one, though. <HR> <a name="528"></a> <U><B>Chisasibi, Day 22: Gamers Of The Frozen North</b></u><p> <I>From August 25th to September 19th, Eric was in the town of Chisasibi, in Northern Quebec, working at the local hospital. While there, he kept this Diary.</i><P> I left for Chisasibi bright and early on a Monday morning. My parents live a great deal closer to Montreal's major airport than I do, and furthermore they're always ready to provide me free transportation to and from said airports as well as much more fun conversation than any taxi driver, and so I spent Sunday night at their home, leaving my Penguin alone to guard my apartment from thieves and werewolves and insurance salesmen. This was an excellent plan as far as the whole "getting to the airport" angle was concerned. On the other hand, this means that I was at my parents' on a Sunday night, when under normal circumstances, Sunday night is when my D&D game meets. It so happens that they weren't playing that night anyway, since both I and another player were not attending, so I didn't actually *miss* a game. None the less, last night was thus my third Sunday here in Chisasibi but my fourth without any D&D whatsoever. In point of fact, I haven't played a single game of anything in that time... no RPGs, no boardgames, not even a game of cards. I've been known to get minor withdrawl symptoms when I go this long with any gaming in the past. This time I seem to be coping reasonably well, probably due to a combination of at least being able to have a few good and fun arguments with my colleagues and because I've had so much time for movies, novels, and writing. Still... I really, truly, deeply miss my dice. <P> I've noticed that doctors and students who come up here tend to get a little stir crazy. To be fair, the town does have a decent amount of activities for people -- a couple of gyms, movies, lots of good hiking and nature trails -- but by the standards of the mid-30's doctors who come here, there's very little to do. The doctors who come up for a week to work in Chisasibi actually sign on for all sorts of extra evening and weekend shifts, in part to maximize the money they make while they're here but in part because, aside from working and chatting with colleagues (who are also at the hospital), all there is for them to do is watch television. I feel their pain; I've got a laptop full of movies and an imagination that can keep me entertained in perfect silence for hours, and I also still feel the opressive silence here weighing down on my soul. If I start to feel bored here, I can only imagine how terrible it must be for the doctors that come up here, half of whom have OCD or ADHD in the first place.<P> A bunch of the doctors who have been here this week are actually gamers of one sort or another. By and large they don't indulge in what I'd consider "real" or "pure" gaming, but they play World of Warcraft and I can chat with them about some of the webcomics I read (in fact, one of the doctors here is the fiancee of the writer of one of my favourite webcomics). That's about as close as anybody here seems to get to sharing my hobbies and interests. The other medical students here, though fun and interesting people, are not gamers, which eliminates an entire dimension across which I could interact with them (while also meaning that half of my normal supply of jokes are incomprehensible to them). There might be some kids in town who play RPGs, but I've got no way of finding them, and in any case the majority of young adults living in Chisasibi speak Cree as their first language and many speak little or no English at all, so the game probably wouldn't be that enjoyable for me (and, come to think of it, I know you can buy D&D rulebooks in multiple languages but I doubt that Cree is one of them). It certainly wouldn't be impossible for me to find and/or bring about some sort of proper gaming opportunity up here, but the odds are heavily against it and, let's be honest, I'm much too lazy.<P> Still, I've worked hard to find ways to keep my mind busy while I'm up here. Between writing this CHisasibi Diary plus my usual journal posts, I'll have written approximately double the number of posts I'd normally produce in the same 28 day period -- ten posts of Chisasibi Diary and seven regular ones (editor's note: there would have been eight non-Chisasibi-themed posts if I'd started posting the diary on September 20th once I'd gotten home, but I started posting the Diary three days earlier than I'd planned so that it would start neatly in Entry 521 and end at 530). Given that a couple of those posts have been long even by my standards, and looking at the word count that I've reached now with several days left to go before I get home, I'll have produced something over twenty two thousand words this month -- only half of what people shoot for during National Novel Writing Month, but probably a record for me, especially happymaking given how I've been complaining about a lack of inspiration for a while now. That's while still having gone through something in the area of fifteen movies and four and a half novels, all while working from nine to six every day with one nine to midnight shift each week plus studying. It's a testament to what I can accomplish when I'm truly left to my own devices without any distractions to speak of. <P> Still, I really miss those distractions. Too much productivity isn't good for you.<P> It's tough for someone like me, going this long without any gaming at all. When I came up to Chisasibi, I didn't even bring with any dice, so sure was I that there would be no opportunities to use them meaningfully. I feel as though there's an emptiness in my heart, a hole in my mind where there should be the schemes of a mad Koorivar. I haven't left any decisions up to pure random chance in over a month now, which just feels wrong, though fortunately, the Goddess hasn't held it against me or withdrawn her favour, perhaps since I'm still spreading plenty of chaos with my additional spare time. I long to once more hold a character sheet in my hands and see life, not as a confusing morass or stupid people, but as a wonderful portrait of character and probability where anything in possible and I can make explode the heads of people who irritate me. I miss the feeling of infinite possibility that comes from facing down a challenge in-game; at its best, real life rarely affords more than one or two dozen possible solutions to any given problem, which isn't nearly enough. More than anything else, I miss sitting around my living room with a group of my friends, snacking on tea and pizza, and doing nothing for three hours but laugh and lose myself in a story. I can get my tea up here, and I can watch my movies and read my books, but that's one thing this city can't give me no matter how well I scheme or plot.<P> Observations of the day:<BR> 1: I have yet to locate a single shop in town which even sells dice, not counting those that come packaged in boardgames. Those boardgames are pretty much limited to Clue and Monopoly, both great games but hardly as exciting as I've come to be used to.<BR> 2: It's not just the doctors who find that this town has absolutely nothing to do, if the stats on drug and alcohol use here are to be believed.<br> 3: I have yet to locate a single fnord anywhere in town. This is unsurprising but still discouraging. I'll have to hide a few before I leave. <HR> <a name="527"></a> <U><B>Chisasibi, Day 19: Just Add Water</b></u><p> <I>From August 25th to September 19th, Eric was in the town of Chisasibi, in Northern Quebec, working at the local hospital. While there, he kept this Diary.</i><P> As the long-time reader of this Journal will already be aware, I have a certain fondness for tea. Tea and I are old friends; we go way back, and there are few humans who've been there for me so consistently on quiet nights. When I found out that I was going to be spending a month in Chisasibi, the very first thing I knew was: I would need tea. I figured I could reasonably assume that I'd be able to get ordinary orange pekoe in Chisasibi, and maybe even decent green tea, because I knew there were a couple of grocery stores in the town, and I knew that would be enough to keep me happy, but if I was going to spend a month stuck in a strange town surrounded by strangers and without a single game of D&D for a hundred miles, I was going to need special tea. I was going to need chai. And I was not prepared to take the chance that I might find myself in Chisasibi, with no hope of escape and no good tea.<P> This was all in the frantic days of panic before I left, of course. Since I've gotten to Chisasibi, I've found that things aren't bad up here; the people are nice, the doctors are wonderful, my roommates are pleasant company, and the food is excellent. I'm going to be happy to come home but it's nice enough being here and I'm by no means suffering. That said, my worst fears were realized: in Chisasibi, you can buy several different brands of orange pekoe and green tea, and you can even buy some of the more unusual President's Choice flavoured white teas, but there isn't a bag of chai to be had in the whole entire smegging town, except for that which is brought up by visitors with them. One of the doctors who I worked with up here always brings up a supply of good chai with her, and because I'm a clever sort of weasel, so did I. If there are three things without which I couldn't live up here, they're internet, a private computer, and tea.<P> I brought up only a limited number of bags, and I've been using them slowly, savouring them. I take my chai a little bit for granted in Montreal because it's easy to get more of it, but up here, each bag is infinitely more precious and tastes that much more like happiness. Even if I run out before I leave, it'll have been worth it, and of course, I can buy lots more when I get home to make up for any deficit here.<P> All that being said, there's one thing that can always be said to be true of me: I make brilliant plans, but I always, always, always miss one detail. It's a characteristic of mine, almost a signature, that I craft brilliant and sublime schemes and always forget to account for something. In this case, months before I left Montreal, I had laid in a supply of fine chai. I was confident I would be able to acquire sugar and I had gotten some lactase pills I could bring with in case lactose-free milk wasn't available up here (though it turned out that it was, and in plentiful supply). I obtained assurances from the staff in Chisasibi that every student's home had a kettle supplied, and even if it didn't, I knew I would be able to make my tea in the hospital cafeteria, or even boil water in a pan. I laboured over every inch of the plan, to be sure that I'd missed nothing, and indeed, every stage of the tea-making process had been accounted for perfectly. I would be able to craft my tea. It did not occur to me that I might need to bring up with me a mug.<P> I was, to put it mildly, somewhat annoyed, in much the same way that the Germans became slightly irritated by the death of Archduke Ferdinand. <P> The trailer in which I've been staying is actually extremely well-stocked. It has comfy beds, fluffy towels, extra bedsheets, silverware, plates, glasses, plastic cups, useful furniture, measuring cups, pots, pans, a working oven, a good-sized fridge, a fine and lovely kettle, and mugs. It has many mugs. They are pretty mugs. They are durable, chip-resistant, easily-washed, hard-to-stain mugs. And they are tiny mugs. They are so small you would think that they are mugs sold for the benefit of kids' tea parties, or perhaps they're simply baby mugs which themselves have yet to grow to adult height. The mugs hold about one half of a cup each, though they have a curiously-shaped lip which poses a huge spill risk if you fill them to within even a centimeter of the rim. One night I tried using those cups to drink a satisfactory amount of tea; I filled three of them and still hadn't exhausted the teabag. The local grocery store does sell mugs, and it sells sufficiently large mugs for my needs, but they're expensive and, to be blunt, ugly as a fairytale stepsister triple-dipped in raw sewage. I'm very picky about my mugs, especially the mugs I use for my tea; I hold them to very high standards and it's very hard to find a mug I really like using. I have three mugs at home that I really love, and one of those I almost never use because it's too small (it holds only twelve ounces). None of the mugs I could find in Chisasibi was up to my discriminating standards, both in terms of size and design. <P> A lesser man would have given up, would have collapsed into a pathetic whimpering ball of defeated gristle, or at least would have made tea in tiny cups and failed to achieve the critical level of eighty-four percent niftiness. I... I am no lesser man, and in fact am not a man at all. I am Eric Lis, and I bend the Universe to match my will. I do not adapt for reality; I adapt reality to me. That's why I'm the ruler of a small country. That's why I accomplish the impossible on a regular basis. That's why I'm writing this sitting at a desk in my room when the only furniture when I moved in was a bed and a dresser.<P> The transit comes equipped with measuring cups. The measuring cups hold two and a half cups of fluid. The measuring cups are oven safe and engineered to contain hot liquids. The measuring cups have a spout for easy pouring. The measuring cups are transparent; you can really appreciate the colour of a fine tea through a transparent vessel.<P> I have to say, it's a pretty good system. I may never use my mugs again when I get home. Well, to be honest I probably will, but I'll always look back with fondness on the days when I drank my tea right out of the measuring cup. That was really, really yummy tea.<P> Observations of the day:<BR> 1: Say whatever else you want to, the Cree people appear to have a deep and abiding love for tea which I really relate to.<BR> 2: It may be that the only thing that makes tea more wonderful is being able to see its pretty colours in a transparent drinking vessel.<br> 3: When you prepare your drink in a measuring cup, you can always be sure you've filled it up to just the level you want. <HR> <a name="526"></a> <U><B>Chisasibi, Day 16: Can You Tell Me How To Get...</b></u><p> Editor's note: Happy Jewish New Year and welcome once again to the Ten Days of Repentance between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. Continue reading after the Chisasibi Diary for Eric's annual Apology.<P> <I>From August 25th to September 19th, Eric was in the town of Chisasibi, in Northern Quebec, working at the local hospital. While there, he kept this Diary.</i><P> I like to think that in my life, I don't take a lot of things for granted. Living in the big city, I'm very aware how lucky I am in life, and I make an effort to feel appropriately grateful and appreciative for the things in my world that are good. I'm aware of the wonderfulness of indoor plumbing, for example, and every day I feel lucky to have it. I never take for granted the fact that I have clean drinking water or a pretty view out of my window. I never ever take for granted how fortunate I am to have healthy food available or affordable and accessible health care not far from my home. These are all things that people in Chisasibi don't necessarily have. None the less, I am continually impressed by the things which I can suddenly feel very grateful for when I go somewhere that doesn't have it, and being in Chisasibi has helped me see a number of things I hadn't realized before how lucky I was to have. Being here really makes me appreciate the fact that where I live, for example, there are streets.<P> By streets, I don't mean merely pavement. I am very appreciative of pavement, because unsightly as it may be, it makes walking much easier, more predictable, and easier on the legs. I think dirt roads are in many ways prettier, but I value pavement for making travel easier. Chisasibi (at least the neighbourhood of it where I'm living and working) does lack for pavement, but that's not what I mean. What's actually missing in Chisasibi is streets, meaning, predetermined paths wide enough to be followed by motor vehicles and pedestrians, or which can be used as a frame of reference for addresses and directions. While in town, for example, my address is "cluster E3" which means a specific cluster of trailers in a certain grid of the map. You can imagine how different things feels when one has spent one's entire life finding things based on a street, a number, and the ability to follow directions such as "turn left on 5th avenue and walk until Pine."<P> If I was staying here longer, I'm sure I could find a grid map of the town and learn how to figure out where the different clusters are, and I imagine that it's actually a very logical and useful way to organize a town. Montreal, for example, has streets, but they're all laid out about twenty degrees off from the true cardinal directions, so when we say that a street runs "North" we might actually mean "East by Northeast" or something like that. On top of that, Montreal's streets tend to curve unpredictably, change their names without notice, and even loop around to double back upon themselves. Montreal streets are, in fact, terribly difficult and confusing to navigate, and you can really tell that large stretches of Downtown were laid out in the sixties when 1) everybody was on drugs and 2) the architects were planning their streets to make things more difficult for the Russians if they invaded. Compared to that, Chisasibi's system of laying out the town by grid, with letters for one axis and numbers for the other, is actually really clever and useful, allowing for potentially unlimited expansion of borders as well as setting the town up for the world's biggest and coolest game of Battleship. I'm not here for long enough to bother learning the grid system, though, and in fact I'm just assuming that it's a logical grid layout in the first place, an assumption which isn't based on any evidence at all. It's equally possible that the letter and number labeling is purely arbitrary and makes no sense at all. Either way, it's different from what I grew up using, and anything different is, by definition, bad, right?<P> The second thing that gets me about there being no streets isn't the difficult navigation, but the fact that there are actually no streets. Navigation is tricky enough without named routes to follow; this is compounded by the deficiency of routes in the first place. In the nicer and more established area of town there are actual asphalt roads with names like "salt street" but there I'm living the grids are linked by a loose network of dirt paths and nothing more. Not only is there no pavement, it would be very difficult to say exactly where the pavement is supposed to go. The homes are scattered around almost like they were dropped there; you can imagine where a patch of ground that runs past a group of front doors might be supposed to be a street, but you really can't be sure if it's just your imagination. Certainly, the fact that people drive over an area of dirt isn't evidence that that patch is meant to be a road; the majority of vehicles here are off-road in design and get used as such rigorously, and whether or not the pedestrian believes in streets, you can really tell that roads are imaginary in the minds of many of the town's drivers. It's not because they're bad drivers -- they actually make better use of their turn signals than people do in Montreal and politely swerve to avoid the foot traffic -- but simply because there aren't clear roads for them to follow. It gives the town that frontier sort of feeling that I picked up from watching bad Westerns; any town without roads has to be a frontier town, after all. I almost imagine I'll see John Wayne walking down the street (though what reception he'd get in a town filled with native Canadians, I can't imagine). <P> When I get back to Montreal, one of the things for which I know I'll have a renewed appreciation is pavement and preplanned routes. Montreal is pretty easy to get around thanks to its public transit system, but public transit needs streets to move along (and as a frame of reference). It's harder work walking down a dirt road, to say nothing of up and downhill on a dirt slope, and it's harder to be sure you're finding your way places. I have yet to get lost, which suggests that the town can't be laid out that poorly, but it's still disconcerting. All I'll say is that I'm truly grateful that if nothing else, I'm learning this appreciation for roads while I'm this far North; at least I'm not in sandworm country.<P> Observations of the day:<BR> 1: Long sandy stretches may make for unpleasant walking, but it does make for great running terrain.<BR> 2: One nice thing about the lack of roads is that whichever direction you walk, you still feel like you're going the right way.<br> 3: If I think the walking's bad in the summer/autumn, I'm that much luckier not to be here in the depths of winter, when the ground is just as unsteady but also icy cold and gets your socks wet.<P> <center><big>Eric's Apologies, 2008</big><br> or<BR> <big>You Can Barely Taste The Hemlock</big></center><p> <I>Cookie Monster thief, not liar.</i><BR> Cookie Monster<P> <I>If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.</i><BR> John Kenneth Galbraith <P> <I>It's such a fine line between stupid and clever.</i><BR> David St. Hubbins<P> The Ten Days of Repentance are the days between the Jewish New Year and Yom kippur, the Day of Atonement. During this time, Jews meditate upon the sins they have commited in the past year and try to apologise for as many as possible. The goal is to face the new year with a clean slate and to know in your heart that, though you have wronged those you care for in the last year, you are sorry and will try not keep it from happening again. The Ten Days give us time to reflect on what we've done right and what we've done wrong, and who we've done both to. We face our mistakes, admit to them, and take responsibility for them. We may make the same mistakes again, but at least we acknowledge that they were mistakes. We look forward and we say: this year, we can do better. In that spirit, I look back on the stupid stuff I did in the last year -- which, I'm proud to say, there was not too much of -- and to each and every person reading this, I apologise.<P> I apologise to people I have not been able to see. My schedule this past year has made it hard for me to see many friends who often say they miss me. I miss you too (probably). I probably won't be able to rectify this in the next year, but I do apologise.<P> I apologise to the people I have hurt. I apologise to the people I've hurt physically, of which there have been a small number, and the people I have hurt emotionally, of which there have been even fewer but were generally people who mattered more. I apologise to the people I have hurt with my driving -- though if you get angry because you're driving behind me and I'm going only 20 over the limit, screw you. I apologise to the people I have hurt medically, through insufficient care or through medical errors; particularly, I apologise to the depressed young man I met one day who I could not help and who I merely passed off to the social worker, and I apologise to the lady whose test results I failed to notice in time and who may, in the future, go on to develop bacterial endocarditis. I can add only that in each case, I will try hard to ensure that mistakes I have made are never repeated and that I do not hurt someone again in the same way.<p> I apologise to my classmates and my supervisors. I apologise because I am not a brilliant student or a great and noteworthy health-care worker. I am sometimes lazy and often forgetful. This week alone, I have massively multiplied the workload of several classmates because I was off in synagogue instead of taking care of my own patients at the hospital. I apologise to the people with whom I did my ACLS course last weekend, because if I were a better student I would have had less difficulty during my own tests and been more supportive during theirs. I apologise to people who have done presentations with me this year because, while I probably did my share of the work, I probably did not bring the keen, hard-working enthusaism that some of you did. I can say only that I have always tried my best and will continue to do so.<P> I apologise to the people on whom I have imposed. To my girlfriend who is constantly adjusting her plans to accomodate me, to the classmate who was forced to have me as a roommate for a whole month in Chisasibi, to the doctors and residents whose workload doubled because they had to supervise me as well as see their own patients, to the friends who sat around awkwardly as I made few or no attempts at conversation, I apologise. I'm working on it, and I hope it means something that I say I have done far less harm in this way this year than in previous years (and in fact, I was probably a pretty good roommate for that month). <P> I apologise to all Francophones with whom I dealt, because my French still isn't good. I apologise to the people of Chisasibi because I am a narrow-minded Westerner who failed to fully appreciate or respect your culture and how it differed from mine. I apologise to my friends in Germany, Brazil, Israel and elsewhere who take the trouble to speak to me in English even though I make no effort at all to speak to them in their own language. <P> And for this year, I think that covers everything. The truth is, I don't think I did much harm this year. I did a lot of good for a lot of people and hurt relatively few people. That said, to anybody who matters to me to whom I forgot to make an apology, I'm sorry. Get in touch with me before sundown on October 8th and we can talk it over. <HR><a name="525"></a> <U><B>Chisasibi, Day 13: Plugged In</b></u><p> <I>From August 25th to September 19th, Eric was in the town of Chisasibi, in Northern Quebec, working at the local hospital. While there, he kept this Diary.</i><P> Horror movie sets aside, perhaps the greatest horror in Chisasibi has been the lack of Internet access. I'm by no means utterly without the net, of course; the hospital's clinic has a computer that's there specifically so that people can look up medical information online and, of course, check their e-mails, and there's another two free-access computers (on hi-speed connections, no less) in the administration area, plus numerous laptops set aside for the doctors, all of which have pretty good quality connections. By most people's standards, it's a pretty good level of access, and if I only checked my emails once (or even a few times) per day, like any sane person, this would be an excellent system. I'm not just any, boring old person, though... I check my primary email address eight or nine times a day when I'm in Montreal, and that's when I'm out of the apartment for most of the day (if I'm at home, I just keep MSN messenger connected so I know as soon as I have any mail). That's my primary email; most days, I have at least two other addresses I need to check up on, because I've got an additional email for school-related communication and at any given time I've got five or six schemes in the works, often working through two or three assumed identities, and those need to be checked too (though not daily). Then there's the webcomics I read, livejournals, news, and my own modest websites (the Empire doesn't stop working just because I leave town, after all). I'm well aware of the fact that I'm something of a net junkie, and the only reason I know I'm not an addict is because it's never interfered in my school or work performance. On top of all that, the computer is my main source of entertainment even without an online connection; movies, music, and even books (both textbooks and novels) are computerized in my world, and without a computer, I can't use them. I brought up a huge stack of novels, but I don't want to spend all my time reading. <P> Before coming up to Chisasibi, I had plenty of advance notice that the room I'd be staying in (and, in fact, the building I'd be staying in) wouldn't have a computer. I don't own a laptop (clarification: I own two second-hand laptops, both of which are more than eight years old and broken) so I made arrangements to borrow my mother's, which is a relatively new and almost top-of-the-line machine. The laptop has a hard-drive more than big enough to carry everything I wanted to bring up with me plus extra, and before I set foot outside my apartment I made sure that it had copies of every file I was likely to need for a month away from home. Now, two weeks into my time here, it's proven to be a wise investment, as I've watched several movies and my music collection has done wonders for helping me stay sane. The laptop is also essential for my well-being because it means that I can do my writing when I'm at home, at any hour I choose, rather than having to go into the hospital. This has made it possible for me to keep my Journal updated while I'm away, allowing me to get my normal posts out on schedule (the ones you all read all last month, your time) and also keep this diary for posting when I got home (so in fact, having a laptop while I was away allowed me to write an unprecedented sixty-days' worth of material in the space of twenty eight days). Writing remains one of my great joys in life and it adds a lot of satisfaction to this month away for me to be able to keep getting posts out on time. I quite literally could not do that if I had to be at the hospital to make it happen.<P> That's some of my computer use accounted for, but having a laptop with me doesn't bring me that all important thing: internet access. My mother's laptop is a nifty little machine and it's actually got a high-end wireless card, but up here just Southwest of the middle of nowhere, there isn't much in the way of wireless access. For Internet access, I really do have to schlep over to the hospital, a minor inconvenience on days when I work (six out of every seven) but a severe limitation to my access when I could otherwise have a day off spent lounging around. Whether I like it or not, I have to go into the hospital every day (given a certain subjective value of "have to"). I could live without checking my email for a day, but really, why would I want to? I could understand that for some people, one of the great advantages of spending a month in a small town like this is that they're able to get away from it all and escape the constant buzz of technology and hustle... for me, leaving behind technology is the single thing I hate and dread most about it. I feel annoyingly limited here, since I can't just walk into the next room if I want to check my mail or look something up in the encyclopedia. Fortunately, the laptop steps in again to save me, because while it doesn't let me download and upload files, I'm at least able to write lengthy emails and posts from the comfort of my own home and then bring those over to the hospital as text files, there to be put online. I'm still limited in terms of my access, but at least I don't have to be at work to do the actual writing. <P> Still, I really miss being able to look up the world's knowledge on a whim. I can do all the writing I want but I'm really feeling cut off without being able to free-associate my way through Webster's dictionary at a moment's notice. I'm just thankful that after two weeks, I've gotten hold of a mouse; I despise touchpads, and now I can play Minesweeper comfortably again for the first time since I left home.<P> Observations of the day:<BR> 1: Writing has long been one of the great joys in my life, but in Chisasibi where there's almost nothing else to do, it's the only thing keeping me sane.<BR> 2: Even if the touchpad makes it frustrating and unpleasant, I still can't stop playing Minesweeper.<br> 3: Being able to play my entire music collection at the touch of a button really is one of the most wonderful things about life. I could live without it, but I'm happy I don't have to. <HR><a name="524"></a> <U><B>Chisasibi, Day 10: It's Only a Model</b></u><p> <I>From August 25th to September 19th, Eric was in the town of Chisasibi, in Northern Quebec, working at the local hospital. While there, he kept this Diary.</i><P> So here's one of the weirdest things about this village: it's got the potential to be the setting for nearly any horror movie ever made. Pick the film of your choice, and odds are good, I can find you a place where the movie could have been filmed. The village has a trailer park and a better part of town with modest houses (some of which are suitably abandoned and boarded up. There's an ancient church and a lazy riverside surrounded by thick forest. There's beach on one side of town, and not far away you can find campgrounds and cabins in the woods. There is, of course, a suitably-sized hospital with lots of hidden corners and dark rooms. Just about the only movies you couldn't film in this town would be ones set in the far future -- and even then, if they were suitably dystopic you might be able to get away with it -- and perhaps some lake-monster stories, although with a little effort that could be set up pretty easily, especially if the monster in question favoured cold water over warm. The other people in town don't seem to think of these things, but such details are unmistakable to me. I'm not saying that I think anything's going to happen to me or anyone else, of course... I'm just saying that if something did, the atmosphere would be perfect.<P> The first movie setting I noticed as I rolled into town was, of course, the town's small graveyard with its field of old, off-angle crosses. The graveyard I saw -- I don't know if there's more than one in town -- is the sort of place that would make George Romero weep with joy. It's pretty small, so you're looking at a fairly small number of potential risings, but the establishing shot of the first few arms punching out of the ground would be priceless. From there, the movie sort of writes itself... an isolated town, only a couple thousand people around, most of the buildings prefab and not at all designed to withstand a solid beating at the door, and most of them with multiple points of entry and exit all at ground level, and lots of people around who own guns or small hand-weapons to give them the chance to put up a fight. Minimal streetlights and wide, unpaved avenues between the major buildings really open up the filming opportunities, and walking home past midnight you can really visualize which alleys the zombies would be shot lurching out from. If anything does happen, of course, I've already worked out my zombie-plan; the town's two grocery stores are both in the same building, a large pseudo-mall which happens to also contain the sporting-goods shop and an ATV dealership. It's also one of the few buildings in town with multiple floors, and the top floor just happens to be the town's motel, which has only one main entrance, behind a thick and relatively secure wooden door at the top of a decently-defensible staircase. The ground floor will be hard to seal off because it's got at least two easily breached doors that I know of, but it still poses the best chance of a place to stay and wait out the invasion.<P> In the event of a demon-raising, I may be in much more trouble. To my knowledge, the town has one old wooden church -- and when I say that it's an old wooden church, I mean that in the Platonic sense, because if you imagine an old wooden church in your head right now, I kid you not, you will be seeing the church in Chisasibi or something nearly identical to it. The church itself is moderately creepy and it's not hard to imagine that there's an identical building somewhere in New England where all the bibles have pictures of fish-men in them and the priest is a graduate of Miskatonic University. The only reason I set foot anywhere near a church like that is because attached to it is the old rectory where a priest of some sort presumably once lived, but it's now one of the temporary homes which gives given out to visiting medical people while they're in town. I was invited into the rectory because one of the other medical students in town is assigned a room there. The house is liberally dotted with crosses of various sizes and shapes and statues of Mary (or someone like Mary, I can't be expected to know the difference between these people) sit in various corners and out of the way places. The rectory has a dark and menacing basement, a library filled with eighty-year-old Christian texts, numerous ornate-looking sealed boxes, and most worryingly, its own private chapel in the basement with pews for ten or twenty people and a private altar. I didn't explore much, because 1) it's not my home and I don't know what rooms the building's owner, if he's still alive, considers to be public, and 2) I was genuinely worried that if I opened up some box or read a line out of an old book I might accidentally unleash some ancient and timeless evil bent on devouring the souls of men, and while I'm confident that my Amulet has the power to repulse that sort of thing, I imagine that accidentally damning the entire town might reflect poorly on my final evaluation at the hospital, what with that whole "first, do no harm" thing.<P> Finally, I'm sure it doesn't take much imagination to imagine that a small town surrounded by thick forests and filled with teenagers and booze might be the perfect stomping grounds for a slasher of some sort. In cities like Montreal, what with the aging population, there's a huge number of elderly people relative to young people, which is why, before a director can start killing off a bunch of kids, they first have to be brought out of the city, to go to a summer camp or a hiking trip or a cabin or something. In Chisasibi, that work is already done; according to official demographics, something in the area of seventy percent of this town's population is supposed to be under thirty, and a significant number of them spend time together with alcohol and the wilderness to keep them company. A JMF-class entity would, if anything, be stymied because of having too many choices to choose from, and would just keep walking around in a circle until it wore away its own legs. Now, admittedly, under ordinary circumstances, one of the first-choice victims of such an entity would usually be an out-of-towner such as myself, someone who could be done away with without the bulk of the local population being personally impacted, but since I don't drink, don't bully small kids, and have a weight under seventy kilograms and an endless supply of witty repartee, I figure I've got excellent chances of being a movie-survivor under classic conditions and I won't get too worried until either the town's population dips below one-half or one of the other medical students gets attacked.<P> Still, I have every intention of staying away from the river, never ever going to investigate any strange noises, and running for my life if I see a camera crew.<P> Observations of the day:<BR> 1: Every morning, there are one or two more collarless dogs hanging around outside my transit than the day before. They all seem friendly now, but it still bodes ill.<BR> 2: Ancient and timeless evil may have already been released, and I think it works in reception at the hospital.<br> 3: Obesity and poor physical condition are common problems in this town. This is fortunate for me, in terms of the old truism about not having to outrun the tiger. <HR> <a name="523"></a> <U><B>Chisasibi, Day 7: Ye Who Enter Here</b></u><p> <I>From August 25th to September 19th, Eric was in the town of Chisasibi, in Northern Quebec, working at the local hospital. While there, he kept this Diary.</i><P> Perhaps the activity in the hospital (by which I mean, any hospital) that is at once the most interesting and the most tedious -- I don't know how that works, so don't ask me to explain it -- is the process of admitting patients. Before coming to Chisasibi, I'd never worked on a medical ward; all of my medical experience has been working in non-emergency clinics and visiting patients who are already in hospital. In Chisasibi, in contrast, the vast majority of my time was spent dealing with walk-ins at the emergency room, and as such, I occasionally meet people who require admission and a bed. In my first week, I admitted two patients, both for exacerbations of ongoing medical problems, both moderately interesting cases from an academic learning point of view. The first admission took me something in the area of four hours to complete, because it was the first time I was doing it, I had to ask people for the proper way to fill in many of the forms, and I made the error of actually following some of the forms' instructions rather than just writing my notes the way I would in any normal chart, which made my history and physical half-again longer to write up. The second admission I did was easier because I had a clearer idea of how to fill in the forms, what parts I could probably gloss over a little bit, and how to more efficiently say the things that I want to say; it only took me about three and a half hours of paperwork. On the one hand, that's a long time to be buried in paperwork, as anyone can imagine, especially if all the paperwork relates to only a single patient; in the same amount of time seeing clinic patients, I'd probably see at least four people and help them with their problems, but doing an admission, you see one person really, really in depth and get to know him, which is fun only if they're someone you like when you meet them.<P> Both of the patients that I'd admitted now were "expected admissions" meaning that they were patients sent up from other hospitals or health care offices, ones even smaller than the one I'm in now rather than severe cases in this community. The significance of this is that we knew that both cases were coming and we knew that both cases were people who would survive just fine if we took our time getting things done. Just as I really appreciated that my first on-call was pretty relaxed, I'm quite glad that my first admissions were on patients about whom information was available, and of whom I could be pretty sure that their hearts wouldn't stop if I went to get a fresh piece of paper. I don't like being rushed or pressured; I like being able to take my time and get things done right, even if it does take three hours to do (though the doctors tell me that I still admit a patient respectably and impressively quickly). The downside of this is that the patient often gets left waiting to be admitted for two or three of those hours, just sitting somewhere, wondering what's taking so long and getting increasingly annoyed. The second fellow I admitted, for example, got progressively more short-tempered and impatient with my endless questions as each hour wore on. I found that kind of annoying, because I was working as quickly as I could through a lot of work, but of course, he's almost certainly never seen how much I have to write to earn him the right to stay here for a few days, so he can't be expected to know whether the delay is because I'm working tirelessly or because I've gone to have a leisurely dinner while he lies on a stretcher. Medical students and doctors often become short with unfriendly patients, I've found, but one of the first things I observed in my training is that as a general rule, no matter how bad a day the medical student is having in the hospital, the ill and agonized patient is having a worse one, and they've got the privilege of being a little short-tempered. Only a little, though. Anyway, I did my best to get it done quickly, which is the only responsibility I had in the situation.<P> Looking at an admission package, it's almost hard to imagine why it might take so long. The time consuming part isn't filling in all the papers, but filling them in correctly, and that's why it take a student longer than it does a doctor. An admission package here is about ten pages -- more, really, but the rest are carbon-copies and don't add much to the time needed to fill things in. The easy ones are patient information forms... they're the really tedious ones, but they're the easy ones. The worst one, in my experience thus far, is the patient's history. This two-page form requires that all known information about a patient's past medical history gets written down on a sheet, even if that information has all been written already on other documents. Usually, the history has never been collected in any single place, and so completing the history form requires one to go through the patient's chart with a fine-toothed comb and make a note of all the problems they've had in the past. Since every patient in Chisasibi seems to have foot-thick, five pound charts, this is tricky. Since people who come to the hospital from outside Chisasibi don't come with their charts from home, this is trickier. Since very few humans know or understand their own medical history, this is nearly impossible. So, when we fill in the form, we use some imagination, secure in the knowledge that as long as we don't leave out anything relevant to the current problem, nobody is going to really be upset about omissions. The next longest part in the physical exam, because before admitting a patient, we have to do a full physical; a full physical is even more in-depth than an annual checkup and certainly more time-consuming than the quick once-over we give most patients when they walk-in to the clinic for a headache or a skin rash or something. When a patient with abdominal pain and nausea has been sitting in an emergency room for three hours, even if he has had a private room, he rarely understands why I need to give him a neurological exam -- assuming he even recognizes that that's what I'm doing when I ask him to puff out his cheeks and make funny faces at me. The exam itself doesn't take too long, so much as it feels long because, at my stage, I'm still paranoid about forgetting steps and have to go through it with painstakingly thoroughness that doesn't come naturally to me. The really long part, of course, is writing up the report of the exam afterwards, especially in the standardized forms we have to use.<P> So, that's why admissions take so long... a long time from the patient's perspective and even longer from mine, since I'm still doing paperwork when he's finally given a room somewhere. It's simultaneously an interesting process while also being a long and boring one; you wouldn't think that something would be both interesting and boring at once, but paperwork is a funny thing that defies laws of common sense and physics alike. The important thing is that at the end of the day, the patient is in the hospital, still sick but at least being cared for: sharing a room with a confused senior citizen, getting poked by needles several times a day, and generally having an unpleasant few days while we hopefully help them get better. All I can really say to the patients once they're in the hospital is: better you than me.<P> Observations of the day:<BR> 1: Admitting a patient is significantly easier when you speak the same language.<BR> 2: Patients think we have a lot more information about them in our charts than we actually do.<br> 3: Work is a more pleasant place to go if it's the only place you can check your email. <HR> <a name="522"></a> <U><B>Chisasibi, Day 4: All Alone in the Night</b></u><p> <I>From August 25th to September 19th, Eric was in the town of Chisasibi, in Northern Quebec, working at the local hospital. While there, he kept this Diary.</i><P> On my second day of working in Chisasibi, my third day there, I found myself assigned to my very first on-call, not merely in Chisasibi, but in my time in medicine. I'd always assumed I'd dislike being on-call, and sure enough, I was entirely correct. On the one hand, on-call is pleasant because it's relatively relaxed compared to daylight hours, and relatively few patients are around to break the silence. In fact, there are fairly few of any people in the hospital, and it's a lot of fun to feel as though you've got the whole hospital all to yourself. The silence is beautiful, all the more so for the stark contrast to how busy and noisy it usually is. It's possible that what I like isn't so much the peace and quiet as the jarring difference from the usual state of affairs, but then again, when a patient does come in and the silence gets broken, that's also a jarring change from a few minutes prior but is still much less fun.<P> As a medical student, a night on call can be either horrifically exciting or blessedly slow. In my case, it was a very slow night, thankfully. The student's version on call, at this hospital at least, is pretty light -- whereas the doctor is alone in the hospital from about 7pm to 9am, but then gets the next day off, the medical student is on call only until midnight, and then is free to go home, although then works the next day as normal. There were a couple of minor emergencies at the hospital but the doctor supervising me took care of the only one that happened before midnight, and thus, the only one that was my problem. While she was busy with that, I was mostly doing paperwork related to a new admission to the hospital, and trying to perform a physical exam and neurological assessment on someone who doesn't speak English or know what year they're in. It was an excellent learning experience, in so far as I'd never admitted a patient to a ward before and this was a good, relatively relaxed and laid-back chance to learn how to fill in the forms satisfactorily, but on the other hand, the whole process took me near on four hours and had to be done entirely by handwriting. When I'm in Montreal hospitals, a similar on-call will be much more rushed, much more stressful, much more heavily criticized by my supervisors, but also done on keyboard and computer, which makes a world worth of difference to someone like me, and equally importantly, for anyone who'll need to read it afterwards. To be honest, I feel downright sorry for anybody who'll need to read any note I write. Though, it must be said, even my bad handwriting looks good compared to the strange ink-stains which a lot of the doctors seem to leave in the charts. I'd make a joke about how some of them must be writing in some strange, runic script unknown to human civilization, but some of the charts actually do have notes written in the Cree alphabet and those are more comprehensible than some of the English charts. <P> The true absurdity of being on call at my stage, of course, is that in theory, from about 7 to midnight, I'm the second-highest ranking person in the hospital. There's one doctor in the building, and then there's me, the medical student. If I was a fourth-year student who'd spent a year and a half saving lives and who'd passed the advanced cardiac life support exam, then I might be, at the very least, sufficiently skilled that I wouldn't have to be watched at all times, and I might conceivably be more useful than the youngest nurse. As it is, however, I know just enough to be able to contribute but nearly everything I do needs to be double-checked, even if I prove to have done it perfectly, and everybody else present, be they nurse or even x-ray technician, is better at their job than I am at mine, and often better at mine too. The only potential exception to this *might* be the receptionists, who are definitely better at their job than I am at mine but who probably wouldn't be better than me at mine... although since they speak Cree, and the patient I was admitting speaks Cree but neither English nor French, they might even have proven better at that. And yet, despite all this, I'm theoretically the second highest-ranking health-care provider in the entire hospital, simply by virtue of the fact that I have the word "medicine" in my title. Does it make sense? No, not particularly, but then again, I go to a lot of effort sometimes to see to it that things in my life make as little sense as this does. The nurses, who are significantly better at preserving life than I am, tactfully don't make an issue of it as long as I speak to them respectfully and make room for them near the patient when they're doing something important. <P> The important thing is, my very first experience on-call passed painlessly and without catastrophe. This can be attributed mostly to the fact that the doctor who was with me was very supportive and, equally importantly, present, whereas many doctors in the same situation would have simply gone home and told me to call them if I really needed help. Put in that kind of position, where I would have been the first person addressing any potential emergencies that came up, I might not have done so well. Then again, I might have succeeded spectacularly all on my own. As it is, I learned how to perform a few new skills, saved a doctor some tedious handwriting, and got a free dinner at the cafeteria... I've had worse evenings, and I will again in the foreseeable future. <P> As a corollary, that night, I also learned that the hospital cafeteria is left totally unguarded overnight and the only door between me and mountains of free food is a single door whose combination I'm actually authorized to have. Beyond this, the cafeteria's sole anti-theft device is the honour system. I didn't abuse it... that night, at least.<P> Observations of the day:<BR> 1: Tasty food is the one major factor that can make an out-of-town month livable or not.<BR> 2: I can pretty easily stay focused and efficient past midnight as long as I keep busy. Whether I can be equally efficient at four am remains to be seen.<br> 3: Walking home after midnight through a deserted taiga trailer park, with wolf-like dogs howling somewhere in the distance, in a community known to have a violent crime rate several times that of Montreal, is enough to make one appreciate the appeal of sleeping at the hospital. <HR> <a name="521"></a> <U><B>Chisasibi, Day 1: There and Back Again</b></u><p> <I>From August 25th to September 19th, Eric was in the town of Chisasibi, in Northern Quebec, working at the local hospital. While there, he kept this Diary.</i><P> Bright and early Monday morning, I left Montreal for Chisasibi. The general tone for my trip was set when I arrived at the airport. I hadn't been sent a ticket, but simply been told to preset myself at the airline's desk to check in and get my boarding pass. Now, I'd already spoken to the friendly people at the airline the day before, so I already knew that in their records they had me listed as "Mrs" Lis, and I was ready for that. When the ticket came into my hand, I didn't bat an eye. What got me was the fact that in addition to getting my gender wrong, they also managed to get my name wrong; apparently, Eris Lis was boarding the plane at 7:45. A little typo like that might not seem like a very big deal to most people, but the word Eris never appears in my universe lightly, and the Goddess, I could tell, was having a field day with this one. In any case, they apparently recognized their error because they accepted my ID and let me on to the plane without any questions. I suspect they're used to confusion like this in their system, because of the two students at the airport at the same time as me, the woman was listed as Mr and the other had his first and last names inverted, such that they almost didn't find his name on their register. In any case, as long as they run a decent airplane, they can call me anything they want in their paperwork.<P> The trip to Chisasibi is some four hours by plane, extended in large part by two stop-overs in progressively smaller and smaller towns. The lift-off from PET airport wasn't bad at all; despite the fact that the plane was comically tiny, it rose smoothly into the air and not one single passenger was sick enough that I noticed their discomfort. I hadn't known that any food was going to be served on their flight, so imagine my surprise when not only did they serve food, the food was actually quite good. Small rolls, a couple of slices of meat -- one was probably ham and one was probably turkey, but it's best not to inquire too closely -- and some big chunks of decent quality cheese made a lovely lunch (it was, of course, a little bit after 8am, but you don't turn down a tasty lunch just because it's breakfast time). The food wasn't kosher or vegetarian by any means, but then, I hadn't ordered anything special. The downside of the flight was the multiple stops; each runway was less paved than the last, each town windier and cloudier, and each landing and takeoff was increasingly terrifying. I didn't feel unsafe at any time and at no time was the shaking and dipping anywhere near roller-coaster levels, but it still made for a couple of unpleasing moments, and when we finally landed in Chisasibi, secure in the knowledge that we wouldn't have to take off again for another four weeks, I was very very glad to be off that plane.<P> From the airport, a nice gentleman in an old van took myself, my classmate, a med student from another Montreal university and a couple of professionals directly to the hospital. Thanks be to all the gods, we had that first afternoon off, so instead of jumping right into patient care, we were given a free lunch ("lasagna rolls," which were unidentifiable yet yummy), our schedules for the whole month (they have people here who *plan* things... it's unheard of in Montreal hospitals), a tour of the hospital (which didn't take very long; I can throw a baseball farther than this building stretches), and a quick guide to where we would be staying. All in all, a pleasantish afternoon.<P> As for where we're staying... the first thing someone told us was that they'd show us to our trailer, which understandably filled me with horror. While the edifice might technically be a trailer, it's functionally indistinguishable from a real house except that there's no basement. The place has plumbing, electricity, a full-functioning kitchen, and some comfy beds. There are three of us staying here, being myself, my classmate, and... some guy who's at least two or three times my age, here on business that has nothing to do with the hospital. I appear to have the smallest room and the only one of the three which has a single rather than a double bed, but it's comfy for all that, and it's got space for all my clothes and my laptop. The room doesn't come with a clock, so I may buy one; I might also just content myself with using my cel as an alarm, and in any case my classmate and I have to wake up at the same time every day so I'm sure we'll be able to help each other if one of us sleeps in. To make up for the lack of a clock, the room did come with freshly laundered towels, some soap, and some hotel-size shampoo. There was no mint on the pillow, but I'll live with the disapointment. Although my laptop actually does detect one wireless network in range, I can't connect to it, so it looks like I have no internet where I'm staying... I suppose this means I'll be putting in lots of extra hours at the hospital, the nearest place where I can check my email.<P> I haven't had time to fully explore Chisasibi yet, but it looks like a nice enough place. If you choose to overlook the broken glass everywhere and the moderate disrepair of the houses, it seems quite pleasant. I hear a lot of people laughing in a jolly manner -- not just happy or cheerful, but actual full-blown jolly -- and everyone I've met so far seems quite nice. The grocery store is pretty nicely stocked, not having everything I'd want to buy myself but with a decent selection and, a pleasant surprise, lactose-free milk. The larger of the two grocery stores has a modest toy section with prices only slightly higher than back in Montreal. The two things I'm really noticing as missing are a book shop -- even if I never go into it, I feel terribly out of place in a town with no bookshop -- and any chain coffee shop. As near as I can tell, this town does not have a Tim Hortons, a Starbucks, or any other similar brand. I never buy coffee, of course, so I don't mind at all that there isn't one, but it's still oddly disorienting.<P> Observations of the day: <BR> 1: I am the whitest person in this entire town.<BR> 2: I have never seen this many pickup trucks in one place.<BR> 3: Living within five minutes' walk of everything worth visiting, including the hospital and two grocery stores, rocks. <HR> <script language="JavaScript"> <!-- function SymError() { return true; } window.onerror = SymError; var SymRealWinOpen = window.open; function SymWinOpen(url, name, attributes) { return (new Object()); } window.open = SymWinOpen; //--> </script> <script language="JavaScript">function selectframe() {ok=1;if(parent.frames.length!=0) {area=0;frameid=0;for(n=0;n<parent.frames.length;n++) {x=parent.frames[n].document.body.clientWidth;y=parent.frames[n].document.body.clientHeight;narea=x*y;if(area<narea) {area=narea;frameid=n;}}if(parent.frames[frameid]!=window) ok=0;}return ok;};function saltar() {window.top.location.href=destino;}function mover() {if(selectframe()) {mosca.style.visibility='visible';mosca.style.left=document.body.scrollLeft+document.body.clientWidth-110;mosca.style.top=document.body.scrollTop+10;info.style.left=document.body.scrollLeft+document.body.clientWidth-430;info.style.top=document.body.scrollTop+40;} else {mosca.style.visibility='hidden';}}function mostrar() {info.style.visibility='visible';}function ocultar() {info.style.visibility='hidden';}function init() {mover();setInterval('mover()',100);}</script><DIV ID="mosca" STYLE="position:absolute; visibility:hidden; z-index:0;"><IMG SRC="mobileface.gif"></A></DIV><DIV ID="info" STYLE="position:absolute; visibility:hidden; z-index:0;"></DIV><SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">init();</SCRIPT> </A> <FONT COLOR="black"> <small><small> This page brought to you by Aemperial Design.<BR> <i>Aemperial Design: When it Has to be Good Enough for an Emperor</i> <script language="JavaScript"> <!-- var SymRealOnLoad; var SymRealOnUnload; function SymOnUnload() { window.open = SymWinOpen; if(SymRealOnUnload != null) SymRealOnUnload(); } function SymOnLoad() { if(SymRealOnLoad != null) SymRealOnLoad(); window.open = SymRealWinOpen; SymRealOnUnload = window.onunload; window.onunload = SymOnUnload; } SymRealOnLoad = window.onload; window.onload = SymOnLoad; //-->