Day 4 - Balmain

I'll start with the boring stuff first -- today was procedure day in the dermatology clinic, so it consisted mostly of me following the registrar and resident as they cut off suspicious looking moles, seborrheic keratoses and the like. I was actually allowed to do a punch biopsy, which is basically a round incision into the skin. I also went to Grand Rounds, which was really boring and about some endocrine diseases. I'm starting to notice that they spell words the British way -- oedema, anaemia, etc. It's really weird. They also have different terminology. For instance, they use:

1. The abbreviation EUC for "electrolytes, urea and creatinine" instead of what we'd call a CMP
2. Urea instead of BUN (they shorten it to a "U" when going over lab values)
3. Frusemide instead of furosemide.

Once I figured those out the rest was pretty similar.

On to the date! Well, here's a picture of him since I know that Mom is probably sitting there saying to herself, "Let's see what this kid looks like!" This is us in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge (across from the Opera House).

So I'll start off with a description of him so we have a good idea of who he is. He's a 25 year old Belgian guy, youngest of three children and apparently has been backpacking in some form or another since he was 15. Luckily he didn't have any issues with hygiene that I could tell, haha. He's also leaving on Tuesday so I guess this is it for us. Our future together ended before it even started...

At any rate, we met up in the suburb of Balmain. It sounds exotic but really it seemed to consist of neighborhoods with one street that had anything of interest on it. He was originally supposed to take me to some fish and chips shop that was "really good" but I guess it was closed so we went to another place that sold "eh" fish and chips. We ended up taking them to this park that overlooked the harbor.

The scary part about this park was that there were very few lights (I was starting to wonder if this is where I'd get raped) and there were giant bats flying around in the tree above me. Guys, these things had to have a wingspan of at least a foot!! Best part -- I THINK ONE OF THEM PEED ON ME!!!! Yes, friends, the night was starting off well. Shady park with giant bats. Wow...

I was pretty anxious to get back to Circular Quay because that was where my ferry to take me home was and I didn't want to miss it, so I pushed him into taking me back there and grabbing a drink or something while we waited for the ferry. He took me to a bar called Sydney Opera Bar, which is right in front of the Opera House (I'll include an incredibly rare picture of the Opera House I took -- not great quality but deal with it):

It was actually a really cool bar that I may go back to again later. At any rate, that ended our night! Tomorrow is the Rugby game with my Canadian friend, so I'm excited for that!