Rain

It's raining pretty hard right now. I think it rains quite a bit in general here. This is a relative recent change as Australia has been plagued by droughts for the last few years. Of course, people know of the recent floods that hit Brisbane and Toowoomba.

It hasn't gotten that bad. In fact, driving around town, you can't even tell that the city was flooded 3 or 4 months ago. The city is bisected by various rivers though so it is always a possibility. This is the nature of being near a river I guess, including Brisbane, the Mississippi Valley, etc. I will mention that the first time I saw one of the main city streams or rivers on a mild to moderate rainy day, it was raging over the embankment. A couple days later when it was dry, the stream was completely docile. A show of respect, please.

As I have mostly commented on things that I have seen, I thought I would make a footnote on what I'm doing these days. So far, I'm still looking for a job. An expected start date would be a couple more months. By that time, I will have been off for 3 whole months! I still cuddle up to Harrison's or the Washington Manual to keep my medically savvy neurons active.

I've had a chance to help my parents a lot during this time. To this day though, they are still having a hard time with the Australian accent. I think the British accent might be a bit more forgiving, but the Australian accent is kind of hard on them. My mum did make a local Australian friend. It's funny because I think they "understand" each other, but my mum can't really understand her English and I don't think this rather nice lady can understand my mum's English either. Brilliant. :)

The rest of the time, aside from looking for a job, I am taking advantage of the educational offerings at the Buddhist school here, the Pure Land Learning College. I am trying to be grateful for everything and everyone around me. I try to be grateful that I am alive as I know from our observations in the medical profession for many of us, someone somewhere in some hospital is taking their last breath everyday. So each day I wake up, I am grateful that I have another day to be grateful. I will consider posting some stuff that I have learned in hopes that it can be taken as good simple life advice.