Monthly Archives: January 2012

Coping behind razor wire

Posted on by
3

As you might be aware, all compounds in Port Moresby are surrounded by razor wire. After a while you don’t really notice the bars, or the razor wire – but you do, when you have been locked in your apartment, to sick to go out, and stuck in for 4/5 days.

I am finally getting over the malaria, but I am still exhausted – don’t know how I am going to cope at work tomorrow… Today is our 13th Wedding Anniversary, so I really needed to get out and take Jacinta somewhere for lunch (I think dinner might be taking it too far) and we needed to get a floor fan to move some air around inside our apartment. So we went out to Courts, then Brian Bell trying to find one. We ended up at Vision City having a nice lunch at the Hogs Breath cafe, then a trip down to the Yacht Club to look through the gym, they were having an open day… By this time – I was stuffed, but toughened it out for another hour… We are going to get memberships, and also enroll Xavier into taekwondo and Xanthe into Hip Hop. That will use up a bit of energy – and they will make new friends too…

As we drove around today, I took some video footage from our iPod clipped onto the car visor. When I get a chance I’ll edit it and upload to YouTube. Hope to get at least 2 views 😉

Right now it is teeming with rain outside, and temperature dropped to 24 degrees celcius. There will be some locals getting hypothermia tonight from the cold….

Next week, for Waitangi Day – we are off to the High Commission for the annual Kiwi Club Hangi. Jacinta has been roped into sorting veges out, and I have been roped into carving meat. We have only just joined the Kiwi Club, and already involved… 🙂

Until next time
Aaron

PNG Twitter List

Posted on by
1

With the current political situation here in PNG, rather than blog about it, I thought that a good way of finding information out is to use trusty old twitter.

I think the local Papua New Guineans are exercising fantastic restraint given what has been happening here in the past few months. I personally have no view on what is going on, it is far too complex for me to even make comment, but I do like to be well informed.

Anyway, here is the big PNG twitter list.

Firstly – me: @aaron_bird

But I am a little boring…!

OK, I could trying doing links, but you know how this works, go to http://www.twitter.com and put in the @name

@liamfoxpng

@skerah

@rabbienamaliu

@syd_y

@jonathanbundu

@buaiprincess

@hotstrongcoffee

@trupela

@tavurvur

@pnglondon2012

@kinashareindex

@esiloan

@kinagroupPNG

I know – I’ve missed heaps, but I’ll just keep adding – OK 🙂

Hope that keeps you up to date,

Aaron

Malaria – round 2

Posted on by
5

One of the problems with Malaria – is if you don’t kill the little bastards, they stay in your system… So to cut a long story short, the other day I started to feel under the weather… Again. One of my guys, Jono – had a cold, so I just assumed that given my immune levels were down with the Malaria 2 weeks ago – that I was just picking up his bug… Until yesterday, when I realized that I didn’t have a runny nose etc. so, popped down to the pharmacy, and asked them if they had any malarial medicine that I could buy (self diagnosed) as I thought that it felt like I hadn’t got rid of it from round 1. But because I couldn’t tell them what I had already taken, they weren’t keen on just giving me the same thing. Instead, I got some multi-vitamins and iron tablets to try give the ole body a bit of a boost. They suggested I go back to the doctors and get another blood test…

I left work right on 5pm as I wasn’t really feeling right, did some grocery shopping on the way home, and was in bed rather early (for me).

Then last night I got the sweats, started spacing out, dizzy, nausea… And really really tired.

This morning, back to the doctors for more bloods, including dengue (just in case). And surprise surprise – I still have malaria, however now, they have doubled in numbers – which is why I now have all the crap that I didn’t get in round 1.

So last time I was prescribed Artesunate and Fansidar which are generally prescribed for the specific nasty malaria that I got. The doctor called it failed medication, so prescribed something a bit stronger: Coartem. This is a Artemether and Lumefantrine mixed drug, that the doctor said wasn’t available in their in house pharmacy (POM Private Hospital) and costs about K600 from Johnson’s Pharmacy. Bloody hell that’s expensive… So mt consult ended up costing K400, plus K300 for last time, and then K600 for meds… This is why Malaria will never be eradicated! K1300 is highway robbery, and not something that is easily affordable by local Papua New Guineans. She did say that City Pharmacy might have it cheaper, so Jacinta took me to Vision City to go to City Pharmacy. Sadly, they dont stock it either. So off to another pharmacy, again – no luck. We were off to Johnson’s when we went past Chem Care – which looked like a dodgy little pharmacy, off the freeway at Gordon’s (down by PNG Art). Stopped in there, and they didn’t stock the Coartem, but had an exact substitute called Coatal (made in China – hope it doesn’t kill me) – cost K34…. Bargain! Bought!

I like saving K560, but In reality, I was feeling really bad by this stage – so think that if they had some miracle drug I would have just bought it so that I could get home…

So there we have it, back on meds, back off work. Damn Malaria!

Aaron