Belly dancing in New Malden
Last Saturday after having spent over 5 hours holed up in the Premier IT House on Southampton Row off Russell square in order to do an English exam (TOEFL) I decided to take myself out for the evening with the London Art Club http://www.londonartclub.com run by James.
It was advertised on his website as an Egyptian Hafla night, and was scantily brief on details. I think I imagined dark strangers dressed up like them lot on Stargate, and intrigued I took the train from Waterloo to New Malden, somewhere I don't think I've ever been before.
Being part of the London suburbs I was not expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised to see that the high street was clean and orderly, very quiet in a nice way on a Saturday night, and that every other shop on the boulevard was either a Korean restaurant or a Korean supermarket.
I ended up having a mouthful of sushi with a couple of other Artclubbers I bumped into at the station in a Japanese sushi joint, which was comfortably patronised by Asian looking types.
The Hafla was being held in a pub down the road, called the Royal Oak Club, and was pleasantly surprised by how traditionally quaint and homey its interior was, with wooden partitioning and a small door Edwardian in height in which we had to crouch down to walk through from one side of the room to the other. It was very quiet and civilised downstairs, and as I began to wonder whether we were at the right pub, the trills of Egyptian music wafted from upstairs beckoned us.
We were greeted by a room packed with people around the edges, in the middle of which was amateurish belly dancing middle aged women . A little grim sounding, maybe, but then they were followed by a whole string of belly dancing performances, ranging from OK to heartrenderingly stupendous. Most of them had gold tassles, like hundreds of them, stitched to their skirts around their bottom regions, and you could imagine their training mantra would be to make them fly by gettin' jiggy with it. Most of them also went bare stomached, as per traditional belly dancing garb, with magnificent bosoms decked up in sumptious colours and yet more gold tassles. I think us in England are so used to seeing women being self-conscious and freaking out at the mere thought of just putting on gym kit at school, that seeing all these women here positively celebrating their bodies at times brought a tear to my eye. Most of them did not have flat stomachs, but in fact it was the dancing and attitide which made them stunningly beautiful to me. In fact most of the crowd were female, I think the male members of the crowd couldn't believe their luck, or were perhaps too stunned to take it all in. The best one was a girl called Beyata, she really shook it like Shakira, she even did the rolling of her stomach muscles, the whole time with this fixed shit-eating ruby grin on her face.
Afterwards there was much revelling, general dancing with a belly dancing style on the dance floor to some banging Egyptian music, it was all quite unexpected. I did my usual up and down Sharon shuffle at the edge of the dance floor, but not feeling quite up to the challenge of actual belly dancing all the way down in New Malden, I left when I finished my gin and tonic at around 10pm. And I didn't get home until midnight. Damn London and its disproportionate distance to time to travel ratios.

The year of the Pig
I went to London China Town with my family yesterday for Chinese New Year. It is the year of the Pig, apparently lucky, well here's hoping. I hadn't been there for the new year for what must be over 15 years, and was pleasantly surprised by the effusions of red lanterns hung aloft above its streets and the pulsating drums beating to the rythm of lion dancing. As ever wherever the lions went there would be a mass huddle of people surrounding them, and I can not but help feeling all emotional whenever I see this, even though the lion dancers were mostly white dudes, looking hot and bothered and underperforming. I wonder if I grew up in Hong Kong whether I would care or not. There was also borderline embarrassing dodgy Chinese music issuing from speakers rigged up on lamp posts. But I suppose the kids love it. Oh what the hell, I loved it. We also saw a large table of white folk in out restaurant, which had three cute and chubby shiny new Chinese babies with them. They were all decked out in Chinese garbs, it was quite a heart warmer. Maybe I'll adopt one one day.

I got quite upset last night when I didn't recieve a phone call from American Bill. I cried a little during the night, and when I was getting ready to go in to work in the morning I resolved I would send him an e-mail detailing what he had done to upset me. I was also going to put down that I was upset that he expresses no real interest in planning when we're next going to meet up. But then when I came into work, my feelings of vitriol for some reason dissipated. I think I thought what was the point of telling someone that their lack of enthusiasm in you upsets you? We can't help being unenthusiastic in some people. Unenthusiasm is something I invoke in so many people, maybe I should accept this as like a calling or something. Go forth and be unnoticed, Pharmacy girl. And one day you'll inherit the Earth whilst everybody's distracted? Yeah, I hope this year'll be lucky for me, the year of the Pig.

Clinical faux pas
It's been a busy couple of days at work. I had a mild headache all day yesterday, partly because of my period, but I think also because of the yoga and hiking I did over the weekend in the Brecon Beacons. At the end of the day I was writing in the wrong times on the prescriptions I was checking, ie we're supposed to write the time we finished checking the script, which people pointed out to me later. This made me feel foolish, and also reminded me of the errors that doctors make when they write out prescriptions. It also made me worry slightly about my state of mind, and how I cope under stress. But then I put it out of my mind, it was just timing, after all.
But then today, it was another busy day, and towards the end of the day, at around 4.30pm, I was asked to screen a discharge prescription. This was no ordinary script, this was a script two pages long with 20 items on it. But really all I had to do was make sure what was on the presciption matched up to what the patient had been taking as an inpatient, ie on their drug chart. But somehow I had made two mistakes: endorsing one item to be taken in the morning when the chart said in the evening, and missing one discrepancy - the Dr had written down a different strength on the prescription to what was on the drug chart. Which was really quite a serious mistake, if it had not been checked by another pharmacist, which would have been a real possibility, the prescription would have reached the patient flawed, by me - me and the doctor, I suppose, but it doesn't feel that way. What excuse did I have? None. A more thorough, careful and together person would have caught it. I suppose there are two types of people in the world, the type which makes lots of mistakes, and the ones who just don't. I suppose if not making mistakes came more naturally to me then I would generally be more successful in my life. I suppose it's all part of being quicker and smarter as well, I've noticed that I just can't talk as well as some, I'm just not quick witted enough. And so that explains a bit as well. At least I haven't tried to ingratiate myself with any of my new colleagues then, I think if I keep everything professional between everybody then when I cock up it will hopefully be less humiliating. When I think back to when I was working at the Liverpool Women's Hospital, I tried really hard to win over my fellow locum pharmacist, but she shot me down. Partly, I think, because she's not particularly sociable, but I think a lot of it was to do with the way I clinically faux pas-ed a lot. Oh well. What can I do? I'm too long in the tooth to do much more about it anymore. Try harder next time, I suppose. I think I might try to lie low for a while.