Friday June 27

Ship's holiday has made today very quiet. But this technophobe has managed, without the aid of a safety net, to download onto my memory stick the photos in my camera. A new digital camera has been great but takes a moment or two longer than my old "point and shoot" but does mean less wasted paper.

The ships' computer system also has thousands of photos archived that we are liberty to download. The wide variety of shots means that I don't have to take hundreds of pictures and the ones on the computer are porbably better than mine. This exercise has kept me occupied for a good chunk of the day.

Peter very kindly went to the shop for me that was closed last night as I was on call today. In return I ws able to teach him how to put sterile operating gloves on - there is a special technique for this procedure. He then went to make pavlova so during the intervals spent on the computer I advised him on the cooking of pavlova and started a good discussion on whether pavlova originates from Oz or NZ. There is disagreement about this apparently. I left the crew galley before the food fight commenced (joke) but have yet to sample the the finished product.

As organiser of a trip tomorrow to an old iron ore mine Iwas slightly disturbed for a few minutes when it was thought that we didn't hae enough drivers. Thankfully the issue was soon resolved. We are taking three vehicles - all Landrovers 110's. The trip is largely by train but rather like the Chunnel means the vehicles are driven on to the train. The BIG difference is the lack of roof and sides to the train. The choice is either to stay in the vehicle or to sit on its roof. The train does move slowly so I'm looking forward to the trip. It's been fun organising it in the main so I hope everyone enjoys it.

My cabin mate left this afternoon so I'm on my own for a couple of nights, probably just as well with a 5.3oam alarm call tomorrow. I have a couple of loaves of bread and plates of meat and cheese ready to make sandwiches as some people have taken up the spare places caused by others dropping out. The dining room won't open until after we've left.

It's strange to think that the next group of people to leave the ship will include me. Tonight I sat with a couple of the OR nurses as we drank coffee and just talked about a whole range of issues, some very mundane, others more profound.

I had chance tonight to watch the sun go down and be reminded of the immensity of God. The sun looked as if it had been covered in gold leaf it was so bright.

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