CHONGLAND

Last Thursday the 10th of September I went under the knife to have an Arthroscopy and an ACL reconstruction. I was booked as the second in the operating theatre, so it was an early start, arriving at the Sydney Adventist Hospital (SAN) at 7am. After heading to the Day of Surgery Admissions area, my Dad and I sat down to wait for things to kick off….

First up was the Anaesthetist who took us off to run a patient history and check to make sure that what was planned in the drugs department would be alright. Then it was back for a short wait before the clerk took us through the admission, mostly paperwork and money….

More waiting before a nurse took me through to be weighed, changed and put into a bed to wait to be prepared for surgery. This involved getting my right knee and surrounds shaved, washed and sterilised, and having a teds stocking on my left leg. Not long after that a porter came and took me upstairs to the operating floor, saying farewell to my Dad in the process…

After being placed in the operating queue, I was quickly whisked away to the outer operating room, kind of like an air-lock on a space ship. The Anaesthetists came and stuck a catheter in my left arm and then it was into the theatre to see Dr Hope, with a few last minute checks, like which knee was being done, it was G.O. time. The last few moments of consciousness began with the words “Think of your favourite place on earth“, my inner monologue went along the lines of “What’s my favourite place on Earth?? I wonder if Heaven counts??“…..

The next thing I know, I’m in the hospital bed in a ward with an oxygen thingo in my nostrils, a drip in my left hand, and little to no feeling in my legs. There’s also a cord with a green button tied to my right hand, which I soon work out is the pain relief drugs…. Throughout the afternoon I became accustomed to my new surrounds, drifting in and out of sleep…. I also worked out that intravenous pain drugs and I don’t mix particularly well when they make me vomit up any water that I’d drunk…. It kinda felt like the hamster experiment where it tries to eat the food with an electric current through it. After a couple of attempts, it just leaves it alone, preferring the hunger to the shock. I preferred to put up with the pain than to vomit and get hot and light headed. The nurse did offer a shot in the bum OR a pill up the rear to stop the vomitting, but I quickly refused those too… It was a shame that the nausea was still present at dinner time, resulting in a watery dinner tray, because the only mouthful of soup I had tasted very nice: a creamy tomato soup.

The night went very slowly, drifting in and out of sleep and having the nurses check oxygen, blood temperature and feeling in my toes every once in a while…. When the morning finally arrived we got breakfast and I was very relieved when I was actually able to stomach it. The cornflakes with apricot halves and skim milk, wholemeal bread with marmalade and Orange Juice went down nicely. Then the discharges started, with all four guys in my ward being discharged that day.

My discharge was the longest: After Dr Hope came and saw me, telling me how happy he was with the surgery and that he wished all his patients were like me, the nurses finally came round to unplug all the tubes and whatnot…. and then when they went to take the dressing off of my leg, we found out that the bandages over the stitches had soaked through, so they needed to be re-dressed, which took a bit of time… Then the Physio came to give me some exercises to do and teach me how to walk on crutches…. Her phrase for stairs was helpful, but not quite right:

The good go to Heaven, the bad go to Hell

meaning that when approaching stairs, the good foot goes up first when ascending them and the bad foot goes first when descending. Then it was another wait for the pharmacist to tell me what drugs I had to take, one for anti-inflammation and a pain-killer. And then I had to wait for my Dad to come and take me home…

Since I’ve been home I’ve been in bed for most of my time, sleeping and watching television…. I’ve had to battle my way through some headaches as well, mostly just with sleep…. On Sunday Mike came over to visit in the afternoon which was enjoyable.

On Sunday night despite wanting to go to church I wasn’t able to, but I did attend via Skype and was able to hear the majority of the service. Wazza spoke on 2 Peter 2, and I was able to catch up with a couple of people after the service through the chat window….

So for the remainder of my time off (2 more weeks) I plan to:

• read
• write – specifically my Engage posts
• some design work – CHONGLAND, and maybe SALT
• play games – Marvel Ultimate Alliance comes out soon and I’ve a copy on order
• setup some computer stuff, if my body allows for it

Thanks goes out to all that have been praying for me during this time, it mean alot and I love you for loving me in this way

A couple of announcements from companies that have registered on the CHONG radar in the last couple of days:

1. Apple
• Copy & Paste text
• Copy & Paste photos
• New Spotlight – This will enable searching for anything in the phone, no matter where it sits
• Search in Mail, Calendar, and iPod
• 3G Tethering – Finally, and especially after the app was taken off the app store shortly after making an appearance
• Landscape keyboard
• Multimedia messaging AKA MMS. This may not actually make it to
  Australia, given that the visual voicemail feature never made it, I won’t be surprised if this feature won’t either.
• Support for new calendar types – CalDAV (supported by Google and Yahoo) and .ics format (Apple iCal)
• Improved stocks application
• Stereo Bluetooth A2DP audio – An awesome addition, although battery life will need to greatly improve for this to be particularly useful and functional
• Note synching with iTunes – I’m a big iPhone notes user, so this shall be very useful. It’ll be interesting to see how well it will integrate into iTunes
• Automatic login in Safari
• Shake to shuffle music
• Wi-Fi auto-login
• Anti-phising
• Extended parental controls

NEW APPLE APPLICATIONS

• Voice memo application – A great app addition, especially considering the 16GB iPhones with plenty of room to move. Voice memos will be a great time-saver, next thing will be some kind of dictation or conversion from voice to text.
• Send and receive files

NEW THIRD PARTY APPLICATIONS FEATURES IN iPHONE OS 3.0

• Peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connectivity
• Browse remote content
• Use your iPhone/touch to control peripherals
• Maps inside other applications
• Turn-by-turn directions – Finally, the ability for developers to put the GPS to the uses I believe they were intended for.
• Push notification
• Voice communication in applications
• Rumbling
• Audio recording – Another great feature that hopefully developers will utilise to it’s full potential
• Access your music from applications

They held an event to showcase their upcoming iPhone OS (Operating System) 3.0 on the 17th in America which was about 6-something this morning in Australia. It was long awaited and anticipated that copy and paste functionality would finally arrive, since being left off the iPhone since it’s launch almost 3 years ago…
The list of features and amendments is quite impressive and will utilise some great functions of the iPhone which were slated for a long time ago:

2. Marvel
• Spiderman 4

Released on May 6, 2011.

• Iron Man 2

Released on May 7, 2010.

• Thor

Released on May 20, 2011.

• The First Avenger: Captain Marvel

Released on July 22, 2011.

• The Avengers

Released on May 4, 2012.

There was a few announcements for upcoming movies and revised release dates:

On top of that they’ve agreed with a company to make a number of Massively Multiplayer Online (MMOs) games featuring their superheros. This was slated for a couple of years ago, but fell through, and now they’re in the works again for both PC and consoles. I’m excited about this, and it will be an interesting time to come with rival studio DC Comics soon to launch their MMO with Sony Online Entertainment.

Tonight I saw the latest release from Marvel with Geoff.
Having not seen the HULK (I don’t think….) I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I’ve enjoyed a fair bit of Edward Norton‘s previous work, and Liv Tyler what else can I say…. (Beautiful girl indeed!!!!) I went in with an open mind, and I can say I was fairly happy with the overall affair…

The movie was well done, it flowed fairly nicely, although it covered some parts fairly quickly and skipped time, but it was well covered up with some onscreen graphics – ‘Days Without Incident”. The villain(s) are thrown in, however not quite showcased badly throughout the film, and there’s a couple of cameos to be spotted, no need to concentrate on them cause they’re REALLY obvious!!! For those that have seen Ironman there’s some good tie-ins there, especially with the Marvel Movies goal set out in a couple of years, and try to find references to S.H.I.E.L.D. in the film as well if you go to see it. There’s also a couple of small patches leaving it open to sequels, nothing too obvious that screams for one, well at least not as a singular Hulk movie, but you’ll find out if you see it!!

Hulk has always been an interesting Marvel Comics character, being a scientist that gets caught up in an accident and being ‘cursed’ with this power which is not particularly consciously controllable, and having a longstanding loving girlfriend, who eventually becomes his wife. It’s actually a really twisted romance story….