The Stornoway Diaries: 6/8/08 - Arriving on Steòrnabhagh of the Na h-Eilean Siar

Day 1 – 6^th September 2008, Fine

This morning woke up to gray skies in Inverness. Had spent the night there en route to Stornoway.

The past week has been a whole gamut of emotions ranging from severe homesickness the first few days in Aberdeen followed by trepidation of the impending departure to Stornoway and then severe stress regarding job applications and the apparently bleak prospects of ST training.

Regarding jobs and such...Singapore here I come after FY1 with my GMC registration. There’s nothing much that you can do if the bloody immigration office wants to be such a bloody bugger. They’ll lose talent ( come on we know that as international students ( especially yellow skinned ones..:P) are more hardworking and ‘nerdier’) , they’ll lose the investment of future international ‘cash cow’ students and basically they are currently getting slammed by the blighted cash cows stranded mid route in the transition.

Oh well, I suppose they will reap what they sow.

Anyhoos, got up at 630am, got the cab to the bus station in Inverness for my bus ride to ullapool. It was a pleasant enough 1.5 hour journey, though I think I got a bit carsick towards the end though I blame it soley on the fact that european regulations make it illegal for you not to wear a seatbelt whilst you’re on a bus. But the drive was really lovely. Lolling hills, green pastures, sheep and cows everywhere. Lovely.

Pulled into ullapool and was greeted pleasantly with a nice quaint seaside town. Huge pier with it’s tiny ferry terminal. Had about an hour to spend after buying my ferry ticket (15.30 pounds for those interested) and started to do my favourite past time of taking photos of the surroundings.

That’s just the one thing about Scotland that you can never get enough of. Spectacular sites of beautiful scenery. Calm waters. Strong, quiet hills and munroes that stretch forever into the horizon. Just pockets of paradise everywhere you go.

When the ferry pulled in I was surprised for certain. It was huge. The caledonian Macbrayne ferry aptly named “ Isle of Lewis” looks more like a freight ship. Coincidentally, during our kilau meeting in Aberdeen, my mate lucy was telling us about a certain stornowaynian ( yes...I’m calling the pple of stornoway that from now on..it’s cute) hundreds of years ago who had made a premonition on how the island of lewis would sink. And strangely enough someone made a comment just a few years ago that the ferry that brings pple across to stornoway is actually called the Isle of Lewis. I’m just glad I made it safely.

Well, the ferry is really quite big and spacious and comfortable. Lots of seats on the upper deck for your viewing pleasure during the trip and for you to sleep as well. And you can go out on deck and be windswept and all and feel the sea spray upon you as well as take in the openess of being in sea and the tiny island of the outer hebrides.

Ferry pulled into Stornoway after a 2h and 45 minute trip and I was pleasantly surprised by a very nice pick up by anne and samuel at the pier to our lovely cottage house just 5 minutes from the hospital.

My little ‘family’ for the next 7 weeks will be Anne Bean, Lee Barry, and Samuel ( Don’t know his surname ). Anne and Lee are my fellow Aberdonian classmates and Sam is the german elective student doing a year in Aberdeen. I will be honest and say that I don’t really know them. For Anne and Lee I only know their faces and probably a ‘hi bye basis’. For Sam...well, I had no idea there were German students in Aberdeen uni. LOL.

But it was really nice that they came by the pier to pick me up, help me get my keys from the hospital and basically help me settle down. It made me feel very welcomed and very happy. And it further proves my point and experience as a student overseas that when you are away from home, no matter if it’s Singapore, Germany or even Aberdeen, it’s only when you are sent away out of your comfort zone that you realise how important your mates are. You may not be friends in school. You may not know that they even existed after 4 years of medical school. But when you are placed together on an island , working in the same hospital, living in the same house for 7 weeks, you become family. You don’t have your usual click to turn to, or your family to support you. And that’s when you realise that for the next seven weeks these people will be there for you and that you have to be there for them. It is not a chore. It is not an obligation . It is just a natural process.

So it was a very lovely day. After arriving, I unpacked, and then Lee drove us down to the newly opened TESCO to do some major grocery shopping on my part for my supplies for the next seven weeks.

Later on in the evening, after dinner, my fellow psych ward mate, Elizabeth Mcgee, arrived on the evening ferry. Poor soul, she’s been put in a seperate house from us. Just some demographics. Each house has four rooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a toilet and a miniature background.

So the merry band of 4 aberdeen med students and the german student from leipzig were having a merry time in the kitchen talking, eating and basically getting to know more about each other. It was just so wonderful. All the trepidation, anxiety and stress that I felt about this placement and other general worries just melted away amidst the banter and laughter of 5 strangers turned family. And the plus point of having a native German is that I get to practice meine deutsch! Das ist sehr gut fur mich. ( That’s very good for me!) Sam is apparently very impressed that I’ve got my basic sentence structures and grammer in german right and tat I know more than just german words. Viele danke Andreas Thimm! You’re a great deutsch teacher!

I know it’s early days to be so positive about this. But I choose to believe that this will be a good placement after all. After all, as the bible says God has plans for us all. Plans that will make us prosper and are in our best interest.

Being sent to Stornoway mght not has been the most ideal placement for me But for now I am enjoying myself and I like what I’ve experienced so far. It will be an interesting chapter in my life and that’s why I have chosen to start a little diary for this adventure that I’ve just started on.