Who Is The Black Chinaman?

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Kuala Belait, Brunei
Saving someone's life is like falling in love. The best drug in the world. For days, sometimes weeks afterwards, you walk the streets, making infinite whatever you see. Once, for a few weeks, I couldn't feel the earth - everything I touched became lighter. Horns played in my shoes. Flowers fell from my pockets. You wonder if you've become immortal, as if you've saved your own life as well. God has passed through you. Why deny it, that for a moment there - why deny that for a moment there, God was you? I realised that my training was useful in less than ten percent of the calls, and saving lives was rarer than that. After a while, I grew to understand that my role was less about saving lives than about bearing witness. I was a grief mop. It was enough that I simply turned up. Living and working back in Brunei, after a 14 year absence... Also known as: Brunei, NASA, Bruise-Eye, Bru, Cheesecake, Nick, BruNick, BruMedNick, Two Step etc etc etc

Wednesday 6 June 2012

Please Keep Your Arms And Heads Inside The Moving Vehicle At All Times

Because you spin me right round, baby, right round, like a record, baby, right round, round round...

28 May 2011? Yea, one year has passed. In this time, it's just been flat chat work, work, work. I still work the same shifts (12-hours on, two days morning, two days night, two days off (which eventually reaches to one after half a day of resting up and not really doing much on that first post-night shift morning, then passing out for the remaining day to try to catch up on much needed rest...). Been with the same partner for 18 months now, and it's good; just "The Look", and we know what each other is thinking and, boom, job done.

But, times, they are a-changing...

If I may bring your attention to the right hand side of the page, you will see a Twitter feed. Some of you who are reading this have been directed here from Twitter. Some of you are old friends who come by every now and then and have a surprise (pleasant or otherwise is still being debated) that there's actually A REAL LIFE UPDATE, which you are reading right now...! So, to say hello, this is how this works;

As shared above, every now and then I do type some blog posts...how often is very much debated. I've had this blog coming up eight years now. The nicknames you see (Brunei, NASA etc) are from the years that I spent studying, then eventually working, in Australia. The Black Chinaman was a name given to me by one of the old school bouncers I used to know, Whopper. Salt of the earth kinda guy, but I've also seen him use a guy to take out ten others during a pub brawl, which was rather fun to be involved in (it eventually became five bouncers Vs 15 drunken idiots, and we won, but with much damage to the flower bushes around the premises).

I have worked in the aviation, medical and security fields in my short life, and greatly enjoyed 90% of the time. The other 10%, of course, deals with the sadder parts of the job, especially in the medical field, but that's part of life.

Anyhow, I'm sitting at work now, so I'll leave some pictures up for what's been going on over the past year:



Sir Dr Nick, Knight of The Order of Bird Poo, Class 1



Ambulance 2 on Standby with RIPAS Ambulances, HSBC Run 2012



Donating platelets for my birthday, 2012



Watching nurses trying to load stretchers; NOW they understand us Ambulance Guys...



Light show...
Mixed up by at
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