I'm finished work for the year, so today I'm gonna talk about Cricket instead. This is an Australian summer after all.

The Australian Cricket team just lost its first test series at home in 17 years. They've been at the top of world cricket for at least fifteen years on the trot. The victorious Sth African team has played very well and in combination with an underperforming Aussie side, they've claimed the series 2-0 with the Sydney Test still to play.

For me, this has well and truly signalled the end of an Era. The voters on a Channel 9 poll agreed with me (54% vs A "Blip" at 46%). The writing has been on the wall for about fifteen months, when the retirements of five senior players required the selectors to plan for the future.

In my opinion, they have failed to do this; there has been no openly touted road-map. To exacerbate the situation, the current senior players are (with the exception of Ricky Ponting) are drastically out of form. From an organisational point of view, it looks as though the team has sprained it's only good thumb whilst cautiously trying to re-grow an arm and a leg.

Now the Australian team needs to regenerate itself, but there's got to be some trust in the newer players. In the last twelve months, there has been a stupendously high turnover of players, and not just due to retirement or injury. Many are because the selectors will give a player a wee trial and then drop them.

I don't know if the revolving door policy is like the All Blacks', where they have many excellent players, or because there's no-one who's putting their hand up and scoring runs or taking wickets.

All this comes across at a last grab at the dominance that Australia has enjoyed for the last fifteen years. I feel it would have been better for the selectors to just bite the bullet and stick with a few new players. Y'know, a new spinner, and two young quicks. Just field them for a while and see what happens. If they have the potential to take twenty wickets with some experience then keep them, grow them.

The selectors must have some faith in their new selections and appreciate that, for the mean time, Australian cricket is not the force it once was. With time, training and heart (that is often only garnered through hard-fought wins and thrashing losses), the team will return to its former glory.

And next time, when the warning signs of the 'end of an era' are visible, younger players will be nurtured and established to reestablish the team. Just like every other selection panel has done since Allan Border's Captaincy.

This was the first trip I've been on in about five years with no pharm/medical reading. Instead, I managed to churn through large amounts of other 'media'. These are my twelve word reviews:

Film:
Hancock - Will Smith's invincible antics, jeopardised by intense love, tragedy. Charlize equals hottie!

Get Smart (2008) - Anne Hathaway is a honey. 'Brick' does the old favourite well. Just.

Lost in Translation (w/ Polish subtitles) - Third viewing, watched with my zero-english speaking Polish cousin. Deep, hilarious.

Shin ge jeon - Inspiring but ironic Korean hero story about the greatness of science, missiles.

Books:
Self ; Yann Martel - Male or female? A tricky and elobarate exploration of the conscious mind.

Books vs Cigarettes ; George Orwell - My first Orwell. Simple observations, readable logical essays. Would make excellent blogger!

Days of Reading ; Marcel Proust - Struggled through noun-less sentences. Some beautifully painted scenes. I lack 'Ruskin' knowledge.

Girls of Riyadh ; Rajaa Al Sani - Cleverly crafted insight; all societies have foibles, some more unspoken, misunderstood, tragic.

The Rum Diaries ; Hunter S. Thompson - Twisted morals and aimlessness leads down a path versus self-discovery.

Of Mice and Men ; John Steinbeck - Ethical dilemmas and hicks. George isn't lovable, but possibly a good man.

Lonely Planet's Europe on a Shoestring ; Various LP Editors - Scratches the surface of an entire continent, maps included. Sometimes witty!

Albums:
Only By The Night ; Kings of Leon - Usually I'm anti- 'number one' albums. Soulful or snappy, thoughtful travelling rock.

Details ; Frou Frou - Beautiful music and haunting lyrics. Psychobabble is a disturbing ballad. Buy it.

Optimist LP and Ether Song ; Turin Breaks - Light music that you can bop or sleep to. Solid iPod fodder.

Viva La Vida ; Coldplay - Saw the album cover at the Louvre; the music is more revolutionary!

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Not a bad wee haul for a month, I reckon. Especially if you include the Sudoku books I trawled through. As far as reading for the next few weeks goes, it's back to the land of medicine to prep for my first rotation; Internal Medicine. The list includes Davidson's IM, Harrison's IM, some Talley and O'Connor and whatever else feels high-yield. And you know what? After six weeks of no medicine, I'm champing at the bit to read some more. Yus.

And yeah, work on Christmas day is going pretty well, too!

Need I say more...

So, I'm working Christmas Day. I've known it for a while. Actually, since February when I asked my boss if I could have the 25th, 26th and 1 Jan.

Why in the hell offer to work Christmas Day? In all honesty, I enjoy it. My Christmas-celebrating family is all overseas or interstate (which is out of reach, this year), and having lived well beyond my means for the last five-or-so weeks the money's a bonus. Being Bar-Mitzvahed also helps to rationalise it, too.

Who needs a pharmacy on Christmas Day? There's a lot of indigestion out there from about 2pm; and a fair number of over-50s have been known to confuse this with a heart attack. Allergies to packing materials are also pretty common. Sun-burn is all too common in this neck of the ocean (I work in a holiday 'destination', after all). But, for most people, here's what Public Holiday and Sunday Pharmacies provide:

"Hi, I've got XX symtom, and I just want to know if I need to see a doctor?"

Around these here parts, it's an expensive exercise to see doctor on a Sunday. A few months ago the only all-hours place for an hour in either direction closed down. There is a group who do 24-hr house calls, but they charge like a wounded bull (for top-notch service, mind) and the wait is usually a few hours. The hospital, not surprisingly, is quite effective at prioritising MIs and the like, but if you're a Cat-5, feel free to join the 5 hr queue to be spoken with. Here at the Pharmacy, we're open 14 hours a day. You might wait twenty minutes to talk to me if it's busy as hell and you look comfortable, and I'll be genuinely apologetic if it takes that long.

Being able to prioritise is a big deal; the ED is damned good at it when it comes to medical emergencies, but there's zero differentiation from one Cat-5 to the next. Here we at least offer some sort of advice, because more often than not, the kind of things people are asking about at 8pm on a Sunday night actually need to be seen by a doctor. Not necessarily today, probably not tomorrow and rarely by an Emergency physician in the next thirty minutes.

Little Frankie's eczema is pretty bad, yeah, so we can give him a wee steroid cream to tide you over until, say, Wednesday, when your GP's receptionist decides that there's a spot free. No, it doesn't look infected.

You even throw out a cheeky wee safety net about infections and the like and away they roll, quick fix in hand.

In my opinion, the lay public isn't fantastic at triaging themselves or their kids, and why should they be? From Joe Public's point of view, there's not much difference between a kid who's cranky with Chicken Pox and a kid who's suffering a deterioration of consciousness from post-VZV Encephalitis.

So, people come to the pharmacy because;

Have a safe Christmas, all.

A year ago, exactly, I arrived in Mumbai. On the third day I was there, I decided to go down to the Cross Maidan to try and get a game in one of the many cricket matches going on down there. In Mumbai, when you play cricket, you play properly.

Two groups of men were shaping up to play a match. It was to be eight overs a side, and there were umpires. A man says to me, "You want to bowl?" and throws me the ball. I roll my arm over a few times, and he says, we play match now; you're on my team.

The man's name is Pradeep. Pradeep, like his teammates is dressed in formal white pants, and a white shirt with gold buttons. He, along with his team mates, have removed their nice white shirts and round caps, so they're bare headed and wearing sweat-stained singlets. Usually, I use fake names, but Pradeep is indeed his name.

Pradeep introduces me to his team; he wasn't the captain (Patrick, a younger guy, right arm quick bowler and keen batsman, was in charge of the on-field stuff), but he's organising a team for a tournament in a week's time, for which the first prize was about $600US for the team. That amount is the equivalent of twice the average yearly Indian wage. This is the first of two trial matches.

We won the toss and batted. In the third over, Patrick holed out to mid-wicket, and I was handed a bat. Number Three, I thought, I'd better make some sort of showing! The first ball was a yorker, and I dug it out and fair grazed the bat on the pitch. The opposition laughed. The next ball wasn't quite as full, and I managed two runs to mid-on. The opposition laughed at the Aussie who felt the need to run two. And so on. To illustrate the level of intensity, one of the umpires called my batting partner for a 'short run'. Eventually, a yorker went through me and took middle.

Pradeep gave me a pat on the shoulder, and we soon went into the field. We put the squeeze on in the first four overs, and with two overs to go, the game was effectively won. I was thrown the ball, and had an over. Some kids watching asked if I was Daniel Vettori, funny considering I bowl the same style, wear glasses and played most of my cricket in New Zealand.

After the game, both teams shook hands, and we went to the Sugar Cane Juice cart for some freshly pressed juice, which Pradeep shouted me, as I'd left my wallet at the hotel with Batman. We chatted about cricket, India, his job and family and my other travels.

He offered to give Batman and me a ride to a shop near his next job. I gratefully accepted, and the two of us picked up Batman and headed to the Pashmina Bazaar, hidden in a tiny corner of Mumbai. There was no pressure to buy, and the goods were top notch. Like, Pradeep, this was the real deal.

On the way there, Pradeep told us about his daughter, then eleven, and how she went to school. He was so proud of his little girl for getting an education; it was obviously very important to him. Pradeep is a good man.

The cricket match I played in was between Pradeep's team - the Drivers from The Oberoi Hotel - and their cross-town, friendly, rivals - the Drivers from The Taj Mahal Hotel. These were good, friendly, honest men.

Until this morning, I hadn't read any news since Tuesday. The happenings in Mumbai are shocking and tragic. I really hope that Pradeep, Patrick and the rest of the drivers from both Oberoi and Taj are alive and unharmed. Take care lads. Shabash!