The large black circles around his bloodshot eyes are not just from crying. His hands grip the industrial fabric and plastic chair, nails white, knuckles pale. Dark eyes filled with sadness and loss. He nervously whets his bottom lip, purses and exhales slowly.

His Cote d'Ivoire football shirt, once tight, hangs limply around his withering shoulders, flapping and shuddering as he tells his story.

He's seventeen. First-generation Swiss. Everyone always asks where he's from, when he moved here. His parents, a teacher and an accountant, moved for a better life, so he could get a degree.

Before this. Before all the medicines.

He rubs his tightly curled hair nervously, waiting for his newest numbers. He mumbles in rolling French, pausing and recalling how this happened. He itches the lesion on his arm.

He never really liked beach volleyball. His friends wanted him to play. Really, he says, I'm a football guy. Switzerland doesn't even have beaches. This is no 1980's Venice or Bondi, he says, grimacing.

You can't play volleball in shoes. Football, he says, you wear shoes. Who shoots up at a beach?

The doc reads his numbers and he nods slowly, takes his pile of prescriptions and leaves. Today his CD4 count is greater than 400. For him, it feels like just another result, a figure, a pile of soothsaying digits.

He feels faceless. A number.

He was mighty quick on the downhill and on the flats, but lost a lot of time over the climbs. At each climb, his face turned to pain and his eyes glazed as he seemed to look inwards, his face drawn and mouth gulping as he suffered silently.

He inspired everone he rode near; his huge changes in speed made him nearly impossible to ride with. The race, nearly a hundred miles, climbed mountains in first snow, then rain and hail.

Mountains that broke Tour de France riders. Perilous, hairpinned descents at eighty kilometres an hour. For hour upon hour he rode.

A Brit was just about to quit. It was too hard, he said. The rain was no fun. Then the man rolled past, and the Brit's eyes and mouth hung wide. He remounted and tried to chase him down, soul lighter.

The man reached the final climb of the day, several hours ahead of the last rider. He pedalled and struggled, in a world of his own as he climbed.

He hauled over the mountain, one pedal stroke at a time, as the rest of the field rode past him.

By hell, he finished, the cyclist with one leg.

For the first two years of Medicine, I slept in lectures. I refused to wag lectures entirely, as that would be denying myself should all things align, the chance to learn. But usually, I slept.

This week, I attended, unexpectedly, one of the best lectures I've ever been to. About 93 seconds before I was heading to lunch, my senior research registrar sticks his head in the door and says;

"So, um, Capt.Atopic, we have a lecture from an international professor. In one minute."

Um, okay. I sat down with six others from the department, and the Prof, a senior WHO Director up from Geneva for the day, gave us the goods on Public Health and Prevention of Mental Illness.

An intersting topic, delivered openly, interestingly, honestly and inspiringly. There was not a snowball's chance in hell that I was going to sleep through this one.

The Prof interacted. He talked about the flaws of Public Health; that often funds were wasted on inefficient, meaningless fluff and nonsense. His vision was to move past the smoky ideas and into action.

The main point of the presentation was emphasising primary prevention; that is, preemptive behavior that seeks to avert disease before it develops. Applied to the entire population.

Things like folate in bread and ameliorating iron deficiency, to reduce neural tube defects and congenital pathlogically-low IQ, respectively.

Public Health, like Evidence Based Medicine, is one portion of medical school that is introduced didactically, fuelled by misguided passion. Both are taught from a theoretical perspective, without solid, coal-face examples.

The Professor spoke from the heart. He sought to inspire, with knowledge, with practicality; one of those Doctors who genuinely and realistically wants to make the whole world a better place.

Yesterday, one of the senior registrars gave a presentation about adolescents who smoke. It was well compiled, informative and had clear conclulsions and signposts for the future. But there was one thing about the presentation that felt wrong. I just couldn't put my finger on it, but slowly, the cognitive dissonance began to take shape.

No matter the message of the article, be it on the large number of dead due to lung cancer, or the horrible effects of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, the media dressed the article with a glamourous photo. Talk about mixing the message.

"You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear." - Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Scandal In Bohemia"

My ear for languages is not strong, which means that, in the French-speaking area I find myself, I have two choices;

Firstly, I can attempt to train my ears, to dissect the rolling and flowing vowels and softly-said consonants. Scanning, searching, aching for familar nouns or verbs and aurally squint intently listening for tenses, pronouns and conjunctions. This I do when in lectures, meetings or group discussions.

For once in my life, I say almost nothing.

The brain bends and I'm soon exhausted with mental effort as I try to convert spoken sounds to the written words with which I'm more accustomed, attaching unpronounced letters to establish a notion of linguistic sense. Soon, the words overpower me and the conversation merges and blurs as I lose the thread, then the needle itself, as the sewing machine turns to a quiet hum and I am lost in thought about the last phrase I interpreted.

Secondly, I can observe. In meetings, it is the responses of others, the sideways glances or brightening of eyes just before a punchline. Gestures, microscopic, indicating grandé or petité, hauté or en basse. Movements of the mouth, as if to speak, before the biting of the lip, or the twitch of the hand. The pauses to ensure a point is made, quick looks at the superior for affirmation.

For this, my ears numb. Eyes wide, watching the mouth of the speaker, the eyes all around, the flickers of faces. Lips, teeth, brow, shoulders all interacting in a symphony of message. The Philharmonic Orchestra as interpreted on mute, crescendo and decrescendo as estimated by bow speed or drumming intensity.

In the street, kids yell to eachother, in adolescent franco-anglo-moroccan hybrid, complete with german and english expletives. But they're smiling at eachother as the football game continues. Only the sworn-at is sluggish, and only for a minute or three.

I still say nothing, mute, observing. Still too scared to venture the smallest of sentences, Australian accent hampering my attempts of self expression. In three weeks, I will be in clinic, en Français. Presently, I can read the language, understand scraps and meet and greet with a few phrases of politeness.

I see and I understand. I can express myself and my thoughts to but a few. A far cry from the mother tongue of ready-made puns, expression and linguistic subtelties. I want to learn this language; a challenge to be sure. To express, to pun, to navigate novels. To navigate streets. To be understood at the supermarket when I ask where the sultanas are.

Lunch today, with a four able anglophones, left me comfortable, relaxed. At the end of the outing my registrar says;

"From tomorrow, you speak French."

Here goes.

Some years ago, I embarked on a Road Trip with a two carloads Uni friends around New Zealand. Two of our number resided in the Waikato (Hobbit country), and we thought it prudent to drop them off for the summer holidays.

During this time, we passed the kilometers by playing the "Tractor Contest". The game has few rules, as I twittered earlier in the year. They are;