reporting

doctor told me there are sometimes "criminal looking people" in the emergency department. he then learned that sometimes the court convicts people to labour in the public sector, so its those guys. kind of sad that they sort of stick out though, as "criminal looking". his comment was not judgemental, just descriptive.

the new hospital he is going to in august, seems a bit better organised, just as we hoped. but its weird how 2 hospitals that are part of the same trust, can have such different ways of doing things. you'd think it would save money and nerves to unify stuff. like, how work rotas are made, how leaves are allocated.. and scrubs. the current hospital is like "whatever", and doctors only wear the top part, whereas the new hospital gives you scrubs and you will wear top and bottom (as they do in turkey). i prefer they wear the whole set cos every now and then they do get bodily fluids or something on them.

renting a car turned out to be really challenging. we wanted to drive to Cornwall and back, next week, but in the end turned to trains. i started off by googling of course. eneded up at easycar.com - which was offering cars by indivisuals, very airbnb'ish - ok great! found even cars around brixton! so then you need to sign up as a "driver" in order to book this car. i first created an account on my name but you need to upload your license info etc so i had to create an account on doctors name instead (my license was stolen along with the wallet in january and i wouldnt have been the main driver anyway). then it gives an error saying they dont insure licenses from turkey. instead to search cars from easycar.com...  at which point i see the url has bcome carclub.easycar.com. its a bloody loop! there is a phone number and they say oh we are a separate company, call this other number....  lol ok. in the end, we could only rent from a rental car dealer, they are open like 9 to 17 on weekdays only...  and the closest is in Oval. not very far, but the opening hours themselves put a lot of restrictions, would have to to rent at least 1 day extra. and that was if we claimed our residence was in turkey. being Uk resident with turkish license is aparently a problem (although by law you are allowed to drive up to 1 year with a goreign license). but if there was an accident, the lie about residency might come up... it was slighty uncomfortable to think about. and i admit being concerned about navigating our way out of the city - it would be doctors first time driving in UK. he feels comfortable with the idea, but the stress was piling up for me. also returning the car by 5pm on tuesday wouldve been a stressor...  the cheapest car rental wouldve been 90£, add 55-60£ fuel costs (yes i calculated). the direct trains then, they were starting from 135£ for the two of us, and so... not much difference? car gives some freedoms, but responsibilities too, and Marianne warned us that we could easily get stuck in traffic on saturday - hence the need to get going at like 7am - which wouldve meant renting the car the previous day etc. both train and car were approx 5h trips, neither car nor train was running from our doorstep so add 30min tube travel. if somehow we wouldve picked up the rental car on friday before 5 (when doctor is supposed to be sleeping), we dont have the right to park in front of the house. but with all this, i felt like that was the least of our worries. so in the end train was an obvious choice.