Happy Australia Day.

My Australia Day, 2007, began in the Emergency Department. Yes, I was working on Australia Day. The last 3 hours of my 10-hour shift were after midnight. How un-Australian is that? Not as un-Australian as the fact that I'm returning to the same ED in 2 hours' time, undoubtedly to fix up more victims of Australia Day drunken violence, drunken accidents and drunken drunkeness. My favourite Australia Day ED story was from a med school colleague who treated a guy whose mullet was set on fire on the train home from the Skyshow. Now that's Australian.

Also quite Australian (albeit circa 1978) - my neighbours. My new apartment building has a swimming pool on the ground floor (next to the gym, sauna, etc.) and I've been enjoying it on these sweltering summer days, swimming laps, inviting friends around and...enjoying the scenery? That's right, there's a plague of topless sunbathers, and not just the hairy, overweight male type, if you get my drift. One of the pool rules calls for "appropriate attire" but this is open to interpretation, I guess. Most astonishing was one girl this week who had oiled her breasts. She was basting in the 35+ degree heat, glistening nipples pointing at the sun. If my breasts are self-saucing puddings, then hers are certainly fried eggs (not that her nipples were yolk-coloured). Whenever I tell people this story, they always ask, did she have nice breasts? Well, of course, otherwise I would have told her to put on some clothes.

Yesterday was my birthday. I was cruelly stripped of my adolescent status as I joined the "26-40" age bracket. On Saturday night I saw the Plump DJs with Katherine and David. The set was average but the night was fun (as I had been missing my Kathy so) and full of alcohol. We shuffled off to bed around 5am. I awoke around 6.30am when my alarm went off. I felt dreadful. Abdominal cramps and strong waves of nausea. Oh no, I thought, for my birthday I've gotten a hangover. I'd always been told that those would come with age. I realise now that I was not hungover but that I was still drunk. Thank goodness. I am still young.

My friend Scotty wonders if, in the future, blogging will become a new feature of the DSM criteria (the diagnostic manual for psychiatric disorders). Where once we kept diaries filled with our innermost thoughts, hidden under the bed or locked with a miniscule padlock, today we proudly proclaim our insecurities and flaunt our insanity online for the whole world to read. Maybe it's therapeutic to get things off our chests and to think that somebody on the other side of the globe could be affected in some way by our musings. Even so, do we really want our really want our friends, parents, bosses or lovers knowing about our perceived inadequacies and crazy tendencies? Is it really the modern-day equivalent of the soapbox or worse - standing on busy street corners in a sandwich board with a megaphone, announcing the demise of ourselves?

My friend Dave tells me that I shouldn't drink alone. That's another story.