Instant expert

So, I am not truly great at ANYTHING. I mean there are things I can do, but I am not outstanding at anything. That is until I sit down and turn the TV on, then believe me when I tell you, I know (and am therefore awesome) at everything.

I can Cook.

I don't just mean cook, I mean why-the-hell-aren't-I-on-Masterchef cook. I can SEE that olives and pomegranite are a bad idea, can't they? I KNOW that looks crap and I could do SO much better. I see their scones, their cakes, there beef cheeks and chocolate fondant cakes and I laugh!! I could out cook them in a heartbeat.



How I THINK I can cook.....

Then I step into the kitchen and am hit with the startling reality that I suck. If it has more than three ingredients and more than, oh, six steps, and I'm screwed. I don't have half the stuff I need, my roller has gone AWOL, and I realise If it's not Spag Bol, Chocolate Mousse or something else I've cooked 100 times I've got nothing.

How I ACTUALLY cook.....



I Can Sing

OK, well maybe not sing, but should definatly get a new career as a music journalist or start a talent agency. I mean, I have seen some of these people on Idol, X Factor and The Voice and you have your good, then you have your pitchy, toneless i'd-rather-stick-hot-pokers-in-my-ears types. And I know who is awesome and who is shit. Surely the major television networks don't know what they're missing by lacking my expertise. I sit at home on my lounge and yell at the box as if they can here me. And you know what, if I was a talent scout, the world would be Beiber free.


I Can Build......Stuff

And I mean anything, ranging from a spice rack to a brand new deck and pergola. Well at least that's what I'm telling myself as I watch some far to perky, far to blonde chick waffle on about how simple it is. Well if it's that simple I should be able to smash it... Right? Then after a trip to Burnings to by all the required timber, nails, glue, paint and such to make what will literally be the BEST SPICE RACK OF ALL TIME only to get home and make some mutilated off balance "Spice rack" that is quite possibly reducing a tree to tears to see another piece of timber destroyed in such a brutal manor. In fact it vaguely resembles something a 10 year old child might make... Only much, much, MUCH worse. Points for trying though right?

 Anyway, that's enough of me telling you now good l am,  and besides, they're cooking a dish on Master Chef that has 40 odd ingredients and well, I could totally rock that.

J


N.B. Tried to find a pic of a really crap handmade spice rack using google images but I could not find anything as close to the shithouse one l made.

Don't give up your day job.

So work has been pretty full on lately and I realised that very few of you know what I do, and even if you know, you probably don't KNOW, so I am going to fill you in. Consider it, if you will, Histo 101.

A superhero movie once said "With great power comes great responsibility". I'm not sure if it was Superman, Spiderman, Batman or Captain Caveman but it was in one of them. My point is that's a bit how I feel about work. I have no power, hell, I'm a working government pleb, but responsibility I have in droves.

I work at The Canberra Hospital. I'm not sure if it's because I'm a chick or because it's an automatic assumption, but usually when I tell people I work there I get "So, you're a nurse?". Seriously? No, no I'm not. What I actually am is a Laboratory Technician in the Anatomical Pathology (Histology) Department, but we just like to call ourselves Histo Techs. Now I know, when you think science you think this: 

Yeah....Were all blond and gorgeous with test tubes and perfect titration's...MY ARSE

When in actual fact, most days I look more like:

   Alright, seriously, WTF is with all the test tubes?????

I'm suddenly beginning to wonder after my little jaunt through a Google Images search for "Laboratory Scientists" if I am being ripped of working in Histo as we don't get to play with test tubes.....EVER. Pretty coloured solutions yet, but NO TEST TUBES DAMN IT!!!!

Well, I could give you the long drawn out version of what I do, using fancy words like Microtome, Dissection, Gross Specimen (as in big, not yuck...), Formalin and all other things, but in the easiest way possible I assist Pathology registrars and Pathologists to get this:

Settle down, it's just an appendix......

 

To end up like this:

A stained section of appendix.

 

 

 

 

 

By now you're either going cool, ewwwww or huh? You know how before I said responsibility? Will it's not all Appendectomy specimens. It's also Gallbladders, Rectal and Colon Cancers, Prostates, Breast, Lungs, Spleens, Livers and Post Mortem tissues, just to name a few. That section is on a slide that a pathologist will then use to make a diagnosis off. Cancer or not? Benign or malignant? If I cock up, at any stage of this process, it has the potential to have epic ramifications on someones life. It does happen. It's sad, no beyond sad....tragic but it DOES happen. 

But not on my watch.

Love to hear any thoughts you guys have about this post. Hope you've learned a little something today. 

J