Day 11 – Mon 05 Oct: Dubai to Brisbane

We landed at 6:30am, about 30 minutes late into Dubai as the airport was fogged-in.  We parked on the other side of the airport (so it seemed) and were bused to Terminal 3.  Being an expert in Dubai now, I made it to the Emirates lounge in record time, and registered for a shower (had to wait about 30 minutes this time!) and had a coffee and yoghurt as entrée.  After showering, I found a quiet spot, had a little more breakfast and Skyped Greg to wish him a very Happy Birthday.  I was really upset that I could not be there with him, but I could not leave Dusseldorf any sooner anyway.  He had plenty of visitors to keep him company though.  Some more work on the post congress report and it was time to make my way over to the B Gates for the flight to Brisbane.  Due to the fog, all flights both in and out had been delayed, so instead of leaving at 10:25am, we only left at midday.  I was OK with this delay as I knew I had five hours before the flight to Hervey Bay left.  So, I sat back and relaxed.  Not so fortunate on this leg to have a spare seat – the plane was choccas.  The man sitting next to me was very relaxed and not a bother at all.  I probably bothered him more as I was a bit restless.  Oh well.  I watched another two movies (Big Game and Ant Man), and managed to get some more sleep.

Landing at Dubai

Happy birthday Greg! Any excuse to drink Moёt at 10am



On the A380 - not unhappy, just tired!

Take off at Dubai




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 9 – Sat 03 Oct: Dusseldorf

Another Mercure breakfast followed by a taxi ride to the CCD for early meetings.  Both Jane and I had meetings to attend starting at 8:30am, so it was another early start.  The MEPS Business meeting started at 10:15am, followed by lunch (same sandwiches, banana and water) then the session where I have my presentation.  The session was titled “Violence against pharmacies and my presentation was: “How far forward is too far forward?”  I used the military principles of health and logistics support as the basis of my presentation and then tried to apply them to every day pharmacy.  I’m not sure if people were just being nice, but by all accounts, the presentation was well received.  I was quite nervous as the room was huge; it could probably hold 200 people, but there were only about 50 present!!  There were two other presentations:  -         Violence towards healthcare professionals is not acceptable – existing sit...
Read more

Day 8 – Fri 02 Oct: Dusseldorf

Image
Another early breakfast was needed as the first session of the day started at 7:15am.  It was supposed to be a breakfast session, however, as we learned last year, the breakfast is very light on.  So we filled up before we left the hotel and had more coffee when we got there.  There were two presentations in this session:  -         My experience in Haiti by Diane Lamarre (Pharmacists Without Borders, Canada); and  -         Heatlh care in danger: moving to solutions by Bruce Eshaya-Chauvin (ICRC). I was Chair of the next session, during which there were four presentations:  -    Mental health issues associated with deploying – looking after yourself by Hana Morrissey (CDU, Australia);  -     Reducing stress for deployed pharmacists – producing guidelines on managing pharmacologistics in deployed situations by Trudi Hilton (Consultant, UK);  -       ...
Read more

Day 6 – Wed 30 Sep: Dusseldorf

Image
Breakfast was at the hotel again at 7am, a leisurely one this morning as our first meeting started at 10am.  We left the hotel at 9am, in a taxi, and were at the CCD a short time later.  We congregated outside the room allocated to us and soon discovered it had been double-booked.  So, we took a wander around and found a huge room and just used that for the MEPS Board Meeting.  That took 1.5 hours and then it was time for lunch – sandwiches and a bottle of water, oh and a green banana! My only other function for the day was the MEPS Meet and Greet, but that did not start until 6:30pm.  Knowing this, I took my laptop to the CCD and set up in the wifi area and did some stuff: emails, words for photobooks, etc.  I also read my book.  This passed the time nicely until it was time to catch the bus to the Meet and Greet. Our German hosts had put on a bus for us, and it left from the CCD at 6pm to take us into the Altstadt to the brewery Uerige.  Uer...
Read more