Day 12 – Tue 06 Oct: Brisbane to Hervey Bay to Hippo Farm

Despite being relaxed about the delay in departing Dubai, I was not quite so relaxed, as on approach into Brisbane, we were put into a holding pattern as Brisbane airport was also fogged-in!!!  What are the chances of that?  Anyway, we landed about 8:30am, and as we were late, there were not too many passengers from other flights in the Immigration, luggage collection, and Customs queues, so it didn’t take long and I was re-checking my suitcase for the final domestic leg.  As luck would have it, the T-Bus was waiting and it left not long after I got on.  So the whole process took no longer than 45 minutes and I was in the QANTAS Club in the domestic terminal having a reviving shower, coffee and breakfast.  Again, due to the fog, all flights had been delayed, so the flight to HVB was re-scheduled to 12:30pm from 11:05am.  So, there was no reason to panic at all!!  I kept Greg informed of all the delays just so that he did not leave home too soon and have to wait forever. We landed about 1:50pm, and then had to wait another 20 minutes to claim our luggage.  Greg met me and took me home.  And, it was sooooo good to be home after a very busy, 11 days away. 

And, so ends another interesting and successful congress.  Now we start planning for not only Buenos Aires next year, but also Seoul in 2017.  Planning for Glasgow in 2018 will start sometime in the new year.  Rumour has it that either Sydney, Brisbane or the Gold Coast may host FIP sometime between 2019-21.  Let’s hope it’s the Gold Coast, as they have a great venue.




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