4 posts tagged “korina”

OK. Simple plan.

The first May Bank holiday would see Korina and I travel down to the North Downs in Surrey, staying at a traditional British pub and spending the weekend relaxing, mountainbiking and hiking. Idyllic. Korina had been working really hard, so some time chilling out together was just what the dr ordered.

Unfortunately, this simple plan did not go, ah, as planned.

Started well enough, with a picnic near Coldharbour before heading up into the hills mountainbiking. We were really just pottering around on the Saturday, as I had been racing the weekend before and was still pretty sore. Save the harder stuff for Sunday and Monday. We thought.

 

So anyway, we were meandering down a path near the end of the day when Korina had a bit of an off. She fell into what looked like a rather forgiving clump of undergrowth. However, under this forgiving layer was a rather unforgiving tree stump. Which she was impaled upon.

She was obviously winded, so we waited for a bit to see what would happen next. Afterwards she was still sore, and we thought that she may have cracked some ribs. But she was still able to ride out, so that is what we did for around 30 mins. Back at the B&B for an hour, still looked like she may have cracked some ribs. Sore, but managable.

 

Then it all went down hill. Korina is tough, but I've not seen someone in that much pain before. All the same she insisted on driving to the hospital because I was not insured for her work car. A somewhat scary ride later and we arrived at East Surrey hospital.

The next three days were spent with Korina in a surgical critical care unit as various doctors and surgeons debated the relative merits of taking out her spleen (or not), which had apparently ruptured and was bleeding internally into her abdomen. However, not taking her spleen out won through, as she was otherwise fit and healthy, and young.

So that is where Korina remains.

She's been there a week now. Fortunately every day she looks less like needing surgery and looks a little more healthy.

 

 

However, the past week has not been without other dramas. Such as Korina reacting badly to an anti-nausea medication, sending her (and probably my) heart rate up to 160 and her blood pressure up to 155/119. Not great considering her family history.

Hopefully she will be out in the middle of next week, with another week or so of complete bedrest to look forward to at this stage.

My christmas present to Korina this year was a weekend in Prague - which we had timed to coincide with when Megan and Branko were also there.

We were very fortunate to get out of the UK on the Friday night - Megan and Branko had not been so lucky the night before, with their flight being cancelled due to freakishly high winds. Nonetheless, it was still a challenge for Korina and I to make our flight - with me being called up at the last minute to go to a meeting in Birmingham with Goodyear-Dunlop, and Korina, somewhat randomly also being in Birmingham pitching to the children's hospital. So it was a mad dash for the both of us back from Birmingham to Heathrow airport.

Luckily we made it, but not without considerable stress along the way!

It was pretty late Fri night when we got in, so just chilled out, had a quiet beer and a bite to eat with Megan and Branko and after hearing about a somewhat pornographic puppet show that they had seen that day, turned in for the night.

Sat we were up bright and early, setting out on a six hour Prague city tour (Prague EXTREME tour). For the most part, the tour was not that extreme, and quite dull - although rather factual.

Highlights of the tour included a good boat trip down the river in Prague, going through the Jewish quarter (which, when described by our guide, sounded more than a little like "Jew-town", as in BORAT), a great lunch at a local restaurant, seeing the spot where the biggest statue of Stalin in the world used to stand (30 M high, before they realised he was a nut case) and the castle.

 

Of these, perhaps the attraction that needs the most expansion upon was the Jewish Quarter. Apparently before WWII, 80,000 Jews lived in this part of Prague, having survived numerous persecutions throughout Prague's checkered history. Due for the most part to WWII, there are now only 2,000 Jews in the whole of Prague, out of 5,000 across the Czech republic.

As a result, the Jewish quarter had quite a sad feel about it - like a whole community had been utterly destroyed and never recovered - even though many of the buildings (e.g. Synagogues) still stand. An strange place to be sure.

One we completed the somewhat-marathon feeling tour, we then got a recommendation from the tour guide for a good local place to eat.

We ended up back in the Jewish Quarter at a great little pub/restaurant - perhaps the most striking features of this establishment included excellent food, friendly bar-staff and somewhat pornographic cartoons festooned around the walls.

The guy serving, once he had finished mocking Branko for being a fat bastard for ordering the biggest meat meal on the menu, proceeded to enlighten us regarding the traditional way to drink absinthe - and another local fire water starting with a B (can't remember the name exactly!). After this description, it of course failed that we would try some of each.

 

Reasonably quickly our little group started to get rowdy, to the extent that we adopted a middle aged dutch couple at the next table, much to their initial reluctance.

After dinner we had planned to go on a ghost tour, but were somewhat dubious of it due to the boring nature of the first tour. However, we decided that if we got bored we would just drop off the back of the tour.

Great plan, unfortunately it turned out that there were only two other people on the tour, so dropping of it would be very easily noticable. We were not the best group the tour guide had ever had - due in part to the amount of the local fire water already consumed and Korina and my insistence of acting out the ghost stories (much to the amusement of Megan and Branko). Lets just say its difficult to get scared when two out of six people keep giggling in the most important parts!

Afterwards we managed to find a salsa bar, which was pretty random in the centre of Prague. More drinking and dancing, followed by an Irish bar before everyone crashed.

Around breakfast time the next morning I worked out that it had been quite some time since I last saw my camera - and had in fact left it in the Irish bar. Concluding that I would never see it again, I almost didn't bother asking to see if someone had handed it in. As it happened, I decided that I may as well, and strangely enough, someone actually had!

So I got the camera back, which was excellent as I had taken a number of good photos around Prague, which is quite a pretty city in the old town.

After retrieving my camera, we went up the town hall clock tower for a good view of the city, had some very expensive coffee in the main square, watched the absolutely mind-numbing astronomical clock (do not much) and generally chilled out before Korina and my mid afternoon flight back to London. 

 

To celebrate Korina's new job, which came with a car, we randomly decided to head up to Silverstone where Korina had some rally car vouchers to use that I had given her for Xmas.

Her excitement built during the trip up through various b-roads and country lanes which we managed to navigate somehow without getting too lost.

Once we were there, I thought she seemed a little nervous - and the first go she looked it as she eased the Peugot 206 around the track. After a break she had calmed her nerves and decided that it was time to "go hard or go home". She looked to be driving a lot more comfortably, but it all went badly wrong in a corner around the back of the course - resulting in a 360 spin and some troubles getting the car going again. The crash meant that she finished near the rear of the pack in terms of drive times - but her instructor still rated her driving ability at 88% and made comments such as "drove with no fear"!

 

After the conclusion of the racing we went to a little country pub called The Kings Arms in the Cotswolds. It was a great meal, with excellent local cider. Unfortunately we were not organised enough to have booked anywhere to stay, and with the bank holiday weekend, getting anywhere to stay out in the country was not likely. So we headed back into London.

Well, after 8 months of trying, Korina has finally been offered a proper job. Its amazing how tight things are in the NHS here at the moment - I guess running a £1 billion deficit means that some cutbacks have to be made (and the NHS is running the UK's largest IT project - currently forecast at £6 billion over its initial £6 billion budget!).

She will be working for Sodexho - who basically provide outsourcing solutions in a wide range of sectors, including food service. So, my rough understanding of what she will be doing includes sort of working as a consultant, going into these outsourced food services and trouble shooting what they are doing wrong (and assessing what they do well), putting into place education programmes where necessary.

Its a great opportunity for her, and likely to pay at least an extra £6-10,000 over what she would have got working for the NHS.

Its somewhat interesting to me that the NHS wouldn't even employ her for a new graduate position (or anything more senior), but that in the private sector she is considered a good match for a position requiring 3-4 years professional experience! Sort of says somethting about the level of incompetence of management in the public sector generally, and in the NHS in particular I think.

The good news (for me) for her new job is that it is likely to include a car - which will be good for exploring a little more of the UK and Europe. The downside is that it will require quite a lot of travelling, meaning I will see a lot less of her - however, she's been so frustrated with the lack of progress on the career front that I'm sure she will be a lot happier now - which is really what I care about...