A Break in Our Regularly Scheduled Travel Blog: Congratulations Dr. Tabubil!

Today my sister graduated from medical school.  She received her diploma from the dean, declaimed the Hippocratic Oath, and marched out of the hall to the rather strained strains of Gaudeamus Igitur, and is now officially reckoned fit to be let loose in the halls and wards of Australia's Hospitals.

            Congratulations, Doctor Tabubil.

            We are very VERY proud of you!

Two  huge projector screens flanked the dais in the University hall, and as the almost-Doctors marched in, the screens showed the procession, all up close and personal.  When my sister appeared on the screen, we rose from our seats like sprinters on a starting gun and lunged toward the screen, waving madly and screaming "Hi Tabubilsister!" at the tops of our voices.  When she entered the hall in person, twenty seconds later, we were back in our seats staring in other directions entirely and pretending to be somebody else, and we completely failed to notice her.

            We weren't the only guests to lose their heads like that, but we felt very very silly.  We made it up by hooting and hollering like highly charge loons whenever someone we knew was made a doctor- it was that sort of happy day.

In the evening we sailed off to the Gala Medical Ball - the grand affair to which Dr Tabubil's triumvirate has dedicated all of their free time (and all their other time too, just in case) for the past year.  I can say without fear or favor that it was one hell of a party.  It does something rather bouncy for the ego to walk into a banquet hall the size of Kentucky and see one's own artwork splashed all over the tickets, the programs, and two enormous projector screens five or six stories tall (give or take a meter.)  But beyond that rather pleasant fillip of "Me!  I am!  Lookit there, eh?" (Not that I would say that.  I am modest as a church mouse) it was one splendid - and smooth running - shindig.

Congratulations  all over again.
            At the tail end of the evening, after the band had run out of steam and the DJ was spinning the best of the oldest party songs, the sound system turned itself up and let loose with the original version of Crocodile Rock - and half of the young men on the floor dropped their trousers and danced in their y-fronts with their pants around their ankles.

We stared. 

            "What on earth are they doing that for?"

            A fully-pantsed young doctor was staring at the dance floor, looking aggrieved. "It's what you DO, apparently.  When this song's playing." He glared at us, as if he was suspecting us of indecent designs upon his fly buttons, and gave his belt buckle a reassuring pat.

           I crept onto the dance floor with my camera - I wanted a photo of this huge mass of pantless young men, as they shuffled widdershins around the floor and belted out old rock and roll, but there was a queue. All women with cameras.

            But when the song ended and they all bent down - en mass and en unison - to pull up their trousers, I was treated to one sweet full-rim moon shot.

            But not for the camera.

            There are some moments you just can't share.