Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everybody! I hope and pray that you have blessed and peaceful celebrations and a fulfilling New Year.

God bless,

Pete

It's Christmas!

PG wodehouse

For some unknown reason, every time the festive season begins to loom, I always dig out my favorite books - my collection of PG Wodehouse. I can't imagine a better way to spend some time off than with one of his novels or anthologies. For me, Blandings Castle has to be his ultimate creation, closely followed by Jeeves, however, I can be equally entertained by Mulliner, Psmith and the like.

For the uninitiated, Wodehouse was an unparalleled comedy writer, who excelled at creating brilliantly convoluted plots with thoroughly lovable characters, all delivered in beautifully constructed prose. These stories are such excellent escapism, both the Kaiser and one of recent Nigerian Presidents were reputed to take to their beds to read Wodehouse when the tide turned against them! There are thousands of biographies about Wodehouse on the net - try the Wikipedia one for starters. For a taste of his writing, try What Ho! An anthology containing a selection of his best stories.

Labels

Well, you'll be excited to know I have updated all of my bloggings so far with labels, which was no end of fun!

Looking through my old posts, I realised I never updated the blog about my exam progress. I passed the whole of my MRCP (hooray!) and I'm now planning to start the anaesthetics exams (FRCA) in June 2007. Must be some kind of lunatic to sit all these tests...

New Treo

For those of you are familiar with my obsession wth my Palm Treo smartphone, you'll be relieved and delighted (I'm sure) that there are several new Treo models on the market. The Treo 680 is a straight upgrade of the 650 (my current phone) as far as I can tell. The best thing about it - no aerial! Hallelujah indeed my friends. The Treo750v is a Windows based phone which to my eye looks pretty much the same as the 680. For any of you who may like to find out more check out the links below...

Palm's official website: Treo 680, Treo 750v

Treo 680 review and Treo 750v review

Christmas, and those who have none...

At this time, with all the festivities and excess, my mind seems to subconsciously switch itself to thinking about those less fortunate. Maybe God is using my blessings to help me focus on others. It's a good time to review my charity donations. One I recently have started to support is Compassion, which enables me to sponsor a child. Mine is called Mateo and he lives in Equador. For anyone who is not involved in this kind of thing, I can't express how much of a blessing it is. When I first received my information pack about Mateo, about where he lives, what he enjoys doing and so on, I was moved to tears - it's such a privilige to be involved even in such a small way in this little chap's life. Hopefully, by supporting him, I can show Godly Christian love to someone who has so much less than myself. I'm not sharing this to blow my own trumpet - indeed I am so very blessed and so very hopeless at sharing it around - but in the hope that others may read it and consider doing the same (if they don't already do so). We are called to support the poor as Christians, and this really is one of the ways we can do so. Let's not forget (however cliched it sounds) that celebrating Christmas is about the birth of Jesus who has given us the gift of life.

Digital Camera

As part of my gadget portfolio, I feel compelled to share with you my latest purchase (an early Christmas pressie). I am awaiting in barely contained excitement the delivery of a new digital camera, what the magazines define as a "superzoom" or "prosumer camera", the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50 (snappy title I know).

Hopefully I'll be able to take some nice pictures once I've worked out how to use the camera, so watch this space for arty landscapes and the like!