Loomings (with apologies to Melville)

"Call me Ishmael.", is how Melville starts the best American novel ever written, Moby Dick.  I cast about for an equally stirring first line, but calling me Doc, Papa, John or Johnny, or even Gas Passer just didn't seem to answer.  I leave the choice of moniker to you therefore.

In any event, much like Melville's philosophical sojourner I'm off to remote climes and austere circumstances, away from kith and kin and thrown in among a set of charcters of varying degrees of sympathy and interest.  Of course, where Ishmael went to "sail about a bit and see the watery part of the world", I am bound to the dusty shores of Djibouti - by report the hottest continually occupied locale in the world.   I'll be providing anesthesia services and whatever other value I can add here at EMF Djibouti, where we support joint and multinational forces helping to bring assistance to this corner of Africa.

I'm not sure if an account of life here will interest anyone but me, but I thought rather than fill e-mail in-boxes world-wide with intermittent  missives, I'd create a central site where I can make a journal, some photos and who knows what else available to all.  My attempt to do will be charted in the posts that follow.  C'mon along!

As this is my first attempt with this medium, I'll stop here and confirm that it's working well.  Presuming this to be the case, tune in tomorrow for "Our story so far..."