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More than Medicine: Episode 1 - Dr Janaka Pieris
3 Plays3 minutes ago
Dr Janaka Peiris is a GP with over 30 years of clinical experience in general practice, occupational medicine, and medical assistance. Born in Kandy, Sri Lanka, Dr Peiris grew up in London and moved to Brisbane in 2010. Beyond his medical career, under the pseudonym Janaka Malwatta, he is a writer, with a cricket blog and poetry collection. In 2021 he won the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize from Arts Queensland for his anthology, Blackbirds Don't Mate with Starlings. He also explores narrative poetry, often focusing on Sri Lankan stories, and has performed at events like the Queensland Poetry Festival.
Join us as Dr Peiris shares his journey from being an "NHS refugee" in the UK to finding autonomy in general practice in Australia. He discusses the factors that led him to choose Brisbane, his experiences as an immigrant doctor, and the inspiration behind his poetry anthology, which addresses racial tensions and personal experiences.
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Transcript
Introduction to Dr. Janaka Peiris
00:00:01
Speaker
Medical Flyaways, the untold journeys of migrant doctors in Australia.
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello and welcome Dr. Janaka Peiris. He is a GP with over 30 years of clinical experience. in general practice, occupational medicine and medical assistance.
00:00:24
Speaker
In addition, and probably more to talk about the things that I have seen him do outside of medicine, it's worth mentioning he is a writer with his own cricket blog and a poet who has won the Thomas Schapko Poetry Prize from Arts Queensland for his anthology called Blackbirds Don't Mate with Starlings.
00:00:46
Speaker
So welcome, Janaka. Thank you, Shristi.
What is a Portfolio GP?
00:00:48
Speaker
Thank you for having me Now, I'm going to start with something clinical, but I'm going to ask you this because ah it's something that use to describe myself too at times.
00:00:58
Speaker
You've mentioned about yourself that you're a portfolio GP. For the benefit of our listeners, what does that term mean for you or you know if you've seen a reference to it in other places?
00:01:09
Speaker
I think it probably means you've got a short attention span and you need to do lots of different things to keep yourself going. That's the description for you and me. Is there a more professional description that you can tell us?
00:01:22
Speaker
Well, I said someone who has ah various strands to their medical career. So I do some general practice. I do a little bit of occupational health work. I do some teaching with the RACGP for GP registrars.
00:01:35
Speaker
ah Previous existence, I've done some medical repatriation work, which I would like to get back to if that's possible. So it just means having different strands to your career.
00:01:46
Speaker
Awesome. so And i i like I certainly was familiar with the term and have seen it used in the UK. I probably have seen it used less frequently in Australia for, I mean, there can be a myriad of reasons for that. So just thought I'd bring that up.
Why Did Dr. Peiris Move to Australia?
00:02:00
Speaker
What prompted you moving to Australia? think in common with lots of people, I'm an NHS refugee. I loathed working for the NHS.
00:02:12
Speaker
which I regarded as an exploitative employer and just couldn't wait to get away. Was there anything about the work that you think was similar to when you came to Australia? Were there any elements of that that were in any way similar to your experience of general practice in Australia?
00:02:31
Speaker
Or was that such a mean know hard shift or change that there wasn't really anything at all that you find similar in between the two? Look, I mean the biggest problem for me in the NHS is that there's never enough time in the day to do the work that needs to be done in the day.
00:02:48
Speaker
And there's no means of limiting your workload. Now, some of that will sound familiar to people working in general practice in Australia. But I would argue that the big difference is you can limit your workloads here in Australia.
00:03:03
Speaker
You have autonomy as to how many weeks you work a year, how many days a week, how many hours a day, how many patients you see in that time. So you very much are able to limit your workload, which is the biggest factor that I found problematic in the UK.
00:03:21
Speaker
the General practice is general practice, and there are a lot of similarities between general practice in the UK and general practice here. But then general practice is also very varied depending on your precise location, the demographic you're catering to, the type of practice you're working in.
Life in Brisbane
00:03:38
Speaker
As you know, I've done a lot of GP locum work. I think I've had about 70 provider numbers. So I've seen a wide variety of Australian general practice.
00:03:49
Speaker
And there there are some aspects that are very similar to but what you find in the UK. There are some aspects that are very different. Thank you for that. And I think I do agree with you that the autonomy is what, it's difficult to convey that when you've, if it's something you've always had and not worked in a system where you don't have it.
00:04:10
Speaker
And probably the only comp comparison I can make from an Australian context is for those here who work within the hospital systems as juniors versus when they practice as an independent clinician. There is some of that, but yep, like you, I'm an NHS refugee too.
00:04:25
Speaker
Was there any particular reason to move to Brisbane? you know what What were the factors that you considered when you decided to move to Australia? So I suppose the factors were, where can I go where I'm not going to have to do any exams?
00:04:40
Speaker
So that carried the countries down to Australia, New Zealand, probably Canada, Singapore, and the Middle East as an expat. Of those countries, Canada had some exams at that time.
00:04:56
Speaker
and So that was discounted. The Middle East, as an expert, I didn't really fancy the idea of. Singapore is somewhere where people tell me it's a great place to visit other countries from, which doesn't sound like a recommendation for staying there itself.
00:05:14
Speaker
and but The salary in New Zealand is significantly less than the salary in Australia. So that kind of brought me to Australia. And I'm a city boy. So when when I was looking at the cities, this may not go down particularly well, but in essence, i um' there are three big cities really in Australia.
00:05:31
Speaker
And Sydney was just like London in the Southern Hemisphere. And I spent a lot of my time in London. So there seemed point doing that. Melbourne was just too cold. So that left Brisbane.
00:05:42
Speaker
Yeah, awesome. I mean, I think that's that's the most succinct deductive reasoning I've seen yet from anyone who's come on this show otherwise, but I wouldn't expect any less from you, Janaka. and The second question is, was there a particular reason why, you know, you chose the part of Brisbane that you live in? Or ah was that just more a case of housing and where you wanted to be in schools and things like that? Because, you know, Queensland, Southeast Queensland is a big area and It more or less has similar vibes. So was there ever any other parts of Southeast Queensland that you considered living in?
00:06:14
Speaker
Oh, first of all, I disagree that it has similar vibes. I think there's if even if you go into the city of Brisbane, there's a big difference between various areas. We were very lucky.
00:06:26
Speaker
It was then called a DWS, District of Workforce Shortage Post. I got that in a place called Kupera, which is reasonably close to the CBD. And one of my friends here told me, he was a real estate agent in Brisbane, told me that you want to be living within five kilometres of the CBD if you can, because that's your optimum sort of real estate business.
00:06:51
Speaker
So we were fortunate enough to find somewhere that was within five kilometers of the CBD and within the splitting distance of Kupera. And so it all worked out that way. Have you had any regrets since moving to Australia? Is there anything that hasn't worked out as you expected?
Reflections on Moving to Australia
00:07:08
Speaker
I probably regret not moving earlier. Yeah, I should have expected that. No, I don't think there's anything that regret about. but yeah yeah I think regret anyway is a little bit of a...
00:07:20
Speaker
It's a dangerous look. You know, you you are who you are because of the journey that you've been on. And the journey that I've been on has been fairly varied. It's taken me to all all sorts of different places, different countries.
00:07:32
Speaker
Did a locum in Moscow for two weeks, which was just an interesting experience. So it's just, I think regret is just not the right way to look at things.
00:07:43
Speaker
So think of it as an adventure. Well, it's a journey, isn't it? you know All of us are formed by the experiences that we have. So but obviously there are some dreadful things that happen to some people that which, unfortunately, I haven't had any of those experiences.
00:07:58
Speaker
But if you don't if you haven't had that, then you've you've just got to accept that the journey that you've that you've taken is what is what's formed you. And I'm probably going to think about that answer afterwards.
00:08:10
Speaker
But you're right. I guess my next question is around being a doctor in the UK versus being a doctor in Australia.
Experiences of IMGs
00:08:17
Speaker
Mine for that, for me, both of those were as what we'd call IMGs.
00:08:22
Speaker
whereas for you only one of them was as an IMG. Was there anything about that experience as a migrant doctor that stood out for you in Australia? Keeping in mind it's your unique experience and mine will not be the same as yours, but still, was there any particular insights or experiences you'd like to share?
00:08:41
Speaker
So I think there is a difference, and you see this in all sorts of different ways, between people who have grown up in and have their primary degrees in ah country like the UK or Ireland or Canada as compared to somebody who has grown up in and had their primary degree in in the subcontinent or Africa or the Middle East. And I think that difference, is it's not one in quality at all.
00:09:12
Speaker
ah but the difference is so partly the way that you're treated when you come here to Australia. what I say here, I mean, as you know, I now live in Sri Lanka. But it's a difference when you come to Australia, the way you're treated.
00:09:26
Speaker
And it may also be a difference in expectation, which is almost kind of bordering on entitlement. And I think ah so think there are two distinct populations of IMGs. I think IMGs who have grown up in, let's say, the UK and have their primary degree there have a different set of expectations and a different ah set of experiences and are treated differently to IMGs who come from what we might term the old Commonwealth or Africa or the Middle East or South Asia.
00:09:57
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think I'll often have been, you know, in these discussions, often I hear the rationalization of, well, they're similar countries in regards to the medical systems and the the type of medicine being more relational and not transactional.
00:10:13
Speaker
And, you know, things that are descriptively trying to draw the commonalities between the Anglophone countries in terms of how medicine works there, while there are still differences between them.
00:10:24
Speaker
Are there any other differences? Like for me, I certainly changed the way I learned when I moved from the place I did my primary degree to UK. And then of course, when I came to Australia, I've changed a few things still.
00:10:37
Speaker
For you, was was kind of coming to Australia almost the same medical system? Were there things that you still felt you had to change in your practice of medicine or how you worked?
00:10:48
Speaker
Or was it simply just changing the place of work? No, think there there are definitely differences. you know As you know, in the NHS, you never think about money. or you know any of those sorts of things.
00:10:59
Speaker
but i don't But I think it's you know i think it's far deeper than that. I think it's attitude and love in terms of just what you're used to and therefore what you expect. But it's also the way you're treated. it I remember one practice manager, and she was trying to be helpful.
00:11:15
Speaker
And she told me, you know, you might have a slight problem with the patients when they see you, but as soon as they hear you speak, you'll be fine. Wow, okay. So that which was very interesting as a perspective. you know I understand the issues with you know people trying ah struggling to be understood sometimes or struggling to understand. but there's you know you I've got a very English accent, and so I'll be treated differently to somebody who has a very heavy Sri Lankan accent or Indian accent or any other accent for that matter.
00:11:46
Speaker
So you know those are the aspects which we can't get away from are race-related issues. I mean, there are there are genuine barriers as well. I think I hear what you're saying is when they see you versus when they hear you was an interesting way to describe it.
00:12:02
Speaker
How did you respond to that? Did you feel the need to respond? No, I didn't. And the reason I didn't was because um wasn't going to be in that practice for long and it's low composition.
00:12:17
Speaker
i don't There's no point. I have a fairly confrontational attitude to race, but there didn't seem to be any point in having that discussion at that point. that is a and I really can't remember where I've heard this. I've read somewhere recently about self-worth, et cetera, and The take home was to not be concerned about how how others perceived you, but to be aware of it.
00:12:41
Speaker
And I think that kind of kind of runs in that in it shouldn't make you decide how you value yourself, but equally others may value you or measure you by other metrics than what you do.
00:12:53
Speaker
Well, that's very true. frequentlyly But equally, I don't believe you should get away with letting people make judgments or suspersions that yeah you feel unjust, whatever the reason for that So that leads me on to your anthology.
00:13:09
Speaker
Do you want to tell us a little bit about the the collection? And maybe, and just to say I have a copy of it, signed copy of the anthology, and I was present at the release.
00:13:22
Speaker
It was an absolutely joyful and memorable occasion for me. So for those who haven't seen the book yet, what inspired
Poetry and Personal Experiences
00:13:30
Speaker
you to write it? And maybe just a little bit about the title of the book to start with.
00:13:35
Speaker
So first of all, I've been writing poetry seriously since coming to Australia, so that's about 11 years by the time I entered for this competition. I've been aware of the Thomas Shepcott competition ever since I became serious about poetry in Brisbane.
00:13:51
Speaker
It's the premier prize for a manuscript of poetry by an unpublished poet. And the reason it's so important is because it has a publishing contract with but the University of Queensland Press.
00:14:03
Speaker
So it's a very prestigious prize. I think the murder of George Floyd in 2021, when that murder occurred, I started writing about it. Well, I started writing about the backlash against that murder. You know, there was there was the the BLM, the Backlash Movement, protest, which was widely supported and hearteningly widely supported by people from different ethnic groups.
00:14:29
Speaker
But then there was a backlash against it. And the backlash is what prompted me to write. So as and when I started writing, you know, I grew up as a skinny little brown kid in London in the 70s and eighty was the era of the the second wave of skinheads who were neo-Nazis.
00:14:48
Speaker
There was a lot of racist violence. So that was basically, I had a lot to get off my chest. And when I started writing, I realized that I would probably have enough material for a manuscript. I knew that the Thomas Shabcock deadline was approaching in about three or four months.
00:15:05
Speaker
So I just got up at 4.30 every morning and wrote until I completed it. So that was the me that how that manuscript came about. The title of the manuscript, Blackbirds Don't Make With Starlings, is a comment that was made to a white English nurse I was going out with in London in the 1990s by another colleague of hers, who was another white English nurse, who disapproved of mixed race relations and said to her, know, Blackbirds Don't Make With Starlings.
00:15:34
Speaker
So having sort of been on the receiving end of that comment and carried it around with me for 20-odd years, I thought it was a good place to use it. Yeah, and and i I must admit, I've read some of it your work and I feel like I would like to introduce it to my kids.
00:15:54
Speaker
I'm not sure they're ready yet. They're navigating similar territory as you in some ways. You know, just looking at what's happened since your childhood, do you think we are in a better place than we were then? Have things improved or changed enough for it to feel hopeful for us to continue, you know, expecting better of each other?
00:16:16
Speaker
is this too much to ask of people? It's categorically not too much to ask of people. And actually, it's what we should demand of people. But I think progressives are made a big mistake in that we thought that these arguments had been settled.
00:16:33
Speaker
You know, that discrimination was unacceptable, that whether that be on grounds of race or gender or sexuality, that these things were unacceptable and that the commonly held norm view would be that, you know, it's unacceptable and needs to be combated.
00:16:52
Speaker
In the UK, I think the Brexit referendum brought a whole lot of racism to the surface because people like Nigel Farage and others exploited race during that referendum.
00:17:04
Speaker
But we have seen it's only, it three or four weeks since we've had race riots in the UK, which have been the worst race riots in probably quarter of a century in the UK. And some of those protesters were holding up posters saying Enoch was right.
00:17:20
Speaker
Enoch Powell was a right wing politician who in 1968 gave a famous The Rivers of Blood speech where he said the rivers of blood will flow through the streets of the UK if it continues to be swamped by by immigration from you know black and brown people.
00:17:38
Speaker
So to think that these sentiments, which were expressed really forcefully 1968, there were race rights in the UK in the 50s and 60s, have disappeared is something that we all thought and we were wrong.
00:17:53
Speaker
That leads me to a question which, I mean, noticing we are steering now into politics and not poetry. So having said that, I do find that this is worth considering as part of our discussion because there'll be many who listen who will Probably have had experiences that can at least be considered as worthy of conversation now.
00:18:11
Speaker
Is the issue that of power or privilege or one of race or both? I think it's deprivation. In fact, Boris, I mean, you racial tensions always come to the surface at times of economic issues.
00:18:28
Speaker
downturns, economic crises. but which I don't think it's a, it's not a coincidence that the Brexit referendum was successful for people for at a time when the UK had experienced seven years of austerity post the GFC in 2008.
00:18:45
Speaker
the Those economic conditions are still pretty dire for a lot of people in, and obviously the the poorer you are, the harder it hits you. I think that that is that then, you know, people look for scapegoats and there's a really easy scapegoat, which is, you know, the immigrant that's come to take your job as opposed to the billionaire who's taken all the resources.
00:19:06
Speaker
So, I think that times of economic downturn always see populism. I don't think it's a it's a coincidence that populism is on the rise throughout so throughou Europe. You can see that with the rise of Trump. You can see it with Orban, with Bolsonaro in Brazil. I mean, this is, you know, Erdogan in Turkey. there's There's a lot of that type of politics ah prevalent. You know, AFD, the alternative for Deutschland, which is ah also a far right-wing party, has been more successful than any other time.
00:19:38
Speaker
they in the elite In the latest elections, there have been right-wingers, far right-wingers, elected in the Netherlands. So this is not a coincidence.
00:19:49
Speaker
And I think that yeah it's very easy just to focus on the race, and the race is the but I would say that the race, often the racism, is often a manifestation of desperation in poorer communities.
00:20:05
Speaker
You know, you'll get populist politicians who will say, the problem is not lack of investment infrastructure or any of these other the harder things to deal with. The problem is foreigners coming in taking your jobs and, you know, et cetera.
00:20:19
Speaker
Well, which is not to excuse the race because there is some of it which is just sheer race hatred, but it's exacerbated in terms of, you know, in terms of economic distress, it finds a wider audience.
00:20:33
Speaker
So you mentioned you started writing poetry 11 years ago. You mentioned the 7.30 every morning. That's a bit of a, I would say, ritual and routine and self-discipline in there about the writing. 4.30. 4.30. Sorry. Wow. Okay. That's me out, I'm afraid.
00:20:49
Speaker
Well, the thing is, you know, mean but you know i'm I'm a full-time GP. I had a young son. When he wakes up, the the day's is over. So you have to do your writing before he starts it. Is that a level of commitment to you apply to almost everything you do? It's a level commitment when I apply to almost nothing else I do.
00:21:09
Speaker
Right. let's That's a relief because I would not have, right? That was a like a, I am quitting now question. Okay. So that was a very high level of commitment.
00:21:21
Speaker
And when did you seriously think you were going to write this book? Like how long did it take for you to go from thinking of yourself as a learner to someone that had reached a level of expertise where there would be peer recognition or you know, quality that you would be happy to put out to be contested in terms of it being worthy of an award. Well, I suppose the first thing is you can never tell if it's worthy of an award. That's really for the judges to say, yeah.
00:21:48
Speaker
Determined, that's not for you to determine. But, so I came to poetry through performance poetry or spoken word. ah When I was in London, before I left, I really got very much into constantly going to performance poetry gigs.
00:22:02
Speaker
And I met, so that there was a ah double actor I saw who called them, they were an Asian double actor, and they called themselves Darketypes, which is D apostrophe Archetype. And they did a lot of I got to know one of them, guy called Shane Solanke, who's a well-established performance poet in London.
00:22:24
Speaker
And he listened to a poem that I had written, the first poem that I thought was a decent poem, which was actually about a soldier in Sri Lanka during the Civil War. And he said, okay, that's that's a really good poem.
00:22:36
Speaker
I've got a show on, and I'd like you to just come on stage and do that poem, which initially I kind of declined because of terror. and after panicking for about 48 hours. you know I'd been following poetry for a long time. I knew that this is what I wanted to do. I knew I was going to say yes. I just had to convince myself to say yes.
00:22:56
Speaker
And it was ah it was a three-hour gig that Shane had put on. There were about 150 people in the audience. And getting on that stage for the first time was... Pretty terrifying, but a huge thrill. It was very well received, that particular poem.
00:23:13
Speaker
So that gave me a bit of confidence. And then when I came to Brisbane, there was a monthly open mic event, poetry open mic event called Speed Poets Run by Gaihukraem Nunn.
00:23:24
Speaker
So I kind of was producing and performing for about 10 years. that I'd been to couple of poetry workshops and we had a writing group that met once a month and we would review each other's work.
00:23:37
Speaker
So, you know, i was getting known in the poetry circles in Brisbane yeah and getting some good a good response. So I had a degree of confidence that what I was doing wasn't completely rubbish.
00:23:52
Speaker
And I'd always wanted to target this award because, you know, hidden very, very deep inside me and very effectively disguised is a certain amount of ambition.
00:24:04
Speaker
So I submitted for the award. Awesome. some And I was encouraged to do so by my my peers in poetry. So in there in you know all that you've spoken of that journey or that part of that journey, I'm kind of hearing things like having that team or I don't know, I suppose a community around you of people that were both interested in poetry and were supportive of you, which I am assuming is a mutually beneficial relationship in a writer's group, knowing I've not been in one.
00:24:33
Speaker
don't podcaster's group anywhere. But, you know, there's a risk involved in putting yourself out there with any of this creative work or just, you know, coming to a place where you don't know anyone.
00:24:45
Speaker
For people that have not done it before, knowing that I suspect you have done it in more ways than one now, how do they take that first step? Is it the Nike just do it or do you have a ah better version than that?
00:24:57
Speaker
No, I mean, ah so I think I was fortunate that Shane encouraged me. I mean, Shane was a is a very good performance poet and it's what he does for a living. So to have that, valid to you know, it's useful to get validation from people that you think are pretty good at what they do.
00:25:14
Speaker
So that, and he put me on stage and then and it was well received. So then that gives you a little bit of confidence. And then you just got to keep doing it, to be honest. you've just got to keep doing it. And youre ah yeah it is a...
00:25:26
Speaker
Every sort of creative enterprise is an exercise that reveals some of yourself. So Neil Gaiman, who's a very well-known writer, he's been successful across many different mediums, says writing is a bit like walking down the road with no clothes on.
00:25:45
Speaker
And if you're not prepared to do that, then you're probably not going to produce any decent writing because you need to be authentic and to reveal some of yourself. And I think that, I mean, that was a good piece of advice.
00:26:00
Speaker
You want to write and if you want to produce authentic material, which is going to resonate with an audience, you need to be honest and open and expose yourself. And that is a risk.
00:26:12
Speaker
So you need to be prepared to take the risk. And the risk of having it rejected as well? Well, that's a different risk. Anybody who writes who has not been rejected is just not writing enough and is just not sending it out there.
00:26:27
Speaker
So any surgeon that doesn't have complications hasn't done enough surgeries is the analogy that my medical brain is going to... Well, as an intensive care consultant told me when I gave someone pneumothorax by trying to put in a central line into their subclavian, if you haven't made a mistake, just haven't done enough of them.
00:26:44
Speaker
So the same principle applies into to writing. you know I mean, J.K. Rowling was rejected 20 odd times before her book was published. Stephen King had a pile of rejection slips that he used to put on a you know, like those iron spikes where people put receipts in restaurants. He hit had a huge stack of them. He would just keep sending them out and keep getting rejections and keep sending of them out and keep getting rejections. So there no there's no risk of rejection. There's a certainty of rejection. If you are going to be a creative artist in whatever discipline, you will get rejected.
00:27:16
Speaker
And that's also to be expected because not everybody will have the same take on everything that you produce. It would be a very boring world if that was the case. So it's just part of the process.
00:27:29
Speaker
Now I'm going to lead you to a different part, which I'm just wondering what part of self-awareness that one had brought is your blog, your
Passion for Cricket and Writing
00:27:36
Speaker
cricket blog. I mean, you loved cricket clearly, and you were a good writer by the sounds of it, even as early as that. So I haven't heard much about that from you. So I want to know a bit more about your cricket blog.
00:27:47
Speaker
Well, I mean, I no longer do it, but I used to write for as for ESPN, Crickinfo, which is the world's largest cricket website. And it came about because and i used to read that website, as many South Asian doctors do, I suspect, male South Asian doctors probably at least.
00:28:06
Speaker
very, very, very frequently. And there was a particular name that stood out because just a bit an unusual name. And one day in my consulting room, this person with this unusual name just walked into my consulting room as a patient.
00:28:18
Speaker
Oh, wow. So we spent a sort of desultory sort of five or 10 minutes talking about his medical problem. And then I said to him, are you the person who writes for Crickinfo?
00:28:29
Speaker
And he said yes. And I had just happened to have written at that point a cricket poem. So i showed it to him. And then we spent about 40 minutes talking about cricket and writing.
00:28:40
Speaker
So on that day, I'd say ran slightly late. Which sign posts for people is unusual for you. It's very unusual. Unlike the rest of us more mere mortals, Janaka. But yeah, keep going.
00:28:52
Speaker
Well, you know, we can talk about consultation as well. So what one's trying to achieve in the consultation or that kind stuff. Not for this podcast. Yep. So obviously you had an in to the crick info, yeah ESPN. Yep.
00:29:02
Speaker
Yeah, so then so then he said, he contacted me later and said, do you mind if for my next article, because he he was used to write for Cricket and for, you mind if I your poem up on, you know, obviously I'll credit you I'll put your poem up as as ah as ah as a piece. So then he put that up and then the next thing I knew i was getting contacted.
00:29:21
Speaker
by guy called Andrew Fernando, who was who is the proper cricket correspondent for ESPN, the the Sri Lankan voice. So they they have different voice for each nation. So he's the Sri Lankan voice.
00:29:32
Speaker
And Andrew, who I didn't know at the time, just contacted me via social media and said, you obviously know about cricket and you can obviously write, can you please come and join us on ESPN Cricket Info? Because basically I'm surrounded by Indians that and I'd love to have another Sri Lankan voice.
00:29:48
Speaker
So I then submitted a piece to the editor as a kind of sample piece and he liked it. And so i wrote them I wrote for them for about about two and a half years until my son was born.
00:29:59
Speaker
And then I dropped my editor a line saying, I've just had a baby. Can give few months just to find my feet? And clearly I was completely underestimating the impact of the baby on your life. So I sent him that email when Dysra was born and I have not been in touch with him since.
00:30:17
Speaker
right ah Yeah, so I think the bit of advice you suggest, I mean, I think we talked about blogging and the fact that you're putting, probably refers back to the same thing about writing that you said, is you're putting things out there that people will read and that you can't take back. So if you're somebody who's trying or thinking about any of these endeavors and you're unsure of where it is ah that you will land, I'm kind of considering the possibility that obviously not everyone will get to a stage of publication. How much do you think these things have contributed to your
00:30:49
Speaker
our well-being or self-care or whatever term you might use to describe what I think is a sense of peace and balance in life? think it depends where you're coming from, right? I mean, I think since I've had probably about a 40-year digression into medicine, but literature has always been my first love. where you know From when I was a very young boy, I was constantly had a book in my hand and I never really considered a career in in the humanities because I came from a very you know medical background.
00:31:23
Speaker
Both my parents were doctors and all their friends were doctors and everybody I knew was a doctor. So I'd never really considered anything else. But actually, i've always loved literature, i've always loved reading, and increasingly, I've loved writing.
00:31:37
Speaker
So, which is, you know, I don't, which is not to say that I'm disparaging medicine. But I think that for me, that's always been my first love and the act of creativity, the act of creation, act of bringing something into existence that was not there before you sat down with a piece of paper.
00:31:56
Speaker
and started scribbling away gives me more satisfaction than you know anything really outside family life. I've got a question here that is relevant to journey life journey, which is, I know we've discussed in the past about having this sense of flow or movement. you know If you're in the same place or the same environment for a certain physical period of time, there's that sense of restlessness that starts to come.
00:32:24
Speaker
And for people that are considering a move or a big life change or a life adventure, however you might want to call it, what would your tips be in terms of what they need to do before they take that leap of faith of, you know move countries, change careers, you know, start a new big venture, whatever it is?
00:32:45
Speaker
So i think the first thing to say is that that sensation of restlessness that described does not come to everybody I mean, there are some people who are perfectly happy being in one place for and they get a great sense of satisfaction for that so from that.
00:32:59
Speaker
So I think it's very, know, everything starts with knowing yourself. it's It's important to know yourself, to know who you are and what you need.
00:33:10
Speaker
I am someone who changes a lot. and You know, my medical career has gone through various different phases from hospital medicine to repatriation to general practice to in the UK to general practice in Australia to local general practice to now this I'm really quite not sure what it is, but I live in Sweden and do some work in in Australia and do some other things. And I've got no idea where it's going, but it's it' it's the journey for me.
00:33:37
Speaker
All of these situations have started really with a sensation of, ah cannot keep doing what I'm doing because no longer satisfies me and I therefore need to do something else. So that's the starting point.
00:33:51
Speaker
Where that takes me is often happenstance, I think, to be honest, as as much as anything else. I'm not sure that there's, can't, I'd love to say that there was a really well-crafted, thought-out, logical sequence of events that's led me to take every step that I've taken and that it's leading me to an end point, which is going to be the ultimate spot to end up in. But that's just a plain lie.
00:34:15
Speaker
I mean, I think I have just, I moved to Australia because I wanted to get away from the NHS. I've moved now to Sri Lanka because I wanted to spend some time in the country of my birth and I wanted my son to have some time in the country of my birth and to spend some time with his family and learn his religion and learn his language. and So I suppose there's just been things that I've wanted to do and I've just decided to go ahead and do them. I think once you decide to do something, the actual mechanics of how you do it can fall into place, which is just a process then.
00:34:48
Speaker
But the the big thing is making the decision, are you willing to make the change? ah Once you've decided that you're going to make the change, actually the mechanics of it, it's just, it is it's very it's a mechanical process.
00:35:01
Speaker
ah Okay, so we normally end these podcasts with me asking or coming up with three words and you having to respond with whatever you can think of, a thought, ah another word in response to it, whatever comes to mind.
00:35:14
Speaker
And Janak has like, Srishti, what are you doing? But that's fine. You can give me feedback later. me feedback now. No, not yet. I'm going to do my thing here. Okay. I keep forgetting that we can edit this. That's why I keep forgetting. That's true.
00:35:28
Speaker
For you, the three words are, I'm going to start with the first one, IMG. Well, I think that has very negative connotations because it it's perceived in a very negative way. And I think it's a completely unnecessary acronym.
00:35:42
Speaker
Creativity. Well, creativity is life. My name actually means creative. So, Janaka, if you go back to the Sanskrit.
00:35:55
Speaker
but I think creative in the sort of progenitor sense of the word rather than in the artistic sense of the word. But nevertheless, I think creativity is the lifeblood of everything. And the last one, belonging.
00:36:11
Speaker
There is no answer to that word, Srishti. I mean, that's something that probably people like me who have moved countries at a very young age, i was four and three quarters when I left Sri Lanka for the UK.
00:36:28
Speaker
I think people like me who have moved countries at a very young age and then grown up in challenging and alien, at times, environments,
00:36:39
Speaker
That search for belonging is a lifelong search. Thank you for sharing that. As you know, we moved from the UK to Australia when my daughter was around that age as well. So, yeah, I think I kind of sometimes see that reflected in ah around me, but hearing it from you has ah positive connotation for me.
00:36:58
Speaker
So thank you for sharing it. Thank you for having listened to this episode of Medical Flyways. I hope you've enjoyed this episode and will return for future ones as well.
00:37:09
Speaker
We would like to give you the opportunity to nominate a guest or any person you feel who is a suitable guest and who may have inspired you in your workplace or journey.
00:37:21
Speaker
So please leave us a comment and we will attempt to invite them to our podcast.