After joining St John Ambulance Glebe Division less than a year ago I have found myself growing to love the wonderful family there more and more. We have good times, we work ourselves off our feet until we want to all go to sleep on eachother’s shoulders and even though we do this voluntarily we always keep coming back for more.

You can imagine my surprise and delight when last week during our awards presentation I was called up to receive the 2010 proficiency award. It is the first award that I have received that has not only given me a plaque but also has my name engraved on the trophy which sits in the trophy cabinet at the Glebe divisional hall.

I would like to thank Brian and Josh (our Divisional Commander and 2IC respectively) for giving me this award and colouring me tickled pink and I look forward to many many more war stories this year.

Speaking Of St John Glebe

While we are here I would like to mention that I am now writing both a blog and a twitter account for St John Ambulance Glebe Division, you can check out the Official SJAGlebe Blog here or follow us (me) on twitter @SJAGlebe.

We are always looking for new members so if you want to keep up to date with what we are doing you can follow the blog on Facebook as well.

Stuart

Sadly it comes down to the very simple, sometimes it is just the stupidity of the human brain and not AutoCorrect that causes funnies.

Case and point:

Stuart

I have been in hiding since well before Christmas, or more to the point I have been busily working doing a lot of overtime at work to support the other task that has been keeping me busy… APARTMENT HUNTING!!!

After spending  a few good weekends hunting around and visiting many a property it looks like I might have found the place, the contract is with the solicitor which is awesome so I guess time will tell.

But needless to say I am still alive and when I have some meaningful things to post… this blog will be the second to know!

Stuart

All within a period no greater than a week I went from having all the hair on my head to losing more than half the hair on my head and face for a great cause. As anyone who knows me will be able to tell you I am never one to shy away from a challenge and that is especially true when I can raise funds for charity.

My workmates and friends took great pleasure in making me work hard for more than $1000AUD that I raised towards the Movember cause. So below for your viewing pleasure is the photos and video of my adventures into losing more than half the hair on my head for a great charity cause.

If you get a laugh out of this and would like to donate to the cause it is not too late please visit my Movember page on the official Movember website where you can make a donation.

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While this post may be quite overdue (I do apologise I have been really busy) in early October I had the great privilege of attending a 10 day Camp as a St John Volunteer.
The 10 day camp was based at Singleton Military Base and was a camp for ~3500 Army Cadets to learn valuable life skills and get out into the wilderness for a week.

While on the camp I was lucky enough to be able to some of my first ever treatments of casualties including one casualty that was slipping in and out of consciousness, another that we were treating for hyperventilation and many more.

The camp I have since found out allows the St John Ambulance Volunteers that attend get experience unlike any other that they would get elsewhere.

Through out the week I learned not only a lot about my colleagues but also about myself as well and in particular my ability within myself to handle extremely stressful situations and get the job done and focus when times were most stressful and the pressure was on.

I made many new friends and was able to grow closer to the people in my division.

On the aside St John has been a large part of my life in recent weeks and that has been keeping me out of trouble. There is some very fun stuff coming up so I will try to keep you all posted with any new developments.
Stuart