What is the Question – January

For the first What is the Question of 2023, Roland chats with ear, nose, throat and head and neck surgeon, Mark Guirguis.

 

What is your name?

Mark Guirguis.

 

What is your occupation?

Surgeon.

 

What brought you to Ballarat?

Establishing the Grampians Region Head and Neck Cancer Service in 2005. Opportunity to live a country life.

 

What is your favourite spot in the city?

Sitting in the sun having a short macchiato outside L’Espresso.

 

What is the best decision ever you have made?

Marrying my wife, Carolyn. We met at a mutual friend’s wedding back in 1994. We got married in March of 2000.

 

What do you like to cook?

Paella. It’s a beautiful dish to share with friend and family. I cooked it for Catriona Rowntree.

 

What building would you choose to be?

The British Museum. I love the history, the architecture, and the role it plays in society.

 

What is your most treasured possession?

My Leica Q Camera. I have taken up photography in the last four years.

 

What is your favourite quote?

“If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward.”

 

What person – living or dead would invite to dinner party?

The Queen. She had seen it all.

 

What technological/scientific development boggles your mind?

Artificial intelligence.

 

What qualities do you admire in other people?

Leadership; taking a position and always looking out for other people.

 

What was your first job?

Weekend store manager at Brian’s Paint Spot in Windsor. I went in for a part time job. I wore a suit, and they gave me the weekend manager’s job.

 

What scares you?

The way that people believe they are experts in everything by using the internet – and the way that people’s opinions are formed by social media.

 

What was the name of your favourite teacher – and why?

Christine Samsuri – my year 12 English teacher. She was half my height but could still make me shake in my boots.

 

What phase did you go through in high school?

Trying to emulate Michael Jackson.

 

What is your all-time favourite book?

The Richest Man in Babylon by George S Clason.

 

What is your favourite smell?

A candle – Ernesto by Cire Trudon.

 

What is something about you which is still the same as when you were a child?

I always finish everything on my plate.

 

What would your childhood-self think of you today?

He’d be very proud of the person he had become.

Outside of medicine, my escape from the everyday is my passion for the arts.

Carolyn and I sponsored the Guirguis New Art Prize (GNAP) in Ballarat from 2013-2019 and are patrons of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale; also, I am a Trustee of the Art Gallery of Ballarat Foundation.

I have a great interest in gourmet food and when I’m not cooking, I can be found checking out the latest dining opportunities in Melbourne with Carolyn and any combination of our four children – Sam, Hannah, Sarah and Andrew.

I’ve also developed a recent love for Pilates and spin cycle classes, so you may catch me on a Sunday morning – in lycra – having a coffee on Sturt Street.