Pg_ctl promote -- wait for slave to be promoted fully ?

Hi team,

I am using PG 9.1.2 and I am promoting a slave to master with the
following command.

pg_ctl promote -D /pat/to/data

Command does return back faster with code 0 ( = success). I assumed the
slave is now the master and issued write operations. But the statement
failed as the DB complained that it can do only read operation.
Postgres.log showed "ready to accept connection" a second later after I
issued the statement. So, my understanding is "pg_ctl promote" is
triggering a slave promote and is "asynchornous".

-- Anyway I can query the state of DB to know its status slave or master
?? So, that i can issue write statements only after I know that the DB
is the new master now

-- Or anyway to make pg_ctl promote to wait till the slave is completely
promoted ?

Any help is appreciated.

--
thanks,
Manoj