I resolve for the 56392th time to blog.

I have a new resolution to blog once a week.

Actually made this resolution about 3 months ago, and it just took this long to make it official. Today I just happened to open up this blog, read some of the past entries, and remembered how I've always liked keeping a written record of what goes on in my life. Usually none of the entries are about anything significant, but remembering the details about an observation I made, an intricacy that moved me somehow, is enlightening in its own way. I've toyed with the utility of this blog: so far it has served as a repository of scattered experiences that may have little value for my readers (all 3 of them). I decided against making it a "Medical School Blog" (like there aren't enough of those already), and neither will it be a "what I had for breakfast" kind of personal blog. For now it will continue to serve its purpose as a collection of ideas, thoughts, a strange loop in ever-expanding cyberspace.

Stay tuned.

Bucket List Item

One of these days, once I convince myself that one meal is worth hundreds of dollars, I will dine here. It's in Napa Valley, they create new menus daily, Anthony Bourdain has called it the best restaurant in the world, and they grow their own vegetables. The website also has one of the best quotations about food:

"When you acknowledge as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving towards perfection becomes clear; to make people happy. That's what cooking is all about."
-Thomas Keller

Maturity.

Sometimes I wonder how these young kids in my class deal with life. The ones who are like 21 or 22, straight out of college, who believe their volunteer positions and club leaderships constitute real life experiences. I wonder what kind of perspective they have when they have never left the institutional bubble, lived outside a slightly artificial environment, or known what it is like to be responsible for someone other than themselves.

This isn't about critiquing their lack of maturity (I don't have that much more of a leg up) as much as commenting on my own maturational development. I used to think, as a college senior, that I had overgrown my bubble. I thought I was too old for frat parties, too old for dinning hall food, too old for a town that had one street, and too old for putting effort into a grade. I wanted to use my skills to make something real, set and meet my own goals, and have a home-cooked meal at the end of the day. It was like all of a sudden I had a growth spurt and I needed new (and classier, not made disgusting by Hanover weather) shoes to fill.

What followed in my first few months out of college were some valuable lessons, mainly to show that as much as college tries to prepare you for life, it is not quite enough. Like how it didn't warn me not to drive a 11' U-Haul truck into a garage with a 9' height limit. It taught me shit about apartment hunting. It didn't show me how to fill out taxes or separate colors for laundry (I still don't). Luckily I learned fast and managed to change a few things in my life that distinguish the pre-real life from the post-real life me. For example, I have and wear jewelry and perfume. I used my neighborhood dry cleaning as well as shoe repair services (thanks Boston cobblestone streets). I don't eat second dinners consisting of fried mozzarella sticks from FoCo, or order mediocre pizza from EBAs at 1:45 a.m. I exercise on a regular basis. I know that the difference between a good and crappy job is not what grade I got but how much of myself, my thoughts, and my personality I put into my work. I don't have as much disdain as I used to for the North Face and pearls. I drink good beer.

I could definitely continue but the point is not to contrast and compare the way a makeover reality show would do. Maturity is evolutional in that it doesn't happen overnight. Being back in school after a hiatus is very different this time around, and I have the past two years to thank for that. Even if I'm still a work in progress, I'm more grounded, balanced, and most of all I know what I want to get out of this mess that we call life. And I don't have to completely stop eating ramen.

Medical Student Syndrome

I'll admit it; I totally have it.

The three dizzy spells I've ever had in my life were temporal lobe seizures; the stomach ache that kept me in bed for a day was acute gastroenteritis, which led to my compromised immune system being infected by a coronavirus (or perhaps adenovirus); my friend has been diagnosed with second degree heart block; her roommate has bipolar (but seriously, she's a nut); I've had tinea pedis as well as capitis; and now I'm convinced I most likely have venous stasis because I spend so much time sitting down.

NYC

I can't stop thinking about this weekend. Chris and I are celebrating our anniversary, and my very belated birthday, in NYC! Earlier this week, I went crazy planning, and as a result, here is our delicious itinerary:

Friday:
6 p.m. - Get into Penn Station, check into our hotel, have a glass (or bottle) of wine with some crackers
10:30 p.m. - Reservations for restaurant week at Aquavit for some succulent Scandinavian cuisine.

Saturday
12 p.m. - Meet up with peeps at Penn Station, walk around, perhaps explore Crumb, visit the Met.
5:30 p.m. - Reservations for happy hour at Mermaid Inn in Greenwich Village. $1 oysters, hollaaaa
8:30 p.m. - 8th Street Wine Cellar around the corner (can't wait to try their Montmayou Malbec).
11:00 p.m. - Angie's house party in Chelsea. She's making mulled wine.

Sunday
12:00 p.m. - Dim sum at Jing Fong
1:30 p.m. - Brain exhibit at AMNH
Before getting on my bus - Trip to stock up at Trader Joe's

Soooooooooooooo excited!!!!!!

The Man Who Ate Everything

The short story is my new best friend. At a phase in my life when I lack the time (or perhaps motivation) to even shave my legs, the last thing I want to do is to throw myself into a chapter of a complex novel. So I read short stories.

The book that I am reading right now is awesome: it's a collection of vignettes from a former food critic for Vogue. I love books about food, especially when they explore it in different cultural and scientific contexts (as Pollan does in The Botany of Desire). An excerpt from the story titled "Ripeness is All":

"Eternal vigilance is the price of ripeness. Make it a habit to return unripe fruit. Throw a scene if need be. Your message may reach the wholesaler or the grower. For the smallest fruit, here's a handy tip: When nobody is looking, remove a berry from its little basket and conceal it in your palm. With your other hand, quickly wheel your shopping cart into a dark corner of, say, the cheese department and pop the berry into your mouth. Chew. Appraise its texture, sweetness, aromatic flavor compounds, and seediness. Then decide whether to invest in an entire basket. But first buy some cheese. You can never have enough good ripe cheese."

Cannot wait to indulge in some home-cooked meals in T-4 days!

Happy Holidays to you all

Cavarium, meninges, and brain.

I had the honor of dissecting our cadaver, T.S.'s brain today. The skull had been cut two centimeters up from the orbital fossa and occipital protruberance, and once it was chiseled away and the dura was severed, I was able to hold T.S.'s entire past life in my hands. His most fond memories, his hopes and fears, everything that made him the person he was, was contained in that epiphenomenon, his brain.

No one describes as well, in my opinion, the insanity of how organic matter such as a brain becomes a person's consciousness and projection onto others, as Hofstadter does in A Strange Loop. As I was dissecting, I was learning the anatomy and the physiology but also completely baffled by how they once came together to first sustain life, then spark consciousness, then create an identity that could change and evolve, and finally cross and intermingle with other minds. Just like how a ripple starts out as a drop of water.

These moments in my studies really humble me, when I realize how we will never be able to come close to understanding something so elegantly complex that just happens, without our knowledge or action, effortlessly and naturally.