Saturday, October 28, 2006

nerdy things i do

recently started eating cereal again. mostly to save money on my off weeks. eat a little cereal for lunch, save some money. also not as high in salt and fat as other stuff i usually eat for lunch. need to keep the blood pressure as low as possible for the good insurance rates, you know. i can worry about the diabetes and heart disease later. cereal itself is kinda pricey, however. freakin' $4 for a small box. favorite cereals growing up: cookie crisp, lucky charms, cap'n crunch crunchberry. cereals i liked but got soggy too fast: sugar smacks (reminds me of calvin's (of calvin and hobbes fame) fav cereal--chocolate frosted sugar bombs), frosted flakes, fruity pebbles, golden grahams (awesome...probably ate this cereal for 3 years straight and had to eat it real fast before the sogginess set in). cereals i didn't really get: corn pops, grape nuts (probably the first "try to be healthy" cereal). possibly my favorite of all-time? the discovered-as-an-adult choco zucaritas (chocolate frosted flakes) that we ate every day in venezuela during a medical missions trip 7 years ago. left you with chocolatey milk at the end, more than the cookie crisp. any cereal that does that is a bonus. of course, someone more a nerd than me has a website...
http://www.inthe80s.com/cereal.shtml

speaking of cereals, what's up with this new fruity cheerios? what a ripoff. can you say froot loops?

another nerd move: watching syndicated scrubs episodes lately on the ol' dvr. there was an episode where brendan frazier stars. you get a glimpse of j.d. looking at the chart and saying he has leukemia. of course, i get curious as to what exactly the chart says and when i pause on it, i realize that it's actually an echo report. had this been a high-def version, you would even be able to make out the guy's name and soc sec #. who do they think they're fooling?

also had a dream recently that i was on jeopardy. steamy dreams about hot chicks in hot tubs? no way, not for me. i'll take ancient religious history for $400, alex.

other things that grind my gears: people who say regime when they say regimen--fairly common in the medical field, e.g., what antibiotic regime are they taking? well, doctor hitler has them on....

and now for the obligatory halloween pics of my nephew and niece. i already told my sister-in-law that the m&m outfit was bordering on child abuse and dfacs reportable.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

of scrubs and sellouts

the sellout would be my fellow blogger bort. now that he's some bigshot in a heme/onc pathology fellowship at a university to be unnamed on the left coast, he has to strip his blog to nearly nothing, even neuter it dare i say, in order to secure a much brighter future than he's had to this point. either blog with all your heart or don't blog at all! yeah, i'm a bigshot, too, a hospitalist here in...ummm...and remember, i'm making all this up in case anyone tries to sue me.

the scrubs part is one of my favorite clips that i've kept in my head for years and now am able to play over and over thanks to youtube. it has colin hay of men at work fame singing in it. the first link is a spliced clip that tries to combine his whole singing part, the second link has only the first half but a little more that didn't get chopped off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JPzi1Su9T4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ45xrtNnzk

techno update
recently got a new cellphone thanks in part to a sprint upgrade program and a credit for the phone i exchanged it with. it's a samsung a640, nothing toooo fancy but much better than the old one. it has bluetooth so i can walk around like most people looking retarded with a wireless headset while i'm NOT talking. but more importantly, i can exchange phone numbers with my palm so i always have a backup and never have to spend time writing down these numbers again. fyi, usually you can have your numbers in your old phone uploaded by a service person and then downloaded to your new phone but my old one was old enough they couldn't do it so i spent like 15 min in the store writing down all my old numbers. now if i can just get that sanford & son ringtone.

also bought a new mp3 player and i'm a rare one who did not buy an ipod. i bought a creative zen vision:m, 30 gb. why, you say? well, until yesterday i would have told you because it has a much longer battery life while playing videos and the display is much better with 4x the color display of the ipod and because i still have commitment anxiety about switching to apple/mac only. of course i pay for it a little bit because most music, tv shows, videos you can purchase online are through itunes and can ONLY be played on ipods. bast***s. i already knew about that but as if that's not enough, ipod just came out with a new 80 gb y'day for $349, which means their 30 gb is cheaper now at $249 and with a fairly comparable battery life to mine. oh well. i'm still happy with it.

sept 11
another anniversary has passed. my wife said i should write a remembrance (which i already planned). where was i? i was in an anesthesiology rotation in med school, i think in between cases when i saw the tv after the first plane crashed and people were giving me an update. of course i thought like most people and figured some small commuter plane went awry and crashed into it. i think i was still at work when the other plane hit and the towers collapsed. i then spent nearly every waking hour the next week watching the news, flabbergasted, teary-eyed at times. i recently saw part of the united flight 93 documentary and we really do forget. it's human nature but americans are particularly susceptible to it. we forget the palpable fear that gripped the entire nation. we forget what that felt like, the enormity of the situation. can you believe that the entire airspace in this country was closed down for a time? the thought of what happened those last minutes in all the planes, the ability to think clearly enough to plan a cockpit attack on the terrorists while in a moment of terror yourself, the thought of what the target of flight 93 really was and what could have happened....

Thursday, September 07, 2006

i am one of the "italians of asia"

more news from the homefront thanks to the ever vigilant, fellow-blogger bort who passed this along.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083002985.html
i remember reading about the "korean wave" i think in a wall street journal article in the past year. korean pop culture is permeating all of asia. man, maybe i need to move back. here i still get confused with all the other asian doctors in the hospital.

if you happen to read this article (and i don't know why you wouldn't as i always provide you, the reader, with scintillating stories), there's a link in there with some photos highlighting the "korean wave." look at the top right of the 2nd picture. you see a throng of similar height asian women and then bam! there's one like 2 feet taller than everyone else. ha.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

more koree news

man, apologies to my fans. i can't believe it's been several weeks since the last post. been randomly busy with work at times. what do i do? i am a (an?) hospitalist. my background is internal medicine and i see patients exclusively in the hospital. in the old days, your doctor would see you in the clinic and if you ever got sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, he (and eventually she...ha!) would see you there as well--continuity of care. well, in our modern times of reimbursement, laziness, money, money, and money, and many other reasons, medical care is splitting not only into specialties by organ/disease systems but also location--outpatient and inpatient care. i'm on the inpatient side. what does this have to do with korean news? nothing. it's just a prelude. anyway, my schedule is i work a week, 12 hours/day then i have a week off. i know everyone out there thinks this is such a glorious schedule. now don't get me wrong, there could be worse things in life but until you try it, you don't realize how tiring it can be. "oh, that's awesome, it's basically just 42 hours averaged out over 2 weeks so it's like regular job hours." how many times do i hear that? well you know what, it's NOT averaged out. you can't average out working. i'm bustin' my...chops for a week then i crash. it's like that tortoise and the hare story and you know who won that won. hmmm, who did win it? anyway, that's beside the point. more about the job later and how we're heading for a health care crisis.

pet peeves words: "irregardless" and "mute point" as in "irregardless of the reason, it's a mute point." if you don't know what i'm talking about, don't bother.

so usa b-ball (and b-ball always refers to basketball, not baseball for some reason) beat korea something like 116-63. not sure the korees are ready for primetime athletics. although for some reason they are good at speed skating and archery in the olympics. can anyone explain that? well, there was a bit of redemption and here it is...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjA5faZF1A8
if you're into music (is anyone NOT into any kind of music? it's like that comedian i heard once..."yeah, this girl i went out with once told me she's not into music. like, not into music? it's like someone saying 'yeah, i don't really like color that much.'"), this video will be a pleaser. there was an article in the ny times recently about it (search "funtwo") and they eventually were able to identify the player and it's this korean kid (i say kid but he's like 23 but looks 15...ahh, that youthful asian skin) who basically taught himself guitar over the past 5-6 years.

the guy on the right is the real "funtwo." who's the kid on the left? some slacker wannabe who actually claimed to be the guitarist on the video! i mean, how pathetic is that??? man, the pressure and lack of self-esteem that kid must feel to think that he needed to fake being someone else in order to be a somebody. so much more to write but it's almost 3 am. time, not for bed but a movie before bed. i have to adjust my hours because i have the night shift coming next week. that sucks.

Monday, August 07, 2006

more paris















here are some before and after pictures with our "swiss miss lady" (denise acabo) as i named her. my friend and i met her on our first trip to paris. that pic is first. her shop was right down the street from where we stayed so we stopped by her place every day on the way to or from the metro. on our recent adventure we were able to swing by her shop again. that's the second pic, me and two of my favorite ladies. ha! of course she speaks no english and i no french but my friend's fiancee translated for us and as my wife pointed out, when we went in this time i spoke in my "speaking to a 'foreigner'" voice--loud, slow, truncated, nouns and verbs only, no articles ("i here 8 year ago."). i actually brought a picture of her to paris but didn't know we would be in the area that day or else i would have brought it with me. anyway, she told me to come back 8 years later with my kids. awww, how sweet. here's a cool "review" of her place with some more info...
http://chocolateandzucchini.com/archives/2004/02/letoile_dor.php

koreans, koreans everywhere...
one thing i found funny was how many koreans there were ("not that there's anything wrong with that"). i'm not just talking about the major sites but everywhere we went, even at the table next to us on our last night out to eat. i always wonder how they find their way around when they don't speak or read a lick of french or english. so resourceful. shows you how far you can get by pointing and with hand gestures. i mean, how exactly do they find their way to chartres?

paris is similar to the u.s. in terms of its populace--blacks, whites, yellows, etc. so it took a little getting used to hearing everybody speak french. i see the same looking people there that i see here so obviously, growing up here, i expect them to speak english (or korean) but they don't. i see some asian brothers walk down the street and they're speaking french. i see some brother brothers walking down the street and they're speaking french. at times i just wanted to yell out "what up, dawwwg!" just to see if they understood me.

hotels
if you're planning on a trip to paris and a cool, comfortable environment means anything to you, get a room with a/c, especially in a summer like this when it's hot everywhere. the nights are okay but the rooms will get hot during the day and it's hard to take a power nap like that. more places seem to have a/c but a lot of others still don't, even some of the nicer ones. the first 5 days we stayed at the holiday inn garden court auteuil in arr. 16. it's toward the edge of town so it took 10-20 min on the metro to get to the sites but the neighborhood was pretty cool and the metro stop was literally a stone's throw away. the last night we stayed at the best western lorette opera down the street from swiss miss lady's place in arr. 9 so the location was fabulous. both places had a/c (although our at the holiday inn didn't work but it was one of the better views and not too hot so we didn't bother changing), english-speaking staff, and were relatively clean. the bw was a very charming little hotel. read my reviews on tripadvisor...heh heh. just trying to get my name out there.

in between the two we stayed at le quai fleuri where the wedding reception was held. it was world cup time again and we got to see france beat spain and brazil while we were there. the brazil match was actually during the reception so when i noticed a number of empty chairs later in the night, i had to slip out and "use the bathroom" for about half an hour and watch the end of the game at the bar with the rest of the people...i mean use the bathroom. of course they won so everybody was in an even better mood and we partied all night. i even introduced them (at my friend's request) to a little nyc style breakdancing. it's a little tougher with dress shoes on. no suicide flip this time.

various
i think i even forgot to mention that i had foie gras (goose liver) at the reception, thus breaking my streak of not eating internal organs. i thought it had a cheesy quality to it and it was actually pretty good (and good compared to others i'm told) but i just couldn't get the idea out of my head that i was eating liver. i made it a general guideline years ago not to eat internal organs so it broke my heart when i learned that sausage casing was intestine-derived. well, there are exceptions to every rule. actually, i think most now are artificial but still, i'll turn a blind eye for a good sausage or steak. i also forgot to mention that we had this awesome lavendar champagne at the rehearsal dinner (tiny, tiny bubbles). yeah.

and what's up with all the female indian beggars in paris? at any of the major sites they are very aggressive and hound you, asking if you speak english and ask for money for their kids who are at home (who's taking care of them???). it's easy for me just to look like a foreigner and throw out the ol' "no speaka englisha."

more random paris memories and my new job coming soon.

Monday, July 24, 2006

those crazy japanese!

here are some nice pics from some random person i have never met. i'm not even sure how i eventually got to their link but those crazy japanese are at it again. yes folks, it's the festival of the steel phallus!
http://flickr.com/photos/megadem/sets/72057594104220700/

in other news, looks like evolutionary theory has reached a milestone. everyone, guard your pet monkeys.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-barash17jul17,1,4797109.story

Friday, July 21, 2006

breaking news!

in a recent article in the anals (pun intended) of internal medicine, researchers from the u of chicago no less, a premier institution, have discovered that interns have significant improvement in alertness when they take naps during overnight call. what an amazing discovery! forget research into cancer or heart disease, we need more dollars into this! i mean, i never knew that napping could actually help. wow.

sometimes i think that people in the medical community are idiots. the evidence-based medicine movement, although it is the best medicine we have, is partly a reflection of this (i will have to comment more on that at another time). i don't need a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blinded study to tell me that moving my bowels more than once a week makes me feel better. i should start publishing my own journal. sorry to be so blunt. anyway, check out the story at...
http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/site/free/prsb0717.htm

more on my new job and paris later.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006


thoughts about paris (not hilton)

so, my wife and i were in paris a couple of weeks ago. what can i say? i thought it'd be easier if i broke it down by category.

environment
the only other time i was in paris was 1998. i was boarding the plane as france won the world cup. pretty cool. the take-home message last time was that the whole city smelled of urine. this time the theme was dog poop. maybe i didn't notice it last time due to the pervasive smell of urine with which i was fixated but i mean there was dog poop freakin' everywhere. see pic for a representative sample. "pooper scooper" is not a word in the french dictionary...and not because it's an american term!

food
probably one of the more important things for me. the last time we were there, the food was excellent. we found a restaurant (la cloche d'or--the golden bell) near our hotel where we went to a few times, right down the street from the moulin rouge. i later found out it was a pretty big hangout for famous folks, including francois mitterand. plenty of little shops with tasty gyros around as well. this time it seems the food wasn't as good. granted, we did eat at brasseries most of the time. it would be like if you visited the u.s. and ate at tgi fridays or some other chain all the time--okay food but nothing special. i'm sure if we went to some nicer places it would have been better but the few nicer places we did go to were still nothing remarkable. the exchange rate didn't help either. what is normally a cheaper place was much more expensive than the last time. the coffee was outstanding, though, pretty much everywhere as was the bread. wine is cheaper than water or coke so we had plenty. the coke was typically ~$5 per glass!!!

people
i guess overall the french people probably get a bad rap as being rude. my experience overall is that they're not too bad. most people everywhere speak at least a little bit of english, enough for you to get by, and if you make a little bit of an effort to use even the smallest amount of french, they usually appreciate it and are nicer to you. what pisses them (and me) off is when someone starts mouthing off in english, expecting everyone to understand them and get angry if people don't. having said that, don't get me wrong, the french should still and always should be very appreciative that we and the brits saved their asses from the nazis in ww2. speaking english i'm sure is more favorable than speaking german to them.

i did find it interesting that there aren't a lot of chains there, particularly in the restaurant field. in korea you'll see starbucks, baskin-robbins, popeyes, etc all over but i can't actually recall seeing a single restaurant chain. there are brasseries and cafes all over the place so i doubt they would do well in that kind of market.

sites
we hit all the usual stuff--everything from the louvre up to sacre coeur and back (due to time constraints we actually didn't even go into the louvre), notre dame, eiffel tower, st. chappelle, arc de triomphe, moulin rouge. we took a day trip to the d-day sites in normandy, a must see if you can. the american cemetery was amazing and a few miles west of there is pont du hoc where the army rangers scaled some cliffs and held off the germans for a couple of days. when you see what they climbed up you realize what a bunch of bad asses they were. unbelievable.

one of the main reasons we went was a friend's wedding outside of chartres and i would have to say that if you do plan on going to paris, the cathedral at chartres is also a must see. it's ~1 hour southwest of paris and the notre dame of paris is so crowded it's hard to enjoy. the notre dame of chartres is just as amazing with a smaller crowd. it also gives you an opportunity to enjoy the countryside and the local feel of france.

life
the cars are tiny. after some problems, i heard on clark howard that mercedes is bringing the smart car to the u.s. check out this video of a simulated crash...not pretty! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5217861/
driving is a trip, probably worse than korea. there are no lanes, pretty much no rules, and the roundabouts are crazy. diesel gas, which our rentals used, was about $6.50 or so per gallon.

i certainly did get a sense of our hurried culture in the u.s. while i was there, particularly with dining. some things in france are slow--not that that's necessarily bad, it's just how they want it and how everyone is used to things being. when people eat, they expect it to be a time of relaxing and hanging out and the service is probably slower as a result of that. there's not much of eating quickly and getting out. you can sit there for hours and you won't get evil eyes from the wait staff to make you leave so that they can make more money off the next guy. also, it's such a conversational culture that the tables are tiny so you're obligated to be close to your dining partner and talk. i remember eating at the chick-fil-a here when i got back and thinking that i was so far away from my wife!

well, i'm getting tired so i'll have to continue other thoughts later. i also started my new job so i will write about that later as well.

Friday, July 07, 2006

i'm baaaack!

man, lots to talk/write about but before i do that, you have to read about a new breed of people i recently heard about on neal boortz: the "sausage casing girls" from the l.a. times, july 4.

http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-et-tightclothes4jul04,1,2496518.story

if the link doesn't work, it would be in your best interest to even go to the paper's site, register and search for this article!

Friday, June 23, 2006

AMC Skit 2006

we just had our graduation last week and have taped a skit the past 2 years. feel free to view it at your leisure. if you're not a doctor or in our program, it may be of limited use to you but the genre still brings it universal appeal.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9899695653382311

going to paris tomorrow!!!

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Yahoo!

i have so much to write but i just wanted to spend this moment to let everyone know that i hate yahoo and it sucks!!! it hurts to say that since one of the creators of yahoo (david filo) is a tulane engineering alum, as am i. in addition to the security at work which makes internet usage in general rough, i frequently have problems uploading attachments to email only on yahoo. even at work, no probs with my gmail or hotmail accounts but i would say easily half the times on yahoo i have to reload the attachments. the gripe currently is that i can't even logon to my email for the past 1/2 hour, which would be nice to do to get my hertz #1 club member number so i can freakin' reserve this car for our trip to paris. frea-kin' yahoo!

notice my displeasure...

Sunday, June 11, 2006

ignore this one

back in the old days of the blogger, you had to have an account to leave a comment so i created a guest account for people to leave comments and when this thing got updated, that guest spot got called "duvnet" for some unknown reason. soooo, i'm getting rid of the duvnet comments because it's showing up as a contributor to the blog and preventing my profile from showing on my homepage. all that to say here's one i wanted to keep on the records.

from bort, 2/24/03: Dr tanna banana lim, i enjoy your lively comments expecially about things that appear so random. I would LOVE for you to post your memoirs that you have amassed in your "journal" during those oh so busy medschool days. Honestly, how u found the time to write down all those things among the hours of sleeping and eating i would never know ( oh wait a minute, i was there eating too...and i remotely remember crashing on that "luxurious" leather sofa). Anyways, keep it up.peace out dog!your B'ham oriental breathren..the fatter one.
PS: will you just pay for the BlogSpot Plus account!..i wanna see pictures...even the salacious neked ones.
of chinese food and beaches

okay, so a quick myrtle update. we went a couple of weeks ago with karen's fam, actually to surfside beach which is a few minutes south of the main myrtle beach. it's apparently more of a family-oriented area, a little quieter, not quite as red as myrtle. we stayed in a house just a couple of blocks from the beach, www.vrbo.com/59437 if you ever want to stay there--great spot, nice house, private pool.

did a little golf a couple of days at http://www.deertrack.com/ and http://www.indigocreekgolfclub.com/ both near surfside. the first place would have been nice had they not just aerated the course--sand all over the greens and they were working on the fairways, too. fortunately we had a coupon ($20 off of ~$50 although the internet told me it was only $30 at the time). we didn't physically have the coupon because i forgot to bring it but the guy let us have it anyway. i didn't realize until the next day that the coupon was actually for the other course! oopsies. oh well, it was barely worth the $30 to play there as it was with all the maintenance going on. the second place was very nice--narrow, challenging, nice greens, great bargain.

we were sandwiched between "white biker week" and "black biker week" (unofficial, of course). the whiteys were mostly on their harleys, the brothers on the "crotch rockets" so if you don't like a lot of bikers, don't go before memorial day!

ate at the original benjamin's calabash restaurant. i've decided that i don't want 115 items on the buffet of average quality and 5 real good items. just give me your highest quality items and i'll take only 60, heck, even 30 items on the buffet! i know that's almost heresy as a buffet connoisseur but i need to go with my heart. normally i don't eat a lot of crab at restaurants because it's so messy but this time i had to make them pay because karen't didn't eat much. i think i ate 5 or 6 claw bunches and that was after eating the other food. definitely got our money's worth. karen says i need more pics on here so here you go...


the calm before the storm...so happy and hungry


note the hands--glistening from the crab juice with pieces of crab
stuck on. very full by this point.

speaking of eating, got delivery from a chinese restaurant the other day and it didn't charge me a delivery fee but a $1 fuel charge! what the heck is that? so if i'm quickly looking at the bill in order to tip the guy, i don't see a delivery charge so i'm more likely to give him a higher tip but in fact there's a sneaky fuel charge so they still get the extra dollar and more tip? commies.

Friday, June 09, 2006

video

before i forget, check out this video from "king of the hill." he's looking for a new church.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtI2pa2m5cg

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

the devil and a birthday

yep, in case you didn't notice yet, it's 6/6/6. really, 6/6/06 but that's not as dramatic. apparently there's a lame omen remake to celebrate the occasion. i had to inform some coworkers at work (kind of redundant...sort of like when interns and even some residents will say "the patient self-extubated himself last night") the significance of 666. some had not even heard of it at all ("the foreigners?" my wife asked...nope, even nonforeigners!).

i have to hurry and post this because it's 2 minutes till my birthday! i wanted to go to sleep earlier but my wife made me stay up till midnight to celebrate. i guess i'll get the maximum out of my birthday if i am up till midnight.

more updates later...myrtle, chinese food, etc.

Monday, May 22, 2006

looks like the spammers have gotten to me...i've noticed an excessive number of stupid comments left by anonymous spammers. i wonder if they've been reading my blog as well. that would almost be worth it.

here in myrtle beach. yeah baby! already got burned...not too bad though. gonna play some golf tomorrow. seafood buffet tonight. oh yeah.

Friday, May 19, 2006

note: second post as the first did not include all the text and had to retype most of it. what a waste! may need to change services again.

man, can't believe it's friday already. tough writing everyday, especially when no one's reading. so sad. winding things down here at the ol' chief resident office. not much to do these days which is why i'm writing now. going on vacation with karen's fam to myrtle beach saturday...a little sun, golf, seafood...yeah. party!!!

had a nice drug rep dinner at morton's last night (downtown). there was one guy there, not sure if he was a doctor but he was hittin' the sauce pretty hard. while the speaker was talking, he grabbed a bottle of wine and poured it into his glass, not quietly and discreetly right above the rim, but like 6 inches above the glass and the wine was sloshing around the glass and spilling onto the table. i almost lost bladder control.

also had a rep take me out this week to rathbun's. check it out at www.rathbunsrestaurant.com
kevin rathbun used to be the corporate exec chef for the buckhead life group (nava, chops, atlanta fish market, bluepointe, etc.) and he actually came out and talked to us in the midst of a busy restaurant! i felt like a little boy. our waitress was emily who used to wait at joel. "good pedigree" said rathbun. now, what did i eat (because i know that's why you're reading)? had the duck breast which was fantastic--recommended medium but i made mine medium well...can't have my fowl floatin' around too much bacteria and parasites. also had "yaya's eggplant steak fries" for appetizers. i wasn't sure about them at first by the description; i mean, it is eggplant after all, but on first taste, these things were freakin' awesome! it's amazing what you can do with a little eggplant and cheese, all fried up with some powdered sugar on top and a tabasco/sugar (i think) dip. wow. bort, you have to try out this place! i've eaten there before for some other drug rep dinners and have had the lobster taco there which is also amazing--it's a burrito-like thing, a rolled tortilla with plenty of lobster inside. regular price? $32. drug rep dinner price? free. satisfaction? priceless.

Monday, May 15, 2006


a pic from korea...i'm putting this here temporarily to use it in my profile. yeah.
poll question: are you planning on circumcising your son?

lots of debate about the pros and cons of it. feel free to do your own google search to find the info. a colleague of mine is trying to spread the lie that circumcision is not painful as there are no pain fibers in the foreskin in an infant. here's an interesting article...
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/453637

you know who you are: stay away from my kids! heh heh. ummm, not that i have kids yet.

Monday, May 08, 2006

"deal or no deal" is on in the background while i'm writing this. quite possibly the most annoying show on tv. i haven't really watched it before and i'm happy about that now. it's not helping that there's a drama queen ("not that there's anything wrong with that") guy who's the contestant. really annoying. "take that deal, gary!"

more annoying or rather frustrating is a case i saw over the weekend: guy who came in with increasing bilirubin levels, now up to almost 17 mg/dL, mostly conjugated (direct). jaundiced like a mofo. alt's normal, ast ~3x upper limit of normal (odd, i know), normal alk phos. all scans normal except small amount of fluid around the liver and ? small ductal dilation. no fever but wbc count increasing significantly with bandemia. any ideas with this limited history??????? guy's a little demented at baseline, nursing home patient, so of course the family refused ercp.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

this link might only work for a limited time before it expires and you have to pay for the article but check out this latest tidbit: philips has filed a patent for a dvr that won't let you fast-forward through commercials and a tv that won't let you change channels during commercials! free tv won't be free anymore. apparently, the only reason we can record shows and movies is based on the "fair use" exemption passed in a supreme court decision in 1984. it only passed 5-4 and would likely not pass today because that decision was made at a time when fast-forwarding through commmercials on a large, clunky machine wasn't reasonable and its basis was that the commercial value of the copyrighted work was not harmed. oh well, better watch as many episodes of law & order as i can.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/business/yourmoney/07digi.html

Friday, May 05, 2006

here's another one for ya from the sun-times on foie gras. chicago's banning it. did you know it's illegal in california to produce (but not sell) foie gras? who would eat goose liver anyway? i like to stay away from abdominal organs but had to make the exception for sausage after i found out where the casing comes from...man, i love sausage and ham and pork. definitely could not be jewish.

speaking of more gross foods, do you know what sweetbread is? pancreas and thymus! to think that i almost ordered it when we went to bacchanalia with the fam a few weeks ago. but then i thought to myself..."sweetbread...not sure what it is but it could be one of those weird things" and boy was i right.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/26foiegras.html

Monday, May 01, 2006

b-ham (aka bort aka burt aka fatboy) was asking about this site. think you can tell the difference between asian groups you smart@#%? well take the test!

www.alllooksame.com

post your scores if you want. i didn't do too well.

Friday, April 28, 2006

so i'm bringing home some food from surin's thai bowl and sushi bar the other day, waiting on the elevator along with this mom and her unruly kid, somewhere around 4-5 years old. he's talking randomly and at times incoherently as kids do but then starts saying something about "chinese man" directed toward me. i'm trying to ignore him by this point but he keeps talking and something to the effect of "you're chinese man deliver food to people" comes out of his mouth. i felt so embarrassed for the mom i said something like "no, this one's for me to eat" to the kid and tried to look away. what are you supposed to do, grab him by the collar and go through a geography lesson for him? ha! reminds me of that scene in airplane! when everyone's lining up to slap some sense into that girl. well, i guess on the other hand, he's smart enough to observe that asians tend to do the delivery in the building so you gotta give him some credit there.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

i'm having some difficulty deciding which site to use for my blog--here or myspace. i haven't really delved into either of them too much but since my foray into blogspot, i've noticed they have made some changes. i can upload photos into the blog (maybe you could do this before and i just didn't realize this...you can't do this on myspace unless i just haven't figured this out yet) and you can leave comments, too--both big issues for me. i want to see what people are thinking! and now since you can add comments on the blogger, maybe this will be the one. plus i have my old posts on here. if you are interested, check out

http://www.myspace.com/tannalim
wow! if you have any interest in sushi or the moonies, you HAVE to read this article. amazing...i can't say i'm ready to give up sushi yet but it may diminish my enjoyment of it a little bit...at least when i'm eating my 40th piece.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-sushi-print,0,6443962.story
this is my nephew, "old man" eric (the one on the left...i don't know who this stalker toddler is next to him). he's the 2nd child of my brother and the only grandson of the lim clan thus far.