new tricks

again, i have no idea how many weeks old the kid is. i know she's getting close to 4 months though. i think for the first time i/we saw her grab her little toy off of her lap with one hand and then grab it with the other. previously i had to place her hands on it (see "battle of the hands") but now she's doing it on her own. she'll also grab the pacifier out of her mouth at times with one hand. she's getting independent. also, she's starting to "talk"/blow out spit. she'll like blow out some air from her mouth and spit/drool will follow along while she's goo gooing. there's a very brief example on this clip. she's also "talking" up a storm. here's a clip of her discussing some current events.


baby loves daddy!


one of my favorites. it's hard work being a mom!


never enough rest...


who is this? yes, it's amy grant at a book signing. where's baby?


no pic with amy herself but i guess the book's good enough


baby stylin' with her sleepwear

kid's been active

baby has had a busy time lately! she met jenna bush at a book signing last week and today she met ol' president jimmy carter at a book signing at the carter center (no pic since they wouldn't allow it). of note, pres carter said she was "beautiful." she was wearing her "future president" onesie. it's hard to look too serious in a onesie. not very presidential.

she also had her 100 day celebration. i know, it sounds like some celebration karen made up just to have a party but it's actually a korean celebration. back in the days, mortality rates were so high, if a kid made it to 100 then it was a good sign.

kate's starting to fatten up. her thighs are like big sausages. she's eating at times 6 ounces which is really at future buffet queen levels. i think she and the ol' man will enjoy knocking out a few buffets when she gets older. definitely need to take advantage of the "kids under 6 eat free" or whatever the age cutoff is these days. reminds me of the days when i would hit the shoney's breakfast buffet when i was 16 but still get the under 12 rate 'cause i looked like a kid.

for the first time last week i lost track of how many weeks old she was when she hit her anniversary on sunday. the count was 14. oh well, it was only a matter of time.

here's a video of kate and her kungfu grip.
another one of "battle of the hands, part 2."


sometime around her 3 month b-day. what a cutie!


back off of my formula, man!


a 100 day pic, stylin' in her lobster bib and fruity pants


rare sighting with grandpa holding her AND smiling


another 100 day pic, surrounded by her loot


hangin' with her hello kitty peeps


reliving the birthday with the stork sign


here we have her surrounded by various trinkets...
the idea is, whatever she reaches for will seal her career fate forever. you can see a sphygmomanometer (or "blood pressure thingie" as my lovely wife calls it...it symbolizes scientist), kitty (vet), comb (stylist), pen (writer), bible (pastor...or maybe music minister if she's in a pca church. ha!), thread (seamstress??), mp3 player (musician), scissors (scrapbooker?), keys (race car driver), phone (communications), money envelope (finance), spatula (chef), whiskey bottle (drunk) and pacifier (in case she's just a baby all her life). fortunately she didn't pick the whiskey bottle. i think she actually reached for the kitty.


surprisingly not scared by the asian cabbage patch kid


a backseat view. love the ring of darker hair at the bottom.


looking interested at the jenna bush book signing


the future pres

short update

just wanted to get this video up. kate's been sticking her hands in her mouth lately, sometimes even double-fisting. every once in a while she will actually discover her thumb and start sucking away as in the video. i'll upload some 3 mo. pictures later. i know the suspense is killing you.

11 weeks (almost 12) and counting...

sorry for the delay on this post. yes, the creature is almost 12 weeks old. wow. it's weird sometimes when karen calls and says something about "my daughter" and i think, "oh yeah i have a daughter!"

kate magically is sleeping many more hours at night these days. it does come at some cost because she gets quite cranky at times in the evening, especially the past 2 nights. tonight she cried for like 2 straight hours (which i know might not be much for some but it was for this kid). finally karen took her and she ate well. i think i may have mentioned this before but i am so glad my wife is my wife. she is so patient with the kid, even when she's screaming her head off for so long. as a testosterone-driven male, my patience runs much thinner. i just look at her crying and sometimes think it's not logical why you're crying because we fed you, burped you, changed you, you had a good bm, we changed you again, and maybe you're crying because of some gassy issues but then it doesn't make sense why you would cry over just a little gas... it's true what they say in pediatrics, these critters aren't just tiny adults.

last weekend we went to niece rebekah's 6 year old b-day. kate slept pretty much the whole way there, about 5 hours (we left at 9 pm). on the way back she ended up going about 12 hours without eating! we stopped in asheville to visit karen's grandmother and fed kate there (nice big bm after feeding her in the parked car). that was around 6 pm. then we drove home, kate was up part of the time and when we got home around 10:30 pm, we just left her in the car seat since she was sleeping and she stayed sleeping till around 6 am! she's sleeping anywhere from 5 to 8 hours from the evening till early morning, sometimes more, sometimes less.

here's a vid of another kate stretch session filmed by my lovely wife. funny, too.

yet another stretch session, this one with some funky dance-type moves.

i was really filming a lot this particular day. here's another with me trying to give our car seat baby a kiss on the forehead while she's sleeping. "rattle toes" makes another visit.

last one for today. another installment of "saga kate." will she wake up or will she stay asleep?

"one day i'll be big enough to eat out of this chair"

stylin' in her new outfit with the headband

with cousins (from left to right) riley, rebekah,

abigail, and anna-claire

lookin' fashionable in her new outfit with mommy

a few new vids

here are a few new videos for those interested.

-kate jammin' to mary j
-an installment of saga kate, episode "she wakes"
-another installment of kate crying...we really tried to console her. but if that doesn't work, get the camera!

more great videos on the way, including wifey karen taking one of kate on the changing table stretching. quite funny. all this on next week's episode...

10 weeks and counting

yes, the little rascal is 10 weeks now. she set a personal record the past 2 nights by sleeping 8 hours each night. the first night she slept from 9 pm to 5 am and last night she slept from 11 pm to 7 am. on the other hand, she gets very fussy at times during the early evening. a few days ago she was screaming her head off for almost an hour. i tried to feed her, burp her, swaddle, shush, the whole arsenal to no avail. eventually i just left her alone...which didn't work either. i realized she has to be ready to calm down on her own in those instances. you can't do anything to calm her yourself. she is the queen bee.

over the weekend we went to an arts/craft/festival type thing in east atlanta. here's kate getting ready. notice her new gansta hand symbol...


another one at the festival being fed by holly with husband steve watching in the background (she did fairly well being fed by someone other than the parental units)...


and here she's worn out by all the activities of the day (keeping the paci close at hand)...


there are a whole bunch of new videos which i'll load soon. that's it for now.

2 months...or 9 weeks?

baby just turned 9 weeks today. 2 months yesterday. there is no way i'm going to be able to keep up with all this week and month business. if people ask me how old she is, maybe i'll just say "well, she's getting up to 6 months" if she's anything less than 6 months and "she's getting up towards a year or so" for anything between 6 months and a year.

different parents' reactions to the same things are pretty interesting. i have a friend who had a kid not too long before us and when their kid had the hiccups, he actually took him to the pediatrician, thinking newborns weren't supposed to hiccup and something was wrong. when our kid started hiccuping, we got out the camera and started filming. maybe we're a bit more nonchalant about things (well, at least i am).

the kid turns 2 months and it seems like she magically starts doing more. she's actually trying to make noises purposefully for the first time. of course, she can cry when she's hungry and make the straining, grunting noises when she's trying to push through a bm but she'll look at me and coo and make little noises like she's trying to talk or communicate. she's been smiling randomly already but now she's even laughing a little bit. pretty neat.

another monumental event: kate's hair stayed down for the first time without any water or other artificial aid. i did have to brush it down with my hand but even doing this it wouldn't stay down in the past. here is the proof (sorry, a little blurry)...






notice the contrast between these and the prior mohawk looks. below i have a few more recent pics. i will have to say, the kid recently won "cutest kid ever made next to jesus" for the 2nd straight month (taken from a poll of parenting experts in our home).


kate and her stylish crib/pack-n-play wear


ready to hit wall street with the slicked down hair


b-day pic (artificially flattened hair)


all dressed up and no place to go


"hey y'aaaallll"


ready for the world...of tennis, i guess
(click on pic to get a close-up of her comb-over)


classic mohawk look

non-kate update

i recently ate at ann's snack bar. it was dubbed best hamburger by a wall street journal article i read a few months ago (click here for the article...not sure how long the link will be valid). if you blink, you would miss the place, which is right on memorial drive in east atlanta. to call the place a shack would be generous. there's a covered, front patio-type area with a few tables for people to wait to enter. then you take a few stairs up into ann's. there are only 8 stools and if you try to come in when all 8 are taken, she'll tell you to get out and wait outside. she's not nearly as mean as the famed "soup nazi" but she's certainly quite a character. she'll take everyone's order at once and then start cooking. it's just her, no one else. no help, no "front desk" person, no one to man the register. once she's done cooking, then you can eat and pay your tab. i wondered what she does when she has to use the bathroom.

the back wall looks like it would blow over with a strong wind. there are many gaps in the dry wall. the back door is surrounded by a frame that doesn't fit and leaves a good bit of light coming through also. the plastic covering over the light switch is 30 degrees off center. the place is unique to say the least.

anyway, i ordered the ghetto burger, complete with lettuce, tomato, chili, cheese, onion and her famous seasoning salt. the patty sizes are huge...then you realize that the ghetto burger is equipped with two of them. the sheer size makes the monster burger that hardee's had out a few years ago look like a kid's meal. i would say it is minimum one pound of meat, post-cooked weight, that is! some pieces of mine fell off on the grill so she stacked those pieces on top, meaning i actually had in some parts 3 layers of gigantic-sized meat. i ate half without much of a problem (after eating half a plate of fries first) but could feel myself slowing down. all i could do was see the faces of my beautiful wife and daughter and i promised them in my mind that i would eat the rest of that burger if it was the last thing i did in this lifetime. the chili was hot so holding the burger was a little difficult but after only a few minutes more, the plate was clean. victory was mine. i accomplished all this knowing that we had already planned on eating burgers on the foreman grill just a few hours later for dinner. oh well, the experience was worth it. i started gettting dizzy and got numb and tingly behind my head and on parts of my left arm when i was done, but in a daze i made it home to my beautiful family. best burger i ever had? possibly. most memorable? no doubt.

here are some pics from a fellow blogger. if you can imagine, the burger actually looks bigger in real life than in the picture. notice it's sitting on a regular-sized styrofoam plate and it covers most of the plate. again, i didn't find ann quite as crotchety as the blogger describes. she kinda had that tough love attitude which i appreciated.
http://blissfulglutton.blogspot.com/2007/08/anns-snack-bar-memorial-drive.html

i also have a couple of new videos on youtube. check it out.

youtube.com/tannalim

24/7 broadcast journalism



to catch a good story, you have to be on the ball 24 hours a day. if someone famous said something similar, it was probably a little more eloquent than that. anyway, the little critter was stirring around 5 or so this a.m. so i woke up as well. it's the usual "family sleeping on the couches with the kid in the swing" weekend thing. when i woke up, kate was doing her stretch routine which she usually does when she's ready to wake up and eat but this time she actually went back to sleep. anyway, here's a video clip which i took during what turned out to be an extend-remix stretch time. i think it's one of the best videos of her so far. the volume is low (i didn't want to wake her completely) so you may need to turn it up. also, kate has a tendency to turn her head to the right, especially in the swing and there's a picture of it above except this is the extreme version. i think her chin may actually be pointing slightly toward the ceiling. karen was worried about the head turning to the right a lot and you really have to be careful how you phrase things to doctors so i told her not to tell the pediatrician "she always turns her head to the right" like she wanted to but that she certainly turns it that way more than left. otherwise, i'd be afraid she has some misaligned eyes or a hearing problem or something more serious. also, forgive me but i think i actually say "as is evidenced" in the video when i meant evident. hey, it was 5 a.m.

am...pm...bm


i think this may be kate flashing one of her gangsta signs to her fellow baby peeps.

up until last saturday, ol' baby kate had been pooping pretty frequently. actually, the two days prior, she had gone once a day. but then, after a nice early saturday am poop, she went the rest of the day without one and also all of sunday. i started getting paranoid. during my e.r. rotation in residency, i remember a family bringing in a baby who had not pooped in many days and i had to manually disimpact the kid (i.e., sticking my pinky up the rear and pulling out countless clumps of rock-hard stool). i'm going crazy thinking i have to do this to my kid. worse, it was almost work time so i'm all worried about her being fussy all day and my wife having to deal with it. of course, all this time kate's happy for the most part, eating, looking the same, not looking like one severely backed up. finally, during a feeding monday morning, she pooped like a champ. the funny thing is, there wasn't a lot of noise when she pooped (she usually squirms around and grunts a little...i know, such pleasant information!) but i could kind of tell she did because she had this smile on her face. way to go, kate. then i got paranoid again because she actually went close to 3 days without pooping but had another big one thursday. i guess she just has her own schedule. so this is my life, consumed with my kid's eating habits and bowel movements.

here's a fresh pic...so content after a nice feeding.

Guest Blog ... from Karen ...

Hi. I had a sec a moment ago to upload this video ... check it out! It's Kate and her cousin Riley--Riley is teaching her "This Little Piggie." Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7VfBajDPEo

ms. mohawk



here's a good picture of kate's mohawk. some have accused me of grabbing her hair in the middle in between my fingers and pulling up, thus creating the mohawk style. while i will not deny contributing to the hairstyle in such described fashion, most of this is also naturally occurring.

kate had her checkup today. she turned 5 weeks yesterday. kid is 10 lbs. now! up almost 3 lbs. since delivery. now that's eatin'. future buffet-eating prodigy in the making. karen also told me kate peed on the exam table. apparently the nurse told my mom to go ahead and take her diaper off and she let out a little tinkle so my mom went to change her diaper and then the fountain started flowing. now that's my girl! let them know who's boss.


kate also loooves taking baths. here's my mom cleaning her in the sink. it is such a funny site, her hair all wet and actually down, just in a trance, sometimes shivering when it gets a little cold. one day i'll load a video of her bath, which i'm sure everyone is just dying to see. meanwhile ("in the meanwhile..."), here's a video of kate and one of her hiccup spells.

the wild boar

the kid's asleep, a good time to post. as you can see our little bundle of joy just passed 1 month! yikes, it does fly by. i'm off this week as my brother and his fam are in town from california and it feels like it's been forever since i've had a week off but then i realize i had a week and a half off only a few weeks ago when kate was born.

so we started a growth chart on our patio wall for kate. pretty tall for a one month old, wouldn't you say? the hair probably adds a few inches.

the wild boar title refers to how the kid eats. her head moves back and forth and her body is contorting in all weird directions, arms flying everywhere, hands in her face and mouth, making grunting and snorting noises. crazy! it's funny how kate's hands do move up to her mouth and face area a lot, when she's eating, stretching, whatever. (her post-waking, pre-meal stretch routine is pretty funny. i'll have to record it one day.) karen reminded me that when we tried to get the 4-d ultrasound done, she always had her hands and arms over her face so they could never get a good picture. what a waste. not really, honey, if you're reading! anyway, the boar reminds me of the "ravenous, ravenous rhinos" game on an episode of the simpsons, which of course is a knockoff of hungry, hungry hippos.

watching her sleep is interesting, too. she's a very active sleeper with her eyes all over the place, open at times, arms again flailing around, escaping the tight swaddle frequently. once i actually saw her eyes roll upward and then both of them roll outward away from her nose. didn't realize that was physiologically possible.

kate's startle reflex is always a source of entertainment. i'm actually getting savvy and have a link to youtube where i uploaded it. not the best example but pretty good.



here's another pic of kate's first full outing. we're at costco. can't see the baby too well. i utilized my own technique of flipping up the bottom of my shirt to cover her feet. gets a little cold in costco, you know. yeah, we could've used socks but we forgot them. as you can see, kate's sitting comfy in the baby bjorn which is possibly the greatest baby invention of all time. when the kid's in there, you hardly realize there's a baby. i even wanted to compile a list of things i could do with the bjorn that i couldn't do without, for example, folding clothes, making dinner, eating, typing on the computer, playing golf....

speaking of which, who says babies change your life? i can still check my email with a baby around...


since we're including videos, here's one of my niece kylie reading a bible verse. love my mom's expressions in the background.

one more pic of kate with one of her bedtime poses...


here's another with cousin kylie and eric, my bro's kids. there was actually one with the kids smiling better but i think goofy smiles make better pics with kids sometimes.


as far as being a dad, it is tough work! you feel so inadequate and helpless when the kid's crying even though she's been changed, burped, swaddled, etc. i'm always paranoid about whether she's had enough to eat. i guess that's the korean in me. i also worry about whether her bowels are moving properly which i guess is the doctor in me. karen worries about all the other stuff, i mainly care about whether she's eaten enough and if she's going to grow strong and smart. karen gets a little paranoid, too. she was in a sleepy haze one day and went to change kate and her diaper was surprisingly dry (which has only happened a few times) so karen was all panicky about kate being dehydrated because she read on the internet ("freakin' internet...") about dehydration and decreased number of wet diapers. i'm still laughing as i write this. anyway, when she's wailing and you're tired, it is very frustrating (as i'm sure karen can attest) but at the same time (well, maybe not at the exact same time) there is such a peaceful, comforting joy and happiness when i hold her and mess around with her tiny fingers and toes and watch her funny expressions. most of the time it's even funny to watch her expressions when she's crying because she has such a pouty-looking face and makes these funny meow-like sounds sometimes.

i guess i would be remiss if i didn't include an actual b-day pic. such a happy face....

life with an 8 1/2 day old

is this not the cutest baby you have ever seen (except your own)?! yes, my wife and her sister kept the little munchkin elf with her wrinkly ol' back and legs up for hours trying to take some glamour shots. i guess they paid off.

i love triads and syndromes in medicine (think beck's triad, charcot's triad, samter's triad for you trivia buffs). our little one has adapted my love of triads and is working on perfecting her own, consisting of eating, pooping and burping, usually in that order. she has also picked up my impatience with eating. now i can skip plenty of meals and use my ninja skills to control mind over matter so that my hunger pangs are minimal. however, when there is a hot plate in front of me and the food is at its peak in terms of temperature, texture, smell, flavor, etc., sometimes i feel like just jumping right in without waiting on anyone else, particularly if they are being lacksadaisical in getting ready to eat and don't share my urgency in eating food at its prime. needless to say, baby kate can go from sleeping to shrieking/hyperventilating in about 30 seconds flat if her food isn't ready. (we're having to do formula supplements to pumping so sorry if that is a sin to anyone out there but if you were in our shoes....) so much pressure. i feel like a cook in a reality tv show.

otherwise the kid's doing okay, just trouble sleeping when you want her to and trouble staying awake when you want her to but that seems pretty standard. she looks bigger already. maybe i'll go weigh her on our new scale. better catch her before she has a bm.

life with a 3 and 1/2 day old

hey, our baby is 3 1/2 days old almost to the minute (originally written at 6:15 pm).

okay, let's backtrack. in case you didn't know, karen was pregnant. she did fairly well considering there was this alien creature growing inside of her, almost at times trying to poke out of her body later in the 3rd trimester (i'm talking appendages poking out like at least 1 inch). mainly just mild nausea in the first trimester but otherwise no major complications with the pregnancy.

so, we're all minding our own business watching 48 hours mystery late saturday night on the 7th (just missed a 7/7/07 baby...not that that was some big goal or anything) when karen's water (we think) broke. it was only a small amount so it was kinda hard to tell but then she started having contractions. mind you, prior to this, no contractions or anything. just another day in the life. her due date was 7/6. well, needless to say, barely 7 hours later and with only 7 cycles of pushing (according to the nurse), a baby was born! she weight 7 lbs, 2 oz and was born on 7/8/07 at 6:13 am. unbelievable how quickly your life changes.

the critter's name is katherine (kate) suna (pronounced sun-ah) lim. sun (means angel) is my mom's name and the "a" is actually another symbol referring to atlanta, thus an angel born in atlanta. that was my dad's clever idea. she is the only grandkid of theirs born in the a-t-l.

as an aside, we delivered at northside which was okay at best. most nurses were pretty good but some were pretty bad. the environment was like a 2 star hotel but probably more like 1 and 1/2. they did open up new floors which i'm sure are nicer but we'll probably deliver somewhere else next time, you know, spread the wealth.

so we came home yesterday and last night was the first sleepless night. as a physician you think i would have a little confidence or knowledge about someone's health but i have no idea what the heck is going on with this kid. i was getting frustrated at 5 this morning because she kept crying and i had no idea why. i had fed, burped, and changed the diaper but i think she actually may have still been hungry. who knew feeding, burping and pooping could be so complicated.

she's like me in a few ways--sleeps with her mouth open, goes from awake to passed out in 1 second flat, and i guess she looks a little like me, too. she does have the famous lim chin known in various females in the extended family. she has big american-sized eyes which the grandparents are happy about. she's also like karen in that she does not like being messed around with at all. she will wail like she's about to invade some pigs and run 'em into a lake during diaper and outfit changes. (when she cries her body turns bright red all over which is kinda funny and her wrinkly skin and sour face really does make her look like an alien.) i say she's like karen in this way because when we took our birthing class (for you single men out there, yes, there are classes on this) they're talking about massage, effleurage, etc during labor but karen was like "it's okay if you don't touch me at all during labor. just stay away." i thought that was fine, just call me when the baby's out!

it's so weird being a dad, kinda like being married. you look over and realize there's this new human attached to you in this lifetime, very existential. i love looking at her though, holding her, kissing her face all over. i know, can you imagine a man talking like that? i guess that's what kids do to ya.

racist rant

oh my goodness. i have just read, in part, some of the most racist and ridiculous ranting ever.

pat's racist rant

there are so many deeply flawed statements in this story that i don't know where to begin. essentially he is saying that colored minorities are the cause of this country's ills. as someone pointed out in the comments, it's interesting that ol' pat doesn't mention the white euro groups (italian, irish, polish, etc.) in his little racist rant. don't even need to talk about the mafia. you know, i consider myself conservative and feel pat buchanan has actually said a few intelligent things in the past but this is the most idiotic, completely delusional thing i have read in a long time in the fairly mainstream media.

outsourcing breast milk?

yes, just had to break my blog hiatus with this story in time magazine.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1612710,00.html

this is some nasty stuff. not only do crazy, hormonal, postpartum women(not to be stereotypical...okay, i was) decide to share breast milk with the babies of their friends or family but they even hire nonpregnant women to breastfeed their newborns. one day i imagine a buffet line of women whipping it out for babies to get all sorts of samples. well, i guess if you decide to use some other man's sperm from a sperm bank to fertilize your egg, this isn't so beyond imagination.

props

1. american express. recently had my laptop on the fritz. actually, it's been months in the making but i finally accepted the reality. after contemplating buying a new laptop (piece of crap was less than 1.5 years old--hp dv4040us), somehow it struck me to check the credit card benefits on which it was purchased. turns out, after much searching, it was purchased on my wife's amex card. for those who don't know, if you purchase something entirely on the card, they automatically extend the warranty for one year. most of my other cards don't do this at all, and for my visa you have to pay extra per year to have this benefit. free for amex, even the cheap delta skymiles options card. as my manufacturer's warranty was only a year, i was in luck. they sent me a box to send to their contracted workers, and not only did they completely replace my motherboard (and fix the original problem), but they completely replaced the lcd screen as it started to develop some bright spots. the spots were considered wear and tear damage and aren't covered by the warranty but because my wife was a "valued customer," they agreed to have it fixed. as an aside, my speaker didn't work when i got it back but i called the guys and mailed it off and had it back 2 days later. also, there's a slightly darker area on the screen but my wife is trying to convince me that i'm pushing my luck and it's minor and not worth sending back again.

2. costco. just got through broiling up some filets from costco. where we live it's not very convenient to grill so, borrowing from ruth's chris, i decided to try broiling some steaks in the oven. somewhere around 10 min a side for a good medium, topped with a discounted bottle of wine, and you're in business. easily $40 for a 16 oz. i just cooked up, only $12 at costco. yeah!

the man...

several funny anecdotes recently. i was babysitting my niece-in-law (? karen's niece) when an old episode of the pink panther came on. well, as you might remember, they pepper it with other cartoons in-between the main pink panther cartoons. one happened to be of this japanese beetle with this awful, fake japanese-trying-to-speak-broken-english accent and slanted lines for eyes (i'm talking no sclera visible at all!), saying how he's lost and is trying to find his way back to japan. kinda reminded me of mickey rooney's awful portrayal of an asian guy (that enough should make you shudder!) in breakfast at tiffany's.

also saw memoirs of a geisha recently. initially i pseudo-boycotted it because of the controversy of a chinese actress portraying the main character in a movie about geishas and japan. the implication was that not only do all asians look alike, but they all are alike, even when making a culturally-focused movie. well, we eventually came across a copy (i think my wife got it cheap at target after thanksgiving) and finally watched it. i expected japanese language with english subtitles but of course, since the main character (ziyi zhang, also in hero, house of flying daggers and crouching tiger, hidden dragon) was chinese and didn't speak any japanese (i'm assuming), they had to speak english. initially i wondered what bothered me so much about it because we watch movies all the time in english when they likely did not speak english where/when it was set (think of any of the jesus movies, gladiator, les miserables). but i think what bothered me were several things: 1. the movie was mostly in english and it wasn't very credible that all these people would labor so hard to speak this pink-panther-japanese-beetle-like broken english and only a little bit of their native japanese. you keep wondering throughout the movie why they are doing that (of course the reason is the main actor doesn't speak japanese!). furthermore, at least in movie format, all that broken english starts to strain the ears. 2. i doubt that all of these actors actually speak with these accents. if i knew they were mostly japanese-speaking and actually had these accents (which apparently is the case for ken watanabe after watching the oscars), that's one thing but i'm sure at least some of them speak better english which means they had to fake this japanese-speaker-trying-to-speak-english accent which is what makes it sad. now, if in fact they all actually speak english like that, then my apologies. which brings up the real question, why not just hire some japanese actress for the part and avoid all this to begin with? are you telling me there is not one female in japan up for the role? it's not like the movie required difficult, athletic, choreographed acrobatics and martial arts that only zhang was qualified for. regardless, even without the language issues, the movie still sucked.

anyway, bottom line is that asians still get no respect from the man in hollywood. hopefully my sis and bro-in-law can change that. shout out to kymber (http://imdb.com/name/nm0510563/) and ted (http://imdb.com/name/nm1136768/)! yeah, kp, korean pride. heh heh. i know, that sounds stupid. what is kp anyway, stereotyping and suppressing women, engaging in corrupt politics, and having a nationalism and pride that borders on racism? i guess.

i was at my friend hoon's wedding in cali and another funny story was shared there. can't remember if it was bort or my friend danny but one of them was rotating at the va (veterans' hospital) and as rounds typically are very early, you usually ended up waking up your patients early in the morning to check on them before rounds. and as some va patients might be a bit disoriented, you would usually go through your battery of questions to make sure you knew they knew where they were. well, bort (also korean) wakes up one guy and asks him, "sir, do you know where you are?" vet, in a dazed look and voice: "vietnam?" doesn't get any better than that!

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.