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.

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....

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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!!!

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...

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

just woke up from a nap. the breakfast buffet at golden corral just hits you in...well, it hits you in all the spots.

my last er shift on thursday was interesting. treated a lady who was wearing rebel flag socks. they were ankle socks and there were rebel flags on the middle and sides. now that's funny.

the shift was kinda frustrating for a while. people come in who don't need to be there. if it didn't take like half a year to get an appointment to see your doctor, there would be less crowding in the emergency rooms. this one guy came in with a sinus infection. he was also mostly deaf, a really nice guy. but i was getting mad at him because he couldn't hear me too well or read my lips and understand what i was saying most of the times. and then i started wondering why in the heck i was getting mad at him. i mean, it's not his freakin' fault that he's nearly deaf or that he got sick. well, i felt bad about all that so i tried to be nicer to him.

i got to do an ultrasound on a pregnant lady and saw a 14 week old baby! i've seen them before but it's different when you've never used an ultrasound probe yourself and you put it on the belly and try to look around for the baby. it's hard to get used to the angles and stuff but when you finally get a focus on the baby, it's really cool. you can see its heart beating, sucking its thumb and everything.

i need some exercise.

i'm watching the women's ncaa basketball championship. my idea of another crazy and exciting night. you know, there's nothing sexier than seeing a bunch of sweaty women act manly, shaking and pumping their fists in the air, chest bumping, slapping each other on the ol' rears. what's next, crotch grabbing?

almost a good night...

phew! or is it whew!? whatever the heck it is, that's what i feel. finally done with 12 straight days of work. finished it off with my first shift in the ER. it's not as glamorous or nearly as dramatic as on tv. there also may not be as much sex going on between doctors and nurses or between doctors and doctors (or even between nurses and nurse for that matter) but there sure is a heck of a lot of flirting and back rubbing and stuff. i mean, i don't think the ER is the most appropriate place to be giving back rubs. maybe i'm just old school.

my first shift in the ER actually wasn't too bad. i almost got through the whole 12-hour shift without having to do a pelvic exam--until the last hour. isn't that the way it always is? there are four charts on the rack and the first one was some girl who was having vaginal bleeding. ugh. now really, isn't there someone more qualified to do this? i think i'll be opening up a men's clinic anyway once it's all said and done. it also didn't help that the girl was so demanding and seemingly high maintenance. now that's a great combo right there. i could go on about countless pelvic exams and vaginal discharges but when you've heard one vaginal discharge story you've heard them all.

let me see, what other exciting news is there? i went to this brazilian restaurant/buffet a couple of weeks ago. you know, it's one of those kinds where you have a coaster-type thing on your table, green on one side and red on the other and whenever you want the dudes to come and bring you meat you turn it to the green side. they have all types of meat on spears and they shave it off onto your plate. there's something really manly and primal about some dude bringing you meat on a spear. okay, so it's not really a spear like the kind you kill wild lions with but a small maybe 2-3 foot spear. and not that i would kill wild lions with real spears anyway. i like lions. maybe a wildebeest. yeah, i would probably spear a few of those. would i really or do i just like to say wildebeest?

anyway, enough for now. i need some sleep.

is this thing working?

alrighty, back in action. i'm sitting here with a hole in my khakis. yes, i'm ashamed to admit it is in the crotch area. i've been wearing these pants on most days to work since i started in july and they're the only ones i have. (now, i'm not THAT poor, i do have other pants, just not another pair of khakis...did i mention i make about $35,000 per year for like 80 hours a week? yeah, that's minimum wage.) therefore (ergo), i have to wash them like 3 times a week and as you can imagine, they've gotten pretty worn out. at least it's good that i discovered the hole before a potentially embarrassing moment occurred. hmmm, i hope no one else has noticed. i hope no patients have noticed. why would anyone be looking at my crotch anyway? what's worse, people looking at my crotch or the fact that i still wear these pants to work? you know, it's hard to get out there these days to do shopping and stuff. you know?

so last night i was hanging out at this restaurant/bar with a representative from the pharmaceutical industry, better known as a drug rep. they take us out to dinner and stuff all in the name of medicial education, of course. this guy is pretty cool but some of the drug reps can be like car salesmen. we were at this upstairs waiting room/bar area where there are a few pool tables and on the one next to us, there was this family with their 2 kids like 3-4 years old. now i'm all for having fun but don't you think they should like get a baby sitter or something? you can just hear them saying "we're not gonna let these kids get in the way of our social lives..." or "honey, let's take the kids out to the local restaurant/bar with the smoky atmosphere." because smoke in the lungs of a 3 year old really is a good thing. you know, it toughens them up.

not that i'm totally opposed to smoking. yes, i do think cigarettes are cancer sticks and even without the cancer aspect, if you would see the people in our hospital who have various other lung diseases because of smoking, you would ban cigarettes. however, i do like to puff on a nice cigar every once in a while. my friend just got back from cuba and brough back some nice ones i've already gotten to sample. and, according to my world almanac 2000 millennium edition, cigars bought in cuba are legal to transport back to the u.s. i think there is a limit, though. but of course you have to get around the whole "how do you get into cuba" dilemma.

it's march madness time, baby!

man, it's been a while. you know how it is, being on call and stuff, spending all night in the hospital, coming home the next day, not remembering where i parked, having that generalized dizzy and lightheaded feeling all day. gotta love it.

the weekend was good. i was at this fancy-dancy hotel in savannah for an american college of physicians meeting. now talk about a lively crowd! my gf was there with me for one of the sessions. now that's real love, to sit through that just to be with someone. then there was a reception banquet type thing the final night that kept going on and on and on. we sat there laughing at how people could talk so long. i looked back and everyone at my table had already left already.

well, i'm tired. i'm gonna take a nap.

a sad day...

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Entertainment/ap20030228_440.html

a mr. rogers tribute. more updates later.

a tribute to B'ham

ahhh, good to see that the ornamental...i mean oriental...i mean asian brothers are still in effect. or is that affect? don't write me back with the answer, that was just a joke.

yes, now, my B'ham oriental brethren...the fatter one. that really would take up a whole website in itself to write about--my dysfunctional med school classmates. jeez, how many did we have taking prozac to get them through finals? we had dui's, classmates sleeping with other classmates, former drug dealers. and then you had our healthy future doctor group eating buffets 3-4 days a week, sometimes for lunch AND dinner on the same day (man, i loved that fried chicken from old country buffet...and i miss the OC Bee). overall though, i think our class was pretty cool. i see some of the med students rotating through our hospital now and they really get on my nerves. but all that for another day.

anyway, B'ham is an unique one i'll have to admit. i talk about him occasionally. he's refreshingly honest about himself and unpretentious about his fatness and laziness. it's good to see someone out there who is not trying to impress ANYBODY. i guess his mom doesn't really appreciate that too much but that's another story, too. he'll be the first to tell you that he probably shouldn't be a doctor--and he's not, he's a pathology resident (a little jab at my path colleagues...they really are doctors). his real passion is...well, food and video games. some highlights from med school:
*he would stay up all night playing computer games, sleep for about an hour and then go to work in the hospital and fall asleep on rounds ("rounds" being what we as a team do, as in go see all the patients with the attending, a couple of residents, and a med student here and there, all of which comprise "the team")
*he would play golf in scrub pants, sandals, and a golf shirt from the 70's
*before he got fancy with the golf shirt, he would just wear an undershirt that he made himself (printed from the internet and ironed on); a sampling of shirts: one said "twinkie" (as in yellow on the outside, white on the inside), another "winner," yet another "jackpot"
*he was obsessed with body sounds and functions and smells
*his lifelong dream is to own a hot wing restaurant that served only wings, nothing else
*he turned his whole room into a putting green, and this meant buying a whole bunch of wood and having it raised a few inches and cutting holes in it
*he was in no way a wood craftsman but he enjoyed cutting and making his own desk (which had a lay-z-boy pulled up to it instead of a real chair) and even a bed frame
*he also once made himself a plastic study stand so that he could study while laying down in bed (we all know how tiring it gets to hold the book up with our arms or turning side to side)
*he's a practical atheist but he watches charles stanley ("the old skinny guy") and t.d. jakes ("the black guy who wipes his forehead a lot") on tv--they're both preachers

so as you can see, i had no lack of entertainment during med school. so many more stories out there, so little time....

i am a music lover and depending on how you view awards shows, it's a good night for us. the grammys are on tv. i don't want to give off the impression that i watch all this tv and that's all i write about because i don't and it's not. i like study and stuff and read up on my patients' disease processes and stuff. really i do. anyway, i do love music and i appreciate all forms--jazz, classical, hard rock, rap, country (yes, even country!), pop, blues...that translates a cd collection with miles davis, patsy cline, nirvana, debbie gibson (now deborah...and yes, i do have a secret debbie gibson fetish, i mean, appreciation), handel's messiah, beethoven's 9, stevie ray vaughan, notorious b.i.g., etc. just thought i'd let you know.

so, some reflections on the first hour of the grammys: what is up with the dixie chick's hair? you know which one i mean, the one with the retro big hair of the 80's. now i like the 80's, but.... and what's up with this josh mayer (? or whatever his name is) dude who's like 16 AND he's performing on the grammys AND he won the best male vocal category. i express once again my previous consternations as i did with the kobe bryant comments--this kid is almost half my age, i'm sitting here drinking a cheap glass of cabernet (cheap but good), there's a ceramic mug representing an anthropromorphized triglyceride staring at me, my room's still a mess, my mom checks up on me and keeps asking if she can bring me food or come clean up for us and such, and i haven't showered in like 2 days because i was on call last night and i had to stay at the hospital. sigh.

the first category of the evening was for best pop group or duo. now if that's the best pop had to offer for the past year, no wonder music is in such a sad state these days. but then norah jones won the best pop female which is interesting and she made comments on that line about how she never expected her music to be considered pop music. and how many lifetime achievement awards are they giving out tonight? one for tito puente, one for glen miller, both of whom i admire. i mean heck, why don't i get a lifetime achievement award. you know, i did make all-state chorus 6 years in a row. there's your lifetime achievement for ya.

more tv ... i'm watching the michael jackson interview. i was like the biggest mj fan. i memorized the smooth criminal video dance scenes and like tried to do them. i wanted that white suit with the shiny blue shirt. when he sang billy jean and did the moonwalk on the grammys (in...84?) that was like the most awesome thing i ever saw. but then he like tried to turn himself into a japanese cartoon character. what's up with that??? and no matter how wacko he might be (wacko jacko), there are still fans all over the place and they like cry and stuff when they see him. i want people to cry when they see me. well, some people do, but i guess i mean cry in a good way. oh yeah, then they showed the neverland ranch and buddy's got an elephant at his house. now i don't care how weird he is but how cool would it be to have your own elephant? and he's talking about his chimp. i've always wanted a chimp or a monkey. wouldn't it be cool to like come home after a rough day and like have a cute little monkey to hang out with? you could like hug it, teach it to bring you your slippers, go out to the patio and have a smoke break with it. does anyone else have these thoughts?

so karen got me some great stuff for valentine's day. v-d as she calls it. she got me an clock that i wanted which is synchronized to the atomic clock like in colorado or something. there's a certain comforting feeling knowing that the time i have is the official time in the whole united states. right now it's 8:44. i know your clock or watch may say something different but this is the REAL time in all of america. so there. she also got me all this kleenex. a lot of times i'll snort instead of blow and she thinks it's kinda disgusting (which i guess it is) so it's one of her subtle ways of encouraging me toward the right direction. she also got me several other nice things and wrote all these cards that fit into each other but it's my own special moment.

life in the hospital hasn't been too rough these days. it could be a lot worse so i'm not complaining. the worst part is not knowing what the heck is going on with some people. i figured medicine would be pretty black and white (since we're on this mj theme) but there is so much grey out there. or is it gray? i was actually off again today. because of our schedule my days off have been bunched up. i got to pray with this guy we transferred to hospice care. we tried to fix him up but couldn't. i was glad to see that he had a son and others who visited often. it's terrible when these sick people come in and no one ever visits them. either the family doesn't care or they live out of town or they don't have family. it's a sad and lonely world out there. share the love!

i admit. i watched joe millionaire tonight. i mean, who are these people? who is this joe? who are these girls? why do they all have such bushy eyebrows? how does this guy end up with a gig like this? questions on the minds of all americans. i don't know if y'all know who i'm talking about (i haven't been keeping up with the show too much...something about trying to save lives and stuff) but what is up with the heidi chick? i do remember seeing part of the episode when she was riding the horse and got all freaked out. and then they show her boyfriend on the show. i mean, dude, get a grip! how in the world can someone put up with that??? i don't mean to judge but....

so karen and i had dinner with my folks saturday. i think it was a great experience overall. i ended up doing a lot of translating. my dad still doesn't speak very good english. i guess 35 years isn't long enough. but he really made an effort to ask her questions and tried to make conversation in his limited way. karen didn't think that it went so well with him but i had to remind her of his past. my sister reminded me years ago how much he has mellowed out. in the old days (like jr. high and stuff) when people would call at the house for us he would just hang up. then he actually started saying hello and saying we're not home and then hang up. now, he even attempts to take messages!

gosh, there's so much more to talk about but i have to watch the rest of joe millionaire. i will have to say that zora does have nice eyebrows. if i were on the show then i would probably pick her.

okay, there are some miscreants out there trying to tarnish my professional career by implying (and thus we infer) that somehow my hobbies and new endeavors are compromising my patient care in the hospital. well...okay, while that may be true, you can't prove it now can you???

anyway, i'm in the midst of getting my friend don to actually hook up my own real website so that user feedback will be more user-friendly. you'll be able to click on a comment section and say what you please. the people must have a voice!

this will be a short post but more will come. i was on call fri. (i.e., i was in the hospital all day and night until saturday) and karen came to town to have dinner with my folks so i haven't had time to write much.