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| mike: how did you get over it? i mean, how long did it take?
rob: sometimes it still hurts. you know how it is, man. it's like, you wake up every day and it hurts a little bit less, and then you wake up one day and it doesn't hurt at all. it was not a good year to be a cowboys fan. i'm finally recovered from their dramatic playoff collapse. immediately after the loss, i was reminded of the above scene from swingers. anyway, i know it's been a while (8 months to be exact), and there are a couple of things to update: 1) if you've ever received a paycheck (unless your job is in the mall), you've probably been forced to take the myers briggs. last fall, our residency program had us all tested as part of a team building exercise. apparently, i am an ESTJ (extroverted / sensing / thinking / judging). according to the companion booklet, this means that i am "life's natural administrator". what the fuck. i can't think of a duller personality type. why couldn't i be INFJ ("an inspiration to others") or ISTP ("ready to try anything once"). interestingly enough, steve revealed to me that he is INFP ("performing noble service to aid society"), making him my complete myers briggs foil. winston = unbreakable / steve = mr. glass 2) i recently went to a faculty party with eden (no, none of the professors were wearing turtle necks or sports coats with elbow pads). apparently, everyone in the world except for me watches grey's anatomy. after people found out that i was in residency, immediately the conversation switched to grey's anatomy plot lines. i suppose i need to start watching this show so that i'll be able to interact with the rest of the world. 3) i just got back from a week long trip to honduras. we were seeing patients and taking samples from water filters distributed to families 6 months ago. was a great time, and definitely a humbling experience. while assessing the water filters, we hiked through farmlands and back roads. returning to our accomodations on the second day of our 2-day backcountry hike, we were guided by 3 children who happened to be on their way to the clinic that same day. iris (age 12), wilmer (age 7), and girl whose name i cannot remember (GWNICR) (age 11) patiently led us up the mountain that separated us from our clinic, our beds, and water that was free from bacteria and parasites. 
GWNICR
wilmer and GWNICR
they asked us whether we wanted to take the longer, flatter route or the more direct, steeper route. we told them that we would take the route they would normally take (which happened to be the latter). big mistake...because it turned out to be one of the most rigorous physical tests of my life. during the hike, i could not help but notice the striking differences between us and them.
us: sturdy hiking boots and backpacking gear worth hundreds of dollars.
them: plastic sandals.
us: several liters of water and multiple powerbars per person.
them: zero bottles of water and zero powerbars per person.
this physical challenge was just another day in the life of a child in rural honduras. my life expectancy is probably 1.5 times theirs. yet during the hike, survival of the fittest came to mind. the journey was typical of most of our patients at the clinic – a several hour hike through peaks and valleys just for 10 minutes of our time and a bar of soap. humbling indeed.
corn...lots of it
drinking this water = instant diarrhea
our view from the clinic
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| when the cowboys' tony romo bobbled the snap in the playoffs, i didn't think anything of it. when the mavericks choked in the first round, i thought it was just bad luck. but when my ICU patients started dying, i begrudgingly started to accept reality. i was cursed - that was the only explanation. my first couple of weeks in the ICU were rough. in my first week, i had five deaths. for those of you keeping score at home, that's 0.71 deaths per day or 0.03 deaths per hour. definitely a stat i'll leave off my resume. luckily, during the month, the deaths slowed to a trickle, and i realized that those mofos were just plain sick. i wasn't cursed after all.
one of the best days of the year was coming home from my last call as an intern, unloading my toiletry bag, and realizing that i wouldn't have to repack it again. being on call every fourth night this year, i had grown accustomed to repacking my overnight bag. i will still be on call next year, but instead of sleeping in the hospital, i will be taking home call - this beautiful concept where i get to sleep in my own bed. doesn't sound like much, but it makes a world of difference.
one of the worst days of the year was coming to the realization that none of my patients knew my name. the asian last name is frankly too difficult to pronouce/remember for 90 year-old, demented women whose bodies are saturated with vicodin. fortunately, i was able to come up with a foolproof way for even the most southern patient to correctly pronounce her doc's last name - "hi, i'm dr. liaw - rhymes with meow". it's a sad sad day when you realize that your last name rhymes with the sound a cat makes and that you'll have to share that realization with strangers multiple times a day. i suppose there are worse things in life. i feel bad for dr. hooshbag.
oh yeah, for all you alums out there, check out the video on this houston chronicle blog on rice athletics. apparently, the rice catcher danny lehmann is the nephew of duane "dog" chapman (aka dog the bounty hunter). the video is high comedy.
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| i love slate. it's provocative and intelligent. but this article is super weak. it references a study on female and male tennis players and tracks the unforced errors they commit during "more important points" in a match. according to the analysis, female tennis players are more likely to commit unforced errors during these important points than male tennis players. women are apparently chokers. the author comments on how this research may explain why there are few women CEOs - they crack under pressure. unfortunately for the author, the research was not conducted on female CEOs.
therein lies the difficulty in summarizing research for the masses. last summer, prior to the opening of the devil wears prada, a new york times writer interviewed eden on her research on the queen bee phenomenon. he was trying to get her to say that her research proves that in business, women are bitches. but sadly, research is nuanced, is not easily distilled into sound bytes, and is not easily generalizable (i.e. female tennis players ≠ women CEOs). needless to say, eden was never quoted in the article.
blah blah blah. in other news, residency is surprisingly a lot of work. who'd have thunk? one of the greatest things about medicine is all the cool potential band names it generates. someone once told me that the secret to a winning band name is matching a random adjective with a random noun (think residual steve). anyway, here are two of my favorite names so far: 1) indifferent gonad (heard during a lecture on embryology) and 2) salvage extremity paradigm (heard during a lecture on trauma / amputations).
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| having moved to the DC area, we wanted to check out the mall...not the galleria, silly...but the national mall. here are some pics...
the vietnam memorial
eden looks super tall in this picture
lots of green space here and amazing views all around.
i was definitely pumped...about protesting something...anything. i heard hippies chanting somewhere in the distance, but sadly, we couldn't find them. oh well. someday.
now that i'm in virginia, it's time to make wild generalizations about virginians.
generalization #1: there are an unhealthy number of vanity plates here. some are super weak ("2TH SRGN")...but most are unintelligible. and i've almost gotten into several accidents trying to decipher them (just kidding mom).
if you can figure this one out, i'll name my first born after you (pending approval from the wife):
"O&A WOW"
in other news, i'm starting residency next week, and having not seen a real patient in 6 months, i am definitely shitting the pants. if you can help it, avoid contracting the avian flu until after july. | | |
| we just got back from spain which was a blast. i ate about ten pounds of paella and drank sangria on consecutive nights (shocking, i know...the asian blush was in full effect). now for some pictures (some of which may or may not be artsy fartsy):
this is from the top of sagrada familia, a church designed by gaudi. his stuff is a little over the top...somebody told me he's responsible for the word gaudy.
the interior was pretty cool and unfinished (it's a work in progress).
this is the door of sagrada familia.
it has raised letters, and i might have found the word "ass" by accident. it's okay...i'm buddhist.
our last night in barcelona, FCB (that's football club barcelona for you non-europeans) won the european cup (okay, i made that up...i have no idea what they won), which apparently was a big deal. anyway, the victory sparked a party that kicked the shit out of anything i have seen in the states. our hotel was on barcelona's version of sixth street, so we had a bird's eye view of the looting...er...celebration.
early on, things looked pretty calm.
but people kept on coming...
apparently, if you had a red flare or a snare drum, you were going to get some that night.
luckily, there was only euphoric looting rather than the angry looting that would surely have accompanied a loss. by the end of the night, the crowd was massive - this was definitely the highlight of the honeymoon (just kidding, eden).
we next went to puerto pollenca on mallorca (which is next to ibiza...you know what i'm talking about...i know you've seen wild on e). this is a gorgeous vacation town full of brits. oddly enough, eden and i got a lot of stares (being from texas, i'm pretty numb to staring). apparently, there are about as many mixed couples in the uk as there are dentists. nevertheless, it was an amazing place to chill.
yeah, i realize that i have no hair on my legs...leave me alone.
i leave you with a picture of eden finishing off a pitcher of sangria.
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