Tuesday, September 9, 2003, 07:42 p.m.

Me...behave? My ass!

Wow, what i thought was going to be a nice day at work got spoiled at the end by one crappy ass comment. Last night i was asked to do a little research and read up some of the side effects of a certain medication and its interactions with anesthesia meds. Well i ended up working late last night and didn't get home til past 10 and tried to find the answers but searched in all the wrong sources. Today i took care of my cases, helped out and got my weekly performance eval filled out by my attending Dr Chen, who has a repuation of being a ball-breaker sometimes. She thought i did a pretty good job and then before i left asked me what i found out about the reading. I told her what i read which was not what she wanted to hear and gave me the third degree and told me that 'you didn't do the reading at all, did you?' It's technically true but it wasn't as if i didn't try. Then she tells me i better 'behave' myself, as if what, i was a little kid?! I hate that arrogant crap and it reminds me of one of the downsides of being a resident. Yeah, welcome to the bottom rung of the ladder again.

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Wednesday, September 3, 2003, 09:09 p.m.

Who needs a hug?

I can't believe its Weds already. My labor day weekend was alright. Half of it was spent at work since i had to take call on Sat. I was hoping i would get off light without a busy night since it was going to be a holiday weekend, but i was also worried since it was saturday night and i know people do stupid shit on the weekends, get themselves hurt, and end up in surgery. Well i was right and we were pretty busy thru the next 24 hrs. Sunday morning i was pretty tired and grabbed a few hours of sleep on and off, but in another moment of classic insanity i decided last minute to drive up to NY and meet mike for dinner. I also ended up catching eileen who was in town for business and dragged her along for food. As if going up to NY late wasn't stupid enough, i took her back home to DC later that night. I guess she didn't have too thrilling a weekend and was more than happy to go home. Monday ended up a little disaster when i tried to coordinate meeting my friend Sid down in DC for dinner and i invited ken with me, but the train got delayed so there was only time to pick sid up from the train station and rush him to BWI so he could fly home. I shouldn't have convinced him to waste time coming to DC and stop at Baltimore instead. It was a bad call on my part but it sounded good on paper...
Monday at work was painfully exhausting, esp since i had pathetically little sleep in the last three days. One of my patients that i was readying to bring back to the OR didn't want to shake my hand, and instead reached over and gave me a big hug. She said she hated the formality of a handshake and preferred hugs instead. Also she believed that everyone should be hugged at least 10 times a day because we all need it. She was over 70 years old but didn't look much older than 50, maybe she was onto something there. It was weird, but maybe because i was so tired, the hug felt really good and i agreed that i could certainly use a few more...

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Wednesday, August 27, 2003, 11:32 a.m.

I feel tired...

For the first time since i've moved out here, i feel kind of tired and depressed. My days have been exhausting and long but now i really feel like its been catching up with me and work just feels a little harder. Work is fine tho, what has been bothering me is something that a friend of mine told me the other day. It was hard to hear but something i have to accept like a mature adult. I think she made the right decision and i would have done the same thing if the positions were switched. We both seem to understand each other and yet i woke up today feeling very crappy and withdrawn and i spent a lot of time thinking about why. I'm guess what really bothers me is that i thought i had an understanding with her, but it turned out to be completely wrong. I'm not angry with her at all, but i feel really mad at myself for being so stupid and dense. I thought i knew what was going on and it turned out i didn't have the slightest clue. Now i'm stuck with major doubts about anyone who is close to me. I wonder if i just see what i want to believe when i'm in fact clueless of how people around me actually look and regard me. Sometimes i don't feel like i've grown any wiser to people or the world at all. Maybe i just think too much...

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Tuesday, August 26, 2003, 06:59 p.m.

People who piss me off

For a change, nothing particularly interesting happened today. After getting a good nights sleep, i no longer felt like a moron at work today, but while i was on my break for lunch, a homeless lady approached me outside asking for a dollar while i was ordered food. My first reaction was to get angry and glare at her, thinking 'how dare you bother me while i'm on my lunch break'. After thinking for a few seconds i gave her whatever change i had, but i was still mad and i wasn't sure why at first. I realized it wasn't the money that bothered me but i felt like my privacy was invaded upon. Still, getting upset over a little money isn't really worth refusing. Plus when i was going home, i got off the usual freeway exit where 3 lanes merged into 2. I knew this and started to slow down and let a space 10 car lengths grow in front of me. Still the cars in the merge lane didn't get the picture even tho i was flashing my lights and kept on going until the lane ended, then blocking traffic anyway trying to merge into my lane which they could have done 5 mins ago. Morons, i couldn't believe how i was trying to be nice and make the traffic move smoother for everyone and yet ppl are still too stupid to get a clue. Ok i'm home now and time to veg.

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Monday, August 25, 2003, 06:48 p.m.

Warrior needs food...and sleep!

I really miss the game gauntlet, not that i was any good at it, but for the group experience. I also miss having video game geek friends too, but that was pretty much my life in ann arbor and i'm kind of done with that.

I'm finally home and tired as hell, especially after getting no real sleep since Sat night and working all Mon. I got very lucky and only had to work one case, granted the case took all day and my brain was firing on half cylinders. I picked up eileen from BWI on Sat night and met up with her sister and boytoy companion. We had this conversation that he looked like a korean pop star and i told them i saw a guy in a movie who looked just like him, but i didn't want to say that the guy was the loser character in the movie. Sunday was a long day and when i was supposed to go back home in the evening, i was wiped out and didn't want to drive back yet, so i had the 'brilliant' idea to nap at eileen's place for a few hours, get my batteries recharged and go home. My 'napping' consisted of constantly shifting between the bed and floor and talking with her while i was half asleep. Plus it was capped off with midnight delivery dinner. I didn't leave until 2am, which led to a really crappy drive back home. I spent about an hour more on the road than usual since i made about 4 stops and kept taking naps. I felt great for the first half of the trip, but the closer i got to Philly, the exhausted i felt. While i drove straight into work at 6am, i kept asking myself if i did these things because i am naturally stupid or just trying to shake up everyone's impression that i'm smart.

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Friday, August 22, 2003, 10:29 a.m.

Why am i such an ATM retard?

Ok, twice this week i've suffered complete brain-farts trying to operate an ATM. The first was on sunday at staten island, where i go to a local bank to get some cash. I withdraw $60 and while its processing, i get distracted and start tying my shoes. The money pops out like usual but what i didn't know was if i wait too long....it sucks my money back in the machine, and it doesn't credit me back! I had to withdraw another $60 and pay the service fee again since it wasn't my bank's ATM. I called this bank later in the week only to find out that they can't do anything and i have to contact my own bank to get the money bank, grrrr. The second time i fucked up was at my own bank and instead of depositing $340 like i originally planned, i only stuffed $300 into the envelope. As soon as i screwed this up i walk straight into the bank where the useless asst manager told me she couldn't do anything and my card would probably be deactivated in a few days because of fraud. I said 'excuse me, but you can't do ANYTHING with the machine thats 20 ft away from us?!'. Once my damn card gets deactivated, i have to go back to the branch office to get a new one made up. Thank god my bank is open til 8 on weekdays *ugh*

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Sunday, August 17, 2003, 08:51 p.m.

Back in NY

Anyone who has been watching the news this past week has probably heard about the whole NE blackout. I've learned a few things about how the national power grids work and how intimately connected all the cities along the Lake Erie loop are. Many people suspect cyberterrorism and while i can't argue that they're wrong, i simply think it was a chain reaction of human and computer error. I still prefer the 'Homer Simpon spilling his cheese fondue on the power plant control panel' theory myself, but everyone is entitled to their opinion.

I kind of ramble about this because i made another weekend trip up to NYC on Sat, this time to visit aya who was taking a week trip to the east coast to visit her cousins in the city. I was a little uncomfortable at first imposing on them for crashspace, but since it was only a night, it couldn't have been that bad. Overall i had a great time hanging out with aya and getting to know some of the people in her family. Andrew, her cousin, and his wife shirley were very cool and fun to hang out with and i fell like i made a couple new friends up their, not just met my friend's relatives. We spent most of the weekend around the soho and village areas with a touch of chinatown and the meat packing district in between. One of the weirder moments was running into my other friend may with whom i spoke with the day before. I figured if i was going to be up in town so often, i'd try harder to introduce all my various friends, just to simplify my life a little. She sounded pretty excited to meet up with us on sat and i was going to call her in the evening to see what she wanted to do, but while we were shopping in soho, shirley made a last minute detour in probably the 15th women's boutique that day. I was pretty tired and just spacing out watching the girls shop when i noticed may standing about 2 feet next to aya. I said 'hey' and we all just stared at each other from the really bizzare timing, especially since i hadn't called her up yet. We got to all introduce ourselves and later got togehter at this french bistro on the west side of town. Another lucky break was finding out that our 1.5 hr wait got trimmed down to almost 10 min, and with may arriving just in time, we got to enjoy dinner and drinks til pretty late. Funny, but i never thought i'd enjoy escargot, but it wasn't half bad. Snails must have been the food theme of the weekend since i had chinese style snails for dimsum the next day. Oh yeah, it was my first time in flushing and queens too. Boy there were a lot of chinese and koreans.

Back to the blackouts, when i arrived in manhattan, you wouldn't even know that the power was totally out 24 hrs before. Everything was up and running and still bustling with people on the streets. Plus i was talking to several locals and they all made it sound like it was one big party, not some crazy riotous madhouse that i imagined. This one girl was telling me that people were on the streets drinking, playing music, games, shooting fireworks. To be honest, i was kind of jealous, but then i thought about trying to use the bathroom in the dark and took it back...

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Fri, August 15, 2003, 09:03 p.m.

TGIF....no seriously

What can i say, it was a great way to start the weekend. First off i was assigned to consults which basically means 'show up to work later than usual and have no definite work assignments unless i get paged'. I rolled in at 7am which feels almost like coming to work in the afternoon. It's amazing how much an extra hour of sleep makes a difference. After helping out with several cases in the morning i ended up spending nearly the whole day in the medical library waiting for a page and screwing around on the internet and reading. God bless ethernet access. Also in a couple of weeks i should have wireless access in the OR suites as well...although i'm not sure if thats such a good thing or not. Maybe i should look into getting a palm pilot with wireless access. To top it off i got off work early and zoomed up to King of Prussia for another local subie meet and stuffed myself with buffalo wings at Hooters followed by one of the funnest yet scariest backroad night drives i've been on in a while. Ever since crashing the WRX i've been a little leery of pushing too hard on an unfamiliar back road, and in the middle of the night. A group of us from the meet ended up going to this house party about an hour into the suburbs in West Chester and i laughed to myself when i found out it was a college party. Most of the people were over 21....well some were. I haven't been to one of those in a long time and while it wasn't really my thing, i had a few beers from the keg which were great since the weather was so foul humid and hot outside. Cheap watery beer really hit the spot. I mostly hung out on the porch and the partyhost's girlfriend was constantly bugging us to see if we were over 21 since they didn't want to get busted by the cops again. This was really funny cause she was the only one who was underaged. I really didn't want to say i was 29 and told her 'i'm a LOT older than 21, trust me' which she didn't really believe. Maybe my redyed hair didn't help, but at the same time, at least i blended in. As i was driving home from the party, i got obsessed with retuning my UTEC so i would floor it on the empty road, pull over, reprogram my computer, then hit the road and floor it again. I'm just glad there were no police on Route 3 that night. Oh well, off to NYC tommorow. I hope everything is up and running again after that blackout.

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Sunday, August 10, 2003, 07:43 p.m.

A lazy sunday

This has been probably the slowest weekend yet, and frankly i enjoy it. True i did go to Otakon on Sat, but that was only to say hi to a few friends. I was surprised to see folks like Henry, who is from LA, out east and apparently he decided at the very last minute. Also scored a fantastic last minute airfare thru Southwest. I was incredibly jealous to find that out. This was probably my first time going to an animecon where i didn't go to meet up with a large group of friends, and frankly i was bored out of my mind. I was so tired by the end of the day that i decided to drive home late rather than split a hotel room and stay, and having woken up in my own bed, i'm glad i made that choice. I did see TM Revolution live and i have to admit that he was pretty good on stage. Maybe i'll start checking out some more of his music.

I spent today waking up late and catching the new Tomb Raider movie, the whole time thinking about how hot Angelina Jolie looks in the film and how a friend of mine said she'd go for her if she went lesbian. Yummy. I found out something cool, that sales tax doesn't apply to clothing items. Anyone want to come visit me to go shopping?

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Friday, August 8, 2003, 08:49 p.m.

Snip snip bleach bleach

After a month of growing shagginess, i finally made an appointment to get my hair cut and recolored. I did it more to get a new color and settled on a lighter brown, just for fun. I realized one of the great perks of work now is that nobody gives a damn what my hair looks like most of the time, since i'm wearing a surgical cap all day. Of course that leaves me with a pretty bad case of hat hair.

I ended up choosing a place in chinatown that some of the locals recommended and i thought they did a great job. Plus it was pretty cheap too, running me only $50. I rounded it out to a nice $60 for a fat tip. Although its kind of embarassing to say, but i love getting my hair cut. It's like a hour long scalp massage with a free haircut thrown in. Look good and feel good, how can you beat that. Anyways, i was pretty impressed and the girl cutting my hair was asking me where i got it cut last and if white people had cut it. I had to laugh because that was true and i wondered how she could tell. I guess she was implying that non-asians don't have a clue how to manage difficult asian hair, especially when it grows in a half different directions like mine. Something funny happened when i was almost done. A couple girls walked in while i was getting my hair cut, and with the color job, both of them were done with their trims before i was. I might have been imagining but i was looking in the mirror and one of the girls was smiling and waving at me. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the hairdresser's attention she was trying to get since she wasn't even paying attention. Someone flirting with me at a hair salon, now thats a first.

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Monday, August 4, 2003, 01:42 p.m.

I'm a n00b again. . .

Ok back to work today. During my entire first month as an anesthesiologist-in-training, i've been getting a lot of 1-on-1 instruction which means what it sounds. Basically one senior staff doc is paired up with each newbie 1st year resident, like myself, and watched carefully as we blunder, screw up repeatedly and get scolded a lot during what is a pretty nasty steep learning curve. By the end of that first month they seemed to disappear for coffee breaks hours at a time once they were pretty comfortable that we wouldn't kill our patients. Life was intense but good, esp since TWO residents were paired up in each room meaning we always had a backup buddy to help out meaning two men could do a one man job. Problem is, its supposed to be a one man job...

Ok, it's now our second month and we're full fledged 'non-n00b' gasmen(and women) and today they started us by ourselves in our own rooms. I found that doing a one man job by myself took a lot more planning and rushing than i thought and during the first case, i felt like i was just starting again. Thank god i got into the groove by the next case and again, my staff just took off and disappared for chunks of time and poking his head in once in a while to see we weren't trying to give CPR to a now-dead patient. By the end of the day, i actually felt like i knew what i was doing when that could be the farthest thing from the truth. Still, i haven't felt like a stud in a long time. Go me.

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Sunday, August 3, 2003, 10:09 p.m.

Crabcakes and Gay St

Another weekend come and gone, and i need more sleep again. This time it was spent in DC again, this time visiting eileen who just got back from france. I got a call from her when she returned to the states, and despite promising myself to stay home for a change, i was invited to hang out down in washington again. Oh well. After getting off a busy late night at the hospital around 10pm, i was almost roped into staying a few more hours to help out with some traumas being rolled in. Luckily i managed to talk my chief into skipping out when i was suposed to and drove thru traffic, rain, and a general lack of sleep rolling into DC around 1 am. We ended up bullshitting til about 5 in the morning despite me wanting to fall asleep a half dozen times and then on Sat we spent the day in Baltimore looking for a good crab joint to eat at. I learned that Baltimore is the crab capital of the east coast and we ended up settling on Phillips which is a chain, but still pretty good. The premium crab cakes were definitely worth it, although i wasn't too impressed with my soft shell crab. It was new on the menu so maybe it still needs working on. We also went into grade-school humor mode when we found that Gay St. ran thru all the adult clubs and porn shops downtown. For some reason i still think its funny even now. We were also kind of pissed that we'd have to wait about 3 hrs after buying tickets to get into the National Aquarium. Stupid fire marshall laws. Sunday we just screwed around, honestly it was still too hot to really do anything outdoors and i ended up making it back to Philly in record time. I95 was good to me tonight.

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