Dr. What's Herface?

Last night I got my contract from Tacoma. It states that this contract is between them and Dr. Me. How crazy is that! They might as well have written between Tacoma and Donald Duck it's so foreign to see that.

I know I've gotten a lot of junk mail to me as Dr. But it's still bizarre. I still wonder who I've tricked to get this far. Then I remember my Ob/Gyn rotation, or my Chelsea SubI, or surgery and realize I've put in the blood sweat and tears to get this.

I've also gone and joined facebook. For the uninitiated (that was me a few weeks ago) Facebook is this online networking system. Like Friendster or MySpace or any of those million of totally useless online devices. However, I did manage to find two people from my postbac program that I think about all the freaking time and have wondered about for 5 years now! So that is exciting. It's more popular with the youngsters so not a lot of people my age seem to be on it. In fact, I couldn't find anyone from my graduating class at Wesleyan that I knew.

Regardless, it'll be a nice distraction on call nights, I'm sure, and for now a good way to keep track of what people are up to.

The Match

On March 15th we all sat in a banquet hall waiting for our names to be read. Once our name was read aloud we walked/ran/waltzed/shuffled up on stage to open the envelope at the podium and announce in the microphone our Match results. Nerve wracking and exciting. Non-medical students who were there said the tension was palpable.

Overall it was pretty fun. Some of my classmates made a really sweet and funny video using pictures from the last four years and video clips.

Me, I matched at Tacoma Family Medicine (http://www.tacomafamilymedicine.org) in Tacoma, WA! Initially I had thought I'd be ending up in Portland, OR but I'm actually happier going to Tacoma. It's a stronger program and such a gorgeous location (photos are from the window of the hotel Suhani and I stayed in courtesy of TFM and from the glass bridge in tacoma). Check out the "highlights" on the link! Pretty sweet stuff.

I'm excited and scared at the same time! I am excited to go out there and look for a place to live. I'm scared to work my tail off at one of the most intense and rigorous family medicine training programs in the US. I'm excited to meet new people and and start my life as an MD. I'm scared to meet new people and start my life as an MD.

Rooftop tremors, paddle boats and barfbags

Again, a late post, but this one I wrote on the plane ride(s) home:



Trip home has been interesting. I met this 50-year-old Croatian woman with a shaved head at the Bangkok airport who sat next to me and, staring deeply into my eyes, discussed the joys and perils of being a single woman traveler. She was very sweet although her English at times was a bit confusing (possibly explaining the intense eye contact). She gave me some guava fruit she had bought but couldn’t eat and after swearing to me that it was safe, and after talking with her and realizing she was pretty trustworthy, I took her offering. As I was just biting into the second yummy slice of fruit she was telling a story about a guide/translator she had in Cambodia or somewhere who gave her the runaround. She was narrating her story and I swear I heard her say, “He, how you say? f-cked my head off” and I nearly choked on my fruit and thought “oh god, I just took food from a psycho bald lady who gives too much eye contact!” but I’m pretty sure it was just her English and either someone taught her the wrong phrase or I heard her wrong. I thought the whole train of thoughts running through my head were pretty damn funny and I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing (she was self conscious about her English and might have been hurt had I start laughing). I think back and wonder if I should have made her clarify the phrase and corrected her.

The flight from Bangkok to Taipei was rather uneventful, except for the landing. The landing was awful with these huge careening bounces on the runway and my mediocre Patricia Cornwell book went careening out of my hands over the seat in front of me.

The flight on my 737 double-decker airbus from Taipei to San Fran was an ordeal. It was “The Flight From Hell” as my row dubbed it. It was a bonding experience. There was terrible turbulence the whole 11 hours with only brief respites. There were people throwing up from the constant rocking and dipping of the plane. I got contracted as the closest thing to a doctor the flight attendants could find and recommended some Dramamine and Tylenol for this sweet teenage boy in the row behind me who was sick as a dog and traveling with his older brother.

Speaking of sick, the youth hostel turned out to be a good place to make me really ready to go back home (view from my rooftop at left). The boys there were feverish with random illnesses, up at night vomiting from alcohol poisoning, and wrapped in gauze from dog bites and other mysterious illnesses. Note to self: If I have boys they are NOT backpacking in Asia without adult supervision! I felt old and crotchety. There may have been a time when I think I might have fit in with dreadlocked, possibly drug-addled, sick, binge drinker international travelers at a crummy youth hostel… but certainly not anymore. I started noticing earthquakes (or what I think were earthquakes but I’ve been told BKK isn’t on a fault line). My bed would either shake, or I would pitch from side to side in the divot in my sagging bed at night (it woke me up my last night). It could have been random vertigo (unlikely) or my imagination (also unlikely to wake me up in the middle of the night) but I think it was an earthquake or aftershock form a nearby fault. I also ran out of cash the last day and since no one anywhere takes credit cards and I couldn’t’ withdraw more cash I was pretty strapped and skipped more than a few meals. Luckily I found a fiver in my bag and exchanged it for enough money for cab fare to the airport to avoid taking the dreaded bus 552 (a long journey in a hot oven of a bus that is unreliable and possibly not even the right bus). I also discovered a cockroach while I packing, scurrying around in my bra no less. I smashed it with my Birkenstock leaving a lovely mess of pussy schmutz on my floor. So I was none too eager to leave the hostel and its sweating, sick, smelly kids and rooftop tremors. I arrived at the airport 5 ½ hours before my flight was scheduled to leave.

My last full day in Bangkok I explored the city rather thoroughly. I left close to 7 AM and hit up Siam Square (the Times Square of Asia). With nearly 10 million people Bangkok hardly feels third world. Their Sky Rail system is easy to manage and most everything is in both English and Thai (except for the best street food I found out but thanks to Tanya and Chris I was able to make do ordering non-touristy Thai food). Siam Square, I imagine, can be a bit overwhelming, but I explored it pretty early, from about 8ish in the morning until mid afternoon. Photo is as I was getting off the Sky Train to Siam Square.

The afternoon and evening I played in Lumphini Park (part of it pictured at left). The park was fabulous and huge and I occupied probably 3 hours or more just reading under trees, watching paddle boaters, joggers, people doing tai chi and masses of people (hundreds?) following some sort of jazzercise routine (I was so tempted to take pictures of this last spectacle but it was getting dark by this time. But it’s okay, the image of hundred of Thai jazzercising simultaneously has been burned permanently in my brain – for better or worse). After the park I went to a fun night bazaar which was really fun with diverse merchandise and a ferris wheel! Go figure!

So I write this from the airport in San Francisco. Full circle. My flight is full, boards in about 10 minutes, and marks the last 4 ½ hours before I can finally go home and curl into my own bed. It was a great adventure and I can see myself going back to Bangkok some day. But I will certainly stay in a real hotel and bring lots more money so I can shop properly (entrance to just one massive 9-story mall at left). The shopping there was amazing – and those who know me know I’m usually not a shopper. They had everything from the designer stuffs (Versace, Gucci, you name it) to cool funky one-of-a-kind boutique stuff, to cheap but surprisingly good knock-offs. There were also lots of silk merchants and handmade folk art trade type places. I intended on some serious gift buying but sadly ran out of cash… maybe next time! And I hope there will be a next time!

Thanks for joining me on this latest adventure! Stay tuned… there may be more ramblings in the future for your enjoyment (or my catharsis).

Leaving Down Under

The weekend before I left back to Bangkok we left in Lisa’s trusty Toyota to drive the Great Ocean Road. A twisty, turny thing with landmarks along the coastline and lots of history (shipwrecks, escaped convicts, and, um, surfing movies?). We also saw koala that were literally hanging out above the road. Lisa got a great picture of one on her super duper camera.



The whole drive the sun was reluctant to show itself and it even rained a little but the views were still incredible and I managed a quick dip in the ocean between raindrops. We all took about a million pictures. One of the highlights was the tree top walk where you walk these long catwalks/scaffolding things around an old forest. (photo Ali took of me on the catwalks at treetop walk.)



We saw the 12 apostles, famous Australian image, I’d say arguably as famous as the Sidney Opera House with rocks along the shoreline popping up in pointy formations. However one had collapsed within the last year and Ali and Lisa were a bit disappointed, as it didn’t look quite the same. We also only counted 9 possible apostles but weren’t entirely sure.



I still found the site rather spectacular and enjoyed the whole trip, even Lisa’s daredevil hairpin turns at breakneck speeds and Ali’s climbing on ledges and swinging catwalks scaring the bejeezus outta me. (pic: winding turns evident on TomTom/GPS)



(Pic of me near cave where two survivors from a shipwreck waited out a storm). I wanted to remark a bit on the countryside landscape as well. At higher altitudes the grass was green and almost lush, but most everywhere else the grass was yellowed and the grazing cows at pasture were rail thin with ribs visible from the road. Looking out over these vast drying fields you could really get a sense of how serious the drought in Australia is. With my vivid imagination it wasn’t a big stretch to imagine things getting worse with crop shortages, cattle corpses feeding the flies and such… but then we got back to the ocean and I perked up and got a little less fatalistic about global warming and little more optimistic while watching waves crashing against the shoreline. Ali asked me why I felt optimistic and I told him not to question optimism… doesn’t questioning optimism then define pessimism in some way?



The whole visit wrapped with a massive BBQ at Wendy’s with various and sundry meat products. The desserts were to die for as well. As had been my trend on this leg of the journey, I ate until I found it difficult to sit upright. Then Wendy insisted we watch some documentary of a house in San Francisco built by some crazy widow and we rested and digested until we got to the point were we could walk instead of waddle to our respective cars. (The photo is of a stone cooked tenderloin I got at a seaside joint on our trip - truly delicious! And fancy!)

Ali and Lisa saw me off at the airport and we enjoyed surprisingly yummy airport salads before my departure. I noshed on a goody bag of chocolate Wendy made for me on the plane as well and tried not to think about leaving my friends :(

Some other highlights about being Down Under
The stars: Orion was upside down. Thought that was interesting. And I got to see the Northern Cross which is a star formation that you can only see from the southern hemisphere and appears in the Australian flag.
Aussie Slang: I don’t even know how to start Australian Slang. I don’t have a favorite per se but I do like how they seem to “chuck” everything – chuck a u-ey (make a u-turn), chuck a sickie (take a day off), etc. For more Aussie slang feel free to visit this site: http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html

Adventures in Oz

My last five days in Australia were awesome here's the first of two posts about what we did! The first two pictures are of fish and chips and some great Aussie junk food!

First I have to admit to a small victory in convincing Lisa to let me sleep in a couple days (she was quite the task master!) and we explored Melbourne more lackadaisically which was fine by me. We also played Ali’s “Wii” – the new video game where you hold this sensor and move around like you’re actually playing the game. We played tennis, golf, bowling and boxing. And you play your own character which you make from all these features, body parts and modifications to look as close to you as possible (however hands are always these big balls which cracked me up for no apparent reason). My character had brown hair, swept bangs, big eyes and freckles (of course) :) I’m not sure if it really looked like me but some of them really did look like the people they represented. Ali’s mom, for example, was a spitting image! Except for the ball hands of course.

One of the highlights of the last few days in Melbourne were going to the top of The Rialto after exploring the University of Melbourne to see the city from many, many stories up. The city had a bit of a haze over it, being nasty-hot and breezeless, but it was beautiful and we could see all these sites we’d seen over the last week like the historic St. Kilda Pier and fish and chips shop turned ritzy café at the end of it. The photo is a composite panorama from Lisa's cool photo software from pictures she took. Cool, eh?

At the University we explored an air-conditioned art gallery that had a rather diverse display of art, from old Russian movie posters and Eastern European warning signs (like, danger, this machine could cut your hand off – with fine deco art to accompany the warning) to stained glass (with one figure looking eerily like Gillian Anderson) to turn of the century portraits. (picture of girl studying at the university)

And for extra fun, here’s a pic of the scary entrance to Luna Park – a Coney Island type park built by none other than an American ex-pat who loved Coney and was inspired to build a Coney Island type park in Australia. Sadly, no Nathan’s hotdogs were to be found around Luna but I’m sure there were fish and chips somewhere nearby.

Another fun thing we did was go to moonlight (or was it midnight?) cinema in the botanical gardens in the middle of the city (pic of lisa, me and wayne enjoying cool wine on a hot evening). We had a yummy picnic of cheeses, breads, dips, sausages, fruit and wine. Definitely the best spread at the gardens! We brought chairs, blankets, a bean bag and settled in as it got dark and the bats emerged, flying around above and very likely keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Then the movie, Happy Feet, started. I had seen it before (and little did I know was going to see it again on the plane from Taipei to San Fran) but it was just as amusing as I remembered and outside on a big inflatable screen is definitely the best way to see a movie!

We also went to Queen Victoria Market and walked the stands. Looking at Australiana, cheap clothes, fruit, meat, live birds. It was disgusting hot but I got to eat yummy food and enjoy the company of Wendy Lisa and Ali. In addition, Lisa and I (on one of our sleep-in days) got to spend some time at Wendy’s pet shop where I played with puppy, squeaked the squeaky toys just to piss Wendy off (that was great fun!) and tried a legendary meat pie from the neighboring shop.

More Aussie (Ozzie?) joy in the next post as well...