You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September 2011.
I won’t write about the exams or studying for the exams… because that is boring.
On Friday after our histology exam, a bunch of us went into the city for lunch. Indian buffet for the win! It was the Brick Lane Curry House in East Village. Tried mango fish curry and other stuff for the first time.
After that, I tagged along w/ a friend to check out the city. Our afternoon was my edumacation of the city.
We walked south down Broadway and checked out SoHo, Little Italy, and Chinatown. Fun facts I learned that most people probably already know:
- SoHo means “south of Houston”. Houston (pronounced HOW sten) is a street that runs sideways, perpendicular to Broadway. Therefore, SoHo is the neighborhood south of Houston. Tada! It’s got a bunch of shops mostly.
- NoLita means “north of Little Italy”. Also another neighborhood/area.
- Little Italy’s in the middle of a 2-week (or so?) celebration called the Feast of San Gennaro. The main street down Little Italy’s closed to traffic and all the stores set up booths and outdoor seating areas. Walking through, I smelled and saw a bunch of pizza, sausages, cheeses, etc.
- Chinatown, which is mainly on Canal St is creeping into Little Italy.
- Manhattan’s Chinatown’s more Cantonese, whereas Flushing/Queens’ Chinatown’s more Mandarin.
- Apparently, Manhattan’s Little Italy isn’t as great as tourists would expect. Friends have told me it’s kind of a tourist trap? If you want better Italian food, come to Arthur Ave in the Bronx which is another Little Italy.
The whole time, my friend and I had an awesome conversation. Unfortunately, my attention was all over the place as were my eyes because of all the new things I was seeing.
Stuffed from the Indian buffet lunch and a Nuts4Nuts cart, I couldn’t sample any Little Italy food. Instead I bought half a roasted duck in Chinatown and got it to go. :) very oily, though 
MOVIE NIGHT
One of my classmates is this really cool guy who grew up in Ghana. A bunch of us ECF people went over to his apartment Friday night to watch a movie called Facing the Giants.
My friend, his wife, and his 2 year old daughter hosted us until midnight and we talked and talked. His childhood in Ghana, his experience w/ men’s accountability groups in the past, their experience delivering their first baby, their thoughts on home births, how they met. All while eating homemade brownies and homemade frozen yogurt. Twas awesome!
HALF MARATHON – 4 WEEKS AWAY
I’m running the Baltimore half marathon instead of the full as I’d originally planned. I just had to downgrade – my training was nonexistent.
I’m still really lazy about running! Part of me kind of wants to just wing it, just out of curiosity and laziness. Another part of me knows I’d probably waddle for a week afterwards if I did.
I just found out that each borough of NYC has a half marathon sponsored by the NYRR (New York Road Runners). So that’s 5 total: Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island.
What’s cool is that NYRR is the group that organizes the NYC Half Marathon (March) and the …. *drumroll* ….. ING NYC Marathon (November). For anyone who doesn’t know, a lot of people call the ING NYC Marathon the most exciting marathon. Crazy crowds (2 million spectators), live music, the course runs through all 5 boroughs, finish line in Central Park, I hear it’s awesome. If I can, I’m going to check it out this November.
The NYRR has this goofy guaranteed entry program where if you run 4 of the 5 halves, you bypass the lottery to get a spot in the NYC Half, and there’s another guaranteed entry program for the full marathon (9 NYRR sponsored races in a calendar year + 1 day of race volunteering).
Before I found out about this, I thought there were only two ways to get into the NYC Marathon:
- Be fast enough to qualify (I think)
- Get a lottery spot
I have no shot of getting into the NYC Marathon before clerkships begin my 3rd year, buttttttt I can still do this guaranteed program thing for the NYC Half Marathon before I hit the wards!
A picture from the Half (which also goes through Manhattan!) taken from nyrr.org
So yeah. I want to run the NYC Half 
Warning: short, scattered-thoughts post. just got to the library. two exams (genetics and histo) this upcoming week. must study 
ECHO FREE CLINIC
Today was my first day volunteering at ECHO (Einstein Community Health Outreach) Free Clinic. I signed up for the semester to do Front Desk work – mainly answering the phone, scanning referral letters and test results, scheduling patients, admin stuff like that. I also tried out my Spanish over the phone w/ a Spanish-only speaking patient. After a few sentences, I gave up and handed the phone over to a student interpreter. Must improve mi espanol!
It’s not as glorious as other positions in the clinic like shadowing the clinical team or being in Labs (where you get to draw blood constantly), but I chose Front Desk ’cause I wanted a sense of the flow/logistics of day-to-day operations at a free clinic.
Patient comes in, checks in, immediately gets scheduled to meet a social worker, etc etc. Just learning a few of the many things non-doctor members of the healthcare team do, and the annoying stuff they deal with. Twas great
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So I woke up for clinic at 7am and got back around 3:30. After some napping, QTing, and munching on a hero from the deli across the street, I’m at the library….finally. (I love going to a pass/fail school!)
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IN THE LIKENESS OF GOD
It’s so easy to get caught up in my daily life happenings to forget that the end of it all is not 70ish years down the road, but in fact – that there is no end. Basically, it’s hard to keep the right perspective in terms of time and focus. Eternity and God. Not a few decades and me.
In the Likeness of God (Philip Yancey, Paul Brand) is a book I got from my old man many years ago. It’s a book Yancey wrote with orthopedic surgeon Paul Brand, who spent most of his career in India treating leprosy patients.
The book’s divided into smaller books kind of how the Bible is divided into Genesis, Exodus, etc. Except these smaller books are called “Cells”, “Bones”, etc. And in each book, you have ~10 page chapters called things like “Unity”, “Mutiny”, “Loyalty”.
I read a 10 page mini chapter or two at night before going to bed, and it’s such a money way to appreciate God in the crazy beautiful way he designed the human body from the organ systems all the way down to cellular level.
The book is basically Dr. Brand’s reflections on how Christ’s analogy of the Church being like a body is indeed true. The book’s packed with factoids of how awesome the human body is and how Christ’s body resembles it.
For this med student who wants to seek after The Best Thing, this book is so awesome. John Piper describes C.S. Lewis as having brought together concrete logic and creativity, two seemingly opposite things. I feel the same way about this book. It’s not science vs. God. It’s science within God, from God, and for God (a play off of Romans 11:33-36).
And I’ll end with this quote. It’s written on one of many glass displays along the entryway to one of the main buildings on campus.
“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”
-Albert Einstein
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Whether this quote relates to what I said, you decide. Either way, the lesson for me today is: sleep, then eat, and you’ll feel wide awake to write a blog post and study
PICS I SHOULD’VE POSTED TWO WEEKS AGO
lecture hall
free ikea desk. same setup as undergrad
matching desk attachment I decided to use as a bookshelf
11th floor. 28 total.
nightstand's view
what should've been the living room
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So yeah. My room is sweet. Especially since I have that impromptu dry erase board, you’d think I’d study really well in my room, right?On the contrary. I tried the library this past week. It’s money. It’s like my mental focus is amplified by all the legitimately studious people around me. The only thing around me in my room is snacks, the kitchen, and the bathroom. Library study from now on.
And my room’s giant. They were supposed to put up a dry wall to split the space into my bedroom and the communal living room, but New York’s got this law about every room being required to have a window, soooooo…yeah. I got my rent due notice in the mail. It’s cheaper than living at Crossroads back in Charlottesville. I think I’m okay with that.
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.U.S. OPEN TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIPS TODAY
took over an hour by subway to get to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, NY
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I got to go check out the U.S. Open today. The weather was really good, and it was nice to be in the middle of all that pro-level tennis play, hopping court to court to check out different players. I didn’t take any pictures of that part, but we also got to see Mardy Fish def. Kevin Anderson, Juan Monaco def. Tommy Haas, and a bit of Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova def. Jelena Jankovic.
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It was a bit annoying not being able to go into Arthur Ashe Stadium where Roger Federer was playing at one point and where Serena Williams was playing at another. The high price tag for Ashe Stadium access was a giant tease.
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Overall, I’m glad I went. I definitely enjoy playing more than watching, and I don’t think I’m going to the U.S. Open again anytime soon…unless I have Ashe Stadium access and a Grounds Admission Evening pass
besides this, I saw men on stilts, balls played in actual U.S. Open matches sold for $10, that giant tennis ball people get autographed sold for $40, samosas sold for $7.50. Prices are more ridiculous than amusement parks.
We got Grounds Day Admissions Passes (11am-7pm) that lets us wander in and out of any game at any court throughout the entire day except Arthur Ashe Stadium.
2 of the 4 friends I went with. At Smash Zone, a kid-friendly area that adapts tennis so that American youth grow up to love the sport. Bryan and Raj are both Cali natives.
Mercedez Benz is probably the U.S. Open's biggest corporate sponsor. They were offering to take free pictures of spectators with their pretty cars, fooling us into telling them whether we plan to buy or lease a MB in the future.
Waiting in front of one of the entrances to Louis Armstrong stadium to watch Janko Tipsarevic v. Tomas Berdych. Since the matches are televised, they let people enter/exit the stadium only at changeovers. It's kind of like merging onto the highway from a traffic light-regulated exit ramp. As soon as we entered, Berdych retired (probably b/c of his shoulder). Lame.
So instead, we went next door to the Grandstands, where Francesca Schiavone was playing Chanelle Scheppers. Schiavone's one of the few women who uses a one-handed backhand. Beautiful.
They went into a tie break in the second set! Schiavone won it (not shown). Twas happy
At the outer courts, we saw some matches for juniors, doubles, etc. I was surprised to see this guy - Somdev Devvarman. He was on the UVA Tennis Team a few years ago! I saw him play in college and the U.S. Open
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IN OTHER NEWS
School’s going pretty well. Learning lessons about how to study everyday. Being humbled by how slow I learn and how smart my classmates are everyday, too
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Last week’s hurricane postponed the plans to go into the city to check out a church. Instead, we had a solid time of worship at one of the ECF officers’ apartment.
Tomorrow, we’re going in the city for church. Time to get a feel for what’s out there in terms of a new spiritual home base.
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Labor Day will be exactly that; I will labor. Didn’t do any studying yesterday and today. Another histo quiz on Tuesday. Gotta get my act together.
But it’s okay. I made my first batch of hummus since moving in
