Thank you.

Thank you Mike, Jud, and Zondervan.  This, folks, is integrity.

 

culture as a gimmick

Parts of my culture are being used a sales gimmick by earnest, well-intentioned christians on this site:

http://www.deadlyviper.org/

People are already discussing/arguing at ProfRah’s blog, so I won’t recycle talking points.  But I just wanted to ask: what happens when people use other cultures as a sales gimmick?  Oh that’s right, perhaps this (look i’m sure the waffles are great but we’re not criticizing the waffles.  same goes with deadly viper)  Or maybe this (seriously, “what up?”).  And oh yes, who can forget this (though not even a real element of chinese culture).

As Deadly Viper stresses, let’s have some integrity and grace people.  You know, the kind that doesn’t mock Asians/Asian Americans, please.

My Girls

Listen to these lyrics:

There isn’t much that I feel I need
A solid soul and the blood I bleed
But with a little girl, and by my spouse,
I only want a proper house

I don’t care for fancy things
Or to take part in the freshest wave,
But to provide for mine who ask
I will, with heart, on my father’s grave

On my father’s grave
(On your father’s grave)

I don’t mean to seem like I
Care about material things,
Like a social status,
I just want
Four walls and adobe slats
For my girls

Let’s paint a little context… this song was released at one of the lowest points in the current financial recession.  It dances to the thumps of anti-materialism in a way that feels both deep-rooted and pie-in-the-sky.  Cool song, no?

healthcare grumbling

A friend and I were musing about the recent healthcare debate, i.e. about death panels…

Liberals are not advocating for death panels for Grandma.  But let’s be honest about the CURRENT state of things.  We essentially have panels operated by Big Insurance and some Big For-Profit Provider Schemes that are screwing over poor people and costly sick people (which could include Grandma).  Why does THIS not make people crash town hall meetings???

Oh My God

…it would be a disservice to your life to avoid watching these talks:

Everything is Spiritual
and
The Gods aren’t angry

on http://player.flannel.org/

Click on “Free Tickets,” then “Get Free Tickets,” and then select one of those videos.  [Thanks to hopewanders for the tip]

socialism is everywhere! yikes!

http://imgur.com/5RkJK.png

I cracked up when I read this.

On being pre-med.

October of 2004 I find myself walking into the UW’s ethnic cultural center for a packed orientation/seminar about being pre-med.  The pre-med advisor — who I never actually met in my 5 year college adventure — stands at ease in front of the eager, studious bunch.  He clicks once to start his powerpoint presentation, scans the bursting room, and asks rhetorically, “why do you want to be a doctor?” He continues quickly, “you’ll be asked that in your interviews, and, see… DO NOT be the guy who reads the script: I like science and I want to help people.  I’d tell him, ‘go work as a receptionist at the pacific science center.’”

So for years afterwards, I take my classes, volunteer my time, lab the lab-work, save the world in Africa, and try to experience — in college — the college experience.  It’s kind of sad that it’s possible to sum it up like that.  But all the while — as I take pause between o-chem studying, as I listen to talks at my christian fellowship, as I update my incoherent (or well-rounded, depending on your lack of honesty) resume — I’m desperately snatching for a better answer to that cursed interview question.  No, Dale, don’t talk about your science classes.  Don’t say you like to help people.  That’s lame, dude.  Say something like you love health policy and rural medicine is your passion… those are home-runs.  Say your dream is to find a cure for mad cow disease, who knows.  Just ANYTHING besides a cookie-cutter, naive excuse for a life-goal.

But you, the reader, are probably shaking your head.  It shouldn’t be that hard to fill in the blank after “want to be a doctor because…”  Yet I’m now realizing that the whole hike through pre-med-valley was not designed for finding a better answer to “Why Medicine?”  The pre-med ride was about finding sincerity.  Because in my opinion, there are a lot of “good” motivations for pursuing medicine that are close descendants of that cliche, but accurate, template.

Jack Spicer, a poet from San Francisco, writes that all poets are just “patiently telling the same story, writing the same poem, gaining and losing something with each transformation—but, of course, never really losing anything.”  A lot of us pre-med folk go into the interview and spew out a re-phrasing of the the “I like science and want to help people” poem, and the panel doesn’t care if you can rhyme single-payer-plan with CT-scan (although it counts for something).  They want to know if I am just bullshitting when I, with different words, say what I swore I’d never say:

yes.  fine.  Science is cool.  Helping people is cool

AH.  THE RELIEF… now, interview panel, please let me elaborate — about how I experienced the utility of epidemiology in East Africa, about how America’s going to need a Normandy-scale invasion of new primary care docs to treat baby-boomers and their wii-is-my-only-exercise children, about how a sloppy courtship with engineering taught me I NEED to work with people more than numbers in the future, about the awesome people at Country Doc Homeless Teen Clinic.

So I’m grateful that the pre-med advisor gave me that stern warning when I was a freshman.  Yet I wish I had understood at the time what he meant: be unique, but more importantly think it out, live it out, and be sincere.  To those of you who are pre-med: think it out, live it out, and be sincere   …  Easier said than done.  But if it’s done, than it’s easily said with sincerity  That’s cute, huh.

On a related note, I was applying to medical schools simultaneously with the presidential election getting in full, mud-slinging swing.  Each candidate would often say what the other guy (guy is gender-neutral in this case) said, albeit with party-rhetoric attached.  Being a maverick and being an agent of change are really getting at the same point.  Putting country first and “Yes we can…” both basically say that unity is strength.  So, not to diminish the content of their speeches, but look, earnestness is what a lot of people want to hear.  And it’s what people will expect from their doctor after the 23095023 years it takes me to become one.

Japan post4

My co-volunteer, Matthew, was drinking a product called “Nuun” a couple weeks ago at clinic.  He then proceeded to pitch it to me as “Gatorade without the fructose.”  Nuun comes in small tubes of tablets that are inserted into a normal water bottle (filled with water) and it adds electrolytes, etc.  for better absorption and performance.  In Japan, it has really kept me on my feet, considering the liters of sweat that I lose everyday.  So Nuun is like drinking my sweat back… but it tastes much, much better

And some pictures.

Japan post3

Some photos…

Japan post2

Mimicking a friend’s blogging style,

1. When I walk outside of some train stations in Tokyo, I still feel like I’m inside.  Both because of the weather and because the alleyways are so narrow with a small sliver of sky-ceiling visible.

2.   Looking outside through the Shinkansen (bullet train) window is fantastic.  When an object (light post, guard rail, other trains) is narrowly missed by the train, it looks like the scenery ‘glitches.’

3. My cousin has been using the word ‘dreadful’ a lot. 

4. Yokohama’s Chinatown has a restaurant that boasts the world’s greatest hombow.  And you are physically unable to pass through the district without seeing it: there’s at least 5 of the restaurant within a few blocks of each other.

5. I bought a sweet knife from the outskirts of the Tsukiji fish market.  http://www.sugimoto-hamono.com/en/company.html