Sunday, January 22, 2006

Crouching Chairman, Hidden Geisha

Last night, I went to see 'Memoirs of a Geisha' with a few of my classmates ('The Circle of Nerds' I like to call us). The movie starred Zhang Ziyi and Michelle Yeoh, so of course it reminded me of Crouching Tiger, one of my favourite films. Zhang did a pretty good job, and it was interesting to see Yeoh in a completely non-martial-arts role. In supporting roles were Li Gong, who seems to be getting more intense these days, and Kaori Momoi, who I remember from 'Pyrokinesis', of all movies. But, the highlight of the film for me was Kōji Yakusho, who was awesome, as always.

Unfortunately, the movie is rather too sentimental for my tastes, with a pretty shallow central philosophy. I 'identified' with Nobu, but everyone else in the movie lacks a real raison d'être.

Anyways, after watching the flick (my butt went ischemic sitting in those small theatre seats), we headed across the parking lot to 'Montana's' for some appetizers and desserts. Suburban Calgary is all box stores and chain restaurants; it's pretty depressing. At least Montana's has nice high ceilings. But, why name a Canadian restaurant chain after a US state? For the same reason that that US chain is called 'Bugaboo Creek', I guess.

Otherwise, I studied like nuts this weekend. Getting a good head start on resp, gotta love it. The cardio exam on Friday went fine, and I owe that in large part to finishing the EKG textbook in the middle of the first week of the course. I never did finish the second (more important) textbook...

8 comments:

apalazzo said...

Lets face the facts.

Alberta = as close as you can get to the US (with health care).

Tall Medstudent said...

I dunno, there are communes all over the place here, literally hundreds of them. Don't see much of that in the US.

Marysienka said...

what did you do before medschool? (if i understand, you can't go directly in meds (like us), right?)

glad your cardio exam went well. i dont like cardio, and i ll probably need to read my notes a few times to do well on this exam. pulmo is more interesting!

Tall Medstudent said...

I went to U of T. Got a Ph.D., then postdoced & worked at Harvard, before quiting everything and coming to meds.

Give cardio a chance; listening to a heart is quite enjoyable, and EKG analysis is a lot of fun.

We just started resp, it's fun too, but there's less to hear... I suppose that percussion makes it fun.

Marysienka said...

i see. was it related to health in any way?

funny you mention EKG. we started on this subject today, and i could barely keep my eyes open. so much theory... i'll try to think practice is more fun :)

Tall Medstudent said...

I did my undergrad in genetics, and grad work in structural biology, so it was vaguely related.

Here's a resp-related factoid: 'the mad scientist' and bil, two of the guys who post here, both work/worked in the lab of the son of the guy who worked out the 2,3-DPG pathway!

Yeah, our EKG lectures failed to transmit the excitement of studying them as well... you can get hung up on the vocab, but it's amazing how much you can get out of one of those things.

Marysienka said...

I have to agree about the EKG. I didnt know we could get that much info from it!

We talked about the effects of 2,3-DPG on the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve just this morning ;)

Tall Medstudent said...

2,3-DPG, what a great molecule.