No More Macon

I'm chewing a nice piece of bacon right now, once again safe and sound at the café by my apartment in Calgary.

Between hopping into a taxi to the airport in Zanzibar, and getting dropped off at home last night, was slightly over 48 hours. I felt sorry for the poor guy who sat next to Rococo and I on the plane into town last night; talk about two smelly people.

Anyways, I have a lot to say about my summer, but it will take a whole bunch of entries to cover them, bit by bit. I'll start by saying that I started the week at the Paradise Beach Bungalows in Paje, and if that was what Paradise is like, I want in. As I was sitting on the beach, I thought to myself, how the heck did I get here? Got frustrated at work in Boston one day, and boom, here I am staring out at the clouds over the Indian ocean.

Spent the last two days in Stone Town, though, where a batik salesman threatened to beat up Rococo as soon as he saw her without my company, because he knew how Asian shit thought. I haven't been challenged to a fight in years... the guy was, apparently, known in the neighbourhood as being a bit deranged, though, so I suppose he was just another victim of a health care system designed to screw over the poorer population.

I had better go pay my MasterCard bill before I anger some collection agent here...

Life

I've got one and a half days left in Arusha. But, I think I'll tell you a short story about Dar Es Salaam.

We were staying in a hotel in a pretty rough-looking area, but it was actually not a bad part of town. There were two cheap tourist hotels within two blocks of each other, and inbetween, a restaurant named 'Chef's Pride' that catered primarily to the foreigners staying there. It was run by this super-friendly guy who went by the name Ali Baba. He always called me 'Michael Jordan', laughed when I bent down walking through their doorway, called one of the other students from my school 'Woody Allen'; a funny guy.

Anyways, on the typical evening, my crew and I would head there for dinner, or perhaps to Jambo Inn, and have dinner. After, on the walk home, I'd generally stop and talk to some of the homeless guys that slept behind plywood crates on the main street near the hotel. These guys had lots to say about the government, the police, the education system, the health care system; they painted things quite pessimistically. One of them, 'Allan', said he had finished two semesters of a diploma in counselling, and was hoping to finish it again at some point, when he had more money. Of course, he was hoping I'd give him something around $150, which would cover six months of rent for an apartment with a floor and running water. Well, he bugged me about it a few times, but dropped the subject after a couple of evenings.

One week before I left, he disappeared. I was wondering what happened to him, and finally found out on the day we left. Apparently, early in the week, a waiter at 'Chef's Pride' had needed change for a 5000 shilling bill (about US$4), so he gave it to a security guard to go get change. The security guard gave it to Allen, to go get change. Allen, apparently, never returned with the change. So, it was time for punishment.

The security guard and four friends found Allen, took him behind 'Chef's Pride', stripped him naked, and beat the crap out of him. This was, apparently, with the knowledge and consent of super-friendly, super-nice, Ali Baba. At some point during the beating, someone came along and complained that it wasn't right to treat a guy like this, so they should just bring him to the police. That they did, telling the police that he had stolen 30,000 shillings. So, he was languishing in jail, with his court date coming up on the Tuesday after I left.

Naturally, when the other guys from the street heard about this, they weren't too happy about it. They talked to the 'Chef's Pride' guy, who offered to drop the charges, if they would pay him 30,000 shillings, as a further punishment; the alternative was that Allen would be convicted, go to jail, and who knows what would happen to him there. So, Allen's friends were collecting money to pay the bribe; they were at 20,000 shillings, and needed just 10,000 more to get him free.

Who can you trust? Super-friendly two-faced guy? Homeless guys who want your $10? Who knows.

Lost in Dar

I thought I'd put up a quick post. I'm in my last week in Dar, and thanks to a few days of illness on my part, and an upturn in the tourist traffic in the last week, I'm finally being left alone by the grifters, and I'm settling into things here. I am known to the locals as the tall person; they can see me coming from hundreds of metres away.

This place is weird. Today I saw a girl of about five, recovering from a lion bite. I wondered what was worse, being bitten by a lion, or being in hospital...

I watched the World Cup final in the lobby of our hotel. Now that was an odd grouping of people. My hotel is full of mysterious south Asians, there with purpose unknown.

Next week I head back to Arusha for a week, then I'm hitting Zanzibar for five days or so. That should make for a change of pace.

I wonder if my Powerbook misses me as much as I miss it. A longer post will follow my return...

Summertime

The last exam for the year is over; whew. Afterwards, we had a bit of a wine and cheese thing, to say goodbye to our associate dean, who is leaving the position this summer. It's too bad; he was a great guy.

The last few weeks of school have been focused on our 'integrative' class, where in small groups of six, we practice our interview, diagnosis, and physical exam skills with standardized patients. It was a lot of fun. One thing about small group work like this, is that we have to dress professionally, i.e. a dress shirt, tie, and dress pants. So, I've had to wear my Seidensticker shirt every day; after class, I generally change into a pair of jeans, but I now love wearing that shirt more than anything, because it's so incredibly comfortable. I often wear a tie with it, with a typical maroon and gold pattern on it; naturally, after finishing class, the tie is loosened, and the top button on the shirt undone. The result: a rebellious prep-school look, that apparently suits me well, given the response of waitresses (and waiters!) around town. Unfortunately, I think I'm going to give up the look, as I have realized that with the addition of some eyeliner, I'd be easily confused with Avril Lavigne.

Anyways, I doubt I'll post again before I leave town. I still have a bunch of details to look after, such as buying something as a gift (like this) for our preceptor in Dar es Salaam, as well as trying to get Massachusetts to stop taxing my car!

Sunset, Sunrise

Yesterday, I came in to school just as the light was fading in the western sky over the mountains, around 10:30 at night. When I finished up my evening of homework, I headed back home; the eastern sky was already very light, at around 4:45.

Let's see, I was going to give a report on the month in meat, but never got around to posting about it. Basically, I want to empty my freezer before I leave town this Friday, so that I can unplug it for the summer. That required my eating up to five chicken breasts per day, about two weeks ago, to finish off what was in there. That coincided with the return of my love of Arby's, who have a four-junior-burgers-with-cheese-for-$5.50 special going on, as well as my classmate Gold Standard's 50-pounds-of-galbi barbeque. In other words, there has been a lot of protein in my life recently.

In other good news, my ophthalmoscope head will be replaced tomorrow with the correct model. Good stuff! I also got a cheap haircut today, that I am very happy with, shockingly so.

I finally have that OSCE tomorrow, that was cancelled due to our SP strike about a month ago... I'm rather unprepared, but oh well, I think that I am good enough to wing it now. Wednesday is our final exam for the year. It'll be the sunset on my first year of medschool; sunrise of second year will be in east Africa, in 2.5 weeks. :)

Seeing

I bought an ophthalmoscope this week. I have tried fundoscopy a few times before, but with no success at all; I guess that my problem is partly due to my glasses and my weird astigmatic vision. Anyways, I got a PanOptic scope (at the moment, I'm wondering if they sent me the correct model; I'll have to check that when I get home). I tried it out today on Rococo, and it was incredible. I saw a fundus for the first time, absolutely crystal-clearly.

Went to Montana's for dinner in celebration; dessert was apple crisp.

I see in the NY Times that Shohei Imamura died a couple of days ago. Coincidentally, I just saw 'Warm Water Under a Red Bridge' last weekend. He made some strange movies; 'Unagi' (a.k.a. 'The Eel') was an interesting one. Both of those starred Koji Yakusho.

Everybody's Working on the Weekend

I had a busy weekend. Saturday morning, I woke up at 5:15, and since I had wanted to actually get up at 6:15, I was afraid to go back to sleep, lest I not wake up again. So, I got up and watched an episode of Felicity, then got to school in time for the 8 o'clock bus to Brooks, about two hours east of Calgary. There, we had a procedural skills practice day, doing some suturing, fibreglass casting, airway, and IV/IM/SC stuff. An interesting town with an extremely high refugee population. Apparently, there is a huge meat-packing plant in town, with big numbers of unfilled positions, that ends up being an easy starting job for refugees. Few language skills required for a job there, living expenses are low, and health services are excellent, so it's a good place for people who are starting from nothing. Also interesting is the landscape in the region: flat, flat, flat grasslands, with the occasional copse. I suspect it's mostly cattle country, explaining the big meat packing plant, but I'm not sure.

Sunday, I picked up Magic Pants at the crack of dawn, and we headed into northeast Calgary for an all-day CPR course. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to animate any of the ACTAR dummies.

Now, it's time to prep for tomorrow morning's integrative session... :( All work and no play makes me a dull boy.

Victoria Day

It's a long weekend up here. I'm celebrating by studying neuroanatomy. I should study a bit of PE later in the day... after which, we'll see if Albertans can walk the walk when it comes to fireworks. I'd hate to have to inform people that Toronto does it better.

BTW, the sun is setting around 9:30 these days. That means it's light until after 10, and midsummer isn't for another month. I'm almost a bit sad that I'll be so far south when midsummer does roll around.

Time keeps slipping

A year ago today (the 20th), was my last day on the job back in Boston. I was at work until 7 or so, then went to see Star Wars III with Bil, Sam, et al, bought some #2 coffee filters at the Star Market in Fenway, then spent the night cleaning and packing up my apartment. In the morning, I was off to the airport to catch a flight to İstanbul. I had no distinct plans, no future, no past.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of wardriving for late-night internet access. Right now, I'm sitting in my car, down by the river. There's a thunderstorm in the distance; the occasional flash of lightning is lighting up the northeastern horizon.

Signs

Yesterday in small group, our preceptor randomly picked me to quickly demonstrate a lid lag exam on... and great, I had lid lag. Later, I had Rococo confirm the observation, and then looked for it myself in the mirror in the evening. At that point, I noticed lid retraction as well, but I think that was just brought on by me staring at the mirror repeatedly looking for lid lag.

I suspect this ties in with my mitral valve prolapse somehow, being an adrenergic symptom. Does that sound right?

Today is hot hot hot, true midsummer weather. Gotta go coop myself up in my room to study; thank goodness, once again, for the TO notes. Again, other textbooks failed. For example, the Crash Course textbook was riddled with errors in its diabetes section, even referring to HONK as a hypoglycemic state at one point! Unbelievable!

Pre-exam Quiet

Not much happening here these days. I've got my endocrinology final exam next Thursday. Hormones are interesting, but I am not looking forward to be tested on them.

So, at the moment, I'm hunkering down with my textbooks and notes. Oh, I finished watching season one of 'Felicity' this week... what a depressing series. I borrowed it from Rococo, of course. Sadly, she doesn't have seasons two through four.

Spirit Guide

I've really let myself go for the last two months. I don't think I've gone running in at least seven weeks. Which wasn't such a good thing, since yesterday a bunch of us from class were entered into the annual Banff-Calgary relay race. I was supposed to do the easiest leg, being the un-fittest of the bunch, but due to last minute injuries, I was bumped up to the third-hardest leg, a 10.9 km section, 5.5 km of which was a big climb. I wasn't great, but I survived. :) We ended up 29th out of 102 teams, a decent result.

My leg started at Lac des Fées, and then passed the area of Mount Yamnuska, at the foot of which were the races I first came out to Alberta to run in, back in 1985...

On the way home, I was passing over Kananaskis Creek, and saw a huge bird soaring low overhead. I slowed down, and looked into the eyes of a gorgeous bald eagle, hovering motionless on the wind, just five metres above me. Beautiful bird.

School's Out

Today was supposed to be the first day of our two-day first year OSCE final exams. Basically, we get tested in communications by interviewing a standardized patient, then we have to follow that up with a set of physical exam maneuvers. Tomorrow would have been similar, with either suturing or IVs added at the end.

I was scheduled for an 8:20 a.m. start time. Physical exam is by far my weakest subject this year, so I was pretty nervous about things. I love precordial and resp exams, but MSK leaves me cold. Anyways, I spent the last couple of days freaking out about it, and finally got everything necessary into my brain last night. Slept terribly, dreaming about the exam, and that it somehow involved bicycling, followed by an essay. The essay I wrote was great, but I had trouble coming up with a good ending for it...

Got up at 6, made it to school on time. They signed us in for the exam, told us to wait a few minutes, then told us that there would be a slight delay. I was crazy thirsty, so I eventually went to go get a drink of water. On my way out, I overheard the profs talking in the hallway, and heard the words "cancellation" and "inflame the situation". Not at all what I was expecting to hear.

About an hour later, the whole thing was cancelled, due to the standardized patients being on strike. Tomorrow is still up in the air, but my bet is that it'll be cancelled as well. The result? A big super-stressful exam has just become a four-day weekend.

In The Mood

Another weekend, another batch of films. Unfortunately, I've hit my zip.ca account's eleven-film limit for the month again, and I'm only two weeks in. So, I had to head over to Blockbuster to rent 'In the Mood for Love'. I'm not the biggest Wong Kar Wai fan, but I loved 'Chungking Express', so it was time to finally see this movie; I almost went to see it in the theatre in Boston, back in early 2001, but never made it. Anyways, perhaps the plot was a bit slow, and not much 'happened', but it did deal some nice emotion, especially towards the end. Nothing like some repression of love and desire to make you connect with a character. Best of all, though, had to be Maggie Cheung's hair and cheongsams. A lot of love was obviously put into making those dresses and filming them; it appears that they were all tailored by one guy, Leung Long Kong, a tailor in Hong Kong (the only information about whom I can find, is directed at Korean tourists). Tony Leung's suits and ties were pretty inspirational as well.

'2046' is sitting on my desk at home...

Cohen

Yesterday, I got Leonard Cohen's newest book in the mail: 'Book of Longing'. The first 1000 people to preorder it through Chapters/Indigo got a signed copy, so Leonard's sig is right there on the title page. :)

I just read the first few poems, though, as I had other forms of entertainment on my agenda. First, I finished watching the loooong television version of Ingmar Bergman's 'Fanny och Alexander', which was good. I wonder if I should still bother to see the theatre-release version. Next, I watched 'Crash'. No, not the Oscar-winner from last year, but the David Cronenberg movie. Wow, that was one screwed up movie. Fun to pick out the filming locations around Toronto, though. Playing 'spot Boyd Banks' was fun too!

Ice Cream

I went for ice cream with Rococo yesterday afternoon (after getting my meningococcus and yellow fever vaccinations). We drove to the southwest, to a place highly recommended by peers. Well, it was okay, but nothing special, ice-cream-wise. It was, however, incredibly expensive, given that it is run-of-the-mill ice cream. More expensive than going for ice cream at Harvard Square, maybe 1/3 higher in price.

Some googling has revealed three more ice cream places in Calgary, and one way out in Cochrane. The Cochrane place I heard about as a teenager already, and I can't recall if I ever actually went there at some point in my distant history. The thing is, I don't really want to drive 75 km round-trip, just to get ice cream.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but I have to admit, my hope for good ice cream in Calgary is fading fast.

Diet time

Last week, I couldn't take it anymore, so I got rid of the beard, and went and got a haircut on Saturday (after it stopped snowing). When your beard is always getting in the way of eating, and your hair is always in your eyes when you're trying to do some physical exam, it is pretty annoying, to say the least. Anyways, after the haircut, I went straight to a photo shop to get a couple of passport photos.

I saw two more movies over the weekend. First, 'Deadly Outlaw: Rekka', which was another unbelievable Takashi Miike movie. Next was 'Super Size Me'. We were going to get dinner from McDonalds to eat while watching, but instead picked up a BBQ chicken dinner from a local supermarket, along with an apple pie and a four-litre bucket of cheap ice cream. It was fat enough to make all three of us pretty ill, especially as we watched Morgan Spurlock go downhill. I have to say, it really made me feel sick. I swore I'd take up running again the next day. Of course, it was too cold on Sunday morning, so I successfully sidestepped the movie's effect. :)

Fore!

You know you're in meds when you get you start getting invitations to golf tournaments in the mail. Got my first one last week. Should have listened when I was told to start playing golf, back in Boston. At least I bought a glove at that time, even though I never actually hit a ball.

Saw another two movies last night. 'Fantastic Four', which was a real stinker, and 'The Delicate Art of Parking', which was a low-budget mockumentary filmed in Vancouver, and wow, a funny movie that caught me completely off guard. I'd never heard of it before. I also saw 'Omen' on Wednesday night: who knew that there were Thai boy bands big enough to have movies made purely to showcase them ('D2B' in this case)?

Stress: The Wellman Agenda

Well, had an intense day so far today. Last night at 2 a.m., I finally figured out that I don't owe US taxes for last year, which was nice. Once that was done, I was able to study for the 'well man' thing I was scheduled for this morning. It turned out to be good, and I shouldn't have gotten so stressed out over it...

Not that I was stressed out enough to hunker down and work harder over the weekend. I still fit in 'Madagascar' and 'Derailed'. Madagascar was pretty funny, and was everything that 'Ice Age: The Meltdown' was not. 'Derailed' was a bit of a dud. We rented it under the impression that it was some kind of relationship drama or something, and instead was more of a crime movie. What sucked, was that the major plot twist was completely predictable. I mean, I love Jen as much as any North American, but it wasn't really worth it.

Speaking of Jen, I finished 'Friends' season six, and realized that I hadn't actually seen season seven yet. So, my future still holds some excitement.

The Week in Review

Hmm, I forgot to post about so much stuff this week.

First of all, I finally got my plane ticket to Tanzania. I had waited too long to book it, and was about to get screwed on the price. I woke up Monday morning, and got a call from a classmate: she had found a cheap ticket, had gone ahead and booked it for me (it was the last seat out of Dar at the end of August), and all I had to do was pay for it. Sweet! No effort required on my part, just the way I like it. She even got the dates right on the stopover I wanted in Frankfurt.

Next, on Wednesday, I had a class in a room that I rarely enter, and when I put my bag down in the corner of the room, I saw the scarf that I had lost on March 1st, just sitting there, neatly folded, in a window bay. I loved that scarf, and was pretty depressed about it disappearing, and now, it had come back to me, after six weeks. Nice!

Anyways, I spent the rest of the week happy about the weather, and getting psyched about summertime. What to do in my two weeks of vacation while I'm in Tanzania? Ngorongoro? Serengeti? Zanzibar? Kilimanjaro? Kilimanjaro is probably out; I don't think I have enough free days in a row to make it up.

I even got excited about a one-night stopover in Dubai. It will end up being a big pain, though, since I'm only there for nine hours.

Anyways, this morning I woke up, and thought that it was Monday and I'd slept in. That meant, I had to run to school ASAP and perform a DRE for the first time. Oh man, was I glad when I realized that it was still Sunday... things aren't looking so rosy for tomorrow.