It's an "urban" film

I'm pretty sure these two guys sitting behind me in my apartment building's computer room are trying to make a porno. I've been sitting here for the past half an hour studying and listening in on their conversation and phone interviews with prospective actresses/actors. Supposedly, from what they are telling people on the phone, the project is going to be an "urban film"...with no budget. They had to tell a girl on the phone who was calling from Nashville that she was going to make the ten hour drive here without a promise to any kind of compensation. Her response was loud enough for me to hear from across the room, but a little too colorful to type out on a blog post.

It's quite funny listening to these two guys talking about prospective actresses. "She's quite attractive and will....ahem...do well with that ONE scene we discussed earlier." (I think they were trying really hard to talk in code because my ears were tuned in like satellite television.) They were quite surprised that they got quite a bit of responses for their "no budget" film.

Oh shoot...they just left! Maybe they'll be back for more planning and scheming tomorrow.

Chimera

This is what Webster's defined as a chimera: an individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution. I wiki'd "chimera" first, but the definition was a little too "sciency" for the purpose of this post. Basically...my point here is that I recently discovered that my hair is in fact an example of a chimera. I recently got my hair trimmed (when I say recently, it usually means a range from 1-3 months) and the hair lady (yes, I cheated on my hair guy Kevin, but I was in Vegas in desperate need of major conditioning and apparently a trim as well) pointed out that I had two different kinds of hairs on my head. Weird!!

I, of course, knew this but it's a fact that I like to keep under wraps or on the low or on the low down dirty shame or in the hush hush...get the picture? Technically, my hair is curly...super curly in fact. But for some odd reason, the hair just above the nape of my neck is STRAIGHT. And it's not just a few random strands here and there. It's a whole spicy bunch of hair that is straight. When I flat iron my hair, there is no problemo. But what girl has the time to straight iron their hair everyday...especially when that girl has super thick samoan hair that even if you shaved half of it off to donate to Locks of Love, there's still enough left to hide the shaved parts.

The problem here happens when I maintain my "curly look", which basically entails me getting out of the shower, forcefully raking a comb through my hair and adding magical protein goop so that it doesn't look like Medusa's hair. An hour later when my hair is nice and dried, the straight hairs all come out and my head of hair proceed to look like two different people own my head...one takes the top of my head, the other takes the bottom.

It's soooo weird!!!!

New trilogy on the shelf

I really cannot help this habit that I have. Whenever I travel, which happens to be quite a bit because I love to visit the familia in Vegas, I always stop by the newsstand or the bookstore in the airport to pick up something to read on my flight. I usually pack a book or two from my collection of unread books on my shelf at home before I travel so I don't have to spend money on yet more books. But...it never works out. I ALWAYS find something more interesting to read. This results in a bookshelf full of half-read books...all of them just waiting patiently for me to end their agony of sitting on my desk or beside my bed, all stacked up neatly one on top of the other.

I just realized this problem when I went home to my parent's house this past summer. Other than a high school photo on the wall, my old room doesn't really look like a room that I once inhabited...except for the books! My closet is full of them. The shelf has a pile and the floor of the closet has another pile. I even found some old books in the garage...still half-read! What a disaster. These books need a home, but yet they are still in lingo waiting for me to finish reading them and either put on a shelf or given away for someone else to read. Books are way too heavy for me to carry in my luggage. I have absolutely no trouble filling my suitcases to the maximum allotted weight with just clothes. Ask my friend Sala, who painstakingly helped me rearrange my clothes into HER SUITCASES throughout our entire trip in Australia just so I didn't have to pay the exorbitant luggage fees at the airport.

Oh gosh...I love how I start writing a post with the intention of describing what's on the title but it either never happens or it takes me forever and a day to get there. Anyways, I really hit the jackpot on my scavenger book hunt at the Las Vegas airport this past trip. I stumbled on the Mortal Instruments Trilogy by Cassandra Clare. If you're like me at the moment and totally depressed because not only is Harry Potter all grown up and married to Ginny without a named-but-should-be-nameless dark wizard to fight, but Bella and Edward also have a half-and-half vampire love clan of their own in the mountains of the Northwest (sorry for the tinsy spoiler for those who haven't finished reading). This leaves me without any extended novels about enchanted worlds to read! None! Until now...thanks to a bookstore in an airport.

Update: I have read the first two books in the MI Trilogy. I'm itching to buy the third book in the series: City of Glass. CAN'T WAIT!!!

I never thought I would say this....

...but I officially hate flying. In the last month, I have been on ten airplanes and am getting on another one tomorrow morning to head back East. Don't get me wrong. I love traveling! But, I no longer have that uncontrollable excitement to get on an airplane anymore. I used to get all giddy because of all the free stuff you get on airplanes. (I used to collect airline blankets back in college. No one told me it wasn't free...don't judge me!) But now, nothing is free, really. Well, maybe the icky disgusting feeling of oily hair and congested face pimples that I always seem to get after every flight no matter how short the duration is.

To make matters worse, I can no longer sleep peacefully for long periods of time on any of my flights. Because I came back with a lovely DVT from my excursion in the Macchu Picchu mountains earlier this year, my doctor has recommended me to walk around on all flights every hour or so. It wasn't until I was doing aerobics with some 80 year old passengers in the back of my Qantas flight (going to New Zealand) did I realize that I really detest flying. Ugh...don't even get me started on the smell of the bathrooms on planes. Gross!

Quote of the day

Came across this quote on twitter just now.

"I have an insatiable hunger for awesomeness...and a tireless pursuit for the amazing".

I like it. I'm going with it.

Tyranny of Popular Vote

This is an essay written by my Grandpa Janairo back in the 1930's. My dad has quoted parts of this essay since my childhood and luckily a copy was found recently. Thought I'd share it.


Tyranny of the Popular Vote
Man irks under the burden of compulsory obedience. It is repulsive to his sense of self respect that he should be made to follow blindly and to accept ungrudgingly that which is imposed upon him to be sheer superiority. He has revolted from spiritual tyranny when Martin Luther flung his memorable defiance in the Council of Nantes and declared that the human spirit can not be imprisoned by bigotry and fanaticism. Man struck the death knell of corporate tyranny when the days of the feudal lords were declared gone forever by the onrushing tide of human freedom embodied in the Magna Carta of England and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. Political liberty has been since its birth the antithesis of tyranny. And yet, paradoxical as it may seem, it has brought about, by the strength of its ideal and the dynamic force of its principle, a new tyranny strong because its set is the masses, uncompromising because it springs from ignorance, powerful because it is regarded as the people’s voice. This offspring of democracy is the tyranny of popular vote.

Need to write again

Wow....I cannot believe my last post was over a month ago! Crazy! I really need to start writing again. I'm actually back in Vegas to study for the boards. Finals finished last week Friday and that's all I have to say about that. Glad that's over with.

Because I will be here in Vegas for two months, my suitcases for traveling were both overweight but at least the guy at the US Airways counter felt so sorry for me (maybe I looked like a hot mess from packing and moving all weekend and from recovering from a huge hangover) that he let me check my begs without paying. Holla! He did give me some advice..."in the future, pack lighter". What a funny man.

So yeah, it's great to be back home. The heat is exhausting. I hung out with the parentals all day doing this and that and came home looking like a crispy lobster. Gotta love the heat in this city:) For dinner, we tried the new buffet at the new M hotel. OMG! By far, this has to be the best buffet in the city! They have free (as in included in the price) wine and beer. And because they had this station at the front entrance, the buffet really had me at hello:) All in all, a great day! Tomorrow...the real work starts.

Countdown to June 19th begins right now. Wish me luck!

Chronic disease is depressing

It is. It may not be readily apparent but it's there...

I just got off the phone from a long conversation with a family member, whom I greatly admire and adore and our conversation made me feel a lot of things. Helplessness. Depressed. Sorrow. Admiration. It is a nice palm-sized slap of reality when I have these conversations and learn about other people's circumstances, because many times I am wrapped in a nice comfortable bubble...called medical school. I cannot believe I'm calling med school a comfortable situation, but it's all relative. Compared to my cousin's life right now, mine is just peachy.

It is peachy because I do not have a father who is sick and undergoing chemotherapy. It is peachy because I do not have to worry on a constant basis whether my father's lab results this week will require him to undergo another transfusion...one of a countless number that he's already been through. My life is peachy because I am not the one taking care of a patient who has a chronic medical condition that will eventually take his life and that patient is my own father.

My classmates and I often discuss the issue of managing chronic illnesses and how difficult that will be. Every patient is different and may not respond to the treatments you prescribe, especially in a condition like cancer. The treatment is steps beyond the fact that you have to break bad news to them and that they have to deal with the bad news you bring them. This doesn't even address the fact that you may not have all the answers...especially if you're not telling them the answers that they want to hear. Some people will have diabetes forever. It won't be cured. How depressing is that kind of news to anyone? In my uncle's condition, there is no known cure. There are treatments that can help prolong his life but the bottom line is, there is no cure.

So all I could offer my cousin in her time of need was a pair of ears and moments of reassurance that hopefully this treatment will work. And hopefully her dad will tolerate this treatment. And although her parents look at her as being the "bad guy" in the situation, what she is doing is admirable. She is taking care of her sick father to the best of her ability. Because he is her father and as a child, anyone would want to take care of their parents in any way possible.

It is tough when the lines between the "caretaker role" and being a daughter gets blurred. I am sorry she has to go through this. I'm sorry for anyone to have to go through that, especially the individual who has the condition.

As I evaluate the events of my day and remember the many moments of me complaining about how much life sucks because I am stressing about school, it's conversations like this that help me adjust the lens so that I tread purposefully (hopefully with fewer complaints) in the right direction of life education.

Taking the beast out

 

Just doing some random test shots with my beast of a camera before I head out to Peru tomorrow. I'm overly excited at how many pictures I'll be getting this coming week! Wish me luck:)

10th Annual Student Charity Auction

Hey hey!

This year I have the pleasure of co-chairing GW's annual student auction, which benefits the HEALing Clinic (GW's Student Clinic). Currently, it runs through the District of Columbia's Bread for the City Organization, which is an all-in-one non-profit entity that provides all types of services, including medical care, to those in need.

It's a combined effort as both the Classes of 2011 and 2012 are working together to fund-raise money through the student auction to help fund the running costs of our awesome clinic! These running costs include overhead expenses such as electricity, water, heat, etc...as well as labs and drugs for the patient. Physicians volunteer their time and students (us) are there to gain more experience and learn more about vulnerable populations who do not have health insurance, who may be homeless, or who do not have adequate health care coverage.

I worked at the HEALing Clinic last year and first learned how to take a patient's blood pressure (old school style...not with those fancy shmancy electronic bp machines), presented my first patient to an attending and got a peek into the lives of some of DC's poor residents, who sadly may have so many co-morbid conditions. This was my first lesson into primary care.

Anyways, the clinic does great work and has some awesome people running it who are very passionate about "serving the underserved". Remember that clever little "pull at your heart strings" answer everyone says at their medical school interview? Hahaha...

Well, we are having this fundraising auction on April 17th. If anyone would like to donate an item of any type (art, wine, basketball game tickets, ballet/theatre tickets, gift certificates) or if you have the hook-up anywhere, please let me know! And if you're in DC on that date, please feel free to join! We hope to have enough wine and food for everyone and of course...some mad bidding going on:)

To see a list of items: Goodies