"...One always has to move forward, otherwise the past holds too much pain"

- Chen quoting grandfather
(Vincent Lam's Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures)

Ervin got me Vincent Lam's Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures for Christmas, the winner of the Giller Prize. I am about two thirds of the way through now, and it is an amazing book.

It's a series of short stories, each around a different character's perspective. The first story centered on a couple named Fitzpatrick and Ming, applying to medical school, and their romance mainly from Ming's perspective. The second story talks about Ming's early days in medical school and introduces us to two of her colleagues, Chen and Sri, from a shared perspective of all three characters. Next chapter revolves around the romance between Fitzpatrick and Ming again from Fitzpatrick's perspective, with the twist of a love triangle of sorts. With the subsequent chapters we see things from the perspective other characters. Yet we encounter Ming, Fitzpatrick, Sri, and Chen again, as they travel through their lives, as their paths cross again and intermingle.

It is a very good read thus far, and I highly recommend it. Though there is some content in there that is definitely not for children or for the easily bothered.

I am off to Cleveland for a few days right now, and am in the midst of finishing packing. When I say finishing packing, I mean sporadically starting the process, kind-of-maybe. Anyway, I am continuing to upload pictures to the galleries.

Photos / Medicine Christmas Rounds 2006 (New Gallery)- go to section

- 24 New Photos

A belated Merry Christmas to you all. I hope everyone had a wonderful time this year with their friends, family, and their loved ones. I ended up having Christmas dinner with some friends, and it was a tremendous time of Xbox, super tasty dinner, and just plain having a fun time.

I played Halo 2 for the first time and it was capture the flag team mode. At the start of the game, I work my way down this narrow corridor and run into Mike. I was like, hey Mike, what's up? He holds down the trigger and starts filling my guy with lead and next thing I know my guy's twitching his last gasps of life on the ground from a hail of friendly fire. Then I am informed that it was actually a free-for-all. I was always a bit of gimp when it came to playing first person shooters.

Today is Boxing Day. Everyday, I try to set a new goal for myself. I like to aim for something great, something wonderful. I want to say, Bryan Har, you've made yourself a better person today, you've made a difference in someone's life, and you've made the world better place for all human kind. I want to say, Bryan Har, you rock. Today, my goal was to wake up in time for work. I like to plan some days to be more mediocre than others. Some days, Bryan Har sucks.

So I woke up at 7am. I lay in bed contemplating.

A) Should I wake up now and just go shopping for a little bit before work?

Or

B) Should I lie in bed for another hour and keep wondering if I should wake up now and just go shopping for a little bit before work?

Since I was in such a bind, I woke up and was forced to go to the mall and acquire consumer goods. I ended up going to a few stores at 8am, and covered the entire lower floor of Masonville Mall. I even ran into some of the nurses, who were just coming off their night shift. I had to be at work by 9am, so I to act quickly with my shopping. I managed to buy a whole bunch of clothes and next year's Christmas cards. Efficient and smart shopping? Thank God for that Y chromosome. If I were a woman, I'd still be in the mall right now wondering which skirt makes my butt look less huge. Just kidding, really. ;)

I got into the hospital at 9:00am. During the run up to Christmas, I discharged most of our patients and sent the rest on "leave of absence". Hence, despite rounding at a rather leisurely pace, I was out of the hospital at 9:25am and back at the mall at 9:35am. I ended up covering the rest of Masonville Mall, went to the "outlet stores" across town, and finally went to gawk at the mad mob at Futureshop.

My pager went off, and I got called back into the hospital to admit a new patient, who was "stable". After spending a half hour resuscitating the patient, I had this strange craving for A&W onion rings. I almost drove myself to A&W, but I guilt-tripped myself out of it and decided to go home instead and eat a proper meal.

Anyway, the vacation blog continues in the Hong Kong photos page.

Photos / Medicine Christmas Rounds 2006 (New Gallery)- go to section

- 26 New Photos

Photos / Hong Kong 2006 (New Gallery)- go to section

- 28 New Photos

So it is 3:45 right now. 3:45am in the morning that is. I feel like some sort of nocturnal creature. I want to go and forage for food in dumpsters. Pick a losing fight with a skunk. Go forage again in another dumpster. Then run out onto a major road and dart back and forth in front of cars. That or I could just blog a strange blog and message on MSN with Ervin, my seemingly perpetually nocturnal friend.

It is Friday today, and my lurid tale of why I am awake at this hour began two days ago on the day called Wednesday. I was in gastroenterology clinic, and it was a new and exciting day of asking people about their bowel habits, gloving and/or lubing, then popping my finger into people's poopers. However, this day, I was pair with a notorious attending physician; notorious for being a super nice guy (seriously); but also notorious for being the slowest attending known to have practiced medicine. Clinic was booked from 8am to 10:30am. We had 28 patients booked into a two and a half hour time span. So at that rate, we should see 11.2 patients every hour.

So 8am, I walk into clinic, the first patient gets there and I see them. The second patient arrived shortly there after and my little med student goes to see them. The third patient arrives and I go see them. My attending strolls in late then, and sees the fourth patient. Then I wait. And wait. And wait for the guy to come back out of the room. He finally emerges; we review my two patients, and its 9am. Instead of having seen 11.2 patients, we've seen 3.0.

The day continues on like this. Some of the patients thankfully did not show up for clinic. One of the patients got inpatient and left before my med student could review with my attending, actually, they had another appointment. Every time my attending would see a patient by himself, I would be waiting at desk for half an hour with two or three charts waiting to review the patients I had just seen.

At 1:30pm, my attending announces, "Oh good, we're done". We were three hours behind schedule, saved only by the fact that 6 of the 28 patients did now show up. So if my math is correct, we were actually running four hours behind schedule. The nurse looked like she wanted to take her own life, my med student felt unwell, and I had the worst headache I have had in a few years and was on the verge of taking my attending physician's life.

That night, I crawled into my bed, and had nightmares about the clinic. I woke up at like 4am and could not get back to sleep. I spent most of Thursday feeling like a Zombie, and my headache came back around dinner time. I took the tension headache breaking dosage of ibuprofen, what I also call the stomach ulcer inducing dosage of ibuprofen, and crawled into bed at 10pm. So now its 4:00am, I'm wide awake, and poke poke poking away at my keyboard. On the plus side my headache is mostly gone, but my belly feels funny for some reason.

Anyway, I'm going to head downstairs now to the dumpster before the raccoons eat all the good stuff.

Good Morning and Good Day to Everyone

Well, I am back from my vacation. It was a lot of fun, and I got to travel lots, catch up with friends and family, and of course, do lots of shopping at a favorable exchange rate. Did I mention that I traveled for free? After all these years, I finally get to cash in on my airline rewards miles.

I have so many stories to tell, so many pictures to share. Where to start really? I visited Calgary, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and Hong Kong a second time.

I guess I will begin with the first segment, Calgary.

I ended up leaving two weeks ago to Calgary to spend a couple of days catching up with my parents, as well as Ervin, Keith, and Karen. I was hoping to get in touch with more people, but my flight from London to Toronto was delayed for six hours by fog. I could have driven to Toronto and back a few times in that time frame, but the ticket was free anyway. Luckily I brought some books along, so despite spending all those hours stuck in that desolate airport, the time went by relatively quickly.

Rohit and his girlfriend were on the same flight as well, so I got to hang out with them during the wait. Actually it was not Rohit's girlfriend, but his fiancée instead, because he had just proposed that very morning. He was taking her on a trip to New York as part of proposing to her. Yes, I was taking notes. Unfortunately because the flight was delayed, I think some of his plans needed to be improvised. What is important though is that she said yes.

How do you people feel about engagements? I think Rohit and his girlfriend had been dating for less than half a year. Some of my friends have been dating for many years and engaged for many years before getting married. Others dated for like three months, and got married within five months. I guess everyone has a different approach. For myself, I because of my older age, I think I would be more predisposed towards a shorter dating/engagement span. That of course does not mean that I am not picky, haha.

I arrived in Calgary about seven hours after the original planned time, and quickly dashed off to Globefish for dinner with Erv, Karen, and Keith.

Hmm, well it is already 6:00am; I better get started on my morning routine. I will do some more blogging later.

Smile, laugh, and have a wonderful day.