Thanks to one of med school friends, I’ve finally joined the world of Gmail. Though still under beta testing, Gmail is Google’s approach to email, with 1GB of free storage, no pop-ups or banners, and most importantly, an algorithm that replaces old school email sorting with the Google search engine. Though for a product that hasn’t gone public yet, it has already fired up a storm with tons of privacy issues currently being debated. In other news, I just got my hands on the demo for Unreal Tournament 2004, and I’m already hooked! Unfortunately, having abstained from gaming for about half a year, I feel like I’m totally being schooled by the veterans. Especially with all the new weapons and vehicles, it’s gonna take some time for me to get back into Total-Geek mode. =P

With the grant finally submitted and my professor in Asia for a conference, the past two weeks have been a time of recuperation for me. I finally got a chance to do my dishes, my laundry, and most importantly, a chance to cook again. I even fired up my indoor grill and made some scallop kabobs, scampi-style. Last weekend, I went to DC to attend Melody’s best friend’s wedding, where she was the Maid of Honor. To save on cash, I took the Chinatown bus to NYC, and then another to DC, where I rented a car to pick her up from the airport. Despite the arduous trip, I got a chance to see my Melody again and even earned some brownie-points on the side playing chauffeur for her and her bridesmaid friends. The wedding itself was meticulously organized (see their wedding site), with color-coded teams reminiscent of a SWAT operation. Melody was a bit nervous, but everything fell into place and she was able to give a most heart-warming toast at the reception. Having been deprived of TV for so long, I spent much of the evenings flipping through the cable channels at the hotel, one of which in particular was showing scandisk results. You really have to wonder sometimes what cable companies are offering with their ultra gold premium 1000-channel package… Anywayz, this past week has also been well-flavored with social engagements, including a lunch with some labmates at Bertucci’s, a dinner with my soon-to-be-intern buddies at the Peach Farm, and even several games of 8-ball at Jillians, which I’ve been thirsting for in a long time. Though next week will probably get more busy at work, it will not water down my excitement since Melody will be returning to me for good in just one week! =D

Since all my friends are about to graduate, I thought it would be appropriate to include this hilarious comic detailing the 12 types of med students, courtesy of my girlfriend who sent me the link. The artist is actually a Pediatrics intern in New York City who authors the ScutMonkey website. What kind of med student are you?

Memorial Day weekend goes by in a flash when you work through all three days. The month of May has been relatively quiet since I’ve been mostly working in near-seclusion helping my PI with an NIH grant. Life has generally been the same old eat-sleep-work cycle, though sadly, work continues to dominate. In fact, I’ve pretty much given up on correcting my schedule. I’ve gotten used to trekking out to work in the middle of the night and walking against the flow of interns and residents in the morning when I go home. The one highlight of the month was a weekend visit from Melody. Though the trip was too short and much of it was spent apartment hunting in preparation for her upcoming move, it provided a much needed day off for me. Otherwise, the few chances I’ve had to pop my head out of my shell have been for grub, including what has become a regular pilgrimage with the guys to visit the sushi buffet and hibachi overlord at Minado, a visit to the TGI Fridays on Newbury for Savita’s birthday, and Jasper White’s Summer Shack for a pre-graduation gathering with some of my other friends. Now that the grant is near completion, I’ll be looking forward to some reprieve from the hard work.

For all you out there who’ve been waiting so long and patiently for my scintillating updates, I’m happy to report that I’ll be rolling out with a new and improved version of my website tomorrow morning. While the new site retains most of the cosmetics of the original design, the basic structure has been fleshed out to incorporate a heavily-modified version of a freeware PHP script called CuteNews. This overhaul was initiated mainly in response to suggestions from friends, though I’ve been putting this off for a while to avoid the headache of writing all the necessary codes. But thanks to our friends at CutePHP, I’ve been able to add several new features to my site with relatively little effort. The most important but probably least noticeable is the ability to post comments for each of my updates, which will finally make this page a true blog. Both new and archived posts will no longer be stored by html, but in data files to be accessed by PHP scripting. I’ve also converted the old forum back into a guestbook, and have added a text search function to look up archived postings. And just to add a bit of pizzazz, I designed an animated version of the logo for the welcome page with Adobe ImageReady. Anyway, since it’s been more than a month since my last update, I’ll have more to report on life in my next post. In the meantime, feel free to post any helpful suggestions, bug reports, criticisms, or just random thoughts!