While Hong Kong is often known for its good eats and bountiful shopping, our trip there last week was more of a chance for me to re-experience the sights, sounds, and flavors from my childhood memories, as it’s been more than 20 years since I emigrated. After recuperating from the day-long journey and adjusting to the 12hr time difference, we awoke Tuesday morning to fresh dim sum at Luk Yu Tea House alongside middle-aged men reading the morning paper and shouting Cantonese at each other – reminscent of a scene from an HK action flick with Triad members ready for the ever-impending gang fight. We next took a double-decker bus to the south side of Hong Kong island to visit Ocean Park, part of Melody’s plan to visit every major aquarium in the world. The marine show was close to expectations, but the tri-lingual narration – with Mandarin (the official language), English (the ex-official language), and Cantonese (what people actually speak) – was pretty mind-boggling. By the time we got back, we were so exhausted that we decided to treat ourselves to a lavish afternoon tea at the Mandarin Oriental before taking the rest of the evening off. We started the next day with congee and fried dough at a local breakfast stand, had our fortune told at Wong Tai Sin temple, and even visited my old grade school, though the kids were all home due to the bird flu scare. After a quick bite, we spent most of the afternoon haggling away at the jade and ladies’ market before concluding the night with a tram ride up to Victoria Peak to take in the amazing view. On Thursday, we took the fancy new cable car up to visit the Big Buddha on Lantau Island. The 25-minute ride offered amazing views of the world’s largest Buddha, though somewhat scary in retrospect as we later learned that it had just recently re-opened after being shut down for a year for safety reasons. After sampling vegetarian dim sum at Po Lin Monastery, we returned to Kowloon for more bargain hunting and enjoyed roast goose at Yung Kee restaurant, which boasted 5 pages of awards on its menu. In the evening, we met some family friends over a seafood feast, including our first taste of fresh abalone in the shell (yum!). After dinner, we walked around my old neighborhood and even saw the building where I used to live. We ended our last night at the Temple Street night market, hoping to get a taste of fresh seafood from street stands known as dai pai dong. But alas, our bellies were so full that we could only wish that we had more time to eat everything we had wanted. Perhaps the most exciting part of our trip was aboard the return flight, when a sick male passenger necessitated the attention of any physician on board – who turned out to be my wife, the gynecologist. Fortunately, short of an actual “Outbreak” sequel, we were quickly cleared by public health officials for deboarding. Before returning to Boston, we will spend some time with Melody’s family in Cali as we ponder our missed opportunities for eating and shopping in Hong Kong, a city that I look forward to visiting again. Check out more photos on my travel page!

It’s official – my home for next year will be at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital. It’s probably a bit more hardcore than I needed for ophthalmology … ok, a LOT more hardcore … but I’ll get to work at the same place as Melody! Looking back, the infamous Match Day has been comparatively anti-climactic for early-matchers like me. For others, this was a much bigger deal, as this recent article in the Times would attest to. Anyway, I guess my fate to stay in Boston has been sealed for the next 4 years. Now, I have about 2 months to defend my honors thesis and otherwise enjoy full-blown senioritis before internship begins in June. I breathed a sigh of relief this afternoon as I handed back my ID badge to the hospital after completing my Psychiatry rotation. Before I left, my patient, who still thinks he’s an archangel despite being on maximum-dose Zyprexa and lithium, told me that he had a great time working with me, and that he’ll move my name up on the list of people going to heaven. For my last day of clinical duties as a medical student – it was certainly a nice parting gift.

Did you know that Maggi sauce is NOT from Asia? I read in an article this week that Maggi sauce, one of the most revered seasonings used in Cantonese home-cooking, is in fact from Switzerland! Among the 8 different types of soy sauces I use (yes, 8), from Chinese-branded light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, aged soy sauce, soy paste, and seafood soy sauce to Japanese ones like Kikkoman and Ponzu sauce, Maggi sauce stands apart as the one special flavoring I use alone. I use it on fried eggs or as a dipping sauce, but always sparingly and never in regular cooking – my magic Maggi sauce. It feels as if my world has turned upside down. I am left contemplating the origin of all the other stuff I had growing up in HK: Smarties candy, Bourvil broth, Mentholathum ointment… See how British colonialism warped my cultural identity?! I fell like I’ve finally “catched the crazies,” as Melody puts it, now that I’m rotating through the psychiatric locked-down unit. On the bright side, working there never leaves me with a dearth of stories to tell. I met a guy last Friday who told me that “little green men” were telling him to kill people. “This is very atypical for me,” he said, “since my USUAL hallucinations are about the KGB.” Isn’t psychiatry just awesome?