After months of waiting, we finally got our hands (and feet) on the Wii Fit balance board! Though originally conceptualized as little more than a bathroom scale, it also does a surprisingly good job at tracking your center of gravity, allowing a myriad of activities like yoga, hula hoops, and skiing. In fact, although my weight is in the normal range, my calculated “Wii Fit Age” was higher than my chronological one – likely resulting from my proficiency as a couch potato. Fortunately, the toy has gotten us both on a regular exercise regimen, at least for the first 3 days out of the box. I just hope it won’t become one of those weight-loss fads we’ll forget about in a month. Since this is my last golden weekend before my MICU month, we also returned for the Boston summer tradition of Shakespeare on the Common, with an entertaining and well-acted rendition of “As You Like It.” This year, we showed up early enough to grab dinner in Chinatown and even enjoyed a game of Scrabble and Killer Bunnies on the lawn before the show began.

Today is the holiday celebrating the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara (or as monosyllabic people like the Chinese call her, Guan Yin). Since I was visiting New York this weekend for my mom’s birthday, we went temple-hopping to pay our respects. Now unlike Buddhist temples in Asia with their exotic and very ethnic architecture, those in the city are often converted row houses or apartments with scant interior furnishings, a few bronze statues for worship, and billions of incense sticks spewing near-asphixiating plumes of smoke into the air. But to my surprise, the dingy basement of the two temples I went to also served up some of the best vegetarian dishes I’ve encountered. At both the Chua Thap Phuong and Chieu Kien Buddhist centers in the Bronx, we chowed down on bowls of vegetarian pho (yes, no beef), bun bo hue (again, no beef), and at least 5 different types of xoi (sticky rice desserts). Good vegetarian food is hard to come by, and good Vietnamese vegetarian food is even harder to find – and for free? To round out my fobby weekend, I also learned to play MJ for the first time. And by MJ I’m not alluding to the Sweet Mary Jane. MJ is for Mahjong – not the computer game for loners who have graduated from solitaire, but the 4-player gambling addiction enjoyed by Chinese housewives worldwide. After blowing 3 hours with my parents at the blink of an eye, I now know why devotees are so drawn to it. Apparently, the Japanese have designed a mahjong table that automatically shuffles the tiles so you can lose your money twice as fast! Watch the video – I especially enjoyed the part where the Cantonese people all go “wah!” at the same time.

My elective block this month has been a welcomed change from the intensity of the CCU. With no patient responsibilities and clinics running only Mondays to Fridays (just like regular folks!), I’ve had time to catch up on reading, re-grout the bathroom tiles, and even finish the short but oh-so-sweet single-player campaign from Call of Duty 4. From aerial assaults with an IR camera to sniper missions in a ghillie suit, the gaming experience was almost reminiscent of a Michael Bay action flick. In the meantime, while the summer sizzle is keeping me cooped up in my air-conditioned room, I’ve started another game called Assassin’s Creed, where you play an assassin from a secret brotherhood in late 12th century Jerusalem whose objective is to knock off nine baddies involved in propagating the Crusades. It’s fun leaping across rooftops and kicking it Wuxia-style, but the most satisfying (and stress-relieving) part is sneaking up to the enemy and pouncing onto them with your hidden blade. Hehehe, so awesome. Anyway, this should keep me occupied until I get my copy of MGS4, the final chapter of the defining series in the stealth action genre. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that not too many sick people show up in the MICU next month.

Starting internship in the cardiac intensive care unit meant that I didn’t get to wear my shiny new white coat or carry the stacks of handbooks they handed us at orientation. Instead, I had my scrubs, my ID, my stethoscope, and my pager – and I was prepared for anything. Yet, there is no experience more harrowing than taking care of ten very sick patients in the unit during my first overnight call, and having my first admitted patient die the very next morning. His demise was not completely unexpected. He was a 400lb man transferred to us from an outside hospital on pressors and ventilator support with a 2-page poorly-handwritten note that might as well have been a big question mark sign. But it certainly didn’t do much for my morale walking home post-call that day, drenched in sweat after an hour of doing chest compressions, and having only eaten a slice of cold pizza over the prior 24hr period. After that first night, my diet has improved, though I still act like a fish out of water at times. My first 2 weeks of internship has certainly taught me tons, and I look forward to what lies in store in the months ahead.