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?

Now that Crysis is over, I figure it would be a good time to roll out some new improvements to the website, including updates to the links page and a brand new page for RSS feeds. This should work nicely as a portal for checking the latest news, at least for me. Anyway, since my wife’s away for a conference this weekend, I can go wild and do crazy fun stuff like cleaning the apartment! Now, with vacuum cleaner and furniture polish in hand, I’m ready to rock ‘n roll.

What better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than opening night of the Boston Ballet’s production of Romeo & Juliet? Well, it’s really more of a romantic tragedy, but…ermmm…romantic nevertheless! It was an evening of cultural sophistication, down to our prelude of beef chow fun and duck noodle soup at good old HK Eatery. =) Anyway, I’m just glad that on this day, even geeks like me deserve a little love.

Welcome to the Year of the Rat! Unfortunately, neither of our ratty pals could be with us this year. And since this is our first Chinese New Year as a married couple, that means no more red envelopes either – a double whammy! Nevertheless, we celebrated the holiday as usual, by mouth. This included both a Canto-style seafood feast on Friday AND an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet this afternoon. In fact, the ease of the month-long pharmacology course I’m taking has afforded me the ability to finally eat and sleep like the average Joe – maybe even a bit more than Joe. Even after writing my honors thesis, I still had enough time to beat Gears of War on hardcore level. Now, with a few large expenditures in upcoming months, I’ll hopefully find stuff to do that’ll be more remunerative than collecting ammo or star bits.

I can’t believe they actually…terminated…the Sarah Connor Chronicles yesterday for the big G’s State of the Union address. It was fun nevertheless watching Pelosi struggle to avoid rolling her eyes in front of the camera while he continued to insist on our success in Mid East campaigns. I was also afraid that he’d still say that we’re not in a recession, as he had claimed earlier this week. I can almost imagine him waving his fingers and saying “there is no recession,” like “these are not the droids we’re looking for.” Anyway, we celebrated my birthday today with the equivalent of a 3-day Chinese feast, followed by some couch-time with Super Mario Galaxy. Until the weather gets warmer, our lifestyle is becoming reminscent of a quiescent state in roundworms as reported in the newest issue of Nature called lethargus.

It was tough getting any rest from sleeping last night. I kept dreaming that I had matched to my top choice residency program, only to wake up to realize it was all an illusion. This actually happened several times, and I would pop out of bed each time with my heart thumping. That is, until approximately 9:05am this morning, when I got a real-live call from the program director at MEEI telling me that I have indeed matched with them. I almost had to pinch myself to realize that this was the real deal. Luckily, I had the day off from work, so after calling up some family and friends, I celebrated with 8-ball and noodles (my favorite combo!). Anyway, I guess this means that I’ll be staying in Boston until at least 2012! My capacity for inertia is truly boundless.

My new year started off smoothly as I slowly settled into my rotation in the emergency department. Besides learning many new things (like how to sustain an hour of doing chest compressions), I also had the fortune of laying my hands on a brand new toy. Looking back at the many cell phones I’ve owned (see here), the RAZR has been my favorite. Although it was tough letting it go, I really wanted a data phone, and the introduction of an irresistable plan helped sealed the deal. So far, the new phone has performed nicely. It’s not as flashy as the iPhone, but is certainly more utilitarian. Today, I used it to retrieve my confirmation for the rank list I submitted for the Ophthalmology match. Now that my fate is sealed, I can only cross my fingers as I anxiously await the results next week.

Happy 2008! Believe it or not, it has been exactly 5 years since I started Xephalon.net. Although the design scheme is basically unchanged, the website has undergone a few upgrades, including user comments and Recaptcha. But more importantly, this past year marked several major events in my life, like getting married, attaining my PhD, and deciding to specialize in ophthalmology. Beyond love and career, 2007 will also be remembered as the year that electronic gaming returned to my life in full force. It began with completing our epic journey through the world of Oblivion, then shifting to the white, witty, wonderful world of the Wii to defeat crazy raving rabbids, rescue Mario’s multi-dimensional world, and embark on a quest for the Twilight Princess. And with a line up of some of the most impressive FPS games I have ever seen – Gears of War, Call of Duty 4, Crysis, and Bioshock, all sitting on my computer, I fear that the gaming industry will finally squeeze that last drop of productivity from my existence.

Our goal over this year’s holiday season was to accomplish absolutely nothing – which was exactly what we did over the past 4 days in New York. Much of our time was spent reliving the joy of sci-fi novels like Ender’s Game and Asimov’s Foundation series. We also flexed the language portion of our brain muscles with DS games like NY Times Crossword and WordJong (it’s better than it sounds), some high-speed scribbling action with Boggle at my cousin’s house, and the increasingly addictive Scrabulous app on Facebook. Of course, we did not neglect to flex our stomach muscles as well. We gobbled Joe Shanghai’s famous soup dumplings, tender BBQ beef tongues at Gyu-Kaku, and a somewhat underwhelming luncheon tasting menu at Bouley. To my dismay, I was struck again with another cold on our return to Boston. I guess I’ll just have to veg out for a few more days before we ring in the new year.