After many flights and sleepless nights (hey, that rhymed!), my interview trail for Ophthalmology finally ended last week as my plane landed in Logan Airport moments before our first major snowstorm this winter. Over the past 2 weeks, I’ve been living out of my suitcase as I traveled around the country, through New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Miami, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. I joined the several dozen other applicants with the same conservative black suit and same leather portfolio, as we all did our best to appear confident but not cocky, unique but not weird, and smart without being a smart-ass. Anyway, after both college and med school interviews, most of us have gotten the whole smile-and-nod routine down cold – like “Wow! You guys have slit lamps too?” Fortunately, through carefully orchestrated planning – pricelining hotels, using public transportation, bumming free rides, and crashing at my friends’ pads, I did manage to save my bank account from taking too big a hit. For the grand finale, I completed my Step II board exam yesterday, powering through the 9-hour exam and taking only one 5-minute break for bathroom and a snack. Now as I sit in my warm apartment and watch the rest of the city being blanketed by the heavy snow, I can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

… tachycardic and palpitating…in San Francisco. Even as I’m writing this entry aboard my red-eye flight back to Boston, I can feel the pain in my feet after climbing the slopes of the city in my dress shoes for the past 2 days of residency interviews. Even yummy dungeoness crabs in Inner Sunset or upscale Indian fusion in Palo Alto were hardly worth the exhaustion. Fortunately, the trip did give me a chance to meet up with some old friends. By the way, I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday. As per tradition, we raided the undergrad turkey luncheon, and cooked up a storm for a friend’s turkey dinner. Right now, I can hardly wait until my holiday break – just my board exam and 11 more interviews to go!

Spam has always been annoying, but lately it’s been out of control. Over the past weeks, you may have noticed the crap-load of spam messages being left on my website. I had put off dealing with it since I’ve been overwhelmed by my rotations, residency interviews, board exam studying, and Kaplan work (to pay for all the traveling). Last week, after removing 75 spam messages from my last blog entry, I finally decided to install reCAPTCHA. CAPTCHA actually stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”. The reCAPTCHA service I’m using is part of an online effort to digitize printed books using OCR. Words that cannot be read are used by this program to be solved by the user before a message can be posted. This should hopefully hold off those annoying bots in the meantime.

I hope everyone enjoyed the extra hour of sleep this past weekend! I spent most of my time catching up with studying, but was ultimately lured by various distractions like finally finishing the last chapter of Super Paper Mario, testing a demo for the upcoming Crysis, and checking out Homer’s antics in the Simpsons Game. We also had a fancy dinner with Brigham physicians in Copley Square, and even enjoyed a hearty Italian brunch and pastries with a college friend in the North End. Now as I’m sitting in my hotel room in Philly awaiting my board exam tomorrow, I’ll have to make sure I don’t go crazy for dinner tonight.

Last week marked the start of my interview season for residency in Ophthalmology. The trip to Baltimore was a nice way to start things off, as I got to see some familiar faces. Overall, the experience was pretty laid back, though I am sure that I’ll be exhausted by the end of December. Right now, I have 15 interviews lined up for the next few weeks, distributed across the country in places like NYC, Philadelphia, Miami, Iowa City, LA, and San Francisco. Next week, I’ll also head down to Philly for the “skills” portion of my Step II board exam. Fortunately, my rotation in ambulatory medicine has been pretty benign, and we were even able to catch a performance of La Sylphide by the Boston Ballet last Saturday. The choreography was nicely done, though we did have to miss game 3 of the World Series for it. Luckily, our team did not let us down – victory is ours!

Who knew, despite being disappointed in Paris three years ago, that our faith in French food would be restored over a weekend in Canada? Last Friday, we drove up to Montreal after securing a nice hotel deal from Priceline.com. Our plan for the long weekend was just to relax and explore the town. But nothing could have prepared us for the mind-blowing (and artery-clogging) dining experiences that awaited us there. On Saturday, after exploring the old buildings and eclectic shops in Vieux-Montréal, we arrived promptly for our reservation at Toque!, one of only two 5-diamond restaurants in Montreal. The 7-course tasting menu there by Chef Normand Laprise took us on an incredible gastronomic voyage blending different flavors and textures with flowers, foams, and freeze-dried “flakies.” Among the most memorable dishes were a refreshing razor clam appetizer with apples, radishes, lime juice and wasabi foam served on its shell; a frozen goat cheese dessert as smooth as ice-cream paired with strawberry flakies; and an unforgettable melt-in-your-mouth foie gras served with poached pear. The meal set us back a small fortune, but alone was worth the entire trip. On Sunday, we visited the Biodome, the former Olympic stadium now converted into a series of indoor ecosystems with various animals like chubby prairie dogs, chubby penguins, chubby porcupines and of course a chubby beaver (they really grow ’em fat in Canada). We also checked out the Insectarium and Botanical Gardens, which showcased an impressive Chinese lantern exhibit that evening. Exhausted from all the walking, we agreed to sitting at the bar when we got to Au Pied De Cochon. Literally meaning “The Pig’s Foot,” the restaurant is truly a bastion of carnivores. We had front row seats to the kitchen itself, as we watched the staff toss slabs of foie gras onto the busy grill and plate each dish like an objet d’art. I had the “Duck in a Can,” which includes half a duck breast with demi-glace, foie gras, roasted garlic, and choux emburre (braised buttered cabbage), all gently cooked inside a can for 27 minutes and opened right at the table. Melody went for the Foie Gras Duo, pairing a foie gras burger with poutine – the classic Quebecoise comfort food of french fries, cheese curds, and gravy raised to near-haute level with more foie gras. We had to take it easy for the rest of our trip, visiting family friends and trying some local delicacies like bagels and smoked-meat sandwiches. By the time we drove back on Tuesday, we were ready to swear off fatty foods to let our cholesterol levels come back down to non-fatal levels… at least, until our next trip to this foodies’ paradise. 🙂

Some of you might have noticed a glitch on my website last week. It turns out that my hosting company upgraded their PHP software to a new version that apparently has an issue with the $PHP_SELF variable on my script. This, by the way, took me many hours to figure out, and really goes to show that upgrades are not always for the better. I remember my dad once asking why I was installing new versions of programs onto his computer. “Is it supposed to make things run faster?” I thought for a second and told him, “No, they make things run slower.” In fact, software upgrades rarely offer any useful new features. Instead, they look shinier and get packaged with bloatware – programs like Nero comes immediately to mind. And for free programs like ICQ and Pandora, the “upgrade” actually means the addition of ads from sponsors. I was pleasantly surprised by Microsoft’s overhaul of their Office software, but Vista was a total disappointment. Unfortunately, our assimilation into the collective is inevitable. Resistance is futile. Anyway, speaking of upgrades, a second edition of my Kaplan book has been released. The first edition was only available as part of a wallet-breaking online course, so going retail should hopefully expand our readership.

Words cannot describe how good if feels to be back home in Boston. I almost went to hug my refrigerator the moment I stepped into my condo. Well…almost. I feel as though I just stepped out of the past and into modern civilization through some portal from the Twilight Zone (I’m actually thinking of a specific episode). Luckily, I now have a bit of time before my next rotation begins. Unfortunately, my ciricadian rhythm over the past few days has been completely thrown off – not because of jet-lag or anything, but by the lack of a regular work day. While I’ve been busy running errands and catching up with my life, not having the necessity of waking up at 6am each morning to do so can be pretty disorienting, especially when I’m home alone. I don’t know how people who work from home do it. It probably requires a level of discipline that I just don’t have.

Since this is the last weekend before I fly back to Boston, it would have been blasphemous to leave Baltimore without sampling the city’s famed crabs. Last evening, my friends took me out to dinner at Bo Brooks, where we sat on the balcony overlooking the waterfront of Inner Harbor just as the sun was setting. But as the evening went on, the serenity slowly deteriorated into a battlefield of carnage as I fumbled with my mallet trying to get all the little bits of meat from our dozen steamed blue crabs – reminscent of the scene with the monkeys from 2001. Although Melody was not available to join the feast, she did get to enjoy free music back home at the Boston Blues Festival this weekend. Sadly, I will just miss her when I get back, since she’ll be on a plane to a conference in Minneapolis that same day. Fortunately, she has promised to leave me plenty of home-cooked goodies for the rest of the week!

From the same resident that brought us the 12 Types of Medical Students a few years ago comes another genius comic strip to help perpetuate the medical specialty stereotypes that pervade our profession. It’s scary imagining my wife as an “overworked bitch goddess,” but these are just “stereotypes,” right? Heh heh (nervous laugh). Too bad there isn’t one for Ophthalmology. I wonder what it would be?