With the boards out of the way, I was able to visit my wife in Sacrmento for a second time. More importantly, this trip was to be my first meeting with the folks at UC Davis with whom I hope to work with next year. Despite having my flight paid for, the need to make a good first impression added a bit of stress to the otherwise relaxing visit. I arrived in Sac Town Thursday after work to enjoy nostalgic late-night Canto seafood at New Hong Kong Wok. The next morning, we walked to Melody’s office, located conveniently across the hall from the eye clinic where I met with the retina division chief for a tour and lunch. We enjoyed the scent of spring along the path home before heading out again for dinner at Taylor’s Kitchen, which we burned away afterwards with some indoor dancing. On Saturday, we solicited departmental gossip from my ex-co-resident over ramen, then headed to dinner with the chairman and retina faculty over home-cooked halibut and lasagna. The friendly company and pleasant conversations helped me relax and raised hope for a potential academic job opportunity for me at the same institution as my wife. With the formalities out of the way, we spent my last day with a food tour from Local Roots, using up our gift certificate from Melody’s co-workers from Boston. After chowing down banh cuon to warm up, we met the tour guide in the afternoon for the 3-mile hike around East Sacramento. Along the way, we munched on Thai noodle salad from the Paragary’s Cafe Bernardo, iced coffee and scones from Coffee Works, margherita pizza from La Trattoria Bohemie, ice-cream from La Bombe, and tacos de carnitas from Centro. The culinary experience kept me well-nourished for my red-eye flight back home, just in time for Monday clinic.

The final weeks before the written board exam has been brutal. I was getting so deprived of sleep that I had to switch from ‘timed’ to ‘untimed’ mode on OphthoQuestions to avoid getting penalized for dozing off while doing question sets. Meanwhile, a few final touches for my research manuscript necessitated some creative coordination for last-minute meetings with my mentors – including one that took place during commercial breaks for the Duke-Creighton game preceding our team’s entry into the Sweet Sixteen. Between my usual pre-exam insomnia and the NCAA finals tournament, I was left with only 3 hours of sleep which definitely compromised my math and reasoning skills, but luckily, spared my recall center for esoteric facts. The 5-hour test felt shorter than previous standardized exams I’ve taken. Afterwards, I returned to Pho Far East for a bowl of hot, steamy celebration, then shopped at nearby Belk for a new sports coat. Sadly, since none of my co-fellows were up for going out tonight, I’ve decided to kick back with another episode of Game of Thrones, as I addictively immersed myself in the tumultuous struggles between the Starks, Lanisters, and Targaryens.

I celebrated a belated Pi Day today with a pecan pie from the grocery store. Sadly, my month-long hiatus from blogging has not left me with more interesting highlights to report. Between organizing journal club, studying for boards, and preparing cases and abstracts for two conferences, I have been left with little time for anything else. Our annual holiday event – the Winter Thaw – was a disappointing 3 hour lecture by evangelical vegans, which we protested over drinks afterwards. We made up for it by celebrating my senior fellows’ getting their jobs at Six Plates the following week. At home, aside from the dread of filing taxes for 3 states, I’ve continued with round 2 of my instant noodle competition. Again, each gets two scores for the soup base and noodles:

1. Ve Wong Chinese Herb (Ginseng Flavor) Noodle Soup (7,6): Nice aromatic herbal soup is spiked with bits of ginger and wolfberries, but the noodles are not very substantial.
2. Vifon Bun Rieu Cua (5,6): Even the “crab sauce” with tomato and tofu bits, dried-fried onion sprinkle, and crunchy bun, cannot convince me this is bun rieu. It doesn’t taste rieu at all.
3. Vifon Pho Bo (4, 6): Salty, flavorless broth and dehydrated bits of meat that taste like rubber, is combined with pho noodles that are way too wide. Fail #2 for Vifon.
4. Sapporo Ichiban (Original Flavor) (5,5): The “original” flavor is like soy-sauce in water while the hefty noodles lose their consistency half-way down the bowl. Definitely not ichiban.
5. Lishan Black Chicken Brand Chicken Noodle (6,6): The soup is spicy with pungent pickled cabbage. The thin, fine noodles have an interesting texture, but too little in quantity to hit the spot.
6. Kang Shi Fu – Artificial Abalone-Crab Flavor Noodle Soup (7,6): The soup is hearty with rehydrated veggies, but no abalone or crab flavor at all. The delicate noodle falls apart quickly.
7. Unif Tung-I Ramen (Special Beef Flavor) (6,6): Mediocre salty, spicy broth with average noodles. Nothing to write home about.
8. Wei Lih – Jah Jan Mien (6,8): Nice springy noodles are tossed with a sweet n’ spicy sauce pack. The extra soup base provides a generic broth on the side that seems more like an afterthought.
9. Baijia – Artificial Stewed Chicken Flavor Instant Sweet Potato Thread (5,6): Crunchy cellophane noodles are immersed in flavorful, but very salty, oily broth, leaving me thirsty for hours.

This year, I’m celebrating the year of the snake with my own tribute to slippery, slithery goodness – noodles! I kicked off the first round of Glenn’s Instant Noodle Competition with the selection below. For the past two months, I’ve been sampling various candidates from Li Ming’s expansive noodle aisle, with the hope of finding a worthy successor, or at least substitute, for my beloved Neoguri. Each package gets two scores (x,y) – x for soup base, y for noodles. Here’re the candidates:

1. Mama Shrimp (Tom Yum) Flavour (8,7): Spicy, flavorful tom yum soup with light-textured deep-fried noodle, worthy of the mama’s cooking. Don’t overcook and add an egg.
2. Fuku Superior Soup Instant Noodle (8,7): The umami broth is worth drinking alone, let alone paired with springy deep-fried noodles. Advertised as edible 3 ways (+/-soup or raw), it’s truly superior!
3. Oh! Ricey – Hu Tieu Nam Vang (5,6): Bits of chunky freeze-dried meat flakes & veggies barely rescues the uninspired soup base. The pho is surprisingly resilient.
4. Kung-Fu – Instant Oriental Noodle Soup (Artificial Beef Flavor) (6,5): Use kung fu to fend off the more oniony than beefy soup while slurping average-quality noodles.
5. Ve Wong – Vegetarian Noodle (Mi Chay) (7,7): Can’t go Wong with a hearty broth of assorted dehydrated veggies and faux meat. Noodles are generic, but springy.
6. Wai Wai – Oriental Style Instant Noodle (4,2): It you like crunchy but rubbery noodles drenched in bland, salty soup base, then this one is right for you.
7. Six Fortune – Instant Noodles (Seafood Flavor) (8,7): Nong Shim called and want their recipe back. Otherwise identical to Neoguri, the only difference are little fish cake bits. Not quite the original.
8. Six Fortune – Beef Noodle (5,6): The strong star anise aroma is overpowering, despite freeze-dried meat bits and scallions in the soup base. Noodles are average.
9. Nissin – Ramen Noodle (with Sesame Oil) (6,6): The traditional sesame broth and noodles taste like what I remembered. Nostalgic, but really just so-so for the name recognition.

For those of you who may feel bad for me because you look down on MSG and dehydrated noodles, rest assured I did also manage to mooch off a friend’s New Year dinner party, and even contribute some store-bought nian gao to the spread of fried pork buns, spring rolls, and tofu salad. The shindig gave me a good break from starting my studying for my written board exam in April.

Since I was going to spend my birthday in the bitter cold alone, I decided to go all out this weekend and eat away the pain. Since it happened to be Restaurant Week, I was able to join a few co-fellows for foodie outings on Saturday. For lunch, we went to Tallula’s in Chapel Hill for Turkish pide and lentil soup. Dinner was in the same area, so I stayed at nearby Caffe Driade for a tall cup of hot chocolate while reading my pile of journal articles in lieu of paying for WiFi. Dinner at Il Palio was respectable classic Italian – minestrone, tagliatelle bolognese, and creme brulee, which interestingly was served in a puffed pastry. My binge continued into Sunday, when I tackled the Food Truck Rodeo. Having researched ahead of time, I beelined to the notable stars among the 30 or so participants, downing a quintuplet of juicy buns at Chirba Chirba, a fried green tomato burger with pimento cheese and fried egg at Only Burger, and a “pigs & figs” grilled cheese sandwich (sourdough + goat cheese + speck + figs + balsamic = yummy) at American Meltdown. Satiated, I was pleasantly surprised by another present back home – it’s my captain’s chair! As it turns out, the rocker, a graduation gift courtesy of the MEEI Alumni Association, comes pre-assembled in a giant box that does not fit inside my car in any orientation. I ended up strapping it to the passenger front seat with the door wide opened which made for a precarious drive back in the midst of a sleet storm. Fortunately, the layer of ice let me slide the box back to my apartment with ease. Meanwhile, I also received my new desktop monitor this week. After shipping my previous monitor back and forth three times in a month, Samsung’s repair center finally threw in the towel. But since the company no longer make 30″ monitors, they could only offer a refund with 70% depreciation! Understandingly, I was a little bitter having to chip in another $200 to downgrade to a Dell 27″. The new monitor arrived just in time before the impending demise of Live Mesh, as I migrate my sync folders to Skydrive. Microsoft, why hath thou forsaken peer-to-peer sync?!

Although my birthday wasn’t until next Monday, Melody decided to move up her visit to capitalize on the long weekend. With a co-fellow helping to cover clinic, I sneaked out of work Friday morning to pick up my other half from the airport, left her home to catch some zzz’s, then returned to wrap up at work. Exhausted afterwards, I joined her for an afternoon nap until dinner at the newly-opened Bleu Olive for Mediterranean fare just across the street which included a tasty mussel appetizer with roasted pork belly and gorgonzola cream. The meal put us back in a coma, and we awoke late next morning for shopping at Southpoint Mall. For lunch, we sought out the mysterious hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant tucked inside the local Kroger, where we were greeted by a talkative HK native who served up only mediocre beef chow fun and fried rice. We did score some work clothes for Melody at the mall, but our best discovery was Atomic Empire. This haven for geeks not only featured weekly MTG tournaments and board game nights, but also a library of demos to try out. We broke out their set of Carcasonne, and became quickly immersed in the German board game. We brought home a copy to continue re-building the French medieval town, laying down tiles and meeples over home-cooked bun rieu while watching the third installation of the Batman trilogy. On Sunday, after stuffing our faces with beignets and steak frites from Rue Cler, we celebrated MLK day and Obama’s inauguration by starting our own revolution – against the Templars of Britain. With the end of Ezio and Altair’s story, Assassin’s Creed 3 brings forth a new half-English half-Mohawk hero and moves the setting back home to Boston during the time of the American Revolution. With new features like climbing trees and firing muskets, the game kept us occupied through Monday, with only a brief pause for Indian buffet and locopops, before Melody had to head home.

It’s hard to believe that my website & blog celebrates its 10th anniversary today. I’m amazed to look back at the decade chronicle of my academic progress, culinary expeditions, foreign travels, and gaming adventures. It reminds me of family and friendships, of furry friends that have long passed, and of my journey together with the love of my life. 2013 kicks off with new challenges for both of us. While I will need to push my research forward, refine my microsurgical skills, and prepare for the written boards; Melody will be welcoming some new friends into her home. Adopted from Bleu Royale, Walter and Gus are both American blue dumbos who promise to provide endless hours of ratty company. Meanwhile, my holiday weekend call has been off to a busy start. After a steaming bowl of beef noodle soup from Li Ming’s for my New Year’s Eve dinner, I got called back to work to laser three retinal tears which took until nearly midnight. Fortunately, I rushed home in time to Skype my wife and parents just as the ball dropped to ring in the new year. With so many more adventures ahead, I look forward to what the next 10 years of Xephalon.net will bring.

After a series of events that seemed arranged for me to miss my flight, I finally arrived in Sacramento for a very rainy Christmas. Once I landed, Melody hustled me into Ramen House Ryu Jin for black tonkatsu ramen before showing me her new home. We spent the next morning hanging her H-bomb diplomas in her office at UC Davis, then rewarded our hard work with banh cuon, banh xeo, and bun rieu at Ban Cuon Tay Ho in Little Saigon. After some grocery shopping and other errands showing Melody’s usual routine, we had a quick afternoon nap before an elegant dinner at Enotria, where the tasting menu failed to impress, save for a chicken “faux gras” dish so named in response to Cali’s recent ban on the sale of fatty fowl liver. We also installed Dishonored on Melody’s non-gaming computer, which had us stealthily zooming our way through the steampunk world in old-school low resolution. On Sunday, we spooned up more bun rieu for lunch before going to see The Hobbit, the first of the trilogy based on Tolkien’s slim novel. From the theater, we trudged through the persistent drizzle to visit Petco for rat toys and Best Buy for potential new toys. Afterwards, we feasted at New Hong Kong Wok with a lavish dinner that reminded me of what I’ve been missing in Durham. On Christmas Eve, we awoke to a leisurely start, got pho for lunch, picked up groceries and oversized dim sum, then cooked up wintermelon soup and Asian veggie dishes for dinner with the in-law’s. To maximize time with my wife, I managed to change my flight with United to the day after Christmas, which despite costing an extra $180, gave us all of Christmas Day to have yet another bowl of pho and complete the game with a “low chaos” happy ending. My connecting flight home through DC was delayed by more than 2 hours, but was redeemed by an upgrade to first-class. It was easier to say good-bye to Melody this time around, knowing that we’ll be seeing each other again in a month.

Even before the Mayan calendar apocalypse came to pass, my last week was already feeling like the end of the world. The week started off with a weekend of cramming high-level statistics for an abstract to meet the submission deadline for ARVO. On top of retina call the following week, I also had to present journal club on Tuesday, surgical rounds on Wednesday, and submit an IRB application by Friday. My poor 30″ monitor also decided to conk out a month after its warranty ended. Despite going to the repair shop, it came back to me unrepaired, which left me annoyed, to say the least. By the time we had our resident-fellow holiday bash on Saturday, I felt as if a heavy weight had lifted off my shoulders. After the party, which included a disappointing holiday gift exchange that left me with a cranberry-scented candle, we spent the rest of the evening exploring nightlife in Chapel Hill. We started down West Franklin Street with drinks at Lantern, grabbed some NY-style pizza along the way, and ended with wings and nachos at Top of the Hill, where college kids dancing to blaring pop music made us feel old and out of place. I spent the following week recuperating and preparing for my trip to Sacramento with errands around the apartment. I wanted a clean house and clean fridge before leaving. To celebrate the upcoming apocalypse, I decided to re-watch the entire Resident Evil quintology. With ladies the likes of Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter dealing zombie genocide in skin-tight clothing, who wouldn’t welcome the end of days?

When it comes to the holiday season, it just isn’t Thanksgiving without mooching. This year, my co-fellow graciously invited those of us here to join her family for dinner. The full spread included all the traditional dishes – roasted free-range fresh turkey, country-cured baked ham, roasted yams with marshmallows, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy – as well as other goodies like roasted brussels sprouts and braised kale. Melody landed just in time to join us for pumpkin and strawberry-rhubarb pies a la mode for dessert. We began driving early on Friday for lackluster Black Friday deals in Mebane before reaching Asheville for lunch at Corner Kitchen. Using my friend’s season tickets, we managed to pass ourselves off as a Bosnian couple to explore the Biltmore Estate. George Vanderbilt’s magnificent mansion was reminiscent of a small-scale European palace. The complex network of servant’s quarters, food preparation rooms, private bowling alley and swimming pool, as well as seemingly endless rows of guest rooms, gave hints to the luxurious lifestyle of the railroad magnate’s family. We finished touring the house and gardens just in time to check in at the North Lodge bed & breakfast, followed by dinner at The Admiral. Here, tasty Kumomoto oysters and PEI mussels were followed by richly-braised short ribs and delicate sea scallops with grits cooked to tender perfection. We spent the evening perusing the eclectic shops of downtown Asheville. The cold drove us to stand in line at the French Broad chocolate lounge for heavenly hot chocolates, liquid truffles, and other artisan delectables while enjoying live music from a local band. After basking in silky sheets in our cozy library room, we awoke to breakfast with a table of retired medical folks discussing how to deal with their ex’s. Feeling out of place, we excused ourselves and returned to town for tapas at Curate. Sitting at the bar gave us front row seats to our dishes being prepared – fried eggplant with honey, salt cod and potato puree, squid noodle paella, and braised oxtail – a gourmet experience that steered clear of the standard gambas & patatas bravas. We shopped around for rat-shaped ornaments before dinner at Table. The satisfying meal kept our bellies warm for the drive back. Despite getting home late, we pushed bedtime back to make further progress in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. On Sunday, we awoke at brunch time for French bistro food at Vin Rouge while getting the oil changed for the car. We had little time for anything else before picking up some locopops on the way to the airport. Having done so much over these three days actually made Melody’s visit feel especially short this time. I think we’ll have to plan less when I fly to Sacramento this Christmas.