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.

With only days to go before internship starts, I spent much of the past week basking in my air-conditioned room to escape the sweltering heat wave. This was perfect, as it gave me the opportunity to set up and enjoy another new toy – my PS3. Considering that I never grew up with consoles like the NES, I don’t think I could ever have imagined having TWO gaming systems in my household. I don’t have any games yet, but the plan is to replace my multimedia PC for streaming music and movies. Speaking of games, we also finally finished Super Mario Galaxy this weekend, after many adrenaline-filled hours of dodging fireballs, collecting star bits, and jumping onto moving platforms. Meanwhile, I also did some reading to pass my certification for ACLS last week. Now I’ll know how to properly yell “I’m clear, you’re clear, everyone CLEAR!” before shocking the unfortunate soul who goes into cardiac arrest during intern start week. Trust me, you don’t want to have to go to the hospital around this time of the year.

After 8 long years, my journey as a med student has finally come to an end. Now, when people approach me in the hospital, I can no longer say “I’m just a medical student,” which for me was like a level 5 circle of protection spell. Heheh. But in all seriousness, this transition is a big step in responsibility. And with great responsibility comes great anxiety. But until then, we enjoyed a double celebration today since Melody got her MPH as well. In other words, while I’m now a doctor doctor, she’ll be a master doctor – not bad for spending just one year for three additional letters in your degree. Actually, this graduation was a 3-day event, with an MD-PhD dinner, an HST graduation, and the Class Day ceremony, giving us plenty of opportunities to take photos, eat free food, and maximize the mileage from our overpriced gown rentals. My parents even took us out to No. 9 Park for Chef Barbara Lynch’s tasting menu (we swear this will be the LAST one this year). The 8-course dinner featured several highlights, including a savory seared foie gras with duck, a well-executed hangar steak, and a light pana cotta with pistachio ice-cream. Other dishes, like the over-salted skate wing and over-crisped pork belly, left more to be desired. Now, as my final days of freedom draw to a close, I’ll have to start reviewing all that medicine stuff I learned. Or else I’ll have to resort to saying “I’m just an intern.” 🙂

We spent last weekend in NYC to attend a good friend’s wedding, where I relived my glory days of geekdom catching up with old college buddies on such important topics as board games, Magic cards, and Star Trek TNG. I also took my parents out to the new ramen sensation in East Village, Ippudo, which sadly did not live up to the hype as the richly-flavored broth was paired with skinny noodles that were limper than McCain without his Viagra. Fortunately, we more than redeemed ourselves down in Cape Cod last week for four days of seafood heaven. Thanks to some research on Chowhound, we were made privy to some of the best eats there, including delicately seared scallops at Brewster Fish House, ginormous lobster rolls at the Friendly Fisherman’s, sweet sweet mussels at Mac’s Shack, and a wallet-friendly fried seafood platter at JT’s Seafood. Thanks to a gift certificate from our wedding last year, we stayed at the fancy Ocean Edge Resort. There, we burned calories with visits to the indoor pool, tennis courts, and even a private beach, which given the chilly weather was more suitable for beachcombing for hermit crabs than actual swimming. We also explored the surrounding area, playing tug-of-war with deers using Melody’s dress at the ZooQuarium, hiking two hours along the Nauset salt marshes to behold the underwhelming Doane Rock, and watching a hilariously unsuccessful glass blowing demonstration at the Sandwich Glass Museum. The trip also offered unique opportunities for my new dSLR, like photographing a bird with my 200mm zoom lens, only to realize that it was actually a glass bottle. As my friends back home in Boston are already firing up their grills for the summer, I’ll be looking forward to our next indulgence in gastronomy.

After months of staring at the cracks along the bathtub edges and pieces of old caulk gradually disintegrating, I decided to put an end to it all and re-caulk the bathroom. The project took longer than I thought, partly because it was my first time, and also because the previous owner filled a lot of those spaces with grout which I had to remove (and I was too cheap to buy an actual grout saw to do it properly). Fortunately, this new Kwik Seal 3.0 let us take a shower just 3 hours after caulking. After the 2-day job, I was awarded with my new toy – a Nikon D40. I ultimately chose this low-end model since this is my first dive into the world of dSLR. And after reading a number of excellent tutorials from Ken Rockwell and Cambridge In Color, I feel truly humbled by the breadth and depth of this immersive hobby. Now that I’ve just finished reading a couple of books like Empire of Light, Choke, and Prince Caspian, my next step will be to break out my digital field guide, get some filters, and take this baby out for a spin.

A year after embarking on our journey together in marriage, we found ourselves closer than ever before. We returned to Walden Pond last evening for our first anniversary, sitting by the water in the cool, serene glow of the moonlight to ponder our past, present, and future together. It was nerve-wracking parking by the roadside and sneaking into the park in the dark, but well worth it. Not surprisingly, our outing was preceded by dinner at Hong Kong Eatery for some old favorites – pork and preserved egg congee, BBQ pork and dumpling noodles, and dried scallop egg white fried rice. Though certainly more low-key than our 10-course extravaganza last week, it was a much more meaningful evening for the two of us.

To celebrate our engagement anniversary, I created a special degustation dinner menu featuring many of Melody’s favorites as well as a few new dishes, with an emphasis on East and Southeast Asian cuisine. Rather than describing each dish, I will just list the 10-course menu with photo links: