No study withdrawal here!

Been back in Socal for 3 days now and have lost track of what day it is 4 times so far. Went to visit the people I use to work with today and gonna go hang out with old friends tomorrow.

Just wanted to wish everybody a Merry Christmas and a joyful, stress-free last shopping day before XMas. Don't forget to leave the milk and cookies by the tree tomorrow night or for those of other denomination...uh...i dunno...maybe just eat the milk and cookies before bed? whoa awkward...

GPA-O-Meter

So for some reason, Drexel is releasing their grades one by one, one each day. These fall semester grades will partially determine if med schools deem me worthy to breathe their rarified air and grant me an interview...or at least a personalized rejection of how if it were up to them, they'd admit me in an instant...blah blah blah...with an actual signature that smudges when you run a wet finger over it!

So far, 4 scores have been released and my GPA-O-Meter sits at 3.81...no thanks to the B I got in Physiology. Man that class just kicks my ass, I dunno why. I'm stupid for physiology, that's a bad sign, it means that I'm going to be a terrible doctor who will mistake a coronary artery for a vagus nerve and cause a massive drop in cardiac output by pinching what I thought was the vagus nerve but is actually the coronary artery....nevermind that they are in wildly different places and look completely different...under a microscope...just kidding, they are different with your bare eyes...speaking of eyes, did you know eyes are the only place in your body you can see parts of your central nervous system (CNS for you nerdy types)

Anyway, just in case you wondered how smart I really was...I'm 3.81 smart baby...you better believe it....wouldn't trust me with your coronary circulation tho... :\

1 more exam left

Physio and biochem exams in the can...gonna go read a book and relax at a coffee shop all day and tomorrow, the deprivation continues with immunology for thursday

Instructions for using a hand dryer

Your common, everyday restroom hand dryer...or is it?

accidents

I was riding my bike to the local borders bookstore late last night to look for a new book to read and I almost got hit by a car, well actually the guy accelerates and then slams on his brakes right in front of me. I thought about the mouth full of rear window in my face and decided that I wasn't in the mood for glass tonight. I swerved just in time to avoid certain death or dismemberment. Today, on the other hand, I wasn't so lucky, again with the car stopping in the middle of the road, this time I was prepared, so I went to go around her just at the same time that she decides she wants to start parallel parking. I must admit I wasn't really paying attention to what she was doing or what she was going to do as I usually would. So the space between her, me and the parked car next to me quickly got smaller and smaller and I was going to be sandwiched in between them. I am now at the hospital waiting for an amputation on my right leg that is literally hanging by a sliver of flesh. Ok it's just a big bruise and I'm at the library next to the hospital. But it looked bad...or awesome depending on your perspective

That was the most fun I've had in weeks. The girl ran for it, so I gave chase. Unfortunately for her, she was in a car and I was on a bicycle. You know that scene from Casino Royale at the beginning where Bond chases the guy across construction yards, in the air on cranes, thru an embassy with embassy guards shooting at them and then at the end Bond faces off with the guards and he's holding the chasee as his human shield and then he shoots the guy and shoots the gas tank and everything explodes spectacularly...well my chase wasn't like that at all. It was better...WAY Better!

I cut corners, went thru supermarkets, smashed through windows, dove down hidden side streets as shortcuts, I think I got on some rooftops at one point like that time in Batman Begins where he takes the Tumbler on rooftops before landing on the freeway, well I didn't land on the freeway...but needless to say, the girl will not be having a great Sunday...cuz she's in prison, not because I beat her up, I don't condone violence against women, only against taco bell dogs and cats...possibly pigeons too.

disclaimer: possibly some or potentially all of the above is probably or may not be a figment of your author's imagination

Truffle Season

I went to the market today and took a look at their mushroom offering. They had quite a variety and it all made my mouth water...I should make a mushroom pie...with 20 different kinds of mushrooms and hanger steak bits filled in.

So among the mushrooms, there was this little box of mushroom that kinda was all on its own. I took a closer look and imagine my surprise when I saw that it was a BLACK TRUFFLE! If you are a gourmand, you will know truffles are like the holy grail of food...put it on anything and it will instantaneously transform into fine cuisine...if you ever made a bet where you stake eating a shoe if you lost, well fear no more, add truffle and that shoe will taste like...er chicken.

So back to the mushroom pie...so I'd make a butter/wine/truffle reduction sauce as pie filling....does that not sound good? Well, better than truffle and shoe at least

It was $300 per pound and this little beauty was $15 worth. I was sorely tempted to buy it, but I don't know what to do with it, I've never cooked with truffles before, but I did just buy a pound of hanger steak...hmmm...butter, wine, truffle reduction sauce over tasty steak...

Good Truffles also depend alot on where it came from and the season. It's truffle season now and the best black truffles are from France and Europe...viva la france. Unfortunately, this baby had no country of origin sticker, passport or any other form of identification.

Boy you shoulda smelled it, it was so good, even though it was chilled.

medicare sucks big rotten walnuts

I'm glad there is medicare, but at the same time, can't it be better? It's like someone gave them a fixed amount and told the insurance providers to make plans that overall costs within that fixed amount. So you've got plans that have no doctor copayment but expensive drugs or a doctor copayment with cheap drugs. And then you've got plans that have dental and vision and others with just dental. And then you've got plans that are only in effect in certain zip codes, what the heck is up with that. I hate retirement and I wish I was 50 years younger and not disabled so I can work and have employer covered insurance, that was so nice compared to this. Ah you young whippersnappers have it sooo easy =)
(Note: there are no hidden messages to this rant)
(Note Note: there is no hidden sarcasm in that last note)

I'm going to start my own HMO, non-profit, by the people for the people, socialist health care, who wants in? Might be expensive gotta pay the CEO bank cuz he's smart and handsome.

I have to give the medicare website props though, so easy to sign up

This plus physiology is killing me. I want to sleep forever, until the end of time or medicare becomes good, whichever is soonest.

Just one more week then home sweet home

I finished this book and am now halfway into this one. The first book is great, I highly recommend it, plus the cover's Orange, mostly, so considering how great the color is, the book's gotta be good!!

I am also putting this song on eternal repeat...for now at least...the lyrics are so upbeat...makes you feel bad for being depressed...ok not really, but it helps you keep your chin up and "keep moving forward" (-Walt Disney)

almost froze my lips off

We went for a 55 mile bike ride on a new route this morning and it was freezing. I almost died of hypothermia! Ok not really, but I didn't have breakfast so I was dying by mile 40 and went to have lunch at this burrito place in manayunk (they should pay me in nachose for this free advert) and I ate almost 20$ worth of nachos and burritos...they were that good and I was that hungry. I forgot to order the 1$ churros though, pretty miffed about that. OK back to the story, the entire time I was eating I was shivering so I went to the bathroom to run hot water over my hands and I looked in the mirror and my lips were freaking blue! I almost lost my lips and even before I ever kissed anyone....so embarrasing...no I'm kidding I've kissed lots of things...girls...I mean. People were staring!

On the ride we saw this car stopped in the middle of the road, at the top of a huge hill and it was on FIRE...literally. People were stopping at the intersection to have long looks it was kind of annoying, I mean once you've seen a car on fire, you've seen em all right?

The midpoint of the ride was Valley Forge national park. It was surreal to think thousands of guys in dilapidated coats and crappy shoes holed up there hundreds of thousands of years ago when the American Revolutionary War raged on. I mean we were COLD, they must've been FREEZING. The scene was probably the same as that seen by George Washington and his men, which was a stark wintry landscape with naked leafless trees. Here's a quote from Wikipedia: "Alternating freezing and melting of snow and ice made it impossible to keep dry and allowed for disease to fester."

Speaking of books, I slacked off today and am reading this book....and it's snowing outside, my car is half covered in snow, it's sticking this time, instead of just melting after touching down.

Got a physio exam on Friday, hope I ace it. It's the first of 3, ending the next Thursday. Less than 2 weeks before I go home.

Post Gobble Day Studying

Sorry for the lack of updates, have been having a roller coaster of emotions the past 3 weeks. 2 quizzes and 1 exam plus practical. I'm slightly behind in my readings for physiology so that's what I'm doing now.

I had Thanksgiving dinner at home with my roommate, his girlfriend and son. We bought some stuff and cooked stuff and it was overall really delicious. Even though we bought most of our meal, prep and cleanup took A LOT longer than actually eating the darn meal. I think everyone should seriously consider industrial autoclaves...er I mean dishwashers that can fit multiple sets of china without having to think to load the darn thing...in addition to walk-in fridges and stoves that span 8x2 spacious burners with separately controlled ovens and a sink that you could do laps in.

Anyway, hope you all had a good turkey day. Last 3 week stretch before I can retire in peace by the seaside in southern italy...oops, wrong timing sorry. I fly back on the 20th, I hope to see most of you in December before ya'll leave for break or in the New Year.

it is COLD!

It's cold here...like almost freezing

insert title here

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, life just isn't that interesting around exam times and the refractory period afterwards. We partied it up Monday night last week after exams. Did you know that bar's are empty on Monday nights? Ya it was pretty nice...no shoving people out of the way to get to the bar, no screaming like it's the trading floor of wall street to order drinks! It was our very own private bar.




Evil-looking pumpkin at coffee shop:

I went to talk to my advisor a couple of days ago and he was really encouraging aside from telling me that his Neuroscience course in spring is THE hardest of all first year med school courses. He said I had a good chance of getting in next fall because of my grades and MCAT score and my application seemed good. I felt pretty good afterwards...I'm really glad I have a great advisor...and a shoe-in for an A come spring :D

Anyway the meeting took place at Drexel's College of Medicine campus and I took a pic of the front of it...the place was smallish...I guess you don't need that much space for 1000ish students

They colored the Love Park fountain blue yesterday...and it's been raining...it it's not raining then it's so humid that everything stays wet the WHOLE day. So miserable. I've only ridden the bike once in 4 or 5 weeks, I feel a little more winter padding around my one pack and I'm growing a badonkadonk.

Phillies World Series Champions Parade day

Geebus, has it been less than a week since last Friday?!?! It seems like a long time. I had my last exam on Monday morning and the Sunday night before I went a little nuts. It was part panic and part exhaustion from a full-on non-stop thinking parade since the previous weekend. Physio was by far the hardest exam, we've got questions with multiple correct answers, only language separates the correct and incorrect. Yep, there were many of us that day who erased first choices, picked a second choice, reerased, repicked the first choice, then reerased again and repicked another choice. It was pretty bad.

Anyway, I got to the above thinking because I was trying to remember when the Phillies World Champions parade was, last friday or the friday before last. So it was last friday. Here are pics...it was a little NUTS.

The colored the Love Park fountain green for the Phillies Phanatic. Posing in front of LOVE and the fountain....there was a line to pose there, yes it was that crowded!

Hey wheres the O?
mmm green water, that can't be healthy.

Phillies Phreak

By the way, these were taken after a microanatomy practical and written exam...kinda relieved after finishing 2 exams so far. One more to go!

The parade route was PACKED! We tried to get to the edge of the street, at some point it became a solid wall of people. And people behind us were still pushing for us to move forward, it was crushing! People are so pushy, maybe they thought we just liked casually holding up the line eh?


That glass thing people are standing on, it covers escalators that go down to the subway. I don't think it was designed to hold that many Phans??!?!

People were at the top of the towers of city hall and on the ledges outside of the windows on the upper floors.

More pretty bikes, the bike messenger brigade did the smart thing and stayed the heck away from all the commotion a few blocks away!

People got hurt, some guy pulled a machete on some people who were standing on his car. The guy turned out to be manning a food stand and while he was wielding his mighty machete, people were looting his stand. It was pretty sad...and all this happened under a "Pledge to do no Violence" banner. This guy seemed really hurt, I don't know why. There was a mom who lost two of her kids! So sad, hope she found them.


There was a streeker on top of the glass cover thing.

The Wolfman visited us not with infectious bites from his sharp teeth but with sweet sweet candy from Rite Aid while we were studying. Yep we all spent Halloween studying...it sucked so bad. You could smell the fun in the air...but we were stuck in the library studying our butts off for the hardest exam yet.
Super boring physio review.

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I have one more exam monday morning, it's supposed to be a KILLER, literally, it kills kids' hopes for medical school! It was bad last year I've heard. It's physiology, which can be killer and sometimes harder than biochemistry because the topics are so varied covering biophysics to biochemical related stuff.

I have stuff to post, I just haven't had the chance to edit the photos yet...

...and I did well on all of my exams so far.

The BEST baseball team in the UNIVERSE

...that is if there're no other planets that play baseball! Congrats Phillies...woot. There were trash can burnings on Broad St last night, it was crazy!

photos courtesy of Reuters and NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/10/30/sports/1030-SERIESROUNDUP_index.html

No snow, no A

Yesterday, it stopped raining just as it was supposed to snow, so no snow. Today, the exam was 2 hours and 40 minutes of frustration and hell. Nutrition sucked, biochem sucked, I suck, I will never be a physician. I'm right now looking at help wanted ads...maybe I can cut lawns for the rest of my life. I think I can do that.

rain --> snow? phillies --> win world series? me --> ace exams?

The scene outside my coffeeshop/study place. It's been raining non-stop since last night when I rode home in the rain. It's not raining hard, but it's windy and COLD. It's going to be below freezing later today and we are expecting SNOW!

With that, the Phillies is 3 and a half innings away from winning the World Series over the Rays from Tampa Bay! Last night's home game (game 5) got suspended in the middle of the 6th, with a tied score of 2 runs each. We just heard that the game won't be resumed tonight because of the wind and the cold and the rain and possibly the snow.

So here's hoping for snow and the world series title and an A on my biochem/nutrition exam manana baby!

nothing here...move on

I have absolutely nothing to post other than I'm taking 3 exams over 5 days and they're all HARD. But I did find this recently: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/38879
and it lifted my spirits in a way only Zombie MJ can do. How about you?

postquiz refeeding

So remember the Comcast building, the tallest building in Philadelphia from the Love Park post? My friends took me inside, they said there was something awesome in there, what was I to do but follow like a flock of sheep...or maybe just one sheep. The surprise was this gigantic LCD screen, which was awkwardly interrupted by the architecture of the elevator halls. Very weird. But they had a cool show on with people dancing at noon, we caught the tail end of it. Then they showed scenes around philly. The image on the screen now is of the row houses along Kelly Dr and the Schuylkill River. It's where I ride past when I go cycling. They house rowing boats for the rowing teams around philly like UPenn, Drexel, Temple, etc.

They also had fake people statues all over the place. Can you tell which are people and which are inanimate objects? I sure can't and they're my friends!

The inanimate people were also mounted on cross braces along the pavilion in the lobby of the building.

We ate at Coronary Bakery

So excited to eat!

The food was CLEARLY delicious


My ham and cheese panini...ahh the simple things in life. I should've had this with ketchup now that I think about

looking for a scarf

After brunch I went to look for scarves because it gets cold on the ride into campus in the morning. Wind chill is a deadly killer, almost up there with cancer...it's that bad

Avenue of the Arts and city hall again. This building looks spectacular in the evening with the fog surrounding it and a light that shines up through the center of city hall behind the towers.

They colored the fountain at Love Park pink again for Breast Cancer Awareness Month...did you all get your mammograms? No suspicious lumps I hope. Seriously!

Old building among new ones


And a night picture of some clock tower near campus.

I did find a scarf, but it didn't help the windchill thing one bit. How come they don't make long wide scarves? You either have short wide ones or long skinny ones. So I've got a long skinny UCI one and a wide short one now. Anyone know where to find long wide scarves so I can wrap my head like a ninja in the mornings?

turkish brunch with the fun bunch

There's this turkish cafe called Cafe Fulya by my house that has their menu on a white board outside and I always pass by on the way home and it always looked like they served delicious food.

My lunch mates, Jolene and Dolan.

My friend Jenny

What is she doing?

Now she's lecturing Dolan, notice the very serious slight pursing of the upper lips, Dolan's walking on glass...excuses are pointless at this point

My food, they are little dumplings called manti filled with beef and cheese with yogurt sauce, they were DELICIOUS!

I also had the special pie, also DELICIOUS although I'm not sure what was special about it! I then had baklava at the end, which was also delicious.

She had the spinach pie I think. Later she had a heaping bowl of rice pudding which she says was made with condensed milk, her most favorite thing in the entire world. Did you ever sneak spoonfuls of condensed milk from the half opened can in the fridge when your mom or grandma wasn't looking? I did, I got a good spanking when I got caught too, worth it though.

I forget what this was but that's yogurt sauce on top.

and a salad for Dolan, which was good. He had a slice of cake afterwards which was also delicious. He also liked my baklava, they were ooozing honey! The BEST baklava I've ever tasted!

Earlier, Jolene made spam musubi and they were the BEST spam musubi I've ever tasted! It's hard to believe because spam musubi is so simple, heck I didn't believe it either at first, but once they passed my gastronomical gates (lips), my taste buds screamed for more and you bet your bottom dollar I gave it more! I am craving them now