Neurology . Robbery

I was just listening to some music downloaded from the internet (if I may make a plug for software, via the spyware-free Kazaa Lite)... specifically, Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Outta My Head". It brought back an intense memory of one of my first nights in Hong Kong, clubbing at Lan Kwai Fong. I met some pretty interesting people that night from a medical school in London. It's amazing that after a hiatus, exposure to certain smells or certain musics can bring back powerful memories.

November was a pretty crazy month for me. First off, I was on a pretty difficult rotation as a senior resident in neurology. I thought it'd be relatively painless as a senior, as you simply manage the junior neurology and medicine residents, but it turned out to be tougher than being in-house on call. I was on home call every other day and sometimes continuously for three days. Some nights I couldn't sleep because the pager kept going off; the next day I would sleep through pages... I'm usually a very light sleeper. That had the potential for disastrous consequences. Unfortunately I do the same rotation in January.

Secondly, I went to my 10-year high school reunion, which was a fantastic experience! It was on the Queen Mary cruise liner which is permanently docked in Long Beach, CA. I saw so many people from the past. I felt nothing but goodwill towards my old friends. I met a very good friend whom I had lost touch with (Minh) and had a chance to visit another guy who is doing really well for himself (Norair) in his new home. There were multiple others. I'll write more on this in a dedicated update.

Third, my apartment got robbed and I lost a whole load of good stuff! That was a frustrating experience, and a lot of negative feelings welled up. The person that did it was good, you can tell by the details of how he worked the place. He had been hitting multiple apartment complexes in our neighborhood during the past week. Unfortunately I didn't have renters' insurance, and I lost my new computer that was built for me by my a family member in the computer distribution business. I lost a lot of good data and I've been offline for a while now, but I recently got a new laptop so my wired life is slowly getting back in gear. For a short time there I was having a productive time reading literature and learning piano again, but now I'm back my usual routine, wasting my life on the net.

Some Thoughts

Upon the urging of some people who can be considered fans of these pages, I'm going to upload my unfinished work to the world wide web. They've been sitting on my hard drive for the past year. I think something got me really down around this time last year and I decided to quiet activity on the website down for a while. I don't even check the website statistics anymore; I'm sure traffic is down to a single unique hit a week, or less. Frankly, it matters little to me.

I recently returned to Philadelphia from my trip to Los Angeles. I saw a lot of dear old friends and family. One of my favorite memories from the trip was driving to and from the Bay Area for a wedding. I must say, I love driving long distances in California. For some reason, those few hours on the road, thinking and listening to Radiohead's "OK Computer", kind of burned a strong impression in my mind. Now, when I listen to that album, I imagine myself driving fast on a desolate highway, on my way to see old friends, everything right with the world.

I read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse while on vacation in Los Angeles. The story really had a profound emotional impact on me... maybe it was the timing, because at the time I read it, I had been feeling remarkably similar to the protagonist in the novel. Maybe that's the secret of Nobel-prize winning novelists... in any case, as a testament to how in tune I felt with the story, I had actually expressed similar thoughts during conversations with old friends immediately prior to having read the novel... but then after reading it and strongly identifying with some of the central ideas, for some curious reason I felt a little unoriginal.

I've recently been thinking very, very hard about letting go of the past. This is something I feel that I must do in order to enjoy my life at present, which Buddhism may help me with. Representative of my miserable failure so far at this insurmountable task, I recently purchased a plane ticket to Los Angeles for my 10-year high school reunion this month. I'll tell you how that goes.

A Sobering Calculation

I was asked a question by an old friend yesterday, a simple question, at the end of a short visit. "When will you be back?" she asked. I said, "Next year. I only come home once a year nowadays." And I began to think during the long drive home, I only have about 50 years of life left. I will probably not be able to visit my friends each year that I return home on an annual basis. Which means, we will probably only see each other about 30 more times before we die. I wish I was able to accept this a bit more gracefully.

I wonder if this will make my decision for me to come home and practice medicine, instead of pursuing the academic path I have travelled for the past 10 years. I don't want to miss my family growing old. I don't want to miss my friends getting married or having children. But for some reason or other, I always find some excuse... something noble-sounding and important, like furthering my career, etc. But we'll all retire one day. And although it's important to feel that we've led a satisfying career, I wonder if it'll lead to a sense of emptiness. I suppose it's natural to feel this way once your career development is drawing to a close and you don't feel the same pressure to keep running in the race. It sure was different 10 years ago, when we were young and those closest to us seemed like they would always be there.

I called a friend, whom I related this to... he is a mirror image of me, and his input helps me clarify my own thoughts. I think, if I returned home, I would begin to take friends for granted again. Maybe if we receive only limited exposure to something good, we fan the flames of our desire. We especially want the unobtainable.

eBay e-Sniping

I got a book in the mail today, not from [eBay] as the title implies, but from Amazon.com Marketplace. It's an out of print, hardcover edition of José Saramago's The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. I think it's the only book I've ever bought twice while I still had my first copy; a testament to how beautiful I think this book is.

Earlier this month, I had seen the hardcover version on eBay selling for a pretty good price. Only a few people had seen the auction, so I thought to wait until the auction's end to keep it a buyer's market and prevent a bidding frenzy from driving up the price. I planned to enter my bid at the last second to prevent anyone from even considering outbidding me and hence get away with a lower purchase price; this is a very effective but rather slimy method, especially if others bid in a "gentlemanly" manner. The last time I checked, though, eBay bidding netiquette was still uncharted territory.

The days of the auction dwindled to a close and the price was stable at around $19. The last few minutes approached after dinner one day and I found myself sitting in front of the computer frequently reloading and refreshing the auction. I had several browsers open in parallel, with bids of varying amounts on them, all waiting for me to click on the "Place bid" button.

At fifteen seconds left, I placed my bid -- a maximum of $24 -- thinking it ought to be enough. I refreshed the auction page, and to my surprise, with less than 5 seconds left in the auction, someone had outbid me by 50 cents! It wasn't a proxy bid by the person who had bid $19, either. After a split second decision, I brought up the other browser with $25.50 on it... hoping to press the "Place bid" button... but I fumbled with the multiple browser windows, bringing up the wrong one at first. I finally clicked on the button, but the auction had ended. I looked at the winning bidder and the bid history; the username was dek2000 which was unique (i.e. he hadn't bidded before on the auction). He had placed his first bid at the last second, like I did. The schmuck had outplayed me at my own game.

I turned away from the computer, mildly disappointed at first, but after a while I began searching for used editions of the book on other websites, like Amazon.com, Alibris.com, etc. There were editions there in new condition, but at slightly higher prices. Soon I forgot about the auction, and went to bed.

I woke up the next day and headed to work, got there late as usual, and sat through a morning lecture on the neurological examination of visual acuity and eye movements given by our illustrious residency director and clinical genius, Steve Galetta. Halfway through the lecture, Dan Kremens, a talented ex- high-powered Manhattan lawyer turned neurology resident in the same program year as I am, came in and plopped down somewhere behind me. His picture is on my website in the [UPenn] Years photography section; in the intern group photo taken in Spring 2001, he's the goofy-- er, handsome looking guy on the back row almost directly behind me, wearing glasses, scrubs, and a stethoscope around his neck.

At the end of the lecture Dan walks up to me with a big grin on his face, much like the grin he is sporting in the above-mentioned picture, and says, "If you're going to snipe, bid higher!" I don't get what he was trying to say to me. What sort of cryptic comment was that at 9AM in the morning after neuro-ophthalmology conference? I look at him with a puzzled expression on my face. "eBay, man!" he exclaims.

At that moment, I realized that out of all of the people in the world with internet access, the guy who outbid me was standing right in front of me. A guy I see practically everyday at work. Furthermore, he outbid me on an item that had nothing to do with our common neurological bond. I remembered the username of the auction winner vaguely and recalled that the initials matched up to his.

It turns out he used a program called [eSnipe], designed specifically to enter bids at the last second. You specify the auction, your maximum bid amount, the number of seconds before the auction ends that you want your bid placed, and the program does the rest. After setting the program up for that particular auction with a bid time of 2 seconds remaining, he ignored the auction until it ended and spent his time leisurely with his family (while I sat sweating with heart palpitations in front of the computer). Accessing the internet an hour or two after the auction ended, he found that he had won the item. Looking back at the bid history, he must have noticed amongst the bidders a certain eBay user named s-wong who also bid at the last second. Everyone knows me as Swong at work because of my email address. The irony is, Dan knew that I enjoyed Saramago's works after browsing my website, which led him to develop an interest in his books as well. He must have had quite a laugh at the auction's end.

It's a small world after all.

An Old Friend's Birthday

Hello World, I'm basically no longer updating this site except on my local hard drive on my computer. Maybe this will all come out in one burst one day, but my laziness combined with high standards keep me from spilling this junk out piecemeal, even though I know nothing matters more than frequent updates in such an ephemeral electronic medium.

I'm still in medicine, seems I will never leave it, or it will never leave me. There are encouraging options from some of my colleagues who are exploring the pharamaceutical industry and business / consulting alternatives. But I'm becoming an old dog, and I never had any business savvy or social engineering skills to begin with. It's even getting worse in that arena, despite having left Caltech.

Today is an important birthday for an old friend. I hope this day finds you happy and in good health. Best wishes to you, where ever you are.

Frustrated Dreams

I had a pretty vividly bizarre dream recently. A couple of high school friends and I were leaving this amusement park. I think I was dreaming about being with two high school friends because I had just been on a long trip in Asia with them. Anyway, we were walking by a water ride, and kids were running past us in the opposite direction. I looked back to see where they were running; at that moment a boat reached the portion of the river at bottom of a hill and created a huge splash, drenching the kids and a well-dressed elderly couple who had congregated there. Soaking wet, the couple looked quite satisfied, and the children shrieked with delight.

We walked past the boarding area for the boats, and thought about joining the ride. Our minds were made up when I spied a couple of neurology colleagues of mine in an otherwise empty boat. We indicated that we wanted to join the party in that boat. The person who assisted in loading people onto the boats reached into the water and pulled out a long rope which was attached to the boat my colleagues were on, and manuvered them onto an alternate portion of the river. There they waited for us, while we were still in line.

After reaching the front of the line, we still were not helped onto the boat. I decided to take matters into my own hands and picked up a rope from the water and began pulling on it. Unfortunately the boat that I reeled in contained a bunch of Japanese tourists. The attendant noticed me, and in a very asian way, forcefully grabbed the rope out of my hand to get them moving along, all the while castigating me with his silence, his body language, and his lack of eye contact. He then took on the form of a near naked Kodo drummer... I had just seen an ad for one of their performances the prior day.

Meanwhile, my colleagues began drifting down the river. Hurriedly I grabbed the correct rope and began reeling them in. At this point, somehow my buddies found their way onto the boat, only they were no longer my buddies, but they were members of my family. I remember hoping that they wouldn't embarrass me in front of my work colleagues, as they were simple Chinese folk with simple customs, concerns, and views about life.

Finally, the boat was at the pier and all that remained was for me to step on. Only, an elderly couple sitting at the pier was blocking my way. They were too slow and frail to move away. I was frustrated to the point that I woke up while exhaling a sigh of exasperation, a sigh that broke through my sleep paralysis and that was actually executed.

I often dream of almost reaching a goal, yet being continually thwarted. It is a very frustrating, Kafka-esque theme. Why do my fears continually intrude upon my dreams. If only I could take control and dream of overcoming limitations, and achieving goals... maybe it would enable me to respond better to challenges in waking life, having had the experience in my dreams.

Site Revision

This site is going through another major revision. So far it's only cosmetic, but it will hopefully contain fun things like more flash movies, a book review database, guestbook, and music section with several of my favorite tunes. At the time of this writing, I'm not even sure if it'll ever be finished. Since I update so infrequently, I have to learn HTML, Javascript, and Macromedia Flash all over again each time I do something like this. In a word: painful. I nixed the science and resume section... I've been in academic stagnation these past three years. Once something like that happens, it's hard to get back on track.

I added more to the [Bio] section. It seemed harder to write this last part about the high school daze, because I'm able to relate to myself from that time. Then I become less objective and increasingly nostalgic; I miss high school and college, and writing that stuff only brings back bittersweet memories.

I don't know why this page still exists. There's no real raison d'etre for this page, nor is there anything conceivable for it in the near future. I check the stats every once in a while, and they run low. But there's something satisfying about shouting into the void.

My first year in neurology is almost over. Only 12 more in-house call nights, then it's home call. I find that a very exciting prospect. I've been doing well lately. We had this standardized test all US neurology residents take, I scored in the 91^st percentile. Not too shabby for a resident in the middle of his first year of training (among my peers it was the 98^th percentile). They told me as a reward, I get to go on an all-expense paid trip to the the 2003 annual neurology conference that UPenn holds in the Cayman Islands. However, I can never shake a certain element of boredom that is present in everything I do medically, which may ultimately limit my potential.

I'm going to Tokyo and Hong Kong in the latter half of May. A couple of high school friends are going with me to have a good time and see Asia. They've never been there before, and they'd like to see what it's like to be in that environment. I'll probably update with pics and travel stories if you're interested.