Just Married

I got married this past weekend in Pasadena at the [Caltech Athenaeum], to Jamie. It was a wonderful wedding. Our friend, [Dr. Christopher G. Wilson], officiated the ceremony. He got ordained thrice over just for our ceremony, and even though it was his first (and only, he says) time, it was probably one of the best that anyone could hope for... although I might be a little biased. Our wedding march was a rendition of Vince Guaraldi's The Great Pumpkin Waltz (yes, from the Peanuts), interpreted for a string quartet by a Caltech professor of music named [William Bing] and his wife Delores. We didn't make a video of our ceremony, and I somewhat regret it since Chris's readings and Mr. Bing's rendition were so amazing. I still hear the music, crystal clear, in my head.

After the marriage ceremony, there was a Chinese tea ceremony where we poured our elder close relatives tea and bowed. Also, in accordance to ancient Jewish tradition, Jamie and I sat on chairs as we were raised up into the air by brawny men. I did a "look ma, no hands!", with one hand up in the air, the other hanging onto a napkin that Jamie also held while she was in a chair. My mom and dad were also lifted up onto the chairs, and apparently they had a blast.

In the evening, we had a big Chinese banquet where my mom invited a huge number of guests, many of whom I didn't know. The evening banquet was very fun, my cousin [Candise Cheung] and her boyfriend hosted the whole thing... she was great at it since she has a job as a Chinese talkshow host in L.A.. There were many funny wedding games. Jamie even changed into a couple of different outfits, according to Chinese tradition.

I had a great time seeing all of my old friends and family, it really made me very happy. It was wonderful to be surrounded by great people having fun in our honor.

I had been keeping these pages personal, and they'll continue to be so, however you'll probably see more and more of married life creeping into here.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Today I spent the day reading [Breakfast at Tiffany's] by [Truman Capote] in the Barnes & Noble on Rittenhouse Square. It was a surprisingly good read. Holly Golightly is an unforgettable character, a beautiful young Manhattan nymph in possession of a vibrant charm full of cheer and naïveté, coupled with a vulnerability and fear of attachment from which she is continually fleeing. A combination that everyone inevitably falls in love with.

Now I'm back in my apartment eating a five-year-old can of Vienna sausages. Vaccuum-packed spam-like goods are in that rare category of things that can outlast a lifetime.

Imperceptible changes

Boy, change can really creep up on you. I took a stroll down Memory Lane today (always a bad idea, it seems). I happened upon some old emails that I wrote, and while reading them over, despite not having felt a sense of maturation or change like I did annually in my early 20's, I realized how different my outlook was back then compared to now.

It is analogous to boiling a frog... put a frog into a hot vat of water, and it'll jump out... but put it into a very slowly heating bath, and it will stay put while it cooks. At least that's what I've heard it'll do, I've never had the pleasure of boiling a live amphibian.

Some changes are obvious. I have become a pretty good neurologist. I have become a poor pianist. I have become addicted to coffee. I am becoming obsessed with photography. World politics now causes me angst. I've developed a worrisome pulsatile tinnitus in my right ear while straining (one day I might be found slouched over dead on the toilet, a rather ignominious end). In other ways, my circumstances have not changed... I was a medical student, now I'm going to be a medical fellow. I was living poorly in a rental apartment, now I am living somewhat less poorly in a slightly nicer apartment. But the most subtle personality changes are due to the burden of years past and the decisions I have and have not made, that lie squarely upon my shoulders like the weight of the world on an aging Atlas. The dreams and passions of my youth are slowly but surely fading.

I'll be in Seoul from April 30th through May 6th, and Japan afterwards until the 16th, with two old friends from high school. This time I promise there will be a real travelogue, and better pictures. If you need to find us in Seoul, we're staying at [Kim's Guesthouse]. In Japan we'll be a moving target.

Bypass surgery . Metaphysics of physical limitations

I'm on a plane flying back from L.A. ...it was an unplanned, hastily-arranged trip for my father's cardiac bypass surgery. He had a mild heart attack and on further workup, his coronary arteries had some significant stenoses. He had surgery last Friday and is doing great postoperatively. That was a big relief, especially for my mother.

In addition to seeing family, I had a chance to catch up with Khanh, Ants, and Bao on my way back. Everyone's parents are getting old... so far we haven't had many close relatives pass away within our lifetimes, but I imagine a whole avalanche of them happening within the next dozen or so years. The first two decades of life were so carefree.

I'm reading more about astrophysics and heard an exciting idea recently. It's about the expansion of the universe, an idea which most of us are vaguely familiar with. Apparently evidence indicates that the empty space between galaxies is expanding rapidly, and it's occurring such that the further away something is, the faster it moves away from us. The reduced 2-dimensional visual image the author provided is that of a grid of points on an balloon as it expands... each point can represent a galaxy. The physical space of our own galaxy, however, does not expand, only the space inbetween. That means there are galaxies that very far from us recede from us at faster-than-light speeds. How is this so, you wonder, if Einstein determined that lightspeed is the fastest that anything can travel? Well, that's as fast as anything can travel through space, but if the space between two points is expanding at a faster rate, then light can't cover the distance in time. This means that there is such a thing as a "cosmic horizon", beyond which we could never communicate in any way with. This represents the knowable edge of our universe.

There is a sense of awe and an undercurrent of sadness and isolation, when confronted with the ultimate physical limitations imposed upon us. It is an illogical feeling because we are in reality even more so limited... not merely by the laws of physics, but by our frail minds and bodies, by our emotions, by social convention, and so on, a nearly endless list of shackles and weights. In my case, I believe the sober feeling arises from knowing that if there are limits even to something as enormous as our universe, all of our fantastic dreams will probably never be realized, and all of our past mistakes will remain uncorrected.

Fellowship . Louis I. Khan . Earth's Curvature

Last year I felt as if I had missed a potentially life-saving diagnosis, and just this past December I caught one just in time. I feel fortunate to have been the neurologist on call. Cases like this make the job almost enjoyable.

I got the neuroepidemiology fellowship at Columbia but I turned it down. Instead I'll be staying at UPenn for one or two more years. I'll be working in a lab, for relatively low wages again. Clinical sub-specialization will come later. I can't seem to get off this science path, even though my track record isn't that great. For that reason I think this will be one of my last academic scientific endeavors, if it's unsuccessful then I suppose it'll be a life in private practice, although a pseudo-academic career just teaching residents and medical students would be more than OK with me. Teaching is probably my favorite day-to-day thing to do... aside from just thinking about science and life. Those positions seem a little scarce though. I wonder when I decided to become a doctor. I don't recall making a serious decision about it, I just did it.

A lack of fulfilment and sense of discontent used to depress me, now it's just an awareness. Is this submission? Is it maturity? Or more likely, is it the sign of my job getting better with age and experience? I will never fully understand everything, least of all myself. Reality is an incomplete picture that limited senses reveal to even more limited minds.

I do remember that around age 10, I wanted very much to become an architect. I remember wanting to design a giant mall or shopping center (I blame that particular oddball ambition as a by-product of growing up in LA). But I did relatively well academically, and I worked harder at science and school than art and architecture, which might have driven me away from that childhood vision. I heard recently that the architect Louis I. Khan only found his style at the age of 50, which is interesting.

I was in Puerto Rico recently. The Caribbean is beautiful, but San Juan was too much like a US city for my taste. I would have liked to have seen more indigenous areas. My favorite place down there was the old seaside fortress of El Morro. While looking out to vast blue sea from the stone ramparts, I noticed the curvature of the earth. At times like those, far from the petty responsibilities of civilization, closer to the magnificence of nature, I feel a little more free.

New Years' Resolutions . Miss Silvia . Fugu . Dominican Republic

Happy New Year, folks! This year, I resolve to break this New Year's resolution.

...I think that one will keep me busy for a while.

I got a semiautomatic espresso maker, a Rancilio Silvia. I also got a grinder, the Rancilio Rocky. I'm in coffee heaven nowadays, trying to learn the secret art of the barista. Unfortunately it means a lot of espresso sampling, and all that caffeine and milk can be harsh on my delicate gastrointestinal system... but I guess that's the price one must pay for the sake of one's art.

I was down in the Dominican Republic last November for a wedding. One of the locals sold me a starfish shell and a dried gutted pufferfish (dried with its spikes puffed out). Pufferfish, or fugu as they are called in Japan, are the ones that elicit Tetrodotoxin, a sodium channel blocker used in scientific experiments and known to cause numbness and paralysis. Apparently a couple of cases of fugu poisoning a year occur in Japan, from contamination of the sashimi by visceral secretions. Anyway, the shells were dried by they still smelled very fishy and attracted bugs... luckily they made it through customs (on the form, I declared them in a way which implied that they were polished, store-bought shells). I plan to put a lightbulb in the pufferfish and turn it into a night light.

The Caribbean must have some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. I'm going back to Puerto Rico this February, for the UPenn neurology retreat.