As in, How do you like them apples.
I picked this up tonight... after avoiding class for a week because I didn't want to deal with seeing a big fat F- on something with my name on it. I really almost walked out halfway through this thing.
So yeah I kind of can't believe it either.
I just got invited to complete a second-round application for UCSF.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is a blog posting about my grandmother. She died early this morning. I miss her terribly.
JC says that if there is one word she thinks of when she thinks of my grandmother, it is "elegance." I agree completely. Granny had Style. She could walk into any room and turn heads, even in her nineties. She was always immaculately composed; she wore skirts around the house and had the kind of grace and bearing you see in Golden Age movie stars. She was a brilliant conversationalist and read the New York Times every day so that she would have something substantive to discuss over dinner or at the club that night. She got her way with charm, and if that didn't work, then with force. She was an utter lady and also a wicked sportswoman. She grew up playing field hockey and messing about in boats, adding skiing, tennis, and golf to her repertoire as an adult. She had a breezy, easy attitude towards competition, I think because she was good. My grandfather used to dutifully practice his golf swing out back every day. My grandmother would show up at a tournament after weeks of not playing and just sweep the thing. I have some lovely salad serving implements from Kenya that came from one such tournament. She wasn't much for trophies.
She was also fiercely independent, and smart. I like to think I got a shred of this from her. When she was in her twenties she commuted to New York City by train and was at Lord and Taylor's every weekday morning by 9 o'clock. She didn't stand behind a perfume counter though I'm sure she would have looked lovely doing it. She was a personal shopper, putting wardrobes together for well-heeled ladies. Later she was one of those well-heeled ladies. She also exercised some kind of crazy juju with a sewing machine, tailoring beautiful suits and blouses and skirts for herself. She taught my mother how to sew, and my mother taught me, but we're pretty lousy compared to Gran. Ditto for automobile driving. When I followed her "the back way" to her house a year or so ago I could barely keep up with her. And my mother was shrieking.
She had a boudoir, and she loved parties and social hours. One summer when I was living with my grandparents I remember tiptoeing in because I stayed out so late. It was a wasted effort; I was tiptoeing into an empty house. But as intensely social as Gran could be, she would spend long hours watching the boats out in the harbor or painting by herself in the Sun Room. My grandfather used to call her the Harbormaster. She loved the sea and anything of the sea. This I most definitely got from her. That, and she was something of a Dog Whisperer. It didn't matter what she was wearing; if there was a dog snout in the vicinity, it would find its way over to her lap. I sent her a CD of foghorns a few years ago and she loved it. She told me it reminded her of the foghorn out at Stamford Point. I think one of her dogs swam out to that foghorn one day, but I can't remember exactly.
She took up painting late in life but as with everything she did, she excelled at it.
Gran and I shared one other thing: a fascination with history and specifically communism. She remembered the blackouts during World War II, when people worried about German U-boats coming into Long Island Sound and there were orders some nights to turn off all your lights. But it was the Russians and the Cold War that really grabbed her. When Gorbachev came to speak at my high school, she was there, and even might have nudged a high schooler or two out of the way so she could personally shake Mr. Gorbachev's hand. A few years later she went to a black-tie party at the Guggenheim because Putin was a guest. One of the times I called her this summer from Soviet Georgia, I heard her order a doctor out of her room because she "was on the phone with Moscow." Gran was no idiot; she knew I was on the Russian border, not in Russia proper. But I know she got a bit of a kick from the theatrics of it.
Some people live a long life and some people live a good life. Gran was lucky enough to do both. At the same time there is a huge sense of loss. When I got out of bed this morning after talking to my mother, I went out on my back porch. It was already one of those consummate autumn days with the kind of crisp blue sky that makes a person shudder with the beauty of it. Gran would be sore at me for missing her so much, so I'll just say this: Gran, you are sorely missed.
DOI: 9-01-09
Work Status: Full time x 2
Assessment: Meeting expectations; ridiculously overtired
Current Rx: New membership at the Bay Club; occasional g&t
This is a typical heading for the surgeon's charts I put together every day. It is a two-part process; at the end of each day the other medical assistant and I template charts for the patients the surgeons will see the next day. Then when we are seeing patients we populate the chart templates with our measurements and observations, and where possible write up the surgeon's examination, assessment, and treatment plan.
Writing lab reports is a lot like writing charts. I just realized this tonight. I had been coasting through the summer on the idea that this year I would be "just finishing up a few prerequisites." I guess I forgot that those prerequisites were mostly labs, and that labs are ridiculously time consuming. Which is why I am so ridiculously tired. Well that plus the whole business with secondary applications for medical schools. And that I don't get to start this process until I get home from class, which is between ten and eleven p.m. depending on the night. And then I get up at six in the morning. Jesu! It is a lot.
But back to this charts thing. Now that I have made the connection between charts and lab reports, I think I am going to be working more efficiently. Sitting down and trying to do the whole lab in one push is tedious and takes many hours. Sitting down to make a lab report template, and then populating and writing it up the next day? Much, much better. Mucho mejor.
I have a nice template for my physics lab report in place, and will get up ridiculously early tomorrow morning to populate it with data and write up my assessment. But! Unlike with such an approach to an essay or research paper I will sleep perfectly well tonight knowing within exactly which parameters I need to be productive in the morning, over coffee and an egg sandwich.
It took a couple of weeks to figure this out. But I think this is a good working solution.
Also a bit of an apology. Early on I clearly designated this as a No Work No Man blog. I continue to adhere to the No Man aspect, but as it seems that all I do is work these days, I have to write about it otherwise there will be a Big Blank Space on this blog site. Also, I am really excited about the work I have been doing.
Oh and I removed my first pin today!! It was an easy removal but a bit of a gusher.
A final add-on: I have someone very close to me that is Sick right now and needs good thoughts. Send them if you can.
In June I wrote about a number of fun things I was looking forward to doing this summer. Here's the update on what I actually did:
1. Taking the MCAT and applying to medical schools. I am looking
forward to this not just to end a six-week study bender, but also so
that I can pull together a lot of things I have been thinking about
over the last two or so years and articulate them in an interesting and
newly coherent way. Also, I finally nailed my target score on a timed
practice exam today. Yay!! And nailed my target score on the actual test. That crazy idea I had about teaching myself the physics I needed? I learned the physics and physics class is now oddly sort of fun.
2. Getting on a plane to Peru with two pairs of scrubs, a stethoscope, donated quantities of coloring books and tongue depressors, a camera, a down jacket, and my trekking shoes. Check. Next time I will bring Airborne.
3. Running at 12,000 feet. I will probably only do this once. Running at 12,000 feet ended up taking the form of a soccer game with the teenage boys from the home for teenage boys. I added a hurt back to the equation to make it fun, and also not fun. We played for an hour and a half. Jesus was nice enough to tell me afterwards "juegas bueno" (you play well). Thank you Jesus. I will never do this again.
4. Picking out 5-10 books to take with me for the summer. Extremely difficult, if you think about it. "Pathologies of Power," Paul Farmer; Moon Guidebook Peru; "Where There Is No Doctor," Hesperian Foundation; "Exile in the Land of Snows," John Avedon; "The Time of the Hero," Mario Vargas Llosa; "The Savage Detectives," Roberto Bolano; "Black Sea," Neal Acherson; Wallpaper Guidebooks Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Munich; Brandt Guidebook Georgia; "The Brothers Karamazov," Fyodor Dostoevsky. I did not get to the Dostoevsky.
5. Mental yoga. Check.
6. Finally making it to Tbilisi. And swimming in the Black Sea, as an Extra Bonus. Check! Extra Bonus in Kobuleti.
7. Introducing LTD to air travel. I think it will take months for her to forgive me for this. LTD went to summer camp in California instead. Thank you D+B!!
8. Seeing how many cities I can fly into and out of before I run out of money. Eleven. And thanks to the Travel Fund it was time and not money that limited the city count.
9. Finding a Buddhist teacher when I get back to SF. How does one go about this exactly? I don't know but I intend to put in a lot of effort. Work in progress. I also decided I am going to buy a goldfish.
10. Upgrading my Spanish language skills from Highly Experimental to Just Plain Experimental. I can say things like "robos armados."
The two and a half weeks I have been back have been so incredibly hectic that I am for the first time having a dream night: folding laundry, roasting some vegetables, even peeking ahead to my assignments due this week. I have nowhere I have to be and nothing I have to do. Tomorrow I will be cranking out second-round applications for schools. Today I woke up early, finished my physics lab report, went to physics lab, met CS for lunch, did a number of administrative-type things, took LTD to the car wash, returned a book at the travel bookstore, and went to the Vietnamese torture parlor down the street. I mean nail and waxing salon. Then I finished my online physics problem set.
I'm still trying to approximate the mushrooms we had at the Bread House in Tbilisi. There's a new and promising version in the oven right now.
The part of my brain that is most articulate and productive in the morning is apparently different from the part that does math. Tremendous news on the stats and physics front.
Cut off more casts on Friday!! I am getting to the point where I can cut in a straight line.
This update is to inform anyone who thinks I live a louche life to the contrary.
NK made me take out a lot of her and S but this is only fair, as I consistently refuse to be in photos and yet act like a terrorista when I am actually holding the camera.
I read somewhere that Georgia is the kind of country (and how many countries are there like this, really?) where you can drive around and see so many thousand-year-old churches, fortresses, and castles that after a while you stop paying attention.
If the number of photos is any indication, I did not stop paying attention.
But there are many, many other lovely things about Georgia that I will write more about when I can sit in bed for more than 10 minutes with my laptop and not fall asleep.
I think that will be this weekend.
Georgia 1 (Mtskheta, Tbilisi, Betunia)
Stalin Museum
Georgia 2 (Kakheti, Vardzia)
Georgia 3 (Ananuri, Gudauri, Kazbegi)
Georgia 4 (Adjara/Black Sea, Kutaisi)
We put 3,000 kilometers (about 2,000 miles) on S' Mercedes. Thank you hero car.
I was a bit worried that SF might seem old or small or smelly or dirty or just otherwise tarnished when I got back after having a full summer of many different places and Not Real Life. You know, the feeling you get after trying on pretty dresses at Neiman Marcus and then you have to put your old clothes back on again? (NK that Neiman Marcus reference is for you.)
But, that did not happen. I slept in D + B's basement Monday night and then got up early and put on a pair of scrubs from Peru and drove to Berkeley and started a new job (and kind of a new life) as a medical assistant for two surgeons at the hospital there. By Friday I was taking patient histories and removing stitches on my own. Next week I learn how to use the cast saw!
LTD was returned in mostly good shape but her crate, which is very large and I think very obvious, did not get returned. Also her toys were really grimy like a homeless person's. But she was happy and has learned how to stay outside by herself so that is good.
The weather has been sparkling, too, since I got back, that kind of super crisp light and color that roundly announces the arrival of fall. You can see the outline of the Santa Cruz mountains from the exam rooms at my new office, and I nearly drove off the Bay Bridge the other day having a look around. Right now I am sitting in my kitchen blasting Swan Lake and labeling my pictures from the Stalin Museum.
I am renting an apartment in Budapest for the next three days. It is set on a lovely, leafy courtyard in one of the oldest buildings in the city. The walls, at their thinnest, are two feet thick. The Danube River is two blocks to the west. It was raining when I got in, but in a nice drizzly sort of way. I mooned over the apartment for a bit and then ran down to the Danube, over the Chain Bridge, around the Buda neighborhood, and back again. This being the third time I have started out a new city with a late afternoon run, I am convinced it is the best possible way to get in somewhere. Open the suitcase, take out the shoes, put on the running costume, and go outside.
But I am getting ahead of myself: I did not really write anything about Vienna. The weather was moody and melancholic, which seemed to match the city itself. Architecturally it looms, with Hapsburg leftovers littered everywhere. There are some contemporary buildings but I stayed mostly around the Inner Stadt so I didn't see much of those. I meant to rent a bicycle and ride around the big park, but the constantly threatening rain kind of discouraged that. Every now and then I would get caught in a downpour, and think about buying an umbrella, and then think about how I would have to carry it with me (there were only the very long ones) for two and a half more weeks. So I never bought one and just huddled under doorways instead.
Here there are two foldup umbrellas hanging by the door. Since they are here, I probably won't need them, but it's nice anyway.
In Vienna, there are ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die
There's a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the gallery of frost
And there's the echoing voice of Leonard Cohen, in my head at least.
The Staatsoper (State Opera) is on sommerpause but I went on a tour of the space. It was constructed in the late 19th century and bombed in the last few months of World War II. Eighty percent of the building burned. The stage and seating are new, but one of the intermission galleries and the Tea Room are still original.
The stage is one of the largest in the world.
In the basement is an original designed by Gustav Klimt, the "baffling but beautiful Beethoven Friese." I can't describe it here. It was not baffling if you bothered to pick up the explanatory pamphlet. In fact, it was so overwhelming and not baffling that I purchased the fold-out takeaway illustration.Bank-rolled by Karl Wittgenstein, father of Ludwig, and completed in 1898 to a design by Josef Olbrich, the building was the focal point of the Secession movement, a group of artists who rejected the stultifying historicism of Vienna's leading artists's association, the Kunstlerhaus. It was intended as a gallery and a meeting space, and the legend above the entrance clarified their aims: "To the age its art, to art its freedom." Crowned with a gilded globe of laurel leaves, the building's delicate stucco work is interspersed with sculpted salamanders, ceramic turtles, and door handles in the form of snakes.
This anti-historicism is seen, interestingly, in a more modern incarnation in the MAK (Museum of Applied Arts). In the annual program, which I read over a fantastic dinner at Immersvoll, the CEO and Artistic Director, Peter Noever, writes that the "way MAK sees it, art is always an experiment with an uncertain outcome. Arts thinks in impossibilities. It transforms itself and knowledge. Its claim is borderless; its mooring is in utopia. Art displaces awareness -- and thus adjusts it."
Two things here. You could easily replace the word "art" with "medicine." Or at least as I hope to practice it.
And you could also note a parallel in Austrian cultural development, over time, of a recognition of historicism and a reaction against it.
There are three MAK outposts in Los Angeles, apparently, and I would like to see them when I go back.
Movies set in Vienna:
The Third Man (1949/Joseph Cotton, Orsen Welles)
The Night Porter (Il Portiere di Notte) (1974/Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling)
Amadeus (1984/dir. Milos Forman)
Before Sunrise (1995/Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy)
Walking tours based on movies set in Vienna:
The Third Man Tour
The Night Porter's official tagline was, "The most controversial picture of our time!"
While I learned at Secession that To the Age its Art, to Art its Freedom, the Night Porter may still be the most controversial picture of our time.
The Sound of Music was set in Salzburg, Austria, but was actually filmed in Hollywood.
