Time flies when you're watching snails on the beach in the afternoon... and realize the sun has set. It also flies when you're teaching curious twelve-year-olds the pathway of dopamine synthesis, including an elaborately acted out analogy with sand... and realize you didn't cover the planned activities for the class period. It flies when you're meandering through hundreds of stalls on Temple Street in Mongkok, checking out all the cute/cheap/hilarious trinkets and bargaining with tough-faced Chinese ladies... and realize it's 1 AM on a Wednesday night. It flies when you're sweaty and rocking out to some new remix you don't recognize with your twelve-year-old students at a CTY dance... and the next thing you know, the first chords of American Pie are strumming up. It flies when school keeps you busy and a few close friends fill the little remaining time and mental space in your life with fun and love.... and you realize you count your friendships in years, not months, now.
2 weeks.
6 months.
1 year.
3 years.
20.5 years.
As of today I have 1 week left in Hong Kong and 1 month left of my last real summer vacation ever. Here's hoping I can cram in so much awesomeness that it gets stretched into the longest month of my life and have so much fun that it feels like it flew by when I look back on it.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Cause every little thing is gonna be alright
I love ups that follow downs.
Two sunny days in a row after a series of overcast ones.
Bank accounts that are unfrozen after panic attacks at the ATM.
Friendships that are restabilized after they teeter dangerously close to the edge.
"Difficult" students who open up to me and gain some insight into their behavior after a string of defensive, aggressive disciplinary encounters.
"Favorite" students who return to class eager to learn and find out what they missed after being out sick all morning.
Gym membership cards that are given after two weeks spent growing a "carb belly."
Teaching the nervous system after attempting to teach the immune system.
Reams of newly purchased paper in the office after a late night spent digging through full sheets of scrap paper to print on.
A full wardrobe of fresh laundry to choose from after resorting to my last clean pair of shorts and T-shirt.
Beach time to skype with a favorite after beach and brownie time to get my mind off of problems.
Going to bed before midnight after a series of late nights.
Two sunny days in a row after a series of overcast ones.
Bank accounts that are unfrozen after panic attacks at the ATM.
Friendships that are restabilized after they teeter dangerously close to the edge.
"Difficult" students who open up to me and gain some insight into their behavior after a string of defensive, aggressive disciplinary encounters.
"Favorite" students who return to class eager to learn and find out what they missed after being out sick all morning.
Gym membership cards that are given after two weeks spent growing a "carb belly."
Teaching the nervous system after attempting to teach the immune system.
Reams of newly purchased paper in the office after a late night spent digging through full sheets of scrap paper to print on.
A full wardrobe of fresh laundry to choose from after resorting to my last clean pair of shorts and T-shirt.
Beach time to skype with a favorite after beach and brownie time to get my mind off of problems.
Going to bed before midnight after a series of late nights.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Just a day, just an ordinary day
- GLIMRs (Good, Lighthearted, Interesting, Meritable Reports) in my mailbox
- Conversations with experienced teachers and future teachers and wanna-be teachers
- Sheep hearts
- Sickle cell blood smears under the microscope
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oax3cUFsBSw
- GATTACA movie clip
- Seventh graders who ask me about porphyria
- Jazzercise
- Nail polish and face masks
- Eighth graders who want me to explain action potentials over dinner
- My manicured male students
- Twenty sets of eyes on me in various states of confusion, curiosity, enthusiasm, and understanding
- The phrase "I'm confused. Can you explain this part again?"
- The phrase "Ohhhh... I think I actually get it!"
- White boards covered in big words and diagrams in my handwriting
- $40 dinner coupons
- Hong Kong-style milk tea with breakfast and dinner
- Freedom from cell phones
- Staff pranks
- Staff hangouts in the health office
- Venting parties in the TA lounge
- Circuit analogies for cardiovascular physiology
- The beginnings of boy-girl interaction in a class of 13-year-olds
- Feeling drained but satisfied at bedtime
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Look at this stuff! Isn't it neat!
(Warning: Stream of consciousness exclamatory observations from my first week in Hong Kong to follow.)
Hong-Kong style milk tea tastes just like proper masala chai! And it comes free with meals at the canteen on LG1! Guess what I'm drinking 3 times a day?
For the first time ever, my CTY shirt is not ridiculously large on me or a hideous shade of yellow! Guess the seventh time's the charm... And yes, you can bet I'll wear this shirt way too often to make up for lost CTY shirt time.
For the first time ever, my CTY lanyard broke- twice! My first one broke on the third day, so I got a new one which broke today. If CTY switched to a cheaper lanyard manufacturing company to save money on their 99% profit margin, I am not amused.
Dragonfruit (the part you eat) looks and tastes kind of like a kiwi except white! And at $6 HKD in the canteen, I plan on eating many, so today I stole (er, borrowed) a metal knife and spoon from the canteen to facilitate cutting and scooping.
Later this month, members of the HKUST community are putting on the Broadway musical "Aida," which I've wanted to see since I was in sixth grade! And tickets are only $80 HKD, so I'm definitely going to go!
Also later in the month, there is a special lecture at HKUST from a Hopkins neuroscience professor on light detection in the retina which I totally plan on attending! And I even understood the gist of the lecture description- yay for remembering what retinal ganglion cells and melanopsin are! Dr. Brainard would be so proud.
Kiwi juice, with all the pulpiness and black seeds of the fruit, is delicious!
So is Yakult!
Bugs here are huge! They're like American bugs (cockroaches, stick bugs, butterflies, etc.) on steroids!
Yesterday I was a part of a man's cute, creative wedding gift to his wife!
The popular, ubiquitous Cantonese dish known as "congee" is also a poor man's food in Andhra called "ghanji" in Telugu! (Exclamations for the cross-cultural connection; thumbs horizontal/down for the food itself, which is edible but bland.)
Grilled bananas sprinkled with brown sugar + melty vanilla ice cream + chocolate syrup + graham cracker bits = to-die-for-delicious!
For the first time in forever, on Friday night of orientation, I sat around a campfire and attempted to roast marshmallows while singing fragments of Disney songs with a fun group of people!
I'm pretty sure the Mavericks jerseys aren't orange, but I am impressed that they got Nowitzki's number right!
And finally, I'll leave you with some reminders for your next "nature's call," courtesy of HKUST Hall 6:
Hong-Kong style milk tea tastes just like proper masala chai! And it comes free with meals at the canteen on LG1! Guess what I'm drinking 3 times a day?
For the first time ever, my CTY shirt is not ridiculously large on me or a hideous shade of yellow! Guess the seventh time's the charm... And yes, you can bet I'll wear this shirt way too often to make up for lost CTY shirt time.
For the first time ever, my CTY lanyard broke- twice! My first one broke on the third day, so I got a new one which broke today. If CTY switched to a cheaper lanyard manufacturing company to save money on their 99% profit margin, I am not amused.
Dragonfruit (the part you eat) looks and tastes kind of like a kiwi except white! And at $6 HKD in the canteen, I plan on eating many, so today I stole (er, borrowed) a metal knife and spoon from the canteen to facilitate cutting and scooping.
Later this month, members of the HKUST community are putting on the Broadway musical "Aida," which I've wanted to see since I was in sixth grade! And tickets are only $80 HKD, so I'm definitely going to go!
Also later in the month, there is a special lecture at HKUST from a Hopkins neuroscience professor on light detection in the retina which I totally plan on attending! And I even understood the gist of the lecture description- yay for remembering what retinal ganglion cells and melanopsin are! Dr. Brainard would be so proud.
Kiwi juice, with all the pulpiness and black seeds of the fruit, is delicious!
So is Yakult!
Bugs here are huge! They're like American bugs (cockroaches, stick bugs, butterflies, etc.) on steroids!
Yesterday I was a part of a man's cute, creative wedding gift to his wife!
The popular, ubiquitous Cantonese dish known as "congee" is also a poor man's food in Andhra called "ghanji" in Telugu! (Exclamations for the cross-cultural connection; thumbs horizontal/down for the food itself, which is edible but bland.)
Grilled bananas sprinkled with brown sugar + melty vanilla ice cream + chocolate syrup + graham cracker bits = to-die-for-delicious!
For the first time in forever, on Friday night of orientation, I sat around a campfire and attempted to roast marshmallows while singing fragments of Disney songs with a fun group of people!
I'm pretty sure the Mavericks jerseys aren't orange, but I am impressed that they got Nowitzki's number right!
And finally, I'll leave you with some reminders for your next "nature's call," courtesy of HKUST Hall 6:
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
You're faking a smile with the coffee to go
In the 24 hours following my last blogpost:
- I went to the staff office to copy papers for my class and, eerily as predicted, got totally immersed in a conversation with a fellow TA (a math education major) about various teaching styles and philosophies on education and the parallels between medicine and teaching. I especially loved a saying in education she mentioned that goes, "You're teaching a student, not a subject" because it reminded me of a saying I've heard probably 30 times in ICM this past year: "You're treating a patient, not a disease." I think this idea of "seeing the whole person" when we work with others, whether as doctors or teachers, may sound cheesy but can tangibly improve relationships and therefore outcomes when applied. However we also talked about the conflict between ideals and reality/practice that exists within both professions. As two young, passionate people just entering the professions, we expressed our hopes of really making a difference in the lives of our patients/students, our frustrations with doctors/teachers we've seen who did not live up to our ideals, and our fears of "burning out" and sacrificing our noble ideals to real-world pressures like time and money and bureaucracy. It was a really thought-provoking talk, and by the end I felt like we had gone from being near strangers to friends, which was a first for me as a CTY staff member. (In previous summers, I had lots of friendly acquaintances but never spent much time really getting to know other staff members, either because I was busy studying for the MCAT or too young/uninterested in joining them for "after-hours activities.") Anyway, this was the highlight of the 24 hours. Brace yourselves.
- I then stayed up till 2:30 AM copying and stapling all the Week 1 worksheets for my class, killing half a rainforest in the process. I think the only reason the administrative people who came in around 2 AM didn't chastise me for using so many reams of paper was because they pitied me for being up so late working. Note: I will never again be an overachiever and copy for an entire week in one night.
- I finally tried to sleep close to 3 AM but was up uncontrollably itching the bugbites covering my legs till God-knows-when. Another fine example of Murphy's law at work: If you have been warned to wear bug spray in Hong Kong, decide not to, and feel satisfied with your decision because you haven't gotten a single bugbite in 5 days, you will suddenly find yourself covered in bugbites at the most inopportune time. Of course I sprayed every square inch of my skin the following morning.
- I woke up to my alarm clock at 7:22 AM, already feeling the way-too-little-sleep-last-night pain behind my eyes, but I promptly dragged myself out of bed and to the shower so I could be fresh and ready and on time to pick up my students for the first day of class. Aaaand I locked myself out of my room wearing only a towel. Okay, I know it's a tradition and it wouldn't be a complete session of CTY if I didn't lock myself out at least once, but did it really have to happen on the morning of the first day of class?
- Due to the key incident (in which the lovely Dean of Res Life came to my rescue), I was running late and didn't have enough time to eat breakfast. No breakfast = crabby Ramya.
- I did manage to arrive at the meeting point for my class at 8:45 AM, which I had previously been told was the hand-off time, but today I got a new memo saying we are actually supposed to pick up our students at 8:30. So I may have unknowingly been late. (Just one example of mis/lack of communication and organization at this site- but more on that another day.)
- During morning class things went fairly uneventfully, although I wish I could have been more lively in my first few hours with the students. For their part, however, the students seem like a friendly, energetic, curious bunch and I already love them. I deliberately pushed myself to stay awake by alternately grading pre-tests and sorting the millions of handouts in a corner of our too-small classroom.
- At lunch time, I played lunch lady in an effort to find seating for all 20 of our students in the crowded coffee shop- clearing other people's trays, rearranging chairs around tables, directing traffic, etc.
- In the middle of lunch we did a headcount and had a brief scare when we thought we lost a kid. A few minutes later we found him sitting with another class.
- After lunch, my instructor and I got lost leading our class to the lab and spent a good 15 minutes walking in circles with a flock of 20 children who now probably think we are incompetent.
- Upon finding the lab, I realized that I forgot to wear sneakers, which was a rule we stressed in our discussion on lab safety that morning, and I felt guilty for setting a bad example for the students.
- In our afternoon bathroom break, I again got lost trying to find the women's restroom, this time with 11 girls in tow. This resulted in a 10 minute winding adventure involving going up and down between floors 4 and 6 and walking outdoors to a different part of the building, only to end up in a bathroom straight down the hall from the lab.
- In class in the afternoon, as a lead-in to a brief biochemistry lesson, the instructor showed a video clip he found online called "Chemistry of Carbon." About 10 minutes in, after listening to facts about diamonds, graphite, and nanotubes, the instructor realized that the video had nothing to do with carbon in a biological context.
- Immediately after afternoon class, I walked about a mile my room to nap.
- Still tired, I hiked back to class at 6:30 PM to conduct the evening class session. Even at the end of a long day, I must admit that I love being single-handedly in charge of a class, so although there were some minor glitches, I left study hall feeling the best I had felt all day. The students' enthusiasm for the subject was contagious just when I needed it, and their excellent questions sparked many tangential mini-lessons (glycolysis! muscle fiber types! DNA replication! enzyme kinetics! enzyme inhibitors!) that I was dying to delve into more deeply (partially because I wanted to enlighten my students and partially because I was excited that I knew/remembered medical stuff) but didn't have time for. Still, in that fifteen minute frenzy of taking questions and drawing all over the white board and defining big biochem words and explaining cool clinical correlations, I was totally in my element.
- With my spirits somewhat lifted by my shift playing teacher, I trekked back to the dorms and ran into the TA with whom I had had the excellent conversation the previous night. We talked about how our day went and the differences between our teaching styles/philosophies and those of the instructors we work with. Without being whiny, we tried to discuss our beliefs and what we could do to ensure the best educational experience for our students. Again, it felt good to debrief with her at the end of the long, exhausting day.
- I hit the sack at 10 PM and passed out before I could itch a single bugbite.
{Fun fact: Over the course of the day, I squeezed into an elevator [capacity: 16] with 20 students six times.}
- I went to the staff office to copy papers for my class and, eerily as predicted, got totally immersed in a conversation with a fellow TA (a math education major) about various teaching styles and philosophies on education and the parallels between medicine and teaching. I especially loved a saying in education she mentioned that goes, "You're teaching a student, not a subject" because it reminded me of a saying I've heard probably 30 times in ICM this past year: "You're treating a patient, not a disease." I think this idea of "seeing the whole person" when we work with others, whether as doctors or teachers, may sound cheesy but can tangibly improve relationships and therefore outcomes when applied. However we also talked about the conflict between ideals and reality/practice that exists within both professions. As two young, passionate people just entering the professions, we expressed our hopes of really making a difference in the lives of our patients/students, our frustrations with doctors/teachers we've seen who did not live up to our ideals, and our fears of "burning out" and sacrificing our noble ideals to real-world pressures like time and money and bureaucracy. It was a really thought-provoking talk, and by the end I felt like we had gone from being near strangers to friends, which was a first for me as a CTY staff member. (In previous summers, I had lots of friendly acquaintances but never spent much time really getting to know other staff members, either because I was busy studying for the MCAT or too young/uninterested in joining them for "after-hours activities.") Anyway, this was the highlight of the 24 hours. Brace yourselves.
- I then stayed up till 2:30 AM copying and stapling all the Week 1 worksheets for my class, killing half a rainforest in the process. I think the only reason the administrative people who came in around 2 AM didn't chastise me for using so many reams of paper was because they pitied me for being up so late working. Note: I will never again be an overachiever and copy for an entire week in one night.
- I finally tried to sleep close to 3 AM but was up uncontrollably itching the bugbites covering my legs till God-knows-when. Another fine example of Murphy's law at work: If you have been warned to wear bug spray in Hong Kong, decide not to, and feel satisfied with your decision because you haven't gotten a single bugbite in 5 days, you will suddenly find yourself covered in bugbites at the most inopportune time. Of course I sprayed every square inch of my skin the following morning.
- I woke up to my alarm clock at 7:22 AM, already feeling the way-too-little-sleep-last-night pain behind my eyes, but I promptly dragged myself out of bed and to the shower so I could be fresh and ready and on time to pick up my students for the first day of class. Aaaand I locked myself out of my room wearing only a towel. Okay, I know it's a tradition and it wouldn't be a complete session of CTY if I didn't lock myself out at least once, but did it really have to happen on the morning of the first day of class?
- Due to the key incident (in which the lovely Dean of Res Life came to my rescue), I was running late and didn't have enough time to eat breakfast. No breakfast = crabby Ramya.
- I did manage to arrive at the meeting point for my class at 8:45 AM, which I had previously been told was the hand-off time, but today I got a new memo saying we are actually supposed to pick up our students at 8:30. So I may have unknowingly been late. (Just one example of mis/lack of communication and organization at this site- but more on that another day.)
- During morning class things went fairly uneventfully, although I wish I could have been more lively in my first few hours with the students. For their part, however, the students seem like a friendly, energetic, curious bunch and I already love them. I deliberately pushed myself to stay awake by alternately grading pre-tests and sorting the millions of handouts in a corner of our too-small classroom.
- At lunch time, I played lunch lady in an effort to find seating for all 20 of our students in the crowded coffee shop- clearing other people's trays, rearranging chairs around tables, directing traffic, etc.
- In the middle of lunch we did a headcount and had a brief scare when we thought we lost a kid. A few minutes later we found him sitting with another class.
- After lunch, my instructor and I got lost leading our class to the lab and spent a good 15 minutes walking in circles with a flock of 20 children who now probably think we are incompetent.
- Upon finding the lab, I realized that I forgot to wear sneakers, which was a rule we stressed in our discussion on lab safety that morning, and I felt guilty for setting a bad example for the students.
- In our afternoon bathroom break, I again got lost trying to find the women's restroom, this time with 11 girls in tow. This resulted in a 10 minute winding adventure involving going up and down between floors 4 and 6 and walking outdoors to a different part of the building, only to end up in a bathroom straight down the hall from the lab.
- In class in the afternoon, as a lead-in to a brief biochemistry lesson, the instructor showed a video clip he found online called "Chemistry of Carbon." About 10 minutes in, after listening to facts about diamonds, graphite, and nanotubes, the instructor realized that the video had nothing to do with carbon in a biological context.
- Immediately after afternoon class, I walked about a mile my room to nap.
- Still tired, I hiked back to class at 6:30 PM to conduct the evening class session. Even at the end of a long day, I must admit that I love being single-handedly in charge of a class, so although there were some minor glitches, I left study hall feeling the best I had felt all day. The students' enthusiasm for the subject was contagious just when I needed it, and their excellent questions sparked many tangential mini-lessons (glycolysis! muscle fiber types! DNA replication! enzyme kinetics! enzyme inhibitors!) that I was dying to delve into more deeply (partially because I wanted to enlighten my students and partially because I was excited that I knew/remembered medical stuff) but didn't have time for. Still, in that fifteen minute frenzy of taking questions and drawing all over the white board and defining big biochem words and explaining cool clinical correlations, I was totally in my element.
- With my spirits somewhat lifted by my shift playing teacher, I trekked back to the dorms and ran into the TA with whom I had had the excellent conversation the previous night. We talked about how our day went and the differences between our teaching styles/philosophies and those of the instructors we work with. Without being whiny, we tried to discuss our beliefs and what we could do to ensure the best educational experience for our students. Again, it felt good to debrief with her at the end of the long, exhausting day.
- I hit the sack at 10 PM and passed out before I could itch a single bugbite.
{Fun fact: Over the course of the day, I squeezed into an elevator [capacity: 16] with 20 students six times.}
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Here comes the sun
For the first time that I can remember, I am consistently having problems sleeping in past 6 AM. If you know me, you know that I love and need my sleep, but for some reason, here I wake up hours before my alarm clock every day, unable to fall back asleep. There are few things in the world that could counteract my frustration with this situation. The fact that I feel blessed by it should tell you something about the sunrise over Clear Water Bay. Pictures may help, but they don't do the real deal justice (especially considering they were taken on my dinky old PowerShot A530).
I absolutely love my early morning ritual here. It a rare treat to watch the rising sun irradiate the water, turning it into gold for a few moments each morning before it assumes its perfectly blue daytime look. It's also the only time of day I can comfortably be outdoors without feeling like a comatose blob of sweat. That's the irony of this place- the scenery will take your breath away, but if you try to appreciate it from outdoors, the 72% humidity will suffocate you first. Here are some photos that I risked heat exhaustion to take, just for your viewing pleasure (meaning you better appreciate them, darn it!):
Here you can see the numerous small islands in/surrounding the bay
See the small section of the soccer pitch/track in the bottom left of the picture? Now see the building all the way in the corner near it? That's where I live.
When I feel like dipping my feet in the water or sitting on a rock just admiring the view, this is where I go. It's pretty much just outside my building, and there's a beach barbecue site nearby where I've seen families roasting marshmallows and celebrating children's birthdays.
I cannot get over how beautiful this place is. Sometimes I fear that by now my descriptions of places and experiences have little meaning to others because I seem to find every place I visit captivating, every experience novel-worthy. I swear, I'm not exaggerating to make you all jealous. I blame the earth for being so uniquely magnificent in every last nook and cranny. (Seriously, you couldn't be ugly somewhere, Mother Earth? For God's sake, even people aren't perfect everywhere all the time, unless they're named John Abraham or Jennifer Aniston.) I blame my parents for being so infinitely loving and supportive (both morally and financially) of my adventurous ways, nudging me in the direction of "carpe diem" over "delayed gratification" an awful lot lately. (What's with this? Is parenting supposed to involve spending the first 18 years teaching certain values only to un-teach them in the next phase?) I blame PSU/CIEE and SIMS/BFC and CTY for giving me productive-sounding (and in some cases, productive) excuses to go traipsing all over distant lands. I blame the people who told me tidbits about Hong Kong before I came (yes, I'm looking at you, E and M and A) for my expectation that Hong Kong would be a smoggy, overcrowded, westernized city, thus heightening my surprise and awe at its natural beauty. And myself? Well, I blame myself for being exceptionally skilled at silencing the desperate, dying voice in the back of my head that tells me I should be taking advanced science classes to prepare for med school or doing research to impress residency programs. And of course, I blame myself for turning all those novel-worthy experiences into novels. I just tell myself that one day when I'm too old and decrepit to travel, I'll wistfully peruse all the blogposts and journal entries and live vicariously through them. Or better yet, that the residency program director at my dream school will stumble upon this blog and infer from this brilliant prose that the author has a thorough understanding of the posterior column-medial lemniscus pathway and could easily avoid the recurrent laryngeal nerve during thyroid surgery.
...Speaking of which, did I mention that I'm "working" here, TAing for a class called Introduction to Biomedical Sciences? Or that class starts tomorrow? Er, perhaps I should go brush up on meiosis. (Just kidding, of course I know the difference between centrioles, centromeres, and centrosomes- how else would I have made it this far in life/medicine? What I'm actually going to do now is go to the staff lounge, AKA "the sauna," to print and copy about 240,813 handouts and get carried away talking to one of the many awesome people who might be in there.) More on "the job" in a future post. Time to get this show on the road.
I absolutely love my early morning ritual here. It a rare treat to watch the rising sun irradiate the water, turning it into gold for a few moments each morning before it assumes its perfectly blue daytime look. It's also the only time of day I can comfortably be outdoors without feeling like a comatose blob of sweat. That's the irony of this place- the scenery will take your breath away, but if you try to appreciate it from outdoors, the 72% humidity will suffocate you first. Here are some photos that I risked heat exhaustion to take, just for your viewing pleasure (meaning you better appreciate them, darn it!):
Here you can see the numerous small islands in/surrounding the bay
See the small section of the soccer pitch/track in the bottom left of the picture? Now see the building all the way in the corner near it? That's where I live.
When I feel like dipping my feet in the water or sitting on a rock just admiring the view, this is where I go. It's pretty much just outside my building, and there's a beach barbecue site nearby where I've seen families roasting marshmallows and celebrating children's birthdays.I cannot get over how beautiful this place is. Sometimes I fear that by now my descriptions of places and experiences have little meaning to others because I seem to find every place I visit captivating, every experience novel-worthy. I swear, I'm not exaggerating to make you all jealous. I blame the earth for being so uniquely magnificent in every last nook and cranny. (Seriously, you couldn't be ugly somewhere, Mother Earth? For God's sake, even people aren't perfect everywhere all the time, unless they're named John Abraham or Jennifer Aniston.) I blame my parents for being so infinitely loving and supportive (both morally and financially) of my adventurous ways, nudging me in the direction of "carpe diem" over "delayed gratification" an awful lot lately. (What's with this? Is parenting supposed to involve spending the first 18 years teaching certain values only to un-teach them in the next phase?) I blame PSU/CIEE and SIMS/BFC and CTY for giving me productive-sounding (and in some cases, productive) excuses to go traipsing all over distant lands. I blame the people who told me tidbits about Hong Kong before I came (yes, I'm looking at you, E and M and A) for my expectation that Hong Kong would be a smoggy, overcrowded, westernized city, thus heightening my surprise and awe at its natural beauty. And myself? Well, I blame myself for being exceptionally skilled at silencing the desperate, dying voice in the back of my head that tells me I should be taking advanced science classes to prepare for med school or doing research to impress residency programs. And of course, I blame myself for turning all those novel-worthy experiences into novels. I just tell myself that one day when I'm too old and decrepit to travel, I'll wistfully peruse all the blogposts and journal entries and live vicariously through them. Or better yet, that the residency program director at my dream school will stumble upon this blog and infer from this brilliant prose that the author has a thorough understanding of the posterior column-medial lemniscus pathway and could easily avoid the recurrent laryngeal nerve during thyroid surgery.
...Speaking of which, did I mention that I'm "working" here, TAing for a class called Introduction to Biomedical Sciences? Or that class starts tomorrow? Er, perhaps I should go brush up on meiosis. (Just kidding, of course I know the difference between centrioles, centromeres, and centrosomes- how else would I have made it this far in life/medicine? What I'm actually going to do now is go to the staff lounge, AKA "the sauna," to print and copy about 240,813 handouts and get carried away talking to one of the many awesome people who might be in there.) More on "the job" in a future post. Time to get this show on the road.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
I'm trying to forget that I'm addicted to you...
...but I want it and I need it, I'm addicted to you.
New place, new times, new blog. I tried not to do it, really I did. I intentionally didn't make any promises to anyone to blog or send lengthy e-mail updates or even skype for hours. I didn't want to be chained to my laptop, documenting my experiences and communicating with the outside world instead of fully experiencing the here and now. But just 3 days after I got to Hong Kong, I was itching to write, and specifically to blog, again. Maybe it's conditioned, a behavior whose stimulus is being in a foreign country other than India. Maybe it's practical, a way to communicate with all my friends and family at once. Or maybe it's just who I am, a natural craving that shows through when you scrape away all the exams to study for and phone calls to return and meetings to attend. In any case, here I am again, re-entering the blogosphere. I can already feel my nerves being steadied.
But it's not just a writing addiction that I'm satisfying at the moment. I'm also satisfying a ten-year addiction to CTY and a relatively newer addiction to traveling. Greetings from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), where I will be living and working for the next month. How did I get here? In brief, the Center for Talented Youth (CTY) is a multi-site residential summer camp for gifted middle and high school students that's run by Johns Hopkins University. If you've ever been a part of CTY though, you know it's more like a little utopian community/cult that exists for 3 weeks every summer and leaves you craving it the other 49 weeks of the year. It's hard to describe the amount of love, curiosity, energy, intelligence, creativity, and compassion that fill the environment at CTY. I first attended as a student in 2001, and, idealistic as ever, I knew from that summer that I wanted to work at CTY like my cool RAs and TAs. My parents probably rolled their eyes at the time, but lo and behold, in 2009, the very first summer that I could possibly apply, I was a Teaching Assistant (TA) at the Chestertown, MD site. The following year I came up with a grand plan to work at the Hong Kong site directly after living out yet another idealistic dream of studying abroad in Spain, but my parents thought that sounded like too much international travel for my first dose, so instead I worked at the Lancaster, PA site, which was special for me because it was a site I had loved as a student. But I'm stubborn and have a great memory when it comes to my grand plans (not so much for the brachial plexus or the coagulation cascade, unfortunately)- so I had my sights set on Hong Kong for 2011, my last real summer break ever. I figured- I don't know when I'll have a chunk of time off to travel abroad again; I probably won't be able to work at a CTY camp ever again; and I definitely don't foresee many opportunities to travel with someone else footing the bill for flights and accommodations. So it was a perfect storm of idealism, adventurousness, cheapness, and carpe diem that brought me here to CTY Hong Kong.
I've been here for a couple days and already have so much to squeal and marvel and ramble about, but in an effort to keep this blog a bit more reader-friendly and also to not spend my every waking minute writing, I'll stop here. For now, with a new blog established, a black lanyard around my neck, and Clear Water Bay outside my window, everything feels right in the world.
New place, new times, new blog. I tried not to do it, really I did. I intentionally didn't make any promises to anyone to blog or send lengthy e-mail updates or even skype for hours. I didn't want to be chained to my laptop, documenting my experiences and communicating with the outside world instead of fully experiencing the here and now. But just 3 days after I got to Hong Kong, I was itching to write, and specifically to blog, again. Maybe it's conditioned, a behavior whose stimulus is being in a foreign country other than India. Maybe it's practical, a way to communicate with all my friends and family at once. Or maybe it's just who I am, a natural craving that shows through when you scrape away all the exams to study for and phone calls to return and meetings to attend. In any case, here I am again, re-entering the blogosphere. I can already feel my nerves being steadied.
But it's not just a writing addiction that I'm satisfying at the moment. I'm also satisfying a ten-year addiction to CTY and a relatively newer addiction to traveling. Greetings from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), where I will be living and working for the next month. How did I get here? In brief, the Center for Talented Youth (CTY) is a multi-site residential summer camp for gifted middle and high school students that's run by Johns Hopkins University. If you've ever been a part of CTY though, you know it's more like a little utopian community/cult that exists for 3 weeks every summer and leaves you craving it the other 49 weeks of the year. It's hard to describe the amount of love, curiosity, energy, intelligence, creativity, and compassion that fill the environment at CTY. I first attended as a student in 2001, and, idealistic as ever, I knew from that summer that I wanted to work at CTY like my cool RAs and TAs. My parents probably rolled their eyes at the time, but lo and behold, in 2009, the very first summer that I could possibly apply, I was a Teaching Assistant (TA) at the Chestertown, MD site. The following year I came up with a grand plan to work at the Hong Kong site directly after living out yet another idealistic dream of studying abroad in Spain, but my parents thought that sounded like too much international travel for my first dose, so instead I worked at the Lancaster, PA site, which was special for me because it was a site I had loved as a student. But I'm stubborn and have a great memory when it comes to my grand plans (not so much for the brachial plexus or the coagulation cascade, unfortunately)- so I had my sights set on Hong Kong for 2011, my last real summer break ever. I figured- I don't know when I'll have a chunk of time off to travel abroad again; I probably won't be able to work at a CTY camp ever again; and I definitely don't foresee many opportunities to travel with someone else footing the bill for flights and accommodations. So it was a perfect storm of idealism, adventurousness, cheapness, and carpe diem that brought me here to CTY Hong Kong.
I've been here for a couple days and already have so much to squeal and marvel and ramble about, but in an effort to keep this blog a bit more reader-friendly and also to not spend my every waking minute writing, I'll stop here. For now, with a new blog established, a black lanyard around my neck, and Clear Water Bay outside my window, everything feels right in the world.
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