Blog Photography

On my blog, I often will post digital photographs of the events that transpire during my life, a virtual "pictoral blog" or "plog." For those interested in matching my photographical prowess, here are some helpful hints to match my skill level.

1. Get it right, get it tight

Pictured above: Just get up in there. Let's see those walnuts on those Anise-spiced vanilla cookies. No, closer. Let's get right on that amchur powder.

2. When it doubt, sad it up

Pictured above: Oh, how artistic. These sad flowers, signifying something, have been abandoned on the subway train, which signifies something else.

3. Photo-bombing

Pictured above: To be fair, this is actually more of a full-on photo-assault.

4. Food pics

Pictured above: A good photograph can make any food look good. For example, this cupcake filled with sand actually looks edible.

Profiles in Courage: Roberto

As you might have guessed, my good friend Roberto visited me a few days ago. Since he was my old roommate at K.K. Amini Scholarship Hall, he was able to muster the courage to actually spend an entire weekend with me. For his honor (and sacrifice), this post is a list of some of his admirable attributes.

1. Punctuality

Having spent a semester studying abroad in Italy, Roberto has mastered the art of the "Italian Entrance", which is where you arrive two hours late and order the smallest coffee on the menu.

Pictured above: Oh, and he also loves pasta. Roberto is set to straight up murder some noodles.

2. Fearlessness

Roberto fears no man, nor is intimidated by any woman. Why, just this weekend, he approached some giant lady to ask for directions. But then, things got weird.

Pictured above: "Dude, did you at least get her digits?"

3. Gratitude

While staying with me, he was quite the upstanding guest. He acknowledged my extreme generosity in granting him the finest accommodations I had to offer: TWO inflatable pools rafts to sleep on, TWO sheets, and HIS CHOICE of pillow or saucepan.

Pictured above: You love it. YOU LOVE IT.

Spin the bottle, then intubate

Many of you are already aware of my aversion to any social encounters with my academic fellows. Meeting medical students outside of medical school is a transition my brain cannot handle. I cannot help but maintain my urge to out-compete my comrades even in a party setting. I still want to be in the top 98th percentile in cookies brought to the potluck and be at least two standard deviations above the average friendly conversation.

But regardless, I attended a party thrown by the MSTP's last night. I had only two rules:

1. I would wear a bow tie.
2. I would not participate in any drinking/sporting event combinations (i.e. beer pong, wine tennis, scotch jai alai, etc.).

Pictured above: Rule one is satisfied. I don't know if you can tell, but this is my party tie.

The hosts also requested that the attendees bring some foodstuffs to increase the spirit of togetherness. I was going to make a cake with the phrase "I will tolerate you all" spelled out in frosting, but I ran out of sugar.

Pictured above: White cheddar and brie biscuits. The key to good biscuits is to acidify the batter and serve them while exclaiming "Y'all want some biscuits!?"

The event itself was quite entertaining. We played all sorts of fun party games. For example, we had a lot of great rounds of medical spin-the-bottle, where instead of kissing the one that the bottle lands on, you have to intubate their trachea. Throw in some alcohol, and you've got yourself an old-fashioned medical school hootenanny.

Pictured above: A "hootenanny" in progress. Things didn't get going until people started whipping out the blood pressure cuffs.

I also had the chance to employ the tried and true Jesse Thorn method of making new friends. I would introduce myself to them and then make some sort of joke about their profession/hometown/appearance. If they laughed at my joke, then they would be my friend. If they didn't, I would hate them forever. I kept track on my party clipboard, which I later transfered to my party Excel spreadsheet.

Pictured above: Love and hate, respectively.

Holiday (Party)

It is that time of year again. Snow is softy falling upon North Face jackets, songs of anatomical mnemonics play through the heads of frozen medical students, and seasonal affective disorder drifts on the clouds of steam from hot cocoa.

Pictured above: Porcelain angels are also lining our televisions, filling the air with porcelain song.

The holiday season has always held great meaning to me, and not just because of my large collection of red and green v-neck sweaters. It is a month to be kind to my fellow man, which will allow me to disregard him for the other eleven. But how am I to enjoy the frivolous pursuit of superficial happiness alone and cold in the big city? To solve this dilemma, I discussed it over breakfast at Elly's Pancake house with my neighbor/accomplice Ro. Loyal readers will remember her as the lady who tried to poison me with macaroons last summer.

Pictured above: Much like Ro, Elly's was full of deceit. And wicker baskets. And I don't know which was more unsettling.

After a brief knife fight to decide who would get to order the eggs benedict (I lost, as Ro is famous both for her love of butterfly knives and her love of hollandaise sauce), we debated the merits of embracing the holiday season.

Pictured above: Coffee helped ease the tension. But not my slash wounds.

Of course, I will throw a dinner party and invite all of my friends! But first, I needed some friends. I promptly went out-of-doors and offered $20 to any passerby to come to my apartment and be my friend. Despite my reassurance that "I'm not a weirdo or anything" and my insistence that "I'm just super lonely and have no friends," no one took me up on the offer. There was a pigeon that did steal a dollar from me though, and I did not take that as a solid "no".

It looked like I would have to go with Plan B: invite medical students. I managed to trick a few of my peers into attendance by blindfolding them and tossing into the back of a van. Before you judge me, you should know that all of this was explained on the e-vite I sent them.

Overall, I had a lovely time at my dinner party. And although I have a reputation for being quite the "square," I had plenty of opportunities to get "groovy" and "funky" with my friends late into the night. I stayed up past 9 o' clock and put whipped cream on tea AND muffins. I was out of control!

Pictured above: Clearly, the tea was flowing at my party.

It was quite the evening, but now I've got to clean up and get back to work. The gastro-intestinal system isn't going to learn itself, you know.

Medical School: Day Two

Day one is over, and now it's time to loosen the knot on this necktie of meeting-new-people-anxiety. I've learned dozens of new names, and I even remember one or two of them. The name-tags are no longer being worn, which is hindering my progress.

Pictured above: My ID. Each MD is sorted into a college (like Hogwarts' houses), and mine is Castillo. It is generally regarded as the Hufflepuff of colleges, since everyone in it is very nice and very dumb. It is my goal to be the Neville Longbottom of my class.

After learning CPR in a room with about 30 dummies (And about 40 mannequins. Zing! Medical student burn!), a small group of us went off to explore the city. Like any new residents to the city, we were attracted to the mystic power of the Bean.

Pictured above: The clairvoyant Bean reflects an image of your future self. Unfortunately, it is of you only 5 seconds in the future, so no one has noticed that is has this power.

We went for some coffee at Intelligentsia coffee, where I ordered a coffee with extra intelligence.

Pictured above: It turns out that intelligent coffee is brewed in glass beehives.

What will tomorrow hold? Team building exercises in the woods! Instead of trying out trust-falls, I'm planning on leading my group in trust-crowdsurfing.

Cyberbullying and the Chicago Winter

Yes, I know that Chicago has cold winters. But it seems like every Chicago native I meet loves warning me of the apocalyptic arctic wasteland that the city becomes every year.

Pictured above: Chicago entering its Spring thaw.

I, for one, am not impressed. Not only was I forced to endure harsh blizzards in Kansas for many years, I was also forced to endure Kansas for many years.

So you can imagine my curiosity when I noticed this comment/question on the wall of my medical school class Facebook group.

Pictured above: A sincere plea for help.

Now, I was going to write something snarky in response, but then I realized that I really should try not to make enemies with my classmates until we meet face-to-face. Instead, I will post my planned response here, hoping that my vast(?) blog readership will be able to advise me on whether it would have been too mean to post for the whole class to see.

Response:

Hello. First, let me congratulate you on your preparative attitude. Nearly 50% of Chicago's population is killed every winter and is forcibly repopulated with incoming medical students. And most of them don't make it past October. A Midwesterner myself, I should be able to give a Californian like you some tips on shopping for winter clothes.

1. You should look for a jacket with sleeves. I know that you are probably really into showing off those tribal tattoos on your upper arms, but you will get more ladies if you maintain a healthy body temperature during a snowstorm.

2. I'm sure you love your board shorts when you are catching a gnarly wave, but they will not adequately protect the lower third of your body from the Chicago wind (which can sometimes reach speeds of 1000 mph). I would recommend either layering many shorts to keep your thighs warm or investing in some "long-shorts" (what we call “pants” here in the Midwest).

3. Finally, the material of your coat is very important. I usually stick to only real yak-fur to keep myself warm, but arctic camel wool or arctic fox pelts also make for some warm options (use baby seal blubber for insulation). Beware Alpaca fur, not just because it is incredibly itchy, but rather because of its financial ties to Al Qaeda.

The Case of the Mysterious Macaroons

Imagine this: I was returning to my apartment after a long day at the laboratory, my mind reeling from the many crimes against nature and humanity growing in the tanks below the basement. There was an ominous glow around the city, like it was covered in some sort of omin blanket.

Pictured above: the ominous city with ominous rainbow. Fun Fact: rainbows do NOT lead to pots of gold, as popular myth asserts, but rather to pots of mercury. This is the origin of the controversy surrounding Skittles' slogan “Taste the Rainbow.”

As I retrieved my keys from my pocket to enter my flat, I froze in shock. I discovered something mysterious on my door handle.

Pictured above: A mystery.

Immediately, my mind began racing. Had the drug cartel in Monte Carlo finally tracked me after I destroyed their operation by seducing the don's daughter and winning ownership of their casino in a game of canasta, only to disappear after they realized that it was I who had stolen their prized Tan Tiger Diamond only a month previous? No, there's no way they could track me down; they believed that I was dead, or rather, the man they knew as Raul Esteban.

Was it a booby trap set by rival scientists, afraid that I was approaching the brink of publishing my data on the neuroendocrine effects in the hippocampus before them? Had the reusable canvas bags gained sentience and turned on their human masters in the only way they knew how: minor inconvenience?

But by using my powers of deduction, induction, and (of course) seduction, I finally understood. The game was afoot. Here is the necessary background information on the case:

Two days prior, after exhaustive research into what the locals consider “nice,” I had prepared a batch of my famous blueberry muffins in an attempt to deceive the natives into friendship. So, I had given a box of them as a gift to my neighbor. I managed to trick her into befriending me, and thus began what we in the business call “the long con”.

However, I was not expecting this sort of reply. The bag was her work, there was no doubt. She had retaliated with an equally deceptive token of gratitude: an assortment of flavored macaroons inside the bag. It was, as the young folks say, “on.”

Pictured above: the tools of a professional. Delicious and malicious macaroons.

She, too, must be a “confidence man” (or for the politically correct, “confidence person” or “confidence woman” or “confidence womyn” or “cynfydyncy wymyn”). This was an unforeseen development, though I welcome the challenge from such an adversary so early in my arrival to Chicago. I shall rebut with an even more aggressive display of baked confections.

Perhaps I will send anger cookies or a resentful bundt cake (redundant, I know, as there is no other kind of bundt cake).

(Not) Making Friends

In Lawrence, I had an almost uncomfortable level of recognition. I would walk through the downtown area and inevitably would run into many people I knew. Before you interpret this observation as one of arrogance ( I am arrogant, but it is not contributing to this particular argument), I must admit this psuedo-popularity was for the most part due to my involvement in many university circles (scholarship halls, biological research, school newspaper, amateur vampire slayers club, etc.) and my trademark state of dress (perpetually business casual). When I moved to Chicago, I was looking forward to starting anew and making a baker's dozen of friends (Twelve total, plus an extra, in case I needed to murder one of them).


Pictured above: an ocean of potential Chicago friends in the fog of anti-Sai sentiment.

It has been incredibly difficult to make new friends. Without school forcing my classmates into close proximity, I have been unsuccessful in making any new Chicago acquaintances. For this, I blame society and its unwritten rules.


Pictured above: My homemade strawberry french toast hasn't abandoned me. Yet.

For example, in my apartment complex, I will often share an elevator with another resident for approximately 17 seconds. During this time, what should I do? Should I just put on a goofy grin and say "Hi there! My name is Sai and I'm new here and I'm from Kansas! Want to get to know me more?!" Terrifying. No one ever says anything, staring into the corner of the elevator or pretending to check their phone. Do I dare break this silence?


Pictured above: Without human companionship, I have taken to a modern style of interior decorating. For instance, this clock I installed on my apartment wall reminds me of the unstoppable march of time and my inevitable fate of death. Also, it has a cute bird.

When the rest of my MSTP class arrives, I'm sure we will become fast friends. We will become a gaggle of geeks, spouting science to each other at an inexcusably irritating frequency. And when the MD students arrive in August, I will then be able to deceive a handful of them into hanging out with me. But this does not address the heart of the problem.


Pictured above: my new, Asian mug (my real, Asian mug is shown just in the column to the right on this blog) and portable computing device. My decor has become far too Japanese, and perhaps the simplest(?) explanation for my lack of friends is that all of Chicago is racist. I guess they don't want another Chinaman in their city.

The real problem is that I want to have "real" friends during medical school, friends who aren't "medical students" and therefore "boring." I need to make friends who are artists, law students, or young professionals who dared enter the "real world" and got "jobs". To do this, I will need to begin trying to talk to complete strangers. And not spend so much time writing blog entries.


Pictured above: Crippling loneliness. And Tanzanian-spiced fried rice.