So, I have a 15 page paper due by midnight on Sunday, a case analysis for one class, some groupwork for the same class (due Monday and Saturday respectively), 2 lectures to listen to for my online class and response questions due on Sunday, a case for my financial management class, and readings, all for Monday. Tomorrow I will be participating in my amazing roommate's Faces of Africa variety show, part of a weeklong event celebrating and showcasing public health in Africa, and African culture. I can't wait! She's been working realllly hard on organizing it all, and I hope that tomorrow night goes really well. It'll be fun! I'll get to model a beautiful Nigerian lace dress, and carry the Ghana flag with Twum (hopefully, if he agrees!) during the flag parade.

Just now I cooked a lot of food - which is my default procrastination activity for times like these ;-) I made Thai jasmine rice with coconut milk (and I'll add lime to it before serving), and I just put into the oven a butternut squash with loads of garlic, a pat of butter, dashes of cinnamon and nutmeg and whole cloves, to roast.

I also got a big salmon fillet and covered one half with a pineapple-honey-teriyaki glaze that I cooked on the stove (and there are whole chunks of pineapple on it as well!). I'll serve that half with fresh papaya :-)

The other half I first covered with coarsely chopped garlic, and then covered with another glaze of red wine, balsamic vinegar, whole-mustard-seed mustard, and olive oil. I then covered that glaze with some Parmesan cheese mixed with herbs, and topped that with some bread crumbs. PHEW! That was a mouthful. I hope it tastes good :-)

Tomorrow I go to the Northeast Market to find lamb and Greek - style yogurt, and then - I plan to make roast lamb with a yogurt marinade crust (I saw this on a Bobby Flay show on Food Network a while ago and have been dying to try to make it), and maybe I'll fry up some falafels and get some pita and make tzatziki or something. I do have cucumbers that I need to use up :-)


ahhhhh I love food!!

A little different from my usual posts about everyday happenings in my life, here goes:

I've been questioning a lot of things in my life recently, from the educational and potentially career choices I made and are currently in the process of making, to the inner values that I hold most dear. The ones that serve as my core, my center and compass that makes keeps me grounded and helps me to navigate through the tricky siutations that life springs upon you.

I don't think I've been giving as much thought to those values as much as I really ought to. To be honest, sometimes it is for a lack of time, and other times it is because it is too hard and too painful to perform this kind of introspection. The fear that all you ever held dear and true are just illusions that couldn't stand up to the lightest of breezes. I am not afraid of challenging ideas because I see this as a way of expanding your mind and learning more. When it comes to myself it is different. I am afraid of reinventing myself because of the fear that I might lose something precious to me.

Then again, if I can't put into words exactly what it is I'm afraid of losing, then maybe it won't be so bad after all. Loss is not necessarily the end of the world.

I didn't feel this way last year. This has been sort of growing in me for the past year, coincidentally, since I came to Hopkins and Baltimore. What I'm seeing now is that there are lessons that I have to really learn and internalize and I'm getting a chance to do this now (this implies that I probably didn't do such a great job in the first try!). So it's painful to experience parts of me being stripped away and torn down, but then I also believe that I'm being rebuilt and renewed in a way. The process is a tricky one, but I cling to the hope that it will result in something good.



I never really gave this blog a mission or vision (can a blog have values too??) - I know I talked about these in a previous post - and maybe it is high time that I come up with them. It'll at the very least direct my writing. And it wouldn't hurt to inspect and refine those three things for myself as well.


er, all right, now back to writing my midterm case analysis :)

Well, I've done it again! Let a few months go by without updating, I mean. I imagine that 99.99999(and so on)% of the people in the world are not too upset about this, so it's ok :) Still though, I would like to update this blog more from now on. I actually update my old blog from Amherst quite frequently, and more than one some brilliant soul has suggested linking that blog to this one (vis RSS feeds, I think), but I have much on the laziness side and not enough on the tech-savvy side to do this, so it may be a while before that is accomplished. I guess for now I'll cut and paste ;-)

(By the way, interesting tidbit from my health management information systems class - the term "cut and paste" originated from the days of typewriters, where you would have to literally and physically cut out your typos and paste in the correct version. I guess as technology advanced, the term stuck :)

So here is my most recent post from my Amherst blog:

Posted on 4-18-2008:

I had a really good day today. It started off early, with a morning tour of the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center. It is the nation's first and only hospital devoted exclusively to treating trauma (critical injury and illness) cases (not to be confused with emergency departments/emergency rooms as part of a hospital's services), and an integral part of the state of Maryland's emergency response system. We met with two of the administrators and started off our tour with a trip to the hospital's helipad.

This was cool for me because it brought back memories of my beautiful Philly view from my window at I-House, where I had a clear view of the helipad and its lights at HUP and could see quite frequently the helicopters making their landing. I would think of my friend John who was an emergency medicine resident and wonder if he would be treating that particular patient. During my late nights at HUP I'd pass through this one corridor where the helipad lights would sweep across, and I remember I would just stop for a few moments and enjoy the connection of that far off view and being very close to the source of those lights.

And there I was standing on top of a helipad in bright daylight :) Felt like coming full circle, in a way.

Then we got to tour one of the critical care floors. It was odd, I hadn't been in a hospital for a while, and stepping inside the CCU felt like going back home in a way. We gathered around an empty unit to hear how the doc and nurse teams would work together to take care of their patients, and I just drank up the view of the beautiful clutter of supply bins, glove boxes, IV drips, the assorted plugs and pipings coming out of the wall and ceiling for gases, etc...I know, I just called it beautiful. It really was to me, I've always found it all fascinating and remember taking pride in knowing, instantaneously, exactly what to get and where to go for it, for the anesthesia folks when their IV placement went slightly awry or when they needed another vial of sedatives.

I really miss that kind of life.


I felt like I was actually doing something, being so close to the patient and their care providers.

Walking around the trauma center with my fellow first and second years, dressed in FULL BUSINESS ATTIRE (which honestly felt kind of silly to me given the kind of place we were in), I felt out of place (almost like, I was peering out of someone else's body) passing by the patients' families and the nurses in their stations staring curiously at our well-heeled bunch. Put me in a pair of scrubs and tell me that my job is to talk to them and help them, and I think I'd feel much more at ease.

But then I remember how curious I was to see things from management's broader level, what I can do in that capacity to help many people at once, and how I'm getting closer to that part of my dream. I think I'm starting to get an idea of just how difficult it will be to wear those two hats, those of the hospital administrator and the clinician. So I hope my experiences from before will help to inform me as I go on in this field. And I really hope I can do a hospital rotation next year :)


Got back home around noon, and spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the lazy, warm day. Tried to do some work (ok, I made a list of what I have to do, studied a bit for my health IT midterm, took a brief nap, and had fun laughing with Denise and a childhood friend of hers who was visiting for the afternoon. How fun is that?), and then went to the finance/management alumni dinner.

I had a nice time, even though I don't really like to schmooze. So far I haven't had much luck in finding my modus operandi for management/finance people. I think a large part of it is that I get tired of shooting the breeze pretty quickly. I'm not good at it because it requires me to become this person that I end up not respecting at the end of the day. There's something about the aggressive sociability of some business folks that I never quite trusted, so it's the last thing I want to emulate just to fit in. I end up just amusing myself (in my head) by tearing down some of the inconsistent things that they say. Yes, there's a lot you can learn by talking to people, but cocktail hour is not one of those times (unless you are with the nerdiest of nerds, bless them - physicians from academic medical centers!! hehe). I guess I have to work on making those times work for me :)

Still though, the food was great (I had the most DELICIOUS chargrilled salmon and then the famous Charm City cupcakes), and I did enjoy seeing some people I like and respect very much. And I have to say, getting to spend more time with my ladies - Elizabeth and Dorothy, both from my program - always makes my day.

And now I'm back, happily satiated and looking forward to lunch with a Philly friend tomorrow (we're getting THAI FOOD!!)..and getting down to business and working, of course. We do still have midterms and papers and things to hand in :)