my life as a filipino-american, newly graduated family med physician

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Dermatology

I started my Derm rotation today and was not surprised to see EVERY SINGLE resident with flawless skin. They are beautiful. Please, oh please, don't let me get a pimple on this rotation.

posted by dinah 6:25 PM

She's too cool

I saw SADE in concert last night and can honestly say it was the best concert I've ever attended. She is truly a class act with such a large and diverse following. Clad in a pink ao dai and her trademark hoop earrings, the songstress sounded and looked exactly as she did when I first saw her in the "Smooth Operator" video in the 80s. She sang every greatest hit in addition to some songs from her new CD.

Now the thing about concerts is that I can people watch, one of my favorite hobbies. During the show, about 2000 of us sat on the
cheap, but comfortable lawn seats.

"What is she doing?" I asked Robin. "Who?"
"That girl over there who's going to embarrass her children one day." I directed him to the Caucasian college student dancing among the seated audience like she was in some trance. With her eyes closed and her hands flailing in the air, she looked almost hippie like, but not quite "groovy" enough.
"I'm glad you're not weird like that." Robin said.

After about 4 songs, a man yelled out ferociously "SIT DOWN!" Startled, the hippie wanna be snapped out of her trance and sat down. In about 10 minutes, she was up again.

If you enjoy your music and are "weird like that," that's cool. Just don't stand in front of me at a concert.

posted by dinah 6:00 PM

All this noise

I finally turned off my tv. Not that I was watching it, but I merely had it on for the noise or perhaps for the company. The other day, I surfed the web, spoke to Kerry, listened to the tv, and "pseudo" worked on my application at the same time. Surely, you surmise that my attention banked on nil towards any of them. I have too much junk going on, too much noise on the outside and inside of my head that I can't get anything done! So now, it's finally quiet . . . enough to hear God and read my Bible.

posted by dinah 11:35 AM

Maintaining a blogger

is easier if you have another one that no one knows about

posted by dinah 11:28 AM

What they REALLY need

Everytime I go to the soup kitchen there's always enough volunteers serving soup, food, etc. But you know what they really need in addition to food? The thing we like to change everyday . . .UNDERWEAR! One woman needed large underwear and all we had among the piles of used, grungy, stained underwear were smalls.

I've never thought about donating my used underwear, and well, I still don't. As a matter-of-fact, I use my underwear to the point where their only use is to wipe the car down (my dad does that . . .I throw mine away). Some people, however, throw away what I deem usuable underwear so perhaps that's donatable. I also think female underwear is more donatable than males . . .

What I think I'll do next time or what our church will do next time is in addition to a clothes drive, we will hold a "new underwear and socks drive." These people deserve new underwear. After all, I think it's both non-hygenic and inhumane to give people your fecal stained, holey, stretched-out-elastic-worn undies.

posted by dinah 10:43 AM

Something weird

posted by dinah 6:00 PM

I'd rather eat a s'more

I am accustomed to slouching, and in doing so, I reveal the harsh reality that I have gained 10 pounds. But, I'm in denial. Even as Joy speaks to me of kickboxing classes and running on the treadmill, I eye a bag of marshmallows ready to be heated and smooshed between two graham crackers.

posted by dinah 5:48 PM

You had to be there

If I'm comfortable enough with you, you'd notice how animated I am when I talk. When I tell a story, my eyes bulge, my voice becomes high pitched, and my hands geticulate. I didn't realize I had so many idiosyncrasies until my friends started complaining that they had started to take on my mannerisms. Last night, I noticed May laughing with her hand beating incessantly on her knees. Whoa, that looks dorky, I thought. Meanwhile, after trying to "prove her point," Kerry shot a glance at me while her index finger pointed at me in accusation. I do that? At another time, Kerry looked at me sideways in a "What choo talkin about Willis" manner. Joy, has even acquired my tendency to say "Eggs-ZAaaactly!" How did I become so weird? Surely, I have influenced my friends in much more lucrative ways, but this is icing on the cake.


July 4th

posted by dinah 9:16 PM

I am now striped

Yes, like a zebra. Since my vacation in Hawaii, my bathing suit has become my second skin. I have gone tubing down the Guadalupe River, swimming at Canyon lake, and recently camping and fishing at Lake Amistad nestled in the Chihuahua desert. I am DARK, but as my husband says, "We're married, we can let ourselves 'go' now."

posted by dinah 8:54 PM

It may not be a spice

My husband is either unlucky or just observant when it comes to finding the atypical in his food. Yesterday, we went out to a Thai restaurant with some friends. For an appetizer, we ordered a ginger-based soup much to my liking--tangy, spicy, and rhinorrheic (made my nose run). As ravenous as I was, I ignored the fact that my husband kept on looking at me funny and snorted my soup down like the pig I have become. When I finished, I asked him what was wrong. He hesitated and then showed me the black "thing" floating in his soup.

"That might just be some type of spice," I said as I leaned in closer to his bowl.
"That's what I thought too, until I saw its legs!"
Yep, it was the cliche "fly in my soup." Our other dinner companions quickly stopped drinking their soup and I joked about how Robin COULD HAVE told me about the fly before I finished mine. Oh well, I've had my share of protein in other forms anyhow. For some reason, I wasn't totally disgusted.

We snickered quietly and discussed with eachother how we'd tell the waiter.
"Should I be rude? Shoud I demand that we not pay for this?" We told the waiter quietly and he voluntarily subtracted the price of the soup out of our check. If we had made a bigger deal out of it, would we have gotten a free meal? If this wasn't an Asian establishment, would they have been less "cheap?"

This has happened to my husband at an Indian restaurant before. He found a gnat in his mango custard, but chose not say anything. Instead, he never returned to the restaurant. Two weeks ago, my friend found a small roach in his spicy beef dish at a Vietnamese restaurant. Again, we let the restaurant get off easy and just ordered another plate. We're too nice.
But the question remains. I have yet to find a bug in my food. Have there been none or have I been eating bugs that I thought were spices?

posted by dinah 9:21 PM

Usually, I can sleep easily on unfamiliar beds, but sleep eluded me for 2 hours as I listened to my husband breathe. A deluge of words pounded the roof top of my brain speaking nonsense. I pressed my ear to his chest hoping the consistent lub-dub would hypnotize me into dreamland, but it only distracted me from what I wanted most . . .sleep.

posted by dinah 7:47 PM

I've bought into the fad

of getting the 70s sunglasses Kerry refers to in her blogger. My excuse? For "a la Christian Dior, " they were dirt cheap at $8 each (since we bought four all together!). Sure, my children will gawk at the weird sunglasses they see their mother wearing in the old photo albums, but what child doesn't? What is so uncool about conforming to pop culture? If you like something, but have to TRY so hard not to, then, in my opinion, you're pretty fake anyway. J Lo here we come.

posted by dinah 12:41 AM

Guys don't talk about this

I'm beginning to realize why I went up a notch in my pant size. No, I'm not pregnant--that would be a great excuse, but I've been indulging in all kinds of cravings lately. While lying in bed last night, images of chips with queso and jalopenos danced in my head. This morning the craving remained so before we set off on our road trip, we stopped by the local fast food Mexican franchise to get an order of Super Nachos. Later, I daydreamed in my passenger's seat of summer days as a kid and how I'd walk to Stop-N-Go for a Moonpie and soda. When we made our pit-stop at a gas station, I searched for a Moon-pie and indulged. Unfortunately, it didn't taste as good as I had remembered. I have no appetite right now, but maybe that's because I just had some ice cream . . .

posted by dinah 12:25 AM

My Scanner works!

Here's a picture from the luai we attended on Oahu.

posted by dinah 12:55 PM

Independence Day

We saw fireworks last night, but I had more fun watching the kids "ooO" an "ahh" after each firework went off. Later, we bought some fireworks of our own and set them off in our driveway. "Cool," we said as we realized one dollar's worth of fun lasted 10 seconds. Kids would have had more fun.

posted by dinah 11:48 AM

tolerance

The wonderful thing about marriage is that it changes you--sometimes, for the worse, but mostly for the better, depending on who you ask. I used to leave the flip tops of my shampoo bottles open which happened to be one of Robin's pet peeves. Early on, he asked," What are your pet peeves?" I read between the lines and asked him in return," Why, what did I do?" Before I knew it, a string of pet peeves ensued from his mouth and of course, I blurted out mine just to let him know he wasn't perfect either.

Currently, Robin's used clothes sprawl on the couch while his shoes stuffed with dirty socks sit side by side on the floor right under our nifty shoe organizer. A few days ago, before we had guests, I finally put away the pile of clothes that had accumulated on the couch over the past month, but here are their replacements. Really though, what am I complaining about? My desk is littered with post-its and books. Tolerance, I tell you, is the hallmark of marriage.

posted by dinah 11:14 PM