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I finally got a ride with a friend to the Korean store, and stocked up on Asian groceries! Here is today’s super easy dinner for the busy, cooking skill deficient student: Miso noodle soup

Ingredients: Chinese noodles, miso paste, oyster mushrooms, onions, cilantro, egg

Cooking time: <10 minutes

1. Boil two pots of water

2. Cook noodles in one for 3 minutes

3. Dump all vegetable and egg ingredients into the second pot and cook on medium for 3 minutes. Break up the egg for a egg flower soup taste, or keep it intact for a hard boiled taste. For a yolk that is more on the raw side (how I like it), add the egg with the miso and step 4.

4. Add miso paste to the second pot and stir for 2 minutes

5. Combine noodles & soup

6. Consume with a side of carrot celery apple juice (mmm healthy!)

Verdict: Yummy yummy yummy, healthy, and easy! Definitely adding to my repertoire of easy recipes.

Lessons: don’t add too much miso unless you want to die of stomach cancer from all the sodium.

I’ve decided to start expanding my cooking skills, since currently I simply stir-fry everything. I am in need of easy, quick, versatile meals that are conducive to the life of a busy student. Here is my first experiment, a super easy dish that took almost no effort!

Total time: 15 minutes

Ingredients: Rice, avocado, cilantro, onions, mushrooms, carrots, chicken

1. Steam all ingredients except avocado & cilantro

2. Bring home leftover chicken from a seminar with free food. Or otherwise know how to actually cook meat (which I don’t – hey, my cooking skills are a work in progress)

4. Add chicken, avocado, and cilantro

5. Top with salt & pepper

Verdict: Yummy & healthy! Avocados are how I know that God is good.

Lessons: I now realize that steamed veggies are generally good but bland, and that steamed carrots are gross. Must find a way to flavor my veggies and remember to only use carrots for carrot juice.

I’ve been back on the East Coast for three months now after five years in California. Granted, I was born and raised here until I was 18, but even after just that short period of time, my heart has been converted. This Thanksgiving I spent five days in southern California and found plenty that I should have been more thankful for during the last five years. The list below is not a complete list, but rather, that which I could sample during my short visit.

1. Driving on wide roads

2.Large shopping plazas 

3. Palm tree-lined boulevards

4. The ability to buy alcohol in grocery stores

5. The ability to sample Asian drinks in American grocery stores

6. Good Asian food

7. Animal style fries with no salt and extra onions at In-N-Out

8. The breathtaking coastline 

9. Walking on the beach barefoot at the end of November

10. Watching the sunset over the Pacific

If you were my friend in elementary school, and you came over to my house, your would find, in the middle of our living room, the most elaborate model train track. I can still remember now, connecting the wooden tracks together, piece by piece, and running the miniature trains along the continuous circuit, through all of its turns, forks, bridges, and loops. But most of all, I remember how my three younger brothers and I laughed when the trains fell off course and landed on their side.

I’m riding the Amtrak for the first time.

I was born in the US, in Crystal City, actually. But I moved pretty soon afterward with my grandparents to my father’s hometown in China. I had my first experience on an airplane at less than one year old. In fact, my first word was “fei”, the Chinese word for “fly”. I would always clap my hands and exclaim, “fei! fei!” anytime an airplane passed by.

Despite the fact I first verbalized the action of airplanes, I really prefer trains. After my trans-pacific flight with my grandparents, we took an overnight train ride from Beijing to Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, followed by a five hour bus before finally arriving in Jianli, the small town from which my dad was the first ever to travel to the US. It must have been then that I fell in love with trains. I returned to Jianli every few years or so, and my favorite part of the 48 hour journey is when I was rocked and lulled to sleep by the motion of the train.

I gradually forgot my romance with trains. The toy trains were packed away and I stopped visiting Jianli since the death of my great-grandma. But I must’ve subconsciously remembered, because in college when I couldn’t sleep or was stressed out by pending exams, I could listen to train sounds from a white noise iPhone app and feel instantly relaxed. Recently I bugged my youngest brother to visit Chinatown with me. He was reluctant, but while we were on the metro he suddenly remembered how my mom would take him to ride the metro back and forth, back and forth, just because he liked to sit on the train.

Now I remember. Although I have ridden the train in China and the bullet train of Japan, I have never taken the Amtrak. I usually take the Megabus because it’s much cheaper, but this time I came on business so someone else paid for my ticket. Unfortunately for my wallet, I don’t think I will be able to revert back to Megabus. The leg space, the comfort, the view, the rhythm. Yes, I will be a train-person for life.

—

Update: I am now in the cafe car and the food options suck. $5 for a frozen pizza? Man. This is not at all like the trains in the movies that serve gourmet food. Oh well, at least they serve food, that’s already a 1 up on Megabus.

View from the train on the way to DC. I guess its the Delaware River?

The story of Yue Yue has outraged China and the world. In a prosperous city in Southern China, two-year old Yue Yue was crossing the street when she was hit by a van. The driver stopped, realized he had hit a child, and then drove on, running her body over a second time with his rear wheels. Over the next six minutes, a full 18 passersby notice her writhing on the ground but do nothing. A second truck runs over her legs. She becomes increasingly motionless, until eventually an older garbage collector woman comes along and calls for help. Yue Yue died at the hospital.

The incident has sparked a huge national debate about the condition of the Chinese moral spirit. While I have my own opinions about that, I don’t want to point specifically to Chinese morality. I remember the first time I heard about Kitty Genovese in AP Psych class, and how a dozen witnesses heard her cries for help as she was stabbed and raped to death.

The lack of compassion for others was what drove me into medicine, and in particular, the study of infectious disease. In my freshman year of college, I could barely keep my heart from pouring out my body as I watched the ostracization of HIV+ children in China as documented in “The blood of Yingzhou district”.  People affected by infectious diseases suffer a double-edged sword of physical and social consequences; no one wants to associate with a sick person who either committed a supposedly immoral act or can transmit the disease to others. I wanted to become a doctor who could provide those affected by a stigmatized illness the compassion and care they needed.

As it was the social impacts of disease that first attracted me to medicine, so too do I increasingly realize that the solution must lie in the social, not medical realm. Medicine can treat or cure, but only a shift in mindset can address the root causes. People need a new moral mindset that does not disparage these individuals in the first place. Thinking these thoughts as I study detailed and obscure anatomy only serves to depress me.

I want to share an excerpt from the foreword to one of Lu Xun’s books, A Call to Arms. Lu Xun is one of the most (if not the most) celebrated writer of modern Chinese literature, who rejected traditional Chinese culture as morally corrupt, and wrote in order to “awaken” the Chinese people. In fact, he was originally a medical student but discarded that profession in favor of literature. He writes…

These inklings took me to a provincial medical college in Japan. I dreamed a beautiful dream that on my return to China I would cure patients like my father, who had been wrongly treated, while if war broke out I would serve as an army doctor, at the same time strengthening my countrymen’s faith in reformation.

I do not know what advanced methods are now used to reach microbiology, but at that time lantern slides were used to show the microbes; and if the lecture ended early, the instructor might show slides of natural scenery or news to fill up the time. This was during the Russo-Japanese War, so there were many war films, and I had to join in the clapping and cheering in the lecture hall along with the other students. It was a long time since I had seen any compatriots, but one day I saw a film showing some Chinese, one of whom was bound, while many others stood around him. They were all strong fellows but appeared completely apathetic. According to the commentary, the one with his hands bound was a spy working for the Russians, who was to have his head cut off by the Japanese military as a warning to others, while the Chinese beside him had come to enjoy the spectacle.

Before the term was over I had left for Tokyo, because after this film I felt that medical science was not so important after all. The people of a weak and backward country, however strong and healthy they may be, can only serve to be made examples of, or to witness such futile spectacles; and it doesn’t really matter how many of them die of illness. The most important thing, therefore, was to change their spirit, and since at that time I felt that literature was the best means to this end, I determined to promote a literary movement.

Lu Xun, I need your genius mind, bold spirit, and big courage. The full foreword can be found here.

Apparently I will be most suited for family medicine, or psychiatry. Neither of which I am interested in.

(According to the Association of American Medical Colleges)

I used up my one allotted dumb question in med school today.

A family of patients with myotonia came to speak to us today. They have a problem with muscle relaxation and occasionally freeze up after using their muscles. The son described playing ultimate frisbee and being unable to let go of the disc. The baby girl cries with her eyes closed because she can’t relax the muscles in her eyelids. The mother is afraid to drive because her foot could get stuck and unable to brake. We watched as the squeezed their hands in a fist around a bar and struggled to let go. Interestingly, the condition worsens in the cold but improves with muscle use.

The disorder is inherited in an autosomal dominant fashion. Autosomal simply means not sex-inherited, that is, the gene does not lie on the X chromosome. Dominant means that one copy of the gene (we have two copies of every gene) is enough to cause the disease symptoms.

The family tree looked something like this:

You can see that there is someone with myotonia in every generation. Now, I was confused and asked why were there some children who did not have the disease even though their parents did. 

So, pretty much any high school or even middle school student with basic biology course can tell you the answer: Each diseased person has one disease gene and one normal gene. Thus, 50% of their children will receive the disease gene and 50% will not.

And here I am, with my biology undergraduate major and medical education asking a stupid question like that. We took our genetics final only two weeks ago and I passed with a 94%. I’m embarrassed to even go to class. I deserve to be kicked out of med school.

So yeah. No more stupid questions from me.

5/4/2

I’m not posting a new article today because I am wasting my life away playing settlers online. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read on.

5/4/2

Kudos to my kid brother for procrastinating his time on these comics made in paint…

My 14 year old kid brother made these. It’s a pretty funny portrayal of a teenager’s world view.