A lot of things have happened. While not everything has been smooth or even pleasantly rocky, I feel the heaviest kind of lucky. It's quite sappy how consciously lucky I feel every day to have everything I do, how much it holds up even the worst days. To inadequately recap. I spent the summer in Vietnam to work on a public health project. I traveled to the center and south, and lived in the north. I stayed in a rural town for a couple weeks, visited my dad's old village, and lived with my uncle, his son and his son's family in the city the rest of the time. My cousin's wife, quite possibly the sweetest person I've ever met, cried at the airport when I was leaving.
I spent three full days at home in which my dad told me how he planted a near dying cherry tree in the middle of our yard and my mom armed me with hoisin sauce to bring to New Haven. You know how parents are cute to everyone but their own kids? My parents are so cute even I think so. I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving, and having a full week with them (and all the brothers, so I think it might be our first full family Thanksgiving ever). My mom keeps reminding me we'll make the turkey together (she made her first one only a couple years ago) and that she'll make my favorite meal too. She and my dad keep asking me if I need funds, something they haven't done in years. I'm guessing they're asking now because they think I've run out, which I was worried about too, but it looks like I'll be able to ride out at least this next year on residual income and aid, which is another part of the luck. But it's funny to me that my mom tells me not to worry about buying a dress for the semi-formal because she doesn't want me to "suffer" (literal translation).
I drove cross country with Allison. We stopped in Tahoe, Lovelock Nevada, Salt Lake City Utah, Denver Colorado, Wall South Dakota, Madison Wisconsin, Rockville Maryland, Lancaster Pennsylvania and arrived here after ten days, 72 hours which were spent driving. We saw lots of rocks and castles, real and figurative. We saw salt and sunsets and my new nephew. We talked a lot, and laughed an unfathomable amount. We played lame games and took pictures of nothing (on the hour). Silly things happened, like our Wisconsin adventure which included bruises and a flooded bathroom. Beautiful things were seen, like Utah and the beautiful beautiful Badlands, which are not castles but make you feel royal, but also small. I'm so so glad that we took the trip and that Allison was the Thelma to my Louise, because how often do you get to do that and more rarely, have it be quite perfect? When in your life you feel both brave and unsure and open to emptiness, drive across your country with your Thelma.
Upon returning to New Haven, I embarked on a scrambled unique honeymoon with the wife, traveling in a 14-foot U-Haul to retrieve and move furniture. First time I've bought real furniture, first time I drove a U-Haul. It took me a full week to get everything and unpack, a week in which I ignored all things school while realizing in class that we were already supposed to have learned in that week what would've amounted last year to a month of material. But it doesn't matter, because I love our new home almost as much as I love the wife. We live on a street lined with restaurants and little shops like the camera store and the random stuff store and the art store and the Art School, and two coffeeshops, including one that's half a block away and owned by Asians who already know how much I love chai. We're on the first floor of an old brick house with hardwood floors and white walls encased in darker wood, with a big kitchen and the homey feel I knew I wanted when we were looking for an apartment. It's just that much farther from school, and that much closer to downtown. Jen and I cook, and Nupur has a bread machine.
School is intense. I can't learn this much this fast. We're learning in modules this year, and we've started with the heart. One of the most interesting, and complicated. Apparently in a month we're supposed to understand the diseases, know the treatments (what do you give first? what's a last resort? what do you give to diabetics?), comprehend how an EKG works and what it's supposed to look like in every kind of dysfunction of your heartbeat (do you know how many different ways your heart can beat?). All this makes me again grateful for being here, without real exams or grades, so I'm still able to appreciate how intellectually satisfying the science is and remember how lucky and awesome it is to pursue something that works your mind and heart. The year's going to be a bit insular, all of us cooped up studying, which sounds kind of sucky but there will probably never be an excuse again to just be cramming in knowledge (hopefully) without other obligations.
At the very least I like the people I'm cooped up with, and through everything else I feel most lucky for the sheer quantity and quality of the people in my life. My college blockmates are all really happy and kicking ass in their respective areas of work/study, and that makes me really happy, to think of everyone growing through the ups and downs of the post-grad years with such grace. It's even crazier to think on the growth with my high school friends who are still some of the best people I know. And in New Haven I have the family I adopted (or who adopted me), people who really love me and at the lowest points (which have indeed already been experienced in the past few weeks) remind me I have absolutely everything I need. Anything that's been hard reminds me also of how there are things I still don't know about myself, and how the more painful experiences force you to know yourself. How you're built, what you value. I know better that honesty matters to me more than acts, that there are things I know I deserve even as much as we hate to use that word on our own behalf, that for as much as I communicate there's a whole lot I miss about even people I know really well and so I need to work on that, that even if you're supposed to pick your battles I will never be able to give up on a person that gave me reason to start trying in the first place. In the end, even if what you find makes things harder--not so much the realization but you yourself--there's good reason for being how you are, and good reason for how each person is.
Reading this over confirms the sap that gratitude makes you produce. But another point is just--so things are quite different. I don't think I'll be blogging much from now on, because I started writing a tiny bit over the summer and I think I want to try as much as I can to continue that, and this year forces me to choose. I'm not sure what happened, but I think it's been this accumulation of gratitude that's pushed me to finally put some things into stories, or rather, clumps. I'll return somewhere in between clumps.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Saturday, August 9, 2008
observations
When a fruit is in season, people eat it everyday with every meal. You eat batches after batches of longans and think it’ll never end, and then one day they’re gone and you understand, and see how defining seasons are. Bowls are never left empty, and if ice cream has melted you eat it as soup. People like to sing. They’ll randomly break out a line when walking across the room. Buses don’t stop at bus stops; they slow down and keep moving. People nap after lunch, no matter where they are. Within few minutes of meeting you strangers will invite you to their homes. It’s not considered rude to push someone out of your way. There’s little sense of individual space. Privacy isn’t important. Vendors hold fast and hard to what they want you to believe about their products even in the face of clear evidence otherwise.
The way people repeat and repeat make me feel like they believe repetition affirms truth, can even will it. What you eat, what you don’t eat, how much you eat, what sauce you choose to dip your food in—all will be noticed. Going out means flooding the streets and hanging out. People aren’t easily bored. They can sit for a long time. Tea is called water. White pants are in style, as are jeans/pants of different colors in general, as are ruffles down the front of your shirt. After walking in post rain streets the backs of my pants and the side of my purse are spotted with large specks of mud. For umbrellas, plaid is their black. People give up their seats for the elderly and pregnant but rarely does a guy give up his seat for a girl in high heels carrying lots of bags. When it rains my aunt rushes out to the balcony to retrieve the laundry.
It rains a lot. When it rains it feels like it will never stop. I haven’t yet experienced rain that you might call a passing shower. It’s always heavy and long, and there is always frequent thunder and lightning. When it rains, things change. People have to stop and find shelter, or are stuck at home. It’s not just an inconvenience; it’s a real thing. People work long hours, but don’t cut short breaks during the day to go home early. If it’s mealtime and someone calls you to eat, you don’t finish what you’re doing, you go; or they’ll keep calling you every other second. Friends are affectionate with one another. They have full conversations via back and forth text messages. People know the names of flowers.
Items are localized in areas. If you want to buy something, there’s a street dedicated to it; things aren't sold mall-style. To lock up your house at night, there’s a lock to the outer gate, an inner gate you pull across your double doors and bunches of little padlocks with different keys. The streets are gritty, and the air is thick with dust and heat. People wear face masks. In the hottest heat girls wear a long sleeve over their T-shirts when going out into the sun. Everyone showers at night. Every day I’m asked whether a dozen different things here are found in America. When a person doesn’t like to eat something, it’s said that he doesn’t “know how to eat” it. In the city it’s assumed you are from somewhere else, so people are always asking each other what their “que,” or countryside village, is.
Distances are significant here. The city feels bigger than it is because of how long it takes to get places. My family’s said that the transition from Hai Ba Trung, the residential district where they live, to My Dinh, the business area of Hanoi, is like going to another country. Rarely anyone has been outside of Vietnam; the majority haven’t traveled to other big cities within the country itself either. People love taking pictures if you pull out a camera and are unabashed about asking to you to take solo pictures of them. People talk to you without introduction. Once a person builds a rapport, which can happen in minutes, they look out for you. Strangers tell you how it is. They scoff when you’ve done something stupid, sound easily annoyed when you don’t do as they think is fitting. It’s not a social disgrace to criticize someone you don’t know because they disagree with you on something like directions or where to put your feet on a bike. Strange things happen, like purple ink splattering my skin through an open window of a taxi. Organization is not consciously valued. With a loose framework things work themselves out.
The way people repeat and repeat make me feel like they believe repetition affirms truth, can even will it. What you eat, what you don’t eat, how much you eat, what sauce you choose to dip your food in—all will be noticed. Going out means flooding the streets and hanging out. People aren’t easily bored. They can sit for a long time. Tea is called water. White pants are in style, as are jeans/pants of different colors in general, as are ruffles down the front of your shirt. After walking in post rain streets the backs of my pants and the side of my purse are spotted with large specks of mud. For umbrellas, plaid is their black. People give up their seats for the elderly and pregnant but rarely does a guy give up his seat for a girl in high heels carrying lots of bags. When it rains my aunt rushes out to the balcony to retrieve the laundry.
It rains a lot. When it rains it feels like it will never stop. I haven’t yet experienced rain that you might call a passing shower. It’s always heavy and long, and there is always frequent thunder and lightning. When it rains, things change. People have to stop and find shelter, or are stuck at home. It’s not just an inconvenience; it’s a real thing. People work long hours, but don’t cut short breaks during the day to go home early. If it’s mealtime and someone calls you to eat, you don’t finish what you’re doing, you go; or they’ll keep calling you every other second. Friends are affectionate with one another. They have full conversations via back and forth text messages. People know the names of flowers.
Items are localized in areas. If you want to buy something, there’s a street dedicated to it; things aren't sold mall-style. To lock up your house at night, there’s a lock to the outer gate, an inner gate you pull across your double doors and bunches of little padlocks with different keys. The streets are gritty, and the air is thick with dust and heat. People wear face masks. In the hottest heat girls wear a long sleeve over their T-shirts when going out into the sun. Everyone showers at night. Every day I’m asked whether a dozen different things here are found in America. When a person doesn’t like to eat something, it’s said that he doesn’t “know how to eat” it. In the city it’s assumed you are from somewhere else, so people are always asking each other what their “que,” or countryside village, is.
Distances are significant here. The city feels bigger than it is because of how long it takes to get places. My family’s said that the transition from Hai Ba Trung, the residential district where they live, to My Dinh, the business area of Hanoi, is like going to another country. Rarely anyone has been outside of Vietnam; the majority haven’t traveled to other big cities within the country itself either. People love taking pictures if you pull out a camera and are unabashed about asking to you to take solo pictures of them. People talk to you without introduction. Once a person builds a rapport, which can happen in minutes, they look out for you. Strangers tell you how it is. They scoff when you’ve done something stupid, sound easily annoyed when you don’t do as they think is fitting. It’s not a social disgrace to criticize someone you don’t know because they disagree with you on something like directions or where to put your feet on a bike. Strange things happen, like purple ink splattering my skin through an open window of a taxi. Organization is not consciously valued. With a loose framework things work themselves out.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
nyaya health
There are a good number of people who want to do good, who make it a concrete goal, whose careers lie upon this idea, who think about it when making life decisions and when living day to day, weaving it into the background of going to school, making friends, finding love, having fun, getting a job. Then there are a rare few for whom doing good isn’t doing good; it’s just doing. It’s the forefront, the bulk, the background. We have a friend like this. Sometimes I read the blog for his organization, Nyaya Health, and I remember how narcissistic my blog is and how he uses this medium for something outside of himself, which is what I think writing should eventually achieve (in a very different, still narcissistic sort of way). His experiences fuel an anger over injustice that drives him, and never has self-fulfillment played a part. Even though most people don’t do good things mainly for self-fulfillment, it can’t help but be had. For him, he is so invested in others that there’s little room for getting anything for himself from it.
There are lots of reasons to support Nyaya Health, which administers primary care to a rural region in Nepal of a quarter million people that had no doctors or facilities, battling incredibly high rates of HIV, maternal mortality, and malnourishment. It’s committed to immediate care as well as long-term health models to care for those without. It’s not just helping out; it’s thinking about everything: management, infrastructure, microfinance, epidemiology.
But personally the reason I give you is that this person makes other people his life, not in addition to his own. Aud and I talk about how we all receive more than we give (not in a deliberate or selfish way, but in a human way). Sometimes people can be mostly givers, and that’s something worth supporting I think. He’d hate this reason for supporting Nyaya, but I think it’s a decent one.
You can read more about it here: http://www.nyayahealth.org
And you can donate here: http://www.nyayahealth.org/donate_now.html
Money can seem trivial because it can be easy, but I can guarantee any amount will be more gift given than received.
There are lots of reasons to support Nyaya Health, which administers primary care to a rural region in Nepal of a quarter million people that had no doctors or facilities, battling incredibly high rates of HIV, maternal mortality, and malnourishment. It’s committed to immediate care as well as long-term health models to care for those without. It’s not just helping out; it’s thinking about everything: management, infrastructure, microfinance, epidemiology.
But personally the reason I give you is that this person makes other people his life, not in addition to his own. Aud and I talk about how we all receive more than we give (not in a deliberate or selfish way, but in a human way). Sometimes people can be mostly givers, and that’s something worth supporting I think. He’d hate this reason for supporting Nyaya, but I think it’s a decent one.
You can read more about it here: http://www.nyayahealth.org
And you can donate here: http://www.nyayahealth.org/donate_now.h
Money can seem trivial because it can be easy, but I can guarantee any amount will be more gift given than received.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
vietnamese-american
I watched Joy Luck Club yesterday morning, and nearly burst into tears about twenty times. My propensity to cry at overtly tear-inducing film scenes depends on my mood, and my general mood these past few weeks has been Being in the Motherland--all the obvious feelings that entails. And hey, that movie is pretty good.
Having many first-generation friends and America being America, in writing my mass emails from Southeast Asia last summer and this one, I got a lot of replies from people about how they related to the cultural aspects of my experiences. From people who felt connected, disconnected, somewhere in between, in relation to their family’s culture. I’m not sure when I started becoming consciously aware of my culture, but I do know that my family has done so well in keeping it a constant presence, whether or not I was aware. And for that I feel such incredible gratitude, it’s tangibly difficult for me to write it accurately. And I feel it’s so important, I so want to get it right.
When I visited Notre Dame Cathedral in Saigon, I sat for a long time in the pews because I was tired from walking all the day in the heat. Mass wasn’t in service but there were a few women in the first row reciting prayers. It immediately brought me back to going to Vietnamese mass with my parents at home, as a kid. I hated going. I hated that it was in the middle of the day, that I had to dress up, that I couldn’t fully understand the sermons, that in the summer it was stifling. But there was one thing I didn’t hate, one thing that with age I actually grew to love, and that was the recitation of prayers in Vietnamese. In English we just say them. In Vietnamese, I wouldn’t say there’s a real melody to the prayers, but the prayers are melodic. There are certain tones that made me enjoy memorizing and reciting them too, purely for the sound and experience, because I’m not religious and not really spiritual either. When I heard the women saying them in Vietnam, they sounded exactly like back home in California, and I found myself saying them too. And I was struck by how this thing, these words and these tones, was carried intact from across the world.
Lately I’ve felt, with a sense of urgency, a need to preserve things about my parents and their history that might fade when they’re gone. To keep through time what they so bravely, carefully transported through place. I want to make my mom’s food, to teach my kids Vietnamese (and have them learn the great amount I don’t know, if they’re not too resistant). And most, to honor all my parents went through to bring me here, by remembering and continuing what they left behind. Because it’s their values from there that made it possible for me to cultivate ones from here. I can feel the question of rationale arising: why does it really matter to remember where you’re from? I don’t have an all-encompassing response, because all my metaphors are too-neat answers. But I think that if one life lived is what provides meaning, and it’s this continuum that makes a single life possible, then there must be some syllogism there.
In America, when people ask you what you are, they mean where your family’s from, because it’s (usually, ideally) accepted that you’re American. In Vietnam, even though my family is Vietnamese, they ask me what I am. They see you by the country you live in, and you’re not considered Vietnamese. And it’s true, because I’m not fully or even mostly Vietnamese. But I’m not just American either. Too often people find themselves choosing between one culture and another, when one of the best things about America is that you can have both (or several). I really dislike the misconceptions of being whitewashed because you’re integrated into American society, or of being super Asian because you have a lot of Asian friends. Because in polarizing things this way, you can forget that you should (or so I personally think) remain connected to both, and can be, despite falling into one of those aforementioned categories. Because that’s what the hyphenation is about. It’s about how one can motivate the other, how you take the best from each, how you incorporate the privilege of perspective into your life, how past and present becomes your future.
D. once talked about the benefits of shared culture, and I saw that in spending a little time with him here, when I felt consciously that the sense of being in between cultures is a culture in itself. One that shouldn’t be separated, because how sad for old things to be lost in a shuffle of migration and opportunity, and how sad for new things to be overlooked by comparison to something else. Culture is such a rich and dynamic thing, and how lucky we are to experience more than one, and to have that combination to claim as ours.
D. also brought up the idea of randomness, that we could’ve easily been brought up in Vietnam if not for certain circumstances and luck and timing. I definitely feel that, especially being here and meeting people my age and comparing where their family was at the time mine left, or others who were born after the narrow window to leave closed. If in 1954 when the Communists uprooted the French, in the small sliver of time that people were allowed to choose communist North or democratic South, my parents hadn’t been able to migrate South, I might’ve been born in Hanoi. If in the years following the fall of Saigon in 1975 my family hadn’t escaped, before nearby countries stopped taking in refugees, I might’ve been born in Saigon. If they hadn’t been picked up by a German boat, sponsored to Germany and then America, I could’ve ended up in so many places. But the one thing that doesn’t change no matter time and place or situation in life, being born to my parents means being born Vietnamese. And if I had to choose only one reason out of the many I feel, it is for that that I love being Vietnamese.
Having many first-generation friends and America being America, in writing my mass emails from Southeast Asia last summer and this one, I got a lot of replies from people about how they related to the cultural aspects of my experiences. From people who felt connected, disconnected, somewhere in between, in relation to their family’s culture. I’m not sure when I started becoming consciously aware of my culture, but I do know that my family has done so well in keeping it a constant presence, whether or not I was aware. And for that I feel such incredible gratitude, it’s tangibly difficult for me to write it accurately. And I feel it’s so important, I so want to get it right.
When I visited Notre Dame Cathedral in Saigon, I sat for a long time in the pews because I was tired from walking all the day in the heat. Mass wasn’t in service but there were a few women in the first row reciting prayers. It immediately brought me back to going to Vietnamese mass with my parents at home, as a kid. I hated going. I hated that it was in the middle of the day, that I had to dress up, that I couldn’t fully understand the sermons, that in the summer it was stifling. But there was one thing I didn’t hate, one thing that with age I actually grew to love, and that was the recitation of prayers in Vietnamese. In English we just say them. In Vietnamese, I wouldn’t say there’s a real melody to the prayers, but the prayers are melodic. There are certain tones that made me enjoy memorizing and reciting them too, purely for the sound and experience, because I’m not religious and not really spiritual either. When I heard the women saying them in Vietnam, they sounded exactly like back home in California, and I found myself saying them too. And I was struck by how this thing, these words and these tones, was carried intact from across the world.
Lately I’ve felt, with a sense of urgency, a need to preserve things about my parents and their history that might fade when they’re gone. To keep through time what they so bravely, carefully transported through place. I want to make my mom’s food, to teach my kids Vietnamese (and have them learn the great amount I don’t know, if they’re not too resistant). And most, to honor all my parents went through to bring me here, by remembering and continuing what they left behind. Because it’s their values from there that made it possible for me to cultivate ones from here. I can feel the question of rationale arising: why does it really matter to remember where you’re from? I don’t have an all-encompassing response, because all my metaphors are too-neat answers. But I think that if one life lived is what provides meaning, and it’s this continuum that makes a single life possible, then there must be some syllogism there.
In America, when people ask you what you are, they mean where your family’s from, because it’s (usually, ideally) accepted that you’re American. In Vietnam, even though my family is Vietnamese, they ask me what I am. They see you by the country you live in, and you’re not considered Vietnamese. And it’s true, because I’m not fully or even mostly Vietnamese. But I’m not just American either. Too often people find themselves choosing between one culture and another, when one of the best things about America is that you can have both (or several). I really dislike the misconceptions of being whitewashed because you’re integrated into American society, or of being super Asian because you have a lot of Asian friends. Because in polarizing things this way, you can forget that you should (or so I personally think) remain connected to both, and can be, despite falling into one of those aforementioned categories. Because that’s what the hyphenation is about. It’s about how one can motivate the other, how you take the best from each, how you incorporate the privilege of perspective into your life, how past and present becomes your future.
D. once talked about the benefits of shared culture, and I saw that in spending a little time with him here, when I felt consciously that the sense of being in between cultures is a culture in itself. One that shouldn’t be separated, because how sad for old things to be lost in a shuffle of migration and opportunity, and how sad for new things to be overlooked by comparison to something else. Culture is such a rich and dynamic thing, and how lucky we are to experience more than one, and to have that combination to claim as ours.
D. also brought up the idea of randomness, that we could’ve easily been brought up in Vietnam if not for certain circumstances and luck and timing. I definitely feel that, especially being here and meeting people my age and comparing where their family was at the time mine left, or others who were born after the narrow window to leave closed. If in 1954 when the Communists uprooted the French, in the small sliver of time that people were allowed to choose communist North or democratic South, my parents hadn’t been able to migrate South, I might’ve been born in Hanoi. If in the years following the fall of Saigon in 1975 my family hadn’t escaped, before nearby countries stopped taking in refugees, I might’ve been born in Saigon. If they hadn’t been picked up by a German boat, sponsored to Germany and then America, I could’ve ended up in so many places. But the one thing that doesn’t change no matter time and place or situation in life, being born to my parents means being born Vietnamese. And if I had to choose only one reason out of the many I feel, it is for that that I love being Vietnamese.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
first day
To get to my uncle’s house you have to walk through a narrow winding road not open to cars. To get here I traveled twenty hours, thirteen of which were on an on the whole unpleasant plane flight from San Francisco to Taipei, and if I had to leave today it would have been worth it.
My cousin (my mom’s brother’s first child of two) brought his little girl (seven years old) to the airport to meet me, and it was wonderful to see them. I’d met my cousin for the first time back in high school when he visited California, before he was married, and he looks the same. I remember my brother told me that he’d taken my cousin to Universal Studios and when he saw King Kong during one of those tram car rides, he jumped out of his seat and exclaimed, WOW. Now I feel like him and every thing I see is King Kong.
My uncle (my mom’s eldest brother) looks older than I imagined he would. He’s in his late seventies, but still I imagined him to be sturdy, like my grandparents on my dad’s side. Which makes no sense since they’re not related, but that’s what I thought. Comparing my parents and relatives at home to others here, I see how living here versus America does make a difference in how you age. My uncle is frail, with my mom’s nose and warm eyes with his eyelids folded towards the middle so they look like they slant. He has trouble sleeping, like my mom too. My cousin-in-law is super friendly and sweet, though her Vietnamese has a different accent and can be hard to follow. Their daughter is adorable, already a quietly strong person who refuses to admit she’s motion sick or complain about it. My other cousin (my mom’s brother’s second child of two) has a daughter too, six years old. The two of them make me so glad that I could visit while they’re still young. Even though they keep only slight memories of you (as I assume, from what I remember of visits from people when I was a kid), it’s nice to know that you met during that time in your life, because it passes so quickly. Like how I met my half-German cousins when they were a few years old and now they’re teenagers and it’ll never be the same when I see them again.
I’ve always been so close to my immediate family that for a long time I hadn’t given much thought to my extended family, also because they are really extended, all over the world. Somewhere along the line that changed. A lot of my drive to come here, and what’s already been affirmed in small and substantive ways, is that roots really are roots.
Living in this home is like a friendly version of the Simple Life. Things are less comfortable, but not un-so. There’s no air-conditioning, but several fans. It is as hot and humid as my parents promised (90 degrees with 75% humidity), but surprisingly I don’t find it that bad. I like humidity. My parents were worried about how I’d survive without AC, but if it stays like this the fans are more than adequate. As long as I can shower. As far as that goes, the hot water runs out, but there is hot water. There’s no shower head, just a teeny stream of water so you have to squat and actively place water where you need it. This sounds un-ideal but somehow felt as nice as what we have in America, I think because I was more aware of being dirty and hence more aware of getting clean. The bathrooms are bit gritty but the linoleum is shiny and cool to the touch. We budget on electricity but there it is and the biggest surprise, my cousin wired me to the internet, old-school. Can’t use the phone while on it, but it’s there. All in all, nothing that requires more than once to get used to. I am grateful to our Southeast Asia trip last year, because most things feel nice in comparison to having a mouse crawl up your arm in the middle of the night, trekking outside in pitch dark to use the restroom, and having electricity go out on you at an unknown time of day. And the Cambodian bus ride from hell nearly desensitized me to insistent honking, which is also the norm here.
Also, today I had mangosteen and lychee and dragon fruit. It is good to be here.
My cousin (my mom’s brother’s first child of two) brought his little girl (seven years old) to the airport to meet me, and it was wonderful to see them. I’d met my cousin for the first time back in high school when he visited California, before he was married, and he looks the same. I remember my brother told me that he’d taken my cousin to Universal Studios and when he saw King Kong during one of those tram car rides, he jumped out of his seat and exclaimed, WOW. Now I feel like him and every thing I see is King Kong.
My uncle (my mom’s eldest brother) looks older than I imagined he would. He’s in his late seventies, but still I imagined him to be sturdy, like my grandparents on my dad’s side. Which makes no sense since they’re not related, but that’s what I thought. Comparing my parents and relatives at home to others here, I see how living here versus America does make a difference in how you age. My uncle is frail, with my mom’s nose and warm eyes with his eyelids folded towards the middle so they look like they slant. He has trouble sleeping, like my mom too. My cousin-in-law is super friendly and sweet, though her Vietnamese has a different accent and can be hard to follow. Their daughter is adorable, already a quietly strong person who refuses to admit she’s motion sick or complain about it. My other cousin (my mom’s brother’s second child of two) has a daughter too, six years old. The two of them make me so glad that I could visit while they’re still young. Even though they keep only slight memories of you (as I assume, from what I remember of visits from people when I was a kid), it’s nice to know that you met during that time in your life, because it passes so quickly. Like how I met my half-German cousins when they were a few years old and now they’re teenagers and it’ll never be the same when I see them again.
I’ve always been so close to my immediate family that for a long time I hadn’t given much thought to my extended family, also because they are really extended, all over the world. Somewhere along the line that changed. A lot of my drive to come here, and what’s already been affirmed in small and substantive ways, is that roots really are roots.
Living in this home is like a friendly version of the Simple Life. Things are less comfortable, but not un-so. There’s no air-conditioning, but several fans. It is as hot and humid as my parents promised (90 degrees with 75% humidity), but surprisingly I don’t find it that bad. I like humidity. My parents were worried about how I’d survive without AC, but if it stays like this the fans are more than adequate. As long as I can shower. As far as that goes, the hot water runs out, but there is hot water. There’s no shower head, just a teeny stream of water so you have to squat and actively place water where you need it. This sounds un-ideal but somehow felt as nice as what we have in America, I think because I was more aware of being dirty and hence more aware of getting clean. The bathrooms are bit gritty but the linoleum is shiny and cool to the touch. We budget on electricity but there it is and the biggest surprise, my cousin wired me to the internet, old-school. Can’t use the phone while on it, but it’s there. All in all, nothing that requires more than once to get used to. I am grateful to our Southeast Asia trip last year, because most things feel nice in comparison to having a mouse crawl up your arm in the middle of the night, trekking outside in pitch dark to use the restroom, and having electricity go out on you at an unknown time of day. And the Cambodian bus ride from hell nearly desensitized me to insistent honking, which is also the norm here.
Also, today I had mangosteen and lychee and dragon fruit. It is good to be here.
Monday, June 9, 2008
packing
Due to a traumatic experience with too much luggage in high school, I tend to be a minimalist packer. I've told this story a bunch of times, even though it's not at all interesting or important, but it really did affect me. It was my first time away from home, for a summer program following junior year. Six weeks in Ithaca New York, and I had no sense of what I needed for a compact time away. I took everything with me. I rarely had to wear an outfit more than a couple times, I brought pictures to decorate my room and CDs for my desk even though I had nothing to play them on. I put all of this into one big luggage, thinking that it would be no sweat since it was one you could pull. It didn't come to mind that everything has its limits. It was so heavy that the pulley broke, on the way to Ithaca. On my way back home, with my bag a bit heavier from accumulating books, it was the biggest pain to put it in the car, transport it, check it, retrieve it. Since then I've been much wiser about what I need, and I lean to the other extreme of bringing the bare minimum.
In the late summer and early fall of 2002, after high school, I packed one very large suitcase and a couple duffel bags and that was everything I took with me to start college. In the late summer and early fall of 2007, I sent about 11 boxes of varying sizes from San Francisco to New Haven to start med school. I also took the suitcase and duffel bags with me on the plane. My packing philosophy hasn't changed much, though after living out-of-school I definitely wanted a feeling of home in my next place, and brought more than the bare minimum for med school. But having packed and moved in some form every year in between, I have learned a few things about packing.
Each year I re-learn, and learn more so, that I have to throw stuff away. I hate it but I have to. I still keep mementos but not as many multiple scraps from the same event. I throw away programs unless they're significant and just keep the tickets. I threw away my one fork and one spoon. I can't keep half-broken (but still usable) plastic trashcans anymore because their shapes are sadly not conducive to fitting in boxes. Yes, I threw away the dried leaves from my Halloween costume. I've given away things like my stereo and fridge. It makes me feel better when things I can't take with me are used by someone else, including toiletries. Gave Jey my detergent once, and Don my toothpaste, Amy my shampoo.
No matter how I try to stick to a system of organization, I never pack quite the same way each time. I knew from the beginning to mix my clothes and books (haha), but there is never a "best" way to package everything else, like shoes and desk stuff and files and vases. There are ways to make them fit that make sense, but there isn't one way that I know to do it every time. Plus there are slight changes in content. So I re-think and re-pack each time. The boxes change, too, of course. I try to re-use them as long as possible and I always over-tape to hold them together, but moving just isn't good for stability and they fall apart.
When you pack, you have to consider everything. You get your big things out of the way, but you have to get rid of those paper clips on the sink, pack the souvenir cup on your bookshelf so it doesn't break, find a place for postcards people have sent you. You go through every inch of your material life whether you want to or not.
Somehow the time and energy it takes increases with each year, even when the amount of stuff stays similar. I used to be able to pack stress-free, even during exams--finish in a day and move by myself in an hour and a half. Last year I remember it being a struggle, deciding what to bring, send, leave behind. Moving this year, it took me a day and several nights to pack, and I enlisted the help of four friends and two cars to move. There seems to be more of me and correspondingly, others.
And in the same way I'm writing minutes before leaving for Vietnam, as time passes I find myself packing up until the end, scrambling when before I could take my time. Things feel semi-incomplete and not fully articulated because I didn't have as much time to think through it all, but it's packaged up anyway and I go on. As heavy as they get, my boxes push me forward.
In the late summer and early fall of 2002, after high school, I packed one very large suitcase and a couple duffel bags and that was everything I took with me to start college. In the late summer and early fall of 2007, I sent about 11 boxes of varying sizes from San Francisco to New Haven to start med school. I also took the suitcase and duffel bags with me on the plane. My packing philosophy hasn't changed much, though after living out-of-school I definitely wanted a feeling of home in my next place, and brought more than the bare minimum for med school. But having packed and moved in some form every year in between, I have learned a few things about packing.
Each year I re-learn, and learn more so, that I have to throw stuff away. I hate it but I have to. I still keep mementos but not as many multiple scraps from the same event. I throw away programs unless they're significant and just keep the tickets. I threw away my one fork and one spoon. I can't keep half-broken (but still usable) plastic trashcans anymore because their shapes are sadly not conducive to fitting in boxes. Yes, I threw away the dried leaves from my Halloween costume. I've given away things like my stereo and fridge. It makes me feel better when things I can't take with me are used by someone else, including toiletries. Gave Jey my detergent once, and Don my toothpaste, Amy my shampoo.
No matter how I try to stick to a system of organization, I never pack quite the same way each time. I knew from the beginning to mix my clothes and books (haha), but there is never a "best" way to package everything else, like shoes and desk stuff and files and vases. There are ways to make them fit that make sense, but there isn't one way that I know to do it every time. Plus there are slight changes in content. So I re-think and re-pack each time. The boxes change, too, of course. I try to re-use them as long as possible and I always over-tape to hold them together, but moving just isn't good for stability and they fall apart.
When you pack, you have to consider everything. You get your big things out of the way, but you have to get rid of those paper clips on the sink, pack the souvenir cup on your bookshelf so it doesn't break, find a place for postcards people have sent you. You go through every inch of your material life whether you want to or not.
Somehow the time and energy it takes increases with each year, even when the amount of stuff stays similar. I used to be able to pack stress-free, even during exams--finish in a day and move by myself in an hour and a half. Last year I remember it being a struggle, deciding what to bring, send, leave behind. Moving this year, it took me a day and several nights to pack, and I enlisted the help of four friends and two cars to move. There seems to be more of me and correspondingly, others.
And in the same way I'm writing minutes before leaving for Vietnam, as time passes I find myself packing up until the end, scrambling when before I could take my time. Things feel semi-incomplete and not fully articulated because I didn't have as much time to think through it all, but it's packaged up anyway and I go on. As heavy as they get, my boxes push me forward.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
people part two: patients
I came to medical school for real people stories. Blogging by nature is self-involved and I usually have little to write about other than myself, which in college I found to be the main thing I wanted to change about my life. The first year of school has been fulfilling in huge part to feeling that, albeit very slowly, I'm on the way to doing that.
We've been introduced to patients in different ways. One of my favorite classes this past semester was Biological Basis of Behavior, which had us study a small corner of psychiatry on a neurobiological and personal level. After each lecture a patient with an illness related to the lecture came in to talk to our class for an hour. This included PTSD, drug addiction, schizophrenia, OCD, binge eating, depression and narcolepsy. The thing that really struck me about them, overall, relates to something Allison once said about how psychiatric disorders are on the extreme end of a spectrum that we're all a part of. For these people, the things we all do were greater in degree and longer in duration.
It was hard to see how memories plagued the Vietnam veteran with PTSD so longer after the war. I always thought my memories lingered abnormally long, but here was a person defined against his will by his past. The man with drug addiction was a doctor, whose career had been put in jeopardy because of his problem. He had real insight into his disorder; he seemed to understand its character so well, even as he knew that despite that knowledge, it was still a struggle to battle it. Don mentioned that his articulation was a function of his education, and that perhaps this insight doesn't come across as clearly with other patients. I hadn't thought of that, and makes me wonder how much expression really conveys comprehension, and what I need to learn to see people beyond what they're capable of showing. I wrote a little about the woman with schizophrenia in the last entry. She was shaking slightly as she spoke to us, I remember her sitting on her hands, and she shared the big and little of her life with us. The narcoleptic person talked about not being able to keep a job, how he was often let go. He said, "I should've been more of a fighter when it came to doing things for myself. I just thought it was time to move on." The man with OCD was a lawyer, whose disorder seemed to pervade his life but he also said no one but his wife and mother knew about it, said that he was good at hiding it. Made me think that patients' relationships with themselves, and with their disorders, are pretty complex. He had an incredibly patient wife, to whom he would relate all the little things that drove him nuts, each night. He'd list the things throughout the day that he obsessed about--did he lock that key, did he mail that letter. And she'd listen, and tell him he was being ridiculous. I remember being frustrated with the interview with the man with a binge eating disorder, because the questions asked of him weren't at all conducive to getting his story. Afterwards a few students came up to him to ask him more, and in those few moments we learned a lot. The absence of something made me feel a little better what I seek.
The man with depression gave us something singular. The other patients told us about their illnesses, but this patient experienced his illness right in front of us. He shed tears continuously through the interview, often without any stimulus. His wife had passed away in the eighties, and he had symptoms of depression back then but it didn't come on full-strength until a few years later and has lasted since then. When asked by a student whether he had any long-term goals, he interpreted the question as asking him what kept him going, in the face of such debilitating depression. He said that that day, his goal was to get to our class. On some days, it was to brush his teeth. He said: "Do I think it's strange that it's been so long, that it hasn't gone away? Yes. Why haven't I given up? Is there something? I don't know." After a few moments, he said, "I hope to get better."
This question brought me back to a conversation I had with the classmate who asked it, a bit earlier, after our pre-clinical clerkship session at the nursing home. Another way we've been introduced to patients and patient care is through pre-clinical clerkship, weekly sessions that expose us to different areas of medicine. We've learned to do physical exams on newborns, interviewed child/adolescent patients, examined and described art to hone observation skills.
My favorite this semester was the geriatrics session, where we performed mini-cognitive tests on the residents. I was bit blown away by how every group discovered cognitive deficits in their residents; I've been so used to practicing the neuro exam on my classmates who have mastered saying the months backwards. The patients we saw couldn't draw clocks that depicted 4:30, or think of more than a few words that started with A. The person my group spoke to knew it was April, but when asked what season it was, she paused. Instead of looking back through the window behind her for a clue from the weather, she stared ahead and I wondered what she was looking at or for. Then she said, fall and I think all of our hearts broke a little.
On the shuttle ride back to school, the classmate and I talked about the session. He'd found it depressing, because he placed so much value on cognitive ability, our capacity to think about our lives and what they're for. I told him I agreed, but that I also liked geriatrics. In the most kind way, he asked me what the point was. I didn't have too good of an answer then, aside from my usual perspective of trying despite an end, because isn't that what everything is on a large scale. Talking about it afterwards, I realized that it's about experiencing things, more so than thinking or expressing. I can't really say what those geriatric patients feel or think, but they must experience. Even if I can't ever understand it or connect to it in a conventional way, it feels worthwhile, maybe all the more so because it's fragile and remote. It feels more moment to moment, rather than continuous with memories and goals and future. With the person with depression, he didn't seem to be thinking about purpose. He just wanted to get through each moment. He just wanted to experience the next second.
We've been introduced to patients in different ways. One of my favorite classes this past semester was Biological Basis of Behavior, which had us study a small corner of psychiatry on a neurobiological and personal level. After each lecture a patient with an illness related to the lecture came in to talk to our class for an hour. This included PTSD, drug addiction, schizophrenia, OCD, binge eating, depression and narcolepsy. The thing that really struck me about them, overall, relates to something Allison once said about how psychiatric disorders are on the extreme end of a spectrum that we're all a part of. For these people, the things we all do were greater in degree and longer in duration.
It was hard to see how memories plagued the Vietnam veteran with PTSD so longer after the war. I always thought my memories lingered abnormally long, but here was a person defined against his will by his past. The man with drug addiction was a doctor, whose career had been put in jeopardy because of his problem. He had real insight into his disorder; he seemed to understand its character so well, even as he knew that despite that knowledge, it was still a struggle to battle it. Don mentioned that his articulation was a function of his education, and that perhaps this insight doesn't come across as clearly with other patients. I hadn't thought of that, and makes me wonder how much expression really conveys comprehension, and what I need to learn to see people beyond what they're capable of showing. I wrote a little about the woman with schizophrenia in the last entry. She was shaking slightly as she spoke to us, I remember her sitting on her hands, and she shared the big and little of her life with us. The narcoleptic person talked about not being able to keep a job, how he was often let go. He said, "I should've been more of a fighter when it came to doing things for myself. I just thought it was time to move on." The man with OCD was a lawyer, whose disorder seemed to pervade his life but he also said no one but his wife and mother knew about it, said that he was good at hiding it. Made me think that patients' relationships with themselves, and with their disorders, are pretty complex. He had an incredibly patient wife, to whom he would relate all the little things that drove him nuts, each night. He'd list the things throughout the day that he obsessed about--did he lock that key, did he mail that letter. And she'd listen, and tell him he was being ridiculous. I remember being frustrated with the interview with the man with a binge eating disorder, because the questions asked of him weren't at all conducive to getting his story. Afterwards a few students came up to him to ask him more, and in those few moments we learned a lot. The absence of something made me feel a little better what I seek.
The man with depression gave us something singular. The other patients told us about their illnesses, but this patient experienced his illness right in front of us. He shed tears continuously through the interview, often without any stimulus. His wife had passed away in the eighties, and he had symptoms of depression back then but it didn't come on full-strength until a few years later and has lasted since then. When asked by a student whether he had any long-term goals, he interpreted the question as asking him what kept him going, in the face of such debilitating depression. He said that that day, his goal was to get to our class. On some days, it was to brush his teeth. He said: "Do I think it's strange that it's been so long, that it hasn't gone away? Yes. Why haven't I given up? Is there something? I don't know." After a few moments, he said, "I hope to get better."
This question brought me back to a conversation I had with the classmate who asked it, a bit earlier, after our pre-clinical clerkship session at the nursing home. Another way we've been introduced to patients and patient care is through pre-clinical clerkship, weekly sessions that expose us to different areas of medicine. We've learned to do physical exams on newborns, interviewed child/adolescent patients, examined and described art to hone observation skills.
My favorite this semester was the geriatrics session, where we performed mini-cognitive tests on the residents. I was bit blown away by how every group discovered cognitive deficits in their residents; I've been so used to practicing the neuro exam on my classmates who have mastered saying the months backwards. The patients we saw couldn't draw clocks that depicted 4:30, or think of more than a few words that started with A. The person my group spoke to knew it was April, but when asked what season it was, she paused. Instead of looking back through the window behind her for a clue from the weather, she stared ahead and I wondered what she was looking at or for. Then she said, fall and I think all of our hearts broke a little.
On the shuttle ride back to school, the classmate and I talked about the session. He'd found it depressing, because he placed so much value on cognitive ability, our capacity to think about our lives and what they're for. I told him I agreed, but that I also liked geriatrics. In the most kind way, he asked me what the point was. I didn't have too good of an answer then, aside from my usual perspective of trying despite an end, because isn't that what everything is on a large scale. Talking about it afterwards, I realized that it's about experiencing things, more so than thinking or expressing. I can't really say what those geriatric patients feel or think, but they must experience. Even if I can't ever understand it or connect to it in a conventional way, it feels worthwhile, maybe all the more so because it's fragile and remote. It feels more moment to moment, rather than continuous with memories and goals and future. With the person with depression, he didn't seem to be thinking about purpose. He just wanted to get through each moment. He just wanted to experience the next second.
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