an oppressively hot and muggy 4th of july in hong kong, tempered by the life-saving air conditioning; feeling of sadness, uncertainty, and regret leave me feeling, for whatever reason, light-headed; i am so sorry, but words and thoughts seem so empty since they cannot undo deeds; life is what it is, for good and for ill; what will things be like, 6 months from now, i muse

vegetables

for quite a long time, i've wanted to be a vegetarian, or at least reduce my meat consumption form the currently exorbitantly high levels to normal, dietician-recommended levels. now why would an almost carnivore like myself want to do this? upon much pondering, i've come up with three reasons

1) Health - generally, eating heaps of vegetables is healthier than eating heaps of meat, both in terms of reduced sodium (and I do have some mild hypertension, due either to poor eating habits or secondary to my daily dose of NSAIDs) as well as fat
2) Environment - meat is REALLY REALLY bad for the environment. It takes thousands of liters of water to produced just a kilo of beef, and while cow seems to be the most egregious culprit, rest assured vegetables always leave a smaller footprint.
3) Ethics - sometimes i wonder if a thousand years from now, humanity will look back and say that the people of this generation were barbaric for eating animals that clearly can suffer and feel pain. at the moment, such thinking is probably concerned crazy for non-PETA members, but i've read enough sci fi (haha, geek i know), particlarly a book called K-Pax (good read!) that i wonder. another way of looking at it - if we've got heaps of laws preventing cruelty to animals (most often domestic animals), how is it at all okay to kill cows and pigs and chickens by the thousand? is there not some sort of deep moral incongruence there?

now, i've tried to hop on the veggie-train in the past, but this has usually ended in me going to the deli and buying a pound of cold cuts and just gobbling it down within a week. i'm not sure if my self-control has improved much at all since then, but let this post be some sort of declaration of affirmed effort - when i return from china, i will look into how to convert to at least semi-vegatarianism.

so wish me luck - i'll definitely need it. it's like someone trying to quit smoking, but i don't think they have anything that i could parallel to a nicotine patch :P

transience

last night we went to mahak's in lusaka, an indian food restaurant, to commemorate the departure of one of the young women who live on our floor at the nusring hostels. i had only ran into her a few times during the week that i've been here, and there were a few people there whom we had just met earler in the day visiting the museum. this happens frequently when i travel and live briefly in a new place. relationships come into existence quickly, they spark brightly, and the almost always fade utterly. perhaps our paths will cross again, but more likely than not they never will.

prior to mahak's, i skyped with a good friend of mine for almost two hours. we were lamenting about the difficulty of forging lasting relationships in a cauldron of instability. i remarked that a more effective strategy would be to learn to better live in the moment - to find random flings rather than to seek true love, so to speak. not something i find satisfying, by any means, but perhaps it is something i could grow to appreciate?

i feel that dynamism is so important, but at some point you can change so much that you begin to lose the core of who you are. so... i find it difficult to appreciate both these transient relationships and the longer-lasting ones, since they seem to be so different.

expat living

there are quite a few internet cafes in lusaka, but there is one i like going to in particular - la mimosa cafe - largely on account of the fact that it has the fastest, most reliable connection i've been able to find. the biggest problem is that the place is about 70 minutes away by walking or 20,000 Kwacha away by cab ($4).

i usually opt for my walking, and boy-oh-boy what a relief it is to be able to walk again, courtesy of Schering-Plough's biologics. anyway, on today's walk i chose a different route from usual and along the waysaw a number of rather nice-looking, well-to-do homes - in stark contrast to the slums that populate the city and even my relatively cushy nursing student dorms.

i've generally noticed two things:
1) many expats living in zambia and other developing countries are here doing some sort of humanitarin work
2) many expats tend to seek a mode of living that emulates their life at home as much as possible

by 2), i mean that expats will tend to live in houses that are quite posh by local standards, frequent the expat establishments (i stand guilty, la mimosa is certainly one of those), employ helpers (cook, maid, chauffeur), etc... etc...

now, i'm personally as guilty of anyone as wanting a nice clean place, warm showers (or any showers for that matter), and a home generally devoid of bugs. somehow though, i feel that it's a tad more egregious to live a western-style life in the midst of great poverty than in a place like riverbend or millwoods. i remember last year when i was in zambia i ran into a british doctor who actively sought to live in the slums - something that i thought was fairly insane even by the standards of craziest bleeding heart liberals. now, i personally wouldn't go so far as to want to live in the slums, but living in a really pretty place out here sits somewhat uneasily with me.

i guess this all boils down to the concept of how much material sacrifice is ideal.

____________

on an utterly unrelated note, the air here smells really nice. there's this hint of smoke that permeates through everything. i'm not sure what gives the air this flavor, but it seems particularly nice breathing it in as i sit out here in the open under the nighttime sky.

''whoever saves one life, saves the world entire"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPHvLtitxug&feature=related

the most moving ending i have ever seen

illness

lately i have been thinking about my seronegative spondyloarthropathy:

april is blossoming, and it's been well over a month that i haven't been able to function properly. over the course of the last 12 months, i have probably been dysfunctional in some way, shape or form, for at least 3. my right elbow and my left knee have been affected, and many of the springtime pursuits i have cherished in the past remain beyond me. i want to walk and enjoy the beatuiful weather that is all around us. i want to bike, feel the wind in my face, explore the trails with my friends. i want to play squash again (admittedly not a season-dependent sport, but still hugely enjoyable). i remember when i used to run many times a week, looking forwards to the sunday morning half-marathon training runs that gave me my first glimpses of the depth of the beauty of edmonton's maze of river valley trails.

everytime i think i'm about to get better, things get worse again. i've been on my new medication for 4 weeks now, and if anything, things have been worse since i've started. this has been taxing on my mind, as i feel my hope for a cure fades a little more with each flare-up. i know this is probably irrational but i'm losing my grip by bits. i hate being weak. i feel the world has no room for weakness. again, i know this isn't true, but again, i feel the rationality slowly slipping away. but who can i help like this? again, being irrational. i don't really need to be that physically functional to work in policy etc. etc. but surely it dampens my effectiveness. i find that is very troubling. it's like there's something you really, really want to do, something you think is relatively good-spirited and noble, and then something happens to derail you. again, irrational - not derailed, just slowed down a bit. i feel like such a lame (pun!) even for writing this, since if i can aknowledge my irrationality, and am posting it anyway, isn't that clearly a sign of poor mental fortitude?

i also think about why. well, as you have certinaly learned in medical school, the type of arthritis i have is multifactorial in its etiology, associated with HLA-B27 and various other autoimmune conditions, associated with some set of environmental? circumstances, associated, associated. but 'why' in the grander cosmic sense of things. my mind, like your mind, certainly pines towards a cosmic moral order. again, irrationality - even amongst religious folk, i can see no weave that screams of karma on the fabric of reality. but you and me believe it anyway. what have i done wrong? i have a sinking suspicion that my motivations, my aspirations, have been impure. i toy with the idea that whatever darkness zings in my mind, invisible to the outside observer but blatantly obvious to god almight in heaven, has in some way made me deserving of this.

the last thing i feel is guilt. I AM SO LUCKY. what i have is nothing. nothing compared to a childhood cancer that will rob you of your limb and life. nothing compared to someone who has this condition in a poorer setting, where physical labor is demanded daily to feed onself and where drugs don't exist. i am guilty. of telling my parents they stress me out and that i would feel better living on my own when day-in-day-out all they have done is care for me. of even posting this and hoping that someone comes along and reads it and values my attempt at some semblance of genuine honesty. i am guilty of being an 'emo', the sort of person people scoff and scorn at.

these are my thoughts. what an imagination i have.

oncology applied to life

borrowed from my amigo Joey:

I think we have a lot to learn from cancer.

Someday, I hope humans learn to break the gates holding them back from growth. Whether we perceive ourselves to be ready or not (we are ready), we will push ahead and realize our dreams. We will discard anyone saying we cannot, make use of our own resources, grow our own so that we may thrive. We will take the path of most resistance and push it aside and blaze our own trail.

It will be chaotic and some roads wind upon each other, the misfortunes of a charging crash of rhinos that cannot see what is more than a few feet in front of them. We have our goal in mind but not a clue what it looks like, only the raw desire to make it happen. I think that it will be well worth it in the end when we circumvent that which prevents us from falling, which wants to keep us sequestered to our suburban lifestyles, the mechanisms of life that say we cannot when our mantra should quite classically be yes we can.

So fellow cancers, let us be the tumor that offsets the diseases that plague this world. Proliferate.

bill

this is something a friend of mine posted just as we were graduating in '07:

_______________________________________

Meet my friend, Bill

I wish you could have seen Bill back in the day.

In college, he was one of those really spiritual guys with a magnetic personality, a real spark plug. A person who knew the Bible inside-out, who prayed with the eloquence of a Jim Elliot. When he led worship - sans band, unplugged, just him and his acoustic guitar before the fellowship group - he brought heaven, then the house, down. He was a spiritual lightening rod; whatever ministry he led glowed with spiritual urgency. Whatever event he organized - evangelistic coffeehouse, short-term missions - seemed especially anointed. A trailblazer with a prodigious gift of leadership, his fame spread on campus. He sent girls into a tizzy with his good looks and aw-shucks humor, but he never played it up. He dated, but (so I heard) with such humility and consideration that no one spoke poorly of him after the relationship ended. While others went to exotic locales for spring break, he went (unannounced and without fanfare) to the Bowery mission in New York for a one-week internship. He had dreams to be a missionary-doctor.

I had dinner with him recently. The last time we had seen each other was at graduation, over a decade ago. We were young back then, dreams and possibilities spread out before us like the expanse of the cloudless blue sky. God had a wonderful plan and purpose for us, after all. There was a shine in all our eyes. But that was back then.

When I met Bill for sushi this past week, we talked pleasantries at first, spoke of our marriages, children, our jobs. He had gone off to medical school to pursue his dream of being a missionary-doctor. He had fallen for a girl during his first semester, and had married impetuously (his phrase), a few months later. Somewhere along the track of earning his M.D., his missionary dream derailed. He got a job at a prestigious hospital, moved into the suburbs. He works hard, he tells me, to keep up with his hefty mortgage. He likes to go fishing on weekends.

When we were in college, we'd get together for dinner once in awhile. Bill would always ask me the same question at the end of the meal. He�' ask, his voice earnest: how's your relationship with God? That night, just as we were finishing dessert, I sensed him pause. He held the spoon suspended in front of him, deep in thought, troubled. Then he lowered the spoon softly to his plate, as if it had suddenly become too burdensome

"Do you still go to church?" he asked me.

I blinked in surprise. I do, I told him. I do.

He looked like he had more to say, and even opened his mouth to speak. But then he paused. His shoulders sagged a little. "That's good. I'm glad." He nodded, more to himself than to me. "That's good." He wouldn't look me in the eye.

He seemed tired, exhausted. A shell of his former self. I thought to return the same question to him, but I knew the answer already. Some things just don't have to be asked.

We ended the meal soon after that. He insisted on paying, and I let him after only token resistance. When I got home later that night, the family had all gone to bed. I walked in the darkness of the house, letting the silence seep into me. I checked in on my kids, tussled their hair. Then I lay down on the carpeted floor for a very long time, listening to the cadence of their gentle snoring. I thought of my friend Bill - hollowed-out, brow-beaten, so different from the spiritual wunderkind he'd once been - and something like sadness filled me.

* * *

I went to church the next morning. I looked at the other men in church who, like Bill, are in their 30s, are suburban fathers with a mortgage and children. I saw them take their place in the pew, sing, clap, say hello, fall asleep during the sermon, pop in a breath mint right afterwards. Go home. Start work Monday. Mechanical and routine. I saw all that, and a grayness settled into my bones that I have not been able to shake.

Because deep down, I do not think we are so different from Bill as we'd like to think.

Santa

A cute little dialogue from the movie I just watched:

"As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies, like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy..."

"So we can believe the big ones?"

"Yes - Justice, mercy, duty - that sort of thing."

"They're not the same at all!"

"You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy - and yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order, as if there is some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged."

"But people have got to believe that or what's the point?"

"You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?"

salads and big macs

helping

as another round of med interviews are taking place, i am being bombarded with requests for assistance. i must admit that this has beeen pretty annoying, on account of it's repetitive nature and the amount of hours that i have spend helping others.

but taking a step back, i realize that being able to help others is quite a privilege, especially when those others are your friends. it means that they trust you enough to ask for your advice, and it means that you have an opportunity to (hopefully) improve their overall utility in some way.

i have an inkling that the opportunities to help my friend will diminish in the future as our lives become burdened with more responsibility, and having to say no to a genuine request for assistance would be far worse than whatever annoyance i feel now.

More theft!

bittermelon

i was flipping through the bible today (something i definitely don't do enough) and ran into ephesians 4. it talks about being completely humble and letting go of any bitterness and malicious thoughts.

my mind wandered to whether or not jesus ever felt bitter. as a perfect being coming into a world full of some pretty bad people, how easy it would be to feel bitter and jaded at creation - meant for the light, but so often in the darkness. and yet i don't think jesus was very bitter at all. he may have been angry, he may have been chastising, but probably more than anything he was loving and he believed, by and large, in humanity - why else give everyone a chance to go to heaven?

now isn't that something? what another interesting shade of his perfect goodness and divinity.

i love stealing from tumblr

i will learn how to love a person and then i will teach you and then we will know

seen from a great enough distance i cannot be seen
i feel this as an extremely distinct sensation
of feeling like shit; the effect of small children
is that they use declarative sentences and then look at your face
with an expression that says, ‘you will never do enough
for the people you love’; i can feel the universe expanding
and it feels like no one is trying hard enough
the effect of this is an extremely shitty sensation
of being the only person alive; i have been alone for a very long time
it will take an extreme person to make me feel less alone
the effect of being alone for a very long time
is that i have been thinking very hard and learning about existence, mortality
loneliness, people, society, and love; i am afraid
that i am not learning fast enough; i can feel the universe expanding
and it feels like no one has ever tried hard enough; when i cried in your room
it was the effect of an extremely distinct sensation that ‘i am the only person
alive,’ ‘i have not learned enough,’ and ‘i can feel the universe
expanding and making things further apart
and it feels like a declarative sentence
whose message is that we must try harder’

-Tao Lin

why dota is baddddddd

in the interest of trying to 'relax' more, i decided to pick up dota again. for all you people who don't know what dota is, it is basically a warcraft 3 mod that i used to play far, far too much. getting back into it, i knew i'd be very, very rusty. let me explain why that contributes to the vicious cycle that is dota.

usually, when you win a game of dota, you feel pretty happy. note a game tends to last anywhere from 20 minutes to 60 minutes, so it's not a trifling amount of time! now, when you LOSE a game of dota, i usually feel pretty upset - but more than just that, i want revenge. how does one get revenge? by playing another game and winning that one!

but... since i am such a horribly rusty player, i can't seem to win any games! it's a cycle of play-lose, play-lose, play-lose until it's bloody late at night and i have have school the next day at 8 am and i realize just how badly i've wasted my time.

so dota, it's time for you to go the way of your homonymous partner the dodo. good bloody riddance :P

"The Christians are right. It is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity - it IS enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God. In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that - and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison - you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you."

C.S. Lewis

relax

time to chill out and love other thought-trees

on international women's day

Three Proven Steps to Advance the World’s Women, on International Women’s Day

By NICHOLAS KRISTOF

Today is International Women’s Day, and in fact the 100^th anniversary of International Women’s Day. It’s a date that is much better known abroad but is beginning to get more traction in the U.S. as well.

So what interventions get the most bang for the buck in raising the status of women around the world? What is most helpful in overcoming injustices such as human trafficking and acid attacks? I’d welcome your ideas below, but let me toss out a few of my suggestions for most effective interventions:

First, I think girls’ education may be the single most cost-effective kind of aid work. It’s cheap, it opens minds, it gives girls new career opportunities and ways to generate cash, it leads them to have fewer children and invest more in those children, and it tends to bring women from the shadows into the formal economy and society. It’s not a panacea, of course. Lebanon and Sri Lanka were leaders in girls’ education, and both ended up torn apart by conflict. In India, the state of Kerala has done a fine job in girls’ education, but its state economy is still a mess and dependent on remittances. But overall, educating girls probably has a greater transformative effect on a country than anything else one can do.

Second, I’d argue for deworming and micronutrients. These may not sound like they’re “women’s issues,” but in a sense they are. For example, iodine deficiency particularly affects female fetuses, for reasons that we don’t fully understand. Insufficient iodine in the first trimester of pregnancy costs that child 10 to 15 I.Q. points for the rest of his or her life, and yet iodized salt programs that prevent the problem cost less than 5 cents per person reached. There are still tens of millions of girls out there with cognitive deficits because so much salt in poor countries is still not iodized. Likewise, women and girls disproportionately suffer from anemia, partly because of menstruation. In the United States, if a woman showed up at an E.R. with a hemoglobin level of, say, 9, she might get an immediate blood transfusion, and lower levels are rarely seen. In contrast, hemoglobin levels of 5 and 6 are routinely seen among women in poor countries – just unheard of in the United States. Deworming would help them, because worms cause anemia, and costs only about 50 cents per person and lasts a year (deworming is backed by groups like Deworm the World). So would iron supplements, which likewise are very cheap and can be given in particular to high school girls and to women expecting to become pregnant. Family planning likewise falls in this category: an intervention that is relatively cheap, pays for itself, and is vastly underfunded.

Third, we need more support for women starting businesses. These can be microsavings and microlending programs, or training in entrepreneurship. BRAC and Grameen have done great work in this area, as has Injaz in the Middle East. Such programs lead women to bring in incomes, and that gives them more weight in the home and society. Moreover, they tend to invest the income in their children, so there’s a broader effect in fighting poverty.

Lots of aid groups implement these kinds of approaches, including the big ones like CARE, Save the Children, Mercy Corps, and so on. So do small ones; Camfed, for example, is focused on girls’ education in Africa. I’d welcome your thoughts below both on what interventions are most cost-effective, and on the organizations you recommend to others. So many Americans are looking for good aid groups to support, and here’s your chance to recommend some to other readers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28kristof.html

random ramblings

it's really nice to meet someone you get along with, and who is similar to you. making that connection is oh so special.

canada is getting slammmmmmeddddddd in the medal count compared to the usa. if things don't change fast, own the podium is going to be a big fat fail.

putting a pack of mentos in coke and throwing it off the high level bridge, while irresponsible, is quite some explosive fun.

nachos are pretty much the best food in the universe - along with bacon and dumplings :).

i am easy prey to addictive things.