Tuesday, December 10, 2002

I'm back home in warm California, escaping the bitter winters in Siberia. OOps I mean Minnesota.

So far this has been really cool. The highlights
1. Talking to a bunch of my friends from high school, college, and church
2. Seeing my cousin and his family
3. Watching ping-pong videos with Dave
4. Playing ping-pong
5. Going to In-N-Out
6. Going to Donutman
7. Getting a French cookbook from Dave

John

Thursday, December 05, 2002

Drat ... just lost a blog.

Oh well, it was only about me getting a brain scan. No, I'm not sick but I just wanted to get the experience of getting inside an MRI scanner. It is a little bit creepy with all the shrill magnetic sounds and the feeling of being entombed inside this machine. I'm just waiting to get hard copies of my brain. Cool ....

John

Monday, December 02, 2002

I had the most amazing trip to Dallas over the Thanksgiving Holidays. Everything was perfect, even the travel during the peak Holiday season. Believe it or not:

1. I didn't get searched
2. The plane left on time
3. The plane arrived early
4. A really beautiful Texan girl came to pick me up
5. Went to see my favorite hockey team on my birthday

Unfortunately, my favorite team (The Wild) did lose to the Stars. I did hedge my bets against that possibility, so it was actually a very special night.

One of the best things that night was spending time with my girlfriend. We were underneath the Stars (no pun intended), and we did a lot of things together. Her parents also made the night special by getting a fruit torte from La Madeleine's. What a way to end the evening :)

The next day, we spent the day at White Rock Lake. It was just nice to just sit and watch the ducks glide on the water. At times, we were completely oblivious to the world around us. We then went home for a Thanksgiving meal with her parents. It was a semitypical Thanksgiving meal with beef tongue, turkey, oxtail, lettuce and mushrooms, and sweet potatoes. I can't think of a more diverse Thanksgiving combo, but the food was definitely very tasty. The next day, I got to meet some of Anita's friends from church. They were very nice people, and I got to see a lot of them at church later in the evening.

The next morning Anita and I studied over at the SMU library. What struck me the most was the number of studious law students on a Thanksgiving Saturday weekend. I'm the epitome of slackerness, so I just wasted my time doing nonradiology reading. We then went to a TexMex place. I'm still confused by TexMex, because it is similar to SoCalMex. Oh well, the food was good but it was very hot. It was definitely not a Minnesotan hot dish (Although, I'm probably one :).

Sadly I had to go back home to Minnesota, but I'm already making plans to come back to Texas.


John

Monday, November 25, 2002

More quiz results

How Spiritually Intelligent Are You?

You scored 24, on a scale of 9 to 27. Here's how to interpret your score:
23 - 27 Spiritually Adept: You consistently act with spiritual intelligence, through sensitivity, compassion, and understanding

Which Bible Hero Are You?

You scored 28, on a scale of 10 to 40. Here's how to interpret your score:
25 - 34 JOSEPH. Self-assured and proud of it, you're leadership material through and through. Hey, can you help it if other people think you know it all? You do!


They wrote that I was a Mainline to Conservative Protestant. Already knew that, but took the quiz anyway.


John
Radiology is totally a self-motivated rotation, unfortunately I havn't been feeling that motivated for this past week. I'm making up for that by doing call tomorrow evening :)

Right now I'm wasting time by taking quizzes at Beliefnet.com

For my spiritual type quiz, I got a score of 90 (25-100) which makes me a "Candidate for Clergy."

Here's a description for what type of Christian I am. I completely disagree with the "Jerry Falwell" descriptor, and it was somewhat inaccurate. Rebuttal in Italics.

Jerry Falwell Christian
(a.k.a. "Historicist" or "Literalist")
You view the Bible as historically accurate and divinely inspired (Agree with this). You go to church every Sunday (Yup, sometimes twice), with the Good Book in a Bible cover (Three bible versions: RSV, TEV, and NKJV. No cover though, will get the Message and NIV sometime later in my life), and Wednesday night (Thursday night)for Bible study. You've read at least one of the books in the apocalyptic "Left Behind" series (completely disagree with the eschatology behind Left Behind), prefer your iced tea very sweet (prefers Chinese tea), and suspect Bill Clinton has murdered (had intimate relatons with) somebody somewhere in Arkansas. You watch "Touched by an Angel," even though you think it's not Christian enough (too saccharine for my tastes). You may watch Mother Angelica's Eternal Word Television Network, and you adore Dr. Laura (Yeecch!), Chuck Colson (Great guy), James Dobson (Has good points), and Rush Limbaugh (pretty good). If you're Catholic, you go to Latin Mass and weekly confession, though you don't have much to confess. You think homosexuals are sinful but try periodically to love them. You think the surrounding culture is so polluted that you shop at Christian bookstores (Hey, Northwestern is the best bookstore ever!!!!), listen only to Christian radio (I have 3 Christian radio stations on my dial, but I also listen periodically to Cities 97)and send your kids to Christian or parochial schools--or homeschool them. You give generously to your church and Christian charities. The Bible provides you not only a direct connection to God but a roadmap for how to lead your life (Can't argue with that).

John

Sunday, November 10, 2002

Today is a very special day for me (November 10). However, right now I'm dithering in the library reading stuff instead of doing what I really need to be doing.

Next up is Radiology! Will write more later.


John

Friday, October 25, 2002

Pediatrics has been going really well, and I have a really cool team. All my patients have been doing very well -- they are simply adorable. I still think that I will like to go through a medicine subspecialty, but I'm really excited about somehow incorporating kids in my practice.

Tomorrow, I'm going to pay my respects for a dear friend. He has inspired me to become the doctor I'd like to be.

John "A Wild-Stars Wars" Fan
P.S: Thank you Anita!!!

Sunday, October 13, 2002

A suffering Minnesota sportsfan

Ok, I admit that I'm originally from California. However, I've been rooting against my hometeam Angels in favor of my newly adopted team the Twins. Aargh ... the pain, the agony. Only a page can save me now. Wait a sec ... I just got a page. I hope it's not another admission. Nope, it's for dinner. Cool.

Dinnertime,


John
P.S.: I really dislike the rally monkey!!!!

Thursday, October 10, 2002

It has been awhile since I've written a substantive blog, but forgive me in advance for rambling because I have just completed my first overnight call schedule at St. Paul Kids :)

My team is amazing! The residents are super nice, cool med students, the food is good, wonderful kids, great teaching, etc... It is probably my best rotation experience yet. Sure it started out pretty slow, but then I had two admissions and got 3 hours of sleep last night. However, during the down-time Brad and I threw my tornado red foosball back and forth to one another. We also made jokes about our fluid rounds :)

Anita's visit

My girlfriend came to visit me this weekend. I've been looking forward to that weekend ever since I started surgery. We had a brunch get together at Highland Grill with my friends Jessie, Gully, Tseganesh, Heather, Lydia, and JP. Yeah, it was the usual crew but I havn't seen them in ages. The night before I went bowling with JP and Kirk over at Rand-Ham. We then went to Stillwater to visit the antique shops, apple picking, hay ride, climb trees, and watch the autumn leaves. Afterwards, I made some apple pie (actually Tseganesh helped a little) and ate my Kiwi-Apple-Sugar-Cinammon concoction. The next day, Anita and I had an adventure locating Bethlehem Baptist church. We missed the first service, so we ate breakfast at this little underground water-hole over at dinkytown. Unfortunately I started panicking that we would miss the next service, but ended up being 15 minutes early to the next church service. This weekend was definitely one of the most special weekends in my life. I'm constantly delighted by all the little surprises that Anita thinks up. She always manages to bring a smile to my face :-)


John

Monday, September 30, 2002

Getting Published

I'm gonna be published in the journal of In Vitro (Cell and Development) :) Sure, probably only 50 people in the entire world will read it but that's ok with me. I doubt there are that many people who are interested in murine leukemia viruses or myogenesis.


John

Survived my orals

I studied really hard for the oral exam, but it was actually very straight-forward. Hmm ... it would have been nice for me to show them that I've learned a ton of stuff. On the other hand, I heard that the multiple choice test is exceedingly difficult. Oh well ...


John


John

Tuesday, September 17, 2002

It has been a really slow surgery service this week, but I still have a lot of reading to do. I've made up my mind that I will not go into surgery as a profession. Right now my top three are still internal medicine, pediatrics, and neurology.

Interesting things:

1. Listening to Derrick's (the intern) self-produced CD, Love is Amazing.
2. Getting a new nickname, QuickSilver

Things to do next week.

1. Study
2. Sleep
3. Surgery rotation


John

Thursday, September 12, 2002

Biking

I've gotten to enjoy biking. Now is actually the perfect time to go biking, but I don't have the time. Sigh ...


I love ..... ...... .....

09/10/02

John
Tying knots redux

The best part of surgery is actually doing surgery, not standing around with retractors. Today, I was fortunate enough to participate in the med school's animal lab. Although it was pretty sad that a pig had to be sacrificed for our education, it definitely bolstered my confidence in surgery. I had the opportunity to cut out the spleen, gallbladder, and do a gastric pyloroplasty. Sounds kinda complicated, but it wasn't too hard of an operation. I even had a chance to practice my knot tying skills. At first, I totally forgot how to do a one-handed knot but like biking your muscle memory automatically remembers and does it for you. That's the coolest thing -- knowing how to do something without actually thinking about it :)


John

Wednesday, September 04, 2002

Tying knots

I'm starting to get the hang of tying knots, but I'm still incredibly slow compared to my chief resident and surgeon. They are just amazing to watch -- knots flying like crazy, little squirters everywhere, tools flying around :) My legs are like jelly though after a 6 hour operation -- I can't imagine doctors who continue to operate past 20 hours.

Today I was pimped quite a bit by Dr. Tuttle, fortunately I was able to answer all of his questions during his Q and A session :) He did stump me on one question: What drug was Dr. Halsted addicted to? The answer: The same drug that John Belushi overdosed with minus the heroin.

Who is Dr. Halsted? Well, he is probably the greatest American surgeon of all time, a cokehead, and an icon over at Johns Hopkins.

Tomorrow, I will be on call. Fun, fun, fun ..... Slowing down .... Yawning ... Getting Tired ... Need my sleep ..... To be continued ....


John
P.S.:

Monday, September 02, 2002

Favorite Quote of the Day

"My friends like to tell each other that I am not really a born-again Christian. They think of me more along the lines of that old Jonathan Miller routine, where he said, "I'm not really a Jew -- I'm Jew-ish." They think I am Christian-ish. But I'm not. I'm just a bad Christian. A bad born-again Christian. And certainly, like the apostle Peter, I am capable of denying it, of presenting myself as a sort of leftist liberation-theology enthusiast and maybe sort of a vaguely Jesusy bon vivant. But it's not true...I could go to a gathering of foot-wash Baptists and, except for my dreadlocks, fit right in. I would wash their feet; I would let them wash mine."

Anne Lamott


Here I am in the computer lab procrastinating as usual, instead of reading Surgical Recall, and somehow I stumbled into this quote by Anne Lamott. Sure she is as diametrically opposite of who I am theologically, politically, but both of us are completely embraced by Jesus. By the way, I would let those foot-wash Baptists wash my feet too :)

Going to church in scrubs

You know you are addicted to foosball once you start going to church in scrubs. Here I was finishing my 28 hour surgery shift, (happy as a clam sustained by a Belgian Waffle with whipped cream and blueberries), figured I could get a few games of foosball before going to church. Unfortunately I didn't have time to change so I went to Park Avenue in scrubs. In the evening I decided to change into my bright orange Northwestern volunteer shirt for church at Stadium Village. (God is probably laughing at my dress choices :). After church, pastor John challenged me to a game of ping-pong. Even though we played with an orange ball (the T-shirt was a convenient camouflage), he still whooped my butt.

John

Saturday, August 31, 2002

Surgery call

I'm sneaking out of surgery to write this blog. Actually my resident decided to take a nap, so he sent me out to do some reading :) So far surgery hasn't been as bad as I expected. On the other hand, it will get a lot busier in the upcoming weeks. The residents have been really nice, but I still think that this will be my last surgical rotation ... sigh ... Anyways, neurology is still my favorite rotation so far. That reminds me, I need to take care of my recommendation from Dr. Ramirez.


Gotta do some reading,


John

Sunday, August 25, 2002

Miniature golfing and air hockey

I went miniature golfing for the first time last Friday. Pastor John was so surprised that I have never miniature golfed that he insisted that I try it out :) On my very first hole, I had a hole in one!!!!! I didn't do so hot afterwards, but he only beat me by 4 strokes after 18 holes. Beginners luck? Next we played air hockey, where I barely beat him 7-6 on the very last second. Now Pastor J wants to challenge me in ping-pong :) All in good fun. His wife is a very good cook, unfortunately she is going to Germany for 3 weeks so I won't be able to learn cooking from her. Hmmm ... I'm doing surgery right now so I might not have the time. Anyways .... procrastinating again


John
Sara Groves Concert

It was a really emotional event for everyone, because it was here in Cedar Valley Church of Bloomington that Sara Groves launched her career. My favorite memory of her night actually came from watching her two year old Kirby play air drums in the air. What I like most about the concert tonight were the lyrics since it touched on the Christian journey as well as relationships :)

I was really lucky to sit in the third row of the concert. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera along. I also got an inside scoop on Sara since I sat next to her bus driver, Mark. He didn't give me too much dirt about Sara, since she and Troy are some of the nicest people he knows. It's always nice to hear that about Christian artists you admire.

After the concert, I bumped into Amy, Jess, Becca, and Keith. Amy showed me the secret passageway into the church where she managed to sneak in past all the lines. She is very tricky (went through the fallout shelter :) Then Becca and Keith had to drive me to my car, since I was totally lost after going through the secret entrance. I wonder how many people were at church, since so many of us skipped. Well ... at least I helped with the church set up before going to the concert :)


John
Biking

All ye Mudders, do not fear! This is not a retread (bad pun) of my fearless biking accident :) I had the most amazing bike ride with Jon Parkhurst the other day. We decided to go on a random bike ride, and we ended up in one of the prettiest parks (Crosby Farm Park) this side of St. Paul. I felt like I was completely in one of the most remote places in the twin cities. It definitely is one of the hidden gems with a small lake and a cluster of wild flowers. Yeah, it was a 16-17 mile bike ride but it was totally worth it. After biking, Jon made an amazing spaghetti meal. I think it must have been the cooking wine and the olive oil :) We also had a really neat raspberry cheesecake dessert and some kiwi fruits. If you exercise, you can pretty much eat anything you want :)


John
Car troubles

I had the most unusual car problem :) Well, I knew that I had a slow leak in my tires, so I knew that there must be a hole somewhere. Yup, the mechanic found a nail ... that's not too surprising. The unusual thing was what he found under a hood. A mouse or as Anita would say, ewwwwww ....


John

Tuesday, August 20, 2002

Thrown to the wolves

That's one of my residents theory in training the medical students. Sometimes I'm afraid of making any mistakes, but the resident allows me to make decisions and sees me struggle to determine what things are right for the patient. Eventually he corrects me, but it still is pretty nerve racking. Anyway, it is a really good way to learn but sometimes wonder if I can be more prepared.

Breathing deeply,


John

Sunday, August 18, 2002

NWA World Perks membership

I have no idea what that is. All I know is that I have gone on a ton of Northwest planes without joining a frequent flier miles. I guess by now, I probably would have been half-way to a free round trip ticket. Oh, well ... Now, I'm really confused by all this proliferation of travel websites: travelocity, expedia, orbitz, cheaptickets, etc... I think that Orbitz is sponsored by all the major carriers, however for one multi-city jaunt that I was planning there was a difference of about $100.00 between the different websites. Is it just me or they are purposefully trying to confuse everyone? I guess all these airlines are in trouble with US Airways and United threatening bankruptcy. Hmmm ... another bailout I suppose. Ideally I would like an interstate high-speed railway. Oops, the government is shutting down the Acela train service. Anyways, I've gotta go back to working on Parkinson's disease.

Later,


John

Thursday, August 15, 2002

Last weekend

I'm just really happy that my good friends have been visiting me this summer. Last weekend I got a chance to see Anita Chang. She's never been to Minnesota before, so I could show her all the neat places here. We went to the lakes, took lots of pictures of Lucy (the cartoon character, not the skeleton :), ate wonderful ice cream (Sebastian Joe's), touched the Mississippi, made a great chicken dinner sans okra, and went to an open house. To be continued ...


John

P.S.: Someone just challenged me to play foosball.
Surgery Options for Parkinsonism and Rotations

That's gonna be my talk for my neurosurgery rotation :) Fun, eh. It was actually frustating for me to remember all of the different pathways that lead to movement.

I'm really happy about my neurology evaluation -- it's nice to know that all that hard work paid off. I just had a talk with my advisor about rotations. Of course he recommended his own site (HCMC -- " a great institution "), but he also said that Parkland has one of the best internal medicine programs in the country. One guy over there discovered the receptor for cholesterol, and subsequently won the nobel prize. I'm just hoping that I will be able to land a spot in their residency program, but I guess it is too soon to worry about it now. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy every moment, pray for friends, and root against Oklahoma :) I just hope that I'm not going to get into any trouble for diong that. Hmmmm ....


John

Tuesday, August 13, 2002

I like Fajitas-

Doing neurosurgery, and am busy however will write more about a wonderful weekend :)

John

Tuesday, August 06, 2002

Tseganesh's birthday party (08/03/02) (Food alert)

Rain, rain, go away. Didn't quite happen. We were originally going to have an outdoor barbecue, but Tseganesh improvised and barbecued in the garage.

I really liked the strawberries, chicken and the salsa. I tried the steak medium-rare, but I guess I should have had it medium-well. The best part of the party is watching the fly girls (Tseganesh and Jen) and the fly guys (Kirk, Joe, and Lukoma). I actually "danced" with them at the talent show but I forgot all my moves. As I told everyone, I have dancing apraxia or normal pressure hydrocephalus secondary to dancing (my neurology differential). You see my feet seem to be magnetically stuck to the floor. That's really bad when you want to dance.

Did you know that Kirk and Joe are thugs? They actually stole flowers from my house to give to Tseganesh. Did you know the excuse they gave to Tseganesh? They said that angels from the sky told them to give it to the most beautiful girl in the world. Hmmm ... that's actually a neat pick-up line :)

John
Starting to get the hang of urology (sorry another bad pun)

If you havn't guessed it already, I just watched the awfully dreadful movie Austin Power's, _Goldmember_, starring Tom Cruise ... wait a sec ... Mike Myers. Bad movie, baaad ... baaaad ... movie. I'm actually sheepish in admitting that I actually watched the movie (another baaad pun). All I can say was that it was Steve's and Joe's idea. If I had my way, I would have gone to all the non-clothing intensive stores. Their other idea was to implement project John. They actually made me go into Banana's Republic, JCrew, Macy's, Sven and Ole's Navy (Yay ... my first Sven and Ole joke). You see I'm probably the least knowledgable person when it comes to clothes. My brain is filled with other more important things, like neurons, astrocytes, microglia, oligodendrocytes, cerebral spinal fluid, and many more cells :)

It was the Mall of America's 10th anniversary -- not too shabby. Don't laugh, my favorite mall is actually Har Mar Mall. Some may see it is the worst mall in Roseville, but it is my favorite because it has Northwestern and B&N bookstores. Northwestern is the coolest store in the entire universe (ok, i'm biased because i met jennifer knapp there and i like their italian soda).

Back to urology. I got to do some H&Ps today. That's pretty cool. I also immediately diagnosed someone with a lt middle cerebral infarct (ok, that's a neurology diagnosis but I already said that I think like a neurologist). Anyway, I'm getting a lot better at asking the basic urology questions and feeling the prostate. I guess it has taken me about a week to sorta get the hang of it, but I guess it's better late than never. I was actually jealous that I didn't get to see an IPP and a laparoscopic nephrectomy today. Oh well, it would have been a really long day if I had stayed, and you probably won't be reading this blog :)

Should be reading urology,


John

Sunday, August 04, 2002

Twisted minds

There are definitely some twisted minds in the urology department :) I just saw an online video about hematuria with "Red, red wine" as the theme song. Ugh ...


John

Friday, August 02, 2002

Procrastinating

I know, I'm supposed to be studying urology but I can't get the stream of thought going. (Bad pun intended :). Hey I realized I misspelled Ten Shekel Shirt, but I don't feel like editing the blogs. Did you know that Ten Shekel Shirt is actually a story from the bible? Read Joshua ... one of the more interesting books in the bible. Well I gotta go, I need to help Jessie move into her new room. Jay has finally left the building :)


John
Sleep

Yesterday, I had a really wacky sleep schedule. I slept at 10:30 p.m., woke up at 3 a.m. read for half-an-hour, woke up at 6:30. I dunno, why I did this. Maybe subconsciously I'm training myself to have a sturgeon's sleep schedule. Of course when you're sleep deprived you dream weird stuff. This has been the second time in about a couple of months that I dreamt of listening to KTIS. The first time around I dreamt about listening to Ten Shekel's Shirt, _Ocean_. This time around I just dreamt of listening to random songs. At least I didn't dream about doing a neurology presentation :)

John
To do list

1. Tseganesh's party
2. Do something spontaneous next week
3. Find a Louisiana-style restaurant in the Twin Cities, just kidding!
4. Study Urology
5. Renaissance festival

Juan Roberto
I would say that I'm a fairly optimistic and upbeat fella, but urology has not been all that I hoped for. On the other hand, the hours are good even though I have to wake up at a really early time :) Another good thing about urology is that they have some of the nicest residents (even thoough they are sturgeons :). I've been following Mark, and so far he's been one of the nicest people (ok, I realize I've used the word nice twice in a sentence but they really are nice :). Today, he spotted me eight dollars for some pizza :) The operating room has been really cool as well -- I saw a bunch of urethrocystoscopies (cystos), suprapubics, radical prostectomies, and a vasectomy. What's worrisome for me is that I'm still pretty much clueless about most of urology and I've been seeing mainly BPH and prostate cancer. There was a lot more variety and a lot more thinking in the neurology clinics. I miss neurology, and sometimes I even dream about neurology. Hmmm ... I wonder what that means.


John

Saturday, July 27, 2002

Gotta thank my sister for fixing my blog problems.

This has been a very good week for me, because I just finished my first rotation. To top it off, Heidi came all the way from New Hampshire :) Originally we were going to canoe over at Lake Calhoun. Unfortunately due to the unpredictable inclement weather, we ended up walking around the lake. Next we went south to Lake Harriet to the rose garden. Her aunt Bonnie was extremely knowledgable about all the rose varieties. I guess my favorites were the mini-roses since I've never seen them before. We then sauntered along Uptown and ate at Sawatdee, one of the local Thai places. It was quite an adventure since I lost Heidi's parents when we were weaving through Hennepin Avenue. Thankfully, we had cell phones to communicate with one another. Heidi told me that she and Joe actually had walkie-talkies back home. I wish they could have stayed for a longer period of time, but alas they had to leave for N. Dakota.

Here's my assessment of neuro.

Great residents! I actually nominated Nidal to be resident of the year :) I do enjoy the intellectual aspect of neuro, but sometimes I feel frustrated that there still isn't much we could do for them. Met many interesting patients from ordinary patients to hall of fame athletes -- I will remember their stories for a very long time.

That's it for now :)


John

Friday, July 12, 2002

Testing 1, 2, 3

Can you read me out there?

Hmmm ...

Back to journal searches.


John

Monday, July 01, 2002

July 1, 2002

First day in neurology clinic. Tired? Yes! Happy? Yes! Sad? Yes.

Your heart really goes out to all the patients -- they probably go through more pain and heartache than your average person in clinic. However, it is also the most intellectually stimulating field of medicine. Unfortunately there isn't much we can do to heal them, but the good news is that we can always care for the patient even in the most hopeless situation.

Yeah, I'm tired but I still have a lot to learn. Will go over my H&P skills tonight as well as another chapter of my neurology text.

Lately I've been listening constantly to You're Everything by the David Crowder Band. Really good stuff.


John


Saturday, June 29, 2002

Aaarggh! I accidentally crashed the system. I had a bunch written down, but now I'm too lazy to rewrite stuff.

Will write more about my medical school experiences.


John

Thursday, June 20, 2002

Take my Quiz on QuizYourFriends.com!

Unfortunately, my posts after today are not getting through. It's so frustrating!


John

Tuesday, June 04, 2002

Things to blog about this week

1. Jennifer Knapp/Jars of Clay concert
2. Transition day
3. KTIS party
4. KTIS celebration
5. Going home to LA
6. Board Studying

Saturday, June 01, 2002

Top 10 Christian Pickup lines

1) “Nice Bible.”

2) “I feel impressed by the Lord to come talk to you.”

3) “I know a church where we could go and talk.”

4) “Is it a sin that you stole my heart?”

5) “Christians don't shake hands, Christians gotta hug.”

6) “Did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?”

7) “The Word says, ‘Give drink to those who are thirsty, and feed the hungry’, so how about dinner?”

8) “You don't have an accountability partner? What a coincidence! Neither do I.”

9) “Excuse me, I believe one of your ribs belongs to me.”

10) “What? Friends do too listen to ‘Amazing Grace’ in the dark.”
I found the coolest website today.

www.hob.com (house of blues). I've been wasting my time listening to Jars of Clay and Jennifer Knapp's concert online.


John

Friday, May 31, 2002

Highlights

1. Delaying the boards. I'm taking it on June 19, which means that I get to study everything twice :)
2. Jennifer Knapp/Jars of Clay concert
3. Lunch with John
4. Transitition day


John

Friday, May 24, 2002

Since the boards are looming right over the horizon, I find that my stress level is ratcheting up considerably (cliched but true). What do I do? Instead of studying like I was supposed to, I watched a movie, surfed the internet, etc. It is really discomfiting to me.

Here's a quote from Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea

Coming soon ...

Random thoughts percolating from my head
Process and evolution
Death of certainty vs. the triumph of faith
The need for continuing transformation.

Pseudophilosophy alert

Studying for boards made me realize that despite my delusions you can't cram all of reality in a single month. At these moments I find my thoughts continually evolving maybe from a Barthian outlook to something closer to a Whitehead or a Hartshorne. Yet I find process thought to still be highly unsatisfying and I still find my comfort in the first question and answer from my beloved Heidelberg's catechism. By chance I came across the verse accidentally before coming to the computer lab. I Corinthians 6:19. You are not your own, but were bought for a price. Can reality be discerned at a quantum level or is it at a higher level that none of our instruments can measure? We all know Heisenberg's famous law that the mere fact of measurement changes the variables that you attempt to measure. What if the phenomena is greater than anything we can measure? For example, people are still trying to measure the amount of particles in the universe. What if that something is infinitely greater than all the particles put together? Is there any hope for humanity to ever understand what that object might be? Some might find comfort in agnosticism or atheism, but right now I find comfort that I'm in an intellectual wrestling match ... and get this ... I'm losing ... big time. Yet, here is where faith comes in. Faith is not about believing that the earth was created in 6 days. Faith is about harboring seeds of doubt; yet seeking whole-heartedly for the one who bought me for a price. Seek and ye shall find ...


John
P.S.: I believe that my faith in Christ is stronger than it has ever been, but it made me realize that I still need to be transformed. To be continued ...

Wednesday, May 22, 2002

Board Studying Update III

I've actually been very lax about studying for boards, so right now I'm cutting on corners (ie: maximizing my efficiency) by doing more questions and less reading. We'll see whether this strategy would work or not.

Agnus Dei and Lux Aeternam

I just found out that two of my favorite instrumental pieces have been transcribed to the words in the Requiem and Mass. Very Cool .... Amy was actually quizzing me on my knowledge of French words (I borrowed her dictionary when I was reading Peter Mayle's book). I flunked miserably, but the word for sheep in Latin is very close to the French version. This led to Agnus Dei (ie: Adagio for Strings for voices) --> search on the internet --> Lux Aeternam (ie: Elgar's Nimrod).

Gift ideas: There is a CD which has both of these pieces. So sis, that's another thing you could buy for me :)

Merci beaucoup,

John

Saturday, May 18, 2002

Birthday Parties

I'd like to wish Jen H., Norma, Heather, Roseann happy birthday. I can't believe that I was actually debating on whether to study or attend their birthday party :) Hanging out with friends definitely won out. Hint: I would like a fruit torte for my birthday cake (I could care less for cream, chocholate, or icing).

I can't forget all my other good friends with a birthday this month.

Heidi, Chris, Sharon, and Rob.

It seems like all my good friends are having a birthday this month :)


John

Sunday, May 12, 2002

Board studying update II

Studying behavioral science reaffirmed the fact that I'm not going into psychiatry. I can study pathophys and path all day (ok I'm exaggerating), but it was really hard to get motivated to study psych. Hmmm ...

Tomorrow, I'm gonna study hematology and gross anatomy. Sounds like fun!


John
Partying

I hadn't planned on going to a party, but Rinde owed me Jamba Juice (long story) so we went Jamba Juice hunting in St. Paul. Should have known better ... nothing happens in St. Paul at night! We then went partying over in uptown. Rinde and Tseganesh were amazing when they did their salsa dancing. However, Murray has all the skills (you can't blame him, he's going into neurosurgery at UCLA). I think internal medicine is for people who can think, but can't dance, and surgery is for people who ... never mind :)

John

Thursday, May 09, 2002

Board studying update

Done with Cardio/Respiratory pathophys, path. Need to go over pharm today. Studying for boards is probably one of the hardest things I have to do in my life. Studying is such a solitary activity, and I feel like I should be out there connecting with people. I went to Barnes and Nobles and saw a bunch of medical students studying. That was pretty cool, unfortunately there was a Star Wars convention book signing thing. That definitely reduced the cool factor of the store by 50%. Oh well ...

I looked at some pharm that night, but I'm easily distracted in a bookstore. I ended up perusing books by Marcus Borg (really liberal theologian), Bill Frist (first Dr. in the senate since the 20's), and Lee Strobel. I'll write more when I have some free time.

Good News

I just got into the sheep lab. Learn to intubate, start IV lines, interosseous line, and other cool stuff.


John

Friday, May 03, 2002

Rededicating myself to medicine (Rated R: For explicitly Religious Content)

I've got a confession to make, this year I feel like I've been running on anaerobic glycolysis all year long. To all the nonbiologists out there, ie: been very inefficient in working up to my potential. I can certainly make a ton of excuses, but some of the reasons are

1. procrastination
2. stopped dreaming big dreams
3. fear

This year, I learned early on that I could do just fine in exams no matter how late I started studying for exams. Unfortunately this isn't the case for boards, since there is just way too much information to cram in a week. It's actually fairly scary, since I've not been able to study 8-10 hours consistently for more than several days this year. With the boards coming up, I really need to find a way to study consistently for an entire month. This month is an amazing opportunity for me to synthesize everything that I've learned in medical school. I need to be sure that I don't waste this tremendous opportunity.

Although doing well in the boards is certainly a worthy reason to rededicate myself to medicine, the real reason I'm rededicating my life is that I've had the opportunity to get to know the Goodwin and Helenihi family. This past week, I learned that Kacie has just returned home to Jesus. Her parents have spent almost every single waking moment with her in the hospital for the past 200 days. What would I do if I were her doctor? her parent? her friend? It's true that medicine is not about knowing all the answers, in fact I'm wrestling to see God's goodness in all of this. Yet her parents could still say to me that it is important to love God, even more than Kacie. Where does their faith come from? In her brief life, Kacie has touched thousands of lives from the nursing staff in the hospital to individuals praying for her on the other side of the world. Her story has touched me, someone she has never met. It made me realize how precious life is, even though it is fleeting like a blade of grass. There are stories of triumph as well. I've gotten to know Rob and Evan. These 2 guys are such a bundle of joy, and yet they are so incredibly mature for their age. I just heard back from Kelly and Joe that the test results are better than they expected. Praise God! There are times when I wonder why I'm learning all this minutiae in medical school, but then you have a face, a family instead of a line in a textbook.

In a way, I've broken the cardinal rule of medicine. I've grown attached to these kids -- you start to care too much. I've certainly asked the question,"What can I do?" Hmmm ... I guess the best answer is to care for the patient and become the best doctor I could possibly be. As the author Hebrews wrote, I need to cast every weight and sin (procrastination, fear, you name it) that clings so tightly and look to Jesus the author and finisher of my faith.

Needing to be transformed,


John

Monday, April 29, 2002

The ABC’s of Love

Compiled by Emily Susan Ward


Abide
“Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.”
John 15:9


Bears
“Love...bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
1 Corinthians 13:7


Compassion
“And He said, ‘I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.’”
Exodus 33:19


Desire
“I am my Beloved's, And His desire is for me.”
Song of Solomon 1:7


Eternal
“But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith; praying in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.”
Jude 1: 20-21


Faithful
“And I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, In lovingkindness and in compassion, And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know the Lord.”
Hosea 2:19-20


Glance
“You have made my heart beat faster, my sister, my bride; You have made my heart beat faster with a single glance of your eyes, With a single strand of your necklace.”
Song of Solomon 4:9


Holy
“But as for me, by Thine abundant lovingkindness I will enter Thy house, At Thy holy temple I will bow in reverence for Thee. O Lord, lead me in Thy righteousness because of my foes; Make Thy way straight before me.”
Psalm 5:7-8


Irresistible
“You are as beautiful as Tirzah, my darling, As lovely as Jerusalem, As awesome as an army with banners. ‘Turn your eyes away from me, For they have confused me...’”
Song of Solomon 6:4


Jealous
“Then the word of the Lord of hosts came saying, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I am exceedingly jealous for Zion, yes, with great wrath I am jealous for her.’’ ‘Thus says the Lord, ‘I will return to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the City of Truth, and the mountain of the Lord of hosts will be called the Holy Mountain.’’”
Zechariah 8:1


Kind
“And so, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience…”
Colossians 3:12


Love
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:38-39


Merciful
“But Thou, O Lord, art a God merciful and gracious, Slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness and truth.”
Psalm 86:15


New
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”
John 13:34


Openhearted
“Open to me the gates of righteousness; I shall enter through them, I shall give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord; The righteous will enter through it. I shall give thanks to Thee, for Thou hast answered me; And Thou hast become my salvation.”
Psalm 118: 19-21


Perfect
“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.”
1 John 4:18


Quiet
“The Lord your God is in your midst, A victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.”
Zephaniah 3:17


Righteous
“My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.”
1 John 2:1-2


Strong
“And he answered and said, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.’”
Luke 10: 27


Truth
“Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.”
1 John 3:18


Understanding
“May their hearts be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ Himself…”
Colosians 2:2

ferVent
“Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins.”
1 Peter 4:8


Wisdom
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; A good understanding have all those who do His commandments; His praise endures forever.”
Psalm 111:10


eXalted
“My soul shall make its boast in the Lord; The humble shall hear it and rejoice. O magnify the Lord with me, And let us exalt His name together.”
Psalm 34:2-3


Yearn
“Because of the proof given by this ministry they will glorify God for your obedience to your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for the liberality of your contribution to them and to all, while they also, by prayer on your behalf, yearn for you because of the surpassing grace of God in you.”
2 Corinthains 9:13-14


Zeal
“I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire, that you may become rich, and white garments, that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; be zealous therefore, and repent.”
Revalations 3:18-19

Saturday, April 27, 2002

Bowling

I had fun bowling with the people in the Internal Medicine Interest Group. I had no idea that doctors can be so competitive :) Anyway, I was in the group with Bobbi Daniels, Wes Miller, and Jonathan Ravdin. Either Ravdin or Miller is the head of the internal medicine department at the U. Since Laura T. was also bowling with us, we decided to split into teams (Ravdin and me vs. Laura and Bobbi) -- Boys against the Girls. The boys won, but Ravdin had to suffer the indignity of losing to Bobbi. I didn't do to bad, I got a 90 but I was really hoping to bowl 100. Still, it was only my 4th time bowling.

OSCE

I loved the OSCE!!!! Technically it was an exam of our physical examination skills, but I spent a lot of time chatting with my third year friends who volunteered for the OSCE. It was relaxing and also a confidence booster for the wards. I'm almost there!


John

Scheduling

Praise God for this whole scheduling business. In an earlier blog, I wrote about how screwed I was in the lottery. Believe it or not, my schedule turned out to be much better than I expected. Here goes:

Neurology -- FUMC (closed it)
Urology -- VA
Neurosurgery -- HCMC
Surgery -- FUMC
Pediatrics -- St. Paul Childrens (closed it)
Med I -- Abbot (closed it)
Med II -- HCMC (closed it)
Ob/Gyn -- Unity (closed it)
Family Practice/ Medicine -- ?

As you see, I got the last spot at 5 sites! A big sigh of relief :)


John
P.S.: I got pretty much all the sites that I wanted except for surgery. Still, rumor has it that I will be working with Dr. Dunn who is probably one of the best surgeons at the U :) My only concern is if I have the stamina to work 100 hour weeks :)

Monday, April 22, 2002

Stuff to do this week

1. Resolve parking
2. Bowling
3. OSCE
4. Work on scheduling years 3 and 4

John
P.S.: I'm feeling a lot better today. This has been one of the faster turnarounds, yayy!!! My red nose is pretty cute, too!

Saturday, April 20, 2002

It's been awhile since I've blogged.

The highlight this week was going iceskating for the first time in my life at Mariucci arena with Roseann. At first I was really tentative, because I was really afraid of falling. Believe it or not I didn't fall at all that day. (It also helps that Roseann sent me an email with a tagline from Psalms -- something about the Lord doesn't let the righteous fall :)

I've also been studying really hard for the boards. This past couple of weeks I've been trying to finish BRS Pathology. It's quite a chore but I'm almost done with it. The bad news is that I just got sick :( AAARGGH .....

Going back home to rest,


John

Wednesday, April 10, 2002


What Flavour Are You? I am Vanilla Flavoured.I am Vanilla Flavoured.


I am one of the most popular flavours in the world. Subtle and smooth, I go reasonably with anyone, and rarely do anything to offend. What Flavour Are You?


Hmmm .... Ice, Ice, Icecream, baby?
04/10/02

I wish that I spend more time learning in clinic. So far we havn't done much except hear a few cool murmurs.

Update on Board Studying

I'm beginning to feel a little bit more comfortable in biochem, however there is a ton of material that I still need to relearn for microbiology.


John

Monday, April 08, 2002

We ARE the Champions (April 6, 2002)

Minnesota's hockey team just won the championships. I find it interesting that whenever a team wins, I prefer the pronoun "we". If "they" had lost, see I probably would have said that "they" always choke. I would have felt really bad for Adam Hauser, because he is a genuinely good guy but he let in two soft goals. The turning point for me was seeing Matt Koalska score with 52.5 seconds left. I just knew that Minnesota would win the game. You could just tell that the Maine players were really tired in overtime and they never seriously challenged Adam. My favorite moments was when he tripped and elbowed a few Maine players. I'm just glad that the game wasn't decided on a dumb penalty. Wait a sec .... it was Schutte tripped my man Koalska again that lead to the powerplay goal by Grant "I score garbage goals" Potulny. If there is anything good that comes out of No Dak, it's Potulny.

Stupid Undergrads

I can't believe that there was a riot in Dinkytown. I went out to celebrate with a couple of friends in downtown St. Paul and the St. Paulites were they were their normal genteel yet exuberant selves. The undergrads are an embarrassment to the state of Minnesota. What is the point in throwing beer cans to the police? Hmmm .... Let's see how much mace we can tolerate?

Celebration at Mariucci

My favorite quote comes from #1, Adam Hauser:"Thank God for creating the game of hockey." Hockey is truly a divine game, despite being popularized by the Canadiens :)


John

If I lived in Middle-Earth, it would be in:
The Shire

The rolling green hills, the springtime weather, and especially being surrounded by the ones you love makes the Shire a comfortable area for you. You love being surrounded only by the ones you care about, and you only desire this in an environment that is vast and open to nature, unlike in the cities or the caves.


Thursday, April 04, 2002

Upcoming blogs

1. Word Freak
2. Why I want to go to Provence
3. The connection between 1 and 2

John
Downtown Minneapolis (March 30, 2002)

S, T, and I (I mean J) decided to go downtown right after our pharm exam. We decided to go to try to find food. By magic we ended up in the IDS tower's food court. S had mashed potato, T had a Phillly Cheese Steak, and J had a tempura bowl from Little Tokyo. Next we decided to go to the flower show at MF's. I've already waxed eloquently (or rambled on and on and on and on) about gardens so I'm not gonna repeat myself. Next we decided to go to the 51 floor of the IDS building. Why? It's there :) T peeked into one of the offices to get a glimpse of downtown. Out of the blue we meet one of T's acquaintances, Mr. B. he let us see the view from his office. Isn't that cool or what! The only downside from working there is having your ears pop as you go up the elevator. Then we also did some window shopping at NM & S5A. Never been in those stores before. Who could blame me? The prices are outrageous! I felt more at home at B&N and Bull's Eye Place aka T, MF's hip little sister.

Downtown was fun!

J


Buxtehude

Last year I got to listen to St. John's passion over at the House of Hope, and I really wanted to listen to St. Matthew's this year. Alas, it was not to be and I got to listen to Buxtehude instead. What I liked most about the concert were the verses he chose to illustrate the 7 parts. My favorite verse has got to be Song of Songs 2:14. However, the high point for me is to sing the great hymn "O Sacred Head" by Bach. I love that song!

Good Friday it was,

John

Downtown St. Paul

T's sister T had free parking next to the Fitz, so we decided to check out M's beloved Curmudgeon Garrison Keillor. Unfortunately it was already sold out when we got there. Next I wanted to go to Northwestern bookstore to see if there were any Third Day tickets. Aack, the store just closed. We ended up watching MJ on TV. Since the blogs are getting progressively shorter (I'm getting tired of writing), it's time to study biochem.

John
Spring is Here? (04/04/02)

Minnesota right now is its cold and ornery self. The weather has been really mild until we got the biggest snowfall on April 1 in 18 years. I'm sure someone up there must be playing an April Fool's joke on us :) I'm slightly regretting not going back to California for spring break, but I definitely had an Easter to Remember.


John

KTIS/KLOVE Addiction

What do you do when you are bored and have lots of free time. Give up? Call KTIS/KLOVE to win cool free prizes. However for the life of me, I could never get through. I'm beginning to wonder if there is something wrong with my phone or my fingers :) The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that they are sending subliminal messages over the airway. In any case it worked! I'm changing my board dates so I can go to Northwestern/KTIS grand celebration on June 8. I'm even going to volunteer for the event.

Note to reader: John loves food. John will work at food concession stand. John loves Sara Groves. John is past the wishing.

The word is out!

John


An Easter to Remember

Mount Olivet

Out of all the holidays in the Christian calendar, Easter has got to be my favorite. This year I decided that I want to go visit a big church for the Easter services. My church meets at night, so I can check out some of the other local churches in the area. Before I went, I prayed that God would lead me to the church. I felt compelled to go downtown, but somehow I couldn't find any churches. Next I ended up on 394, then somehow I ended up on Theodore Wirth. Decided to shadow a car, since I figured that they must be going to church. Car moves to driveway. Ok, person got back from church :) Went around Cedar Lake, still see no churches. Went down to Harriet Lake, no churches yet. Somehow I ended up on 50th, decided hmmm ... wait a sec. Wow, Mount Olivet was the first church that I saw all morning! You see, I've always wanted to go to that church since I heard that it is the biggest Lutheran church in the country. Time: 10:30. No worries, that church has services at 6,7,8,9,10,11,12,1. I feel kinda sorry for Pastor Youngdahl. What a day! Decided to pray at Lake Harriet. Lasted 10 minutes. Why? I felt a cold wind blowing accross my shoulders. Read Jesus' last recorded prayer John 17 in the car, then headed back to Mount Olivet. Some observations:

1. Lots of people go to church on Easter
2. The greeters seem genuinely surprised when you bring a bible to church
3. Lutherans have a quiet strength about them (ie: they don't talk that much :)
4. Really awesome choir
5. People sing softly
6. Short services! This was the shortest service that I've ever been to. 35 minutes!!!!! My dad preaches longer than that (just kidding dad :)
7. A lot of people where funny robes

Park Avenue

I felt that God certainly did not lead me to a church that just met for 35 minutes, so God led me to Park Avenue Methodist. This is not your typical methodist church, because it is truly the most integrated church that I've ever been in. Before the service, pastor Mark greeted me by saying Happy Easter. How many other pastors take the time to do that? On Easter no less. I came during the 12 o'clock service which is the bilingual service. I don't sing Spanish, but I enjoy praising God in different tongues! Although there were fewer people there than at Mount Olivet, it was definitely a more dynamic service. I felt HIS presence there, and I couldn't help but break down in tears. After Efrem preached he invited people to go to the Altar -- those who want to partake in the power of Jesus' resurrection. I decided that I needed to go up there. While I was up there, I felt a hand touch my shoulder and someone begin to pray for me. Whoever that angel was, thank you.

Stadium Village

Normally I arrive at Stadium Village about half an hour before services start, but since I overslept I barely got there 10 minutes before the services started. Before Easter, I prayed that I could have the opportunity to sing Christ is Risen Today. Did God really answer prayers! At Mount Olivet I sang 2 stanzas of the song. At Park Ave, I sang 6 stanzas. Finally tonight we sang 4 stanzas. At Stadium Village we have a more contemporary service, but I felt so blessed by the hymns we sang last week. This past month pastor John Sanny has been preaching a really powerful series on Jesus' blood. What if Jesus was your defense lawyer? Wouldn't that be the most awesome thing? Through Jesus, God sees us as His precious children not the objects of His wrath.

Christ is risen indeed!


John

Saturday, March 30, 2002

Outline for some upcoming blogs

1. KTIS/KLOVE addiction
2. Downtown (Marshall Fields, IDS, Neiman Marcus, Sachs Fifth Avenue)
3. Buxtehude
4. Garrison Keillor
5. Dumb Jokes

Stay tuned, Don't turn away from your blog channel. Same place, same time.

Ever procrastinatingly yours,

John
Seder Meal (March 26, 2002)

Ok, I was debating all week last week whether to finally start studying for pharm or participate in the Seder. I decided to do both. Unfortunately I've already eaten a big meal before the seder, so I missed out on all the good cooking :( It was a very meaningful service for me, because I started to see the connections between passover and the last communion (stories of redemption). I'm not feeling very philosophical right now, so I won't go into depth into soteriology and semiotics. What event that happened about 2000 years ago is the most important things ever to happen in this world? Go to church tomorrow to find out :) BTW: Happy Easter!!!!!!!!!

The main thing that left me confused was the 13 attributes of God. I counted and recounted and even asked Keith to help me cout, but I could only count 11 attributes of God. I'm pretty good at math, so that left me kinda baffled until I finally realized that the authors of the song came up with Lord, and Lord God as 2 separate attributes.

I liked all the songs that the cantors (Jess and Amy) selected, but I couldn't help but smile when I heard the pentatonic unaccompanied spoken progression.

Makes me wonder what I will be singing in eternity,


John
Monday (March 25, 2002)

Sorry for getting my blogs out of order. The blog down below detailed my hurting thumb on Tuesday. We're stepping back in time to Monday.
Read Blog on Da Afghan for intro details.

I was hungry and getting desperate for food. At this point, I even ran out of cereal. Time to go to the grocery.

My new favorite grocery store is the one in Har Mar Mall in Roseville. Why?
1. It is brand new.
2. It is next to my favorite bookstore. Northwestern.

I was hungry, but I decided to get tickets to the Ginny Owens or Third Day concert first. Bad news. They sold out of Third Day and they didn't have Ginny Owens. I thought to myself that should be ok, since I could listen to Ginny's new CD on their listening stations. Even worse news! Their listening stations were down. I did get to listen to Fernando Ortega's latest release, though. So even though I'm not going to his concert (sob, sob, sob), I still heard some of his newest stuff.

Went shopping. Gave in to my craving for fruit: oranges, bananas, and apples for now. Finally found out what my favorite fruit is. Try this experiment out for yourself:

Step 1: Fasting
Step 2: Buy all assortment of fruits.
Step 3: See what fruit you eat

Answer: My favorite fruit is the orange!!!!!!

It is about 3 o'clock now, and I still havn't studied for my exam. Decided that it was a good time to take a nap. Then I visited people at Nu Sigma and saw how stressed they were :( Probably wasn't a good idea to delay studying for the exam (6 o'clock now). Studied for a little bit. Watched movies.

Thumb still good,


John
Latest Test News

Thank goodness that I finally completed this hectic test schedule. It will slow down considerably for the next month or so, when I finally recover for the boards. I did ok on my tests, but not nearly as well as I did on the first two. I'm just glad it's over .... Hooray for Spring Break!!!!!!!!

Thumb's Importance in the Grand Scheme of Things

Do you ever recall the passage in the bible about the unity of the body? Each part actually has a unique function including the thumb. Sometimes when you are in medical school you overemphasize your gray matter and the corpus callosum. But did you know, that when you take a test the thumb is just as important :) I found this out the hard way when I had a pretty nasty papercut over my thumb right before the test. I went out to the test proctor to see if she had any bandaids, but she didn't have any. All I could do was think ... thumb hurts ... need to suck on thumb ... are my platelets working? thank goodness I didn't take aspirin before the test ... BT normal ...

Just imagine if you didn't have a thumb. Would you be able to grip a #2 pencil and bubble in the answers? No you couldn't. Fortunately I still had a thumb, but it hurts so bad to bubble my exam. I couldn't think straight.

I did fine on the exam, but I might have been a wee bit overconfident in preparing for it. You see, I decided to watch History of the World Part I and VS right before the test. I also put in less on that exam than I have for any of my other pathophys exams.

Note to self:
1. Don't ever watch HOTWP1 right before a Seder meal. I could even generalize it to: Don't watch any movies by Mel Brooks right before the seder :) I swear you can't listen to the cantor without grinning :)
2. Don't watch VS. I mean I do love Kirsten Dunst, but even she can't save the movie.


John
ACP News

Unfortunately I just found out that I didn't get elected to the ACP-Student Council. I really like this organization, and I highly recommend it over AMSA or AMA. Those other organizations are way too political for my tastes. The president for the AMSA chapter here at the U is a pretty cool person, though :)


John

Sunday, March 24, 2002

Know Name Records

Did I know that place? I figured since I was lucky to get 50 minutes on my parking meter for free, I might as well wander around dinkytown. Went into the store, looked at a lot of no name records until I went to the CD section. Whaddya know ... I found 2 used Tori Amos CDs.

From the Choir Girl Hotel
To Venus and Back

Making out like a bandit,


John
P.S.: Tori likes gardens, too! Hint: She wrote a song called Datura.
Da Afghan (March 23, 2002)

Just like old times ... My cupboard is bare, all food gone ... Thinking about food ... What will I eat???

Got some money in my pocket ...

Mickey D's? Just ate 2 big macs 2 days ago.
Arby's? Just ate there last night.
Dragon Court? Ate there during lunch yesterday.
Big 10? The sub is not filling enough for dinner.
Chipotle? Waiting to use my bag for later.
Booger King? Craving for veggies.
Hong Kong Noodles? That's for my lunch and dinner on Sunday.
Pizza? Yuck! After all these lunch lectures with pizza, no thanks!!!!
Supermarket? Too lazy to get food.
Fine dining? I'm hungry, man ... Gotta eat quick!
Porky's? Didn't feel like driving.
Matt's Bar? Jucy Lucy's are fabulous, but the wait is too long.
Nu Sigma Nu? Leftover lasagna. Ummm ... no.

As you can see, I'm quickly running out of options. Then I remembered about Da Afghan Express. Never been there, but that should satisfy my craving for something different.

The food was decent, I got chicken curry in case you were wondering. However, they watered it down to cater it to the American public. I like my curries hot and spicy, just like MTV (just kidding!). MTV has some rather insipid programming of late -- they also recycle programs over and over. After awhile, you think that there could be nothing more lame than HIG (check what the acronym means at www.paulinia.blogspot.com. Be forwarned it isn't a pretty site.

I'm going to post a review of their shiskabab once I get back there, but what I really want most is their baklava.

Sweet!

John

Saturday, March 23, 2002

Done with Pathology!!!!!!!!!!

Hallelujah! Done with two exams so far!

Even though I've studied less than I've ever had in medical school for these set of exams, I'm fortunate that I havn't really done that poorly. My mind is really on other things at the moment. In case you were wondering Pauline, this is what I got. (Note to sister: I probably won't post my bad grades on the internet :-)

Lab Medicine: 67/68
Pathology: 54/55

Please pray for me, because two of my hardest tests are coming up: hematology pathophysiology and pharmacology.


John

Thursday, March 21, 2002

Suturing

I got to practic my suturing skills on Tuesday (March 19, 2002). Pigs' feet are really tough to suture, and I feel like I need a lot of practice with suturing. The good news is that with lots of practice (ex: foosball), I think I could get pretty good at it. Maybe, I'm going to practice suturing during my summer break before my surgery rotation.

Will be insanely busy next week. Lots of fun ahead,


John

Monday, March 18, 2002

Relationship Lunch Lecture

We had a lunch lecture on relationships today by a marriage counselor in the medical school. It was a very good and encouraging talk for me. Did you know that doctors have a 22% less divorce rate than the general population. Lawyers and dentists have a much higher divorce rate ... I wonder why? The profession with the lowest divorce rates are the clergy and farmers. Taxi cab drivers and bartenders have the highest divorce rates, Yada, yada, yada ....

I actually took notes about the talk on intentional couples. Here are a few things I jotted down:

Nurturing couple rituals. For example leaving and returning home, talk times, having a date night, bedtime, etc ...
Negotiating roles and responsibilities.
What to accept vs. what to keep struggling over.

I have the serenity prayer (ok, the Zits cartoon version) posted on my locker. I'm being random again, which means that it's time to actually get back to work.


John
Welcome to the Garden

The synopsis below does a much better job writing about Amelie than me. Here are my favorite scenes.

1. Telescope
2. Childhood
3. Riding on the motorcycle (Look ma, no hands!) The Mudders out there would totally get the reference :)

The movie reminded me about the special innocence that we have in all of us. There are so many simple pleasures that we can partake in our daily lives. Right after seeing the movie, I went to see Marshall Field's Spring Flower Show. The theme this year is recreating Christian Tortu's garden in Provence, France. Although the theme of this website is about a garden, honestly I havn't visited a garden in such a long time. Back in the good old days in Egypt (um, I mean college), I frequented an enclosed garden in Scripps almost every day. It was a place of extraordinary beauty and solitude. A place where I can smell the roses and hear the rustling water. Tucked away is a small chapel where I tried to listen to that ethereal, small, still voice. It was also there that I challenged God to make the rains come. To be honest, it was a pretty stupid request because I didn't bring an umbrella :) Nope, God didn't pour out the heavens that day but it did rain at night. You might say that it was coincidence, but after that point I never asked God to prove His existence again.

The eighth floor of Marshall Fields was visually stunning. I had no idea that they could recreate a garden inside a building. Like a kid reborn, I twirled around with the music and listened to the birds chirping (through the sound system), and smelled the flowers again. I also found out that a horse can move its ears. Yes, there was a live horse there! My favorite moment has to be watching little kids squeal in delight over the gold catfish. They then took a penny and made a wish. In fact, those kids inspired me to make a wish of my own. Here's are a few hints:

Matthew 6:21, What have I been praying about lately?

Actually, I heard a song by Sting this morning. Hmmm ....

Set them free,


John
P.S.: I wish I could go to Paris for Spring Break. Roseann and Eric are the luckiest couple in the whole wide world :)

Saturday, March 16, 2002

Waiting to see Amelie
Here's the synopsis from Twincities.sidewalk.com

The Setup

Raised by stifling, unemotional parents, little Amélie grows up into
a dreamy young Parisian (Audrey Tautou) who lives alone, works in
a restaurant and tries to bring joy into the lives of others. In
between mooning about Paris, taking revenge on the local meanie
and matching two lonely hearts in her restaurant, Amélie herself
falls for a strange young man (Matthieu Kassovitz) who collects
discarded photographs. Always eager to encourage love in others,
she finds herself too afraid to do the same for herself.

The Breakdown
After the monstrous letdown of his Hollywood sojurn ("Alien:
Resurrection"), Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("Delicatessen") has concocted
a fanciful little treat out of Audrey Tautou's girlish smile and witty
fairytale interludes. After one of the most hilarious opening title
sequences ever made, "Amélie" lets us into a world much lighter
and happier than we're used to from Jeunet but still lit with flashes
of his mordant wit. While the machinations used to keep the young
lovers apart grow somewhat ridiculous, Tautou's sublime
performance and the film's unshakable devotion to her make for a
deeply satisfying experience.
Shelf Exam

I did better than average for the shelf exam, but there is still a lot of studying left to do. Right now, I've just purchased QBANK for 90 days as preparation for the boards. I've got all my study materials now. For everyone who's interested, here is how I'm studying for boards.

Before May 3. Cover all of the traditional disciplines (Read First Aid for the Boards at least 3 times from cover to cover)

Micro -- Reread Clinical Micro made Ridiculously Simple. Do the Comprehensive Final on one of the books I have. Do BSS.
Embryo -- High Yield Embryo (all). Selected passages from BRS.
Biochemistry -- Lippincott (all) Spring break. BSS.
Pharm -- Lippincott (all).
Neuro -- Reread High Yield.
Physiology -- Do all questions in BRS. Read Kaplan books.
Gross Anatomy -- High Yield Gross (all). Read all the Case Studies in Moore and Daley.
Genetics -- ? First Aid for Boards. Pathology BRS
Pathology -- Read Pathology BRS cover to cover. Look at all the pictures in Robbins. Work on Robbins Question Book.

After May 3. Systems + Questions

Goal do 3500 questions by June 10. Reread First Aid at least 4 times (total of 7 times). Read books on internal medicine for the wards. Memorize all of Buzzwords.
Go through my systems review books (Kaplan).

June 1
Jars of Clay.
Jennifer Knapp
June 10 Boards
June 11 Flying Back to So. Cal.
June 23
Justin's Wedding

Wow 7 J's in a row!

John

Thursday, March 14, 2002

Just posted two songs that captured my mood for the evening.

Gracefully falling back to the arms of grace,

John
Painting Pictures of Egypt

I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt
Leaving out what it lacked
The future seems so hard
And I want to go back
But the places that used to fit me
Cannot hold the things I've learned
And those roads closed off to me
While my back was turned

-- Sara Groves

Breathing

I'm finding my way back to sanity again
Though I don't really know what i'm gonna do when i get there
I take a breath and hold on tight
Spin around one more time
And gracefully fall back to the arms of grace

-- Lifehouse




Hair update. I'm getting used to it. It's pretty cool!


John
Fun Ideas (ranked in the probability that I will do it)

1. Amelie
2. Marshall Fields' Spring in Provence (some place in France)
3. Prairie Home Companion
4. Buxtehude
5. Third Day
6. Ice skating
7. Cosmic Bowling
8. Fernando Ortega

John Hartono

Monday, March 11, 2002

No skiing

I have but one excuse: MARCH MADNESS has arrived!

John
The Ice Storm

You've never really lived until you've experienced an ice storm. Ok, I just made that up however we just had the most incredible sturm and drang this weekend. My poor car, all alone on the street suffered through the freezing rain and sleet. I had a craving for pancakes this Saturday, and I thought it would be cool to test my car to see how much damage the storm inflicted on her psyche. Well, my car wouldn't open up to me. I did everything I could until I finally bodyslammed the doors in frustration. The ice was broken. Anyways ... I couldn't see through her because of all the ice on the windshield. It took me a good half an hour to scrape all the ice off my windows. The roads were very slick, and I got to use my new favorite phrase. Ooof Duh. Key to Minnesota driving ... drive slow, real slow.

Were the pancakes worth it? Absolutely! I had mango and strawberry pancakes topped with Maria's secret recipe. The place also had live Latin American music. Pretty cool if you realized that this was in Phillips' neighborhood. Just proving a point that you find beauty in unexpected places.


John

Friday, March 08, 2002

Shelf

The shelf was a very draining exam. I was falling asleep when I took it, fortunately the exam doesn't count. After taking the test, I know that I still have a lot to review for the boards. Hmm .... shelf, boards? Was the original doctor a carpenter?


John

Thursday, March 07, 2002

Knee Hurts

I really wanted to go cross-country skiing this weekend, but right now I'm having doubts if I could make it or not. The funny thing is that my knee started to hurt right after I told Caitlin that I wanted to go skiing. Go figure .... Just thinking about skiing made my knee hurt.

John


Last Day with Dr. Miller

I was really sad to leave Brooklyn Park Clinic. There is still a lot that I could learn from him. Anyway, the best compliment I received so far is from Julie who said that I was the nicest medical student that she has met. However based on an informal poll that Abby took, I think that Nate Groebner probably tops the list. He is in one of my small groups, and he is one of the nicest people I've met.

John

Plan for the Weekend

1. Study
2. Cross-country skiing
3. Good Earth
4. Shelf


John

Monday, March 04, 2002

Gophers Game (03/03/02)

I just figured out why I felt so bad over the weekend :) The Gophers just blew a 4 point lead with 30 seconds to play. Unbelievable!

NIT, here we come!


John
Delirious Concert (March 2, 2002)

I love Delirious -- IMHO they are the best Christian rock band around. My favorite moment of the night was during the introductions when Martin introduced the guy as someone who is not fit to tie his Master's sandals. His name was John the Bassist (Ok, horrible pun but I love it!)

My favorite song of the evening was "Do You Feel the Mountains Tremble" since the song brings me back memories of my time at Catalina Island. That was a very special time for me. Changed lives, Changed paradigms.

John

Saturday, March 02, 2002

Deliriously Happy

In about an hour, I will be going to Northwestern College to listen to Delirious in Concert! Last year I went by myself to listen to Ginny Owens perform with her labelmates over at Rocketown records. I'm really glad that Rinde (a first year at Nu Sigma Nu) is coming along to the concert with me. He has heard Delirious on KTIS, but he has no idea what he is in for.

John
Ok, I'm not feeling very original lately. I guess I'll start copying music lyrics that fit my mood for the day.

By the way, I just heard an awesome recording of Vladimir Horowitz's return to Carnegie Hall. Bach always makes me feel better.


John
Ocean

Lately I’ve been thinkin’ about You
And lately I’ve been dreaming of You
And lately I can’t get You out of my head
Get You out of my head

Something about the ocean
Makes me rise up and praise
Something about the heavens
Makes me stand in awe again
Something about the sunrise
Reminds me of Your faithfulness
Something about the ocean
And I’m lost in love again

I’ll sing until I sense a smile
Upon Your great and lovely face
And till I know Your glory’s in this place
Your glory’s in this place

Something about the ocean
Makes me rise up and praise
Something about the heavens
Makes me stand in awe again
Something about the sunrise
Reminds me of Your faithfulness
Something about Your presence
And I’m lost in love again

--Ten Shekel Shirt
Waiting Again (March 1, 2002)

I called my parents up last night, because I was feeling kinda down. My dad, the amazing guy that he is read me this poem by Rudyard Kipling (Actually my equally amazing sister wanted to read it to me).

IF


If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!



--Rudyard Kipling

Friday, March 01, 2002

AAArghhh. Lost the Lottery

Bummer, I'm in group 12 for the class registration lottery. This means that I'll have the last choice for all of my rotations.

To be continued,


John
Random Blogs (Free writing to see where my mind leads me)

Blogs are cathartic. They are my golytely for the soul. Bad pun. Did you know a girl named Holly written by a guy named Truman Capote? Whatever happened to Breakfast at Tiffany's? I used to sing that song a lot. Back in the days in college. I think Dave knew the guitar chords. Sometimes I want to go to New York. To touch the sorrow, angst, pain. Where is the humanity in this post-modern age? Relationships. Distance. The world may be getting smaller, but people may actually be moving further apart. Building walls. Pink Floyd. Revolution. Beatles. Instant Karma is going to get you. John Lennon once imagined a world. I too think of a world. A place where time ceases to exist. Where we would all dwell in the radiance of the source of all goodness and love. A place where I will finally converse with Bach and ask him how he got to be so smart. Chris Rice, you finally have all your answers now. But how would it feel like if you finally have the answers to all your questions? Where does that leave me? Do I want to know all of the answers? Am I strong enough to handle the truth? The truth shall indeed set me free. There will be neither tears nor sadness. Questions, questions, questions. Many things keep me hanging. Never forget that fateful day in college. Chicken. Chirps. Love to. No. Unintended consequences. Questions. Grief. Love. Acceptance. Prayers. Requests. Answers? No. Yes. Maybe. 1 out of 3 ain't bad. Remember 245, the passion. If you read this far, you've begun to know the randomness of my mind. I keep going in circles. I'm missing Najarian for this? Let everything that has breath ....

Let the games begin,


John
Misunderstood Songs

Launch has been totally awesome and the service has introduced me to a bunch of new songs that I havn't heard before. One of the songs I heard is Kody by Matchbox 20. At first, I was excited to hear that Rob Thomas was singing about the bible. However, instead he was mangling the word bottle. These are the actual lyrics:

So please hand me the bottle, I think I'm lonely now
And please give me direction, I think the hurt set in
And I don't feel nothing

There's a squeak hinge down on the back gate
It lets us know if he comes around
I don't sleep that good anyway
If you've never heard the silence, it's a God awful sound


John
Devil's Hair Cut

Ok, I never liked that Beck song. However, I have just gone from having the longest shag of my life to the shortest hair cut ever!
Note to self: Don't get a haircut from someone who doesn't have hair. Shortness is subjective.

Anyway, I'm getting used to my haircut and I have actually gotten quite a number of compliments from my classmates. It just takes a lot of time to get used to this style. Steve said that I look like Jet Li, but I definitely need to incorporate more martial arts moves.


John
The Ides of March

March is a crazy to time for medical students. The rationale is that April will be the time when we could start to review for boards, so they are trying to pack all the info in March. I have a shelf exam next week (simulated boards) and then finals starting on March 15 or 16 and then continuing until March 29.

March 29 will be a Good Friday indeed!

The good news is that I'm really excited about the blood/cancer segment in contrast to the Gut/Bones from the last period.


John
Plans for the weekend

1. Delirious Concert
2. Gophers Game
3. Studying
4. Studying
5. Studying

Looking forward to my most exciting weekend of the year!


John
Party at My Place

I invited a bunch of people from my church to come over to my apartment in lieu of core group. I actually tried to get enough prizes for everyone, but I was a little bit short because there were more people than I expected :) You find out really interesting stuff about people such as that Chris is actually friends with Pierce Brosnan aka the other James Bond :) I also figured that you can trade a computer game for a car. Just ask Tom :) He is going to be my agent when I finally graduate from medical school. Since it was supposed to be core group, all of us shared our favorite bible verses. It is really neat to see which verses touch everyone's lives. FYI: My verses are Isaiah 40:31 (got an extra point on the Chemistry final with it) and Hebrews 11:1-2. really glad that God has placed a strong group of Christians in my life.


John

Tuesday, February 26, 2002

Values Debate

Ok, I had a debate with Norma over at the fraternity. It really shouldn't have been a debate, but she was just trying to harrass me :) Norma's a huge sci-fi fan, and I made the impolitic remark that all the resources used for the making of Time Machine could have been spent for better use. My contention is that if people put more of their energies into fighting poverty, disease, and starvation instead of making dumb TV shows the world would be a better place. I do believe that their is a place for art and beauty, but I see no reason why NBC just spent 100 million dollars renewing Friends. Oh well ....


John
La Bodega (February 25, 2002)

In honor of Kirk's birthday, we went to go to La Bodega, a hip little joint at the corner of Lyndale and Lake. Their specialty is Tapas -- or model food in English. Model food is basically dainty, pretty, small dishes that models eat. It was very tasty, but you can't really satisfy your appetites in one serving. According to Roseann, you could get really cheap Tapas in Spain and the reason they make it tiny is because Tapas are generally served at night (their smallest meal of the day). To me, it is the Chinese version of dim sum. I shared my dish with Joe Lee, so we ate chicken honey mustard and halibut. The funnest part of the night was to see Kirk and Michael L. dance the flamenco. Like I told them, it takes two to flamenco.

Still need sleep,


John

Monday, February 25, 2002

Valentine's Day (February 14,2002)

Did you know St. Valentine was a Christian physician? As the legend goes, he helped restore the sight of a blind woman. I'm not sure how that has anything to do with Valentine's day, but I find it interesting that he is a real historical figure instead of a make believe person invented by Hallmark.

That evening we had our core group meeting at the basement of the church. Diana, Becka, Jess, and Amy did all the beautiful decorations and food. All the guys did was to help eat. We did help clean up :) It was also the first time that I heard of the band Ten Shekel Shirt.

My brain is turning to mush,


John
P.S.: Christianity Today's website has a bunch of cool e-cards
Getting Lost in Wisconsin (February 12, 2002)

Where is the worst place to get lost at night? I gotta say Wisconsin, since at least there are a lot of nice people when I got lost in Iowa. Here I was trying to figure out why there are no more lights on the highway when I finally saw a building. Before I went in, I noticed that it was a strip club! Out in the middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin. I quickly bolted as fast as I could.

I found a gas station where I asked for directions instead. She wasn't that nice and she gave me unclear directions. I got lost again until I finally read Amy's directions again. Finally I made it to Houlton elementary with -7 minutes to spare (7 minutes late for all the non-math people out there :). It was really neat to see the second and third graders sing about what they want to be. I'm really happy that one of them sang about wanting to be a doctor. That made my day! However, if I weren't going to be a doctor I would have to say that teachers probably have the most important and toughest profession.


John
Boundary Waters Trip (February 8-10, 2002)

That was one of the most amazings weekend that I've had in medical school. It was a time of many firsts: cross-country skiing, broomball, sauna, dipping into an ice hole, getting the 50 point bonus in scrabble, snow-shoeing.

I didn't know that the boundary waters is so far away. We stopped by Duluth and I thought that we were almost there. Ummm ... I was wrong. Although there wasn't any snow on the side of the roads, pastor Sanny was telling all of us to keep faith that there was actually a lot of snow up there. Our next stop was at Grand Marais. Still no snow, but I still had faith :) John and Diana also pointed out the hotel where they went for their honeymoon. The North Shore is really pretty, but I'm not really sure that I would want to honeymoon there during winter. We went up the gunflint trail and saw two meese. Actually JR, our resident hunter, saw them. After 6 or 7 hours from Minneapolis, we finally reached Adventurous Christian retreat.

I didn't go last year, but according to Connie (our guide for the weekend) we were legends. Note to self: long-johns and fire do not mix.

We were playing with Amy and Jess' magic ball when we got the fan's cord tangled up. One of the coolest pictures I have is of Chris trying to fix the fan. Anyway, I had some time to think about giving a bible bullet. Somehow, Jeremiah 29:11-13 came to mind. Awesome bible verse!

I woke up at 6:30 the next morning and had some quiet time for myself. The first thing I tried to do was to run in the snow. I felt like a kid again -- running and tumbling across the snow. JR thought I was nuts, but it must have been the Canadian air.

At 9:30 all of us got ready to do some cross-country skiing. It was a little bit nerve racking, because I was the only one who has never cross-country skiied before. However Kathy was an excellent and patient teacher. I did fall numerous times, but I actually enjoyed it. After a while, I was looking forward to zooming down the little hills. The moment that I finally found the groove was when I stopped paying attention to my form and started to enjoy the woods, trees, and nature. I have another amazing picture of the whole group waiting for me. It was an amazing accomplishment! To top it off, I still feel like I have enough energy to do another loop. Hmmm ... after a couple of weeks, I sorta forgot about the pain. My right knee was killing me, and I found out from class that my femur and patella was not in exact alignment. Gotta work on my VMOs .... Still I would go cross-country skiing in a heart beat!

We were tired, but we felt like we should go snow-shoeing. That was a blast too, but then I realized that I did get tired after a couple of hours of skiing. I didn't have boots so I borrowed Russ'. That mean that I could use his special snow shoes. Unfortunately I broke it while trying to chase the girls (just kidding!). I actually have no idea why it broke, but the straps on those snow shoes were pretty messed up before I put them on.

The evening was spent watching people do some rock climbing. Oh, before that Tim Anderson and I were the dish-washing crew. We made it our mission to be the fastest dishwashers this side of the Mississippi. Unfortunately, while washing the dishes I missed Amy's ascent to the summit. Even though we had a ballayer, it was still pretty scary when you fall off (I did that :) but it was a really big high to go all the way to the top.

Saunas are Hot

My friends say that I like to point out the obvious, and obviously they are right (just wanted to point that out). How hot was it ... 200 degrees fahrenheit. People say that I'm crazing for jumping into the water hole, but you can't help but jump in there after spending 15 minutes in the sauna. This is further proof to me that the Finns are the hardiest people on earth.

The best part of the evening was when JR lost his sandal in the ice hole. He wasn't able to retrieve it, because it sunk down to the bottom. I suggested half-jokingly that we should pray about it. Right after we prayed for his sandal, it floated up. You might say that this is a coincidence, but God answers way too many prayers for me to claim it to be a coincidence. Wow, He even cares about JR's sandals!

Broomball

I was in no shape for more punishment, but I agreed to play broomball anyway. I don't remember much about it anymore, except that I kept falling on my right rear end.

Scrabble

The entries are getting shorter and shorter, because I'm getting tired of typing. Here is my 78 point word: JASMINE.

Gooseberry Falls

A frozen waterfall? I can't believe that I was actually walking on the river bed. Still, there were others in the group who did far more adventurous things there. Believe it or not, while we were up there someone came up to John and said "Are you John Sanny." He is famous!

Trip Home

We made a gentlemanly's wager among the guys on who could predict our arrival time. I was the closest, but all of us went a little bit over. What a weekend!

Good times,


John
Done with Tests for Now! (February 25, 2002) (Warning: Rated R for Religiously Explicit Content)

Moral of the story: Don't procrastinate by studying 34 lectures in a day. Although it is humanly possible, it is very stupid. I know ...
It probably is a sin, although I don't see that expressly printed in the bible.

The wisest man on earth once wrote
But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body.

Ecclesiastes 12:12

Like all the athletes out there (such as my hero Kurt Warner), I have to praise the Lord for letting me do alright on the exams even though I procrastinated big time this weekend. I didn't do as well as I normally do on exams (108/122) but I'm just glad that I passed with a comfortable margin. I've made a promise to myself that I would never, ever do this again.

What I need to do is have some quiet time and meditate on where my life is going. No, I'm not talking about what kind of doctor I want to be (I've already thought about that). What really matters is what I'll be doing outside of medicine. Yesterday, pastor Harry Maghakian preached about the dash (1976-?). Although it is a measly dash, it is far more important than the numbers that bookend it. I know what life isn't ... life isn't just studying, eating, and sleeping.

Thoughts on _Just Like Jesus_ by Max Lucado.

Just imagine somehow that Jesus had complete possession of my heart. Everything else about me would still be the same ... my life, my studies, my profession, my family.

One of my biggest blessings this year was to receive an email from Kelly Helenihi. I became friends with her family when she came to Minnesota for her son's bone marrow transplant. Sometimes you wonder why there is so much injustice and suffering in this world. Yet she taught me so much about being totally dependent on God's grace. It is so amazing to be able to cry together and pray. I didn't have any answers that night, but I did feel like Christ placed me in that very moment.

I know that there are a lot more people in my apartment complex who need prayer, yet somehow I've not taken the time to get to know them. If Jesus had complete control of my heart he would take away the fear and self-doubt.


John

Tuesday, February 19, 2002

Finally got the pictures back from the boundary waters trip. My favorite pic has got to be the one with me using a snowshoe as a crutch :)

Still praying for more snow, but thankful that the weather has been awesome!


John

Sunday, February 17, 2002

Tests coming up this Saturday and Monday

Next week after my pathophys test on Monday, I will write massive blogs.

Plans:

1. Make Chinese Chicken Fried Rice for the fraternity
2. Study
3. Sleep
4. Study

John