Kyuchanisms

I can't go to bed although I have another call day tomorrow. This 30 straight hours of work every 4 days is definitely wearing on me. Usually I don't have any trouble going to bed, but I've been giddy thinking about Mardi Gras. I'm going back to New Orleans next week for my 10th Mardi Gras. New Orleans is my home. I'm excited to see my old roommates again. C.K., T.P., C.J, and others L.B., G.M. I'm also kinda scared because my liver isn't as worked out as before I started this 80 hour work thing.

I'm listening to the two new U2 songs Get Your Boots On and No Line on the Horizon. I'm totally excited about the new album that's about to drop. I've been somewhat disappointed with the previous 2 albums. They were safe and recycled back the classic commercial U2 sound. U2 is at their best when they're fearless and putting out new experimental sounds. From these 2 songs, it's hard to predict if the new album is going to make an Achtung Baby-esque rebirth, but it definitely evident that they're not resting on their laurels as the only band to survive the Cold War era. What some people consider as the "rock's last superpower", U2 still has some bravado: still making relevent music, sales, news headlines, Bono making a stand for every starving 3rd World countries, and performing at Barack Obama's inauguration (although U2 are not American) with their song MLK. Sorry Axl Rose.

After listening to Lil' Wayne's Tha Carter 3 now for about a million times now, I can definitively proclaim that Tha Carter 3 is the best album within the last couple of years. That album still gets better everytime I listen to it. I was absolutely floored by his performance during the Grammy's when he collaborated with New Orleans' Dirty Dozen Brass Band. I'm ready to go back to New Orleans.

My head hurts. Sobering up is not cool. I sure miss those days when if I didn't want to wake up, I didn't wake up. Screw going to class. Screw anatomy lab. Screw showing up for dermatology rotation. Now, I have to be responsible and stop drinking early on work nights. I've had a late start on the real world, but I still think I need another redshirt year or an injury-related medical 6th year eligibility.

It's 4am, and I'm having so much trouble sleeping. Unfortunately my alarm is set to go off in an hour and a half because I have to be at work by 7am. Last time I blogged was right after match. So much has changed since then. I'm settled in Philly and getting worked 80 hours weekly as a medicine resident. Playtime has been officially over for me.

I love living here in Philly. My neighbor is awesome. My neighborhood is called Society Hill. It even sounds ritzy. I'm also pleasantly surprised with all the new places to go out and explore around in downtown Center City Philly. I've already found my favorite bar and it's walking distance from home: The Pirate Bar, a classic dive bar very similar to Ms. Mae's club in N'awlins. Also surprisingly, I don't miss New Orleans too much. I do miss all the people I've left there especially my roommates and my pseudo-roommate C.J. After 8 years of doing the same thing... going to Balcony/Bulldog every Wednesday night, F&M/Grits every weekend until 6am, Goldmine in the French Quarter, karoaking at Cat's Meow, Ms. Mae's until daylight, or going to the Boot for $0.25 drinks on Tuesday night until 4:34am before an anatomy final at 8am. By the time 4th year of med school rolled around, I was really getting bored with the same scenes in 504.

The one thing that has stuck with me from my 8 years of nurturing in New Orleans is my alcohol tolerance. The problem, now more than ever, is that when I have some rare free time to go out, I get obliterated. Unfortunately this is a big hit in my resident-salary wallet. Most people have about 4-5 drinks and call that a harsh night of drinking. Sh*t, I have about 5-6 drinks before I walk out the front door, and that's before the multiple carbombs or yager bombs. Thank God for 2am last call. I'm glad that I'm in a city where I can no longer drink in bars until daylight. I can't wait to go back for Mardi Gras though.

Overall, my transition above the Mason-Dixon line has been a good one. So far, everything is new and exciting to me here. Or at least until the winter cold front comes in. I've probably only seen snow 5-6 times in my life. It only snowed in Dallas every other year. I've never seen snow when I was going to University of Texas in Austin. In New Orleans, it supposedly hasn't snowed there since 1964. I may see snow 5-6 times this November. Holy sh*t! I'm starting to get f*cking scared. I need to go buy a jacket tomorrow. Possibly this something called a peacoat and scarf.

I'm back, and I matched. I'm going to Philadelphia. I'm so excited to go there. More posts to come when I'm not so hungover.

I've let this album sink in awhile. Now I'm listening to the bonus 2nd CD that just came out. Radiohead is the best band out today. Period. Their new material In Rainbows is absolutely the most original, invigorating music I've heard in years. Every time I listen to this album I appreciate their musicianship even more.

All previous blog entries are temporarily coming down while my residency applications are officially out. They will be reposted after Match Day 2008, March 20th. I will still blog during this period, but yall won't see them until after March 20th.

My boy is moving up! My old roommate "Smoky" Jones' rap group Westbank Krewe just released their debut album. And it's hot.

Westbank Krewe's Webpage

Check out the song Broken Ties. At the 4:58 minute mark, Jones absolutely kills his solo verse. He opens up La Guerra with another killer intro.

We had some great times. His co-workers at Commander's Palace hooked him up with some good stuff. And we played a lot of video games. Don't ask me about how he got his name.

I love my Playstation 3. I bought a PS3 awhile back thinking I could sell it for a profit, but recently to my chagrin, Sony lowered the retail price by $100. Oh well. Instead of taking a hit on the investment, I decided to keep it. It has f*****' taken over my life. I play Madden online sometimes into the wee hours of the night, and it has wrecked my daytime productivity. I was originally scheduled to take Step 2 boards on August 24th. But I decided to push this test back 2 months because I'm not ready. Like C.J. would say, "No big deal."

Back to that daytime productivity thing... Laziness and ADD. These day, it is so hard concentrate and do any school work. Med school has put me thru the ringer. My 4th year performance has no bearing on my long term future so why try?... I spend so much time pondering about my future... what I'll be doing 3 years from now... how I'm going to spend 4th year... how I'm gonna to fit in a 2 hour nap and catch up my tivo... amotivational syndrome is really sinking in, but unlike previous times, it's not chemically induced.

My new favorite song: Crank That Soulja Boy by Soulja Boy Tell 'Em.
I'm jocking on yo b*tch a**!

Yes! The Smashing Pumpkins are back. I've been listening to their new song Tarantula, which is f*ckin' awesome, and I must already listened to it on repeat about 12 times already. Backpedaling from their forgettable post-Mellon Collie and Zwan days, Tarantula sounds very much like something from the Gish and Siamese Dream era. Heavy crunching distortion throughout and plastered with wailing guitar solos and sliding harmonics on the e string and ideological angry thematic lyrics and even a quiet psychedelic melodic bridge. I can't even put into words how excited I am for the new album Zeitgeist to comes out. Billy Corgan is the main reason I picked up a guitar. This may not be very heterosexual of me but... If there is one person that has awed me, inspired me to dream whether attainable or not, taken me aback at first instance and made me do a double-take, brought unexplored thoughts into my reflections, that person is Billy Corgan.

I love this family medicine rotation. It's chill, and I have the weekends off. In a little bit, I'm about to get ready for another trek into the french quarter. And why not? Tonight, it's a special occasion because my boy Tan*** is going out. He hardly ever goes out. Br** B***** said, "if he goes out, I have to go out. He ain't showing me up." I'm gonna love 4th year of med school. Like my boy A*** T****** proclaimed, "the next 15 months, we need to live da life!"

On another note, this [4th] season of Entourage has been very so-so. The show has definitely lost its edge since season 2. I hope this show doesn't jump the shark soon. Then, there's Grey's Anatomy. I only watch this because my house has a Grey's watching party every Thursday. People whined about the last couple of episodes, and today, people complained for hours how they hated the last episode of the season. It's only a TV show. Get over it.

F*** this s***. I'm so burned out. I can't wait until the day I don't have to worry about school, life... figuring out what career to go into and other s***... whenever that is. Being hungover makes me so whiny. Two straight days of the Goldmine and those flaming Dr. Peppers then capping off the weekend with a throw-back-day visit to Grits Bar. I just can't drink like I used to. Back in the day, I didn't have any problems getting slurred 7 straight days if necessary, especially during Mardi Gras season. These days, I have some serious chills and shakes during first 24 hours of sobriety.

It's been awhile since I've blogged. Over a month ago, my friends K****, T***, and C****** threw me a very late surprise birthday party. It was awesome. So many people showed up. Having a birthday on Christmas day, I've never had a real birthday party. I felt so grateful to have a birthday party in March, an off-the-chain Baron Davis over AK-47 nastiness birthday party at that. According to some people, it was the party of the year. The birthday party fliers made by P***** featured a collage of the the cast of the O.C., the Hills, Lindsey Lohan, and yours truly. What I wasn't grateful about was the double digit numbers of tequila shots I received that night, but I'm also grateful that I didn't die. Unfortunately, my birthday present which was the supposedly naked chocolate jello wrestling in a kiddie pool never happened because people got too drunk. Of course, that night also ended at the Goldmine.

Back to the real problem. I'm trying to write a personal statement for my impending residency application. Writer's block. First, I really need to figure out what I want to be. I just want an easy life. I just don't want to work hard anymore. For stuff that I like, i.e. cardiothoracic surgery, the training and the hours of commitment are too brutal. Working 100 hours a week, being on call for every hours of my life, not being able to watch football on weekends for the rest of my life until retirement... I can't handle that. The easy lifestyle careers such as general radiology, I would probably gouge my eyes out after being in a dark room looking at thousands of films with no people interactions. I need to do some deep soul-searching for the next couple of months. Coming up in July, I have a dermatology elective. Man, I hope I love derm, or at least, I need to condition myself to love derm.

To help inspire to write my personal statement and put s*** in perspective, I even went back to read my personal statement that I wrote for my medical school application. It is f*****' comical. So naive. Here it is:

Ever since I can remember, my father has pushed me to excel academically. He instilled in me the belief that education could solve the problems of the world. He strove to expand his knowledge and exceed the expectations others set for him. As a research scientist, my father thrived as he contributed new discoveries to quantum mechanics in the field of physics.

As I grew older, my father constantly encouraged me to expand my mind and enrich my soul. Education was not only important to solve problems, but it also allowed science to advance, which was essential for the betterment of society. He insisted that as I learned, I must make it a priority to pass on my knowledge to others. My father believed that the noblest acts involved teaching people to help themselves and to add to mankind’s knowledge so that future teachers would be better able to assist others. Whether to improve the designs of safety features in an automobile, to find a new cure for a disease, or to inspire young children to learn, each and every achievement was extraordinary and worth the effort. As I grew up, I originally wanted to become a scientist or an engineer in academia. However, as time passed I became disenchanted with the academic world.

I am certain that my father feels rewarded by all he has accomplished in his work. Over the years, though, I noticed that much of his research was done alone, and he did not have many opportunities to interact with other people. My father seemed a little lonely at his work. As a research physicist, he rarely touched base with others outside his immediate research team. On those occasions when he did meet with other scholars, these relationships seemed more political than friendly. I began to doubt that I wanted to spend my life as a research scientist.

At the University of Texas at Austin, I strayed from the idea of entering academia and decided to become, of all things, a rock musician. My friends and I formed a pop-rock band, The Incident, and amazingly, began to establish a cult following. We eventually recorded an original album and performed at the nationally recognized South by Southwest Music, Media, and Film Festival, which over the years included acts such as Willie Nelson and Beck. Like most rock and roll dreams, it came to a sudden halt when the guitarist flunked out and the singer left the band for law school. What I miss the most about the band are the diverse people I encountered while playing. I now know that whatever path I choose, it must include ample opportunities to interact with others.

While these events occurred, my father found himself facing first-hand his family’s history of Diabetes Type II. My father and all of his six siblings have diabetes, most of whom, including my father, have advanced to insulin dependency. In the last couple of years, he has been forced to visit a wound care clinic to care for simple cuts on his shins and feet. Although he leads an almost normal life, with the exception of daily insulin shots and a modified diet, some cuts and bruises sustained on his legs take months to heal. It pains me to see my father in such a weakened condition. It also scares me. I am faced with the realization that diabetes is most likely in my future. Being around a loved one, watching him endure the pains and complications of diabetes, has awakened in me a need to help ease such suffering.

Today, I work as a medical research technician at Tulane Medical School running clinical tests for genetic deficiencies. Most tests I run involve fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH) for genetic deletions such as DiGeorge syndrome or gene amplifications such as the amplification of the HER-2/neu gene found in some cases of breast cancer. Attending clinics through my work at Tulane has allowed me to interact with patients suffering from various genetic disorders. Those who are in pain, those who cannot help themselves, need someone to make their lives easier and more comfortable.

The study of medicine would fuel my academic ambition while at the same time allowing me to interact with people and to help those less fortunate. My enjoyment of science and my respect for the importance of learning harness my determination to succeed in medicine. Nothing could reward me more than the chance to improve people’s lives. Medical school provides the technical training that gives the ability to make people’s lives better. Becoming a doctor to better society is my ultimate goal.

I'm in so much pain. And this time, I'm not hungover. On Sunday, I ran my 5th Mardi Gras marathon.... all 26.2 miles. Of course, I wish I would have trained for this. This time, I stayed sober for a month and ran about twice a week. My finishing time was horrible, and not to mention that this might have been my most f*****' painful run yet.

Alright, no time to waste. This test on Friday is supposedly the hardest test I'll have in my med school career. I'm f*****' gonna go off the deep end this Friday night. 100%!

As A*** T****** would say, "What a hit!" Mardi Gras came and went, and I'm still sober. A horrible mishap of food poisoning culminating to a trip to the ER to get 3 liters of normal saline, and I'm knocked out for the entire Mardi Gras. Boooooo. At least, I pushed back my inevitable progression to cirrhosis and then hepatocellular carcinoma another week.

I'm done drinking until Mardi Gras. Drinking is no fun anymore. I'm in the middle of my internal medicine rotation. I'm really enjoying this rotation, and it's my favorite rotation so far... enough to say that I may actually go into an internal medicine residency. Only downside to this rotation is that them mother f***ers are only giving me 4 days off this month, and I'm on call every 4 days. Most people had a 3 day MLK weekend. I had a zero day weekend with a 24 hour call day in the middle of it. At one point, I worked 12 days straight. Okay enough b****ing about school.

Of course, on my off days, instead of catching up on sleep, I have to go out and get bombed. But something is wrong these days. When you live in a chronic state of tiredness, drinking only accentuate how tired you are. I can't get f***ed up and f*ck sh*t up anymore. Now, I just want to go to bed after about 5 drinks. I am so lame. I can't wait until 4th year, my last chance to postpone my trek into adult life. That will absolutely be my last opportunity in life to live it up as a lifetime student. No more exams to study for. No more pressure to perform well at wards. No more 80 hours work weeks. No more waking up around 5am. I'm f***in' done. Basically enjoying life until I start my adult life as a first year intern. I'm already planning a 2 week trip to Vegas. Maybe a 1 month trip to New York City. Wake up everyday whenever I want to. Show up to the hospital whenever I want. Get a tan. Workout everyday and finally lose this 15 pounds I've gained since starting medical school. Go to the Boot every Tuesday for 50 cent night. Go to the Superior Grill every Wednesday afternoon for 3-for-1 Margaritas happy hour. Then, go to the Balcony every Wednesday night for $1 Rolling Rocks. Go to Lucy's every Friday for happy hour. Play Xbox360 all day instead of going into clinic. Catch up on some TV by renting dvds of 24 from season 3 'till the current season. Or renting some old Entourage episodes. Get f***ed up whenever I want. Sleep in. Get some g**d*mn sleep for more than 7 hours.

I can only dream. Okay... back to reading about the management of Acute Myelogenous Leukemia.

My hangovers are lasting more than one day these days. I must be getting older. This week, I'm working the night float shift for obstetrics for which the hours are from 6pm till about 8am. I came up with the brilliant idea that I would stay up on Friday and Saturday night until daylight to reset my biological clock and get ready for graveyard shift. To help myself stay awake late, I now had a valid excuse to hangout and drink in bars until 6am. What a fantastic idea... or not. The last 2 days of work were retardedly painful. On my 1st night of work, I don't think I've ever felt that sh*tty in my entire f*****' life. I can almost compare it how Felicity must have felt in Mission Impossible 3 when the nitroglycerin capsule bomb placed in her brain was triggered on and was emanating that debilitating shrieking noise right before detonating. In my moment of illucidity, I swore to myself that I would never drink again.

Tomorrow is going to be painful. After numerous pitchers for Monday Night Football, I really wanna go out to the french quarter, but since it's only Monday night, everyone is wussing out, and no one wants to go out with me. Now that I don't have the opportunities to drink often, when I do drink, I f*****' drink. Beer tastes so good these day. I love drinking. Am I an alcoholic? I may just call in sick tomorrow. I really don't want to wake up in 4 hours to go to work. I'm also hoping that I'll be sober enough to drive to work at 4:45am. Back in 2001, one of my old boss had a son that worked in New York city who went out and got hammered on Monday night September 10, 2001. That night, there was a Monday night football game featuring NY Giants at Denver Broncos. Since Denver TV schedule ran on a west coast time zone, the Monday night game started and ended pretty late. Like a good New Orleans born and raised kid, he didn't need much excuse to go get schlitzed, and needless to say, he called in sick the next day. Of course, everyone knows what happened next day on September 11, 2001. This kid worked on the 62nd floor of the 1st World Trade Center building that collapsed. Ever since I've heard this story, I have no qualms about drinking on a weekday night. I totally disagree with those AA ads that says alcohol can ruin your life. F***... drinking irresponsibly may save my life one day.

Since it's been awhile since I've posted, here is how I dressed up for Halloween. I was Kim Jung Il. I'm about to activate my nuclear missle launcher on my belt. Also, check out the spilled beer on my london fog jacket. There's many times when I claimed "I haven't been this drunk like this in awhile" but this time, I really mean it.

I thought I couldn't hate studying any more than before. I don't know how much more I can b****, but I'm gonna keep b****ing. Surgery exam on Friday, so this studying bulls*** is getting worse. Of course, I didn't get anything done today. I spent 12 hours in coffee shops today, but I think I only read for 3 hours. Usually, I blast my iPod to drown out the non-working housewives having some stupid a** conservations about their yoga classes or the upscale dress shops on Magazine street. It must be nice to have time to eat a 2.5 hour nice outdoor patio lunch at Cafe Rani with fellow housewives then spend an hour at CC's Coffee relaxing and reading People magazine and/or Us Weekly with a caramel skinny latte before going to a yoga class on a random Tuesday afternoon. I gotta stop studying at the same courtyard and stop people-watching. I'm getting off the topic....

Today, I was listening to my "advanced" copy of My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade on my iPod and found myself zoned out and staring at the wall instead of studying. I must have listened to that album at least 8 times. Great album yet I found myself mildly disappointed. Their previous Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge was excellent, so I guess I was expecting even a better album. I was hoping that Gerald Way, the Billy Corgan look-alike, would reach the pinnacle like Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins. The Black Parade is their attempt at a cinematic concept album like Who's Tommy or Smashing Pumpkins's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Narratively, it's almost a straight rip-off of The Wall by Pink Floyd. At some parts, it sounds like something off Green Day's Americal Idiot. In fact, The Black Parade was produced by the same producer that did American Idiot. They have definitely toned down a little from their seriously dense dark sound. I miss the crazy fast guitar solos, and songs are less intense and more hooky. More piano and string arrangements. On some of the songs, they've skewed toward more emo-pop-punk with more emphasis on pop-punk a la Fall Out Boy & Panic! at the Disco. I guess they want to get on TRL more often. I hope this album does well commercially. Still, this album offers many gems. This is How I Disappear may be their best song yet. Dark and unforgiving. In their excellent song Sleep, Gerald Way talks about the horrible stuff he sees (9/11, wars, mutilations, killings, etc.) and is tired and just wanna shut it all out and go to sleep. I feel the same way about my surgery rotation... I just want to catch up on some sleep with anger. Thematically, Gerald Way tells it the way it is. Singing about despair and death. Tells you that you got the short end of the stick. The world sucks, and it's taking you down with it. There is no hope, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Too numb to even be bitter anymore. The song Cancer tells a story of a patient on chemo on his death bed looking back on his uneventful meaningless life. The shortest straw has been drawn for you, and there is nothing you can do about it. Some great stuff. Almost parallels my medicine education. Of course, these themes wouldn't apply to housewives with six figure husbands. Clothes, cars, roof, free time, and spending money just given to you. I don't know if it can get any better than that.

I was watching a recent tivo-ed episode of Grey's Anatomy where Izzie stands outside of the hospital all day contemplating whether to walk into the chief's office to ask for her job back. In this episode, Merideth wakes up with the sun breaking into her room, and all the first year surgery interns get to work when the sun is up. What a bunch of b.s.! No surgery interns get to work after the sun comes up. Their a**es get there before 4:30 am. As a med student, my a** gets there no later than 5 am, and I know the interns get there before me. And none of those character b**** about not getting enough sleep. That cap on the 80 hours work week is a myth, at least for interns.

While I'm in the b****ing mood... The Cowboys must bench Drew Bledsoe now! Today against the Eagles, Bledsoe sure didn't get too much help from the o-line, but nevertheless... he just can't perform under pressure. As the game gets tighter, he holds the ball longer. The sack under 1 min left in the game on 1st down with plenty of time to throw the ball away was totally unacceptable. Even when he had plenty of time to throw, he still looked rattled, hurried and kept underthrowing all his passes. I think about 20 explicitives came out of my mouth when he threw the game-ending interception in the endzone that was returned 102 yards for a td. I don't know if Tony Romo is the answer, but I know Bledsoe ain't it. If Bledsoe is allowed to finish the season, the Cowboys have an ugly ending coming to them. Whether at the end of the regular season or in the playoffs, Bledsoe's seasonal 2nd half slide and/or his propensity to choke under pressure is going stab the Cowboys Nation in the back. T.O. is gonna be yelling at his teammates, his coaches, and the media. Parcells is gonna have some nasty season ending press conference. It's not going to be pretty.

Sobriety sucks. I miss drinking. Tomorrow, I have to go to work by 4am. Ugh. I'm enjoying surgery rotation, but the hours are killing me. I usually get there between 4-5am and stay until 6-7pm unless we have any emergencies, then I have to stay longer. I wouldn't mind being a surgeon, but right now, I see how tough residency is and I don't want to go thru 80 hour per week for 6 years making less than minumum wage. I miss the simple days of drinking 4 days a week and going to school hungover. I can't wait until end of this block which is Halloween weekend, my favorite day of the year in New Orleans. As for people-watching, you see some f***ed up s*** during Halloween, even worse than Mardi Gras. It's wall-to-wall hedonism. These days, I count down the days of the next time I can drink.

Last time I went out for Halloween in New Orleans, I almost got arrested 'cause I was dressed up as a cheerleader and being so hammered, I stumbled into the middle of the street in the french quarter to hail a cab while a cop drove by and I got questioned for soliciting and then was told to get in the back seat. I yelled, "I'm not a hooker! I'm a guy!" and started running away. Of course, I don't remember any of this, and my friends claimed this happened. Supposedly, this was a hilarious story to them when they retell it, but not to me... this potentially could have been my 3rd trip to jail. Later that night/morning at home after passing out for a bit, I go to take a piss, and there's some girl asleep sitting down on my toilet seat with her panties still pulled down to her feet who must have passed out while peeing. But that's another story for another post. I must admit though that I got some sexy legs.



The other day in the OR (operating room), it was just me, the attending, and one other resident. We were listening to some classic rock station on the radio and talking about football and music. Topic of Paris Hilton pops up, and I accidently admitted that I liked her song. The attending stops the liver resection to look at me and says "You didn't know the last song was Bob Dylan, but you like Paris Hilton? I don't know about you, Chan." The resident responds, "You should keep stuff like that to yourself, and you don't ever admit that you like Paris Hilton. Especially in the OR!" I'm thinking... Great! F*****' great!

I was studying in Starbucks the other day, and I've decided that Starbucks corporation is evil. I could talk about how Starbucks are blood-sucking animals, driving out some of the local coffee shops in Uptown New Orleans, and how I'm sick of their omnipresent advertising media blitz... but that's another topic for another day. While I was people-watching and being distracted by talent, I noticed that a good majority of the people in line are overweight folks or yuppies with a sprouting pot-belly that will only get bigger as they lose their lifetime war against obesity. Do they know what are in those drinks? Let's face it: most people have absolutely no understanding of the implications of nutritional contents. Those frappuccinos, depending on the size, have somewhere between 400-700 calories. Starbucks patrons drink this s*** 5 to 6 times a week. About 3500 calories equals 1 pounds of body fat. Six drinks a week becomes about 300 drinks in a year. Let's do the math. From the age of mid-20's to mid-40's, estimate about 6000 frappuccinos which becomes approximately 3,600,000 calories, give-or-take 200,000 calories. Without compensating through exercise or diet, that could potentially be 100 pounds of pure fat rolls on your a**.

A lot of those calories comes from a sweetener called high fructose corn syrup. There are starting to have some new evidence that high fructose corn syrup is a strong risk factor for diabetes. High fructose corn syrup is everywhere. Look at the ingredients to any sweet foods or drinks, especially sodas. In the last 25 years, there has been a shift in food production replacing the white sugar sucrose with the cheaper high fructose corn syrup. This trend also parallels the sharp rise in prevalence of obesity and diabetes. Wikipedia has a good page on high fructose corn syrup. More scientific articles can be found on PubMed at US National Library of Medicine. That's why I've switched to rum & diet coke instead of rum & regular coke. Of course, there are other factors contributing to this disgustingly fattening country such as McDonalds, video games, absent-at-home working mothers, and my favorite Popeye's Chicken. (On a side note, the Dr. Pepper made with white sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup that can only be bought at the Dr. Pepper factory taste like heaven. Doesn't have that prune-like after-taste.)

Have you ever been to Wal-Mart and visually surveyed the patrons? People are so f*****' fat. The Center For Disease Control and Prevention has a great resource on obesity. The CDC also has good material on diabetes. I put a pic on the bottom of this post that should sum up everything without reading any of the forementioned sites.

Unfortunately, this trend toward obesity and diabetes is not going to improve any time soon. And what's going to happen to this epidemic of people with type 2 diabetes and obesity? Someday, this is gonna be my problem in my future medical career. Poorly controlled diabetes is some s***. Hypertension/hyperlipidemia leading to coronary heart disease/atherosclerosis, peripheral neuropathy leading to amputation of legs, glaucoma leading to blindness, kidney problems leading to renal transplant. It ain't no f*****' joke. Heart disease is presently the number 1 killer above cancer, HIV, accidental death, etc. Obesity and diabetes are going to make the number of heart diseases go up.

That's why I think there should be a civil lawsuit against the Starbucks corporation. If you can go against cigarette companies, why not Starbucks. In the lawsuit against cigarette companies, it was argued that consumers were not warned against the effects of cigarettes. Last time I checked, there's no Surgeon General's warning on frappuccinos that these can cause painful heart attacks or amputation of left knee. Cigarette companies refrained from developing, testing, and marketing potentially less hazardous products. Why don't Starbucks use real sugar in their drinks? Others argued that cigarettes kill more than HIV. Frappiccunos can potentially cause heart disease which is the number 1 killer. Why not civil lawsuits against McDonalds or TCBY or Coca-Cola? They aren't as annoyingly everywhere. Cigarette companies denied nicotine as additive. Starbucks uses a different roasting method that makes the House Blend coffee so good. I could drink that s*** everyday, but with white sugar added. I've spent so much money at Starbucks.

I have to be a trooper tonight. I don't get a lot of full weekends off anymore. I'm pretty hungover today, but I still definitely going out again. What a mess I've been all day. I don't drink enough these days anymore. My tolerance level has gone down. I was so hammered that supposedly I proposed to 2 girls last night.

Third year of medical school has been a drastically life-style changing experience. I miss the days of waking up every day naturally without an alarm clock. No responsibilities. I miss going to the Balcony Bar on Wednesday nights, and after 4 or 5 drinks I'm like, "yall know... I think I'm not gonna go to school tomorrow." Order an another drink and keep on drinking 'till 5am or something. Yeah, I miss those days. But I surely don't miss studying for the boards. F***! S***! D***! That f*****' s*** had my a**hole hurting for weeks.

Now, I have responsiblities. Ugh. I have to go in 6 days a week for most weeks. What am I getting into? I get in at the butt crack of dawn. I'm doing one of the easier rotation, and I'm still tired. I can't wait until I start surgery next month. F***ers I know that are doing surgery right now look and sound so tired. They get in by 4:30am and have to be ready to present their patients to their atttending doctors for rounds at 6am. They stand all day. Having to stand still while holding something during a 6 hour surgery. Not being able to scratch their butts or pick their noses. Leave at 7pm. Unless they're on call which happens every 4 days.

I need to take advantage of these rare 2 day weekends. Now that I don't drink regularly, it's a little bit harder to down this "friendly" drink.

I'm back. Back in New Orleans.

I should be taking advantage of not having drinking hours and going out until 6am. Instead, I'm studying for boards on a Friday night. Geez.

It was so horrible being back in Texas where they had last call. Taking your drink and kicking you out of the bar at 2am. And the drinks were so horribly weak. I definitely missed New Orleans. I can't believe I spent an entire year in Houston.

How the hell did I end up in Houston?

Saturday August 27, 2005. The worst day of my life.

I'm awaken to a phone call at 11:00am. "When are you gonna leave?" I respond back, "Where am I going?" My boy E**** is like, "Dude, a category 5 hurricane is coming, and it's going to be a direct hit. Mandatory evacation starts today." At this moment, I've got the worst f*****' headache of my life. In fact, I'm not even sober yet from drinking the night before. Right now, I just want to go back to bed. I'm thinking because I've already evacuated twice within the last year and nothing has happened... F*** it! I'll just ride this through.

The days leading up to that Saturday, I've been in a bubble. I was reclused away in my typical cram routine for exams leading up to Friday August 26, 2005. Thursday night, I did my usual overnighter. Did okay for pharmacology and smoked immunology. By the time, my last test (pathology) rolled around 2pm, I was pretty much delirious. (By the way, that pathology test was BY FAR the worst grade I've had in my medical school career.) So, I started drinking immediately after the exam and through the post-exam party later that night at Red Eye. Yup, the drinking didn't stop until I left Club Ms. Mae's at 6am Saturday morning.

By the time noon rolled around, every shop on Magazine street was closing with the windows boarded up. The news were showing gas stations running out of gas. S***, I guess this one ain't gonna be no joke. Anyways, after some convincing from my roommate, I decided to evacuate New Orleans. Still not completely sober and what it seemed like an impending cracking of my skull from this hangover headache, thus being barely functional and being unable to drive, I decided to leave my pathfinder in H****'s building and carpool out of town. I felt so sick in that drive... sitting thru traffic, my head was pounding, and it was hot. I only packed 3 shirts and 2 shorts, thinking I'll be back soon as the hurricane blows over. Little did I know that I wouldn't be back for months.

That weekend, we went to my favorite city in whole world Austin, TX to party. Mind as well make the most of a s***ty weekend. That Sunday night, we went to Treasure Island on 6th st for 25 cent well drinks. On the TV at the bar (about 4-5 hours before hurricane Katrina made landfall), fox news had this analogous diagram of how New Orleans looked like a fishbowl and was going to go under with this supposedly 40 foot storm surge. Drunk, stupid, and laughingly in disbelief, I yelled "Ah sh**! Our sh** is gonna get f***ed up!" Monday morning, I was still laughing as one of the CNN reporter, trying to capture the strength of the wind in downtown New Orleans, fell on his a**. Tuesday morning, I wasn't laughing anymore as the levee broke and started to flood the city. D***, I guess we ain't going home for awhile.

Instead of moping around, later that week, I joined some classmates doing volunteer work in Baton Rouge. I worked at an ER clinic that was setup in the LSU basketball arena. People trapped for days in the flooded areas were helicoptered there. Also, some immobile populations such as nursing home residents and other evacuees were transferred there. We worked the graveyard shift from 6pm till 6am for a week. The first couple of nights, that place got slammed and not enough workers to go around. Boy, did I see some s***. The attending doctors were pretty liberal in letting the med students do whatever they want. Majority of the docs were neither ER surgeons nor internists. The volunteering docs included couple of orthopedic surgeons from Harvard, an anesthesiologist from New Mexico, an urologist, and others. So they were all playing "doctor" like George Clooney. It provided them much change from their usual careers, playing that front-line "critical care" doctor thing, so it seemed they were having fun with it. I can have a whole another blog on just my clinical experience there but too much to fit in this blog.

Toward the end of the week, it slowed down to a trickle. Around 3am-4am, there wasn't too much to do except walk around and sort of socialize. There was this one family from the 9th ward that were trapped in New Orleans for a week. They haven't eaten anything the last couple of days, and they had nothing on them except for the clothes on their backs... pretty much lost everything. They looked horrible, just beaten down. I chatted around with them for awhile, checking their charts, making sure everything is okay. Afterward, I offered to go get them some clothes. Walking to LSU red cross to get donated clothes, I finally had some time to really reflect on what's been happening. That family didn't even know where the mother was or the whereabouts of other relatives. They didn't have cell phones. They had no way to contact and probably won't see them for long time. They had no money. I don't know what the f*** the grandparents were gonna do with themselves with no home nor money and nowhere to go. Too sick and too old to get jobs and start their life over. Their 6 year old boy kept telling his father and grandparents that he wanted to go home. The kid just didn't get it. My eyes started to swell up. These were good people, just unfortunately poor and unlucky. I really didn't know what these people were going to do or where they were going to go.

My experience at Baton Rouge reaffirmed why I'm going into a career in medicine. I always seem to b**** about school work and studying. How I hate being holed up studying, having no human contact for hours and days, not enjoying my life. But that's just not true. Cheesy and cliché as it seems, I want to help people. I truly believe that I'm going into medicine for purely ideological reasons. It's not for the money, prestige, or whatever. If I wanted to make money, there are many other ways to make money, especially early in life and enjoy spending it. I could have went into consulting or investment banking or stuck with my original aspiration, management information systems. Like those 50k-100k yuppies, wanting to look cool, decorating their homes out of a sharper image catalog, taking b****es out shopping, dressed like a kenneth cole catalog, or something. By the time I make any real money and pay off my debt, I'll be too old to have any real fun with my money. It ain't like I'll have time anyways. When I see an out-of-shape 45ish year old guy driving a Z3 automatic transmission convertible, masquerading around like a 21 year old, I think to myself... What a f***ing tool! Let's not kid ourselves. You're not fooling anyone. Don't think you're cool. You're old and lame. You need to act your age and get a minivan or a lincoln sedan.

This morning, I had my last school test for this school year. Only one more exam left. The mother f*****' Step 1 boards. But I'm burned out and need a break. I've been studying non-stop every day for the last month. I need to a take a day off.

I'm definitely gonna get f***** up tonight.

D***, this tastes so good. It's been so long since I've had a beer.

The next 12 days, I have 4 exams (including 2 national standardized shelf exams), so I do nothing but study. Not to mention the mother f*****' board exam next month. Maybe 'cause I'm studying every minute when I wake up until I go to sleep, thus making my life so miserable and stressful, it seems to make this beer, the best beer I've ever had in my life. It's 2:50 am. My room is dark, and I'm alone. My eyes are too dry to look at anymore pictures of bloody fungating colon cancer. Drinking by myself. Time to grab another. I wonder if I'm going down the path of an alcoholic....

"How are you doing?"

I don't know how to answer that question anymore. I f*****' hate that question. These days, my life is so blah, blah. How the f*** should I respond? I get up out of bed. Then, I study. When I get hungry, I eat lunch. Then, I study some more. Oh, I get hungry again, so I eat dinner. At night, so much reading makes my eyes dry out, so I take out my contacts. Of course, I read some more before going to bed. Finally, I go to bed. There.

I have no anecdotes. Like that NIN song, every day is exactly the same. Weekdays, weekends, holidays. It doesn't f*****' matter. This is so g**d*** f*****' miserable. After I take this board exam, I'm gonna drink so much that I want to hear voices and see crawling insects when I get sober. [classic delirium tremens]

On another note, as I stated previously, the sorry state of new rock music has forced me into listening to some old school s***. I've been listening to Outkast's ATLiens. I forgot how good they were. Also, I rediscovered Black Star. This album has to be in the top 5 rap albums of all-time. Unfortunately, Mos Def and Talib Kweli got together and released only one album.

Now, I'm waiting for the next Shady/Aftermath album. I can't wait until the next 50 Cent or Eminem album. Supposedly, Dr. Dre is working on another album. He sure is taking a long time, though. There's been rumblings about it for the last 2 years. But the guests on that album gotta be off the chain. 100%. Young Buck, Lloyd Banks, Paul Wall, The Game, Snoop. You name it.

'Cause my last post seemed to have set off a debate over rock music, here is my top 5 rock albums released in the last year or two. You don't agree? Start your engines.

Honorable mentions:
Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
Death Cab For Cutie - Plans
Fall Out Boy - From Under The Cork Tree
Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have It So Much Better
My Morning Jacket - Z
Secret Machines - Ten Silver Drops
The Veronicas - The Secret Life Of....
We Are Scientists - With Love And Squalor
Wilco - A Ghost Is Born
U2 - How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (Grammys loved this, but I rate this in my bottom 3 amongst U2 albums.)

Now the top 5:

5) World Leader Pretend - Punches
I have to give a shout out to these kids from New Orleans. Great stuff. Seen them play twice. They're awesome live.

4) White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan
Not really a rock album but whatever. They changed to a more eclectic sound. Very out there. More of a piano album. Took awhile to grow on me, but now it's my favorite White Stripes album. Can't wait until the Raconteurs come out.

3) Queens Of The Stone Age - Lullabies To Paralyze
Awesome stoner rock. Very agonizing to put this at number 3 'cause any of my top 3 could have been number 1.

2) My Chemical Romance - Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge
These guys f*****' rock. Of all the bands out, they have the most potential, and they're still young. Awesome musicians and awesome guitarists. Gerard Way is the next great frontman. They remind me of Smashing Pumpkins in their prime. In the Helena video, Gerard Way even looks like Billy Corgan. Every song on here goes balls out. Thank You For The Venom, To The End, and You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison are gems.

1) The Strokes - First Impressions Of Earth
Their first album Is This It? was the critic's darling and an indie hit, but I hated that album. The second album Room On Fire was just okay and had two really great songs Reptilia and The End Has No End. Their indie fan base are somewhat disappointed with First Impressions Of Earth, but they couldn't be more wrong. Gone are the formulaic signature Strokes hooks and replaced with a more diverse sound. This album experiments and gets a little messy. Not very safe and a little bit darker. It's very ambitious and very dense. I love this album. Heart In A Cage is one of the best rock songs ever written. Electicityscape transcends. Vision Of Division is a ridiculous song. Julian Casablancas's vocals take this song to a new level, and the guitars are outta f*****' control.

Now I'm waiting for the next Radiohead album.

F*** the boards. F*** it! I just haven't any motivation to get my act together and study. I've hit the g**d*** wall. Lately, the only thing that excites me is my renewed aspiration to play in a rock band again. I miss being on a stage. I just recently got some professional recording studio equipment and more guitar effects, so I've been writing some music. Instead of using my 5 day Easter break to do some catch-up studying, I spent about 10 hours on Friday setting up and playing with my new toys.

Yeah, I'm gonna try to be like Prince and lay all the tracks down myself. Lead guitar, vocals, rhythm guitar, bass guitar, piano, whatever. I'm hoping my roommate can hunt down some drums, or I may be relegated into learning to use a drum machine also. But s***, lyrics are hard to write. I've never been the verbally facile-type. Musically, I'm confident that I can create some great euphonic melodies.

While on the subject of great music... I just saw Pearl Jam's SNL performance from last saturday. They aren't as consistently great anymore, but their new song Severed Hand is awesome. One of their best ever. Awesome performance. These days, there just aren't any new good rock music. The crap I hear now is awful. The rock genre as a whole just doesn't seem to have the great talents anymore, lacking in awesome guitar players, songwriters and such. The music is shallow, dumbed-down, and just bland vanilla. This is pretty evident by looking at the Billboard 100. Not to say that sales determine great music, rock doesn't sell anymore. Music sales are dominated by rap and R&B. The talent has definitely shifted over to the hip hop scene. Kanye West is ridiculous talent. His music is innovative and imaginative.

If I have any ambition for my music, I want to emanate excitement and awe. Like the first time I heard Eminem on the radio. Like the first time I heard Smashing Pumpkins on the radio. Like the first time I heard Dr. Dre's Nothing But A G Thang. Like the first time I heard Slash's opening riff for Sweet Child O'Mine. It was fresh. It had a visceral punch. You had to stop and feel the aura. It took you somewhere you've never been before. That's what I want. That's where I want to be. I want to make a mark on people with relevance. I want to radiate a sense of adventure like when Jimi Hendrix proclaimed his arrival to the music scene by setting his guitar on fire for the world to see in 1967. Like when my boy A*** T****** hears Eminem & Notorious B.I.G.'s The Most Shady, I want to create that twinkle in the eye. I don't want to be like today's rock headliner Nickelback. Bland vanilla. They don't inspire. No one says I wanna grow up to be like Nickelback.

I hate this s***. 3:03 am. I'm in the midst of another ritualistic all-nighter before an exam. I'm so burned out lately that this endocrine/OB/GYN test is gonna rip me a new one. One thing I know for certain. You can rule out a career in gynecology for me. Girls are so disgusting. I'm sure some of my classmates would agree with me... this numbing stress level is getting f*****' out of control. It's kinda like in that movie Saw 2 where that dude has a vice locked onto his head with a contraption that's going to fatally smash his head on a timer set for 90 seconds. The key to unlock the vice is embedded behind his right eye, and the killer Jigsaw was nice enough to leave him a scalpel. Damn, that was a good movie.

I might have to break my non-drinking pact. Tomorrow, or should I say later tonight, there's a party with free alcohol. I don't think I can turn down free alcohol. Unfortanately, my happiness is found in a bottle these days. Like my boy A*** T****** told me earlier, "You're drinking! 100%!!!"

http://www.myspace.com/bevochan

Last night, I signed up on myspace.com. I've been resisting this forever, but now myspace.com has taken control of my life. I've heard about it for awhile, and finally, I realize what kind of a phenomenon this has become. I must have spent at least 5 hours today... looking at who are married, who have kids but not married, where they live, who they are friends with, etc... basically stalking people. My only complaint is that I wish I could search for the name AND the school at the same time, especially when I can't correctly spell the last name. Try looking for Steve or Jennifer under the graduating class of 2000 at the University of Texas at Austin. A lot.

On a completely different note, I'm disappointed that my Longhorns basketball team failed to win the national championship. I guess I can't complain since the University of Texas has captured a football national championship and a baseball national championship in the last 12 months. Kinda like that Meat Loaf song, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

Just out of curiosity, I was googling my name and found a story about me on my best friend's blog site. I forgot how funny this story was.

http://distortedveracity.blogspot.com/2005/12/as-i-was-riding-home-from-holiday.html

Another one:

http://distortedveracity.blogspot.com/2005/12/june-7-2003.html

It's time to admit myself into AA. I've had enough. Last night, my former host family (yes, I'm a Katrina refugee and victim) threw a wine tasting party for me and my friends. The party was a smashing success. Afterwards, having blown through 25 bottles of wine, we did it up late night at an Irish bar. I didn't sober up today until 1 pm. Now, 12 hours later, I'm trying to go to bed, but my chest is f*****' thumping from I feel like is an irregular heartbeat. This s*** gotta stop. What's worse is that I also drank 2 nights ago. What's even worse is that I couldn't read anything today or yesterday. My brain was like a jello.

Friday, we went out for St. Patty's day, and you can't go out for St. Patty's day without gettting s***-housed. But that's an another story for another day. Long-story-short, I had to jump on not just 1 grenade, but TWO grenades. Yup, I looked worse than that guy that stepped on the landmine in that movie Platoon. It was like a bad horror movie when in Nightmare on Elm 5, Freddy slashes someone, and all the body parts and gore splatter all over the wall. I'm not embrassed to announce that I watched Halloween: Resurrection in the theaters (this is the one with Busta Rhymes where Michael Myers shows up in a reality TV show and kills everyone on internet streaming video). Anways, the night accumulated with me staying up until 4am drinking more, probably rambling a lot about nothing, and stalling for time for a buddy. One of the girls passed out on the couch. And other one was stone-cold sober, definitely wanting to end the night and looking at me as if I'm some drunken idiot, which I probably was and she probably want me to shut up. Hell, I just wanted to go to bed.

I'm making a pact. I'm only drinking two more night before my board exam. I have to drink next saturday 'cause I'm going to a ball (med school prom). Second saturday from now, I have to go to a wedding. And that's f*****' it! Alcohol begone!

Finally, since the Thursday after Mardi Gras, today is the 1st day that I don't feel like s***. For awhile, I thought I had mono or something. Fever, coughing, post-nasal drip, sore throat, general fatigue and malaise, etc... one thing would go away, and something else would happen. New Orleans during Mardi Gras is such a cess-pool of digusting entities. But it's so fun.

These days, my life sure is boring. It seems like I only eat, sleep, and study. I can't wait until I finally get my Step 1 board exam out of the way. This test pretty much determines my fate for the rest of my life. I hope I can match in a nice city with amenities. It would sure suck if I end up in some backward rural town doing general practice. I would have to do almost everything through the internet such as shopping instead of going to Walmart. As if I already spend enough time staring at my computer screen. Speaking of computers, I really need a new one. My computer is too slow to run this professional music recording software, and it doesn't have enough hard drive space. I need to get some more financial aid money, so I can chase another aspiration to play in a rock band. I also need a new electric guitar like a new custom PRS. I'm gonna start looking for loose change in the couch and in my car, and hopefully it'll add up to five grand.

Since Mardi Gras, I thought I decided to quit alcohol for good. It's only been 2 weeks, and I'm already missing it. I wonder if St. Patty's day is big in Houston...

Mardi Gras 2006. Just got back Wednesday night around midnight. I thought I've done come up on Mardi Gras, but this year I took Mardi Gras to a new wicked level. Yeah, my body is screaming at me right now. I don't understand how chronic alcoholics do it. My highlights this year include staying up all night on Bourbon street Monday night and stumbling onto a taping of the weather segment with Al Roker for the Today show on Mardi Gras morning. I got on national tv hammered off my a**, screaming at the tv behind Al Roker. The angle they were filming, I was the only person seen behind Al Roker in the crowd. Later that night, after never going to bed, I went to the Mardi Gras block party at Jean Lafittes. There, I met Josh Hartnett, but a female friend of mine said he was sort of a cocky a**hole. I didn't get to talk to him much, but his hometown boys from Minnesota were pretty cool. After pulling an all-nighter for an exam last Thursday night, not sleeping again Monday night, and constantly being hammered from Friday 'till Tuesday night, I slept about 16 hours last night. I really miss New Orleans although it's not the same city I remember.

School has taken over my life. Before I started school, I used to think that med students whining about how they didn't have any time to do anything other than study were soft. Well, s***. I was wrong. I should be out drinking Wednesday $1 pints instead of looking at lung pathology. This whole school year has been one big propaganda against tobacco. Cigarettes = Death

I hate long weekends. I wish I wasn't so weak-minded for getting peer pressured into go out drinking. Consecutive nights, people had to have birthday parties. I'm not in college anymore when I could drink many days in a row without feeling too painful. These days, getting blitzed back-to-back nights gives me utter hellacious pain. I wanna jump off a cliff. Unfortunately, trying to read school stuff is spinning my head even more. Fortunately, this block exam on psychiatry is supposedly one of the easier exams. I didn't realize there are so many ways to be sexually deviant. People do some pretty sick a** s***. Talking to a resident from the hospital formally known as Charity hospital, a good portion of psychiatry there was snuffing out who is faking a mental illness severe enough to qualify for disability. If you understand New Orleans culture... some funny stories. I guess it ain't ironic that right now I'm reading about substance abuse and dependency. Talk about alcohol and DTs. I should pretty much smoke this section of the exam since I live it. Um... 13 drinks in a week is considered abuse according to this stupid literature. F***, I guess I had one abusive weekend.

Boy, am I hungover. I think I've spent about all but 2 hours in bed. I don't think I sobered up until 2 pm. Last night, we had a school party at the places called Crome. We started out with a pre-party at my place, and I must say that my spinach-artichoke dip is the best ever. Most people wanted to get tipsy before going to the club. As for myself, after 2 pints of my classic "friendly" mix of Evan Williams and Coke, I was ready. Anyways, the drink specials were $4 wells. Considering that we rented out a private room and guaranteed at least a hundred people with the club only giving us 175 paid drink coupons... Ridiculous. Since my roommate is the 1st year class president and was in charge of getting the party together, he hooked me up with some drink coupons. I guess I had fun. Considering that most people said I walked around most of the night looking zoned out. Couldn't be my "friendly" drinks kicking in. I told many people that I loved Vince Young more than any person could love another person, but I explicitly explained it wasn't Brokeback though. Man, I can't get enough of this new Strokes album. There's about 4 or 5 songs that I probably listen to about 7 or 8 times a day since I got the album.

Plano. Something is wrong with this place. Like some suburbs, there is a huge disproportionate lack of people between 20-35 year olds. The city of Plano has the highest income per capita for population greater than 50,000 in Texas, thus there's not much affordable housing for young adults. There isn't a nearby college, so unfortunately there is also the lack of coed talent. Anyways, I'm at the local gym, and being my narcissistic self, I gotta do curls in a sleeve-less shirt. Since I'm in a zone immersed in my iPod, I'm totally oblivious to the couple of 50 year old women checking me out. I guess, since they're so used to seeing only bunch of high schools kids or out of shape 45 year old men, they must have been taken aback to see a man in his prime. Later, one of the women gets on a machine right next to mine and starts to ask me bunch of stupid a** questions such as "how does the pin work?" You want to lift 50 lbs, put the pin in the hole labeled 50 lbs. Duh. She ask me what muscles I'm working out and stares at me while I do rows. Is this lady seriously hitting on me? Throughout my workout, I catch them staring at me even more. Then, I started to feel queazy as I imagine them imagining me in some intimate setting. I've never felt so violated in my life. Now, I know how Tulane coeds must feel when I stare at them on the stairmaster and point them out to all my boys. Alright, back to Party Poker.

The problem with waking up at 2pm is that I don't fall asleep the next night. I've been going through this vicious cycle of waking up later and falling asleep later. Now, it's 4:20am, and I'm still wide awake. I just got done watching episode 1-8 of Scrubs season 1 and Man of the House. Must say that while Man of the House may not be a great movie, it's still a future purchase. The cheerleaders in the movie are hot, and even Texas governor Rick Perry makes an appearance. Also, the movie brings back a lot of nostalgia from the college days. I sure miss Austin. Oh yeah... rewatching the old Scrubs episodes after couple of years of medical school has brought the show a different poignancy. Before, I watched the show as a purely comedic show, and I probably missed some nuances and idiosyncratic steretypes. I didn't realize the show was pretty accurately poignant in depicting the life of a first year resident. Dealing with real issues. Today, I think the show has run out of ideas and has become somewhat soap-operish. But still very funny. Hopefully, downing couple of Shiner Bocks will help me fall asleep. Here I go.

Well, it's around 1am, and I'm wide awake with nothing to do. It's Christmas break, so I'm with the rents in Plano, TX. Plano is a such nice boring surburban city with strip malls and blockbusters at every intersection. Unfortunately, there are no bars with $1 wells around here. I did sign up for the unlimited 2 movie rental deal at blockbuster, so I rented about 15 movies in the last 4 days. People there are starting to recognize me 'cause I go back every 4 hours to rent another 2 movies. They are so condesceding though. They're like, "you're back already?" and look at me as if I'm some loser with nothing to do. Then, I get chastised for renting March of the Penguins instead of some elitist art movie like Crash. I wanna scream at them and yell "mind your own g****** business and let me rent my movie in peace, you a******! You f*****' work at blockbuster and you live in plano, f*****!" Anyways, I just got done watching Cry Wolf. What a great movie. Awesome twist ending. I'm such a sucker for slasher movies.

Recoveries from a hangover are taking longer these days. It's 2:24 am, and I still feel groggy from the night before. It's been about 24 hours since I had my last drink of a tasty Irish Car Bomb. Of course, my headache is also compounded with the pressure of studying. The week before exams are getting worse and worse. I probably put in about 10-12 hours of studying for 6-7 straight days before an exam. Right now, I'm trying to look through hundreds of case photos on brain tumors while listening to the new Darkness album. Not as good as the debut but still pretty good. They're attempting to do some serious songs which take them away from what made them good: campy-ness with 80's hair metal attitude. The worse thing about drinking so much the night before... I sure am hungry a lot and often. I went to Taco Bell twice today. I may just drive over to Taco Cabana pretty soon to get the Fajita Taco meal. Mmmm.

It's 1:23 am. I just got done eating some food and reading up on all the 2006 Rose Bowl hype on the web. I'm listening to the new Strokes album, First Impressions of Earth. I've never liked the Strokes, but the new radio single prompted me to get the new album. I love this album. It's unlike their previous stuff. Cleaner less fuzzy recording (never understood using expensive digital recording studio to get the garage-like recording ala White Stripes), less 70's new wave pop influence and much heavier alternative rock. I guess I could go to bed now, but I'm wide awake. I don't have class until 2 pm, and that's if I decide to go to school. Not having any classes before noon, I wake up everyday without an alarm clock. Being a lifetime student is great. I wish I was back in New Orleans where they serve alcohol 24/7. I could go drink at the Club right now.

This is no longer a free posting site. The Shining Star has asserted himself. From now on, it's all $anu$eater, all the time.

Once again, I woke up this morning with nothing to do all day. I may try to catch the Real World Austin reruns on MTV, or better yet, I may rent a movie. Right now, I need to go eat some breakfast.

Today, it wasn't until 2pm when I sobered up. Drinking in the quarter until 7am will do that to you. I may try to go jogging in a little bit to sweat out the alcohol. Let's see how that goes.

Today, I woke up at 12:35pm. I ate some breakfast and then went to the gym. For the rest of the day, I watched TV.

This an open-posting site allowing all those who access it to speak their minds. Sort of like a bulletin board for friends of the Shining Star. Simply login , go to the posting menu, and type your new post. After you are done, select "Public Post" and your musing will appear for everyone to see at kyuchanisms.blogspot.com.

The rules:

Put your name on your post so we know who you are.
Don't edit any posts except your own.
Don't delete any posts.
Don't mess with the settings or template.

Otherwise, have fun!

The year was 1994. Three youths, one of whom was our young Hero, drove down a desolated stretch of road during the pouring rain. Carefree and foolish, their Toyota Tercel EZ Model happened upon the abandoned worksite of a traffic repair crew. Perhaps because of the torrential downpour, the workers had left their wares haphazardly alongside the street.

Noticing the scene before them, one youth turned to others and, smiling slyly, suggested the group make off with one of the flashing lights used to mark the site. Quickly, the driver stopped the car, and the other two jumped out of the hatchback and into the cold, wet evening. They snatched up the light and sped off into the night.

Of course, like so many a plan concocted by impulsive young lads, the scheme had one glaring flaw.

As the coupe roared down the backroads, the gentlemen soon realized their dilemma. The light continued to flash repeatedly, illuminating the interior of the car at regular intervals. Not wishing to draw such attention to themselves, two of the youths considered relinquishing their find.

Luckily, the Shining Star used his keen intellect to provide a solution which had eluded the others. With a knowing grin, he explained:

"No problem. If we get stopped by the cops, we'll just say we're construction workers."

Wise words from a wise man.