Monday, June 29, 2009

Quote of the Day

"The height of your accomplishments will equal the depth of your convictions."

Travel travel travel

It's so much fun! I have lots of photos to post from my last two weeks, between Hawaii, Seattle, and Canada. Rest assured it's been a blast. Most recently, on our ferry ride to Vancouver Island we saw baby orcas breaching, a bald eagle soaring right before us, and seals sleeping. On my run this morning I saw a little sea otter playing along the the shore. And of course, the vespa ride! It's been awesome to spend time with Nicole, Grandad and Laurie. I just wish I was staying longer!

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Crossing into Canada

Enjoying the Peace Arch park.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Friday, June 26, 2009

Good News!

On my last day in Hawaii, I got a phone call from the Dean of Admissions at Stanford Medical School letting me know that I was accepted!

I'm still a little in shock, what good news! Go Stanford!

And a fitting quote...

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work, the more I have of it."

Thomas Jefferson

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Saturday, June 13, 2009

What a birthday extravaganza!

It started with a filling homemade breakfast courtesy of my Grandma...


Then, I decided to take advantage of the "Get in Free on your Birthday" deal offered by Disneyland...


With my 81-year old Grandpa. Yah that's us standing in line for Splash Mountain.

And we rode Space Mountain and the Matterhorn too (and many more!).

And then more family came and celebrated on Saturday.

I'm officially spoiled. Thank you to all!

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Thanks!

Thanks for all the wonderful birthday wishes yesterday! I had a fun day at Disneyland with my Grandpa, and my Grandma spoiled me with a birthday breakfast and steak dinner! I will try to post photos of Disneyland on Monday.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Pizza Party!

Last night I had a pizza-making party to celebrate my 24th Birthday! I was so impressed with everyone's creativity and pizza-making skills that I have a few awards to give out....


Most Traditional: Kevin won the award for most traditional pizza, hereby called the "Kevin" pizza.

Most Unique Combination of Ingredients: Meghan won this award with her brilliant combination of apple, celery, and brown sugar toppings.

Most Creative:
Hannibal and Jay won the Creativity award for their stuffed crust!

Troopers of the Night: Melissa and Audrey won the Trooper award for helping set up, slice and dice, and still making delicious pizzas!
Trailblazers:
Amy, Eugene and Rajiv won the TrailBlazers award, for making the first pizza of the night!

Most Perserverence:
Abi and Jay won the Perserverence Award. For making these two delicious pizzas even though they were already both stuffed!


Best Secret Ingredients: Yiwey won the award for best secret ingredients. He made a Hawaiian pizza with Spam and Pineapple!Thank you so much for everyone who came and were such good sports and fantastic chefs! I had so much fun and I hope you all did too.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

The origin of "doctor"

The word doctor is derived from Latin doctus 'having been taught; learned' (from docere 'to teach').

Interestingly enough, the word "patient" comes from the latin root patiens, which means "to endure".

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Atul Gawande's lastest New Yorker article

"You come to realize that we are witnessing a battle for the soul of American medicine. Somewhere in the United States at this moment, a patient with chest pain, or a tumor, or a cough is seeing a doctor. And the damning question we have to ask is whether the doctor is set up to meet the needs of the patient, first and foremost, or to maximize revenue."

The Cost Conundrum

What I like about this article is that Dr. Gawande gets at the heart of the problem. We're not going to be able to solve the problem of health care costs by changing who pays for what. What we need is to revitalize the profession of medicine, bring the honorable reputation back to physicians and make sure that doctors are trained and inculcated with a culture of asking the question "what is the best we can do for this patient" and put all other questions or incentives aside. This is what a profession is about, and why doctors have such high respect. It's NOT easy to make this the main objective of your daily life. But it a worthy goal that comes with responsibility, tough decisions, and respect. We have to get back to the healing, caretaking aspects of medicine, the aspects that everyone, patients and doctors can unite behind.

RSS Feeds

I finally discovered the amazing value of RSS Feeds today.

So far, I've stayed away from them, mostly because I didn't really understand what RSS meant. I also really like visiting all my favorite blogs because of the unique user experience you get with different backgrounds, seeing other commenters, and seeing what blogs they subscribe to.

However, I've reached a point in my blog reading in which I do not have the time or patience to visit each individual blog regularly. I discovered that an RSS feed is a super-easy way to make 1 "super-blog" with all the recent blogposts from your favorite blogs. If only someone had explained this to me earlier...

I just set up all my favorite blogs with their RSS feed links in Google Reader. You should too if you haven't already! A key point of advice: go through each blog and select "mark as read", this way you will only have future posts in your inbox.

Monday, June 1, 2009

No Excuses

Quote of the day

"They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts"
~Sir Philip S. Sidney

Courtesy of my Good Earth White Tea bag.

Video about BCT

Here's a short video clip of an interview with Elly and Laura (my two bosses) talking about BreastCancerTrials.org...We've come so far!

Clinical Trial Matchmaking Made Easy @ Yahoo! Video