The castle: surgery shadowing HR

I've been trying to process some paperwork to shadow the surgery resident I've been doing research with. I see her fairly often, and we usually meet in the surgery housestaff lounge. It seemed the easiest thing for me to just shadow her on a few OR days or clinic days.

As soon as we tried to set up a date, we ran into some administrative roadblocks. Someone from the surgery office called me, directing me to call another office, which somehow had to do with hospital outreach. Then they asked me to get signatures from a host of people, so that I could forward the forms onto a third person. When I sent the forms to the third person, he asked me what the heck they were for. And so we started again....

Bureaucracy is an aspect of daily life, especially in medical school, but this was certainly the most Kafka-esque experience I've had in a while. I forwarded the whole 2 month long email chain to my friend James, who somehow came across the "lost pages of Kafka's last novel":


A young stranger arrived just the other morning to serve at the hospital. After initially being viewed rather circumspect she allayed the fears of the clinicians by telling them that she had been summoned by the attending to do some surveying.
"Surveyor!" they called. "What shall we call you?"
"My name is L" replied the visitor. "I have scheduled work with the attending and I would like to get started as quickly as possible. I have a tight class schedule and I'm leaving for Africa in a couple weeks. So, like, let's get this shit started."
L was told, rather abruptly, that no one actually meets with the attending and certainly not without the proper paperwork.
"But Dr. Kirby has already signed my paperwork" L said.
"But that is of no matter surveyor. It is not the signature of Dr. Kirby that we need. It is that of the attending, Dr. Warner. Please go talk to James Lee. He handles all of these mundane details" relayed one of a handful of administrators.
"But how can Dr. Warner, the lead attending, sign off on my paperwork if no one can speak with him?" Pondered L.
"That is none of my concern!" shouted an administrator. "Here, take these two orderlies which will serve as comic relief and in all likelihood try to have sex with your significant other" offered another administrator.
"Well, that's kind of strange. I think I'll be alright." muttered L.
"Fine, then good luck driving this already confusing plot when it's just you marching around trying to get signatures." interjected yet another administrator.
"Fine, whatever. Let's go, assistants."
And off they set, towards the towering Attending Office seen off in the distance. After the assistants proved to be completely incompetent (for example trying to nap in a bed reserved for a critical patient) L set off on her own. Finally, after weeks of trying she managed to get

Amazingly he did this all on his iphone...

Bubble chart

I read an interesting article from Brookings on the change where the poorest people in the world are living, and how this affects what the development world should focus on. This got me thinking, but I wanted more detail beyond the 2x2 box of low/middle income and stable/fragile states. But aha, here it is: Poverty in numbers, the changing state of poverty from 2005 to 2015.

This second paper is a long, detailed document, but from an initial scan, they do a great job of presenting easy to understand and visually compelling graphics. I'm especially a fan of these bubble graphs, using which the reader can immediately visually understand the relative magnitude of poverty in different regions and countries, instead of having to think about how numbers relate to each other.

This screen grab is rather hard to discern, so if you view the original document the image is on page 8. What's interesting is that China gets considerably smaller (although it would have made better sense to keep it in the same position in the 2015 graph), and in fact almost all of East Asia drops off. 2015 is dominated by South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and some SSA countries even grow in size (DRC). It's also interesting to see how Latin America, while rife with its own set of problems, represents a small slice of the pie population-wise.

schiller's, blind nils at firebird

I took yesterday as a personal day and did almost zero work...

I dragged Tim to Schiller's with me in the morning to look at camera equipment. I want to gear up before my trip to Tanzania in two weeks, but the price tags are enough to think about new hobbies, like knitting. I picked up my first SLR a year ago and just started taking pictures, but the technical talk still eludes me, and a lot of times I'm not really sure what I'm paying for. Tim and I also debated investing more upfront for equipment I can 'grow into' versus saving some money now and upgrading later. I'm incline to say Tim's advice of investing early makes sense, but my student loan supported bank account says no.

Still, I took some recommendations, and decided I'm in the market for a flash, a tripod, a polarizing filter, a backpack insert to carry my gear, and mayyyybbbeee a new telephoto lens. So far I've only ordered the Canon 580 EX flash from Keh.com. I'll update you as it comes in.

Tim with his camera that also folds out into a three bedroom home:

In the evening our Practice of Medicine class held a 'physical exam' review session with junior residents and pizza. I just happened to be in a room of many young female medical students and two single male residents, which brings many obvious jokes to mind.

Despite the draw of questionable pizza and free soda, we left the review early to hear Adam play with the blind nils at Firebird. Adam, who also happens to be a physics phd student, is one of the most haunting male vocalists I've ever seen live. His voice is versatile, crooning, shouting, whispering.

http://www.myspace.com/theblindnils

Brunch at Salt, Central West End

Poached tongue and eggs. Admittedly, not my order.

ST[y]L[e]

Yesterday was the STL IA/STL Style photoshoot, on Comptom and Cherokee. We brought our own props, got our own t-shirts, and rocked our own inner-models.

Afterwards, I treated everyone I met with slightly more disdain, since I was now a working 'model.'

The evening was a lovely first visit to the Barnes and Nobles in Ladue. Though much smaller than what I'm used to in the Seattle suburbs, it was still a nostalgic multi-hour multi-bookpile visit to the cafe. I devoured the current issue of Harper's, including an interesting essay by Nicolas Baker (the author of last year's the Anthologist) on pacifism. I'm hoping to guest post about this over at the Chang Dong Times soon. I do wish that Harper's made more of their content available online (or that someone who subscribes would lend me their password).

Other books I picked up and piled: The new translation of War and Peace, in paperback. Alas, wish-list relegated. Several National Geographic photo albums. Ethiopia travel guides. Fast food nation. Swahili phrase book. Many more.

But oh BN, I love you but...

Of these, I only 'needed' 1. a Swahili phrasebook, and 2. a gift for a graduating friend. I found the best options in both categories, pulled out my laptop, checked the (lower) Amazon price, and one click ordered with free two day delivery and no sales tax. Then, I read until the store closed and left the beautiful books behind.

Does this make me a terrible person?