Med School in Philly

Hope

2009-01-20T19:42:00.000-08:00

This post has no structure, I am going to say whatever I feel like at the moment.

Now i'll be very truthful, I rarely follow politics and I am not someone who cares much for politicians. But I feel today is a day that has inspired me.

I just watched Obama's 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention, and I saw, after filtering through the typical idiot comments found on youtube, a comment that I thought rang so very true.

"It is much more difficult to be for something, than against something"

I think this line exemplifies what Barack Obama is doing for this country.

Barack Obama is FOR hope. He is FOR ideals. He is FOR opportunity and unity and coherent strength among our people. And rather than joining the masses who are so quick to blame others for troubles, instead he is inspiring the people to do something about it.

I don't know what everyone else feels when they watched Obama's inaugural speech today, but i'll tell you what it made me feel. It made me hold back tears. It sent chills down my spine. It made me sit a little bit straighter. And it made me want to be a better person. Isn't that what you want in a leader? Someone who can inspire, tell a story, elicit emotion, and force action simply by talking! Getting people to do things simply by the spoken word. I find it amazing that there are such inspirational people in the world. Just thinking about how much he has inspired me makes me want to be like him. Not because he's famous or because he is in a powerful position. It's because I wish to inspire like he does.

Granted, I'll never be in a position to touch and inspire the billions of people that he does around the world. But inspiration, being a role model, has never been about the number of people you touch. It's about the WAY you change them for the better. It's just like that one quote, "To the world, you may just be one person, but to one person you may be the world". Everyone has to start somewhere, and for someone like me, affecting one person may be the start that I need to take as well.

What Obama will do as president will be great, but that's not what interests me about him. It's what he's already done on his path to being president that does. The way he single handedly unified a nation, because he gave a reason for people to believe in him. He stuck to his guns and his ideals, and people really understand that he is genuine about what he says and what he does, and in a world full of corrupt and deceitful people, it's refreshing to find someone at the top of the world, who got there the way he did.

I was thinking, if they had hidden John McCain and Barack Obama behind curtains so you never knew what they looked like or what color they were throughout their entire campaigns, and you listened solely to what they said, would the people who voted for John McCain simply because he's white and Obama's black have voted differently?

Anyway, today is historical to me. Why? Because a black man is president? No, i don't care what color he is. It's historical to me because a great man is president. Especially in our country, as of now, in order to fill a position that is not considered normal for people of a certain race/sex/faith, I believe that a person has to be transcendent to overcome that. I hope that one day, people will understand this, and that people will look at Obama and not think of him as a black man, but as a great man.

I honestly and truly believe, as Obama said, that the differences among the people of our country is our STRENGTH, not our weakness. We should not allow ourselves to be pigeonholed by single trains of thought, but rather we have many different alternatives, which gives us a right to make an educated choice for ourselves. I've always thought that this was the right way, but I can't say I've always practiced it. Coming to Temple has given me an opportunity to meet people from all walks of life and every race you can imagine, from my classmates to the patients, people on competely different ends of the spectrum. But what you realize when you spend time with these wonderful people, is that when you really get to know them, you look past the differences. You don't even notice it anymore. You don't categorize them based on their race or upbringing, but rather on the strength of their character and the inherent meaning behind their beliefs. You understand that good-spirited people exist everywhere, and it inspires me everyday to have friends who are so good-hearted, and are much better people than I am. It becomes a goal for me to be like them one day. They are my peers, but they are also my role models.

To finish my unorganized rant, I'll leave with these thoughts.

Have the courage to stand for your convictions. You are all role models, whether you want to be or not. Be the inspiration for somebody else, it has much more far reaching consequences than you can imagine.

2009-01-08T22:46:00.001-08:00

I've never made New Years Resolutions before. I've always felt that they were just things I should be doing all along the way anyway. I've never felt a resounding need to point out my faults, and then set an actual pathway to rectify them. Well, i'm older now, and since i'm busier and have more studying/work to do, I can't just do whatever the heck i want all the time. Plus, since im older, my body is not nearly as resilient as it once was to all the crap i do to it. So... the theme of my 2009 new years resolutions is... PERSONAL HEALTH!

1) Be overall Heart Healthy! - You always hear these studies about how cardiovascular disease is such a huge disease in older males. Yet us being young males, we never really think too much about it because we're young and invincible... or so we think.

I had an EKG lab today, and while my blood pressure tested the "ideal" 120/80 systole/diastole, my professor told me that 80 diastole is actually not ideal. It's on the high end of ideal. And for someone as young as me to have it already that high, he said its just gonna get consistently higher and higher. Also my standing pulse rate is at 80, and these past few days when i've been sick, its been at a consistent 100 beats per minute, which is just about tachycardic. So needless to say, I have not been taking care of my heart very well for 23 years, and at this rate it definitely will not last me a full life.

2) Maintain a Healthy Weight - According to my BMI(Body mass index) I was in the category Overweight.(Higher than normal but less than obese). I was a consistent 190lbs at school , but after my finals, when i arrived home for winter break, i was an even 180lbs. However! Just because I lost weight doesn't mean I was doing myself a favor. My staple diet consisted mostly of pasta and fried rice, which by no means is an ideal way to be eating well. Also.... after 2 weeks at home, i came back to philly at 195lbs. My goal is to be back at my freshman year of college weight ... 170 lbs!!! (well it was 165, but i like the number 170 more, sounds manlier)

3) Eat Right! - Time to get some salads and diversify the food I eat. And the biggie is.... LESS SALT! I did a nutrition study on an average days meal for me, my calorie intake seemed to be at an average level, but my salt intake was like twice to three times as much as im supposed to have.

4) Consistent exercise - I am consistently put to shame by some of my friends at school who find the time to workout everyday and still get all the rest of the things they want to do done. Gutierrez has a morning workout before class and an afternoon workout AFTER class! And i can't even get in ONE?!?! NO MORE!

5) Live balanced, no excuses - I constantly find myself saying I don't have time to exercise or cook a decent meal or do things needed to maintain a healthy lifestyle all for the sake of "work" and "studying". Well I had a revelation today. So ... let's say i work so hard to get all these things and I have my "dream job" and everything and then I don't even live long or healthy enough to enjoy it. Whats the point of that? So... Balance!

Ok, time to Gamecast the Oklahoma/Florida Championship game. I don't have TV.... And i'll try to make more posts, i was getting frustrated with always trying to post pictures in my posts cause they dont have a straight plug and position format, so i don't like doing that.

Man I wish I was in Cali

2008-11-19T04:36:00.000-08:00

Philly World Series Parade and Halloween!

2008-11-01T00:33:00.000-07:00

HELLO! Today was a very very eventful day in Philadelphia. Since you all know the Philadelphia Phillies won the world series, today the city was in an uproarious celebration due to the Championship Parade. Basically Broad and South Streets were JAMPACKED with people who were celebrating. I tried to go home from the subway and it was so packed with fans it took me literally 30 minutes to move 10 feet. LITERALLY. There were estimates that there were about 2 and a half million people out celebrating here, and from these pictures you'll be able to tell that it was probably true.

Later in the night.... it was time for HALLOWEEN!!! NICE AND SPOOKY!! I was not feeling very good, but at the very last minute I decided to go out. SO! I had to improvise and make a costume as quick as possible. It took me 20 minutes but my handy work paid off. Or maybe it didn't. This may be the worst costume ive ever had.

If you can't tell what I am, I'm a traffic light. Finally me turning red from alcohol has an advantage!! Unfortunately today my alcohol digestive properties decided to be very good and I didn't turn as bright red as I was going for. Oh well.

Me and my boy Gametime Gutierrez. He had a bunch of Barbies sowed into his shirt, which made him into a "chick magnet".

Thats how the night ended for me. HAHA. Ghetto-est Costume Ever.

Snow!!!!

2008-10-28T14:39:00.000-07:00

You see the picture of the weather on Tuesday? SNOW in Philly is
coming!!!

APAMSA National Conference Weekend!

2008-10-19T15:48:00.000-07:00

Hola amigos

This weekend was the APAMSA(Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association) National Conference weekend and it was hosted in Philadelphia! My buddy Vinhtastic Trang drove his ass over from VCU and came to visit for an action packed weekend of.....!!.... lectures and learning.... haha and also some fun. The national conference brought members from APAMSA chapters across the country to Philly in order to share what each chapter has done philanthropy-wise, what their future goals are, and other ways to coordinate inter-school community service projects. It was also a good way to meet other medical students from across the country that you probably wouldn't have the chance to meet otherwise.

There were several very good speakers and workshops that we attended. The first was an endotracheal intubation workshop where a doctor from the Navy(who happened to be a temple med graduate, awesome!) used her mannequin to teach us how to properly intubate a patient using a Macintosh blade i think it's called. You pretty much need to stick that blue thing in the dude's hand into a person's mouth, push forward on the back of the tongue to protrude the tongue out. This allows you to see inside the back of the patient's throat, where you need to place the tube into the trachea(not the esophagus otherwise you'll kill the patient), pump up the little balloon to keep it in place, and then administer breaths. Granted it was a mannequin but it was still an interesting procedure to witness and I got to try it out too without too much trouble.

Another workshop we went to was a little more disturbing at first, but it was actually the coolest one i've seen yet since ive never seen anything like it. The mannequin arms have red dye "blood" attached to the inside of the arms, so that when you practice drawing blood, there will be actual simulated blood coming out so you know if you got the vein correctly or not. We got to practice administering shots, drawing blood, and inserting a catheter into the "patient's" arm, which was cool since this was the first time I ever got to do this. There was also a Sim Man in the room next door which breathes and has vital signs and everything, and we simulated rescue situations such as if a guy passes out on a plane, what are the steps you need to take for basic life saving technique.

Afterwards, we went to this huge banquet which reminded me a lot of the formals and installs that i went to in college. Same prepped dinner with tons of people (I think there were 200-300 people there?) . One of the doctors there had been chillin' on his beer for like, an hour, which vinh had pointed out to me. So i offered Vinh ALL the money i had in my wallet to go up to that doctor and say "Excuse me sir, I thought you were a doctor? So why are you NURSING THAT BEER."(Credit to Rob Nguyen who first called me out the same way a year ago). Too bad Vinh didn't do it. It would have been the highlight of my medical school career. Sad I know. (Oh yeah the speaker in the picture is Mike Honda, a congressman from norcal, im sure a lot of you norcallers have heard of him)

OOH! there was also a raffle that we had. I won a free Anatomy textbook, but since I already finished anatomy, and Vinh is starting anatomy on monday, i let him have it so he can study his way to victory or something like that.

Finally, after the banquet, we headed over to the Strikes Lounge. It was a bowling alley with tons of pool tables, arcades, air hockey, mini basketball, and it had the redsox/rays game on tv too. APAMSA rented out the entire place so we just had a buncha people in there who could go wherever they wanted, bowl as much as they wanted for free, with free drink tickets(well only one free) and tons of free food. The platters came out one after the other. We stayed until about 2am and then finally bounced. We had been up since 6:30 that morning to go to the conference and we were exhausted out of our minds, so after this very very fun day, I got to go home and finally knock the eff out.

Ok that's all for this update, hope it wasnt too long and boring. I have a midterm tomorrow, what am i doing wasting time posting! ARGH!

P.S. The APAMSA National conference will be held next year at..... dum dum dum.... UCLA!!!! Needless to say, I hope I finish my tests on the friday before and have an excuse to fly out to LA and visit y'all! It's a whole year away but it will be awesome! If you read this and are a med student and went to UCLA with me, MARK IT ON YOUR CALENDARS!

APAMSA Health Fair and Soccer Game vs Jefferson

2008-10-12T09:12:00.001-07:00

Hey guys

Thanks to Chris Chow's need for updates, which i was planning to do for a little while anyway, I decided to take pictures of what i did for this past weekend BESIDES studying. It was quite an event filled weekend with lotsa good times!

The first picture is a picture of the APAMSA health fair. Basically what happens is there is a fair put together for the underserved vietnamese community in north philadelphia. We got to practice little things to help out the community, including taking blood pressures(which i just learned how to do, haha im so noob) and also do glucose and cholesterol tests. There was really good Temple representation there (about 25-30 students?) who showed up and helped out. There were about 15 drexel students there as well and I saw this one dude who i totally thought might have gone to UCLA, but I didn't really know him at UCLA(or not enough to remember his name anyway), i just sorta recognized his face under his huge mat of hair, so i didn't bother to ask if he went to ucla, but i guess i should of. ALSO we got a ton of good food afterward, and i ate like 5 eggrolls with that sweet dipping sauce, plus spring rolls with the peanut brown sauce. DELISH!

The second picture is my classmate Joe taking a cholesterol test for me. We had been doing the tests throughout the morning and after it cleared out a little bit we resorted to testing each other. I am proud to say my cholesterol is a stunning 100 even(I think anything under 200 is considered okay), despite the fact that i eat so much steak here. Must be the exercise. (Also notice the stethoscope around my neck. I Looked hella legit hahaha, but you guys all know better)

Third picture! It's a picture of the Temple Med Soccer team that i play with. Today we played against Jefferson Medical school and we won a convincing 2-0. It was our first victory in 3 games, even though we're still undefeated. We tied the first game 4-4 and tied the second game 3-3. We're on our way to victory! yayuh hahah.

Fourth Picture is an in-game action shot. I was taking pictures while i was playing and the person was passing the ball to me. JK. But it was a pretty intense game, and it required a ton of testicular fortitude on our players' parts(and ovarian fortitude for the girls i guess) to pull out the victory, but everyone played hard despite the early morning 9am game and and we were rewarded with the W.

Fifth Picture is a picture of Oscar, one of my teammmates' dog, who acts as the mascot for our team. If you didn't know, the Temple mascot is an Owl, so she bought the most AWESOME mask I have ever seen and put it on her dog. Oscar was trying to get it off for the longest time but he was unsuccessful so he was stuck playing our awesome cheerleader the whole game. What a trooper.

Anyway, that's it for now, off to Dim Sum down the street!

More Tastes of Philly

2008-09-30T20:02:00.001-07:00

DUDE! To add to my day of indulgence, for dinner i went to this place called mcgillin's. They had 5 dollar pitchers of beer and.... wait for it.... 25 cent wings! so when you're given the option for 25 cent wings, you do what any sane rational person would do. You order 72 of em. This picture is just half of em, but we inhaled them like no other.

Second picture is a dessert called Gelati. It's a mix of frozen yogurt on top and this dessert under it called "water ice". Water ice is sorta like a slushy, but thicker, but not quite frozen lemonade-ish... yeah you just kinda have to have it. It's good though. Come visit philly everyone! It's awesome here!

A Taste of Philly

2008-09-30T13:20:00.001-07:00

Hey guys,

So i finally finished my first block final yesterday and I am ecstatic. I went out and partied last night and went a little crazy on the shots(as evidenced above) although obviously not all drunk by me cause I am still mush. But it was fun and we went bar hopping to 3 different bars over the course of the night, with the other friggin 180 temple med students taking over from place to place.

Also, because our final was yesterday on monday, we get today(tuesday) off, and it was a much needed break. I finally cleaned up my apartment, did laundry, shopped for food, and built that annoying little cabinet thats been sitting on the side for the last 2 months. ALSO, in a sort of little celebratory way, i totally got to indulge myself on a fat philly cheesesteak.(as evidenced from said picture above)

The first thing most of you did when i moved to philly was ask me to send you a cheesesteak. I will do the second best thing and send you a PICTURE of a cheesesteak. Oh it was so delicious, and it was only 5 bucks for that bad boy. (a regular cheesesteak) Also, the same place i went to has a "Monster" cheesesteak for 10 dollars. I can only imagine how ginormous it is, one of these days im gonna try it. The only place in LA that i know of that's comparable to it is actually in westwood called "South Street Philly Cheesesteaks" which is modeled after the south street that is 2 streets down from where i live. cool huh? very cool. Ok now i'm ranting. Have a good day everyone!

PS. WHO WANTS TO GO SNOWBOARDING WHEN I GO HOME

Whoa, i just figured out how to enable comments

2008-09-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

Haha I'm such a blogging noob. I had no idea that there was a way to enable comments until now. I just thought that this blog was incapable of doing such a thing, but i liked using it cause I could blog from my phone by emailing to the site. My block final is tomorrow, but after that, more posts!

My new haircut

2008-09-26T16:21:00.001-07:00

So since I have been in philly, I didn't know where I was supposed to go to get a haircut. So finally after it got ridiculously long, I decided to google "barbershop" and find somewhere to go.

Well, this is the result hahaha.

Contrary to whatd you'd probably think the people here think it's actually pretty fun. One person said it looks like a European soccer player(cristiano ronaldo specifically).

My professor even came up and commented on it. He said that when he was young, him and his friends used to call it DA. Of course, I had to know what cool nickname DA stood for so I asked. He told me "duck's ass".

I'll leave it at that.

Only one more week of anatomy!!

2008-09-23T19:01:00.001-07:00

Hello guys and gals

I have not been updating this as regularly as I would like but I feel like procrastinating a little bit so I am going to indulge you guys.

I have officially one week left until my anatomy final next Monday and I am über excited. The second years are all telling me that anatomy is by far the hardest part of first year so after this I can breathe un poco mas and enjoy my life a little. Not that I'm not enjoying it now. But you know.

Also, I will be coming home for thanksgiving so I do hope hope to see you all while I am home for a measly four or five days. Miss y'all

Ps. The picture is of me recharging my highlighter. The skinnier one was running out of juice cause i highlight so damn much so I luckily had a bigger one and I'm trying to pass some of the ink over from it. Will it work? If the stain on my white dress shirt sleeve from a highlighted I fell asleep on is any indication.. Heck yeah it'll work

Greatest iPhone app ever!

2008-08-24T18:45:00.001-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen. I have just discovered the greatest iPhone app
in the history if ever. It's called scribble and it allows you to take
a picture from your camera roll and draw over it however you want.

This is a picture from a wasted Wednesday a couple years ago back at
pelham. Ah those were the good old days. Haado gay wooooo!

I hope this isn't illegal

2008-08-20T19:35:00.001-07:00

I snapped a picture of a cop without him knowing. I just find it funny
that even cops have to take the subway for some reason.

Philly is a pretty city

2008-08-20T14:40:00.000-07:00

I am currently in the library studying but I wanted to take a break so
I decided to do a little mobile blogging.

Philadelphia really is an interesting city full of culture and art.
Take this picture on the building wall for example. It is so
masterfully done and the art is really just a wonder to behold. Where
in la or pv or anywhere else have you seen things like this? I can
only think of the graffiti on the freeway walls and the one exception
is that picture of the marathon runners somewhere but I can't remember
where.

Anyway, if this was just one mural in the entire city, it wouldn't be
that impressive. But this is just one of tons or murals and street
artwork that literally covers the city. I know the perception of
Philly is that it is a more ghetto or dirtier town than la, but it
really does have its beauty.

I think this is just the perfect example of the metaphor that I live
by most of my life. Like you all know I am quite an optimistic
person, so I'm gonna lay a little bit of my thought process on you now.

Let's say two people are standing in this exact spot from where the
picture is taken. However, one of the people is always pessimistic,
looking at things as the worst possible way. This person would look
down and see a street that is dirty, filled with trash, and have too
many cars cramming up the streets. Now the other person, who is also
standing in the same spot, is the optimist. He looks up and sees a
realm or possibility, imagination, and creativity sparked by the
gorgeous mural, the beautiful trees and the sun filled sky.

What's the idea here? Two different people can be in the same exact
spot, or place in their lives or whatever you want to call it.
However, even being in the same spot, your outlook on life can have a
dramatic effect on how happy or appreciative you are to be where you
are.

That being said, I've studied more in this past week than a combined
quarters worth of undergrad work, but I'm happy where I am. Cheers
everyone!

My First Day

2008-08-10T18:14:00.001-07:00

"You see, today isn't just anyday. It's my first day. I'm the man..."

For those of you avid fans of the tv show scrubs, you may recognize
that quote as one of the first lines jd says in the very first
episode titled "my first day". Hence the title of this post and the
picture of my new, ahem, scrubs, that I will be wearing tomorrow for
my first day of gross anatomy. Now, granted he was referring to his
first day of residency which is insanely different, but let's not ruin
a good moment with the particulars.

Anyway, I just was thinking about how my time here has been, and will
continue to be, a lot of firsts. It's the first time I've ever been on
the east coast for more than a week. It's the first time I've ever had
to leave everything and everybody I know to live in a new place. And I
guess it will be the first time I make a first step into what will be
my career for the rest of my life.

Foe those of you wondering, I absolutely adore philly. The orientation
week was a blast, and my future classmates are all intelligent,
driven, and for a lack of a better word, nice people. The transition
has been much easier than I thought it would be and there are so many
interesting things here in such a largely different culture it almost
boggles the mind.

There are entire walls of buildings that are covered in hand painted
murals, decorated with art supplies in a way and scale that I didn't
think was possible(I'll put a picture of one on my next post.). The
layout of the city is tremendously easy to navigate, especially for
someone as directionally challenged as me. The public transportation
here is easy too, the subway essentially gets me almost anywhere I
need to go.

All in all, this is probably the smallest "big city" I've ever been
in, but that's not a bad thing. Hopefully it'll be okay to keep me
occupied for the next four years even though I'll be studying a lot.

I miss all y'all a lot and I hope everything is going as well in la as
it was when I was there to enjoy it.

Jon

Test

2008-08-08T19:50:00.001-07:00

This post is a test from my phone.

This is my new student id! Look how spiffy the holographic things are

Phillin' Philly

2008-08-08T19:45:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone

I am starting a new blog to update you guys at home and everywhere else who care about how my life in philly and medical school are shaping up to be like!

I also added the option to blog using my phone, so if i find interesting things along the way, i will be taking pictures and talking about them, so look for some interesting updates! hopefully...

2008-08-08T19:41:00.001-07:00

Starting new blog