Sunday, April 23. 2006
New York
Another Lomo-ized shot, this time from the Central Park Zoo's penguin exhibit. I was fascinated by the phrase, "watch me, watch me, on the sea's great stage..." Kiran was mocking my fascination with taking pictures of words, but I can't deny the power that the written word has over me.
I've been to the big apple before, but this trip was actually a momentous occasion... for my car. It joins the small group of cars that have driven through both Los Angeles and New York City. How cool is that? At least one police officer in NYC gave my car a funny look after seeing its california license plate. She probably hasn't seen a whole lot of those.
So how did my car end up in new york, anyways? Funny you would ask. Kiran and I had booked a bus that left Virginia Beach at 1am, which we managed to miss due to them running out of seats. So we headed back to Norfolk (thanks to Amit who drove us to and from the bus station, 2x 30min roundtrips!), and drove up at 2am, arriving in new york at 9:30am. We parked the car, dropped off our bags at the hotel, and proceeded to tear up the town. Won ton noodle soup for lunch in Chinatown, and I mistook the Met Museum of Art for the MOMA, a mistake that cost us some 40 blocks of walking... The central park zoo was very cool, something I never knew was even there. The MOMA was awesome, although I probably spent 80% of my time there in the photography exhibits. I don't think I know how to really appreciate the rest just yet.
And the reason we went in the first place, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones played at the BB King lounge one 42nd street. It was a killer concert. By the end of the day though, we had been up for 40 hours with only maybe 3-4 hours of scattered naps, and as such we were too tired the next day for anything but the drive home.
Anyways, Kevin beat me to post #100! Congrats to our blog for 100 entries, and here's to the next 200.
Friday, March 17. 2006
Match Day
Match day!!! Across the country, at the same time on the same day, fourth year medical students find out where they will start their residencies in a grand ceremony. Ours is a little special, we dress up in costume. This year's theme was "channel surfing," and as such we're all dressed in TV-themed costumes. I, on the left, am a network news weather man, with a complete weather forecast map strapped to my back.
For more thoughts on match day including where I matched, continue reading below the fold.
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Sunday, March 5. 2006
India: You can get lost, but you can't hide
So today's my last full day in Mumbai, I'm headed to Delhi tomorrow, then back stateside on Wednesday (by the way, can someone pick me up from the ORF airport on Thursday?).
I can't say I'm too happy about going back, especially because it took me about three weeks to really settle into things here and then I only had another week to enjoy it! My NGO had its monthly meeting on Friday, and I had to give a little farewell speech... in Hindi. So I spoke for a few minutes about how thankful I was to be welcomed into their organization and for their friendship, then switched to English and talked about how they had evolved since I first met them in 2003. When I sat down, I pretty happy with my language skills, and I realized that I would never have been able to make a speech like that a month ago.
I guess it all comes down to somthing I said to another visiting medical student I met my first weekend in town. I said, "Part of me feels perfectly at home here, the other feels completely of its element." Perhaps the reverse of how things are back home.
Wednesday, March 1. 2006
Goa to Mumbai
Hey, so I've been offline for a while since I was in Goa last weekend! Before I left though, I worked on my sister's film shoot here in Mumbai. She's shooting some promo spots for a sports film festival, so it was cool to see a Bollywood production crew (cinemetographer et al) work with 35mm film.
Also finishing up at work. Sorry about the lack of LOMO shots, I have a total of 2 1/2 rolls shot, but I think I'll have to wait and post the good ones when I get back stateside. In the meantime these digital snaps will have to do. Attached are two production stills from the shoot.
In the meantime, here are "Points to Remember" about DJ'ing a party taken from a newsletter published by Cafe Coffee Day, an Indian version of Starbucks...
1. Judge your crowd and then play your music
2. Expose yourself to every kind of music
3. Put Indian music first on priority
4. Do not throw attitude on people
5. Whatever you do, do not screw up the mood of the party
Words to live by. On that note, this is me signing off until the next post...
ps: Is anyone out there actually reading this? I don't see many comments. Come on people!
pps: Saw Jackie Schroff at a restuarant tonight for those out there as Bollywood obsessed as I am. I pretended I didn't recognize him so he'd think I'm cool.
Tuesday, February 21. 2006
A little press can't hurt
So my sister is also in Mumbai shoting some promo spots for a film festival, so there was an article about her over the weekend in the newspaper Daily News and Analysis (DNA www.dnaindia.com). Not to be outdone, my own article was just picked up in today's edition. I was having a conversation with one of the editors about the whole "match" process and he asked me to pitch an article on it! I found it odd that it would be so interesting in this setting, but anyway... here it is...
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1014018&CatID=9
ps: the photo is of the Oral Rehydration Salt I'm always talking about, described by the Lancet (aka "the literature") as one of the most important medical advances of the 20th century. I'm working on something that will earn that title for the 21st century, I'll call it the Chandra Solution. I have the name down, but I'm not sure exactly what to put in it... aspirin probably... and yogurt.