Privacy

I knew that one of these days I had to address how much info I want to reveal about myself on this blog. But the question is, what would be a reasonable degree of privacy? I am, after all, publishing the details of my life on the internet for anyone in the world to see.

Ok, let’s try this:

• I’m not going to hide where I live (in Orange County), because obviously I will be talking about going down to Laguna Beach or the cool Japanese market over in Costa Mesa. And this significantly narrows down where I go to school (but I’m not going to talk about it by name).
• I am going to not use people’s names, unless they give me permission. I just don’t know how they would react, especially since I’m already talking about them behind their backs (but it’s usually nice things!). It doesn’t seem quite so bad if I’m preserving at least a little bit of their anonymity.
• If you’re famous, the previous rule doesn’t apply. So I can say things like, “And then Chad Michael Murray and I totally made out! But he wasn’t as good a kisser as Gael Garcia Bernal.”
• I’m still gay. Wouldn’t trade that for anything.
• I’m Chinese. Also, part of my identity, although I’d really like to more okay with that.
• Oh, and when I start seeing patients at the hospital, I sometimes will want to talk about them, but I shouldn’t. What some people do is they change the patient’s details enough to make the patient unidentifiable. But still, it’s not difficult to find out what school I go to and therefore what hospital, so I will not talk about patients at all.

I’m also going to go back and change my previous entries. Yes, I know, it feels kind of shady, but it’s my party and I can cry if I want to. Hopefully, though, as I get the hang of this blogging thing, I’ll do that less often.

False alarm

Remember this?

I think things aren’t that serious between me and B., and I think he may be breaking up with me, or at least not that interested in me any more.

Oh, haha! Just kidding.

So it turns out he was out of town, and busy. And here I am, thinking, “Geez he’s taking a long time to return my calls.” I met up with him tonight again, and we cleared things up a lot. I gotta stop being so insecure. He’s not at a point where he wants a long-term committed relationship yet, but he likes me (!) and likes being together with me. And I told him, if he ever has a change of heart, that we should stay friends and keep in touch. And we talked about relationships and our histories and there was kissing.

But I think it was a good experience for me, to deal with these issues. Now I know I can be fine if it doesn’t work out between us.

Thoughts on news

I first want to say that I like the Los Angeles Times. I grew up reading it, and I appreciate the balance in coverage and restraint from injecting commentary in all but the commentary page. When I worked on the school newspaper in high school, I strove to write like the LA Times writers — pursuing different points of view, being a true “reporter” of the facts and details of a story, and staying as neutral as possible. This is a style, I think, that fits my personality, that fits the diversity and the moderate political stance of California. The New York Times is a fine paper, and it’s historically important, but its writers have trouble keeping their opinions out of their news reporting. I know some people appreciate that, they like the commentary and analysis, but to me it feels sloppy and egotistical.

My second comment is that it is often said (usually by conservative bloggers) that the mainstream media is biased and fails to report on the good things happening in the war in Iraq. Well, suck on this, biatches.

Vaccination clinic

Who here feels like they have no idea what they’re doing? [everyone raises hands]
—George O’Malley

Volunteered at a vaccination clinic yesterday. It’s a clinic offering free immunizations for children and families, mostly for school purposes. It’s run by a nurse, and it is also a place for us medical students to come and practice their skills.

The nurse is a very nice and patient person, but I felt like I was running on her last nerve by the end of the day. First, I kept patients waiting forever (they even sent the translator to hurry me up). This was mostly because I didn’t know where the bottles were, or I had (a lot of) trouble preparing the syringes (damn you bubbles!), or I was trying to figure out if the tetanus and diptheria vaccine was given intramuscularly or subcutaneously, or I was just trying to figure out which immunizations the patients needed.

I forgot to add band-aids and cotton balls to my tray, but luckily there were some in the room. Also I gave a couple of injections without remembering to swab with alcohol first. And when she reminded me, I said, “Oh sorry,” and set the needle down to get the alcohol. I forgot to cover the needle first and it became nonsterile. She went out to draw some more vaccine (which is expensive, as I understand). And she also looked at the vaccines that I was giving (a total of 5) and asked me, “You know that these two are given sub-cu, right?” I said, “oh.” She looked concerned.

And on top of that I had to communicate in Spanish only. I can scrape by with my high school Español, but it takes a huge percentage of my brain’s processing power, and makes it hard for me to put the patient at ease. I can only imagine what it must be like for a patient to see a nervous, sweating medical student fumbling with a tray full of needles, forgetting to make things sterile and making other mistakes, and who says only a few words to you.

It makes me glad that there’s at least another year before I go into the hospital. But it also makes me nervous how much more I have to learn.

Getting motivated

I have been having difficulty getting motivated lately. I read all these blogs about organization and motivation and getting things done (big ups to Lifehacker and The Happiness Project), but when it comes to getting my own act together and taking care of all the things that make me wake up in the morning and groan, I just keep putting them off.

I’m not going to dwell on the subject, except that it seems like I’ve been trying to think my way out of this one, when really the best thing is to just DO. Just pick up that list and say, ok, number 1: fix computer. Let’s get started.

Ok, I guess I should do it now, right?