Bolivia: a prologue

Mike (exiting the airport security line): Crap. When I put my computer back into my backpack, I didn't see the folder with my visa application materials.
Andrew: Uh oh. You sure it's not in there?
M: Nope. Checked all the pockets. Maybe I left it in the security line.

{Mike leaves the secure area, waits in line, checks all the bins, passes through security again}

M: Nope. Shit. You know, I definitely had it in your apartment. I bet I left it there.
A: Maybe you put in in the checked luggage.
M: There's no way to know. How much time do we have:
A: We board in an hour fifteen.
M: Shit. Alright, you wait here. I'll take a cab back to your apartment and see if I can find it.
A: Dude, that's crazy. You don't even know it's there. You might miss the flight.
M: Alright. Well what now?
A: Well what do you need?
M: Passport photo, visa application, copy of my immunization records, clinic letter, copy of my credit card and passport.
A: Hmm. (taps on iPhone) Well, there's a CVS 13 miles from here. You could do your photo there. But then you can't make copies.
M: I can't believe this is happening.
A: Maybe there's a business center here in the airport.

{Quick inquiry at the information desk: there's a UPS business center in the O'Hare Hilton.}

A: Great. And I can take your picture with my iPhone and email it to you to print out.
M: Okay. Let's find a white background..........oh here, the side of this kiosk desk is white.
A: Alright. Crouch down next to it and look straight.
A: Looks good. I'm emailing it to you now.
M: Okay. We have an hour...I'm going to run to the Hilton, print out the photo and the email attachments, and make the photocopies I need.
A: Good luck, man. I'll meet you at the gate.
M: Hopefully.

3x3

Code

It was 7pm, and Isabel was nearly done mopping the patient rooms 12 East. After that, she'd round the corner and tidy up the remaining three rooms of floor 12, then it was on to floor 13. Custodial night shift wasn't the most glorious of jobs, but the atmosphere was safe, the pay was okay, and the hospital never was lonely. One last room, in the corner. Then one more hallway, then floor 13. Isabel knocked on the door and called, "pardon!" before opening the door. The light was off. "Turning on lights!" she called again. With a flick of the switch, the empty but messy patient bed was illuminated by a fluorescent glow. Isabel always started with the bathroom. She opened up the second door, and screamed.

"Today was the worst birthday, EVER," though Lisa to herself as she left the MICU room on floor 10. Not only was she on call, but she had spent the whole day arguing with triage about placing a patient directly into the ICU rather than the floor. Triage had broken protocol, the ICU refused to take the extra patient, and in the ensuing confusion and gridlock, the elderly paraplegic patient's bicarbonate continued to plummet as she waited. By the time Lisa had finally convinced the ICU to take her, it was too late to save her life. She was now DNR with a focus on palliative care. Lisa had always been an optimist, and she couldn't help but believe that this patient might have lived if not for the systemic mistake, even if it was clear to everyone else that the woman had presented to the hospital when it was already too late. So was the life of a resident physician. Lisa was shaking her head to herself when the trauma pager on her hip went off. Code. Floor 12. Lisa sprinted to the stairwell, dashed up to 12, and ran to the corner room as fast as she could. She could see the room before she got there. She'd be the first physician to respond, so she'd be running the code. Instinctively, she started reviewing the steps she had memorized so many months ago. But when she finally arrived at the patient's bathroom, her through process came to a jolting halt as she came upon the gruesome scene.

The 50 year old patient had hanged himself with his belt, and now dangled suspended from the towel rack near the ceiling. Nurses from the floor started to file in, and without losing a beat Lisa barked commands and together they got the man's body down to the floor, laid him on his back, and stripped off his hospital gown. More residents came rushing in, as they too had received the page. Lisa was in charge; deliberately but forcefully, she ordered a nurse to retrieve a defibrillator, and had another resident check for a pulse. There was none. In came another resident with the medical student. "Chest compressions, now!" The student dove in, and right away began pumping at the chest, locking his elbows throwing his body weight into every violent thrust. Anesthesiology was here. Quickly and expertly, they shoved down a plastic tube down the body's throat, secured the air mask, and began squeezing the airbag to give the man artificial breaths. The student now was exhausted, and was dripping sweat over the patient's body. One of the residents tapped his shoulder and took his place, and the student sat back to catch his breath. This was not like on TV. CPR was a tiring, violent, last-ditch act to save a life. 90% of the time, it would fail. Defibrillator was here. The nurse placed on the electrodes between chest compressions then called to clear the body. Airway stepped back. The chest pumper stepped back. "I'm clear. You're clear. All clear!" The body lurched forward as the defibrillator issued a long beep and discharged. Still no pulse. It was now the student's turn to do compressions again. Once again, the anesthesiologists pumped. Once again, the defibrillator charged. All clear. Discharge. Still no pulse. The cycle repeated. Then again.

Finally, Lisa called a stop. Time of death, 19:17. By now there were about 20 people crammed in the patient room, all of whom had a separate role during the code. Some stayed behind to finish off the situation, while the rest left to return to their interrupted work. The medical student didn't know what to think as he returned to the team room. His knuckles were bloody; somehow he had scraped them during the code. He now felt cold as the hallway breeze hit his sweat-soaked scrubs. As he logged back into the computer to finish off his evening notes, he knew that he wouldn't have time to reflect until hours later when he returned home. Codes happened all the time. There was still work to be done in the hospital, and the hospital didn't wait.

Within the next hour, Isabel had returned to the patient room, now messy but empty, and had sanitized and reset the space for the next patient. Now the room was spotless, with a new bed on wheels with a new mattress and neatly folded sheets. The room had already been assigned to a patient waiting in the Emergency Department hallway downstairs. That patient would be here in a few minutes. The hospital didn't wait.

Music review: The Ice is Getting Thinner

It's about time I started writing about music again. Note to readers: I tend not to listen to albums until they've been out for a while; it's not on purpose, but I simply don't have a ton of time to listen to things anymore and when I want to listen to something, I really like to sit down and listen with my full attention. So sometimes it takes me a while to discover songs that came out months ago. But good music is timeless, right?

"The Ice is Getting Thinner" is the exquisitely devastating finale of Death Cab For Cutie's latest album, Narrow Stairs. The analogy isn't subtle; in the first person, it compares the slow deterioration of a romantic relationship to the inevitable melting of ice in the spring. DCFC is known for depicting the melancholy, but this is perhaps the darkest and most despairing we've seen from the band. A solo bass provides both the relentless ostinato bassline and the primary harmonic line to Ben Gibbard's baritone melody, forming sparse minimal chords that are quite unlike the multi-layered complexity we've come to expect from DCFC. The choice of instrumentation helps shape the desolate landscape of the song: first, the range of notes available to Gibbard and his accompaniment is limited to low clusters. Second, the thin instrumentation is really an intimate duet between voice and bass, adding to the sense of loneliness that encapsulates the lyrics so well.

The only glimpse of light we see occurs in the bridge. For a moment, we move into a major key area, and the bass stops its mechanical accompaniment and assumes the more traditional bass role as a guitar appears and plucks arpeggios above Gibbard's vocals: the first treble-range sounds of the song. For two short measures, we anticipate a happy lift as Ben sings "as Spring arrived." However, the next line, "we were taken by surprise," does indeed bring us a surprise, but instead of an uplifting turn, we encounter a crushing chromatic shift developing into a downward circle of fifths that spirals us back to where we began, except this time we find ourselves even deeper despair as the bass strums muddled clustered chimes on its lowest open string while the guitar performs a wailing solo with pitch bends that mimic human cries.

Dramatic? Yes. Too much? Perhaps, but even if you find the aesthetic too overbearing, you can't deny that the concept and execution of this recording is beautiful in its simplicity and almost too painful to listen through.

I've been toying with the idea of resurrecting this blog. Sure, I'm not the strongest writer. But enough of my friends have Blogspot accounts that I feel that my comments to them would be more legitimate if I had posts of my own. So: please leave a comment for this entry whenever you read this; that will be my gauge of how worthwhile it will be to continue this. Now, for some actual content:

Why I love my parents, part 1:
In addition to being totally liberal and understanding and letting me do with my life what I see fit (atypical of Asian parents, many of whom indoctrinate their children with their own ideals), the following exchanges of the past week illustrate just how awesome and sharp my parents are.

1) ME: Mom, I'm going to Madison this weekend to watch the Wisconsin/Davidson game.
MOM: Oh, don't forget your Pepsid! [Note: Pepsid AC, by some unknown mechanism, inhibits the Asian flush associated with alcohol consumption]. The fact that my mother instantaneously made the connection of "Madison --> game on TV at a bar --> alcohol --> minimize social stigma by taking a drug for off-label purposes" makes me very happy.
2) My parents gave me porn star sheets, by which I mean black satin sheets. I don't know what exactly they expected my reaction to be. Unfortunately, the feel is just too weird and after a half week trial period I have switched back to cotton.

Mom and Dad, you are amazing. Consider this my heartfelt salute (despite the fact that you will probably never read this post).

...and scene

I spent my last full day in Mexico City with Ben and Adam in the former mining town of Taxco, about 2.5 hours south of DF by bus. The city is built into the side of a mountain, and walking through steep cobblestone streets surrounded by a breathtaking mountain view is a fine way to end any trip.

I'm back in Salinas now. With a laptop and high-speed internet access I can now upload my pictures, which I will do soon. I'll add them to my previous posts rather than all in one separate entry, and should be done with that by the end of the week.

Dash across the border

Upon entering Mexico, foreigners receive a small and rather useless immigration form. Apparently this form is required to leave the country again. Nobody told me this, nor was this mentioned anywhere on the form. So begins my first story, in which I trekked across the airport to the immigration office and proceeded to bribe my way out of the country, since I lacked the cash to pay the official fee and had no cards with which to extract more money. I definitely would not have been able to do this in the US, but in Mexico all it took was placement of cash on the counter, direct eye contact, some leading questions, and silent understanding. I left the immigration without any remaining cash, but with the documents I needed to check in to my flight.

The rest of the flight went without problem, and in Pittsburgh I met up with Doug, Ronli, and Jenny and we proceeded to drive towards Cincinatti, stopping at a Motel 6 on the way. Sometime around 2:30am someone began pounding on the door next to ours and screaming to her not-so-significant other. This continued for about an hour and a half. Eavesdropping, we learned that this woman was seven months pregnant, whoever was inside refused to accept that he was the father, and that he should open the door "so that she could punch him in the face" [sic]. Finally, Doug called the front desk, a security guard rectified the situation, and all four of us (and presumably them two, too) were able to sleep in peace. The next morning, a heavily tattooed woman in a beater was seen in a pickup truck driven by a skinny, smoking tattooed man with a shaved head. Tires screeching, they rode off into the sunrise, leaving behind a cloud of dust with only their shared future ahead of them. I wish them only the best.

Wedding number one in Cincinatti and wedding number two in Pittsburgh were wonderful. Much alcohol and food was consumed, air guitar duels were fought, and jollity was had by all. I saw many friends I had not seen in over a year, and some I may not see for at least another.

Returning to Mexico, I had a five hour layover at O'Hare during which I hopped onto the El to meet with Neil and Mari for lunch downtown. I got back to O'Hare only 40 minutes before my scheduled departure, but to my dismay I learned that my flight had been delayed 2.5 hours. Miffed, I joined the crowd of Mexicans surrounding the payphones and joined their strife in attempting to call friends and family in Mexico. Few of us had much luck, as my calling card seemed not to work from a US pay phone. I soon became the designated dialer of the group, since I could interpret the English operator instructions. While on the line for one call, a young woman handed me a Minneapolis number and I lent her my cell phone. So I met María, who was returning from visiting her boyfriend in Duluth. It was her first time out of Mexico, and she was rightly confused by the delays and gate changes thrust upon her, not to mention being in an airport in the first place. She understood no English. Excited to practice my Spanish and make a new acquaintance, I became her guide, along with a small group of elderly ladies who were similarly confused by the situation. After more delays and gate changes, we finally left O'Hare 4 hours after our scheduled departure. María and I maneuvered some seat switches to sit together and I continued translating crew announcements and refreshment offerings, and tried and failed to summarize the plot of the inflight movie, "Breach." Later, we helped each other through customs and calling taxis. Yay for new Mexican friends!