I am currently on vacation.
Vacation - three syllables that stand for luxury and daredevil traveling and all that. Despite my love of travelling, I am currently spending my first ever vacation from work at home in my apartment.
A lot has happened since that journal entry on 6/6/09. I got my visa, I came to the US, I started residency, and am currently three months into my intern year. I started making myself a scarf, read a few good books, got a new computer (courtesy of my wonderful wonderful parents), a pretty new phone and an apartment I love.
In the past three months, I also splurged on a new bed - I spent a ridiculous amount of money on this beautiful beautiful bed I absolutely love. Thats the brief update... haha.

I haven't written any poetry in over three months. I haven't found any new music in this period either. I haven't managed to buy all the things I need for my apartment. I havent managed to get my license, or a car for that matter. **shrugs**

I have learned, though, that I love being where I am. I love working with people. There are any number of moments that I don't want to be around people anymore, and I'd give almost anything to be curled up in bed. But I like the people I'm working with, they're genuine and I think we're developing happy bonds.
I have also learned that it is a fine thing to dream, but it is a finer thing yet to be able to fulfil those dreams by myself. Yes, there are loan repayments. Yes there are a million things I can complain about. At the same time, I am finding myself a calmer and more fulfilled person when I go to bed at night, and to me, that is all that matters.

Huggiez,
memememememe.

6.6.09 - journal entry

tomorrow,
i shall burst into a million dewdrops
on a thousand rosebuds.
will that slake your thirst
or will you leave, smiling,
sated by the shimmering rainbows
in my being?

tonight,
i am myself,
a bumblebee on a chrysanthemum,
jolly in my solitude
and cozy in a flower.
i lean on the night a minute,
wishing to be here for a while longer.

The Paperwork Demon

So the Match is over and I Matched to a program I loved since I interviewed there. I am headed to MetroHealth in Cleveland for a four-year combined Internal Medicine/Pediatrics residency. I spent two days dazed and incomprehending, then the paperwork demon appeared and brought me back to reality. Like crash-landed me into reality, that I have less than a week to complete as much pen-pushing I can.

I am surrounded and inundated with the white stuff. Its stacked in piles and piles around my room - notes, books, papers, folders, more notes, notices, bills, booklets, pocketbooks, takeout menus - you get the idea. As I'm sitting on the floor on the one corner that is scrupulously paper-free, it strikes me that I'm upto my eyeballs in paper.

I am headed Home in less than two weeks time, and the sheer amount of the ragged paperwork I'm facing is staggering. I just spent three hours figuring out loan repayment schedules and realizing that yes, I am going to be forking over more than half my monthly income in loan repayments alone. While it means that when I finish residency I will be free of atleast one loan, it also crushes my dream of making it back to college - yes, I said college - for that long-sought degree in creative writing. Well, there is still the online classes option, I guess.

Meanwhile, the exercise in numbers reminded me of why I chose a career where the only math skillz I'm going to need are those that can be adequately performed on a standard four-function calculator. I am not fit company when I'm accounting for a huge monthly outgo relative to a small-ish monthly income. Yes, the numbers are still swirling around my head.

Once the number job gets approved, I can graduate. Its been like pulling teeth so far, what with people being to busy to tell me things in advance and then suddenly pulling it out as an obstacle. I feel like I'm running in one spot, unable to surmount this numbered hurdle.

Hopefully, tomorrow I can get atleast something moving at some end, I can get some more printouts and mail out some stuff that has been waiting for ages, including one Christmas present. Wheeeee.

Meanwhile I'm going to watch CSI: Miami online for the third night in a row until my brain lets me fall asleep. My insomnia is back in full force - I haven't slept two whole nights. Hopefully, tonight will be better.

The excited ramble, I guess

The rank order list submission deadline was on Feb 25. Now I'm counting down to Match Day, and I have butterflies and other pretty crawlies in my belly. They're growing bigger and bigger and eating more and more, and hence I will not gain any weight from all the brownies and cookies I'm eating.

Not being allowed to cook also severely limits my culinary variety, so dinner is mostly unhealthy - noodles, ready to eat food, noodles, cookies and milk, occasionally oatmeal and/or cereal, noodles, etc. I have three different kinds of noodles in my room, and that is sad. I suppose I could spend more money at the hospital for dinner, but a salad (>60% lettuce - dosen't that make you feel all rabbitty)costs more than 5$, and I'm heartily sick and tired of grilled cheese sandwiches, "oriental" vegetables and boiled green beans. Not to mention white bread.

I'm just getting over my poetry slump, I wrote one that was well-received over on Splash and that makes me happy. I'm also reading more poems. Not one the workshops, since the hospital computers won't let me access the workshops and the internet at home is pretty unreliable, but published poems, prize-winning poems, poems that take me away from the eventful environment of the not-too-ill into living rooms strange yet familiar, a silent kinship under the skin.

I recently had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Thomas Duffy (yep, the guy who discovered the Duffy antigens, for anyone who understands) talk about the arts in medicine, and poetry in medicine. He could have been talking only to me. Some of the more "grounded" medical students with me were like "What the hell is he talking about?", but I loved it. I love hearing that there are people who do both medicine and poetry and balance them out.

After the 11th, when I walk into a patient's room, I won't introduce myself as a medical student anymore. More likely, I will have a medical student with me whom I will introduce. I will add a doctor before my last name, and fewer patients will know my first name. I will add an MD behind my name, and we all shall be proud. I might also be scared or nervous as I wait for the 19th, Match Day. I do hope I will Match at the program I loved interviewing at.

I'm flying back to Chicago next week. I get to go back and steal hugs from my favorite two-year old, and do a whole lot of shopping. I love shopping, and I have a list of things I have to get before I fly home. Like buy a crazy amount of chocolates. Like a really crazy amount - its embarrassing how much chocolate I'm going to have to buy in the next couple of weeks.

Hershey store, are you listening? I'm coming your way!

Does anyone know if Coldstone has ice-cream that I can carry home to the heat of the Indian summer? :P

Exciting News Blog

SO remember how I wanted to be a doctor as far back as I can remember? Yeah. I'm starting my last rotation on Thursday, and that runs for four weeks. Then, I get to add a "Dr." before my name and an MD after. Isn't that awesome?

I won't have a graduation ceremony, my school isn't having one. I'm so exhausted from all the interviews and travelling and the non-stop working, running, moving, studying, that all I want to do is to go home. So it all works out and yes, I'm flying home on April 3. Yay. I booked my flight on sunday.

Speaking of interviews - I have been thinking long and hard about my rank order list for residency, and I sort of have it figured out. Thats a secret. The results will be out on March 19, just after I'm hoping to receive my MD from my school. Whheeee.

I finish that last rotation on March 11 and I'm flying back to Chicago the next day. Tonight and tomorrow, I'm going to be packing. Just throwing stuff into suitcases and a duffel bag. Aaaaaaaa.

I'm too happy and exhausted to type out my thoughts in order. But my joys are so interconnected, it is sort of hard to pull them apart and figure out what comes first. Am excited for the next couple of months.

Poem

I have no fingers to feel with,
no one to reach out for.
My breath comes in little wisps,
pale ghosts telling me
I'm alive.
In the twilight darkness,
my mind is hypaethral,
perhaps even transparent.

Quis operor sequor?
Est is sententia
vel est is flumen in suus tractus??

Lacuna es decessio mihi.
English est haud diutius meus castrum.



(What do I follow?
Is it thought
or is it a river in its course?

The words are leaving me.
English is no longer my forte.)

Poem

Lights sparkle, fiery and hazy
in lukewarm water jets
pounding my numb skin.
A taste of being almost home.

Back when I was little
and a bath
involved
me and one of my parents,
in a bathroom
filled
with bright plastic buckets,
I'd close my eyes
and enjoy the feel of water
pouring over my face,
warm and caressing.

I didn't know then
what it meant -
I am just beginning
to understand the real meaning
of home.

When the simple sensation
of water coursing down my face
and washing away tears
feels like a caress from all those years ago.

When I can almost smell
the flavors
in my mother's kitchen -
fresh coriander,
tamarind,
freshly-grated tender coconut
for festivals
I can no longer track.

When I dance on the edge
baring my heart
for strangers to read,
trying to find a niche
I can hide in.

When all I want is my freedom
and a kiss, maybe a hug -
so badly that it almost hurts.