Couple of friends of mine who went to Japan last month brought me this souvenir: a Kamichu! phone strap. It’s pretty nice but I had a hard time putting it on my phone. The hole to hang strap is too small and it took me a while to put it on. I’m not exactly a phone strap person because with the way I use the phone I probably would break that tiny string within 3 days. So instead of ruining this nice little gift I’m going to put it back into its original packaging (see below) and keep it somewhere safe.

Big thanks to JC and EC for getting me this from Japan.

It seems that the city of Montgomery, Alabama has suddenly decided they are going to apologize to Rosa Parks and others who had suffered the injustice and humiliation during the 1950s. Please give me a break. If they are going to apologize to someone, shouldn’t they do it when that person was still alive and apologize in person? Why bother when the said person has already passed away? The article also states that the Alabama Legislature has passed a bill that would pardon Ms. Parks and others who were arrested for violating segregation-era laws. Excuse me, how many years has it been since desegregation? What took them so long?

All these apologies and pardons should’ve been done many years ago. I can’t help but wonder whether this is nothing but a publicity/political stunt. It lacks sincerity and looks to be too little, too late.

A friend of mine is a third year medical resident and he’s been thinking about whether he should specialize in other branches within he field such as oncology instead of being your run-of-the-mill internist. It seems that internists are considered to be in the lower level of the “hierachy” when compared to the specialists. He wants to be a “better” and “more useful” doctor, but the question is what exactly is a “better” and “more useful” doctor?

It’s human nature that people want to excel in what they do. In our society these specialists, let’s say cardiologists or oncologists, are more highly regarded by people than your family doctor at your local clinic. These people specialize in areas that involve serious and highly fatal diseases. Thus only the very smart, talented, and motivated people can handle the work. Are they better and more useful than my family doctor? I personally don’t think so.

I can totally empathize with him but I told him from a patient’s point of view an internist is equally as important as a specialist. For example, if all the internists in my city decide to take a day off and absolutely refuse to see any patient, can these specialists take over without missing a beat? May be a few can, but they won’t be the majority. In the end, doctors are too specialized in their particular branch that it is impossible to expect them to know everything outside of their specialty, thus everyone is equally “useful.” In my opinion, a “better” doctor is someone who cares about her patients, does everything possible to make sure she is making the correct diagnosis and whether her patients are getting the appropriate care. There’s nothing more scary than seeing a doctor who doesn’t seem to care. After all, even a little mistake can lead to some grave consequences.

I’m not in the field of medicine (that means I don’t know crap about it) so I can only speak from a patient’s point of view. (Everybody has seen a doctor sometime during her life, so everybody has been a patient at some point.) While my friend ponders whether to pursue further in his field, I hope he understands that even a “lowly” internist can also be a very good doctor.

So this is the kind of person Prince Charles of the British Royalty really is: out of touch, full of himself, and a jerk. It once again shows why the royalties are the worst. Worse than businessmen, worse than politicians. I started to see why Princess Diana decided to find another guy.

My other blog host crapped out and I didn’t have any backup! The admin won’t even answer email! I was able to salvage some of them through Google but I still lost a few long posts. This really sucks. It had happened before and I wasn’t able to get a backup plugin going before the host died again. I’m going to completely move to wordpress.com so it won’t happen again. I’m slowly, painfully, and manually transferring all the old stuff to wordpress.com. This is going to take forever..

@#$#%$#@^$%$#^$#

Okay the title is a really silly pun. All I want to say is congratulations to my friends EC and SW² who just got married recently. I’m looking forward to attend their wedding banquet in a couple of weeks.

Some time ago one of my friends L3m shocked us with the news that she got a motorcycle license and was getting a new bike. That was big news as she has done something that most of us — at least among the group of people I know — wouldn’t even consider. Obviously there are people who think this is a bad idea, with the usual “It is dangerous!” as their reason. It seems that she was able to filter out all the negative reactions and did what she wanted to do, which is really cool. I also love motorcycles but I know I’m not going to get a bike in the foreseeable future. So instead I have been bugging L3m to show me her new ride. Couple a weeks ago my wish was finally granted and here is one of the pictures that I took. (As usual, the “anonymous filter” is on. :-) It’s a Kawasaki Ninja. Even though it’s a beginner’s bike but pretty cool isn’t it?

Now that I have put the picture up on my blog, I hope she won’t get angry and chase me down and run me over with her bike…

Despite what is in the picture, I wasn’t the one who got married. As I said at the end of the previous post, I was in the San Francisco/San Jose area couple of weeks ago to attend my cousin EH’s wedding. I hadn’t seen my cousins for more than 10 years so I was pretty excited. In a way this was more like a family reunion, as all of us are scattered across the country. The wedding was great. It was well done, well organized down to the very small details. The reception was particularly good because the food served by restaurant that they chose was simply superb. For the 5 days I spent there, except the day of the wedding, I spent most of my time touring SF/SJ area with my relatives. I can’t say it was all good and fun. It’s not that there’s nothing fun to do in the area, the problem lies with whom you are going with. When you are traveling with, err, older people, there are limitations of what you can do and where you can go. For example, they insisted they have to have a certain kind of food for lunch or dinner, with anything else they would complain to no end. Personally, I would like to try something different everytime. Anyway, it was still great to be able to hang out with my cousin BH (EH’s sibling), who was the designated driver for the time I spent there. We used to hang out together quite a bit when we were little and it was nice to do that again, 10+ years later. If it wasn’t because BH didn’t have more off-days I would’ve stayed longer just to hang out. I was also introduced to BH’s significant other, the personable J. J helped out with a lot of the driving chores and etc and is well-liked by all of us. Overall, the trip was fun and I would come again on my own or with my friends in the future.

(One might wonder what’s up with the “happy face” in the picture. That’s the infamous “Laughing Man” logo from anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I used it to cover the plate area for obvious reasons and will use it again to cover people’s faces and etc in the future.)

One of the places that I made sure to visit is SBC Park in San Francisco. This is essentially the 1st stop of my “pilgrimage” to all 30 MLB stadiums. I suppose Fenway would’ve been my 1st stop and I’ve been there for a few times already. The biggest problem is that I don’t have any pictures to show that I had been there. I also haven’t been to Fenway since the new regime that took over and made renovations and additions such as the new outfield concourse and the Monster Seats. Red Sox ticket prices have become so prohibitively high that I’m not able to afford them anymore. When I have the money I’ll return to Fenway to really check out the park. Anyway, SBC Park is considered one of the best built ballpark in the game. After seeing the real thing, it really makes Fenway looks a garbage dump, even with all the recent renovations and additions.

This is the main entrance to the park. I think they call it the Willie Mays Gate. I arrived almost an hour early so that I could spend some time walking around inside and outside the park.

The Willie Mays statue stands right in front of the main entrance. There were always people hanging around so I never had the opportunity to take picture of the whole statue without those people getting in the way.

As shown in the picture, this is the statue of Juan Marichal, the “Dominican Dandy.” The statue was erected back in May and is located outside the back gate of the stadium, the Lefty O’Doul Gate, just before the bridge. Looking at the statue I think he must be a fun pitcher to watch. Unfortunately I wasn’t even born when he retired in 1975.

After making the round outside the stadium I decided to get in. It is clean, spacious, and generally very comfortable. There are LOTS of restrooms. Lots and lots of them. Why is it important? Because I had waited in line for the restrooms at Fenway many times. Fenway isn’t horrible but you still have to wait. At SBC, there’s no such thing as waiting in line for restrooms. There are also many concession stands so one doesn’t have to wait long to get food. The garlic fries there are delicious. It is a bit salty and the garlic probably isn’t very good for your breath, but still highly recommended. One thing that SBC Park is on par with Fenway: price of food. You can easily spend $20 or $30 on food alone. If you are hungry and you’re a big eater, watch out.

The red circle in the picture is where I was seated. It is in the bleachers but the view is better than I thought. This is where SBC Park is so much better than Fenway: the view is decent no matter where you sit. The angles are very good that you don’t have turn your head all the way to the left or right to see the action. Unlike Fenway, there are no obstructed-view seats as well.

This picture is taken at the top of the grandstand seats. The view is pretty similar to Fenway’s. I should also mention the right field bleachers. This is where those long homeruns fly over and into the McCovey Cove right behind it. The view of the McCovey Cove is really not bad there. That area is so close to the Cove that if the ball flies out of the stadium it’ll definitely hit the water when it comes down.

This picture is taken at the upperdeck. I have to say I was pretty scared when I climbed up there because of the steep angle. I’m afraid of height so as soon as I took the picture I walked back down immediately. (And holding tight onto the handrail.) Despite the height and the steep angle, the view is surprisingly good up there. It looks far away in the picture, but it is actually quite a bit closer. If I knew the view is this good I wouldn’t have bought that bleacher ticket. The price for the upperdeck doesn’t cost much more than the bleachers, but you would feel much closer to where the action is when sitting up there. Obviously, I wouldn’t want to sit all the way at the top, probably a bit down below. If I sit way up there I think I would be too afraid to go the concession stands or bathroom…

Is there anything that Fenway is better? Sure of course. The atmosphere at Fenway is definitely better. The fans are much louder and you can really feel their passion. I won’t say the Giants fans are apathetic but when I was there I simply didn’t feel the same electricity as in Fenway. The fact that this Giants team has not been playing well this season doesn’t help either. Without Barry Bonds, there’s really not much to cheer for the fans. (Are the fans going to root for him with all that steroid stuff?)

And how was the game? It was okay. The Giants were playing the St. Louis Cardinals. I pretty much expected the Cardinals to win. The Giants were trailing all along (thanks to some poor defense by Alex Sanchez, yes, that steroid guy) and tried to make a come back at the end against Jason Isringhausen. It didn’t work out and the Giants lost 4-3. I can’t say I paid full attention to the game for the full 9 innings though, as I spent quite a bit of time walking around and looking at things inside the park.

Overall I think it was well worth the money. The park is beautiful, the seatings and views are great, and I love the garlic fries. My first choice was to see the Oakland A’s but they were on the road at the time so I went to the Giants instead. Looking back I think I made the right choice. I heard Oakland’s Mcafee Coliseum is nowhere as nice as SBC Park. I probably only want to go when the A’s play the Sox. To be fair, the A’s are a better team than the Giants, so their games are probably more interesting to watch.

I finally found a host that offers great WordPress hosting for free. I’m actually able to get a theme that I like to install. The long waited category feature is finally here. (Blogger doesn’t have it. Yeah, they can die now.) This is going to make things much easier. I’m going to transfer the old stuff from my other blog to this. (Thus there’ll be stuff that have older timestamps than this post.) I also need to update what has been going on since my long hiatus from blogging. This is going to take a while……

I said before I was back from a hiatus and was going to blog again. Alright I lied. Didn’t happen. There were lots of things going on, and I was too lazy. (Excuses excuses…) Anyway, this time it’s for real. I’m going to fire away, so watch out. :-)

Also, a big thank you to Hisui for letting me use her web space to link pictures to my blog.

Update: Spymac is so slow and unreliable it’s unusable. (Instead of keep adding features and trying to compete with Gmail, can they do something about their crappy service? Sure it’s free, but what good does it do if ftp/email/etc wouldn’t work when you need it?) So much for the generosity of Hisui. Well, fortunately I get more connections: Sei will let me use her web space to store my images. Thank you so much!