The Last Mile

You have to hand it to the ancient Chinese. They really had a handle on things, like truly effective home remedies for stomach flu -- rice porridge (shi fan) rocks! -- which I have been relying heavily upon over the past 48 hours, and wise old sayings about life's truths, like that one about the last mile being as hard to finish as the first 99 put together.

I'm in that last mile on a long overdue paper right now, and I've totally lost my steam. All I have left is one paragraph in one section, on the use of intravenous immunoglobulin for the treatment of anticonvulsant hypersensitivity reactions, and all I can do is stare at the yellow legal rule on my desk with "IVIG" written across the top. It is as if all my cerebral presynaptic boutons (I just love that word, boutons, so very francais, oui?) have been squeezed dry of any useful molecules of neurotransmitter and the reuptake receptors have packed up and gone home for the day.

Of course, I did this to myself. My administrative assistant knows me well, that I can't focus and get much done until a deadline is breathing down my neck. Why is that? Is it how my parents raised me or is this something hard-wired into my genetic make-up? Was it an evolutionary advantage for my ancestors to sit back and wait to harvest the rice only when the fields were threatened by an impending monsoon? Did my great-great-great-great-great-great aunt secure a better match for herself by waiting until the night before the lunar new year to clean the house of a year's worth of grime?

This time, 2 or 3 deadlines have come and gone, extensions have been granted, and this is it -- now or never. By golly, I'm going to finish this last mile, bound feet be damned!

Too close to home

Poor Pig, Poor Me -- Pig gets no sympathy from Goat, nor I from Bob.

Say what?

Bob was complaining to me last night that I don't listen. I find that kind of humorous, because I can recall many a time when I've told him over and over again about a planned family activity, the day arrives, and it was as if I had been talking to the wind. That's why I have a particular appreciation for this joke my office mate dropped on my desk today, I'm still laughing :)

Man driving down road
Woman driving up same road
They pass each other.
The woman yells out the window, "PIG!"
Man yells out window, "BITCH!"
Man rounds next curve
Crashes into a HUGE PIG in middle of road and dies.

Thought for the day:

If only men would listen...

Sumptuous Rice

I attended an Indian cooking class with some girlfriends this past week as a new exotic venture. The class, "Sumptuous Rice," was not exactly what I expected. Instead of stirring our own pots of biryani, we mostly watched the teacher cook at the front of the home ec room of a well-to-do high school.

Just getting to that home ec room was a stressful affair. Not so much because we had to navigate unknown halls, following cryptic signs, but because everywhere we turned there were banners and trophies declaring the stunning accomplishments of over-achieving, mal-adjusted, over-pressured, angst-ridden teens. A John Waters spoof of wealthy suburban Maryland life could not have been more disturbing than the reality. Passing the cafeteria, we saw pint-sized teeny-boppers defying gravity in a verticle pyramid under a plaque for State Champion Cheerleading. Professionally printed mega-banners in the stairwell congratulated the school for having two Westinghouse semifinalists and two Intel semifinalists. Their National Merit Scholars were proudly displayed, like a list of champions from the Pan Asian games -- C. Jao, J. Sun, J. Tian, W. Xiong, and L. Yu -- Can you blame the white flight from neighborhoods harboring these unreal kids? How can students possibly survive that kind of academic environment unscathed?
I'm not even white, and it's enough to make me want to run far, far away with my little yellow babies.

After recovering from my scary high school flashback, I settled down to making rice stews with an authentic Indian cook. To be honest, she lost me at "masala" and "pressure cooker". Even so, I did enjoy diving into the sumptuous bounty when it was all done, while believing, even for a short time, that I might be able to recreate it on my own.

The highlight of the class was really the instructor's story-telling. She had a gift, like Rachel Ray, of chatting away while not missing a beat with the cooking. One story she shared with humor was the evening she met up with her newly-arranged-to-wed husband in NYC after flying 22 hours from India. She was anxious to make her way to their new home in Maryland, so they hopped in the car and drove an additional 5 hours after her long flight. When they finally arrived, she was nearly sleep-walking from the fatigue, but perked-up when her hubby said he had a surprise for his new bride.
"Flowers? Jewelry?", she thought to herself.
He asked her to close her eyes as he steered her through the house. "OK, open your eyes!"
She found herself facing the kitchen as he smuggly declared, "Here is the kitchen, I will never have to step foot in there again!!!"

Remind me now, what they say about men and pigs?

By the Grace of God

By God's grace and thanks to my fellow blogger, Angela, I found out today that my brother made it into cyber news (Yahoo AP) with his family in Boston.

Church Elder David Ting holds his son Tobin, 2, as the congregation stands at the beginning of Sunday service at Grace Chapel in Lexington, Mass., Sunday, Feb. 11, 2007. Grace Chapel is one of many megachurches altering the segregated landscape of Sunday worship, with African-American, Haitian, white, Chinese and Korean congregants singing along with a guitar-playing pastor. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

...David Ting, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and a Grace Chapel elder, has seen this firsthand. When he and his wife first joined the megachurch a decade ago, they were 'very much in the minority' as Chinese-Americans, he said. But at a recent church Christmas pageant, he realized that the children's choir had transformed: about a third of the singers were Asian.
'Look,' he told his wife, 'this is the future of Grace Chapel.'

What strange chance that my brother should make the news, less than a week after our own appearance in the Baltimore Sun. I think it's kind of neat, especially since I learned something new about my brother's multiracial megachurch, I guess I've been remiss in asking him more about it. By another uncanny coincidence, I also have been, albeit sporadically, attending a Grace megachurch in my own neck of the woods, as a token Chinese. For some reason I never put two and two together, his Grace megachurch and mine, until I read the article. I suppose even church preferences can run deep in one's bloodline. It's just too bad I can't tap into this cosmic twist of fate and, somehow, coincidentally, win the lottery.

Happy New Year

This past weekend, I was in my first stage production in years since our med school spoof, "Sleeping with the Enema". That's me behind Connor in my groovy pants in the annual Chinese New Year variety show put on by the Howard Community College Chinese School. As amateur and brief as our little dance number was, all of us in the bilingual class had nervous butterflies waiting backstage for our time in the spotlight in front of hundreds of people, oddly including some non-Asian faculty members from our neurology department. But all the practice, despite ice and snow, paid off, and we had a great time, including the kiddees. Afterwards, I asked Connor how he managed his stage nerves and he said very maturely, "I tried not to think about it."
We'll be capping-off our week-long celebration of the new year of the pig this weekend over dim sum with a festive serenade of drums and a lion dance. So for all you Mandarin speakers out there happy eating, XIN NIAN KUAI LE, GOONG SHEE FAH TSAI!!!

Our 15 minutes

By now, many have already heard of our time in the limelight over Valentine's Day when Connor and I made it into the Baltimore Sun's local section. I now have a new respect for journalists and photo-journalists who have to extract quotable quotes from mumbling subjects in the field as well as keep an accurate account of names on a host of strangers in their pictures. And boy, can they be resourceful. Somehow, the reporter tracked me down from my blog, of all places, and emailed me some last second questions to clarify her statements in the article, including the fact that Connor has a different last name from me. Luckily, she made it under the deadline for printing and it was all good. I'll include my favorite excerpts from Laura Shovan's article below (i.e. the "important" quotes from yours truly).

Connor Shin can't wait to celebrate the Chinese New Year with his family Sunday. The first-grader, who attends Hollifield Station Elementary School in Ellicott City, will watch a dragon dance and have a traditional meal at a restaurant in Gaithersburg.

But Connor got an early jump on the new year - the Year of the Pig - last week when he participated in the Miller branch library's Chinese New Year event. The children's story time was part of Cultural Connections, a library outreach program targeting Howard County's ethnic communities. Lew Belfont, Howard County Library's head of customer services, said, "A significant population that is served by the Miller library [is] Chinese and Korean." Belfont and information services librarian Fritzi Newton applied for a grant from the Maryland State Department of Education. The Howard County Library received two Library Services and Technology Act grants totaling $50,000.

The Miller branch used the first Cultural Connections grant to advertise in Korean and Chinese newspapers, buy Korean and Chinese materials and hire two cultural liaisons. The second grant is being used at the east Columbia library, where it will serve the Hispanic population.

"The people who are interested are not just Chinese and Korean," said Tricia Ting, Connor's mother. "It's a nice way to bring the community together," and teach other children about Asian culture, she said.