The price you pay for enlightenment

I endured a sacred ritual of finishing my university education. Many before me have stared this beast in the eye and either cowarded or gritted their teeth. Not many walked away happy.

Today I confronted my student loan debt. Having used loans during undergrad and medical school, it was quite substancial. There was only one solution and that wasn't pretty - consolidate then apply for economic hardship deferrment through residency and just watch the interest accrue year after year as I am powerless to stop it.

I have friends who devote their 20s and sometimes 30s to paying back their loans. Just imagine all the socializing money you are losing monthly. Rather burdensome when you consider how many time as a student you told yourself that things would be much better financially once you had a real job. The problem is, that once you get a real job, you give all your hard earned money to the people you owe for getting you to this position.

Why is education so expensive? Was it always so expensive? Is the cost just a safety net in society to make sure that you contribute to the workforce later and don't just sit home, read books, surf the internet and collect social benefits?

Dare the taxi

51st and Broadway. One side Mars Restaurant. Other side McDonalds. Both edges of sidewalk overcrowded with busy New Yorkers fighting their way home after work. The pedestrians had the red. Streams of traffic interjected itself between the pedestrians and their way home. The road should only be one lane. All vehicles were hugging the right side. I began to cross. Inches from the wall of vehicles between me and my destination. A renegade taxi tried to expand the road and hug the left. He drove toward me, hoping I would back up and allow him to pass out the other vehicles. I wouldn't relent my hardfought pavement. Screw him. A gaze. That's all he got. The eyes signaled his defeat. He stepped on his breaks and reluctantly made his way behind the pack. Soon the moment ended. I had won a victory for the owners of this city - the pedestrians. We crossed quickly then expanded in many directions, nothing needing to be said.

1st Meetup meeting of Spanish Speakers

This evening I went to my first Meetup meeting at the Iguana Lounge on 54th street. When I arrived I looked for a large group of people. I had no idea what anyone looked like. On the dance floor many people were standing around, chatting in small groups. I walked to the center and stood alone just listening to the conversations of others, which although seemingly an eternity was only maybe 2 minutes. Finally a man turned around from the small group he was in, made eye contact, and said "hola." The game had begun.

This man, my first speaking partner, was a physical therapist whose Spanish ability was intermedio as he said. I was like an old engine that took a while to warm up. I could see that he was growing bored quickly and he found someone to introduce me to. So there we are - the three of us and right away I could hear that the new guy had even worse Spanish than me and that the first guy was ready to pawn me off on the new guy. Some desparate instinct deep within me took over. It was as if I recalled what I already knew in a Buddhist sense. My Spanish speaking dramatically improved and I commanded the attention of the intermedio for long enough until the group coordinator came by and said that we should switch partners. Whew! I did not come here to engage in a conversation of "uh... como se dice... uh..."

Overall, it was a fascinating experience on many levels. On one level I approached random strangers and began to conversate about topics ranging from who I was and what I did to the use of Skype for internet telephone calls. On another level this was done in a foreign language, namely Spanish, in which I am far from fluent. Just imagine starting this sentence: The people in the United States have more money than Europeans because they... then stopping because you have no idea what the verb "to earn" is or what the word for "taxes" is. Or telling someone that you had read the other Dan Brown books besides the Davinci Code but forgetting their titles because you are so concentrated on speaking in Spanish. Then whenever you switched partners having to go through the basics again but being incapable because you aren't used to the new accent.

Exhilarating. A true test of your communication ability. I am sold on this group.

First Inline of Vacation

Went out today for a nice long inline. I began by crossing midtown at 51st over to 12th and trekked north. Along the way I was passed out by another blader when the road got treacherous. I followed him and the chase began. We each had our strengths. He could negotiate bumpy terrain much better than I yet I was the faster of us on a flat surface. Every pothole jarred me though I perservered nevertheless. Just when I would gain on him, another pothole would nearly down me. Around one corner I almost met my maker, as it became bumpy and 2 pedestrians and one biker quickly materialized into my view. The best way to describe my escape from certain collision is to liken this instant to a slithering dance, resplendent with agility.

By the end of our race, we rode to the end of the trail at 95th and crossed out. He exited to his apartment on 92 and Broadway, as he knew it would be impossible to challenge me on the smooth path Broadway affords.

At this point, I crossed east over to Central Park West and entered the park at 93rd. What a beautiful day for blading! I weaved east and west while always maintaining south until I finally came out at Columbus circle. Then the ride back on Broadway, the street, not the sidewalks. Incredible! One near life taking escape from a bus and one time of getting stuck behind a stinky garbage truck, then it was over.

New Orleans - Day 6 - Return is imminent

On the drive to pick up my bags, I observed a politically active New Orleans. It was election day and multitudes sprawled the streets attempting to secure votes for their candidate in this crucial race which would be very pertinent to the future direction of New Orleans rebuilding and repopulation. 26 candidates were on the ticket each with his own solution to the New Orleans struggle to come back. One question in my mind is whether displaced people living in other cities out of state like Houston, TX should be allowed to vote or if it should be assumed that they have built new lives and are not planning to return. People believed they should have the right to have a stake in New Orleans future. Personally, I chose not to vote because I know I will not be a part of New Orleans ever again and it wasn't my right to decide on the future of a place I will not be a part of. The results were that the incumbent Mayor Nagin will run off against Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu on May 20. I believe this is a fork in the road in which one of the two candidates will lead New Orleans into a very different direction.

On the flight back, one last hurdle appeared. The flight from Chicago to Newark was originally delayed 2 hours, during which time the passengers were to have boarded and rested on the runway. Luckily in the end it was only a 30 minute delay. No matter what though, as long as I could return to my city, NYC, I was happy.

Being back in Manhattan was wonderful. Again the security of being surrounded by man's skyscapers. Then the security of being wrapped in my lovely wife's arms. I am home once again.

New Orleans - Day 5 - Compared to Baton Rouge

Vitalizing Downtown Baton Rouge

I hope I look this happy by the end of intern year


LSU Baton Rouge Parade Grounds

LSU Baton Rouge near Union

Today I lunched with my party god friend. We acknowledged the strong bond we had formed to one another during medical school as a result of our backgrounds. He and I came from two very different worlds which were both distanced from one another and from the worlds of the typical LSU medical student. We were very different people from our classmates yet we had to coexist peacefully with these people for 3 years. My world and his world adapted well to one another despite our differences yet neither of our worlds adapted well to those of the typical LSU medical student. It is the reason that admissions committees devote so much effort into choosing the applicants who will fit best into the group and compliment it. Apparently they weren't aware that my friend and I were a horrible fit with these people.

People have told me that it is just how things go. You go to medical school to prepare to be a physician. You make the good memories later when you are a physician. Even so, it would have been nicer to have been in an environment that was more conducive to my happiness and growth. This is why I was very careful about choosing my residency program. There were many choices in New York City, but I chose the one in which I knew I fit best with the residents and attendings and the one whose work environment I thrived in. I learned my lesson from New Orleans.

My friend dropped me off at the LSU Baton Rouge undergraduate campus and I hung out there waiting for my other friend to get out of work. At first glance the LSU campus looked just like I had remembered it, business continued as usual. Upon further inspection, there were subtle changes. For instance I searched for the office of my old German professor but I could not find it and the hallway had been infected by the math department who seemed to have taken over much of the foreign language department property. In general, LSU Baton Rouge brings to mind many more good memories than LSU New Orleans. I guess Baton Rouge was my social education which didn't really prepare me for the workworld with a German major and New Orleans was my academic education which prepared me for residency but didn't do much for me socially. My hopes are that the Mt. Sinai residency will fuse the social and the academic.

My other friend eventually came by to pick me up. She looked happy. She is an intern in Baton Rouge and got slammed after the Hurricane, working way more hours than she should have. The good news was that she was on consults this month so she had a little more freetime during my visit. It was great to spend some time together and catch up and hear the happenings of old friends. She brought me to downtown Baton Rouge, where we listened to a live band for a few and ran into some people we knew. There is an effort to vitalize the center of Baton Rouge. I believe this is necessary because the population is 600,000 and growing - it is a huge overgrown suburb - they need a real downtown feel.

So we finished the evening with dinner then the movie Friends with Money, which I expected more out of. I don't know if I was just exhausted or whether the movie was boring but I almost fell asleep multiple times. It falls into that category of films in which the focus is the relationships of the characters without much attention to plot or imagery.

New Orleans - Day 4 - Party Culture Brings Hope

Audobon Park looking great

Party places like Cat's Meow are opened, just not as many partyers

If this isn't a sign of the return of New Orleans tourism, I don't know what is!

The Party God

The Superdome plans to return

Today I went out with one of my medical school buddies who was very atypical for our school. He does not fit into the social architecture of the class but has a huge social network in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. He is a self made businessman and a party god.

He dropped me off in Audobon Park while he got a haircut, which gave me a great chance to spend some relaxing time walking around the beautiful scenery and to relive some pleasant memories. Audobon Park did well. It is in very good condition and has people frequenting its grounds.

Before we went out, I sat in his kitchen and talked to his mom, while he got ready. We got talking and I said I had learned French at one time, at which point she interjected that she was a French professor. Next thing I know, I am entangled in 25 minutes of speaking in French. It was tough for many reasons to return to this language including the facts that I hadn't spoken it in a while and I am in the middle of learning Spanish. I kept making stupid errors like saying y instead of et. All in all, it was enjoyable and made me realize that even though I already put in a lot of effort to learn French and German, the only way to keep up my level is to constantly immerse myself in them, through reading, movies, conversation, etc. It is a full time job to retain fluency in a language.

Being out on the town with this friend and his friends helped me realize that New Orleans was what you made of it, like any place. You could hide in a corner somewhere and barely leave your dwelling or you could go out and party, which is what we did tonight. This friend's raging world is full of partying and opportunity to rebuild a better New Orleans. My other friend's quiet world is full of hanging out alone with his wife and preparing for a move out of state.

So we went to the House of Blues Foundation Room, which was very exclusive. We ventured downstairs to a country concert which was filled with screaming fans shoulder to shoulder. Then we followed this up with another huge club in New Orleans. What I saw tonight was people who were there to party and were trying to make a good life for themselves. They were bringing back the spirit of New Orleans, which was always founded in a large party culture.

New Orleans - Day 3 - constant struggle

Fortunately, the streetcar is operational again

One prevailing theme in Louisiana is that things do not work as well as they used to. Today I hitched a ride to the DMV express, to renew my license. I waited in line 10 minutes to find out that the network was down, which meant no license. I had no vehicle so I had to wait for my ride and about 30 minutes later he arrived and the connection had just been fixed, so we chose to leave and I wasted my time.

Another example is Walgreens. We dropped off a common prescription and the wait time was 4 hours.

In the minds of the people, there appeared to be a constant stress that manifested itself often enough. For instance the people I stayed with were living a very regimented life and trying to control their environment as much as possible to the extent that they lost the spontaneity of life and the fun that comes with it. When my friend and I returned to his wife one hour late after visiting the French Quarter she was furiously upset.

New Orleans still has many of the same offerings as before including restaurants, bars, souvenir shops, live entertainment and strip clubs except that there are far fewer people frequenting these establishments. Again there was the random checkering of functionality. One restaurant in the French Quarter was opened and fully operational while the one next door was boarded up and would possibly never open. The French Quarter in general though, was more fortunate than the rest of New Orleans and the architecture did not suffer as much. In addition, much of the money used to revitalize the city has been funneled into the French Quarter.

The ride to and from Baton Rouge was not entirely pleasant. At some point the boys went off on a dissertation of their experiences with rats - how to experiment on them, how to capture them, how to kill them, etc. Then later they bitched about the spanish accent of one of our lecturers. He was understandable if you gave it a little effort but they refused to try. It is typical that these people don't embrace other cultures as much as tolerate them.

The funny part of the commute was our morning stop at Starbucks. Our carload laughed ridicuously when I ordered a grande drip with one packet of raw sugar and 1/2cm of whole milk and ordered them 3 root beers, because Starbucks does not sell Coke. Why? Maybe it was the humour of ordering coffee in a fancy way in an environment that was anything but fancy.

My overall impression of Louisiana today was that there was a constant dark weight and feeling underlying life and that there were breakthroughs of fun and humour rather than constant such activity.

Today I was asked why I feel better in NYC, why it is a better fit for me. I realized that I needed the connectivity with other people and through them, with the world. I knew that I could never again live in the periphery of civilization, isolated. I need to be central.

New Orleans - Day 2 - Checkering

Fried chicken will always be very popular here

Pat O's Bar no longer has the dueling pianists



This is a large restaurant where Carol and I have dined, which is now closed

Like much of the French Quarter, this sector looks perfectly normal, just not as many people as there used to be.



Claiborne Street



Today we drove through more neighborhoods of New Orleans. One old theme of New Orleans is still true. In the past, I have heard the neighborhoods described as checkered, in the sense that one street was a good place and a few streets over were crime ridden. Now the city is not checkered as much in terms of crime rather in terms of functionality. One street works well and has many inhabitants, the next over might not have electricity or street lights, might not have any people shopping, living there or being entertained.

New Orleans - Day 1 - Day of Bad Luck

The place I stayed at in Biwater - used to be a bad neighborhood - note the gates on the windows

The last time we saw this storage facility the entire side of the building had been ripped off


This is one point at which the levees broke in Lakeview



These FEMA markings could be found on ALL houses in New Orleans

Typical FEMA trailer

Someone's idea of humour

My friends walking the Causeway because both vehicles are being repaired



So my first day in New Orleans was fraught with a thread of bad luck. First I was stopped by airport security and found out that my driver's license had expired so I had to use my passport (this expired license was somewhat symbolic of my expired life in New Orleans). Next we waited at the airstrip for 20 airplanes which were ahead of ours, which delayed my flight about 45 minutes. Then on the airplane we went through tubulence and dropped our altitude rather rapidly multiple times which scared me thoroughly. At that moment I realized I still believe in a higher power even while my scientific self argued that the conditions were fine and that the weather couldn't be bad enough to end it now and bring my unlived life to a close.

After I arrived in New Orleans, on the drive back with the friends I was staying with, the car stalled. Fortunately we were able to get it started again but this happened again and finally we decided to put it in the shop. The man who serviced us was a slick willy and spent 20 minutes to finally tell us that the computer diagnostic for symptomatically was obviously the fuel filter, would cost $80. Today we will not find out what will happen to the car. So my buddy and I were sitting outside the repair shop with no transportation waiting on his wife. After a while I asked him to give her a call and see where she was. She was at home and had forgotten us. So we crossed a major roadway, on foot, Causeway Boulevard, and made our way to Pucchino Cafe where we bought overpriced Frappachino type drinks.

His wife arrived shortly. So next we realized that the van had a bad tire. We took it to Goodyear and they saw a rip. After checking it out, they realized both back tires were bad so the damage was $204.

Once we retrieved the van, we took a ride through Lakeside and witnessed the destruction which was still present. I also took my first look at the breached levy. The city still has many problems and there are many areas that are so devastated that I wonder whether they will ever be rebuilt.

The living situation was not ideal. The apartment did not have easy access to the French Quarter so it was only possible to drive there and back which made me completely dependent on other people for transportation. I did not have my laptop with me and they only had one laptop which they used at the nearby café with free wireless which was only open until 10PM so I barely got any internet time.

New Orleans is a place of give and take. Some streets are full of life, others devoid thereof. Some shops are open, others closed. Some houses are liveable, others aren't. This is not a whole healed city, it is a city of scattered regeneration.

Tomiwa's Gamenight

A hearty thanks to Tomiwa for hosting another great night of drinking, socializing and playing games at his great Harlem homestead. My favorite game this night was twister and I believe I walked away as the champ, although I cheated as much as a prime time wrestler.