Back and fatter than ever.
10 days and 10 pounds later, I’m back! Check back next week for The Franksabunch’s™ first–and probably the last–attempt at posting a poem.
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Filled.
When my heart is filled with hate I find it hard to fill it with love.
When my heart is filled with sadness I find it hard to fill it with joy.
When my heart is filled with frustration I find it hard to fill it with peace.
It’s okay to feel hate, sadness and frustration over the Virginia Tech shootings. Lord knows that I did. (And for some twisted reason I felt it more when I found out that the murderer was an Asian guy.) But the world moves on with or without us, my friends. The world is filled with hate, sadness, frustration, love, joy and peace with or without us. I cannot change the past nor can I prevent the future, but I can do my best to fill the world with more love, joy and peace than hate, sadness and frustration…because I have to believe in something. And if that will be my downfall, then I will fall clutching hope instead of despair.
God bless, everyone. Take hold of those you hold dear a little tighter tonight.
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Bye!
If you happen to see someone who looks like The Franksabunch™ rollin’ down Manha’an with a gangsa lean you are not imagining things…it’s me! I’m off on my vacation. I’ll check in but prob won’t post until I’m back. In the meantime, here’s something I found at the radiology department today when I was there to do a procedure:
I guess someone doesn’t like doctors, huh? (Look at the crotch area.) BWA HA HA HA!
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Saying Goodbye (The Maravich Paradox).
She’s my favorite patient.
I’m breaking a rule here. I’m not supposed to talk about patients. But sometimes rules should be broken.
One of the reasons why I chose my specialty is because it affords me a certain amount of continuity, being able to see a specific portion of my patients outside the hospital on a monthly basis without having to deal with things like back pain, narc seekers and people demanding antibiotics for a runny nose (although those people deserve love, too).
She is an example of why I made the right choice, a member of the Greatest Generation with the spunk of Eleanor Roosevelt and the warmth of homemade apple pie. Adorned in pearls similar to those my Grandma used to rock and always wearing those big, black headphones that would make her the envy of any Manhattan DJ, she would always greet me with a big smile. In return I would clasp her hand with both of mine. She is the only patient that I will greet by kneeling and saying, “hello, my dear, how are you doing?” and say goodbye with, “okay, dear, I’ll see you later.”
I’m not supposed to say, “dear,” to patients as it can be considered a form of sexual harrassment. But sometimes rules should be broken.
One day her heart will give out, as it will with everyone else as most patients in my specialty will die from heart disease. There are some hearts that I wish could beat forever. But the rules of nature will not allow that.
I was running up and down the hallways that morning in a frenzy, trying to get all of my work done. A resident pulled me aside to ask me for a consult and when she told me the name my heart went into a dizzying rhythm. It was her. My favorite patient.
It’s a funny thing, the heart. I call it the Maravich Paradox [see Pistol Pete Maravich], where strength and weakness can be one and the same. No one ever doubted his heart on the court, and no doubt it was his heart that brought him glory and greatness…but in the end it was the weakness of that same heart that brought him to the end of his days while doing what his heart loved. The strength of a heart is in its vulnerabilty. It takes more bravery to let someone in than to cowardly shut out the world, more resilience to heal from the times you’ve been burned than to go through this world unscathed…and unloved. And one day when you have given so much that strength will become your weakness. That is the Maravich Paradox. The reason why husbands and wives die so soon after one another, why we hurt and can be hurt by the ones we love, and why the good ones never seem to stay around long enough in our lives.
And this beautiful woman with her beautiful heart…has her heart finally given so much to those around her that it has nothing left to give to itself? I had planned to walk in with a big smile, clasp her hand in both of mine, kneel and ask her, “my dear, what happened?” But when I walked in I knew that her heart had indeed given itself away for one final last gift.
I wasn’t supposed to touch her without wearing gloves, but sometimes rules should be broken. I wasn’t going to allow my last contact with her to be hindered by the dehumanizing feel of 50 cents’ worth of latex. We already place too many barriers between us and those we care for as if they were our own children, our own parents. So I clasped her hand in mine, squeezed it for one last time and softly said, “goodbye,” before I hurriedly left the ICU and stormed past the waiting room full of broken hearts and impenetrable hopes.
She was my favorite patient and I wanted her heart to beat forever, but sometimes rules cannot be broken, no matter how much I wish they could.
See you later, my dear. I hope that you will still be rockin’ those pearls and headphones when we meet again on the other side of the dark curtain.
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He saw, she saw.
Last week I went to see my primary care doctor (because even superheroes need preventive care…I’m not 25 anymore!) and when the nurse was trying to take my blood pressure she couldn’t get a good reading. In my nicest voice (I didn’t reveal to her my secret identity yet…it tends to make ancillary healthcare providers nervous) I remarked, “oh, I think the blood pressure cuff you’re using might be too big.” (She was using the cuff I usually use for people who weigh at least 3 dollars.) “Well,” she said with a smile. “After you took your shirt off I saw your arm and thought it was quite big, so I grabbed the XL cuff.” To which I promptly replied, “Why thank you.”
Hahahaha!This reminds me of my first year at the Univ. of Maryland (Duke sucks!). My friend bet me that I would gain 15 pounds by Christmas break and if I did I would have to take her and her sister out to dinner. Determined not to lose I did an anti-Atkins: I ate meat only once a day and ate lots of plain carbs, cutting out all sauce, juice and soda. By Christmas I went from a solid 185 to a waiflike 164. I was so skinny that I could hide by standing sideways and all the New Joisey sorority girls would take a sip of Haterade whenever I’d walk by. I looked like Gumby dipped in yellow ink!
But it was quite a lesson in the views through the gender looking glass. When I came home I got two different responses when I ran into my male and female friends:
Boys: Eh, brah. [shaking head] You stay all skinny now. You need to go lift.
Girls: Oh my GAWSH, Frank. [hopping up and down] You look sooooo good!! How did you lose so much weight? Tell me how!!!
All my guy friends wondered what happened to the semi-buff man that left Hawaii and all my wahine friends wondered what happened to the semi-fat man that left Hawaii.
It’s funny how we can grow up in the same country, be immersed in the same local culture, exposed to the same media, and yet still have diametrically opposed views on things (with us men being on the correct side of reason, of course
). So in the spirit of ill communication I thought I’d highlight the differences in the way the correct and fairer sexes view things. Shopping together
- Great bonding activity. So which pair of shoes do you want to buy me? *pout*
- Horrible bondage activity. I want to scratch my butt but the cute salesgirl is nearby.
Xanga
- Great for networking and venting about my BF, BFF, BGF, M&D, WoW, FHS, KWO, CMP, WAL, QDI, and UEK.
- Chicks! Dude, can you get me Akikokim’s phone number? (It’s about time you post again, A!!!)
Weddings
- I. want. that. bouquet. (The only time women outside of bachelorette parties that women will be reduced to screaming teenyboppers.)
- Open bar, baby! *barp*
A girl’s best guy friend
- I’m so happy there is a boy who I can talk to about all my problems and go shopping with!
- Why is that guy always trying to creep? Get your own wahine, mushbag!
Hillary Clinton
- A great trailblazing, standard-bearer for women’s rights and the pursuit of cracking the glass ceiling.
- She looks like a dude. Is that a moustache I see?
Eating out with friends
- It’s so cute that he wants to spend time with my friends
- Good, this way she can’t stop me from eating that 4th slice of pizza…hehe (it works, trust me)
Commitment
- Yay!
- What?
Global warming
- We need to cut down on emissions to save the pandas.
- Oh, does this mean I have to fart less?
Fear to Faith Clothing
- Great stuff!
- Great stuff!
Finally, something we can agree on.
(Sorry, don’t have time to write more down.)Have a great week!
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I’m heading to NYC for vacation soon to visit my sister(s), any recs on where to EAT?
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Edit: Oops, for those of you who asked about my friend’s orchid company, the website is down, so I’ll ask him what is the best way to contact him.
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Family.
What does it mean to be family?
The quick answer is the easy answer. A mom I cherish as the last of the Taiwanese generation and for the simple fact that she’s my mom. A father whose love I will never forget, whose lessons I will always remember. 3 sisters that I adore but will never tell them that I do. (I’m Man like that.) And 4 nephews and nieces that I wish would stop growing, stay forever young and allow me to store their cheeks in jars to open in case of emergency.
What does it mean to be family? Is that all there is? Sharing DNA?
Yesterday I spent part of the day visiting and helping out at the SF Home and Garden Show. One of my friends from high school grows/sells orchids and flew in from Hawaii to sell his goods. 3 of us, all high school classmates living in NorCal, came to help him out. They took much joy in laughing and enjoying how “the doctor was the one bagging the flowers,” which was reminiscent of our Vegas trip when I was the one unloading all the bags from the taxi (why not? I’m the one with the biggest muscles
). (I knew the least about orchids, so it was better for me to avoid explaining things to customers and just package the orchids. That and I was lethal after eating some garlic fries.)It’s always been that way with them. No respect. And I love it. Haha! It keeps me real. When we were younger one of my best friends would refer to us boys as “The Ohana.” (Which means “family” in Hawaiian.) Early on we didn’t include the girls under that umbrella—being like most wahines at that age, their social maturity was as nascent as their bodies were nubile, causing splintering cat fights here and there. But the boys? Sure, there were cliques amongst the males in our class, but there was never any animosity and every chance meeting included a wrist snap at the end of the handshake. (For some reason only the bball/hip hop community and “locals” from Hawaii shake hands like that.)
I thought about this as the 4 of us—a doctor, an accountant for EA, a rep for Eveo, and an orchid farmer—all talked about our friend who was unemployed for about a year and others who indulge in habits that one day could lead to one of my greatest fears, seeing one of them in the hospital 3 decades too early. We are all so different, but here we are…bad boyz for life, ride ’til we die. Over the years we’ve fought each other, driven each other crazy, but we’ve also rallied to support one another in times of illness, broken relationships and financial hardships, while still ragging each other about things that happened over a decade ago.
Yesterday we also talked about our friend B. We both went to the same elementary, intermediate and high schools together. Growing up in the same neighborhood I remember hanging out at her house back in the days when being a latch-key kid was safe. After high school then college hit we ran in largely different circles, but still kept the requisite myspace connection.
When my father died 3 years ago I was living in the mainland and with the chaos that is involved in funeral planning I didn’t have the chance to tell everyone. I simply sent a quick email to a random group of people, which did not include her. But there she was, along with another friend, Shelley, who I had not spoken with in years…there they were, standing in line to greet my family after the service. I never told anyone this, but seeing them there was more touching than having my close friends, GF, or family there. Because having them there meant that people who I had no contact with in years still cared enough to come to support me and my family.
And I feel a forlorn sense of sadness when I remember that I never really took the time to say thank you to them for coming. B, we just found out, is in the middle of a fight for her life. She has a condition which I won’t say here, but it touches me to see her friends rallying around her, madly circulating emails through channels long silent to spread the word about a fundraiser they are going to hold for her. (It’s going to be a dinner/entertainment/silent auction held April 22nd in Aiea, in case any of you Hawaii peeps want to go, or if you want to send a check, message me and I’ll send you the address for the fund.)
To place someone else’s needs above your own, to put their heart in your heart, your mind on their mind, and their soul in a place where it will never be lost or forgotten… That is what it means to be family. And my dear friend, no matter what happens, you have your family. All of us.
I can’t be there, but you know that my support will be. Take care and God bless.
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Check out the orchids I got from my friend. He can ship to the mainland (actually that’s most of his biznass). Orchids make good gifts and decorations (the last of our friends to get married used orchids as the centerpieces for dinner…nice!).
If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll forward you his contact info (for some reason his website is offline right now). Have a great week!
And you MUST check out the new video of the week (finally updated after 4 months). I’m humbled by her skillz.
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(Stoopid) Father of the Year Award.
This past weekend I decided to take a road trip to Davis, CA (of all places) in order to increase The Franksabunch’s™ domain (animal planet style, minus the urinating to mark my territory for fear of being arrested for impersonating a drunk frat boy or a drunk Courtney Love). It’s a nice little college town, but little did I know what was in store for me that fateful day.
So I’m walking through the streets of Davis with a gangsta lean when my feral senses—sharpened by years of avoiding the rabid nurses at work looking for someone to order constipation meds at 3 AM—detected that something was rotten in Denmark…
To my right I noticed a cop standing on the sidewalk speaking into his shoulder walkie-talkie thang. That’s all fine and dandy to see the Po-Po hanging around, even in a peaceful town like Davis where the only violence that occurs happens when the Asian college kids fight over the last plastic cup of Crown Royal, but why was he standing in front of an optometrist’s office looking intently at everyone passing by? Even me? (I know I look, roll and regulate like a thug but…jigga please, do you think I’d try to jack someone Chow Yun-Fat style one time for your mind while wearing my shirt that I bought on sale for $12?) I then looked ahead and saw a Five-O with a shotgun hiding behind a tree facing the bank across the street, next to the optometrist’s office.
He’s hiding his shotgun like how all the engineers in Silicon Valley hide their secret Myspace pages they use to stalk Man Jose wahines.
I walked a short distance further and saw that around the other corner of the bank was another Po-Po, except this one was smarter and upgraded to a semiautomatic rifle.
Uh-oh, I hate doggie poo.
Where you at, sucka?
My first thought was to look for a movie camera and Grace Park making a cameo (hey, a man has to dream) but a distant 0.37 nanoseconds later my second thought was to get the heezy out of dodge faster than most married men every 4th week of the month (if you don’t get the reference, go look at what’s at the end of this sentence). But, alas, it seems that even my life-saving super powers must be used on my days off also, because…
Sitting 15 feet away from the shotgun Five-O and right across the street from the bank’s entrance was a man and his 3 kids, all sitting in a row for target practice. I asked him if he saw the police and knew what was going on and he mentioned that he saw las policias con muchos guns and just wanted to see what was going to happen. I was tempted to ask him if he knew who Darwin was and his theory of evolution, but decided to be nice about it and politely suggested that he should move his kids to safer ground…like, say, Palo Alto. After an imaginary flickering 10-watt bulb appeared over his head, he said, “oh yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” and then proceeded to move his kids…another 15 feet away, still across the entrance of the bank.
This is after he moved them to “safety.” But at least they’re in matching clothes, no? (If you’re wondering where I was, I was hiding behind a pillar at the motel behind these guys.)
Ai-ya. Some people just don’t get it.
So instead of running away for cover in the nearest fast food restaurant with a 99-cent menu, I stuck around. Hecka, man, I’m not a pediatrician. Kids scare me more than white women asking me out on a date. I have no idea how to treat kids, but at least I can carry them out of harm’s way or apply pressure to any wounds in case someone comes out of the bank bustin’ caps in the air like it was a Fitty Cent concert. Lord knows this guy probably wouldn’t know what to do since he was dumb enough to put his kids in harm’s way like that.
Luckily, whatever situation was going on in the bank resolved 10 minutes later. One of the workers came out of the bank, the cop with the walkie-talkie went in, and the 2 other Po-Po’s put their shotgun and rifle away in their cars, and with the kids now safe I went off in search of food.
Now that’s a MAN’S shotgun!
Mere coincidence? The parking ticket man arrived right when the bank situation resolved…I guess parking tickets are a stronger deterrent than prison!
On most days I like being a healthcare superhero, but that day I was happy and content to be able to tuck those super powers away into my back pocket and walk away like any other person rolling down the street with a gansta lean in search of a fast food restaurant with a 99-cent menu.
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Have a great week!
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I need to run and hide.
So today I’m trying to find a particular nurse named Mark who is wearing “burgundy” colored scrubs.
From a side view I see someone wearing burgundy scrubs with the name tag saying, “M. xxxxx” and say, “are you Mark?”
“No, I’m not,” said the FEMALE voice, as she turned to face me and then walked away.
Oh my. -
The Ghetto Gourmet.
When I was a pint-sized version of the superhero that I am today, I remember seeing this show called “The Frugal Gourmet.” I was much too young to understand what either word (frugal or gourmet) meant, but do remember that there was an old homie with a beard and the voice of a librarian who would cook stuff that didn’t look appetizing (translation: no soy sauce used, no rice, no spam). Later in college I again conjured up the image of the old man when my English prof mentioned the show and how amused he was at the paradoxical-esque name.
I was thinking about this the other day when I was in my kitchen trying to figure out just what the heezy I was going to make for dinner that night (it’s always the most important question of the day). Those of you who know me in real life can attest to the fact that I really can’t cook (the pictures evoke a much better consonance than the dissonance going on in your mouth) and I don’t usually use recipes from books. Like my father before me I tend to just grab whatever is around and throw it in a pot…and what I have is usually what is ON SALE! (When he would cook we’d always cover the entire kitchen with saran wrap…it made cleaning up much easier.)
Except for my part-time attending job last year, I have never made a lot of money. (Trifecta-double-hecka, man, my younger friend who is a plumber is already retired and collecting pension that is more than my current salary.) Everything I earned last year I banked like a Tim Duncan basketball shot from the low post to save for my future family, wedding, relocation, blah, blah, blah and I’m determined to try to break even or save a little during fellowship, which is easier said than done, since in California the taxes to my salary cause more cuts than an emo kid who accidentally dyed his hair the wrong shade of black and prices are more inflated than Al Gore’s energy bill for his house. (How’s THAT for an “inconvenient truth,” eh?) Anyway, so I usually peruse the aisles at the grocery store and buy whatever is on sale, which often leaves me scratching my head when I peer into my refrigerator, wondering what da hecka I was thinking.
That morning I looked and saw…
- Ready-peeled garlic because I’m antithetical proletariat like that ($2 for 40 cloves, 33% off)
- Shrimp ($5/lbs. 50% off)
- Egg roll wrappers ($1, 50% off)
- Green onion (3 rolls for $1)
- Cabbage (not on sale but cheaper than Paris Hilton’s morality)
Then *ding* a lightbulb went off and I decided then to become the man who put the dim into dim sum.
I bought some pork–which, like my biceps, is never on sale–and threw it together with the green onions and garlic.
Initially I was going to try and be fancy and put a piece of shrimp in the middle but then decided to just throw it all in. Why be fancy if I’m eating alone? If the dim sum is fancy and no one else eats it, did it really exist? If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, did it really fall? Can you hear the sound of one hand clapping? If Michael Jackson tries at first to be black but then gets accepted only by white people, isn’t he just like any other Asian guy? Sorry, where was I?
At this point I didn’t know what to do…so I opened the egg roll wrapper thing with my kitchen scissors…
Then I kept on cutting! It’s like any marriage between a man and a woman…split down the middle but not really even (watching football games vs. shopping…boo-hoo for Prada sales!) –> oops! I’ll upload the pic again when I get home.
I didn’t have anything to prevent the dim sum from sticking to my steamer, so I threw some cabbage to put the dim sum on, which served as my fiber for the day. (They teach us critical problem-solving skills in med school, as you can see.)
It’s like being in a sauna. Steam for 10 minutes, but if you see someone wearing those Korean scrub gloves approaching you, you better scream like a rabid Nicole Richie and run for your life.
And I present to you the 1st generation of Franksabunch™ Dim Sum. Like its creator, it has extra skin that hangs down the sides, ain’t pretty to look at, causes bad breath but will leave you satisfied and warm on the inside.
Have a great rest of the week!
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Notice the new front page xanga has? I guess with the new way they’re doing featured content, it looks like my 2-year run of consecutive featured posts will be coming to an end. Haha…
Edit: Sorry, didn’t take a picture of how I wrapped them. I have more skins so if I try it again I’ll take a pic! I basically put the meat in the middle and folded it horizontally and pinched the sides.
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What in the…
Sometimes when I have a minute and I’m completely bored I look in footprints to see what sites people come to my xanga from (mostly to see if someone is talkin’ smack so I can bring the pain back
)…and apparently someone came to my site by typing in a search engine “free pics of decapitated women.”WHAT THE FRIJOLES IS GOING ON?!??!?!?!?!?! O_o
There are some sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick people out there. (I’m guessing my Islam and Pope Benedict post is what came up in the search engine.)
Eep!
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