Urgent - Delete My Mailing Address

The time has come - I am moving out of my apartment in Queens to a friend's apartment in Staten Island. Therefore, please remember to delete my current address in Queens out of your address book.

Go ahead. Do it now.

NOW!

And no, I will not give you my "new" address in Staten Island - I will only be there for three months. Send stuff to my California address and I will get it in a few months or if it is urgent, my mother will forward it to me.

HEY YOU! I said DELETE!!!!
Thank you.

Chocolate - Oh, So Much Chocolate!!!!

Last week I got a pretty big taste of what heaven will be like, God willing I make it!

My good friend S.A. invited me to a "great place for dessert in Brooklyn." Really, she could have brought together any number of words in a sentence - the mere fact that "dessert" was included as one of the words perked my ears. "Hovig, the world is coming to an end after dessert" suggests to me that I still get to enjoy dessert first!

Anyway, SA took me to a place called The Chocolate Room. That's right - the place is EVERYTHING CHOCOLATE and is absolutely divine. Divine I say!!!

We enjoyed hot chocolate; literally melted chocolate in a glass served warm with a homemade marshmallow! We split a Chocolate Layer cake (pictured) that was quite possibly the most tantalicious and moist and gooey and FRIGGIN' AWESOME chocolate cake I've ever had (disclaimer: I may have made similar statements to some of you when you have baked me a cake - those statements still hold true). We also split a Chocolate mousse with homemade whip cream on top that literally melted in your mouth. We did indeed OD on chocolate.

Truly, truly I say to you - if this is heaven, PLEASE count me in!!!!!!

Quickies: Quick Updates On What's Going On

Twitter seems to growing in ubiquity - the web service, which allows users to keep the world updated on what they are doing every minute, seems to be all the rage right now. Even my friend NK over at his blog is using the service now. At some point, I may take the bait - but for now, I'm introducing this new blog feature - "Quickies" - where I will give short update blasts on various events going on. Things that wouldn't necessarily get a full blog post in the past, will get their little space and 15 seconds of fame here.

1. Day Off
Since my hospital is now totally and completely closed down, without any patients, sans doctors, and lacking supplies, I was given today off. Starting tomorrow, I am being moved to Wykoff Medical Center in Brooklyn, which is about a 45 minute commute from my house by subway. I will be there until my current rotation (Internal Medicine) finishes on March 13. I then have a two week hiatus before starting Surgery at Staten Island University Hospital. From my house, that would be about a 2 hour commute - so that's NOT happening...I will be moving to Staten Island and staying with a dear friend who is also doing her rotations at SIUH.

2. Amazing Mac and Cheese
I just had the most amazing - AAAAMMMAAAZING!!!!! - mac 'n cheese EVER last night. A friend made it and I melted right along with the cheese. Just boil some pasta (we used the small shells which were perfect), drain, then add milk and velveeta cheese and let it melt together and let the milk dissolve into the dish. My friend claims the true southern style would also include eggs and some baking of the pasta - but whatever man, it was AMAZING as is! I can't wait to make it for myself...though it should be noted that this is NOT a health food!

3. Biggest Loser
I have been stuck at my weight for the last few weeks. I made it to 224 and I have another weigh-in sometime this week. But it has been frustrating not being able to lose weight as fast as I lost it the first few weeks. But alas, this is to be expected, so if you find yourself in a similar frustrating situation, don't give up!

4. Renaming the No Child Left Behind Act
Congress, rather than making meaningful changes to a law that requires much improvement, is focusing instead on renaming the thing. Great use of time and effort guys - way to go! So here is my contribution: "Don't You Dare Hold Parents Accountable in a Child's Life, Only Blame the Teachers Act". Other ideas?

5. Pondering First Class Flying?
I found this great picture about the recent US Airways Flight 1549 that landed in the Hudson. The flight crew were amazing and deserve all the credit for landing safely and getting the passengers out. But this picture DOES give you another pretty darn good reason to fly first class! (And people who know me, know that I'm always looking for any reason to fly first class!)

Why Mr. Rogers Was The Best Neighbor Ever!!

This has been a tough week for me - not because I have been working hard, but because I have been hardly working due to the imminent closure of my hospital. The transfer of patients has been moving ahead of schedule and the last of the patients are expected to be transferred out by today, rather than next week. Thursday afternoon, the hospital was like a high school at the end of the year - all the employees were in the halls, clearing personal effects and hugging each other and taking pictures and just soaking it all in before the hospital is closed forever.

Rather than dwell, however, I want to enjoy an article written by Mangesh Hattikudur that I found online. He describes the top 15 reasons why Mr. Rogers was the best neighbor ever. Hope it brings a smile to your face the same way it did for me; and I hope you have a wonderful weekend, neighbors! :)

1. Even Koko the Gorilla loved him
Most people have heard of Koko, the Stanford-educated gorilla who could speak about 1000 words in American Sign Language, and understand about 2000 in English. What most people don’t know, however, is that Koko was an avid Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood fan. As Esquire reported, when Fred Rogers took a trip out to meet Koko for his show, not only did she immediately wrap her arms around him and embrace him, she did what she’d always seen him do onscreen: she proceeded to take his shoes off!

2. He Made Thieves Think Twice
According to a TV Guide piece on him, Fred Rogers drove a plain old Impala for years. One day, however, the car was stolen from the street near the TV Station. When Rogers filed a police report, the story was picked up by every newspaper, radio and media outlet around town. Amazingly, within 48 hours the car was left in the exact spot where it was taken from, with an apology on the dashboard. It read, “If we’d known it was yours, we never would have taken it.”

3. He Watched His Figure to the Pound!
In covering Rogers’ daily routine (waking up at 5; praying for a few hours for all of his friends and family; studying; writing, making calls and reaching out to every fan who took the time to write him; going for a morning swim; getting on a scale; then really starting his day), writer Tom Junod explained that Mr. Rogers weighed in at exactly 143 pounds every day for the last 30 years of his life. He didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t eat the flesh of any animals, and was extremely disciplined in his daily routine. And while I’m not sure if any of that was because he’d mostly grown up a chubby, single child, Junod points out that Rogers found beauty in the number 143. According to the piece, Rogers came “to see that number as a gift… because, as he says, “the number 143 means ‘I love you.’ It takes one letter to say ‘I’ and four letters to say ‘love’ and three letters to say ‘you.’ One hundred and forty-three.”

4. He Saved Both Public Television and the VCR
Strange but true. When the government wanted to cut Public Television funds in 1969, the relatively unknown Mister Rogers went to Washington. Almost straight out of a Capra film, his 5-6 minute testimony on how TV had the potential to give kids hope and create more productive citizens was so simple but passionate that even the most gruff politicians were charmed. While the budget should have been cut, the funding instead jumped from $9 to $22 million. Rogers also spoke to Congress, and swayed senators into voting to allow VCR’s to record television shows from the home. It was a cantankerous debate at the time, but his argument was that recording a program like his allowed working parents to sit down with their children and watch shows as a family.

Heart Attack? Don't Come Here - We're Closed

After serving their respective communities in Queens for over a collective 150 years, Mary Immaculate and St. John Hospitals will be shut down as of next week, victims of decades of mismanagement and a very hostile economic climate. All efforts for a government bailout or loan have been exhausted. As of last Saturday at midnight, the ER at St. John where I am doing my Internal Medicine rotation has been shut down. All is quiet on the western front. In fact, it is downright eery in the ER.

The hospital, which was full the whole time I have been there up to last week, and has a capacity of around 240 beds, is currently holding about 40 patients in the remaining two wings that are still operational. As soon as those patients are either discharged home or transferred to another facility, the padlocks will be placed securely on the doors and only auctioneers will be allowed inside to inventory and sell the stock.

I wonder what hospital beds sell for these days.

NOTE: The two pictures of the ER above, although from a slightly different angle, are of the same side of the ER. You can see beds were empty before we officially closed down. After our official shut down of the ER, you can see that the once organized and well-kept area is already in disarray. Very, very sad.

Quotables: Regarding Baltimore City School's New CEO

"I have a feeling if Jesus brought him the Lord's Prayer, he would've had edits."
-Benjamin Feldman, Research and Testing Director in Baltimore City Public Schools

A year after I left the Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS), a new CEO (our version of Superintendent) was brought in named Andre Alonso. From all accounts I have read at the Baltimore Sun newspaper online, the man is committed and passionate, if not a bit of a firecracker. He is driven and wants nothing more than to see the children of BCPSS succeed. I must admit, had somebody of his caliber and zeal and ingenuity been running the school system during my tenure, I may well have stayed longer.

Mr. Feldman, a 33-year veteran at BCPSS, goes on to say this about Dr. Alonso:
"You know what would be really heartbreaking? If he [Alonso] failed. If he can't do it, no one will ever do it. We will never have a superintendent of this caliber again."