bought a rocking chair for 20 bucks. Got a stool along with it free. So the stool was obviously in sad shape. The varnish was all peeling off. But the wood was great. Thought I could do a reasonable job with same sanding and painting.
So at home my aunt told me that she had a sander and stuff. I was under the impresssion that it would be a block with a piece of iron sticking out. She brought out a whole electrical unit, with special paper attached to do the job. And special stain and finisher. Now I really had to know stuff about sanding and varnishing so as to do justice to all the equipment I had.
Started out on the sanding. The purpose being to get the old varnish out and to make sure all the wood is at the same level. The stool is really good wood. It took me 3 hours to get a plank done [there are 4 planks on the surface]. The sander makes enough noice to wake up the neighbourhood, so I give them a break at 9 pm. I spent the entire weekend sanding, and I still have the sides to do.
The varnish needs to be used when the temperature is around 70 F. So waiting for the clouds to clear up and the sun to beam through.
The instructions say that I should get all the dirt off the stool, and have a clean brush. Thats gonna take some searching.
First, need to get the sanding done though. Then will think about the paint. I think the stool is looking a little rotten from all the humidity all week without the varnish. Should get done with it quick.
Good learning experience. Basically sanding and varnishing is painstaking stuff. Save yourself the trouble and buy new stuff.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
the week
The nice thing about a US residency is that the program will tell you the problems you will face and how to avoid them. The problem is they just get a little caught up in it, and the result is I'm now really scared of doing a residency.
The fact that I will be under continuous scrutiny isnt the problem. Its just that if I let my guard down and make a mistake, it could financially wipe me out forever. Sobering thought. Hopefully the rationale that working in a crazily tough system without making mistakes, will make me a better doctor works.
Anyways I know I make mistakes and I'm gonna make them again. Should make sure I pick them up before anyone else does I guess.
Lets see how it goes. Gotta remember to enjoy the ride though. All these serious things have a real propensity to screw up a perfectly reasonable day.
The fact that I will be under continuous scrutiny isnt the problem. Its just that if I let my guard down and make a mistake, it could financially wipe me out forever. Sobering thought. Hopefully the rationale that working in a crazily tough system without making mistakes, will make me a better doctor works.
Anyways I know I make mistakes and I'm gonna make them again. Should make sure I pick them up before anyone else does I guess.
Lets see how it goes. Gotta remember to enjoy the ride though. All these serious things have a real propensity to screw up a perfectly reasonable day.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
physicals
New job. Went for the mandatory health check up today. Turned out quite well actually. blood pressure was around 100/60 though pulse was 100/min [ cant boast of being an athlete just yet]. No handle and cough thank god. Was excused from the ppd, so got out with a single prick. Altogether not too bad.
On rumination I realized that it could have been much worse. Like the time in Pune when the new surgery lecturers came in for their physicals. Ah that’s an ugly story. Lemme start at the beginning.
So Dr Gandhage was the HOD of the radiology department at Sassoon hospitals where I had joined in to be the new doormat. The department was facing an acute crisis in that there were not enough ultrasound machines functional [this happens every 2 months]. So the Wise Dr Gandhage had brought out of retirement his favorite 1970's [maybe 1980's] ultrasound, which had a mechanical probe attached.
The problem was the lower half of the image on the monitor usually remained uninterpretable so the all-seeing sonographer had to gauge what lay in the depths depending on what he saw above. Obviously every one thought that he was being an idiot. He felt it and decided he had to reveal just how things could be done.
The clinic where this machine was so far out from the department that on a usual day no one except the guys at the clinic knew what happened there [basically me and a lecturer]. So patients were being kicked around left right and center, till they either ran away, got their ultrasounds done on the last sensible machine in the department or left with a report that was a figment of the sonographers vivid imagination.
But on that fateful day Dr Gandhage paraded into the place and everything was in edge. Things were smooth until these 2 guys came in. They had both just successfully cleared their postgraduate surgery exams and were about to join back as lecturers. For some obscure reason they needed an ultrasound abdomen and scrotum as a part of their physical [maharashtra requirements I'm sure]. Any normal human being would probably have just done an ultrasound abdomen and let them go. I mean it’s anyway meaningless to do an ultrasound abdomen as a routine part of a physical leave alone the ultrasound scrotum. That's what these guys expected anyways.
But Dr Gandhage was at his pedantic best. He not only made them strip but played around with their balls for as long as he could. It was awful. The worst was when one of them made eye contact. I felt really sad at their humiliation. So the guys got their signature and the rest of the day went of well.
Reminds me of the time after our med school physical when we heard that one of us had a serious varicocele. So 3 years later the guy got it corrected. The next day the bulletin board read ' Now ladies I'm ready for some action'.
On rumination I realized that it could have been much worse. Like the time in Pune when the new surgery lecturers came in for their physicals. Ah that’s an ugly story. Lemme start at the beginning.
So Dr Gandhage was the HOD of the radiology department at Sassoon hospitals where I had joined in to be the new doormat. The department was facing an acute crisis in that there were not enough ultrasound machines functional [this happens every 2 months]. So the Wise Dr Gandhage had brought out of retirement his favorite 1970's [maybe 1980's] ultrasound, which had a mechanical probe attached.
The problem was the lower half of the image on the monitor usually remained uninterpretable so the all-seeing sonographer had to gauge what lay in the depths depending on what he saw above. Obviously every one thought that he was being an idiot. He felt it and decided he had to reveal just how things could be done.
The clinic where this machine was so far out from the department that on a usual day no one except the guys at the clinic knew what happened there [basically me and a lecturer]. So patients were being kicked around left right and center, till they either ran away, got their ultrasounds done on the last sensible machine in the department or left with a report that was a figment of the sonographers vivid imagination.
But on that fateful day Dr Gandhage paraded into the place and everything was in edge. Things were smooth until these 2 guys came in. They had both just successfully cleared their postgraduate surgery exams and were about to join back as lecturers. For some obscure reason they needed an ultrasound abdomen and scrotum as a part of their physical [maharashtra requirements I'm sure]. Any normal human being would probably have just done an ultrasound abdomen and let them go. I mean it’s anyway meaningless to do an ultrasound abdomen as a routine part of a physical leave alone the ultrasound scrotum. That's what these guys expected anyways.
But Dr Gandhage was at his pedantic best. He not only made them strip but played around with their balls for as long as he could. It was awful. The worst was when one of them made eye contact. I felt really sad at their humiliation. So the guys got their signature and the rest of the day went of well.
Reminds me of the time after our med school physical when we heard that one of us had a serious varicocele. So 3 years later the guy got it corrected. The next day the bulletin board read ' Now ladies I'm ready for some action'.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
traffic
Back in India at last. Only positives to report from Delhi, where the encounter with the mighty central ministry of health was stressful, but the fact that I was able to travel from the outskirts of Delhi to Rajghat in 40 min through minimum stress and dirt via the Delhi Metro to push files, took away the tedium.
Saw Rang de Basanti. Jingoistic to say the least. Some of the songs are cool. Aamir Khan just manages to pull off the college passout routine. The film is basically a parody of British and present India. Ends up with a whole lot of people dead. Blood makes good cinema.
Came across the world's funniest flyover. It begins like a single one way and joins another similar oneway from another road to funnel traffic into the main bridge- so looks a pregnant lady on with her legs astride on straps. Then suddenly in the middle of the flyover a lone traffic policeman blocks out traffic from one lane at a time. The reason- traffic on the left side of the road suddenly makes a shift to the right [aka from Indian to us style driving] so that traffic can rejoin on the right side in the road below. Whoever designed the bridge must have failed all his civil engineering exams. Also an effective way to make sure the traffic cop remains employed. God Help Bangalore.
Planning to hit home soon. And get drunk, Hallelujah
Saw Rang de Basanti. Jingoistic to say the least. Some of the songs are cool. Aamir Khan just manages to pull off the college passout routine. The film is basically a parody of British and present India. Ends up with a whole lot of people dead. Blood makes good cinema.
Came across the world's funniest flyover. It begins like a single one way and joins another similar oneway from another road to funnel traffic into the main bridge- so looks a pregnant lady on with her legs astride on straps. Then suddenly in the middle of the flyover a lone traffic policeman blocks out traffic from one lane at a time. The reason- traffic on the left side of the road suddenly makes a shift to the right [aka from Indian to us style driving] so that traffic can rejoin on the right side in the road below. Whoever designed the bridge must have failed all his civil engineering exams. Also an effective way to make sure the traffic cop remains employed. God Help Bangalore.
Planning to hit home soon. And get drunk, Hallelujah
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Hmm
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16
/science/16gene.html?incamp=article_popular
So the diabetes world just got a little more interesting. Another gene associated with a predisposition to DM 2 has been identified. I can see the pharmaceutical giants licking their fingers at the possibility of a new target for therapy. The world of diabetes therapy already has such a bewildering range of drugs many of them entire new groups that came out in the last decade. If a disease has many possible treatments it usually means that none of them present a clear advantage and less is known about the disease itself. So basically in medicine choice is bad. And so it is with Diabetes.
/science/16gene.html?incamp=article_popular
So the diabetes world just got a little more interesting. Another gene associated with a predisposition to DM 2 has been identified. I can see the pharmaceutical giants licking their fingers at the possibility of a new target for therapy. The world of diabetes therapy already has such a bewildering range of drugs many of them entire new groups that came out in the last decade. If a disease has many possible treatments it usually means that none of them present a clear advantage and less is known about the disease itself. So basically in medicine choice is bad. And so it is with Diabetes.
Monday, January 16, 2006
MoMa.
Couldn’t they have abbreviated it to something else. Anyways the museum of modern art or MoMa, is free Friday nights. The whole of New York turns up there Friday night 4-8 pm. Nice because everyone is well dressed and all the girls are lovely. Quite a young crowd for an art museum. But MoMa has an entire floor dedicated to Pixar, so prepare to be surprised.
The first and ground floor are dedicated to Pixar. Going through the exhibits really gives you a sense of the imagination these guys have.
I missed the Prints section on the 2nd floor and the sculptures in the garden. For some other Friday I guess.
The 3rd floor has the photographs and design section. The design section was nice, there was these models and photographs of a ‘house of spiritual something’ which caught my eye. It has a two walls meeting each other at right angles, with the main living area located underground within the right angle. The walls just serve as the doorway into the underground dwelling. Kind of looks like a wing. And the photographs of the house and the area surrounding it are marvelous.
The Robin Rhode media exhibits are a must see. He takes what is a simple idea [his works are basically graffiti on a wall and his interactions with them, to depict motion, caught as stills either as photographs or a movie of stills] and runs with it. The photographs of him catching fridges, furniture, and even an automobile as they appear to fall out from the sky are amazing. I mean you can’t help but feel good at the end by the childish spirit in his art.
The Odilon Redon exhibit is strange. His charcoal and pencil work are undoubtedly beautiful. The images he conjures up are fascinating. I didn’t understand his interpretation of Poe’s ‘The Masque of Red Death’ but his vision of Berenice is apt. The Masque of Red Death is about the princes who with his courtiers enclose themselves in a castle to escape death from a plague epidemic that rages outside the walls. The ball that they have is unfortunately intruded upon by a masked stranger, who at the stroke of midnight reveals himself to be the plague. And everybody dies. Redon’s interpretation is like a mangled face in a red vista. I imagined it as an encounter between the prince who stares in stark horror at death. Anyways Berenice makes up for it. This is a story of a man infatuated with this lady. He loves everything about her. But most of all he is tortured by visions of her beautiful teeth. Classic Poe. Driven by the visions when the lady dies, He goes in and retrieves her teeth. I like Poe because of the way he minutely describes every scene, every person, and their strange obsessions. And the painting captures this quite aptly. When Redon goes color, his visions just explode with paint. ‘Roger and Angelique’ for example the blues of the rock face and the brilliant white of the surf are astounding. The main protagonists Roger and his hippograph, Angelique and the sea monster are faintly drawn into the grand image. Green Death is astounding because of the sheer contrast between red and green in the painting. ‘http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2005/redon/redon.html’ will take you through the collection.
The fourth and fifth floor has art. Some of it beautiful. Some strange. But that’s the way abstract art is. Sometimes you get the feeling that these artists’s get genuine pleasure from signing their names on crap, which is then highly valued by their patrons.
MoMa redefines what collectible art is. The building itself is astounding in that there are several corridors that feel like balconies opening out into open spaces.
Went on the same day to the International Center of Photography, which is down the same street. Wasn’t impressed as the collection is small and just too focused on a few topics. Definitely avoidable.
The first and ground floor are dedicated to Pixar. Going through the exhibits really gives you a sense of the imagination these guys have.
I missed the Prints section on the 2nd floor and the sculptures in the garden. For some other Friday I guess.
The 3rd floor has the photographs and design section. The design section was nice, there was these models and photographs of a ‘house of spiritual something’ which caught my eye. It has a two walls meeting each other at right angles, with the main living area located underground within the right angle. The walls just serve as the doorway into the underground dwelling. Kind of looks like a wing. And the photographs of the house and the area surrounding it are marvelous.
The Robin Rhode media exhibits are a must see. He takes what is a simple idea [his works are basically graffiti on a wall and his interactions with them, to depict motion, caught as stills either as photographs or a movie of stills] and runs with it. The photographs of him catching fridges, furniture, and even an automobile as they appear to fall out from the sky are amazing. I mean you can’t help but feel good at the end by the childish spirit in his art.
The Odilon Redon exhibit is strange. His charcoal and pencil work are undoubtedly beautiful. The images he conjures up are fascinating. I didn’t understand his interpretation of Poe’s ‘The Masque of Red Death’ but his vision of Berenice is apt. The Masque of Red Death is about the princes who with his courtiers enclose themselves in a castle to escape death from a plague epidemic that rages outside the walls. The ball that they have is unfortunately intruded upon by a masked stranger, who at the stroke of midnight reveals himself to be the plague. And everybody dies. Redon’s interpretation is like a mangled face in a red vista. I imagined it as an encounter between the prince who stares in stark horror at death. Anyways Berenice makes up for it. This is a story of a man infatuated with this lady. He loves everything about her. But most of all he is tortured by visions of her beautiful teeth. Classic Poe. Driven by the visions when the lady dies, He goes in and retrieves her teeth. I like Poe because of the way he minutely describes every scene, every person, and their strange obsessions. And the painting captures this quite aptly. When Redon goes color, his visions just explode with paint. ‘Roger and Angelique’ for example the blues of the rock face and the brilliant white of the surf are astounding. The main protagonists Roger and his hippograph, Angelique and the sea monster are faintly drawn into the grand image. Green Death is astounding because of the sheer contrast between red and green in the painting. ‘http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2005/redon/redon.html’ will take you through the collection.
The fourth and fifth floor has art. Some of it beautiful. Some strange. But that’s the way abstract art is. Sometimes you get the feeling that these artists’s get genuine pleasure from signing their names on crap, which is then highly valued by their patrons.
MoMa redefines what collectible art is. The building itself is astounding in that there are several corridors that feel like balconies opening out into open spaces.
Went on the same day to the International Center of Photography, which is down the same street. Wasn’t impressed as the collection is small and just too focused on a few topics. Definitely avoidable.
Friday, January 13, 2006
The Met
Went to the Met yesterday. Wonderful experience. So much to see and ponder about. Easily could spend a week in there and still be unsatisfied with the experience.
Truly need to go back to look at the entire upper floor again. Just managed a cursive look. Lots of Bodhisattva statuettes in the Asia section. Maybe that’s all the stuff that they could get out. But truly gives an idea of how important Buddhism was and is to Asia. Makes you wonder how Hinduism managed to win the encounter in the Indian Peninsula.
Lasting impressions,
Salvador Dali’s Crucifixion – He plays with light and distance, orientation, to give the impression of a levitating Christ superimposed on cross of cubes.
Calatrava’s exhibit – He gives such a sense of balance to his ideas that some of them actually seem to float. And most of his creations are functional. Not just art. His versions of the human head on the spine, and the spine in itself make you rethink all the anatomy that you are so sure of and have accepted as too complex to represent, in straight lines. Beautiful. The whole exhibit makes you think about lines of weight transmission and tension, and the way he makes them come together in magical sculptures.
Ah and all the nudes, easily the reason I missed seeing so much of the other art on display.
Truly need to go back to look at the entire upper floor again. Just managed a cursive look. Lots of Bodhisattva statuettes in the Asia section. Maybe that’s all the stuff that they could get out. But truly gives an idea of how important Buddhism was and is to Asia. Makes you wonder how Hinduism managed to win the encounter in the Indian Peninsula.
Lasting impressions,
Salvador Dali’s Crucifixion – He plays with light and distance, orientation, to give the impression of a levitating Christ superimposed on cross of cubes.
Calatrava’s exhibit – He gives such a sense of balance to his ideas that some of them actually seem to float. And most of his creations are functional. Not just art. His versions of the human head on the spine, and the spine in itself make you rethink all the anatomy that you are so sure of and have accepted as too complex to represent, in straight lines. Beautiful. The whole exhibit makes you think about lines of weight transmission and tension, and the way he makes them come together in magical sculptures.
Ah and all the nudes, easily the reason I missed seeing so much of the other art on display.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Hi
Hoping for a peaceful and happy New Year world. Will set of on a new trail. But at least I am secure in the knowledge that I chose education over everything else. For a guy who ultimately wants money so as just to be able to afford a paraglider and float of into the sunset, that isn’t strange. I hope that India will one day be able to accommodate another specialist, and disappointment be damned.
In the mean time, I intend to live and learn and fly when I can, physically and spiritually, and enjoy every part of it.
Peace.
In the mean time, I intend to live and learn and fly when I can, physically and spiritually, and enjoy every part of it.
Peace.
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