India came to a grinding halt before the final match of the India-Pakistan series, taking place in Pakistan. This series is probably the most imporant thing happening in the universe for most people on the subcontinent. The political scenario is hilarious - apparently, the outcome of this match has important repurcussions in the upcoming Indian elections. How great would it be if the US presidential candidates had to worry about who won the NCAA basketball tournament?

India went on to WIN the match, and THE ENTIRE SERIES - becoming the first Indian team to win a series on Pakistani soil. YAY!!

Speaking of things coming to a grinding halt, a confused county in Oregon has stopped giving marriage licenses to ANYONE. I knew this was going to start descending into nonsensical hilarity. The headline is worthy of The Onion.

Really interesting article on dirty politics in American history...

I had no idea that the campaigns in the past had been so raunchy. Imagine someone giving John Quincy Adams the nickname: "the Pimp"!

The Spark Personality Test - here's what they think of me:

DREAMER
(Submissive Introvert Abstract Feeler )

Like just 11% of the population you are a DREAMER (SIAF)--reserved and imaginative. You are basically the shy, silent type. You don't have much interest in facts and figures or most of what's going on around you, but the internal worlds you build for yourself are rich and complex.

Luckily, your creativity and strong heart mean you have a deep personality evident to anyone who gets to know you. It's just that not many people do, because most everyone thinks you're a loser. Talk to yourself less, other people more, little shaver.

A pilot asked the passengers on his flight whether they were Christian.

Now, usually, I do my BBC reading with a faint smile of amusement on my face. I have realized that the BBC has a penchant for reporting on rather bizarre incidents throughout our world. Sometimes I've shared some of them here. But that article about a proselytizing pilot really terrified me. It reminded of Margaret Atwood's imagined world in The Handmaid's Tale. That book is eerie enough (set in a thinly veiled Harvard-in-the-future) as a fictional account. I don't enjoy reading actual articles that mimic its insanity.

I have to admit the pilot was right about me being "crazy" - but that's because my brain is over-populated with belligerent gnomes, not because I'm a dark-skinned, idolater from the Orient. You have to get these things straight.

I have performed an interesting experiment.
Let me preface by saying that med students are very pretentious about being health-conscious. I think it makes sense that med students would be healthy - I mean, you spend all day looking at slides and descriptions of what happens to you if you smoke, drink, eat badly and don't exercise. I have avoided becoming paranoid about my health (or conscious in any way, really) for the most part. Recently, in my constant attempts to push the barriers of what I can eat, I purchased a box of Twinkies. I was craving ONE, and I bought a box. It turned out to be too much, even for me. They are like little sugar bombs. In a bad way. So I had the box sitting on top of my fridge for nearly two months. Now, the interesting/annoying thing is that med school friends kept coming into my room and saying things like, "DUDE, I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU WOULD EVEN CONSIDER EATING THAT." Or sometimes, I would offer someone a Twinkie, and they would leap back in horror and disdain.

Finally, one day, in my attempt to rid myself of the box, I abandoned it in the dorm kitchen.
The box was empty in two hours.

Apparently they don't realize that even if you eat the twinkies with a flashlight in the middle of the night, they still are bad for you. That's also what I have to say to the med students who emerge from bushes and shrubs behind the building, smelling suspiciously of smoke. Smoking is just bad for you, it's not immoral. Twinkies are just gross, not illegal. Everyone relax!

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Shameless plug for my favorite coughdrop/throatsoother - Halls Honey Lemon Drops.

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Also - you can't choose your parents, but this kid really has my sympathy.

Billions of Blue Blistering Barnacles!!
Tintin is 75 years old, and you'd never think to look at him! Pass the whiskey....
(Let's just hope that Spielberg's proposed films do Herge justice.)

The reason I don't remember most of my adolescence.

Weird dream.

My friend and I drive to NYC, but accidentaly end up in San Francisco. We are in a house that has winding hallways and many many doors that all seem to lead to different levels and lobbies. I occasionally run into either familiar kids or family members from India. Many of the levels have clothes racks and very fashionable college-age girls running about. Some of the levels are hosting an Indian wedding and yoga classes. Finally, trying to locate my friend, I get into a small antique-looking elevator with a giant man. As we are in the elevator, it begins to shrink. I think that I am going to die in this shrinking elevator, suffocating in the flesh of this wrestler-size person. But then the elevator becomes like a suit stuck to my skin and I pop my head out the top and emerge. Kind of like being born. I suddenly realize that I am not in NYC, but SF, and I need to be back in Boston in 5 hours. I have no money, and I ask someone if there are any buses, and he says, "Nah, you can't get anywhere from here."

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Yesterday I realized that soon I won't be in class anymore. This summer I will kind of stop going to class all the time, and I have to start spending all my time in hospitals. Actually, by the end of next month we will start being in hospitals for one or two full days each week. When I express anxiety/shock over this to my friends, they say, "Yes, dear, you are in MED SCHOOL. Doctors work in hospitals." But the fact of the matter is that since I was 5 years old I have been in some kind of regular classroom schedule with lots of people who are all the same age and exams and pretty short days. Suddenly, being in an adult workplace seems really frightening. Like being stuck in a shrinking elevator with a giant, perhaps.