From Paris to Med School, you'll always know what's happening with my life on this website.
It's bad enough that they just made a movie glamorizing how my ancestors fell to that panzy Alexander the Great way back, but did they have to cast Colin freakin Farrel as the guy who plays the Panzy that takes down Darius, the King of Kings. To this my friends, I must shake my head in disgrace.
for the Hollywood crap:
www.alexanderthemovie.com
For the real stuff:
www.notmyidea.com/persepolis
can i get wut wut
What happens when a Frenchman of Laotian descent thinks he's Usher, Sisqo, and KrisKross all at the same time? The result is a horrific example of a cultural fusion gone wrong.
His name is Welly Denzey (that's not his real name) and my claim to fame in France is that one of my students was his cousin and another one of my students' brother is his DJ. He's the sole source of pride in the suburban area where I taught at, Le Mee Sur Seine/Melun as the guy who made it out of the projects and became a rap star, sort of.
Check it out: my favorite video is #1, there are hardly any decipherable French words in it, but apparently everyone knows what "#1" and "step on the mic" mean .
http://www.willydenzey.com/v2/videos/video/clip_number1.ram
http://www.willydenzey.com/
He's the denzey and he's number one baby! go Le Mee!!!
Wow, and just when you think you hate Bush the most, someone tops you.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=123
i don't think she can be beat. i mean, dying wish? that's a bit extreme.
My high school friend Matt just informed me that he will be getting married this upcoming February in Orlando, at Disney World to a fine young lady name Cheryl who he met during training for the Air Force. I guess my high schol friends and I are going to ORLANDO!!!! and hopefully it will be fully recovered from the hurricane by then.
Congrats Matt, we're all very happy for you!
In regards to globalization and why I hate it, I've put up the following links:
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~jswanson/03s/100/articles/jan21art1.htm
this article is written by Cassidy, a New Yorker econ journalist.
In regards to Outsourcing, Cassidy has another great two-sided article. It's called "Winners and Losers: Is free trade really a good thing?" in the August 2 issue of the New Yorker. Both sides of the debate really hailed the article for its completeness. I highly recommend you check it out. I couldn't it find it online but I'd be happy to copy it for anyone and mail it. just let me know. I'll be taking it to SF with me because I think Ben and Kayvon really should read it. Though they might already know everything it says, I'd like to hear their reaction to this rather neutral way of approaching the topic.
For an opposing point of view, check out this article:
http://aei.org/news/filter.,newsID.21036/news_detail.asp
Finally, check out my letter to the editor for the UCLA paper (it's at the bottom of the page) to see my feelings on globalization in case anyone cares to read it.
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/db/archivedarticles.asp?ID=16095&date=8/13/2001
Some will think that I'm very one-sided and I'm often even wrong, I know this, but such assertions are debatable and I make my claims because I've seen this shit first hand, on video, or have read about it. I don't just dig it out of my ass.
I hope everyone knows why I'm going into medicine: I like the stuff. I like the science, it fascinates me. I like doing clinical research and contributing to medicine in that way because I feel that it can be my way of leaving a contribution to the world, albeit maybe not a huge one, that may last long after I'm gone even if it is in the form of some scientific or medical data that somehow contributed to the progress of science and technology. And of course I want to help people. I love the clinical setting and knowing that I'm in a position to make people better and help them improve their health and life. But that doesn't mean I'm intent on working in South Central as my friend Kayvon challenged me to. I fully intend on working in underserved areas for a part of my career and hope I will be able to do even more than my fair share of charity work both on a global and local scale. But in the end, I hope to be an academic.
During a long car ride in Montana, I asserted that to my friends that the American Dream is in peril. My friends, especially Kayvon, disagreed. Kayvon told me that in America, if one is smart and perseverant he can always find a way to succeed. For the most part, he's right. He even let me read a book called "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," which is all about how one can "make it" in America by being financially smart and creative. I'm not challenging any of this. But my only response is: some of us want to keep a life where we have security in our professions. I don't want to constantly worry about making money and maybe one day owning a corporation. In a capitalist society, these opportunities will always exist but some of us are content being teachers and doctors because we want to have a profession we love where making money is not the most important measure of success. It doesn't mean that we're not smarter, it just means that we have other priorities. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with aspiring to be a great capitalist, after all, we need such people to keep America competitive in the world with a strong economy full of jobs and all that good stuff. What they do can still be noble as long as it's done with a conscience and with good ethics and sensitivity toward one's employees and their needs.
But some people aren't meant to be capitalists and might not even want to be rich but live in comfort and security. And of course there are a lot of people who just simply aren't smart and can't be successful businessmen. They may not have the brains or the skills or education to aspire to "Rich Dad's" principles, but that doesn't mean they should be damned to a job at Wal-Mart for $10 an hour, living in poverty despite holding a full-time job, and without access to healthcare. For people like us, it is important that unions exist and are respected. When the Great Depression came, American society realized that the government should help such citizens to a certain degree and that's when things like Social Security and the New Deal kicked in. We stopped saying "tough shit" and instead realized that as a nation, we should all be concerned for each others' ambitions. Yes, all roads to capitalist success should stay open but capitalism should be practiced with concerns for everyone involved from the top down to the bottom. This concern is the type of thing Rich Dad ignored as he kept his corporations from unionizing, as he looked down on the woman who worked in his shop, and as he claimed taxes that funded social programs were stealing on the governments' part. His mentality takes us back to the pre-Depression era where if you just didn't have the skill or motivation to "make it," you were doomed to poverty and a third-world lifestyle.
To all my friends with huge ambitions in our capitalist economy: I wish you luck and happiness but I hope that when you do make it -- and I'm confident all of you will because I know you all well enough to know your potential -- you will apply the skills of "Rich Dad" with a greater sense of compassion and sympathy toward your subordinates. I hope that you'll realize that unions may be a sacrifise worth making to give your employees a certain level of security. I hope that as you make important decisions regarding outsourcing and downsizing, you will regard the human consequences (such as the diginity of your employees) with as much respect as the economic consequences.
All in all, I think "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" is a great book with sound financial advice for everyone. I for one will now look at every financial decision in a different light in regards to what is an asset or liability. But a lot of the rest of it simply doesn't concern me because I decided a long time ago that I don't want to own a company (or my own practice) and don't want to worry about making money. I just want some security. The book argues that this security doesn't really exist the way it used to and I agree. So, I'll take some of its advice and in the meantime, advocate that we need to hold on to whatever security remains. I strongly suggest you all consider voting for Kerry because of his unflinching support for unions and his ability to shift and adjust his stances on topics such as free trade depending on the state of the economy and what the nation needs. Some call this flip-flopping, but I think it's simply responding to a complex situation in a thoughtful way. In the meantime, I'm going to be happy knowing I will be a good doctor in the future pursuing a dream to help people and contribute to the field of medicine. If Rich Dad thinks that makes me "poor" and "uneducated," then that's his misjudgement.
I will soon be going to Missoula, Montana with my friends who are in San Francisco.
"This will be incredible," proclaims Benjamin Allen. Our friend Dave is really going out of his way and hosting us. Will write more on this next week.
My roommate Jordan LOVES bagels. Seriously. He sporadically comes home with a pack of gourmet bagels and thoroughly enjoys the experience they provide. My last roommate in France loved bagels too. His name is Evan. On Saturdays, he'd occassionally get up and say "I'm going to go be Jewish today."
Confused, I'd ask him what the hell he's talking about.
"I'm going to the Marais, and getting some bagels."
-"Yeah, okay."
Well, I guess Jewish people really do like bagels but Evan was a small sample population. So I ask Jordan "Are you Jewish?" -- I actually had heard he was before but I wanted to confirm.
Confused, he replies "Yes, why?"
I reply with " cause I heard Jewish people really like bagels."
Anyways, now Jordan says he can't ever again have a bagel without first contemplating my pseudo racist generalization/stereotype comment first. eh....
Evan's Response is at the comments section. He can be reached at the link in my sidebar.
I like my medical school. Really. San Diego is a nice place and the school is fairly prestigious with some great professors and research. But man, UCSD is a weird, retarded campus. Here are some wierd things:
Condoms by the shower:
UCSD has an awesome recreation facility. It's totally state of the art. The other day though, as I was putting my stuff away in the locker room I noticed that right outside the showers, there's a condom dispenser. Now, this is the one and only condom dispenser I've seen on campus. Not even the bathroom upstairs in the gym has one. ONLY the bathroom area right next to the showers has one. Now I'm not suggesting the school gym's shower room is a haven of homosexual activity but I'm just gonna say that it's a bit weird and leave it at that.
yay, go Tritons.
Concrete, Concrete, and more Concrete:
This place LOVES concrete and hates paint. Really. My classes are held in the most industrial looking piece of ugly gray concrete box-like structure on Earth. I'm used to beautiful Italian architecture and brick buildings at UCLA but here, they just build huge concrete structures and don't even paint them. They figure all the grass and dead trees around campus will cover up their ugliness or something. Even their sculpture garden is concrete. I shit you not, it's just a bunch of concrete blocks held up in a stone-henge like manner except it's ugly and somehow it's supposed to be a relaxing artistic area.
Trailer Trash School
If the buildings aren't concrete, then they're bungalow/trailer structures. You know, like the portable classrooms some of us had in middle school, those. I mean, I can expect that sorta thing from a junior college but not a "world class research university" as they like to proclaim themselves to be. It's hideous, a bunch of bungalows all over the freakin big campus.
No Coffee:
Apparently the invention of food and soda dispenser machines just totally bypassed UCSD. The coffee shop at the med school closes at five and there is no way to get coffee or soda from any machines. The machines that were there are currently broken and they never installed the coffee dispensers. It's impossible to get a caffeine rush here!
Cafetaria:
Club Med as it is ironically called has the worst food on Earth. They need to demolish that place and have a Wendy's move in there or something. Their Kung Pao chicken tastes like spoiled Fesanjoon (Persians will understand the gravity of this statement only, sorry to discriminate).
But despite all this, I really do like my school, really.
Just your typical Persian kid from suburban LA, fulfilling his destiny to get the MD/DDS/PharmD, you pick. I study a lot, (practically live at Twiggs sometimes) burn out, and then go out and party to get it all out of my system and reenergize. The cycle then repeats. I've lived in SF, Paris and now San Diegoand this site here is the chronicle of my gradual entrance into the Real World I was told I was entering upon graduation from UCLA.
