My reward for my awesome parallel parking job

I've gotten pretty good at driving recently. I can back into spots, maneuver around sharp turns, squeeze in between buses, drive over 70mph, and -- drumroll please -- I can even parallel park now.

I know. Shock. Gasp. Awe.

I'm an Asian girl...who can parallel park? But that's impossible, right?

But I can. And I did. Today, on my way to have coffee with an old friend (and I mean old as in we've been friends since middle school, not old as in my mother telling me I need to have children old), right across from the cafe we were going to, I saw a woman pull out of her parking spot.

Super excited to have such a prime spot, I parallel parked my way in, and paid my dollar an hour in quarters for the meter.

I had a grand ol' time catching up and complaining about intern year with my friend, and then, when we came out, there it was.

A parking ticket.

Are you kidding me? I couldn't believe it. I had checked my watch, so I knew exactly when the meter was going to run out. We were well within my time limit!

Then I saw the same thing on all the other cars parked around me.

So I let myself hope for a good thirty seconds. Oh, maybe it's just a flyer. An advertisement that someone came by and put on all the cars!

But nope.

Here it was.

A real life parking ticket.

I mean, I kinda knew I was due for a ticket. Driving three months, speeding away and running late to things? Yeah, I knew my karmic chances were just about up.

But a parking ticket?

How lame is that? A ticket for not anything sexy, like speeding to get to the hospital or running a red light to catch a flight. Nope. I got a violation for parking.

Now, before you guys think it's cause I parked in two spaces, had boxed someone in, or was twenty-five inches from the curb -- no, none of that applies. My parking job was flawless. A nice six inches from the curb, and smack dab in between the lines. It was beautiful, and it was perfect.

No, my parking violation was for street cleaning.

STREET FREAKING CLEANING.

Sigh. Sixty-eight freaking dollars. Talk about the most expensive parking spot ever.

Whodunit?

Here we are at our psych residency retreat! Where we all played a real-life Clue! Aren't we cute?

Can you spot the murderer? I swear it isn't me. Swear.

This is why I should listen to more country music

On my way home today, I heard sirens. In the distance sure, but lots of them, seemingly coming from all around me. I looked in my rearview mirror and didn't see anything, but I pulled over to the side like a good driver.

I slowed to a stop, and waited for the ambulances/fire trucks/police cars to pass me.

Instead, I got some crazy loud honking and cursing from all the cars now backed up behind me.

See, those sirens? Just part of the song that was playing on 97.1 FM. Thanks to Carson Daly and over-synthesized pop music, I fulfilled my stereotyped role as bad female Asian driver today.

In other news: my car has surround sound! Who knew?

Kentucky fried

ME

So sir, can you tell me where you're from?

PATIENT

Greenville, Kentucky, ma'am.

ME

And why are you in Los Angeles?

PATIENT

I'm on my way to Bakersfield to meet the movie stars. Because I'm starting acting too.

ME

Bakersfield?

PATIENT

Yeah. My third cousin, MacGyver, lives there.

ME

Is that so?

PATIENT

Yeah, so if you could help me get to Bakersfield so that I can start my acting career, I'd really appreciate it, ma'am.

ME
And do you know where you are right now?

PATIENT
Yes ma'am. Los Angeles.

ME

Have you been in movies or television before?

PATIENT

No ma'am. I usually hunt vampires. That's my real job. But don't tell the Count.

ME

The Count?

PATIENT

Yeah. Dracula. You know.

Thanks for giving me your seat sir, but that's just my food baby

My bathroom scale is usually under my bed. Out of sight, out of mind. And as long as my clothes fit, I don't really care about the number.

Except my clothes have started pinching and showing off things that really should stay hidden.

So I pulled out my bathroom scale, put in some fresh batteries, and voila! I've gained fifteen pounds since starting intern year. Fifteen pounds! In two months! Egads!

Now, I know that everyone jokes about the freshman fifteen, and how that terrible event in our college lives rears its terrible head all over again during intern year of residency, but seriously. This is ridiculous! Fifteen pounds! Are you kidding me?

Lord help me.

For those of you who don't believe me, maybe you'll believe my crazy psychotic patients. Sure, they might be delusional, but they're also disinhibited and have no sense of social aptitude and are thus extremely truthful. Harshly truthful.

Case in point: today, my patient looked at me and remarked, "I didn't know you were pregnant!"

I"m never eating again.

Back from vacation...

And it hurts so much.

Man, it was rough waking up this morning. Rough making that drive to the inpatient psych hospital. And sandpaper rough having to go from peace and quiet and calm and beautiful scenic drives to crazy psychotic patients who yell and curse at you constantly.

I'm already looking forward to my next break.

Chicago! October 25th cannot come quick enough.

Ten years later

We remember. 9/11/01

You rock my whirl

My co-residents are so punny. I'm a big fan.

Since you spent $60000 on your car, maybe you can afford $50 on a driving lesson

After three months of driving research, I've come to this completely biased study conclusion:

• People who drive Audis are giantly huge dickheads.

Doesn't matter if it's a sports car, a sedan, or a mini-SUV. They all drive like they think they're the shit, when really, they just drive like shit.

They make my blood boil and my road rages rage. Ugh, hate!

I guess as long as the death threats and marriage proposals even out somehow...

Neurosurgery sucks.

Hours are long, work is hard, and there's a lot of stress and responsibility that comes with the job.

So I don't envy Martin for what he does. At all.

Well, I do get a little jealous on just one thing. His patients adore him. They love him and they're appreciative of everything he does for them.

My patients, on the other hand, hate me. 

Every day that they see me, they ask me when I'm gonna let them go home. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I have to say, "Nope, not today!" which causes them to go into hysterics, curse the parents that borne me into this world, and inevitably, will explicitly tell me how much they hate me. It doesn't matter how many times I try to explain to them that we're doing things to help them. They feel like they're being jailed, and I'm the jailer holding the keys. 

And since we're on a locked unit, and I really am the one holding the keys.

Martin sees patients in clinic every Tuesday. Every time he sees someone he operated on before, they are profuse with their praise and admiration for his skills.

When I see repeat patients, it's because they went off their meds and they're crazy psychotic again and the police had to bring them in for trying to exorcise demons from strangers or for wandering into their neighbors' houses butt naked, or something along those crazy delusional lines. So when I see repeat patients, it's really to start the entire mundane process of titrating medicines, and listen to them curse me out for locking them up, all over again.

I know it's silly. Me, being jealous of a neurosurgeon. But I guess I would really appreciate it if I could have one patient give me some affirmation for doing what I do. Some tangible proof to point to and say, "See -- THIS is why I went into psychiatry."

As it is, I can't wait for vacation. Less than five days to go!

I really need to learn how to speak Mandarin

They told me he was out of control.

I didn't listen.

They told me that he needed an intramuscular cocktail.

I didn't listen.

They told me that they had tried redirecting him, asking him to take a time-out in the seclusion room, all to no avail.

I didn't listen.

Instead, I was convinced I could talk him down. So I went over to him in the day room, where he was raging against some hallucination, and he pointed at me. "YOU!"

"Yes?" I asked him.

"You my friend!" he replied, and held out his hand, gesturing that he wanted to show me something.

He doesn't speak English, so I figured miming our way through conversation would be better than taking him into a small interview room where we could get a translator on speakerphone. So I gave him my hand. And he immediately grabbed my wrist, pulled me towards him, and out of nowhere, slapped me.

"YOU BAD GIRLFRIEND!"

As soon as he grabbed me, all of the male nurses sprung into action, and took him down quite forcefully. So forcefully he was down on the ground within seconds, arms and legs splayed out straight, his voice muffled as he continued to curse profusely in Mandarin. "Now do you want to restrain him, doctor?" the charge nurse asked. "Yeah, we should probably do that," I admitted, chagrined that I thought I had magical mediator powers that could someone convince this crazy person that everything was going to be okay. Moral of the story: listen to the nurses.

Also, it turns out that my generic Asian face apparently resembles his ex-girlfriend's, who just recently dumped him. And so, seeing me there apparently caused him to go into an even deeper psychotic rage and consequently, started all the slapping. His family tells me that she was quite pretty, even if she did make him crazy.

Definitely gives a whole new meaning to receiving a "backhanded" compliment, that's for sure.

Road rage regret

I've been driving for three months now, and I have never used my horn.

In fact, there have been a couple of horn-deserving moments when cars have cut me off and I almost crashed into a wall, and I would have used my horn if I knew where it was. The first time, I sat there punching the middle of my steering wheel for a good thirty seconds, before I realized that the horn button was off-center, but by that time, the offending driver had cut off three other drivers and had driven off into the smoggy sunset. Long story short, it wasn't worth it.

Today, I used my horn.

I left a good ten minutes late for work, and I was feeling guilty since I'm the one who's supposed to relieve night float, and I knew I was going to be very late. So as I sat in the RIGHT TURN ONLY lane at a red light waiting for the car in front of me to go, I finally did it.

There were no pedestrians, no oncoming traffic, and yet, this car just kept sitting there. Sitting there, while I had places to get to, and night floaters to send home. Either he turn right, or move over so that people who wanted to, could.

So I laid on the horn.

That's when the driver rolled down his window, pointed to the giant "NO TURN ON RED" sign, and then flicked me off.

Oops.