DONE

Its day three of freedom after taking Step 1 of the US Medical Licensing Exam. The way it works is that in order to become a licensed physician, you have to take and pass three killer exams called steps 1,2,3 respectively. I just spent 8 hours of my life taking Step 1 this past Sunday.

Anyway, I am ECSTATIC that I am finally done with the lecture based, sit on your ass portion of med school and going on to the learn on your feet bedside portion of my training. Thats really what it is I have found, training. Its pretty amazing amount of information that they cram into your head, even if most of it leaves again the day after the exam.

For example, got CPR recertified today and took the course. Compared to the last CPR course I took 3 years ago, it was amazing to know and be able to have a map of the human body in my head as the instructor talked about positions, techniques etc and know precisely the physiological bases of respiration and circulation.

Anyway, so it is on to pediatrics starting on Monday. Gonna be working in the Neonatal nursery (. . . awwww . . .) which should be pretty great. Then its off to the white mountains for a pediatrics outpatient experience before going going back back to Cali Cali in late July to work at the Children’s Hospital in Orange County. I can’t wait to be a real person again.

Wenda Gu’s studio in Shanghai

In case I forget it, apparently Wenda’s studio is in the emerging “modern art center” in China. The address

101 Ground Floor Building 3
50 Moganshan Rd
Shanghai, China
t 8621 62996293

Contemporary Chinese Art?

Pretty funny. I went to an opening of Wenda Gu’s Exhibit (www.wendagu.com) at the Hood museum today. Basically this guy who calls himself one of the original contemporary artists to come out of China (was even banned by the Chinese government) took Tang poems and translated them to English, retranslated them into Chinese again except incorrectly so the strokes were backwards and extra radicals added etc. The point is that in the process of “bridging cultures” nothing can be precisely interpretted and authenticity is lost/created/recreated. Not particularly creative in my mind and not as interesting as actually talking to the artist who was pretty vague about modernity, postmodernity and culture but lucid about markets, which markets are more developed for art, who his leading competitors are and how many studios he had. He even compared himself to Walmart saying that his production base is in China (low cost and better craftsmanship) and his “creative center” in New York.

What was funny to me was that while his art was contemporary, the business of buying and selling is as ancient a tradition and as authentically Chinese as can be.