Living in Boston

Timmy Said:

One month from now, it'll be my 3rd year living in the US. The past three years, i've lived in the best suburb (Newton), one of the worst (Malden), and now again in one the best (Arlington) around the greater Boston area. I am about to finish my residency in arguably the most dangerous part of the city (if there's a shooting in Boston, this is usually where it's at). I've worked with some of the best doctors, and inevitably, some of the worst as well. I've learned how to handle American grads and their hard-headed ways. They always try to test you first, try to see if you're tough enough to handle them, since you're a foreigner. These are some of the smartest kids, some Harvard trained, almost all from the four Boston top-20 Medical schools in the country (Harvard, BU, Tufts, UMass), most of them going to Harvard-affiliated hospitals. Thats why most of them have this snotty attitude, and look down upon foreign graduates. It doesn't help that the higher ups in our program prefer these people (who wouldn't) over us, foreign grads. I remember when I was in the first month of my second year, I got assigned to a really hard-headed intern and a medical student. She was such a pain, always questioning my patient management, and the sad part was she didn't know a thing. She confidently made up answers (and stuck by them, even though they were so laughably wrong) when I asked her questions. But I perservered, kept on teaching her, kept on being patient with this intern, and eventually I gained her trust. We actually had a great time together, she gave me advice on how to handle others in the future and opened up to me that they were brought up that way, and in their medical school you needed to show a strong front or you'll be eaten alive. The medical student on the other hand, was so happy with his rotation with me, that he wrote so many recommendations to the dean of medicine and our director, that I never had a rotation where I didn't have a medical student with me. But, not everything is peaches and roses. Another time, I worked with someone so bad, so arrogant, that in less than three days working with him, I needed to call him out, verbally scrubbed him clean, and even after not changing one bit, reported him to the director and chief medical resident. After that, he was so scared, that "I ruined his career". You need to clearly set the tone that you are the boss, and these a-holes better not mess with you. You can't be Mr. Nice Guy all the time here, or else they'll eat you alive. My first six months here, I was literally chewed out and spit out. My confidence was at the lowest. But sometime along the way, something clicked. Now I have the confidence that i'm at par with these people. Their only advantage was they were lucky enough to be born here, studied here, and to be American citizens. I have better USMLE scores than most of them, and far superior medical knowledge. They probably are in better programs, because of their advantages, but I am happy enough with my accomplishments, and how far i've come.

I personally believe in destiny. I feel that I was destined to live here in Boston, sometime in my life. Bostonians, like New Yorkers, don't give too much respect to "feeling", newly transplanted people here, especially, non-whites like myself. In sports, they think i'm just riding the wave of the Red Sox popularity, after they became 2004 champs. The funny thing is, I know as much about the Red Sox or the Boston Celtics as any die-hard out there, Bill Simmons included (btw, i'm a big fan of this guy, check out his work at http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/simmons/index). I've been following the Celtics since the mid-80s, and the Red Sox since high school in the mid 90s. I know every player on the Celts and the Red Sox, every major trade they ever made since the 90s. So you might consider me the Asian Bill Simmons. But like Mr. Simmons, I do not follow hockey, and unlike mr. simmons, I prefer the Colts to the Patriots.

But it's getting better nowadays, ever since the Red Sox signed the best Japanese pitcher in the planet, Daisuke Matsuzaka. Now, people are nicer to us when we attend games at Fenway Park, assuming we are tourists from Japan. People in the elevators talk to us, thinking every Asian is Japanese, making small talk about Dice-K's last start. That's why a lot is riding on this guy's career. He has, not only the Japanese's fate in his hands, but the whole Asian nation. If he flames out, its back to being ostracized, if he becomes the next Pedro, we can even be heartthrobs (like what happened when all the South Korean telenovelas came in).

Anyway, its time to prepare for the finale of my wifey's favorite show....Grey's Anatomy! Last episode was....INTENSE.