Atlanta Sight-seeing

My dad was here for the last 10 days. Now we have a car and a free Saturday, we decided we should take the opportunity to see the sights. There are tons of things to do in Atlanta, with Keiko having an interest in only a few of them. So we started out with those. The World of Coca-Cola and Georgia Aquarium are both new and were built next to each other. So they have combo tickets to save money. These were Keiko's picks.

As long as we were there, I wanted to see a few things nearby, namely Atlanta Underground and Centennial Park.

We started out parking at the cheapest place, which was Atlanta Underground. It is basically a mall that is where older Atlanta used to be before they built on top of it. Not a terribly special mall besides it's location. There are bunch of places to learn about Atlanta history, but no Japanese translations so we skipped out on that.

We passed by CNN center. This is also a popular tourist attraction as they have tours you can go one and see the sets etc. We didn't make it to this one today.

We did make it to Centennial Park. This park was built in preparation for the 1996 Summer Olympmics in Atlanta and infamous for the bomb. It turned a rundown part of Atlanta into a big tourist attraction. It now has free music and festivals.

We did realize this was going to be a big crowded weekend. What we didn't know that on this Saturday there were several events, all attracting tens of thousands of people each.

-The Alabama Virginia Tech football game. All I could see were jerseys from these schools. The South is nuts about football.

-Atlanta Braves game, with the stadium nearby

-Georgia tech football game

-NASCAR on Sunday

-Everybody else that comes for the 3-day weekend

This is a Virginia Tech fan that has really gone all out.

The Centennial Park was where ESPN had made base for their college football show. It was filled with people rooting for their schools. It was fun to show Keiko a little American culture about tailgates and football fever.

This is the Olympic fountain.

The G-fish stands for the Georgia aquarium. From the website, "On November 23, 2005, Georgia Aquarium officially opened its doors to the public. As the world’s largest aquarium, Georgia Aquarium features more animals than any other aquarium in more than eight million gallons of water."

Apparently, this was due to contribution by Home Depot.

I have nothing but good things to say about this aquarium. It was a little pricey, but it truly was the most impressive aquarium I have ever seen. It had several tanks with just huge giant glass windows to the tank, like bigger than movie theater screens. It had a great variety of wildlife, tons of things for kids to do including just a play area when kids just need to run around, etc.

This is the map. It is very easy to navigate because you can see every section of the aquarium from the center lobby. My favorite was the one in the top right of the map because it had a giant glass tunnel through the water.

Pictures of Keikos favorites incloude these little guys that just come out of the dirt to feed.

Dad and I in the tunnel

Sawfish above the tunnel

The center plant is actually a fish

Touching a sting ray (and a shark)

We then went on to the World of Coca-Cola. It is a combination of a museum and great marketing/advertising.

Here is the giant building.

Keiko found a Japanese coke machine

An example of all the artifacts they have

Our souvenirs. They have a automated factory at slow speed so you see the bottles being put on a conveyer belt, being cleaned and photopraphed for quality, where the syrup is combined with carbonated water, the filtering, and then you see the filling of the bottles and it being capped and get to take one home with you.

Highlights of that for me were this 3-d Star Tours kind of ride where the seats move and you get sprayed with water and mist and poked by "bugs" in an effort to discover the recipe of Coke.

They they have a room with soda fountain dispensers of Coke products all over the world. Really all over the world. Some taste pretty good, some taste pretty awful. We did this after not eating lunch and after having 64 flavors of Coke and Coke products at 3pm with no lunch was not the best idea.

So we went to a 50's style diner and filled up. Keiko seems to like American food more than me. I got some Greek lasagna and Keiko got lamb and potatoes. Since being pregnant, she seems to like meat more.

THANKS DAD for the great day!

Our apartment from the outside

Keiko took a bunch of pics of our apartment complex.

Welcome to outside the apartment.

These stair lead up to the parking lot. So we live on the "1st" fl but it's really more like the basement.

The path that leads to the stair from our door.

The opposite direction to the pool and office.

This is the view from our window/patio. It's beautiful, but it has lots of bugs...

"Garbage can"

Outside post boxes

Parking lot

Gate into the complex

Gym

Pool

Tennis court

Shows how we live in the basement.

Many paths to walk around the area.

And you can see how we have a patio with screens surrounding it.

Thoughts on a specialty at the end of 3rd year

I have finally finished one of the busiest, most interesting, most useful, and most exhausting years of my life. Unfortunately I still don't know what I want to do for the rest of my life, but I have some thoughts.

Medicine or peds, that is how I started the year out. I thought I valued having more time to talk to patients that anything. Then I did medicine and it didn't seem all that enjoyable to me. The internal medicine clerkship director says we shouldn't judge internal medicine on our 3rd year experience. But that's all I have to judge. That left pediatrics, which I really enjoyed.

Then I did surgery. I did 1 month of trauma surgery, 1 month of urology, and 1 month of orthopedics. vascular surgery, and ENT (ears nose throat). I actually had a really great time. I got better evaluations from my residents and attendings than I had received all year. The flow worked for me well. You see the patient, ask them only pertinent questions, make a plan to solve the one problem that you as a specialist can solve and move on to the next patient. Surgery is a quick-fix. In general, you do surgery, the problem gets better, and you are done.

I realized that I wasn't a "I just want to talk to patients as much as possible" kind of guy. I like to get things moving. So, surgery is for me: right?

Well, surgeons spend a good portion of their time in the operating room (OR). Do I like doing surgery? I have no idea. For the most part, I haven't done much more than sew the skin at the end of the surgery. Frankly, the OR has in general been pretty long and boring. Sometimes the procedures are really interesting and look like the would probably be fun to do but standing for hours on end just watching is not my idea of a good time. I really have no idea if I would like to do surgery as a career and am not sure how I will figure this out.

There is one more specialty that I find very appealing: emergency medicine. I will get a chance to really experience it until 4th year but emergency medicine is a nice balance. You get to think a lot and try and figure out what the diagnosis is for lots of different problems, you see quite a bit of action and get to do various procedures during emergencies (like sewing up cuts, putting various tubes into people, etc. but I'm not really sure to tell you the truth).

And there is the final possibility: working at the CDC permanently. If I enjoy my next year immensely I could end up doing public health for the rest of my life. This is a real possibility. Maybe even working in a foreign country. I won't be able to judge this much until I see how much I like next year in Atlanta.

But no matter what specialty I choose, I hope to be able to do research and advance the field. It's one of my favorite parts of medicine: the possibility to improve awaits, and that results in more lives saved.

Our apartment in Atlanta, all moved in

Here are some pics of our place in Atlanta:

Entrance way with little place to put our shoes and I stick my bike helmet. I have a healthy 5-8 mile bike ride to my work, depending on the day. I feel much more fit than med school :)

To the right of the last pic, our dining area.

At the center of the last pic, our kitchen. It's nice because it is easy to study or do something while someone is cooking as sound doesn't travel far from here, but a little lonely for the cook... :(

Looking from the doorway, our entrance into the patio which can be seen during the day in the Japanese BBQ entry.
http://oldisland2.blogspot.com/2009/08/yakiniku-japanese-bbq.html

Moving to the left, our "living area." And thanks to my dad, I tried to hook up the cable again after our Internet was connected and found we got basic cable after all.

Our closet isn't quite as big, so we tried to stuff a bunch of stuff behind our bookshelf. I feel like it's hardly noticeable unless someone takes a picture of just this and points it out...

A few stairs leads up to our bed.

Then we have our desk and bathroom (and someone hiding)

Bathroom

Closet connected to bathroom

Marriage pics in the bathroom

Marriage pics in the living room (too many perhaps?)

We live in a beautifully green area. Pics soon to come.

Problems since arriving to Atlanta w/ pics

I promise I'll have the uplifting blogs that say we're doing great after I finish describing the amazing amount of problems we seemed to have.


Problems since arriving to Atlanta:

1. Taking my medical boards (Step 2)
2. My cell phone battery died
3. Finding a used car
4. Setting up Internet
5. Getting to work while not having a car


1. My plan was to study for my boards during my ICU month. But as I mentioned, it didn't quite work out as planned. I didn't even really have time to study for my ICU tets, let alone my medical boards. Then my plan was to study a lot once we arrived in Atlanta. However, since we didn't have a car we had to buy several things while we still had the moving truck.

Plan:

Arrive on Saturday, move in Sat and Sunday
Mon-Wed: Study
Wed: go to Baltimore to visit my brother and study there
week following that on a Thu: take my medical boards


Reality:
Arrive on Saturday,
Sat-Wed: desperately try to move in before our flight on Wed
NO STUDYING!!!

Once we arrived at our apartment, I was surprised to find out that we had no microwave.


This shows where the microwave should go but since we are paying so little rent I guess I can't really complain. We had the rental truck until Tue (that was the minimum rental time for an Chicago to Atlanta move) so we looked up the list of things we had to buy on Craig's list and bought them. Well some things were the same price new.

-Food storage (best deal ended up being at Target)
-Futon
-Coffee Table (IKEA)
-TV stand (IKEA)
-Chairs for the little patio we have
-Microwave
-Microwave stand

By the time I finished this, it was time to leave for Baltimore. No studying.



Once I arrived to Baltimore, I went as planned. Study from 9-5, play with Chris and Emily and Keiko during the evening and on weekends. However, without any prior studying, my total study time ended up being a total of 5 8-hour days. This wasn't quite what I planned.

But, when I did take my test, it went way better than Step 1, the first part of the medical boards I took 3 days prior to my wedding, so I suppose it all worked out.



Images of our purchases (from Keiko's Japanese blog):
$10 at IKEA :)

Microwave with stand (Craig's list). After we bought the microwave for $30, a person offered this stand with a microwave for $15.... sigh, we just took the stand.



Our $100 futon from Craig's list. Keiko really wanted a wooden frame, and this one turns into tables.








This is our TV stand and coffee table. Notice anything similar? They don't really make any TV stands these days for non flat-screens. So we found this coffee table for $20 at IKEA and just bought 2. It took quite a bit of work to put together until 1 of the maintenance guys stopped buy to fix our door and let me borrow his electric screwdriver. :)


Keiko enjoyed her meatballs at IKEA :)