Power

It is extremely frustrating to know that in spite of being certified for something you cannot use it as effectively as necessary because you are all of 5 feet 5 inches tall and weigh 120 lbs. Somebody driving a car just got hit by a truck outside my apartment today, barely 50 minutes ago. I ran downstairs to help extract the driver from the car (as an EMT , we received the training necessary to do so). Obviously some dumb shit sporting a HIPAA mask but lacking any knowledge or skill whatsoever got there first, and pushed me out of the way, saying "we don't need you". I flashed my EMT license and CPR cert at him, and again, he said he didn't need me and tried to push me away. Was he really going to pull out a guy from a car crash without any help whatsoever? Normally I'd let him try and fail, but the driver was bleeding freely out of his nose and was shaking uncontrollably. Shit. I pushed him out of the way, got hold of C-spine, and after some persuasion and instruction the fool helped me get the driver out.
   Now we're on the street, 911 has been called, and the driver clearly has head trauma and is unconscious. I started to lay the driver down in supine position in order to assess airway, breathing and circulation and to do a rapid trauma assessment. Now donkey-fuck here wants to keep the driver sitting upright because he doesn't want the man to "choke on his blood"....are you fucking serious? You stupid freaking shit. I don't remember ever being this pissed off at a complete stranger. While he was arguing, I began checking pulse and respiration - they were absent, and he needed CPR - how the fuck am i supposed to do that while he is sitting up? The fool tried to tell me that I was wrong. Before the battle over putting the guy in supine position began, however, we heard sirens - the ambulance was here. I informed the EMT of the situation and he began CPR with his partner; two other EMTs pulled out the stretcher and continued assessment. I was free to go, and unlike that fart balloon I was working with, decided that since they didn't need my help and since they are *up-to-date with their training* I should get out of the way.
   I am so relieved that the ambulance showed up when it did. In the time that I wasted trying to argue with this fool (as physically I had no chance of pushing his grubby hands out of the way without injuring the patient), I could have been halfway in with CPR by the time the EMTs showed up.Turns out my partner here was one of those fuckhead premed students who have taken 2 biology courses so far and shadowed somebody in a hospital for about a day and now think they have all the skills necessary to save the world. I really don't understand where the hell they come from. This is part of the reason I really don't like a lot of premed/medical students (no offense to the ones who are my close friends), and a small part of the reason I've begun to choose public health over medical school as a career - absolute fucking lack of humility. They just automatically assume that they are superior to everybody else without listening to anybody around them  - if you have EMT/CPR/rescuer training (or are at a point in med school where you've been on rotations and have learned real-life stuff), you have the right to think you can help. But if not, get the fuck out of the way! They are so hung up on looking like the hero that they fail to realize that they are actually harming the person they are supposed to help.
     Medical schools place a large amount of stress on trying to figure out whether an applicant wants to be a doctor because he is passionate about medicine, or because he is passionate about the 3 perks that come with it: sex, money, and POWER. You may not want to be a doctor for the money, but looking like an action hero is an innate desire that med school applicants have....yes, I know that I may be applying to medical school, and I am not completely innocent of this desire....but there is a time and place for trying to reap it! If you are trained and certified to help, by all means, go ahead, even if all you are doing it for is the image. I could care less. But it's a little pathetic how many premed students I have met who seem to care about nothing BUT the image. This is how medical schools should test them - put applicants who have no background in clinical/emergency procedures in a situation where they need to implement them. See how many people stay behind and how many rush in and try to move their fat asses in where they don't belong.

How to Keep a Monkey Interested

John and I had a lot of options for how to spend a Saturday night. We decided to look up wikiHow articles on dating that have been written by some individuals who consider themselves successful at attracting the opposite sex. Here are a few things I learned tonight:

1) If a woman is not responding to your advances, she probably has autism.
2) If you are approaching a woman and she tries to ignore you, it is because she is more afraid of you than you are of her. Therefore, disregard her behavior and keep trying. Open by convincing her that you are not trying to mug her.
3) Do not flirt at funerals.
4) Do not laugh immediately after complimenting the person.
5) To properly seduce a man with eye contact, you must leave the top eyelid open wide, try to squint only with the bottom eyelid, and keep moving your vision from their mouth to their left eye to their right eye. Do not look insane.

We realized that we have not been using our talents sufficiently. If so many people out there are sharing their expertise, why don't we? So we poured ourselves a couple of bottles of wine, and documented the lessons we have learned from dating our exes. Here is the product of our efforts:

How to Keep your Monkey Interested.

Is your monkey hiding from intimacy (like, under the couch)? Ever wonder why that banana just doesn't fit right? This article applies to both male, female and neutered significant others.

1. Monkey see, monkey do. It is a well-known fact that personality mirroring is extremely successful in picking up women even if you are ugly. This is especially true in human-monkey live-in relationships. If you act too human, your monkey may feel insecure and may be unable to relate. When your monkey needs to have a real conversation with you, squat on the dresser so they feel that you are as mature as they are.

2. Create a living space. Being in a relationship is a serious commitment, especially if you are a monkey. Make sure there is a monkey flap through which she can leave and lick her wounds after an argument.

3. Take a vacation together. A lot of hotel spas cater to simi-sexual relationships. Visit the two-way flea grooming room, where your monkey and you can truly bond and have a delectable meal together. You can take swing classes, where even if you are unable to participate, you can watch your monkey swing from all manner of dangling objects.

4. Compliment your monkey. Tell your monkey, especially in more intimate situations, that her tail is particularly spiffy. Let her know how red her backside is. She will most likely scratch her armpits in response, which actually corresponds to blushing in humans. Buy her sexy lingerie from Victoria's Simian (not the Edible underwear).

5. Do not be afraid to raise your voice. If she screeches, screech louder. You may end up having some very passionate make-up sex.

Warnings:

• Do not shave.
• Do not shave your monkey.
• Never run out of bananas. You never know what else he/she will use as a substitute.
• There is a time and place for feces-throwing. Only use that under extreme circumstances to prove a point.
• Sharp teeth.

Not so good with the title-making.

There is a cat on my head, an article on Jharkand’s malaria endemic on my lap, and stress about the future on my computer screen. Actually, the cat is on my lap, the article is on the screen…you get the gist.

I realize that this is the second entry in a row about being bekaar.  To readers in a similar predicament, I apologize if I keep causing your hand to extend in a disconnected manner towards that large pint of ice-cream in the freezer. To everyone else, welcome to airhead-geek space. (note - you should switch to low-fat if you’ve been bekaar for a while, that shit piles up)

Why is it that so many individuals in my age group don’t know what they want (career-wise at least)? It isn’t so at home – almost everybody I went to school with in Mumbai already knows what they are doing; for example, many are already married/engaged – bas life set. That last bit makes me doubt the amount of independence that all-girls’ Catholic schools claim to propagate. Okay, seriously though – a lot of MIG girls I graduated with are writers, doctors, MBAs, etc. and really enjoy their jobs. Almost everyone I know here in the US is either knee-deep in loans, in grad school (mainly sar-firaas like me) or working crappy jobs while trying to figure out what they want. Only a select few are already on desired career-paths. I agree that I have been a part of this country for 7 years and therefore part of the US educational process (at least till 12^th) I lovingly call mollycoddling. I remember being asked to name an example of a gas on my first day in a US school in 2003 – completely bemused, I answered hydrogen sulfide, due to which the chemistry professor thought I was mocking him. The correct answer was AIR. Saala taklu. As opposed to Ms. Ghorpade, who frequently pulled me out of my seat using my left ear as a lever, screaming “aamcha mulaancha yo!!” 

I digress. It is late, so for parting words I’d like to say something encouraging to all my fellow unmarried MIG classmates who have been victims of “oh you’re single? Umm, oh honey that’s okay!” – fuck them. They don’t know what they’re missing. Enjoy the next decade of youth.

Introduction.

I’m 22 years old and still in school. Mind you, not like the occasional 20-year old recluse you encounter in high school. I’m in my second year of graduate school, working on a bullshit Master’s degree and all the while salvaging a second, hopefully more useful Master’s degree (this one in Public Health). I have no idea what I want to do, I live in a building where Allston criminals hide regularly after their latest stabbing spree, and the one time somebody broke in to my apartment he didn’t steal anything but watched me sleep till I woke up and chased him out. I’ve called 911 twice this year just because of where I live. Can’t say my life is uninteresting.

People in the US always seem shocked to hear that we have to pick a career choice by the time we’re 15 back home. After being here for 7 years, I’m starting to feel the same way. Mainly because the direction my career is taking is about as straight as that of a bayl escaping from a tabela. I wonder if that’s what this country needs. Concentrated fear, instilled by the lectures you grew up listening to because you hadn’t saved the world using quadratic equations by the time you were 12. I’m constantly worried about what the hell I want to do with my life, and as much as I love my friends, I want to give them a dhakka when they say “You’re just 22! You have time!”

Going home to India has become something I anticipate as well as dread, like when you take a bite of that cheese you’re craving but aren’t sure if it has gone bad yet. I hate the “how long before you become a doctor, eh?” – jeez, all I want is some home-cooked pav-bhaji, why do you have to ask me this every 10 minutes? At this point I have performed CPR on a child, helped treat bomb blast victims, written a bunch of stories, received my Emergency Med Tech license, extensively analyzed Persian literature, taken Public Health classes, and have day-dreamed about being a lion-tamer. My closest friends are musicians, medical/nursing students, journalists, film majors, writers, engineers. I came to this country so I’d have more career options, among other things like toilet paper instead of a lota, and vacuum cleaners instead of a jhaadu. Too much of a good thing.

In the future I will write about many things. Health, food, politics, women, men, Bollywood, India. But most importantly, nothing important at all.  

Yes, I wrote this while I was in lecture. Gotta pack up so I can race all the cars on the way home with my bicycle.