30 Days

It's t-minus one month until the start of medical school. I am as excited and nervous as ever --but mostly eager to meet my new classmates and get this show on the road. There are lots of fun orientation activities planned for us the week before classes start. At the moment I plan on strategic attendance of these events to make friends without being too overly enthusiastic about the Manadory Fun. I'll leave that to the 21- and 22-year olds. Although, I must admit, I have only the fondest memories of my college orientation week (described at the time – and quite accurately in retrospect – as Camp Amherst) those 7 long years ago.

Also, I just received my new mailing address, effective August 25:
435 East 30th Street
Room# 726
New York, NY 10016

Hope you all are enjoying your respective summers so far, and keeping out of trouble as best you know how. Check back soon for new content, as I'm trying to keep my readership from flagging as has been suggested by the Google Analytics and Feedburner software. Hopefully, I can keep you interested. Holler.

The Seventy Sixers

It's been a long while since I've done this, but I thought it would be a good time to welcome new readers in far off places. According to the good folks at Google Analytics, in the last year or so STAB has been read by people in 76 (!!) countries -- up substantially from the 58 country readership I reported back in August 2007. The international flavor of this blog was an important part of its creation, and it has been wonderful to see hits and comments from curious peeps all over the world.

A giant hello to my new readers in the following places:

Malaysia
Puru
Botswana
Estonia
Slovenia
Slovakia
Morocco
Bahrain
Georgia
Pakistan
The Bahamas
Luxembourg
Kenya
Uruguay
Zambia
Czech Republic
Greece
Sudan
Croatia

I hope you guys like what you've been reading so far, and please feel free to leave comments if there's anything in particular you'd be interested in hearing more about. I'm also trying some new widgets out on the blog (check the right bar for my Last.fm recent plays and my Twitter feed) -- let me know what you think. Hope you're all well, and I'll be back soon with some decidedly less self-promotional news.

Everything I'm not // made me everything I am

Never underestimate the therapeutic value of a little good news and some new tunes to bump. Ye's release couldn't have come at a better time. I listened to Graduation for the first time last night, and three or four of the most infectious beats have been looping through my head all day.

When it feels like livin's harder than dyin'/
for me givin' up's way harder than tryin'/
Lauryn Hill said her heart was in Zion/
I wish her heart still was in rhymin'/

and

Top 5 MCs you ain't gotta remind me/
Top 5 MCs you gotta rewind me/
I'm high up on the line you can get behind me/
but my head's so big, you can't sit behind me/


Word; maybe I'll get around to writing up something more substantive about the album at some point. But if that doesn't happen, you guys can check out what else I've been listening to using that cool last.fm widget over there on the right side of the page. I hope none of my more embarrassing listening habits come to light - but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

Also, I got one.

The Godfathers (of Soul and Opera, respectively)

An inspired duet performed by two larger-than-life musicians who recently passed away: James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti. They perform Mr. Brown's misogynist classic, "It's a Man's World" - but totally rock out. This is really the only acceptable way to listen to Opera. Here's the video:



And a signature I'm Obviously On Drugs moment from JB at the very end of the clip:

James Brown: Thank you! Gratzie!
Interviwer: How did it feel to sing with Pavarotti?
James Brown: I FEEL GOOD!

Heinz + 1

Even during my hiatus, people seem to have been reading this thing. STAB's readership is now at 58 countries according to the good people at Google Analytics - 14 more than since the last time I reported. I can't really believe it either, but who am I to argue with their fancy web technology. And welcome to my new readers in:

Lebanon
Lesotho
Portugal
Saudi Arabia
Colombia
Chile
Mayotte
Malta
Brazil
New Zealand
Denmark
Mexico
Belgium
Hong Kong

I hope you like what you've been reading so far, and please feel free to leave comments if there's anything in particular you'd be interested in hearing about.

I think I'm going to keep a very low profile this weekend: work on my applications, go for a few long runs, and maybe even catch up on some of the e-mails I owe you guys. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and I'll be back soon.

Worldwide Readership Up, New Report Shows

It has been a while since I welcomed new readers to the blog. There are now readers of Smarter Than the Average Bearnot in 44 countries around the world, up 12 from the last time I reported. A big Hello to new readers in the following countries:

India
Trinidad and Tobago
Israel
Turkey
Singapore
Namibia
Palestine
Thailand
Romania
Norway
Burkina Faso
Brunei

I hope you guys are liking what you're reading so far - and I would encourage you to post comments or e-mail me directly if there are any topics relating to HIV/AIDS or life in South Africa you'd like me to address.

I am swamped under loads of work this week, including starting to design a half-day training for the staff of the clinics I have been visiting on basic Monitoring and Evaluations principals and the benefits of keeping accurate statistics on HIV and HIV-related care. It is already a bit nerve wracking to realize that I'll be leading this training session for nurses, counselors, and data capturers in three and a half weeks, but I think I have a handle on the information I need to impart. And I also have some good Power Point presentations drawn up by the United Nations and the US government covering some of the relevant information to use as templates for portions of this training.

Alright, I've distracted myself long enough. Talk to you soon.

Brief Encounters

I don't really feel like blogging today so I'll just share two small, entirely unrelated points:

1) Two men entered the Sinikithemba Clinic this afternoon, armed with guns and smoke bombs(?). They were looking to empty the meager register that the clinic keeps on hand for the patients who pay a small (R140, or approximately $20) monthly access fee to use the clinic. Fortunately, the guys showed up after the main register had been emptied by the armed guards several hours before - so they only got away with the few thousand Rands the clinic keeps on hand for 'emergencies'. Luckily, I was safely hidden away in the upstairs Monitoring and Evaluation office until the guys left, setting off a smoke bomb as they departed from the scene. The security guards weren't able to catch up with them and they eventually got away. It was quite a scary experience, and I'm still a bit shaken up. But - most importantly, I guess - no one was hurt, and the patients were eventually able to be seen after a brief police investigation of the Crime Scene. I am and will continue to be baffled by the fact that are people in SA disparate enough for cash that they would terrorize a clinic full of sick HIV patients.

2) The Smarter Than the Average Bearnot readership is now up to 32 countries. I'd like to welcome to the new readers in:

Swaziland
Vietnam
Dominican Republic
Ireland
Austria
Taiwan
Netherlands

Blackjack!

A few new readers in a few new countries has brought the total number of nations where Smarter Than the Average Bearnot (STAB) is read up to lucky number 21.

I'd like to welcome new readers in Switzerland, Egypt, Philippines, Maldives (To be fair, I had to look this one up. The Republic of Maldives is actually a collection of atolls located 450 miles southwest of Sri Lanka, off the coast of India - and it looks like it would be an absolutely fantastic place to visit someday), Ghana, and Australia to the STAB party! I hope you guys are enjoying the posts so far, and please feel free to post a comment or send me an e-mail me if the spirit moves you.

Lots of work to do today trying to wrap my mind around the complexities of diagnosed and undiagnosed tuberculosis in communities with high HIV/AIDS prevalence. And after that, I'll probably move on to reading about how to develop Monitoring and Evaluation tools to measure and track patient outcomes longitudinally. Might not sound all that interesting to you, but I'm pretty excited about it all. Be well.

Call and response

In response to my Uncle's comment to my last post (his original text can be found here):

Hey Rick -

Your thoughts on this matter on much appreciated, and it is something that Ariel (who I have a hunch might have been that first poster) and the rest of my friends have talked about at length. I think that the suggestion you've posited about our desire for Celebrity is certainly part of the story. However, I also think that those who you are referring to as My Generation have a ever-growing belief that information - about themselves, about their friends, about the wider world we live in - resides in the public domain.

At first these web-based tools like blogs, photo sharing sites, etc. were utilized almost expressly as a convenient medium for sharing this information with friends and family. But much of this, once private, information has become readily available to anyone with access to the internet with the rapidly growing power of search engines and social networking sites - and my generation has embraced this shift. (I often speculate that this trend will spiral out of control, ultimately giving way to The Dystopia, but that is outside the scope of this particular discussion, I think.)

These are just some of my off-the-cuff thoughts on the matter, but the larger questions at hand are certainly something that is actively being actively thought about and discussed by many of us. This is a subject that would certainly warrant further discussion at another moment in the near future.

Also, Ariel has just informed me that New York Magazine recently published an article discussing this issue exactly. The article is called Say Everything and can be found on their website here. I haven't read the article yet, but hopefully it will shed some further light on this question.

Wait a minute Mr. Postman

Chris brings up a good point in a comment he left in response to one of my last posts. How can you guys be expected to mail me things when you don't even have my mailing address?! Well, I'm about to fix all that right now:

227 Evans Road
Glenwood, Durban 4001
South Africa

Letters and packages are encouraged. And maybe you can even send me things that remind me of the cold weather that you guys seem to be experiencing in the Northeast at the moment; I've gotten a spate of e-mails in the past few days, all reinforcing this tragically frigid state of affairs. I'll be sure to keep you guys updated if I end up moving elsewhere at the beginning of March.

Also, I have just realized that I now have readers in 20 different countries around the world - up from 15 just a few weeks ago. A big hello to my new readers in Italy, Spain, Poland, United Arab Emirates (UAE reprazent!), and China.

And now back to looking at this barrage of CD4 and viral load data for all of the HIV patients who have come through the clinic in the past 12 months. It's a messy job, but actually quite interesting once I move on to the Conclusions section of the study. Hopefully I'll even have some interesting info to share about this report in the coming days.

Milestones

According to Google Analytics, I received my first visitor from the 15th different country last night. Here are the places where this blog is being read (so far):

US
Canada
UK
South Africa
Peru
Senegal
Thailand
Argentina
Finland
Sweden
Germany
Japan
Turkey
Republic of Korea
and, lucky number 15: FRANCE!

This suite of tools from Google has some really interesting features; I'll be sure to share any other exciting numbers or milestones I come across.

Welcome Back!

It's about damn time that I post something new up here. That week of vacation hit, and I lost of the blogging inertia I had been working so hard to cultivate.

I've just left my job at New York Cares (which is quite sad, really. It had been a wonderful experience over the past 16 months) and now have a lot more free time on my hands. However, this time is being spent by doing things like picking out/up a new pack, looking for voltage converter sets, cleaning my room of the detritus I accumulated in my last apartment.

Also, I've been preparing lots of the materials I'll need to begin applying to medical school this Summer. While it certainly is a bit early for me to be working on it, it is much easier for me to take care of some of the first parts of the long and tedious application process while I'm still in the States.

I'll be landing in South Africa in 3 weeks time; thinking about it like that makes me a bit dizzy - with all the positive and negative connotations. (That's a picture of central Durban up there on the left. It looks absolutely beautiful, doesn't it? )

I hope you all had wonderful Holiday Seasons, and you'll be hearing from me again soon. Keep it thug.

b

ps. For those who are subscribed to the feed of this blog, I've set up my del.icio.us account (it's a cool social bookmarking site) to send out updates with any new sites I tag. You've probably been receiving them for the past few weeks, but I just thought I should fill you in.

beats, rhymes, and life

after i wrote that last post, i had to go and listen to the timbaland back catalog. and now i've incorporated it into this audio post. i'm still in the process of figuring out all of the features available in garageband, but i think i'm getting better.

also, i'm still really curious about what music people think i should be sure to get before i leave.

and now, beats:



b

It's all Geek to me.

Hey all -

I'm going to be trying out a whole bunch of new features on this blog in the coming days. The first thing I'm trying out is feature that will let you 'subscribe' to my blog. You just click on one of the links below, and using one of several different programs you will automatically get sent my updates when I post to my blog. This is a good site where you can learn more about how Feeds work

Maybe no one will use this feature, but damn the torpedoes, ludicrous (Ludacris?!) speed ahead!

Subscribe in a reader

Let's see I can harness the power of my new(ish) Apple toys...

As promised, my first audioblog. It took me a longer to figure that out than I thought I would. ** NB The technophobic should stop reading now. ** The site that I was testing as a host for my audio files (imeem.com) currently only accepts .mp3 files. However, I couldn't figure out how to get Garageband to export as an .mp3 file - only as an .m4a. This means I had to import the song into my iTunes, convert it to an mp3, and only THEN could I post it to my site. ** EXIT GEEKmode ** Sorry, you can start paying attention again. I just needed to vent for a minute.

What you (hopefully) hear below is just a rough draft. I know I can use Garageband to do some pretty cool editing stuff, but I just wanted to prove that I could do this first.

Not too much SA-related has been going on the past few days. Mostly moving lots of my stuff back to my parents' house. I did get a very long e-mail from a woman who is currently volunteering at the same clinic I will be at through an UK agency called VSO (she described it as the British Peacecorp). The e-mail exhaustively describes her time in Durban and at the McCord Hospital. She's very insightful, and even share lots of observations about the social, economic, and cultural climate in Durban and South Africa. I haven't really had time to digest it all - but once I do, I'll be sure to share the insights that seem particularly interesting/important. She used to (and will continue to, i assume, when she gets back to the UK) produce TV dramas, and her tone is refreshingly straightforward and pithy.

a'ight, here goes. just push play:





Big ups.

b