For those of you who don’t know, Pandora is a cool radio site where you control the music you want to hear. If you haven’t checked it out already, get over there now- you’ll be happy you did.

Anyway, Pandora doesn’t allow use of their service to anyone outside of the US. Fortunately, neat little programs like Hotspot shield allow you to connect to an American VPN that give you an American IP and also prevent your ISP from monitoring your browser traffic, for the most part. This is also a sweet program that gets around anything else your ISP might be blocking. If your ISP is pretty strict on keeping their blocks active, they’ll eventually block the IP of the VPN that you’re connecting to.

Never fear. The Global Internet Freedom Consortium provides four or five more programs which are basically identical to Hotspot shield (without the annoying banner ad) and allow you do the exact same thing.

Now all you non-US users, go out their and stick it to the man.

My fourth year at Shifa College of Medicine is finally at an end, and I have only finals to look forward to for now. Winter break, although 2 months long, is going to be speant doing volunteer research (electives!) in ophthalmology, though I’m not sure where as of yet. Right now Duke, Michigan, JHU, and Bascom Palmer are all possibilities. Finally, I’ll get to start my long-awaited final year of medical school next February, after four long, long years. It’s now more than ever that I wish the MBBS program was also only a 4 year stint instead of five, but no such luck. Another whole 12 months to go!Summer break was pretty fun this year so coming back to Islamabad hasn’t been bad at all, especially with winter break near by. The rolling blackouts are somewhat annoying, especially since they’re even more frequent now than ever before, but Pakistan has it’s fair share of other problems that need more urgent attention, ie flopped economy. Way to let that exchange rate shoot up guys!

I can’t really be phased by all that right now though, with finals coming up. I have the next two weeks off from classes to study- luxurious as that may sound, the finals cover everything, practically word for word, all the way from January to the end of the year. It’s definitely not a testing system I’m in favor of… much like everything else.

At the very least, I have this to be happy about: The heat has ended. The scorching summer heat that lasts a minimum of 8 months out of the year has finally come to an end and I no longer wake up in the middle of the night gasping for water and praying for the power to come back so that I can turn on my AC.

Haphazard as this post is, I’m pretty sure the fact that I was up all night studying excuses me from trying to write properly.

Then again it only cost five bucks- you get what you pay for.

I remain a die-hard fan of their barbacoa, chips/guac combo, and their hidden menu items.

Anyway, I’ve only got a few weeks left now, and then I’ll be back on my way to med school in Islamabad. Can’t believe there was another bombing in Lahore the other day. That makes two in one summer. It’s the strangest thing how crazy it gets out there every time I leave. Last year there was the whole red mosque fiasco plus the Bhutto assassination, and this year- bombings. I’m really inclined to think I’m some sort of good luck charm. Then I come out here and everyone asks me, “How can you possibly go to school out there? Isn’t it crazy and wild and full of terrorism?” No, except when I come over here. It’s really amazing how I can sit in my room in Islamabad at my desk, in total comfort and forget that I’m even in Pakistan- what with the high speed dsl, online gaming, 360, AC, etc. As soon as I hit up Google news though, I see more stuff going on in Pakistan on there than I ever do by just wandering around the streets of Islamabad. My neighbor at home here in California though, will swear by it that the city “is just a hot bed for terrorism.” I think not.

Oh yeah and for medical students who are wondering about the 5-hour Energy drink and how well it works, let me join the millions of people out there by saying, it doesn’t. Red bull ftw. Thanks. I’m out.

Still, I wanted something physical to do. I hadn’t worked out in a couple of days and I was starting to get restless. That’s when it hit me. I needed to go EXTREEEME.

For those of you who don’t know (and if you’re in this group then you’re definitely NOT EXTREEME) being EXTREEME means doing something you would normally do, and then intensifying the hell out of it, be it through force, speed, or volume. For example, you like to go paintballing. That’s pretty fun, I GUESS. What would be more fun? EXTREEEME Paintballing! How do you do that? Well, you basically go skydiving… and then PAINTBALL on your way down. Yeah, that’s right.

So, I needed a way to go for an EXTREEME run. I can’t just go sprint, because let’s face it, I’d get tired and slow down and start jogging. That wouldn’t work. I needed to run UPHILL. That’s pretty EXTREEME but, well, I could probably do that, too. Hmm. Run with weights. Now there’s an idea.

I decided to get a backpack, fill it with weight, and then go running. I didn’t have a backpack though, nor did I have weights. After a quick EXTREEME trip to K-mart, I bought myself an EXTREEME backpack, and a value pack of 25 bottles of water. Surprisingly, the 25 bottles of water fit perfectly into the backpack. Problem solved.

And that’s how I did my EXTREEME 3 mile run. The backpack probably weighed a good 35 to 40lbs. Two days later, and I am EXTREEME-LY sore.

Not quite. He was persistent. He changed the sales pitch and began from the very beginning. I cleared my throat and inhaled loudly, to try and speed him along, and when he finished this time, I tried it again. “Like I said, sorry, but we’re not interested.”

Commence round three. This time I wasn’t in the mood though. I cut him off and with a curt ‘look here buddy,’ and stressed how I was trying to be polite and how I honestly didn’t care about what he had to offer when all of a sudden I hear, CLICK.

WTH? He hung up on me. That rat bastard.  I decided then and there, that was the last time I would try to talk it out with a telemarketer. Next time you get a call, hang up, for my sake.

I’ve been spending the last two weeks in an ENT rotation, which is pretty awesome, and the department actually has some really smart professors in it who can teach well and are hella experienced. It definitely beats being taught by other shmucks who’ve done nothing than an MBBS. Another cool thing about ENT is that it’s very practical. The diseases we’ve seen so far come very textbook, and are easy to pick up and then also follow along on. This is great, especially when you get to hop into an OR and check out a procedure. It’s one of the few times you actually know what that big drill is being used for. And even though ENT keeps us pretty busy, we’re totally free on the weekends, which makes it perfect for…

FOOTBALL. Finally. I think the last time I played a real game of football was over a year ago. I was sore as hell afterwards, especially the next day, and still sort of am, but I doubt that’s gonna stop me from playing again this weekend, especially since I was on the winning team.

Here’s a picture my little sister took just seconds after our hand-off and seconds before I scored the fourth TD for our team. Awesome game, to say the least, 35-28. You can check out more pictures here.

After football, I think I spent the rest of the weekend in recoup, and that’s why I’m slightly behind on my studying now. I did do some studying, but that was for the coming summer, since the internship I’ll be working at in the ophthalmology clinic is actually pretty demanding. I’m expected to know a lot of stuff, and that’s also something I’m behind on. Speaking of stuff I’m behind on, I was actually so sore that I didn’t even work out once yet since the game. I’ll have to make up for it soon, but with this Cardio test on Friday, who knows.
Well, there you have it folks, another update on my light-speed life. Back to computer games I go… shoot, I mean.. studying :-/