Monday

Rain. Heavy rain. Not heavy rain. Blech all around. Gloomy day.

NCAA championship – yep, half of my Final Four picks are still alive – Illinois and Louisville. Problem is, they’re about to oppose each other and only will remain standing, and I picked Illinois. We’ll see…

On the CD player right now: The Best of Sting. Yeah.

Are medical shows back? Hmm. “Medical Investigation” on NBC never got me, even if it did have Neal McDonough (“Boomtown”). But, “House” – I am such a sucker for “House” on FOX (putting aside the fact that I did watch Hugh Laurie back when he was a funny Brit actor) – great show. And, I do like “Scrubs” (even though I can never watch it, because I seem to watch everything else at that time slot on Tuesday nights). And, then, last night, “Grey’s Anatomy” premieres on ABC. I’m not going to say that it’s some kind of great winning show (it’s not – some of the lines were a little lame). But, there was some charm to it. As the NY Times’ Alessandra Stanley puts it:

Now that “Sex and the City” is off the air and “ER” is on its last legs, ABC has concocted a drama that tries to be a little bit of both: on “Grey’s Anatomy,” alluring young interns compete to become surgeons – “Sex and the City Hospital.”

And that is not a bad combination. In this age of “Desperate Housewives” and “The O.C.,” it is refreshing to see a television show whose heroines aspire to meaningful work as well as meaningless sex. Certainly that seems to be the vocation of Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), who narrates the series in a soft, Carrie Bradshawesque voice-over. In the premiere episode Sunday night, Meredith wakes up, callously tosses out the handsome stranger she picked up at a bar the night before and races to her first day at Seattle Grace Hospital. Her one-night stand, of course, turns out to be Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey), a surgeon and her boss. [….]

“Grey’s Anatomy” is a Girl Power version of “ER,” focusing as much on the interns’ love lives and career ambitions as it does on the patients’ treatment. It is an unsatirical update on “Ally McBeal,” and has a similar sensibility to “The American Embassy,” a Fox drama about an American woman who escapes a bad relationship by moving to London to work as a diplomat. Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the executive producers of “Grey’s Anatomy,” James D. Parriott, was a creator of that show. (Fox pulled “The American Embassy” after a few episodes.) [….]

Surgery is known as “the game,” and it is the interns’ obsessive quest to scrub in and get their surgical gloves bloodied. “The game,” Meredith says in a portentous, if inane, voice-over. “They say that a person either has what it takes to play the game, or they don’t.” (These must be the same people who say “Good things come in small packages” and “Beauty is as beauty does.”)

On her first, terrifying 48-hour shift, Meredith bonds with other freshly minted doctors who are as hazed and overworked as West Point cadets: Isobel (Izzie) Stevens (Katherine Heigl), an ethereal blond former lingerie model known to her peers as “Dr. Model,” who is immediately assigned dozens of rectal exams by her scornful bosses; and Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh, “Sideways”), a ferociously ambitious and hard-edged intern who always seems an inch away from smashing her helmet into some miscreant’s skull. [….]

Ms. Oh steals every scene as Cristina, cynical and so crudely ambitious she appalls even her hardened superiors. While Izzie keeps a mournful vigil over a breathing but brain-dead patient, Cristina wishes he would hurry up and die so she can assist at the organ-harvesting surgery.

“Grey’s Anatomy” marks the return of women in white coats after a long dry spell. And even viewers who don’t track feminist trends on television may enjoy the sight of a quivering liver being lifted out for transplant and tenderly placed in a thermal picnic cooler.

If you enjoyed the medical textbook, you’ll love the television show.

Ok, so Stanley does a number of things – she mentioned “The American Embassy” (a show that died real fast, but one that I had enjoyed – and I was probably the only one who did – and Stanley’s absolutely right – “Grey’s Anatomy” narration and poignancy felt a lot like “The American Embassy”); she gave Sandra Oh good marks (Stanley’s right – Oh’s character was way tough and felt less-than-compassionate. Boy, is this like a stereotype on Asians in the medical field?); oh, and that weird little sex thing going on with Patrick Dempsey character and the Dr. Grey character… Hmm. Well, I have to say that Dempsey was quite cute; had a few lame lines; but otherwise acted ok. Does his Dr. Shepherd have a clue that Dr. Grey could nail him on sexual harassment if he doesn’t get serious about cooling things with her? (yeah, I’m thinking like a lawyer again). But, then again, Dr. Grey seems to feel awfully conflicted about him – I mean, she did invite the guy home before knowing he’s her boss, and when they were alone at work, she didn’t exactly stop herself from kissing him.

Hmm. The rookie diplomat heroine in “The American Embassy” kind of had that same kind of conflicting emotion in terms of her romance thing with the CIA agent. But, there’s the obvious difference between “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The American Embassy”: the rookie diplomat, like intern Dr. Grey, was professionally competent – but the diplomat had a romance thing going with the male character whereas it feels like Dr. Grey’s going for the sex thing, which makes her more… well, I guess more modern and/or independent. Meredith Grey, after all, isn’t looking for emotional attachments, unlike her predecessors of Starring Women on TV. Meredith just wants to be a doctor, even if maybe she doesn’t want to be the kind of doctor her Pioneer Doctor Mom was (her mom was apparently the Great Surgeon of Seattle – which goes to show you how cool this show is – don’t go assuming that Meredith’s medical parent is a man when they say she’s the daughter of a doctor). I’ll have to see the second or third episodes before I give a true thumb’s up on this series.

So it goes. Let’s sing it now: Rain, rain go away…

7 countries in 7 hours, real and virtual

At Canada PavillionWe went to Expo 2005 today, the successor to the World’s Fair series. Close to 50 years since the Flushing World’s Fair, there is still a number 7 type train, but it’s a magnetic levitation train, and there is still a big globe, but it’s made of living flowers. The car exhibit is just as big, but there is a big ferris wheel which was incredibly smooth. We focused most of our time in the Pacific Rim countries area, mostly asian countries. The Philippines had these essential oils displays which facinated me. Malaysia had a projection of a girl in a sarong, which looked something like Princess Leia if she was malay and was being projected from R2D2 in a jungle. Singapore had a huge pavillion — the main attractions were an indoor rain forest (not that we needed it – it was seriously raining all day) and huge bookcases of keepsake boxes which showed little aspects of daily life.

Prices were really expensive. Roti canai = $10 US, Pizza = $4 US. We got a lot of magnets.

Canada was the best visually because of its multifaceted video presentation. The picture is from the Canada pavillion’s website – they had people with big flat screen displays walk around and take people’s pictures.

The most advanced thing that we saw were a variety of robots. There is a robot receptionist called “Actroid” that can respond to questions in four languages, and looked somewhat plastic but relatively real young lady. It’s a step up from Disney World anamatronics. They had another one that was standing and in a race queen uniform at the “Robot Center” while they were demoing a T. Rex robot. P- and I thought it was real freaky. It was also really freaky that they also had a live Japanese lady in a similar but red uniform, and it was kind of hard to tell them apart.

Before that, we spent the morning exploring the local department store’s food court at Nagoya Station. We stood outside for the 10 am opening, where the female attendants came out and literally did some sort of mechanical song and dance before they opened the doors. You kind of almost couldn’t tell that they weren’t robots either.

We spent like US$30 down there on so many foods it was not funny. Pork cutlet bento, salmon sashimi, fried gyoza dumplings, crossants, ham buns, chestnut buns, brioche, salmon roe sushi, square box sushi, yoghurt drink, assorted nuts, mochi. But it was so delicious and fresh, we could not resist. That seemed like a lot, but we saved a ton of money not eating at the expo.

Onward to Kyoto tomorrow, returning to Tokyo and flying to Taiwan.

Getting to the Church On Time

We stayed one night at the New Otani Hotel in Tokyo. Wow, what an amazing place! Their premier restuarant is Le Tour d’Argent, that I know only as one of the few restaurants that defeated the French Iron Chef. Their orange duck menu is close to $200 for two. Obviously, we didn’t eat there. Instead, we wandered the surrounding streets, filled with pachincko parlors, and found this restaurant called An An, which specialized in dishes made with home-made tofu. Menu: Fresh yuzu (tofu skins), shashimi, roast beef medallion and asparagus appertizer, fried tofu, house salad with crumbled tofu, chicken skewers. Their food was amazing, and we were stuffed at US$30 a person.

The next day was the mad dash to make it to meet up with Anthony Bianchi. His name is in full despite the house rules because he’s an elected city councilman in the city of Inuyama. He is originally from Brooklyn and had gone to my high school. Sunday he was hosting the high school’s band and chorus at Meiji Mura, an architecture theme park; as landmarking is virtually impossible in Japan, the alternative has been to bring these old buildings to this park where they can be cared for. Bianchi hosted Easter Sunday service at the moved St. Francis Xavier Cathedral, followed by a musical and choral performance. Afterwards, there was a party held at the Inuyama International Center, aka “Freude”, where we ate our fill of homemade Japanese foods made by the group’s host families.

Trains: we took the red circle “M” line to Tokyo station. Took the Shinkensen Bullet Train to Nagoya. The bento boxes on board were great. Took the regional railroad to Inuyama. Took a bus to the theme park. Took a tour trolley to Area 51 where the church was. It was pretty amazing what kind of efficiency is required to make public transport work here.

We’re going to the Expo 2005 aka the World’s Fair tomorrow. I’ve been calling my mom daily using Skype; it works very well when you have a good Internet connection.