July 2001

    Happy Canada Day | Oregon Coast Aquarium: Life After Keiko | Film: Xiao Qian (A Chinese Ghost Story) | All Aboard! The Great Canadian Story Engine | Film: Perfect Blue | Film: Long Night's Journey Into Day | Film: Wo de fu qin mu qin (The Road Home) | Sports Resurrection | Clinical Laboratory Sciences WebRing Hookup | (Still) Happy Anniversary! | Healthcare Labour Market: Boom and Bust | Nikkei Nexus Update | Japanese New Wave | Ties Talk Update | Oops! Not My Department

  • Oops! Not My Department
    My medical specialty, pathology is very much a behind-the-scenes one, which the public does not hear about unless something goes wrong. Today, the pathology department at Oregon Health & Science University is in the news:

    After an autopsy has been performed, the organs removed from the body for examination during the procedure are usually placed back in the body, and the body is then released to the funeral director. Pathologists sometimes (routinely at teaching hospitals) keep portions of organs or whole organs for more detailed examination.

    In this case of a young heart transplant recipient who died suddenly on 07 December 2000, the girl's heart and lungs were to have been sent to Stanford University for examination by a transplant pathology specialist.

    According to the story above, the pathologist responsible for the case told the girl's parents he had packaged the organs for shipment but delayed sending them during the Christmas mail rush because he feared they would be lost. The package then went missing. Now the parents are planning to sue OHSU.

    I work part-time as a pathologist for the OHSU Department of Pathology, but today was the first time for me to hear of this incident. I do not participate in the autopsy service, so I am not in a position to comment on the practices or procedures that might have led to this situation. However, I think the pathologist on this case should have had more faith in the courier services that would have handled the package had he sent it. Using information technology, companies like UPS and Federal Express can track the progress of thousands of packages across the country, from origin to destination. Those companies have invested heavily in IT because they have recognized that IT is mission critical to their business. The package would have been in better hands with them, because the same realization has yet to be arrived at in medicine industry wide.

    (31 July 2001)
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  • Ties Talk Archive Update
    There is an update at the Ties Talk Archive:

    ... and more!

    (31 July 2001)
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  • Japanese New Wave
    Dorami-chan's professor from her Japanese Drama class asked her to be a translator between the performers and stage crew at a rehearsal for Japanese New Wave, a part of the Portland International Performance Festival, a presentation of workshops, lectures and shows put on by Portland State University's School of Fine and Performing Arts, now in its 10th year. For her trouble, they gave her tickets to the show!

    • op.eklekt - Looking at Far East
      This Kyoto couple play space aliens back from a mission to study human behaviour on Earth. They visited Japan, a place that even some Earthlings think of as otherworldly! In white face makeup and costumes that resemble Heian Period kimono, the aliens wordlessly show their interpretation of what they had observed:

      • Tea ceremony - They get most things right, except they use canned tea and mix in the custom of kinen shashin (commemorative photos)
      • Tennis lessons - An inept student buys her way to certification
      • Oseibo (year-end gifts) - They remove furoshiki (wrapping cloth) in a rainbow of colors from a year-end gift, layer after layer, and follow each with a little victory dance
      • Gion Matsuri - They wear sandwichboards and scarlet conical caps, and spin around like tops, throwing small objects at the audience. This really looked like an alien custom if you weren't familiar with this summer Kyoto festival.

        Gion Matsuri began during an epidemic in 869 CE as an attempt to placate the angry deity and ward off sickness and disease. Every July 17-24 enormous, towering, two-storey-high carts called Hoko are hauled around the streets of Kyoto. At intersections, the carts are spun around. People atop the cart toss chimaki (lucky charms said to bring good health for the entire year) to the eager crowds.

    • Yan-Shu - ZUNNJA
      My image of butoh dance is of something very solemn and serious. This group, named after a Song Dynasty poet, performed a butoh work that starts out that way, but also incorporates humorous elements. One dancer is shorter and stouter than the others, and gets teased.

    • Nibroll - No Parking
      This modern dance group presented a disjointed piece that consisted of people running around aimlessly, hitting each other, or lying down. This portrays what has been happening in Japan lately, especially the lying down part -- in the past decade, the Japanese government has spent nearly 130 trillion yen in ten different stimulus packages in an attempt to revive the economy, to no avail.

    (28 July 2001)
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  • There (finally!) is an update at Nikkei Nexus.

    (27 July 2001)
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  • Healthcare Labour Market: Boom and Bust
    July, especially the first week, is traditionally a bad time to be a patient in a teaching hospital. Most postgraduate medical training programs start their year on 01 July, so housestaff teams are made up of green trainees who are struggling to understand their new responsibilities. The specialty of pathology is no exception, though I wonder why -- the job market for pathologists isn't exactly hot or even lukewarm, and hasn't been for a years. As I see another cohort of new residents begin what will be a 5-year commitment with dubious employment prospects at the end, it makes me wonder why training programs cannot be more accountable and coordinate the number of residency positions with societal need. After all, public money subsidizes many of these programs.

    "America's healthcare workforce: Make no large plans", an article I recently came across in HealthLeaders.com, an online healthcare newsmagazine, reports that pathology is not the only healthcare field with a training position-job vacancy disconnect. While pathologists are in vast surplus, there are shortages of nurses, physical therapists, radiology technicians, dentists, and, in some areas, even doctors.

    The goal of centralized healthcare manpower planning has many obstacles. Other than the National Residency Matching Program, which matches trainee candidates to positions, there is no country-wide coordination of training programs within or between specialties. And even when a profession proactively restructures itself, it is not necessarily doing the right thing. In the early 1990s, schools of pharmacy predicted a diminished role for pharmacists and reduced the number of pharmacy programs and restricted the number of entering students, yet now there is a growing shortage of pharmacists. That, however, was a case of bad forecasting. In pathology, programs have yet to adjust to a decade-long trend. For now, when it comes to choosing a career, trainees should apply the same rule they would to the stock market: caveat emptor ("let the buyer beware").

    (23 July 2001)
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  • (Still) Happy Anniversary!
    Dorami-chan and I have been married for almost one year! Her schedule gets busy over the next few weeks, so we decided to celebrate our anniversary early by following the route of 1999's Wine Tour #1 to the picturesque town of McMinnville, about an hour southwest of Portland by car. McMinnville is famous nationally for being the birthplace of popular children's author Beverly Cleary (Henry Huggins, Ramona the Pest, Otis Spofford, etc.), but locally it is also known for Nick's Italian Cafe.

    Many Oregonians are upset about the influx of Californians to their state, but they shouldn't complain about the arrival of chef Nick Peirano from San Francisco. He was one of the first in this area to offer multi-course, prix fixe suppers. (Some locals may still be getting used to the concept. One couple came in while we were eating, then, perhaps unable to figure out the menu, left after finishing their aperitif.) Back in 1977, he set up shop in what looks to have once been a diner, which has been redone in dark wood tones and subdued lighting. There is still a counter with a row of stools, though everyone was seated in booths. The mood is casual: the maitre d' was in tie dye, the waiter was in an aloha shirt, and many of the customers were in jeans. Though the place was full (reservations are recommended), it was still quiet enough to carry on a conversation.

    The menu changes from week to week and season to season. Here is what we had:

    • Appetizer: An antipasti plate and steamed Manila clams marinated in lemon with garlic and Italian parsley - excellent
    • Soup: Minestrone, from Nick's grandmother's recipe, we were told - excellent
    • Salad: Traditional Caesar salad, and mixed greens with spicy dressing - excellent
    • Pasta: Pesto lasagne topped with roasted hazelnuts - unique and delicious
    • Entree: Grilled beef with mashed potatoes - a bit ordinary, but tasty; Salt-Grilled Salmon Steak with Basmati Rice - ordinary (which is not to say "bad", just that I have been fortunate to have enjoyed a lot of salmon to date, to the point that it is almost routine.)
    • Dessert: Tiramisu - excellent; lemon ice cream - good, but a bit heavy after a meal like this; I was hoping for gelato. (Dessert is extra)

    McMinnville is in the heart of the Willamette Valley wine country, so its wine list is extensive. I had a glass of pinot gris (excellent) followed by a pinot noir by local producer Amity Vineyards (disappointing -- a bit of pepper up front, then nothing, bland, no finish).

    The restaurant's web site mentions that one of Nick's daughters is named Tomiko, so we wondered whether his wife is Japanese. But the chef didn't come out of the kitchen (I guess he wasn't curious about who was sending back all those spotless dishes), and though the waiter was very friendly, we didn't feel comfortable asking him. Maybe next time!
    Nick's Italian Cafe, 521 NE 3rd St, McMinnville, OR 97128, Tel: (503) 434-4471

    This anniversary reminds me that I have yet to write about what happened on our wedding day. I still won't have time to do that for a while, but I have posted some more wedding day images for you to look at in the meantime.

    (21 July 2001)
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  • Clinical Laboratory Sciences WebRing Hookup
    I stopped updating Dr. Dave's Museum some time ago, but left it up on the Web since it might be of interest to new visitors. To increase the chances of new eyeballs landing there, I recently applied and got accepted to the Clinical Laboratory Sciences WebRing, a ring of websites devoted to the clinical laboratory sciences. Check them out!

    (20 July 2001)
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  • Sports Resurrection
    I have finally moved my recovered files, late of HotBot, over to Angelfire. All of my sports-related pages are there now:

    I didn't realize there were so many! This will free up room on Tripod, where the Ties Talk Message Archive keeps growing, and here on Yahoo!GeoCities, where I continue to blab on in "What's New?". Hopefully this will be the last move, but somehow I don't think so. Free Internet services are dropping like flies these days ...

    (19 July 2001)
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  • Wo de fu qin mu qin (The Road Home) (China 1999; Dir: ZHANG Yimou) ***
    For Di, a young farm girl in 1958 rural China, it is love at first sight when her village's new schoolteacher arrives. Their shy courtship is played out against a backdrop of golden autumn foliage then stark white winter (which looks a lot like Alberta -- there are even magpies!). The story is told as a flashback prompted by the death of the schoolteacher some forty years later. His son returns home to deal with the request of his mother (Di, grown old) that her husband's body be brought back from a hospital in the city according to the local custom, whereby pallbearers carry the body and talk to it on the way, so that the deceased's spirit does not forget the road home. But the coffin is heavy, the trip is long, and all the young men have left the village to work in the city. Will tradition lose again?

    The film looks gorgeous (director ZHANG began his career as a cinematographer) and features ZHANG Ziyi, whose next role was the martial arts prodigy princess in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Here she is not required to do any kicks or swordwork; the camera spends a significant portion of screen time showing just her face. And that is my main complaint about this film: it just hits the same emotional note, over and over. Given the simplicity of the plot, a music video format could have been just as effective and more efficient.

    Cultural Notes

    • During the construction of the new schoolhouse, each woman in the village makes a lunch for the crew (Di hopes the teacher eats the one she made).
    • Di, as the most beautiful maiden in the village, must weave a red cloth to wrap around the main rafter of the new schoolhouse the day it opens.
    • Teachers and education are so highly regarded that other villlagers insist on doing physical work for the teacher, and take turns hosting him for lunch.
    • In a time before Krazy Glue, ceramics were repaired by hand-drilling holes next to the breaks for metal clips that hold the pieces together.
    • People in this part of China (probably screenwriter BAO Shi's home province of Heilongjiang in the north) bury their dead in coffins.
    • Di weaves a cloth to drape over her husband's coffin during the walk along the road home.

    Watching Carefully

    • Two posters for the movie Titanic hang on the wall in Di's house -- irony? More like inspiration, despite director ZHANG's statement, "Chinese cinema shouldn't allow itself to be so much influenced by Hollywood."
    • During the flashback sequence, Di walks along a dirt road traveled only by horse cart, but tire marks are clearly visible.
    • One published review states there are no references to MAO Zedong in the film, but a picture of him hangs at the front of the classroom.

    (14 July 2001)
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  • Long Night's Journey Into Day (USA 2000; Dir: Frances Reid and Deborah Hoffmann) ****
    A documentary about South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee, which was set up when apartheid ended to help the new society there find social cohesion rather than vengeance for past crimes. Beginning in 1996, the TRC toured the country, hearing testimony from the perpetrators and victims of apartheid crimes and administering amnesty on a case-by-case basis. The intent was to try to break the cycles of politically inspired violence that so often repeat themselves historically. The film focuses on four cases:

    • Four young black men from the township of Guguletu outside Cape Town seek amnesty for their part in the 1993 stoning, stabbing and beating death of American Amy Biehl. They saw Biehl as a symbol of white oppression, when in fact she had gone to South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship to fight apartheid. Her parents feel her memory would be best served by forgiving the men so they can lead productive lives and help build a new nation.
    • After watching the film Mississippi Burning, which was about apartheid in America, a South African security forces officer who killed the "Cradock 4" black activists sees the similarity of his situation and has a change of heart: "Police should protect, not enforce." Hollywood does good for a change.
    • An African National Congress guerrilla seeks amnesty for having killed three white women by blowing up a bar with a car bomb. When asked about his motivation for the bombing, he replies, "It isn't rocket science." But the sister of one of the women, from the perspective of her privileged white neighbourhood, just doesn't get it.
    • Two policemen, one white and one black, have different stories about how a carload of young black men ended up shot dead with weapons in their hands. The truth turns out to be a very twisted case of interdivisional office politics.

    I had heard tapes of the TRC hearings a few years ago on CBC Radio. This documentary weaves actual testimony footage with interviews, news clips, and commentary to much greater effect.

    Tonight's screening at the historic Hollywood Theatre was a benefit for United To End Racism, an organization that is sending a local delegation to Durban, South Africa for the United Nations-sponsored World Conference Against Racism. We were invited by a member of local Asian American drumming group Portland Taiko who will be part of that delegation. Slightly more people were in attendance than were at the last benefit I went to. Interestingly, given the subject matter, almost all were white (no Klingons this time!).

    Members of the delegation explained how UER is dedicated to eliminate racism in the world using the process of Re-evaluation Counseling. RC's basic premise is that humans are intelligent, rational, and inherently good beings, who hurt others only if they have been caused harm themselves in the past, without resolving that distress spontaneously through emotional discharge (crying, trembling, raging, laughing, etc.). In the RC process, two people take turns counseling and being counseled. The one acting as the counselor listens, draws the other out and permits, encourages, and assists emotional discharge. The one acting as client talks and discharges and re-evaluates what happened in the distressing incident. RC sounds a bit pollyanna-ish, but apparently it works for some people.

    (13 July 2001)
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  • Perfect Blue (Japan 1999; Dir: KON Satoshi) ****
    "In the world of make-believe, the price of fame may not be worth the cost of identity..."

    In modern-day Japan, girl group aidoru (idol) KIRIGOE Mima is instructed by her management to make the transition from singer to actress. At least one of her fans isn't happy with the change, and says so by means of a website ... at first. Meanwhile, Mima becomes less sure of herself and starts losing her grip on reality. This murder mystery, based on a novel by TAKEUCHI Yoshikazu, is suspenseful and keeps you guessing. It was shown in Dorami-chan's JPN 410 anime class at Portland State University as an example of how animated feature films don't have to be about legend, fantasy or robots, and can compete with live-action film for entertainment value -- and product placement opportunities (Japan Rail, Tetra fish food, Apple Computers and Nikon Camera availed themselves of this).

    (12 July 2001)
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  • All Aboard! The Great Canadian Story Engine
    Did you know about this project, launched 13 June 2000 by the Canadian Film Centre, director Norman Jewison's internationally renowned training facility? The Great Canadian Story Engine is an online, interactive storytelling community where Canadians of all ages and backgrounds can share real-life personal stories about their experiences in Canada without having to set up their own website.

    The collection so far includes a number of stories by Japanese Canadians, many of whom I got to know during my time in Toronto ON:

    (08 July 2001)
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  • Xiao Qian (A Chinese Ghost Story) (Hong Kong 1997; Dir: Andrew Chan) ***
    One of Dorami-chan's courses at Portland State University this term is JPN 410: Japanese Animation: Horror, Humor and Mystery. The students watch and discuss anime -- animated films from Japan. The free screenings are open to the public, and are held Monday to Thursday at 6 p.m. in Cramer Hall, Room 71, a large lecture theatre. The wooden seats are uncomfortable, but what do you want for nothing? The class is full of anime otaku and Japanese ryugakusei looking for easy credits (the anime are shown with their original Japanese soundtrack and English subtitles). This sounds like a bit of a bird course, but students actually do gain exposure to Japanese culture and legend. Even Dorami-chan has learned some new things.

    Tonight's film was the only one in the series to not come from Japan, although Japanese artists participated in the production. It is the animated version of TSUI Hark's 1987 live-action film Sinnui Yauman, which in turn was an adaptation of a Chinese folk tale. A love affair between a tax collector and a female ghost is complicated by the fact she is on a mission to find a life essence to feed her mistress, and by three ghostbusters who are determined to eliminate all supernatural beings on earth. The film combines traditional 2-D animation and 3-D computer-generated animation to interesting effect. Western influences are evident in the visual style, including Walt Disney (Fantasia) and Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)).

    (05 July 2001)
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  • Oregon Coast Aquarium: Life After Keiko
    Dorami-chan and I used the Independence Day holiday to get out of the city, to the seaside town of Newport OR, about three hours southwest of Portland by car. It is home to the best fish and chips I have had in Oregon and the Oregon Coast Aquarium, rated one of the top ten aquariums in America. The aquarium lost its main attraction in 1998, when Keiko the killer whale was returned to Iceland.

    You may recall that Keiko was the star of the 1993 movie Free Willy and its sequel Free Willy II, which told the story of a killer whale that escapes a Sea World-type amusement park with the help of a young boy. Then the world learned that in real life, Keiko, suffering from lesions and infections, lived in a small tank at a Mexico City amusement park. The Free Willy Keiko Foundation, established by school kids, a billionaire and a film company, used private donations to fund Keiko's trip from Mexico to Oregon in 1996, where the orca was rehabilitated for two years. Some decry the millions of dollars spent thus far on this unprecedented project, but it is interesting from a scientific standpoint.

    Keiko's former 25-foot deep tank underwent conversion to a three-part display called Passages of the Deep: "Reef" (dogfish, rays, wolf-eels), "Flats" (rockfish, halibut), and "Open Sea" (sharks, skates, salmon, tuna). The walk-through tunnel design puts you in the middle of the action, with fish swimming to your left, right, above and below! Other exhibits include:

    • Jewels of the Sea - An extensive collection of local jellyfish, dramatically lit in a dark room to show their delicate details.
    • An aviary that brings examples of local seabirds up close. The male birds had their mating season plumage.
    • Seals, sea lions and playful sea otters in tanks with large windows in the side so you can see what graceful creatures they are underwater.
    • Wildflowers - each exhibit is in its own building, so the land between them is used to showcase local flora.

    Americans go to aquariums and marvel at the strange and wonderful underwater creatures, but for Japanese it is like a trip to the grocery store. Everything looks delicious, even the octopus (tako), sea urchins (uni) and kelp (kombu)!

    We took a Behind-the-Scenes tour, something the aquarium began to offer just last week. They only take ten people at a time, so it is a good idea to phone ahead to reserve a spot. We saw the sea water quality monitoring station, the food preparation area, where vitamin pills are stuffed into whole fish to replace nutrients destroyed by freezing, the jellyfish farm, the seabird rearing and rehabilitation facility, and the top of Passages of the Deep, where scuba divers jump in daily to clean the tanks. We were told that the aquarium supplies other aquariums around the world with jellyfish and seabirds. We also learned the life stories of the sea mammals at the aquarium: most were "problem animals" who had become too accustomed to humans. Their friendly behaviour was dangerous to themselves and others, so they were brought into captivity. We ended the tour with a valuable lesson from our guide, who asked:

    Q: What should you do if you find a stranded marine mammal?
    A: Leave it be and notify the authorities. Do not touch it -- if it is a baby whose mother has gone foraging for food, she will reject it when she returns if she detects a human scent. Also, you will be fined, because moving an animal is against the law.

    We returned to Portland in time to see the city's Independence Day fireworks, which left a bit to be desired. Especially disappointing was the ending, which was a fizzle rather than a flourish (perhaps some rockets were duds?). Perhaps the planners felt that anybody who wanted to see a serious display of fireworks was probably across the Columbia River in Vancouver WA at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site to see the 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular, touted as the biggest fireworks display west of the Mississippi.

    (04 July 2001)
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  • Happy Canada Day
    Today is Canada's national day. Happy 134th!

    (01 July 2001)
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