August 2001
Hospital Autopsy |
Portland Obonfest 2001 |
City Oasis: Laurelhurst Park |
(Still) Happy Wedding Anniversary |
Teaching Page Revamp |
Get The Lead Out -- With Medical Informatics |
Raccoon Lodge & Brew Pub |
Tunnel Tour of Japan |
Oregon Wine Tour #2 |
Sunday in the Park |
Todai Seafood Buffet
- Todai Seafood Buffet
Our extended visit with Dorami-chan's best friend Shim and her two-year-old son Ak-kun
comes to a close later this week, and they wanted to say arigato before they return to Hawai'i.
Shim had heard of this restaurant chain in Hawai'i, so she treated us to lunch today at the Portland outlet,
which opened almost a year and a half ago in
Pioneer Place II,
the expansion of Portland's downtown shopping mall.
I am not a big fan of buffets. Quality suffers anytime so much food is prepared at once and sits around for that long.
(An exception was the hot pot buffet we went to for
my father's 70th birthday in Edmonton, where nothing was cooked in advance!)
But I can see that buffets have a role,
such as when you have to feed a large number of people at once, or if you have to eat and go in a limited amount of time (like a lunch hour).
Also, I feel Japanese food doesn't adapt very well to the buffet format, given the emphasis on freshness and presentation.
That said, Todai isn't bad, when considered within a buffet frame of reference.
- Soups: Misoshiru, as well as ramen and udon, which are usually meals in themselves.
- Salads: Interesting! Hourenso (boiled spinach), kombu (kelp), broccoli stems with a kim chee flavoured sauce,
and spicy marinated octopus. There was lettuce for less adventurous types -- but with sesame dressing.
- French crêpe station: Rather inexplicable. Why not okonomiyaki (Japanese pancakes) instead?
- Fried food: About a third of the length. Cha-han, yakisoba, tempura and breaded things. Cholesterol overload!
(I am told that on weekends, part of this section of the buffet is replaced by lobster and crab. Still cholesterol overload!)
- Beef ribs and chicken teriyaki
- Boiled mussels and shrimps
- Sushi: Todai tries to get around the freshness issue by having a temaki station
where you can have a cone roll made for you on request, and by making their many kinds of makizushi (rolled sushi)
all California roll style, with the nori (roasted seaweed) on the inside. The approach is only partly successful.
I recommend going during high-volume times and hanging around so you can get the sushi right after it has been made.
To their credit, Todai doesn't try to fill you up by increasing the fish-to-rice ratio (ideally 1:1 or better).
A unique offering was tempura makizushi, a deep-fried piece of rolled sushi with melted cream cheese
in the middle -- bleagh, no thanks!
- Dessert: The fruit table had flavourless to downright sour strawberries, watermelon,
and pineapple, probably from out-of-state and picked for shipping before they were ripe.
The cakes OTOH were very good, considerately cut into slivers and tiny squares.
Most of the diners were groups from nearby offices. A significant number looked like they were buffet habitués,
many to the point that my appetite was blunted somewhat. There were also several young families, their strollers
parked next to their tables and kids sitting in high chairs or booster seats when they weren't running around
the open-concept cafeteria-style room, or getting dry nappies at the diaper-changing stations in the women's
AND men's washrooms. This pointed out another role for buffets: to provide those with small children a chance
at something remotely resembling a sophisticated dining experience.
Did you know?
"Todai" is the Japanese word for "lighthouse". This explains the
thing on top of the head of Todai's yellow mascot creature.
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Todai Restaurant, 340 SW Morrison Street, Portland, OR 97204, Tel: (503) 294-0007
- Sunday in the Park
Today Dorami-chan and I got to see the newly renovated
PGE Park
(the former Civic Stadium) up close.
As one of the pre-game and halftime acts at the
Portland Timbers
soccer game, local Asian American drumming group
Portland Taiko
got the use of one of the private boxes, and so invited family, friends and past students to watch.
This was a good opportunity for the group to present taiko music to a wider audience.
Their choice of songs that feature en masse drumming, big arm movements and interesting choreography
proved effective in this open-air venue.
The announced attendance for this
A League
match was about 4,900, well below capacity.
Soccer is far from the most popular or well-known spectator sport among Americans, despite the fact that the U.S. was host to the 1994 World Cup and 1999 Women's World Cup tournaments.
Plenty of audience diversions were provided, even as play went on: free T-shirts were catapulted into the stands, and the lumberjack cheerleader would rev
his chainsaw and cut off a piece of a log whenever the Portland side had a scoring chance. After each Timber goal,
someone would emerge through a door in the outfield scoreboard and ring a large bell. There were two such occasions,
both in the first half: one off a brilliant left-side sprint and crossing pass by Keith Costigan, and one from a penalty shot.
The visiting Charleston Battery looked outclassed in all departments. The second half was mostly just a chance to enjoy the fine, sunny weather.
The food and drink available at PGE Park has been much ballyhooed as a showcase for local restauranteurs.
We had some nachos that were very ordinary -- melted Cheez Whiz over extremely salty chips.
Luckily the antidote, draft Widmer Hopjack Pale Ale,
was in plentiful supply at a reasonable price ($4.50).
PGE Park, 1844 SW Morrison Street, Portland, OR 97205-1605
- Oregon Wine Tour #2
Today Dorami-chan and I went on our second tour of Oregon wine country.
-
Tunnel Tour of Japan
I am just back from two weeks in Japan.
-
Raccoon Lodge & Brew Pub
Dorami-chan is experiencing a bit of a time crunch
with the end of her summer term at Portland State University,
so to give her a kitchen break, we went to this popular brew pub in southwest Portland.
Going up the stairs to the main dining area, posted on the wall are positive reviews the pub and its beer have received.
At the top of the stairs is the merchandise counter. No brew pub today is complete without its own custom T-shirts,
sweatshirts, mugs and the like, but most take a more subtle sales approach than this! The main dining room
is decorated like a hunting lodge, with open rafters, fireplaces, and lots of stuffed animal heads mounted on the walls.
You can perch on stools around raised tables, or sit at standard tables or in one of many 4-person booths. I tried two of the many kinds of beer --
amber ale and India pale ale. Both were skimpier on hops than I prefer. The open kitchen offers standard pub fare
and more ambitious undertakings. We stuck to the simple stuff this time -- chicken wings and a salad. The presentation
keeps to the theme: the food arrives in metal camp buckets and on plates decorated with raccoon pawprints.
The volume is generous. The taste tends towards sweet. The unique point of the menu is the fried potatoes:
they come in five flavours -- sweet potato, shoestring, ale-battered steak fries, Yukon Gold and tater tots -- and,
if you want to experiment with something other than ketchup and vinegar, there are eight dipping sauces
(we tried raspberry and spicy curry peanut). The service was efficient, though not overly friendly or charismatic.
It is non-smoking, which is a plus, but it doesn't look like a good place to watch sports, with only two televisions perched high on the wall.
Overall, our experience was pleasant enough that I would be willing to go back, but probably only during
reduced-rate happy hour (before 6 p.m. and after 9 p.m.) and if I happen to be in the area.
Raccoon Lodge & Brew Pub, 7424 SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy, Portland, OR 97225-2149, Tel: (503) 296-0110
- Get The Lead Out -- With Medical Informatics
An article in yesterday's
National Post
brought attention to a paper in the August 2001 issue of the
Canadian Medical Association Journal,
which describes a retrospective study that found considerable delays in the Canadian medical system's handling of women
who have abnormalities on their screening mammograms. It takes four to seven weeks for women find out if they have breast cancer,
while some wait three months or more for a diagnosis. Only 3%–10% of women with abnormal screening results
will be found to have breast cancer following assessment. Still, an abnormal breast cancer screening result precipitates
acute anxiety in the patient. Further, a 1999 meta-analysis suggested that delay to treatment as short as
3 to 6 months among women with symptomatic breast cancer was associated with poorer survival.
The study was unable to determine where the delays come from: patient (who wants tests scheduled according
to their availability), physician (office inefficiency) or system (lack of integration of components).
However, the study's lead author indicates that communication lapses between doctors and inefficiencies in the medical system
are causing the delays. I can add my own anecdotal evidence: pathology reports I dictate can go for days without being typed.
"Women are waiting, largely because of poor organization of the system rather than a lack of resources," the author says.
I don't know how true that is -- information technology is a resource, one which is in short supply in medicine.
Faster transcription, or voice recognition software would enable me to issue pathology reports faster.
Electronic data interchange and online booking of the various steps in the care continuum would reduce those waiting periods significantly.
One wonders whether financially challenged Canada can afford such a technology upgrade, though.
- Teaching Page Revamp
My primary responsibility at my part-time pathology job
is surgical pathology service work -- rendering diagnoses on biopsies and surgical resections. But with a
new cohort of pathology trainees
having just started at my hospital, I have been thinking about teaching theory lately,
and have added my personal Teaching Philosophy to my Teaching page.
You will find a lot of it stems from the fact I am an INTJ
(see the section "INTJ as Parent/Teacher").
- (Still) Happy Wedding Anniversary
One year ago today Dorami-chan
and I shared our wedding festivities with relatives and friends in Japan.
We celebrated our anniversary last month, so all I did today was update
the format and content of my Getting Hitched in Japan page.
- City Oasis: Laurelhurst Park
We discovered an oasis in the middle of Portland today, thanks to an invitation from one of our
Portland Taiko Japanese drumming instructors
to attend her multi-event celebration potluck picnic party in
Laurelhurst Park.
A picnic site had been booked through the
Portland Parks & Recreation Reservation Center, but not knowing where the site was, we walked
around much of the park before we came upon the familiar faces of Portland Taiko
members and classmates from past drumming courses.
In 1909, Portland Parks & Recreation
purchased almost 35 acres of land from William S. Ladd, a former mayor of Portland.
Today, what was once farmland is a serene expanse of green, with shady, mature trees of different types.
It is a popular place to bring dogs for walks -- there are almost as many canines as people.
(Some dog owners would say, "Dogs are people, too!" :-) )
The city even provides plastic "doggy do" bags from trailside dispensers!
Laurelhurst Park, SE 39th & Stark, Portland OR 97214
- Portland Obonfest 2001
Dorami-chan wanted to see what
Obon is like in North America, so we took in this year's iteration of the local celebration of
the Buddhist Festival of the Dead at the
Oregon Buddhist Temple along with some fellow students -- a European American
and Malaysian American -- from a previous
Portland Taiko Japanese drumming class.
Things were much the same as when I last attended this event,
even the weather! This time, there seemed to be more non-Nikkei-jin and more children --
one of the cutest was a little girl in a yukata with a
Hello Kitty
pattern. Inside the temple, the smell of incense was familiar.
I saw about 15 hatsubon lanterns by the altar, one for each person in the congregation who
had died during the past year. Most had made it to their 80s and 90s, but one person was only 41
when he passed away. Back outside, Seattle Matsuri Taiko had been invited to play again,
and performed an impressive set that included singing, conch shell blowing, rapidfire drumming and dynamic choreography.
We enjoyed the food: sushi, yakitori, yakisoba and -- an Oregon touch --
marionberry pie.
Kakigouri (shave ice) was also available, but it was a bit chilly out for that.
At 7 p.m. just around twilight, the bon odori started. Dorami-chan was impressed
by the large number of people who came, and the large number who had yukata or happi.
She learned some new dances on the spot, like the A-I-U-E-O Song and Maneki Neko
(we were too busy to attend the practice sessions held in the weeks leading up to Obonfest).
She was happy that the closing dance was one that she (like most Japanese people) knows, Tanko Bushi
-- it is the most widely danced bon odori in Japan.
One of our taiko friends had been itching to drum all evening, and got invited into the yagura
(the tower stage in the center of the dancers) to pound the dance beat for a few of the songs.
When it was all over, the lanterns strung over the dance area (the temple's parking lot) glowed increasingly
brightly in the gathering dusk. I may gripe about
attending Japanese community events
that don't change from year to year, but I was happy that this opportunity exists to share a bit of Japanese culture with
our friends and all the other non-Nikkei-jin who came. Statistics say that the
Nikkei community is shrinking,
but culture doesn't necessarily need bloodlines to continue.
P.S. I just updated my Obon Q and A page
- Hospital Autopsy
Pathologists
sometimes use the term "hospital autopsy" for postmortem examinations they do
on patients who died in hospital of natural causes, as opposed to a "coroner's autopsy" in which
foul play or malpractice is suspected. Today I came across an article that is a report of a "hospital autopsy"
in a different sense, i.e. a postmortem examination by financial analysts of a hospital that died :
This Atlanta-area hospital went from seemingly good financial health in 1998 to bankruptcy in 2000.
Contributing to its death was an outdated legacy information system that did not provide the hospital administration
with timely and accurate financial and operational metrics. (It could also argued that the administrators did not
even fully understand the data they were getting from the legacy system.) Ironically, when Y2K concerns
prompted them to switch to a new computer system, the cost and time overruns of the installation project
and resulting disruption of billing and reimbursement (the report doesn't provide details of why these happened)
were the final nail in the coffin for the hospital.
Information is the lifeblood of any organization, and its information system can be thought of as its heart and
blood vessels. Analogies for this hospital might be a couch potato who suddenly decides to get some exercise,
or somebody with a failing heart who undergoes a transplant. In either scenario, the chances for a favourable
outcome are better if a professional recommends and supervises an exercise program, or oversees the
transplant procedure. In the context of this case, such a professional is a medical informaticist,
who would ensure that hospital information systems "stay fit" and that any changes are
made in a controlled fashion that does not jeopardize normal operations.
The report quotes figures that in 2000, hospital credit downgrades outnumbered upgrades almost 5:1,
and that hospital bankruptcies have increased over the last three years. One can only hope that
hospital administrators wise up and have information systems that enable them to get wiser,
or else mortality will increase.
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