Mind drawing a blank

It's odd, I haven't posted much recently not due to forgetting about the blog per se, or not having much going on (quite the opposite)... I guess I'm just having trouble finding topics I really want to talk about in a longer, more united post. Maybe I'll just leave it up to a "quick hits" post today:

• I did my first ever triathlon last weekend! It was a sprint triathlon (500 m swim, 20 km bike, 5 km run) and was an interesting challenge. I remember feeling more mentally and physically exhausted after the half marathon, but this was its own challenge. My relative inexperience in the open water swim and the cycle leg showed, not to mention my transitions. Fortunately I made up a lot of ground in the run. I'll be looking to do another with a long-term goal of finishing an Olympic length triathlon by the time I'm 30 , no let's say 2014...
• While "training" for the triathlon I found myself trying to challenge my times with some slightly longer run distances. Ever since I started hitting the sub-5 min per km consistently this spring, I've been pushing myself distance-wise. I'm now at the point where my all-time 8 km record I achieved in Grade 10 (2003!) of 36:45 is now within reach... my most recent run hit ~37 min, so I'm still a few seconds off. It's gonna be hard but not impossible at this stage...
• The next six months are really going to be testing my resolve and discipline as I look to go through CaRMS again. This may be the hardest I'll have to work to earn something...
• Mid August means that first "smell of fall" is on its way. What I mean by this is that there's always one morning probably 4-6 weeks before the first evidence of autumn hits where you can just smell or feel the fall air. It's kind of neat, but also kind of depressing even though I really do like fall. I don't think anyone really looks forward to summer ending. 
• As much I've been trying not to, I've been binging on a lot of music this year. I partially blame Spotify, but I think there have been a lot of solid albums that have been released so far in 2013. I'll post some of my favourites soon. 

Helplessness

First post with some substance in a while, and it's gonna be a heavy one about work. I'll try not to divulge too much in the interest of not being too specific about the patient's case but I'll try not to be vague-city either.

I'm working with the ICU team right now so I help deal with calls from other units when their patients are in trouble. There was a guy we were called about last week who wasn't really responding to anything. At first I think the nurses just thought he was having a deep sleep but over time it became clear he wasn't responding to anything. He was generally high functioning and independent before coming to hospital for a totally unrelated issue. A young grandfather and a husband. I met his family. For the better part of an hour or two we really had no idea what was going on. He had a huge work-up done yesterday for a similar issue and nothing came back remarkable. Labs so far showed nothing either. Besides him being essentially comatose (GCS ~4), he was otherwise stable. I actually had to leave in the middle of transferring him to ICU to go to clinic in the afternoon.

Later that evening I decided to look up the CT of his head because I had an inkling he had something neurological going on. He had a massive intracranial bleed with midline shift and herniation. I was floored. I don't think I've been shocked about a test result for a patient in a long time. He had imaging the day before which was pristine and overnight for no reason he bleeds.

It made me think that despite all the training we get, the hours we put in, as much as we label ourselves "experts", when something like this happens to somebody, we're completely helpless to do anything. There was nothing that was significant in his history that could have caused it, nor could it have been prevented. In a profession where we are constantly searching for answers or remedies to ailments, mother nature pulled a fast one on us where all we could do is look and not have an answer.

On the Zimmerman trial

I don't normally comment on that many current events on this type of forum but I felt compelled with this particular case. The reason is that it illustrates to me the difference between what is 'general knowledge' in the public and a further, deeper understanding of the story behind the title.

The Zimmerman trial just wrapped up yesterday with the well-known acquittal. Not surprisingly, it resulted in an immense amount of outrage among those that saw it turn into a symbolic battle of racism and civil rights in the US. As a superficial follower at that time who really didn't know much about the case, it seemed odd to me that this guy who shot this unarmed teenager got away with no sentence at all. So I read deeper...

The defence's case had a number of flaws, as outlined in this New York Times article...

1. The only witness (Ms. Jeantel) of the incident had her credibility torn apart by inconsistent testimony
2. Outside of Ms. Jeantel, nobody else witnessed the actual altercation clearly. Yes, Zimmerman was following Trayvon Martin, seemingly on a vendetta, but did Martin lunge at Zimmernan first? There's some reasonable doubt there. 
3. Florida's self-defence laws when it comes to trespassing are terrible, at best. From the same NYT article: 

The laws allow someone with a reasonable fear of great bodily harm or death to use lethal force, even if retreating from danger is an option. In court, the gunman is given the benefit of the doubt.

As a result, it's not really a surprise the jury could not come to a "guilty" verdict. What that requires is they have to have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that manslaughter or second-degree murder was committed. Was Zimmerman out to prove a lesson? Probably. He pursued the teenager against the police's instructions not to do so. Was he profiling Trayvon Martin? Probably. However, was there reasonable doubt surrounding the sequence of events and in the context of Florida self-defence law?

Unfortunately, yes.

Friday night music: some "hip hop jazz", versatile dream pop, and new but 'classic' JT

Hey folks, I know it's been a while but I've got a few gems for you.

The first band, who hails from Toronto, is, as Wikipedia puts it, "an instrumental hip hop jazz" group. That last sentence had a lot of commas. Anyways I heard them on the radio the other day on my drive to work and a quick Shazam later I find out who they are and am currently digging their stuff on bandcamp. They're called BADBADNOTGOOD, and in a way I wonder if it refers to their skills at using they keyboard because they clearly don't know how to turn off caps lock.
In some respects they remind me of the late J Dilla and of course they have that jazz element to them that I like. Of course I'm a fan of both of the aforementioned so it's not a surprise I'm currently trying to decide which album of theirs to buy first.



The second band I wanted to talk to today I actually heard from Aaron Paul, of Breaking Bad fame. They're a duo from the Big Apple who actually cut through a couple genres. Sky Barbarick's vocals fit the dream pop mold pretty well, but the accompanying instrumentals vary from a single guitar and percussion to a more electronic vibe that fits better in one of those downtown lounges. Either way, they sound great, especially for those clear summer nights when you're up late just chilling and chatting with friends over some drinks. Have a listen.




Lastly, JT is out with a new single from his 2nd part of his 20/20 Experience album... because having the highest selling album of the year so far wasn't enough. Some vintage JT here... that's what I like.

Friday night music: 3-for-1! Bass slapping, and post rock x 2

Hey folks, quick post tonight. Three songs I'd like to share... what a treat! I was thinking of posting something longer but working overnight happened and I slept until mid-afternoon.

Let's start things off right with something upbeat from The Preatures, a band from Sydney, Australia. Love that bassline!



Next, Sigur Ros just released another single from their upcoming album, Kveikur, and this is the title track. I heard them play it live earlier this year and it was definitely my favourite from the new songs they played. A few YouTube videos of live versions were floating around, but give a listen to the studio version. One of their more "dense" songs they've released in a while:




Lastly, here's "Campaign" by Russian Circles, a post-rock band. I used to listen to this album when I'd work out and need focus and I happened to play it again last night, reminding me how much I enjoy it. Great for some late night tunes.




Happy Friday!

My digital love for Daft Punk goes analog

My top 5 most listened to artists since 2006

With the release of Random Access Memories, I knew I was going to write something about it after giving it a few good listens. The more I thought about it though, the more I started thinking back to how I first became a fan of them. After all, this phenomenal rise to stardom almost exclusively through the legend of their live performances, maybe a bit of Kanye and Disney is pretty fascinating. They've taken an easy stranglehold of #1 on the Billboard charts after never coming closer than 61 previously.
On top of that, their marketing plan for RAM's release was incredible and I'm sure only helped build up the hype to the album's release.

I remember the first song I heard by them, like many others, was "One More Time" off Discovery back in early 2001. Funny enough, I listened to it fully for the first time on a ninth grade school trip to France and loved it instantly. I enjoyed the catchy beat of the overall song but THAT bridge with the emphasis of Romanthony's vocals, the light synthesizer background and the slow build-up was what grabbed me.  On that trip, I would often see billboards in the Subway everywhere advertising the release of Discovery, for a band I really knew little about. I later ended up watching the entire Interstella 5555 music video series for that album and thinking "Harder Better Faster Stronger" was my favourite.

For some reason, that album just stuck with me through the years. I can only think of Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head and Parachutes and many of U2's songs that did the same as I went through high school and touring through different musical tastes. Those three artists never left me.

I think I never really heard much of Human After All because at that time of my life I wasn't looking much into the electronic or dance music at all. I still liked Discovery but wasn't on top of what was coming out. If I remember correctly, it was bands like Franz Ferdinand, the Strokes and bands you'd find on the Garden State soundtrack that occupied my time.

Then Alive 2007 came out. I was obsessed with that album for a long time. Same with TRON. Those three albums had so much contrast between them but the beat, the way the music flowed, and the progressive layering were all aspects of them I appreciated about Daft Punk.

I bought into the hype of their fabled next appearance/performance/studio album, I didn't care what it was. After Alive, I wanted to see them live and I was ready to travel to see it happen. I remember the first news I heard about their next album was that Nile Rodgers had publicly stated he was in collaboration with them. I even found my tweet!

And now we wait... | Nile Rogers says he is working with Daft Punk on their new album houston.culturemap.com/newsdetail/02-… via @culturemap
— josh spaceman (@jfanae) February 7, 2012

It was a combination I would not have thought of, but it had me salivating. My parents' musical taste resulted in me being raised essentially on the Beatles and disco and I couldn't believe that the guy responsible for these riffs that I distinctly remember was going to be on the album.

Fast forward to today and I have Random Access Memories in my collection and I've listened to it all the way through at least a dozen times. At first listen, like many people I talk to, don't really know what to make of it since it is such a departure from what we're used to with music these days, and I'm not even talking about the disco revival. With time though, I grew to love it, and each week it seems a different song is what I have on repeat.

I will take a few block quotes from Pitchfork's review of the album. This is a big deal for me because I ALMOST ALWAYS find their reviews condescending, egotistical and inconsistent, but that's a story for another day. There are some instances where I also don't agree with what they say in the review but some large quotes took the words right out of my mouth, so kudos:

"It’s all rendered with an amazing level of detail, with no expense spared. For RAM, Daft Punk recorded in the best studios, they used the best musicians, they added choirs and orchestras when they felt like it, and they almost completely avoided samples, which had been central to most of their biggest songs. Most of all, they wanted to create an album-album, a series of songs that could take the listener on a trip, the way LPs were supposedly experienced in another time."

Yup. The time they took to meticulously craft it is unheard of these days. First, it's an analog album. They also employed people to play the drum beat or guitar rhythm for the entire length of songs rather than loop a small section for consistency's sake. Their attention to detail was in every aspect of RAM.

"The continual churn of the internet, experience tells us, favors quick connections, conveniences, ephemeral pleasures. But there are areas of culture popping up that seek to slow down, focus on details, and wallow in the kinds of media that it still takes money to create. This is the space that Daft Punk seek to occupy, which in and of itself can be seen as problematic. For those who embrace the more egalitarian approach to music production created by access to cheap tools and cheap distribution, Daft Punk’s mind-bogglingly lush record scans as elitist, possibly even dismissive of the creativity that is happening on a smaller scale."

Well put! With such a contrasting message they are trying to relay from current convention, they risk alienating some, especially in the EDM crowd.

So RAM is best appreciated as a counter to these trends. It’s not that “all music should be this” but that “some music could be this.” By the time you make it to the album’s astonishing final stretch, it’s hard not to think that Daft Punk have succeeded at what they set out to do. The arrangements on "Beyond" and “Motherboard” are breathtaking, and Panda Bear, after many so-so collaborations, aces his vocal turn on “Doin’ It Right”, a terrifically uplifting bit of electro-pop.

"And then it ends with 'Contact': It’s the most old-school Daft Punk song here, and it’s also the only one based on a sample, pulling its main riff from a 1981 song by the Australian band the Sherbs. Daft Punk and collaborator DJ Falcon first used 'Contact' in a DJ mix in 2002, and now it finds its way on an album about time and memory in 2013. You get a feeling of time collapsing with it, seeing where Daft Punk have been and where they could go. 'Contact' will likely close some future live multimedia extravaganza, and people will go insane, and they will return to this album with new ears."

My thoughts exactly... I don't know how you don't put "Contact" anywhere else BUT the finale.

Thinking about the album, I don't know if there are going to be any songs that stick with me as much as "One More Time" but this album is more than the some of its parts, and I can't remember the last time I've felt that way about an LP before. I give it a 4.5/5 myself because I still don't quite get "Touch", haha.

Pitchfork may have been speaking in superlatives about this album being a landmark in musical history, but I don't think they're completely off-base, especially with news coming down the pipeline that now David Guetta wants to play copycat and have a chance with Mr. Rodgers. I guess time will tell, but I do know that in my books, the Daft Punk collection will continue to grow and won't be collecting much dust along the way.

Saturday-at-noon music: 11 months into residency / Parov Stelar

Hello from medicine call. Good morning! Good afternoon! Got the Friday/Sunday shifts this weekend. I tried starting this entry on call during some down time but the medicine gods got mad at me for slacking off so it ended up being a pretty busy night.

In just over an hour it will hit It is June 1st, the day before my mom's birthday. This time last year she and I had just gotten back to Edmonton after deciding on a place for me here. As much as that seems like it was so long ago it's hard to believe that it has already been 11 months.

What have I learned so far?
- As much as we made fun of the FIFE pneumonic in medical school, I find its framework has been vital for good patient care, rapport and satisfaction. Even from a medical side there have been countless times where an important piece of information was gleaned exploring this side. Go figure.
- Family medicine rulez. The people in my program are happy with their future in their profession, the flexibility and what limitless directions it can take. The job opportunities are endless, we are fostered in a positive environment and I've found it satisfying. Huzzah!
- Despite my previous point, medicine can consume you. Be careful. It will be all you think about at work, it is most of what you and your co-resident friends will discuss and it will seep deeper into your consciousness even more than in medical school. The hours are longer, the pressure is stronger.
- I started re-watching Scrubs (again). I have heard that out of all the medical shows out there it is the most accurate in its atmosphere, the conflicts and the stories. I couldn't agree more.
- In Atul Gawande's book, Better, he emphasizes the importance of asking every patient one question completely unrelated to why they are in hospital or about themselves. I saw the value in it but I am blown away by how much it improves my rapport with patients and in turn my enthusiasm to genuinely want to help them. You can see their faces light up when they see that you're not just running through the motions and show an interest in who they are. It can be anywhere from a simple "what do you do for work/fun/school?" or a follow-up question regarding a random tidbit they mention about themselves. I now actively try to do it at least once a day.

As much as I find it interesting looking back, the future is just as intriguing. I could be finished in just over a year, or more hopefully on to further training in something that will further diversify my future practice. Either way,

Whoa, this got too long! Anyways, here's my tune for the week. I stumbled upon Parov Stelar recently via Spotify (best music streaming service ever) and am really digging his jazzy-loungey-chill songs. Excuse my incoherence and lack of proper vocabulary, I'm a bit low on sleep. Just listen.