getting my ass into gear

so the last two days have been (surprisingly) productive since ive decided that i want to definitely be started on a few projects by the beginning of october.

thursday:

i should've gone to ID outpatient clinic in the morning but thought it was wednesday for some reason. instead, i walked down to smoothie blues, a family-owned place catering to primarily farang, and had a yummy breakfast consisting of pancakes, eggs, bacon, and fresh orange juice. i also read part of the bangkok post and the august 2006 uk version of marie claire (which has way more articles in it, btw) before meeting up with ben for lunch at a local street food stall.

in the afternoon, i went to meet with some people from the methamphatemine (MA) study. The head person had originally suggested i look at some of the questionnaire data on tattoing, so i met with the behavioral data person, A, to look at the questionnaire and get some of the data. i helped translate the questionnaire into english and A said she would help me if i figured out what i wanted to look at. i have no statistical background whatsoever, but she uses SPSS (ive been told by multiple friends now that it's worthless, but that's what she has), and checked out some books for me from the library on how to use it (i'm picking these up on monday). later, i bonded with some of the MA head people by showing them wedding pics from the US. they noted that most of them were single (A has a boyfriend but he's getting his PhD in Tasmania now) and that it was hard to find men who would date highly educated women. also, it appears that many of the older women chose between having a career/education and having a family. kinda sucks.

anyway, after i met with a, she suggested i go over to the drop-in center (Baan Ruk Puen, or the House of (loving) Friends - sounds dumb in translation, but it's fine in Thai). i did, and hung out with a bunch of the interviewers/youth outreach workers there; most of them are women (i think there are 2-3 guys out of maybe 12 people). it was fun; i told the story of how i met chris and answered questions about being thai-american and just got to know everyone better. all the single girls were like, "Where's the other fellow? the head person (Orn) said she would bring him over today so we all got dressed up." it was kinda funny though because the head person also told them that he was 21 or 22, but he's really 28. random.

when they were getting off work, they invited me to go eat at this all-you-can-eat steak buffet held at a hotel. i tagged along and ate mostly thai food (the steak wasnt great), including tons of fishballs, for about 70 baht. lots of hotels in thailand also have these karaoke singers that sing during your dinner. there were two at this place who sang separately (a woman who sang thai songs and a gay guy who sang english songs). it was kinda hilarious because the gay guy just made up some words that weren't really in the songs, but nobody caught on since everyone was thai there. i think it's interesting that many singers here likely sing phonically (is that a word?) rather than knowing the actual meaning of the words they're singing...or that's what it sounds like, anyway.

after dinner, i ended up staying up pretty late (for me, that's like 1 am here) and emailing up a storm. i set up a meeting with this family doc who does a ton of drug research here (i want to investigate other areas for being involved while waiting for the suboxone vs methadone trial to start - ill probably do interviews for the access-to-care subproject in that trial, which looks at barriers to care for hiv+ iv drug users). i also emailed some local NGO's to see if i can get involved in some way, and wrote to the head of this Advanced Study of Thai program at UW to see if he could give me any leads for an advanced Thai teacher in Chiang Mai. sometimes i wonder if all those years studying mandarin were a waste (i remember so little now, but still understand it). oh well, we'll see what happens - i haven't ruled out returning to china in the future. :)

friday:

woke up early (around 6) and then went back to sleep until 8. got up, and got ready for ID OPD clinic. poo was post-call so she got to clinic a little later than usual and i had time to pick up iced coffee and sweet rolls for breakfast. this is the first time ive been to clinic before it's actually started so i got to hear the head nurse give a PSA-style speech about wearing condoms as an HIV+ person to avoid spreading the disease (and also to avoid being superinfected, or receiving more virus), the importance of taking meds daily and at the correct times, etc. She also gave some basic information about clinical trials that were currently enrolling and encouraged people to ask questions about meds if they had any when she met with them personally (all patients meet a nurse briefly to pick up meds and make their next appt after seeing the doctor).

there weren't as many patients in clinic in the morning (we saw 10 in less than 3 hrs). i took notes while we saw patients though and observed that of the 10 patients we saw, 6 were women. five of these women found out they were hiv+ because their husbands/partners had died, prompting them to get tested. the first patient was 22 and said her boyfriend died last month. she was obviously anxious and had no clue about hiv, what CD4 count meant, what she should do, etc. poo was kind to her and tried to lecture her about basic hiv stuff like no meds until CD4<200,

I'm interested in gender differences between quality of life among men and women and also on women's perspectives...I feel like I would be so angry if Chris was like, 'By the way, I have AIDS', or just died on me and then I found out I was infected from him...not that you can do anything about it at that point, but it's frustrating - and probably really depressing, especially if you're widowed. Today (this is a week later now, because this post was half deleted) we saw a 52 year old woman who was clearly depressed, recently widowed, and was now living with her youngest child. She said the older child didn't know her status and she was embarassed to tell him. She just started taking ARV and looks pretty cachexic. Sad.

Back to last Friday - in the afternoon, I hung out at the MA drop-in center and asked to observe a 3-month follow-up questionnaire with a 20 year old in the MA study. it was really interesting to see the effect of MA use on this kid (who seems like a really nice guy, student at a local technical institute) - he clearly had no concentration and had to ask to have a lot of statements/questions repeated, including the one asking if he had any problems concentrating in the past week. He seemed really out of it in terms of dates too and had to repeatedly look at a calendar to see what days comprised 'last week' or 'last month'. However, he impressed me by being able to answer all the 'tell me whether you think this statement is a myth or a reality' questions (some of them were really tricky; they had to do with drug use and/or sex) and being really adamant about condom use. Right now he states he has about 5 regular sexual partners but uses condoms with all of them...good thing, yeah?

Friday night I had a yummilicious burger at Mike's Burgers and Wawee coffee with Ben. Ever since then, I've had a burger craving, but am in general liking the fact that I've cut way down on red meat, eating pork and chicken instead. Poo apparently thinks I've lost weight as well (Thai people are obsessed about weight and will likely comment on whether they think you've gained or lost weight almost everyday).

A funny story (in retrospect) having to do with weight:

On Wednesday and Saturday nights, there's a market set up outside of the mall across the street with local food vendors and others selling clothes and knicknacks of different sorts (cell phone holders, umbrellas, hello kitty pencil cases, etc). There's also foot massage chairs set up and I thought I'd get an hr massage for 3 USD. Unfortunately, the woman who was assigned to give me a massage was convinced I was pregnant. She was an older (maybe 50-60ish) and meant well, but as soon as I sat down, she was like, "Oh, are you pregnant?" And even after I replied in the negative and told her I was actually just 'fat' , she kept harping on it and making comments like, "But your legs are really swollen and it's like when Thai people are pregnant and are going to give birth!", "You should go see the doctor and get a pregnancy test," and "Oh, are you still single (implying virginity)?" I think we spent half an hour on this topic and the massage was actually pretty painful in multiple ways. Oh well, though. Thai people I told the story to thought it was funny and that the masseuse was a little out of line, but that's life. At least I know that it wasn't just me being offended after awhile.