New kid in town

My blog needs to be updated. A lot of the personal info here are already passé. To start with, I am no longer in Japan (Darn, I terribly miss a lot of things there). I have already finished my PhD there and I am currently doing my postdoc in the US. Still in the period of adjustment, but I am doing fine.

Besides putting aside my profession as a dentist, I am also going a little off-track with the lifestyle that I am used to. Here in the place where I live now, life is a little boring. In Japan, I worked hard but I could also unwind in a café or in a fine restaurant with my friends after a day's work . Shopping was also great and it was easier, I think, to fly to some of the hottest beaches in the Philippines or in Thailand. Public services were also fast, efficient and relatively safer.

But in fairness to the place where I live now, many things here are new to me and I find them amusing. There are a few dining or entertainment places that I like, but hey, the scenery is beautiful. Talk about picturesque farms, endless white picket fences along roads lined with the canopy of towering trees, horses, nice rivers and lakes.

Just like in Japan, I also work my butt off here and I am learning a lot of new stuff like closely looking into individual cells using confocal microscope. How cool can that be? Now I can take pictures of cells, not just of macroscopic things. This morning, a cool and very smart-looking associate from Olympus microscopes came to recommend some upgrades for the scope, so I am more excited about the microscopic things I could look into in the future.

Wish me luck!

Welcome back, ENTOURAGE!

It was such a warm (35 degrees) and boring day yesterday. Good thing, I upgraded my cable TV subscription to premium, so I can now watch HBO-On Demand and other great channels. Now don't be thinking that I have to cough out big bucks for the premium channels. It's just an additional $12.00 per month, which actually will add an extra buck to my pocket money because when I upgraded, I also gave up all the cartoon and music video channels, giving me $13.00 bonus a month. Isn't that a good move? More movies for the big boys, less of those precocious caricatures yelling out nasty stuff for every child to absorb, or those dumb chicks gyrating to the sarcasm of the sound they call rap.

What I am most excited about is my being able to watch Entourage again, an HBO original series about an up and coming Hollywood actor and his entourage of three from Queens, NY. I have never missed an episode of this great series since it first aired two years ago. It gives me a glimpse of the colorful life in Tinseltown, with so many twists and turns.

Entourage is different from Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewises. The two latter shows may have different plots, but ultimately, they have one common dilemma: how to fornicate with each and every character in the series. This is why I have lost interest in both of these shows. McDreamy bangs Meredith, who at one point, bones George who shags both Isobel and Callie who pumps McSteamy who screws Addison, the former legal sexmate of McDreamy. What a sickening circus! And don’t get me started with Desperate Housewives!

With Entourage, you can see how Vincent Chase, a talented young man chases his dreams in a cruel yet rewarding world. Yes, he sleeps around with most of the willing bitches, but he also turns down a $6-million sex-first-before-movie offer because it is not his thing to sell his talent to the swine. I also like a lot Ari’s (the talent manager) quotable quote which goes, “Yes, we have a lot of whores in this agency but we ain’t pimps here!”, referring to a disgusting pig who will not sign a multimillion project unless Ari’s assistant jumps into bed with him (the pig) first.

Watch the episodes from the beginning if you have time. It is currently in its fourth season on HBO.

Famous guests appearing as themselves on the show include James Cameron (Titanic director), U2, Jessica Alba, Stephen Gaghan (wrote Traffic and Syriana), Scarlett Johansson, Brooke Shields, Ralph Macchio (it was good to see him again, now matured and less famous years after the Karate Kid), Sarah Silverman and others.

Trivia: Do you know that the producer of Entourage is Mark Wahlberg? The former rapper known as Marky Mark (Good Vibrations). I really admire him for coming up with a great series in a big network like HBO!