While waiting for my flight from Brisbane to LA, I had 3 hours to kill and I decided to browse through a bookstore. My love for reading actually died down many years ago. I think the last time I read a whole book outside of the required readings dictated in school was about 3-4 years ago and even then I never really sat down to read that much anyways. It’s one of those “I’m too busy for this” things that happened. However, after reading the book “Who Moved My Cheese” (Also as a sidenote, my sister was like “Who reads a book called who moved my cheese?!?!?!” umm apparently me haha!) and seeing other titles of books, I have decided to make time to read every day. Also, I think that reading about the opinions and ideas of others, you can improve yourself in many aspects of your life and I can’t wait to be a better person with these regards. I think doing medicine does not have a time limit to it (there is just so much to learn that even if you studied for 24/7 you wouldn’t possibly be able to know everything there is to it- which I think is a pretty humbling thing that there is just SO MUCH information out there), so you can choose to do it 24/7 or you can do it as a career and not let it take over your life. I think most of the time before getting into medical school I’ve been caught up with getting in that I’ve forgotten about / not cared as much about what goes on in the world around me. In this manner, I feel like I’ve lost touch with the real world.

A couple of book titles that caught my attention were

- Daniel Tammet’s Born on a Blue Day that chronicles his way through life being a savant

- Michael J Fox’s Always Looking Up that chronicles his very positive view though he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at the height of his career

- Mitch Albom’s the 5 people you meet in heaven

I also read a few food magazines and jotted down a few recommended restaurants in Melbourne and Sydney since I will be spending at least 2 weeks in Melbourne this coming June. I just actually started really getting into cooking only recently and I’m in awe with regards to how much there is to learn about cooking! It’s not as simple as I thought it would be. There is so much art involved in it and I believe that what attracts me the most to it is the fact that you could go on an adventure while cooking. Also, to watch Gordon Ramsay and the passion he always has when cooking (at least in his F word show videos) is very inspiring. I absolutely LOVE seeing people very passionate about what they do. It’s a very very very beautiful thing.