Yamato Sushi (야마토 수시)

My girlfriend is leaving town soon so we decided to eat as much sushi as possible this weekend. (We both love sushi). Yet, sushi in Boston is illegally expensive, and most of my experience had been atrocious.

Is Yamato sushi an exception? Short answer is no. All of their food tasted old and tasteless. But does it fill you up? YES!! They have all you can eat option every day of the week for about $16 for lunch and about $22 - $24 for dinner depending on which day it is.

Check out: http://www.yamatoboston.com/

This is the place!
117 Chiswick Road  Brighton, MA 02135

We started off with appetizers. Tempura and calamari and they were absolute nightmare. It's hard to fuck up these things but they managed to fuck them up extremely well. It was the most tasteless and stale tempura and calamari I have ever had in my life.

This was our first order of sushi. They were not horrible but not great. Just tasted like cheap and thinly sliced fish that I could buy in small corner store in rural no-name town of Korea.

The first order of sushi didn't fill us up so we ordered "spicy seafood" udon and miso soup. Again, they had too much water. I assume they have huge pot back in the kitchen just for udon and add a lot of water for maximum profit.

 This was our second order of sushi since first order didn't fill us up. Again, nothing special. They just tasted like fish from H-mart or something.

 In summary, if you are completely broke like myself, I'd go here again just to fill my stomach up for about $15. But, if you are true sushi lover and don't want to betray yourself, then I wouldn't go here..

There is one thing that really frustrates me almost every day. It's not medical knowledge or clinical skills. Do I have profound medical knowledge and awesome people skills that make patients jump up and down with joy? No.. But what frustrates me more is my ignorance about everything in life other than medicine.

I'm working with all sorts of people. People who are quite and people who are loud. People who enjoy reading books and people who enjoy spending weekend nights getting totally wasted. People who like sports and people who like computer games.

More often than not there would be no interaction with me and co-workers because whatever they try to talk to me about, I wouldn't know about it. For example, people talk about politics ad nauseum with the election in 3 weeks. But, I have absolutely nothing to contribute to the conversation. So, in the end I get labelled as "quite" and noone makes attempts to approach me. Of course, I don't approach other people to make small talks either because that's not my comfort zone. Well, not having gossip time with co-workers is okay. But, it happens with patients as well. Some patients wants to talk about sports, cars, politics, relationships, etc. And not being able to build rapport with them kind of frustrates me...

Sometimes, life is absolutely unfair.

Of course, it is anecdotal but I know of people, who weren't stellar academically and/or spent most of their time just "enjoying" their 20's, going back to Korea and assuming low stress/high-paid jobs just because they spent some time overseas and can speak English. Some of these people are my friends from high school and college. I guess I'm upset because I wasn't courageous enough to gamble my life on whether I could get those jobs if I went to Korea.

USMLE Step1 Prep (to be edited)

Resources:

Gunner Training - Good if you have lots of extra time to go through all the flashcards and short answer questions. Not good if you can't keep up with class material.

Kaplan Qbank - People say it's too detail-oriented. But I like it. Nice complement to your course work if you get it at the beginning of M2

Pathoma - Great quick overview before your classes and quick refresher before committed board studying. I watch it normal speed and it's still okay since he doesn't drag on like school professors. Each section is like 10 minutes.

USMLE World - Not yet tried

Kaplan videos - only listened to Reymond. Right up there next to God.

Goljian - Not yet tried

Dr. Najeeb videos - He's a really talented teacher. I just listen to him without even taking notes and somehow the concepts stick to your head for a long time. I aced my physio block cuz of him. A bit too detailed oriented for the board prep though.

Book:

First Aid - Gotta have this

Advice to 1st year students

If you got time, memorize at least one bug or one drug per day. Repetition is the key.

It's all about time management

Second year med school is, to me, really different from first year med school. I learned how I learn materials the best and so I feel like I have more time on my hands. For instance, I learn the best when someone just simply talk to me about the material, when I see drawings, and glancing at flashcards once in a while.

So, on with the spare time. I usually use that spare time to sleep. I don't know why but I tend to just fall asleep if I have some extra time. Not a really productive use of time, I know. But, still, I'm a med student, I can fall asleep at anytime and place.

Some people I know use those time really wisely. For example, going for a run, hanging out with friends, catching up with family, studying for Step I, etc, etc. I really respect those people who have discipline to wake up early in the morning to jog around or have their ass down for an hour to do Qbank questions.

I could get sooo much more done if I had that discipline.

Stark Contrast

It is always frustrating when you think you are capable of 10,
but people think you are only capable of 1.