"It twists people like pretzels."*

Though my classes don't start till Monday, I was reading an assigned article on healthcare reform earlier last week and it got me thinking about two things. 1) How, fortunately - for my parents and professors - and unfortunately - for me - I still do most of my homework ahead of time; and 2) how, contrary to popular belief, there's no single silver bullet to solve all the healthcare woes in America.

Like most everyone else, I've known for a long time that the American healthcare system is confusing, inefficient, and expensive for both physicians and patients alike; actually, that's one of the main reasons I decided to go to public health school before applying to med school. But, what I didn't understand until now is how most of the current healthcare "plans" that various groups have been proposing also have the potential to be just as confusing, inefficient, and expensive if a) there's too much opposition/resistance from the public, and b) if there's too much opposition/resistance from the private (health insurance) sector.

It's been said before, and it's worth saying again: if it's broken and it needs fixing, stop arguing about what needs to be done and start working together to repair it. Yes, it's important to analyze the deficiencies and pitfalls of the American medical system, but it means nothing if no one is willing to compromise on solutions for those problems. It's one thing to say "we can change" but it's another to actually change.

Sometimes I get bored and make semi-creative t-shirt designs for health care competitions sponsored by Rock The Vote. And then, I post one of those said designs on my blog so people will vote for it if/when it gets chosen as a Top 5 t-shirt design on Sept. 1.

*Quote from Nicholas Kristof's latest NY Times Op-Ed on healthcare, "Until Medical Bills Do Us Part"

Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy a lot of other cool stuff.

(See update at the end.)

Between bi-monthly recaps of the Daily Show, daily readings of the most popular articles in the NY Times, and keeping up with random blog updates on a week-to-week basis, I've actually managed to be relatively productive these past few days, and not just at my desk (although, it is nice and I did assemble it all by myself).

My $24.99 desk from Wal-Mart

It's not just my time that I've learned to budget more carefully, though - I've begun to find better ways to budget my money, too. And I feel the least I can do is pass the insight onto everyone else.

It all started a few weeks ago, when I started reading up on all the Money-Saving Tips that U.S. World & News Report compiled months, if not years, ago. Now that I have more expenses, less disposable income, and more reasons to save, I figured it wouldn't hurt to do some financial research.

Then came a brilliant encounter with P&G eSaver, an amazingly sustainable way to download coupons onto your grocery store card. I've always pictured coupon-clippers as frugal, stay-at-home supermoms or retired elderly couples who spend their days gardening and playing bridge, but now I've found a way to maintain my street cred and save a few bucks every time I go shopping, simply by the click of my mouse.

P&G eSaver (a.k.a., my new favorite financial find)

Tonight, though, was the icing on the money cake. I ended up reading an old article in the NY Times - partly by happenstance and partly by my conscious decision to read articles in the "Your Money" column - "Financial Advice for Recent Graduates". What caught my attention was not so much the words of wisdom that the advice-givers spewed in response to the specific questions about financial planning, but the fact that one of the advisors, 26-year-old Ramit Sethi, had a blog called I Will Teach You To Be Rich. I mean, what kind of person would not want to read a blog with that kind of name?

Apparently, his blog gets about 250,000 unique readers a month, so there's a pretty good possibility that I'm one of the last twenty-somethings in America to find out about it - but that doesn't mean I'm any less excited to stock up on all the financial tips that the site has to offer (even if I am about a year or so late). It's definitely earned a permanent spot on my Blogger Reading List.

Best quote of the NY Times article? Ramit Sethi's one-liner: Rich people plan for things before they need them, while others are caught treading water when something bad happens. Not sure if that's exactly true, given that I know a lot of rich people who don't know the first thing about financial planning (or life-planning, in general) - but it got me thinking that maybe, those who plan properly simply have a much better chance at becoming rich. Perhaps, careful planning begets financial success, and that, in turn, is the positive reinforcement that propels an individual to continue their conscientious behaviors.

Time to turn my thermostat up three degrees and save $10 this month! (Check out the "Power fiction & facts" list by clicking on the thermostat link - who knew a gas and electric company could be simultaneously informative and witty?)

Update: To be completely honest, the two aforementioned tips in this post (using P&G eSaver once every month or so and turning my thermostat/AC up a few degrees) are actually the only two changes I'm making to be more prudent with my money. Not that this is anything novel, but I'd like to think that small changes make big differences (kind of like with this UK public health program I read about after seeing the Michael Moore documentary, SiCKO). Not to mention, Malcolm Gladwell completely agrees with me, so that has to mean something. (The Tipping Point is what enlightened me during countless rides on the métro and solo meals in cafés when I was in Paris this summer - I highly recommend reading it, if you haven't already).

I fall asleep in hospital parking lots.*

*Lyrics from "Hello Seattle" by Owl City (my new favorite music addiction).

For the next two weeks or so, I'll be floating on the virtual corner of health care reform and health care debates, and physically residing near the corner of the public health school and the health sciences library.

Also, I'll most likely be using the word "health" at least once in every written sentence.

A snapshot of my daily "commute" (i.e., my walk across the street).

Lastly, just for clarification's sake, I don't actually fall asleep in hospital parking lots - but a lot of med students and residents do fall asleep on the exceedingly comfortable leather couches in the health sciences library.

Looking forward to health-related raucousness, pedestrian travel, and, if I'm lucky, well-deserved naps on the library couches in the near future. Read me on the flip side.

Expect the unexpected.

Andrew Card, the former Bush White House chief of staff, said, "August is a challenging time to be president. I think you have to expect the unexpected."*

Hypothetically, if I were to intentionally spin that quote to better fit my own situation, say, in a blog entry, I'd note that August is also a pretty challenging time to be a recent college graduate, move into your own apartment with minimal help from others, and start an accelerated graduate program. Not only do you have to expect the unexpected, but you also have to learn to handle it reasonably well.

A rose from our garden at home (Mobile, AL)

Photograph taken by Dr. Sailen Barik

Today was definitely a case in point.

After spending about five days at home in Alabama, I departed for my five-hour drive back to Atlanta. One unexpected power outage, two four-way intersections without functional traffic lights, and over a dozen torrential downpours later, I arrived in Atlanta.

Unfortunately, more unexpectedness was still to come.

Granted, you can't really hope for the royal treatment when you're paying nearly nothing for an old, starter apartment within 5 minutes of an unbelievably expensive university - but after moving in loads of items in the summer heat and unpacking for an hour or two, there's a basal standard of living that you do expect: running water, functional air conditioning, and, perhaps, a general level of cleanliness (i.e., no mold, unfriendly rodents, or pesky pests with wings or antennae).

There's certainly running water and no mold, but so far, I've killed two small spiders, one creepy roach, and two unidentifiable six-legged (or maybe eight-legged?) arthropod-like creatures... and there are probably more that either got away or couldn't be caught in the sweltering 88 degree heat of my apartment interior - because the air conditioning, according to my "interesting" roommate (for lack of a better adjective), apparently "works sometimes if you don't keep it on for too long, but the temperature usually doesn't change".

For the time being, I've borrowed a sizeable floor fan from my roommate, but it's safe to say I'll be stopping by the leasing office first thing tomorrow morning. Paris might not have had central air, but at least the outdoor temperature was cool enough at nights to open the windows and breathe in chilly, fresh gusts of oxygen...

Andrew Card might have gotten it wrong in his TV interview last week - I'm pretty sure that every month is a challenging time to be president. And I'm pretty sure that September will also be a trying time to be a new graduate student in a starter apartment.

At least I know to "expect the unexpected" now.

*Quote from Frank Rich's August 8th Op-Ed article in the NY Times, "Is Obama Punking Us?"

Knew you, new me.

Today is the first day of a new month, and the last day of an old era - I'll soon be moving out of my last-ever dorm room and settling into my first-ever apartment. My past four years in college have been, in many ways, much more than I could have ever expected, despite the occasional youthful indiscretions and the sometimes unpredictable ups-and-downs. All things considered (not to be confused with the amazing news coverage by NPR every weekday), I made it through without any major injuries, barring one badly-broken toe and a few memorable bruises during a recent game of frisbee in Lullwater Park. To keep the post concise, I'll leave out all the rest of the sappy and/or overly emotional events.

A snapshot of my brand new digs

It's about time I shed the safety nets that undergrad has so graciously provided (for a mere $46,000/year, give or take a few thousand dollars...) and learn to become my own guide to gaining grad school success. Goodbye to dorms (err, "residence halls"), outrageously expensive on-campus parking, and my undergraduate past; and hello to a freshly-furnished apartment, free resident parking, and my grand graduate future. Been there, done that, know the old version of who I used to be - and now it's time for the new me.