I felt the Sumatra quake today!

At 5:15 pm local time there was a 7.6 earthquake in Sumatra. At that time, I was laying in the hammock trying to marshal the energy to get up and prepare for my first muay thai class. I heard a rumble and then thought I felt something. Then I thought I must either be crazy or that the Burmese army had begun shelling something very nearby. Then I forgot about it. After checking CNN this evening I found that indeed there was a quake! And according to USGS people in Bangkok have reported feeling it.

The Thai boxing class was fun. I've mostly given up exercising on my own here, so it's nice to go somewhere and have someone tell you to keep jumping, kicking, punching or whatever. I have thought about picking up a new hobby while here, and this may be it. We'll see if I can walk tomorrow.

I've also figured out how to address the lack of calories in the average Thai and Burmese diets. On many street corners are carts that sell sausages of varying types. These are skewered on a stick, the sides are slashed (to let the grease in I guess), and then they are deep fried. This is covered in sweet and sour sauce. Each one costs about 20 cents.

This week I'm in adult inpatient. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with myself. The medics are pretty good. Most of the time when I say "have you thought about doing _______," they say "yes, and here's the reason we are not." I often disagree with the final decision, but don't argue because they have decent logic behind their actions, and generally the difference is just a matter of aggressiveness. I am typically in favor of a more aggressive approach, which never happens in the US. A few times though they've thought I had a good idea, or have seemed unsure and I, also unsure, at least came to the same conclusions as them. I think tomorrow I'm going get more involved and actually see and write notes on many of the patients on the ward. To this point I've just been 'following from a distance.'

In general, things are good. Each day crawls by, but weeks have passed quite quickly.