Friday June 11th: Sea lions and Crabs

Whew, that last post was pretty intense! Just a quick update on the abortion front before I launch into frivolous tourist stuff: Friday was fine...because I didn't get to see any D&E's! There is a very self-righteous nurse working at the clinic who has made it her goal to prohibit students from seeing D&E's past 18 weeks. I was pretty upset about this when I walked into the OR after the patient agreed to let me observe, and was promptly shooed out by the nurse. She pursed her lips, furrowed her brow, and looked very severe as she shook her head furiously and chased me out. Now that someone's not letting me see D&E, my apprehension changed to I'm totally fine, dammit!. :) After talking with the rest of the staff at the clinic, they talked to the nurse and told me I would be allowed in because I was on a special rotation. But come procedure time, I got the same shooing out by the bleeping nurse! And no amount of talking with the rest of the staff helped. Sooo, I'm pretty pissed that I traveled to San Francisco to be turned down by Nurse Severe-looking-face. And I have no more D&E days in the clinic, so I guess I won't see any for a while.

But I'm over it, because since I got really frustrated on Friday about the situation, everyone started being really nice to me and allowing me to do more patient care! So now I can do ultrasounds by myself! And take histories and present their cases independently! Woohoo! :) There's a silver lining to every cloud.

So on to sea lions and crabs. Friday after work I needed something to calm me, so I headed to the ocean. I walked along a long, curved pier where a bunch of Cantonese people were throwing out nets for crabs. The setting sun reflected nicely on the water. It was cool to see the people drag up their nets full of crab, which immediately started scampering sideways when they arrived on the pier. Here is a picture of some Cantonese people pulling up crabs. They kept looking at me oddly because I sort of walked right up to them so I could see more clearly what they were doing.



As I was hanging around them, I heard one of the kids say, "I hate that seal!" Looking over the pier, I saw a black shiny body in the water: a sea lion! It hung around the crab nets, eating the fruit of the Cantonese people's labors. A little while later, as I was standing next to one of the men who was pulling up a crab net, he started shouting, "It steal my crab! My crab!" He was playing tug-of-war with one of the sea lions, which the sea lion won, because when he finally pulled up his net it was empty. When he pulled up the empty net, he looked down at it and said, "It steal my crab!" with a pout. I thought it was nice of him to say it in English for me. Even in his displeasure he was considerate!

Next I went over to Pier 39. The coast of San Francisco has a bunch of piers that go from 1 to 40-something. They are warehouses that jut out a little on the water, although they mostly house touristy things, restaurants, or companies. Pier 39 is a big tourist attraction because sea lions sit on them all day. When I go to the pier, I was surprised by how many there were! There must have been about 50 sea lions just laying there!



They kept uttering this weird honking bray. And sometimes they would climb over each other, or have silly little fights where they would honk and roar at each other. The way they walk is quiet comical too, because all they have are flippers, so they have to hobble around, honking simultaneously. A little Hispanic girl came and sat right next to me while I was watching them. She must have been about 4 years old, and she kept trying to imitate the honk.

I walked around the touristy part of the pier a little bit and discovered some crazy rollerbladers doing some sort of flash gathering. There were about 20 of them, and they were advertising for a performance they had later in the week and started doing crazy stunts, basically skating very fast between cones. When they had decided they were done with the mini-show, the group of rollerbladers and some bikers quickly rolled away on their many wheels, and in two seconds they were all gone. I found myself confused at their sudden departure, and looked to my right. I was sitting by myself, and when I looked over I made immediate eye contact with another person who was sitting by himself. I quickly averted my eyes and walked away, feeling awkward and hoping he wouldn't talk to me. But then I thought, maybe this person would be good company. Plus he was sort of attractive. So I tried to look at bored as possible, which worked! He was an engineering student originally from Iran doing an internship in the Bay area. I learned a little about Iran, and learned some Farsi phrases, although I can't remember them anymore.

This reminds me, I met another random dude in the same area about a week ago. We each wanted our picture taken, so we ended up talking a little. He was a surgeon from LA, probably late 30's. At first I was slightly creeped out because he was sort of old, but then he said something about going to a gay bar. Assuming he was gay, I felt really comfortable after he said that, and said something about something gay or other. Then he got semi-embarrassed and said he only went to gay bars because they have better music. Hehe, I guess I assumed too much. But do gay bars really have better music? I think this is a weird presumption.