Our Brazilian Christmas!
December 22, 2008 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
For fans of the television comedy show (a Brit export or adaption should I say) the Office, you may recall a couple of weeks ago they had a Moroccan-themed Christmas party. Along those lines, LFP combined our holiday festivities with the Spa at Willow Bend to have a Brazilian-themed party. Fortunately, no one caught on fire unlike the TV show. That would have probably made it more interesting. Fortunately, we had Donna’s husband Mike, a fireman, present to control the festivities.
We all really had such a fun time, and the experience that my extended extended family shared was deeply enriching. I would also like to thank Waleska, from my spa, who is Brazilian for connecting us with Mario, a real-life gaucho. Interestingly, he is Japanese, as there is a huge Japanese community in Brazil. He cooked a wonderful assortment of meats including picanha (which is really the best piece of meat for all you churrascaria-rodizio fans out there), sirloin with garlic, beef ribs, bacon-wrapped chicken, whole chicken, and chicken hearts. (Make sure you offer a wish before you have the latter. They actually are delicious). I would like to say muito obrigado (Portuguese = thanks so much!) and gochiso-sama (Japanese = thank you for the great food) to Mario and his teammate Max. Waleska also created the famed Brazilian cocktail caipirinha for us. That was a real treat.
By combining the spa and LFP into one holiday event, I think we really all shared how much WBW is a single extended family. I get a tremendous kick seeing everyone in my building every day, and I am really happy we could have such a massive party together. Unfortunately, the cold breeze outside made it impossible to light the fire pit, but we all stayed warm inside. I hope all of you are having a fun time at your holiday events for the office or with your family and friends this season. I hope you enjoy our little video and photos of our holiday event!
Rethinking the Xmas Tree
December 7, 2008 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
Fashioning myself a design pundit and a supercilious aesthete, I was looking for some new design inspirations on an old theme, the Christmas tree. I remember growing up with a fake Xmas tree that we unfolded every year from the attic and bent down the artificial branches with each passing year a branch snapping off, almost reminiscent of our own senescence. There was always something a bit contrived about a fake tree but, of course, something quite appealing in its flame-retardant safety, environmental recyclability, and not to mention economic frugality. And how do you fit that tree in your non-SUV anyway?
My mother said, “I’m really tired of another boring old Christmas tree. Any ideas?” I am always up for an aesthetic challenge, especially when it can be a fun exercise. We started our quest in this Christmas tree store at the nearby Shops at Willow Bend. It was anything but innovative. Standard old trees with over-embellished, filigreed ornaments that ran counter to my spare design aesthetic of “less is more.” I thought Neiman-Marcus, the epicenter of taste with a Texas twist, could be a source of inspiration. (Any great designer will own up that he or she steals ideas.) I saw a pair of very narrow, tall pine trees with echoing radial, spoke-like ornaments that flanked the escalator upon alighting on the second floor. These trees really captured my imagination, especially considering having it paired with its neighboring twin. However, I didn’t know how to acquire such a tree, or trees, nor how to attain all of these unique ornaments. The task seemed to be of Sysiphan proportions.
Marching onward to the third floor, I saw in the home design section, these naked tree limbs sprayed white and arranged in a vase with equally restrained ornaments. I thought brilliant! At this point, my mother insisted on going to this cool garden store in West Village in Uptown Dallas that she loves called, what else, Gardens to look for other ideas. Upon entering the store, my brain fixated on 3 design displays that had the same naked tree limbs with very spare ornaments. I asked if I could buy the display. Jeremy explained that “No, sorry these items are going to be moved to the front window for our holiday display.” Upon reconsidering what he needed for his display, he sold us the “Christmas tree” and related ornaments. With my design bug in a frenzy, I started to evaluate what vase would be best to fit this Charlie Brown Christmas tree (yes, the unwanted cultural legacy of this tree has been pointed out to me so let’s just get that out of the way.) I started with a small pot and pursued a course that transmogrified my tree into a Rauschenberg-like found-art piece until Jeremy cradled our tree into the pictured concrete vase that returned the design to a Zen-like simplicity. Pictured is the end product of an arduous design odyssey!
My Travels in Asia: Remembering Bali (Part 5 of 5)
December 5, 2008 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
I conclude my travels in Asia with a place that has left an indelible mark in my soul, Bali, but not for the reasons you might think. More about that in a moment. I spent a week in Bali to attend the Oriental Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (OSAPS) meeting arriving on a Sunday night. The meeting would start on a Tuesday, and I had pre-booked time to go scuba diving on Monday morning. 7 am on Monday morning I stood outside of my hotel ready to go diving but with no divemaster showing up for an hour, so I gave up. Calling the dive agency, they apologized profusely and asked if I wanted to venture out on another day. I told them no and found another dive outfit for Friday morning.
Bali has always been a quiet Hindu community centered around tourism set amidst a chain of Indonesian islands that are mainly Muslim in outlook. The people in Bali are generous, warm, and indigent by Western standards. They make a hard living by catering to the mass of tourists that flock to the island. I remember for one dinner we had a spectacular live show near the hotel pool and a lavish buffet. The following night for closing ceremonies, we went all the way to this new multi-million dollar center that was built to resemble some ancient Incan-like ruins and ate a sumptuous feast on the lawn while being entertained with a perpetual tribal dance playing out in front of us. Friday morning came and I went to go to dive after about a 6-hour drive to the Eastern coast of Bali to a site famous for a U.S. WWII wrecked ship that had been even more splintered by the nearby active volcano that oozed into every cranny of the timbers. It was an amazing dive.
I was debating at that point whether I would be safe to fly out on my appointed 1:30 pm flight on Saturday given that it would be barely 24 hours to off-gas the nitrogen load. I went to Kuta to dine on some indigenous food that night and then retired to the local bar scene at Paddy’s nearby. I remember talking to a lot of Australians (since Bali is a favorite destination for proximal Australian tourists) and asked this one Austrialian woman why all of these men were in drag. She explained that they were the Australian football team (that’s soccer to us Yanks) that had just won a championship back home and were celebrating their victory.
I decided to fly out on my 1:30 pm flight on Saturday back to Hong Kong which served as my base camp for part of my travels in Asia. I rarely cannot sleep, but on Sunday evening I got up and opened my friend’s laptop to scan through the New York Times online, which is usually part of my daily morning ritual. I was astonished to read the story about the Bali bombings that occurred the night before at 11:03 pm Saturday night that literally decimated everyone at the night clubs, Sari and Paddy’s, where I had been the night prior. A chill went through my spine, and I lay now definitively awake for the remainder of the night. Fortunately, I phoned my parents the night before to inform them that I had safely returned to Hong Kong on Saturday so they didn’t worry when they heard the news themselves.
I heard that most of the individuals who survived were burned beyond recognition, had lost their sight and/or hearing, and were permanently crippled from the experience if they were not fortunate enough to die. I remember reading a story in the local paper of a Hong Kong man who bent over to pick up some coins he dropped at the precise moment the bomb went off and was spared significant corporeal harm because the bar served as a physical barrier to the blast. When he got up he saw everyone with at least 80% body burns and he held a teenage girl in his arms for less than a minute before she expired. That tale has stuck in my head.
I am extremely thankful for surviving but do not want to be so arrogant to think I am more special than anyone else who did not survive. I emailed the Australian girl that I had met at the bar on Friday, and she recounted that she had made it home prior to that night like me but that the entire Australian football team didn’t. I will always be grateful that I am alive and well, not burned, not deaf, and not blind. If anyone is fearful today or negative, remember well how close we are to having it all taken away and that we should live with an open heart of gratitude.
My Travels in Asia: Remembering Shanghai (Part 4 of 5)
December 4, 2008 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
One of my favorite cities in all of Asia is Shanghai. Perhaps my feelings emerge from its magical history as the international, polished jewel of China a century ago. Perhaps my cherished view of Shanghai reflects half of my legacy, as my mother and her family hail from Shanghai. In any case, it has more to do with it being a fascinating, almost over-wrought, urban metropolis that bespeaks the decadence, opulence, and gusto of modern China.
I travelled with my mother in 1993 throughout China including the greatest-hits tour of Beijing, Shanghai, Guilin, and Xian. By the time I had finished my travels I became intensely appreciative of my home country, the United States, and foreswore a return trip to what I deemed a dusty, impoverished, and barren land. However, by 2002 when I returned to lecture in Shanghai I was floored at the transformation I witnessed. It was as if Sturgis, Michigan (sorry to my in-laws there) had become Chicago, Illinois over night.
I flew into the old airport that is reminiscent of one of the tiny airstrips in the Caribbean islands and flew out of one of the best, if not the best, airport in the entire world, Shanghai Pudong International. The old, dust-caked roads in 1993 gave way to superhighways that arced across the sky and linked every conceivable part of the city to another. The buildings that crowded the skyline were modern and distinct like a major U.S. city with a little less decorum, reflective of the nouveau riche status of China. I remember having a 4-dollar, one-hour foot massage followed by a luxurious French dinner in a restaurant called T8, dining on sweetbreads and foie gras. What a contrast!
After dinner I strolled through the cobblestoned streets that were fabricated to match Europe in a vibrant other worldly area called Xin Tiandi (literally new heaven and earth), partook of some Billie Holliday at a jazz club where the chanteuses sang in English, saw a music video being filmed with interracial couples embracing under a boom crane and was mystified at a McDonald’s version of Starbucks called McCafe. Shanghai is a must see if you are in the Far East even more than Beijing. It will stimulate you, shock you, and offer you a glimpse of the collision of cultures and tastes that is modern China.
Btw, if you haven’t read China Inc. by Ted Fishman, you should. It reveals a lot of the current commercial roots of how China is emerging as a world superpower and how it is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
My Travels in Asia: Remembering Seoul (Part 3 of 5)
December 3, 2008 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
The greatest airports in my opinion are in Asia: Pudong (Shanghai), Incheon (Seoul), and Hong Kong. There is nothing like these wonderful ports of entry into a new city. Incheon is one of the best and rivals Shanghai’s Pudong. I have travelled twice to Seoul, once for an extended several weeks during the 5-month trip to Asia and the second time for a week in 2004 to lecture, operate, and actually recover from a flu given the incredibly arduous hours I spent that week only to feel that my self-pity was unfathomable when I stood in line at LAX immediately behind the brave young girl, Bethany Hamilton, who had just lost her left arm to a shark attack a few months before.
Seoul is a complicated city. It bears vestiges of a colonial Japanese past with an imperial palace rebuilt to stucco over that legacy. It shows the strain of a city rapidly industrializing under the shadow of a totalitarian regime a stone’s throw away (with the discovered secret of multiple carved tunnels that the north covertly created to lead to rapid deployment of military southward at a blink.) For cosmetic surgery in Asia, it represents the height of both academic and clinical accomplishments, that have influenced my thinking and practice. It is also filled with warm and inviting individuals with whom I have bonded for life.
I wanted to tell the story of a good friend of whom I am very proud. Dr. Kim was recommended to me by Dr. Shu in Japan for me to visit and to observe. When I first visited him, he practiced out of a small, grayish clinic, and I remember very fondly that one night he wanted to take me out to an “expensive dinner” so he picked Bennigan’s. I informed him that I would rather dine on local fare, to which he first reacted with a puzzled expression that slowly gave way to understanding of sorts. Upon my return 2 years later, he had moved into a lavish new clinic and surgery center in neighboring Bucheon with a lecture hall and had been training fellows and international visitors. In fact, he even translated my book into Korean and got it published. I was wondering about the impetus behind his meteoric transformation. His wife confided in me that I had really changed his life by having him think big and getting him excited again about his work by publishing him in international journals. She mentioned that he had been suffering from ulcers and that his stomach conditions had since dissipated. I was thrilled that my initial short visit would have such a profound and lasting impact.
I remember that when I returned in ’04 to lecture and to operate, we drove up to the Hilton hotel where the lecture series was being given. Dr. Kim had plastered on the side of the hotel my clinic’s name. I really had done no work to organize the meeting but that was what he thought of me and he had me sign all of the program certificates as co-president. Another great surgeon, Dr. Jung, invited me to go to lecture next year 2009 in China but I simply cannot make these long trips away from my practice. I loved training with Dr. Jung and had the good fortune to invite him as a special lecturer in Washington D.C. for a course for which I was the director last year dedicated to the Asian face. I really cherish Drs. Kim and Jung for their convivial hospitality, genuine goodheartedness, and brilliant surgical acumen. They are the core of my remembrance of Seoul and to me are the embodiment of Seoul. Tomorrow we get Shanghai’d to Shanghai.