Book Review: Cutting for Stone

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, 2009, Alfred A. Knopf, NY.

***** (5 stars -- my highest rating).

In post-Colonial India, a Catholic nun from the Carmelite Order of Madras and a trained nurse, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, is sent to N.E. Africa to staff one of the many missionary hospitals that exist there. On board the ship that is taking her to Africa she encounters a very private and quiet surgeon, Thomas Stone.

"Among the Calangute's passengers was a young surgeon -- a hawkeyed Englishman who was leaving the Indian Medical Service for better pastures. He was tall and strong, and his rugged features made him look hungry, yet he avoided the dining room. Sister Mary Joseph Praise had run into him, literally, on the second day of the voyage when she lost her footing on the wet metal stairs leading up from their quarters to the common room. The Englishman coming up behind her seized her where he could, in the region of her coccyx and her left rib cage. He righted her as if she were a little child. When she stuttered her thanks, he turned beet red; he was more flustered than she by this unexpected intimacy. She felt a bruising coming on where his hands had clutched her, but there was a quality to this discomfort that she did not mind. For days thereafter, she didn't see the Englishman."

Through an unusual set of circumstances Sister gets to know, trust, and love this man (and he in return). When their ship reaches Africa, their paths take them in different directions but very soon they meet at the missionary hospital called "Missing" in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Sister Mary Joseph Praise becomes Stone's third hand in the operating theater and through the years they become a very successful team at the hospital helping poor and affluent locals who seek them.

On the fateful day that this partnership is broken due to Sister's death, twin boys Shiva and Marion are born at Missing. In the womb their heads were joined together, but after birth and separation of heads, they are still somehow able to share their thoughts and feelings without verbal communication. This book is the story of Shiva and Marion as seen through Marion's eyes. But to characterize it simply as the story of Shiva and Marion would do it great disservice as it also gives you insightful glimpses of Colonial and post-Colonial India, of the life and times of Emperor Haile Sellasie of Ethiopia (you'll learn here why Bob Marley and his followers are called "rastafarians"), of the politics of N.E. Africa, and most importantly of medicine, surgery, and the medical system in the U.S. and elsewhere. This is one of those books that is bold, grand and sweeping in its intent but one that does not disappoint. The writing is simple but at the same time the pictures that are painted are vivid and colorful.

I now see medicine and particularly the surgeon's role in a completely new light thanks to this book. The writer himself is a doctor and surgeon who is currently a chaired professor at Stanford University -- obviously he knows a little about the subject matter. I've found

myself in the operation theater twice in the last four years and always entered it -- or rather wheeled into it -- with fear. While I have no desire to be back there anytime soon, I will be a lot less fearful next time knowing a little more about the science of surgery than I knew before.

After reading two pages of this book, I was hooked and it would be no exaggeration if I said I couldn't put this book down. It made me laugh but it also brought tears to my eyes -- so powerful is this story of love and sacrifice and the tragedy of Africa. This book belongs way up there in my list of books I won't forget for a long time -- I give it my highest rating.

Why "chai" drinks suck in the U.S. (and other places)

The other day I paid close to $3 for a tall chai (skim milk, no water) at Starbucks. It was one of the better "chai" drinks I've had in the U.S. but it was pretty pathetic compared to the real stuff you get from even ordinary street vendors in India. When Indians make it at home it's much better than what street vendors serve, so Starbucks' chai is a couple of notches below real chai. And Starbucks' chai is way better than most other places [sigh].

How Starbucks can improve chai:
1. Real chai is not made from refrigerated chai syrup. You begin to heat water to bring it to a boil, add sugar, "chai masala" (a dry ground mixture of spices like cardammom, cinnamon, dried ginger, etc. -- available in most Indian stores -- get the Badshah or Kamal brands), and other herbs (ginger, "lili chai", etc.) and wait until the water comes to a boil. When it does, reduce the heat and add Indian chai. Heat milk up in a microwave and add it to the simmering tea mixture, bring it all to a boil and switch off the heat. Add herbs that are only meant to be added after the heat is off (e.g., fresh mint). Wait for a minute or two, serve it and drink it while it's extremely hot.

2. Chai is served extremely hot. Sort of like when I order "coffee with steamed milk" at Peet's. It should burn your tongue if you drink it without blowing on it (blow on it stupid, don't sue me). Starbucks serves chai latte luke warm. Sacrilege.

3. Real chai has a very faint tinge of cinnamon. It should have a stronger flavor of cloves and cardammon and ginger. Most tea in the U.S. has a very strong cinnamon flavor. That's not real chai. And no...you can't have it your way even if you like the taste of cinnamon.

Editing text files with sed -- adding a line in particular places

On unix and unix-like systems there is a stream editor called "sed" (which obviously stands for stream editor) which is very useful for editing large text files. It's a stream editor because it takes a text file one line at a time edits it according to your wishes, and outputs that edited line -- sorta' like a stream. I frequently use sed to make wholesale changes to text files. One could use an editor like emacs or Kedit or others to -- maybe -- make the same changes. However, the powerful and beautiful thing about sed is that it accepts regular expressions.

Suppose you have a file that contains dates like 1-Jan-2000, 15-Jul-1998, and so on and you want to replace the years with their two-digit equivalents (2000 with just 00, 1998 with 98,....). That would be a somewhat tedious task with a typical search and replace operation available in editors or word-processing programs. However, with regular expressions one can craft a symbolic expression that means "find me a number with one or two digits followed by a dash followed by three alphabets the first of which should be upper case, then a dash and finally four digits". A stream editor can then be used to replace the last four digits with just the last two digits.

Although I've been using sed for a while and consider myself quite proficient with it, I ran into an interesting problem: If a line begins with a date, I want to insert a blank line before it. While my previous experience with sed was confined to acting on each line individually this was an attempt to insert a line into the stream. Here's the command that did the trick:

sed '/^[0-9]\{1,2\}\-/i\
\
' inputfile.txt

The regular expression begins with the first forward slash and ends with the second forward slash and it means find me all lines that begin with one or two digits followed by a dash -- in the file that I was editing this was sufficient to find me all the relevant lines. The key to inserting a line is the everything after the second forward slash and ending with the '. It essentially says "insert a blank line preceding whatever matched the regular expression." Note: One has to literally type the backslash at the end of the line then hit the [Enter] key on the keyboard, then another backslash and [Enter], then the closing ' and the name of the input file.

If you regularly edit large text files making wholesale changes to them, I highly recommend sed -- it's very powerful and fast. There is a steep learning curve but once you start using it, you'll be doing all kinds of powerful edits that previously took you hours in literally seconds.

Review of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (Stieg Larsson)

Somehow ended up watching the movie on Netflix's instant streaming service before reading the book. Thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Didn't like the book. The movie doesn't leave you enough time to think about whether something makes sense or no. The book does. This is the problem. I find most mysteries to have little credibility because when you think about the progression of events they don't quite make sense. In fact, I'm going to stick out my neck and say non-fiction mysteries, i.e., real-world murder cases or scientific mysteries are way more interesting and credible than the average Agatha Christie type mystery.

Skip the book and watch the movie. And, oh, there are some really sick people in the world.

Music for insomnia

For unknown reasons, I'm unable to fall off to sleep these days. I'm reminded of Al Pacino's movie Insomnia (excellent movie...if you like whodunits, watch it) and I'm getting a feeling for being an insomniac. Last night, I decided that instead of tossing and turning in bed, I would use it to my advantage. When I was a kid growing up I would spend hours and hours just listening to music but as a grown-up I hardly do that due to lack of time. This was a great opportunity to go back to being a kid.

I listened to my favorite electronica album (these days): 76:14 by Global Communication (image of album cover above and left). If someone wants an easy introduction to contemporary electronica, this is the album I would recommend. Easy to listen to and evocative of some of the scenes in the Bourne trilogy....many fans of this album might wonder what the connection is, but my mind somehow always goes to some of the train scenes in the movies while listening to some parts of the album. [If there's anyone out there who feels the same way, please drop me an email....I hope I'm not the only one with this mental connection].

The album runs 76 minutes and 14 seconds...therefore the title. Each track's title is also the length of the title....a novel idea. My current favorite track: 9:39.

Music review :: Zero 7's Simple Things

My ratiing: *****
Simple Things
Group: Zero 7
Genre/s: Acid jazz, lounge, blues, electronica.
Label: Palm Pictures (Audio)
Released: 2001

One of the few good things about aging is you begin to receive recommendations for music and movies from your nephews, nieces, and other young people. Typically, this turns out to be material that I would have never come across by myself just because my contemporaries are plugged into very different things. Zero 7's debut album Simple Things is a great example of what I mean. It was recommended to me by my very cool niece who lives and works in NYC. None of my friends have heard this album or even heard of this group. The first time I listened to this album I thought of it as interesting rock music. The second time I listened to this album I enjoyed it too but I remember it as a blues album. The next time I listened to it we were driving somewhere long distance and I had the late-night shift. I put it on at a low volume in the car. It just blew me away. The lyrics are superb, the vocals (Mozez, Sia Furler, Sophie Barker) are gorgeous. Mozez's voice reminds me of Roland Gift's (Fine Young Cannibals), Sia Furler's voice is like Chrissie Hynde's (The Pretenders) but with just a little hint of Janis Joplin in it, while Sophie Barker's is more conventional but beautiful.

The best feature, though, of Zero 7's music is the electronica. The multi-layered melodies are lush, fully developed and well thought out. I love electronic music and these guys blend their electronic
keyboards with the percussion and the vocals beautifully. Of course there are a number of tracks that are purely instrumental and these are the tracks that blew me away on my long distance drive (listen to Polaris in the dark to experience what I mean). Maybe the most unusual aspect of the album is the number of genres that it spans. I saw somewhere that Zero 7's music is classified as acid jazz. The term "acid jazz" evokes images of dark, smoky jazz clubs with people on
acid listening to jazz (well, at least to me). But if this is mainstream acid jazz I'm blown away by it. I don't think this is mainstream acid jazz...surely mainstream acid jazz doesn't have this stylistic quality to it with the blues-like singing, the electronica, and the laid-backness of a couple of the numbers. Anyway, what does it matter? Enjoy the music.

Book review: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

My rating: *****
Book title: Snow Crash
Author: Neal Stephenson.
Genre/s: Science-fiction, cyberpunk, drama.
Publisher: Bantam-DoubleDay
Published: 1992

Neal Stephenson can be credited with writing the first cyberpunk novel ever with Snow Crash. After reading this novel, you'll wonder if Stephenson had a time-travel machine because he foresaw the coming of the world-wide-web in such a big and accurate way -- after all, the novel was published in 1992 which means that it was written prior to 1992. The net wasn't a big force prior to 1995 and it wasn't a force at all in 1992 or even 1993.

Snow Crash is actually a virus but of a different sort: people get infected by it if they view it on their computer screens. It looks like "snow" (hey you RGB people -- you know what I mean!) but it has a horrible consequence -- death! The hero of this novel loses an old friend to the virus. Thus begins his quest for the search of the origins of the virus and its perpetrators. This is an amazing book because it's not really your traditional science-fiction with nebulae and space travel and so on but it's stuff that computer geeks (such as myself) can really relate to. One of the virtual reality simulations that is described here runs on a UNIX box -- I got a real kick out of reading that. The book is destined to be (some say it already is) a classic because it spawned a whole new type of literature. Get it and enjoy it (and once you are done, get Stephenson's other books).