Tuesday, June 17, 2008

San Francisco


Greetings from San Francisco!
I'm here for the Endocrine Society 90th Annual Meeting where I presented my research data in a poster session yesterday.
Anyway, this would be my 2nd trip to SF. It's an interesting city; I liken it to a hilly Vancouver with its waterfronts, large Asian population. I'd describe it better if I could, except I learnt long ago that I suck at descriptive narrations. In fact my writing abilities are limited to foul, politically-incorrect satiricals; not surprising if you know my all-time favourite classical writer was Tim Allen (Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man).
We stayed at the W. It was my first time in this hotel chain, and I must say it's interesting. Pricey, clean and modern rooms. Chic, hype, and very, how should I say, zen. It has an Asian theme, with paper lampshades and a weird glowing smiling Buddha in the room!
The meeting itself was as usual, pretty high quality. I met up with a group of Singaporean endocrinologists and we had lunch one day. It's great to meet up with people from home, though there wasn't any research presentations by any Malaysians this year. I did however meet some docs from HUKM.
As an added bonus, my research poster got us an award. It was a retrospective study we performed looking at the frequency of acute pancreatitis in patients with primary hyperparathyroidism. Unlike other previously published studies from surgical cohorts, this is the first population-based study out there and we found much lower numbers compared to the other papers. The manuscript is in its final preparatory stages and hopefully I'll be submitting that for publication within the next month.
Will be leaving for Minnesota tomorrow. And in 14 short days we leave for Malaysia. No rest for the wicked...