San Francisco revisited

Finally the my exams are over.
I felt the sense of relief, but at the same time, was not very happy with my performance. Well, I can blame no one for that, I was hardly even prepared for it. February has been busy than ever. Besides having visits from family and friends, I was doing a neurosurgical rotation, with much of time spent in the OR. There were lots of farewell parties, meeting-ups, and events that packed my schedule for the whole month. I wasn't able to even study for the exam; writing a blog was totally out of the question.
The last week of the rotation was spent in Hokkaido University Hospital, an affliated hospital of an Imperial University nearby. Though there were lots of red tape in such instutites, I was welcomed with opened-arms. It was a great experience getting to know the various other surgeries done there, and the interesting people working there. I had a great time.
Though my career was sort of decided by now, I still get lots of friendly invitations to join the neurosurgical team from various famous surgeons, and it has been hard to resists.
My step 3 exam was taken place in San Francisco, a city in the west coast of the U.S.A. It was my second visit; the first visit was 2 years ago, when Daisuke was doing his one year study vacation over there and I decided to stop over after my visit to UPMC and Boston.
It was great going to a city that felt familiar from the start. The weather was awesome during my visit, pretty unusual for a place famous for its rainny and foggy winter. Though my exams were complicated by the computer break-down, lost of my registration form, and the terrible jet-lag, I am glad to have a much enjoying experience outside the long hours of computer-based exams.
Chinatown, Coit tower, Fisherman's Warf, Ghirardelli Square, Golden gate park etc. were awesome, and I was glad to be back again. The openess of the city could be seen in how people from all skin colors actually integrated into the society, with hispanics and asians working from top executives to blue collars. I heard that the Police Chief is a Chinese woman. This is sort of different from the east coast, since the society is more segregated and you don't get alot of great different mixture of ethnics in one place the same time.
San Francisco - though this visit was brief, I came to love the place, and perhaps, it shall be another city worth more revisiting.