Blog comments

Thanks to Dennis Drabelle, who wrote that Joe "has invented a new travel genre. Surgical tourism."

Thanks to Barbara Wheaton, whose opinion seemed mixed on Songkran's "folkloric manifestations."

Thanks to blog chief copy editor Bill Ullman, who expounded at persuasive length on the folly of going into surgery minus a wrist-ID---and without a companion to keep an eye on the proceedings. Joe concurs, although at BNH he had made such a big deal of the missing ID band that it became an OR joke, and nobody was about to forget that he was "Mr. Joseph." Joe says he has read that many nurses, when they are hospital patients, bring along a nurse "buddy" to watch out for errors. They know.

An anonymous blog reader asked if we had witnessed the "Olympic torch hubbub" in Bangkok.
We did not. The Thai government warned that it would expel any foreigner protesting unlawfully, so we played it safe and didn't go at all. It came off peacefully. Dully even. A handful of pro-Tibet sign wavers booed the torch brigade, and every Chinese student within a fifty mile radius was rounded up to wave the flag of the Peoples Republic and boo lustily back.