Another Day in Cuba

Yesterday, I woke to the sound of the ocean (my window looks out at the Malecon and the Straits of Florida), and wrote for a long time- hence all of the posts yesterday. Today, we present- I stayed up late honing our talk into a 10 minute work of polished beauty, and then watched a bit of season 3 Buffy before going to sleep (vampire Willow is indeed awesome) Today’s post will be a bit shorter, as we present in 2 hours. But I wanted to get something out there.
Lunch yesterday was a bit difficult. They had planned to have it outside, but it was really windy, so we were inside instead. In two shifts, which they didn’t really tell us while we were standing in line, in a very stuffy corridor for close to an hour. Still, the company was awesome- I met Linda and Bob (Dean of GME and Chair of Psychiatry at Eastern Virginia University Medical School) and talked Virgina politics for a substantial length of time. When I got in, I sat with 2 folks from South Africa and Fitz Mullen, the plenary speaker from the morning. We did talk a bit more about implementation; he seemed to agree that implementing the vision of socially accountable medical schools was complex in our capitalist environment, and that we probably would have to move in baby steps in the US to achieve his vision. He also expressed dissatifaction with the COPC model in practice, and discussed his meeting long ago with the Karps (the folks who invented the idea). He has found it difficult to “stick to the method” of analysis that first proposed, and sees a role for the differing expertise of the MD and the MPH skill sets in caring for individuals and populations. Fun lunch. The oral presentations in the afternoon were interesting: I had trouble following the ones in Spanish, and the ones in English largely seemed to be works in progress, interesting work, but no real data presented to support it. Perhaps today will be more data driven (of course, our talk is more descriptive as well, so a least we will fit in well).
Bob and Linda were going to Chinatown for dinner, and, since I couldn’t locate Valerie, that seemed a reasonable thing to do. The idea came from 2 others they had met, Vaugn and Helen, from Miami and Washington, who were presenting some work on teaching Genetics-oriented family history. The ride to Chinatown was long and complicated, and the Chinatown here looks a lot different than what I envisioned- not at all like San Francisco or New York. Narrow streets, few lights, no signage. But the “Lotus Flower” restaurant lived up to its billing, serving Cantonese food with a Cuban flair. We had a nice sangria with dinner, and good conversation about the upcoming inauguration before piling back the the Cab to go to Moro Castle at night for the 9 PM cannon firing, a tradition that goes back to Colonial times. The cannon called the people into the fort before the closing of the city walls, and also afforded an incredible view of the city at night. Well worth the visit.

Talk is soon. More to follow.