deadwood

It's 9 o' clock. I'm up in my room having just finished watching Gilmore Girls. It's an old episode I haven't seen before but have probably read the transcript of. There's nothing else to watch now.

I have borrowed Lola's cassette/CD player because I thought this is probably a good time to pay attention to my once growing record collection. For some reason the first song I play is Deadwood, the second track of Garbage's "I Think I'm Paranoid" single. Right below that disc is Catatonia's "International Velvet". I play Road Rage. I wonder what I'm going to play next.

Last night it was around this time that I was eating dinner - leftover spaghetti with a little too much ground meat and needing a lot more spice. I was glad that The Italian Job on HBO turned out better than I thought it would. I was still very much awake after the movie. I took a light beer from the fridge and went up to my room. And that was the highlight of my day.

Fantastic.

I am 25. This is how I choose to live my life. Nothing is different. Everything is the same. Where has my life gone?

I was going to be someone by the age of 25.


Reading: Microserfs by Douglas Coupland


My "Hit List" for the night:
1. Deadwood - Garbage (I Think I'm Paranoid)
2. Road Rage - Catatonia (International Velvet)
3. All Eyes are Different - Shudder to Think (50,000 B.C.)
4. All Over You - Live (Throwing Coppers)
5. Dyslexic Heart - Paul Westerberg (Singles - OST)
6. Walk Down the Road - Cynthia Alexander (Rippingyarns)
7. Moonchild - Cibo Matto (StereoTypeA)
8. Winners - K's Choice (Cocoon Crash)
9. Indian Ragas - Makiling Ensemble (Per Square Meter: A benefit for Habitat for Humanity Philippines)
10. Mad About You - Hooverphonic (The Magnificent Tree)
11. Glory Box - Portishead (Roseland NYC Live)
12. American Adagio - Anne Dudley (Seriously Chilled)
13. High Life - Mono (Formica Blues)
14. Awesome - Veruca Salt (Eight Arms to Hold You)
15. My Sex - Elastica (The Menace)
16. I Can Buy You - A Camp (A Camp)
17. Angel of Sadness - A Camp (A Camp)

"Angel of Sadness leave me alone. When the music is over. The silence is home."

sa overpass

It has been alternating days of waking up late at ten in the morning or waking up early at six. Aside from the waking hour there really isn’t much difference between the two. I still make myself a cup of coffee as soon as I wake up, check my email and afterwards decide what book to read. I’m usually too lazy to go out so I don’t move from my seat until after twelve when I fix something for lunch and wolf it all down in five minutes. I have another cup of coffee after that and resume reading. I swear, if I were man I would be a terrible, terrible slob. As it is, I’m already on the way to getting there.

The other day I managed to get myself out of bed early, take a shower and get out of my apartment before noon. I found myself at Cubao after an uneventful ride on a bus that smelled faintly of mangga and bagoong. I’ve never crossed the overpass near Farmer’s market in the day before. Usually it would be at around 8 or 9 in the evening when I find myself crossing EDSA, waiting to have dinner with a friend. Why Cubao for a dinner date? Simply because it was the most convenient, just a single bus ride both ways.

Late in the afternoon, holed up in one corner of Mister Donut having a cup of coffee and pretending to read a book, I watched as the pedestrian traffic traversing the mall increased. Here were all the men and women going home from their day job, getting off the MRT, crossing the mall to get a ride somewhere else. I watched for hours as all these beautiful people go through the rituals of daily living. I think to myself, aside from the people minding their stores around the area, no one really stays at Cubao for long during the day. But between 5 and 8 pm Cubao seems to be teeming with life. It appears to be at the heart of everything until one realizes that it serves as nothing but an unremarkable stop on the way to one’s destination. Just like an airport. An airport is never really a destination in itself, it is just a means to get to one. I think to myself: if I was here earlier there would be an entirely different set of people passing through.

And I watch as the people shuffle tiredly along.

overpass

Listening to: Wine, Women and Song (Harvey Danger)
Reading: The Tesseract (Alex Garland)

how it ended

I’m half way through Jay McInerney’s collection of short stories How it Ended.

The first four stories has me doing a double-take every time I remember that McInerney is the author and not some bright, young and hopeful writer just on the rise. He reads like David Sedaris but less funny, less cynical and more preoccupied with sex and drugs*. The short story Smoke reads McInerney only because I’ve read it before as part of his novel Brightness Falls. Getting in Touch with Lonnie is vaguely familiar but I don’t remember where I read it first. I have three more shorts to go through and for some reason I am reminded of T.C. Boyle’s After the Plague which I never finished reading. It sits atop my bookcase with another book by the same author I have yet to plow through.

I have another week until Promo Boards and enrolment but I really don’t want to go home to the province yet. Food, family and TV do not match the enticement of reading (or at least trying to read) one book a day. I tried making a list of the books I’ve read this year and the number does not even come up to half of the amount I usually read in a year. I am a painfully slow reader, what a friend reads in a day I read in a week. The number of books I do devour in a year is still not to be ashamed of.

I don’t know. I’m just feeling really, really lazy today. All I want to do (as usual) is have my nth cup of coffee, listen to music and read**.


* Right now I wish I hadn’t given away my copy of David Sedaris’ Barrel Fever. I really didn’t care much for his writing there but I would love to read it again just to compare.
** I remember something I wrote years ago about how my life can “distilled” into cups of coffee, sleepless nights, books read and rain. Well, fours years down the road nothing much has changed. Everything’s still the same.

bits and pieces on a monday

So.

It's 6 am on a Monday morning. I haven't gotten out of bed this early in a week. I go out the door to stretch a bit while I wait for my coffee to cool down a little. There's no use in having it burn my tongue, you see. As I start twisting and contorting my ill figure my neighbor from across the hall comes out and chats up a storm with me. We end up talking about . . . nothing much. Her niece is doing her last minute studying for a removal exam in Physiology and at the same time worrying about the results in Biochemistry. For a minute I feel very fortunate that I didn't have to go through the same ordeal when I was a freshman. Or as a sophomore or junior for that matter. NO to removals!!! I think at this moment that's the one thing I'm most scared of. I feel that the "pass or fail" option is not much of an option at all.

My mom called again last night. She is never one to check up on me regularly and yet for the past six weeks she has called me every Sunday at 11 pm with no fail. I do not take this sudden interest in my life as a fault. However, I can't help but feel mildly curious about what brought on this sudden shower of attention.

My grandmother sent me an SMS yesterday asking when I was going home to the province (yes, aren't I a darling, everyone seems to want to get in touch with me). As always, completely evading the question, I replied that the results for Surgery haven't been posted yet. I am going home in a day or two, and it is truly because of the delay in the release of Surgery grades that my trip to province has been waylaid. But I'm also trying to delay going home as long as I legitimately can because I need a few days to sleep until late in the morning and spend the whole day just reading a book. (It seems I've already had enough sleep already, since I'm back to waking up at 6 in the morning as is my habit.)

More bits and pieces later.

Listening to: Joss Stone, in my head, she's singing the theme from Alfie :)
Reading: The Weekenders: Travels in the Heart of Africa

"You are a wise man, my friend, a wise man in a place of great foolishness, and one who may yet survive this theatre of lunacy."
- Contamination, Irvine Welsh

I'm off

Tonight I want to stay up late to listen to music and read, the way I used to do when I was still working. I want to once again feel the relaxing calm of living (and working) near the beach even if at this point I am nowhere near one.

Tomorrow I want to wake up before the sun rises to go out and take pictures. No, not of the sun as it begins its journey across the sky. I want to take pictures of the city waking up. I want to take pictures of the night’s silence turning into a busy hum. I do not wish to document my life in pictures; writing is enough for me. What I want is to document other people’s life in pictures. What I want is to immerse myself in the harried vibe of the city but feel calm inside, not burdened by commitments, not held back by attachment, not lost in a daze of school work and exams.

I’d like to say I’m off to have a vacation but I’m not so sure about that. I doubt I’ll be able to go anywhere to actually unwind for the sem break. It’s still a nice thought though, me having a vacation (especially since I haven’t had a good one in a really long time).


Listening to: Lovesong (The Cure)
Reading: High Fidelity (Nick Hornby)

on bathing (and smart toilets)

I am currently browsing through Lisl and Landt Dennis’ Soap for Body and Soul, a book that my aunt lent to me. She makes handmade soap for a living (in addition to being a pediatrician) and thought I would be interested in what history has to say about bathing and its relation to health.

The book starts out with a short history of soap across the ages. While it is interesting to note that evidence of soap-like material were found in clay cylinders from 2800 B.C. Babylon, the part I found compelling occurred much later with the downfall of the Roman Empire.

Initially, with the rise of the Roman Empire, there was a burgeoning obsession with cleanliness. Enormous and elaborately adorned public baths were built, the largest being Emperor Caracalla's thirty-acre water world. With 1,350 public fountains and cisterns, and thirteen aqueducts bringing water to Rome, per capita the citizens used about 300 gallons a day. Unfortunately, as with the power of the Roman Empire, this fixation with bathing did not last.

“With the decline of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity, appalling filth spread throughout Europe. The clergy, shuddering at the debauchery and promiscuity that took place in Roman baths, condemned parishioners who bathed.”

Historians have called the Dark Ages that ensued as “the one thousand years of filth”.

“ . . . plagues swept the Continent, killing hundreds of thousands. Devastating epidemics of infectious diseases, rampant infant mortality, and short lifespans were all common . . .”

I think that pretty much brings anyone reading to the conclusion that the plagues and epidemics of the Dark Ages where brought about by poor hygiene. Of course, there are others things to consider. The inadequacy of medicine in those days plays a huge role also.

Good hygiene and proper sanitation certainly do go a long way in disease prevention. In the hospital, frequent handwashing alone has been the most cost-effective way to prevent nosocomial infection.


More about plagues and epidemics are discussed with the history of plumbing(!) at theplumber.com. Also check out the smart toilets which measure sugar level in the urine, blood pressure, body fat and weight before dispensing advice on diet and exercise.



In unrelated “news” I just learned that I passed my Pediatrics class. Oh the joy of living! The recently modified system of Promotion Boards and Removal Exams has everyone shaking in fear. I still haven’t decided yet if the new system will be of more benefit to the students. Most of the people I’ve spoken to recently do not seem agree.

tripping: sunset

On a rainy day like today while I wait in gloom for what seems to be a very short list of students who passed this semester's class in Pediatrics (and while 108 friends and classmates study for the dreaded removal exam in Internal Medicine tomorrow) I just thought that more people should see this.

yosi break

“Hoy, mahiya ka. Umagang-umaga yosi kaagad,” ang walang pakundangang singhal ng Ate ng bumaba ako mula sa kwarto upang mag-agahan.

“Malamig kasi,” ang palusot ko.

“Eh di magkape!” ang sumbat ng Ate. “Sa kasisigarilyo mo bukas makalawa wala ka ng baga!”

“Si Ate naman, over,” biro ko. “May baga pa naman.”

“May baga nga, butas-butas naman. Anong silbi nun!”

* * *

While studying for Community and Family Medicine (CFM) a classmate and I were discussing how difficult it is to sustain interest in a health program. Initially, the programs seem to go well with enough support from hospitals, health practitioners and the community. Eventually the interest and support dies down. Sustainability seems to be a bigger problem than actually getting a program off the ground. (Yes, I don’t know what I’m talking about.)

In particular we talked about anti-smoking campaigns.

Republic Act No. 9211 or The Tobacco Regulations Act of 2003 prohibits smoking in public places and public transportation. It also regulates tobacco sales, advertisements and distribution. Around the time the bill came out the then junior medical students taking up CFM came up with a project to support it. There were stickers and flyers distributed to the students and the staff; posters were everywhere. I remember one banner quite clearly. It depicted a man on a horse riding towards the sunset ala Marlboro Country. He was alone presumably because his cigarette-smoking buddy had already succumbed to lung cancer.

Another campaign I remember fondly is Yosi Kadiri which was launched by the Department of Health in 1994. Considered one of the more successful campaigns its aim was to lower the prevalence of smoking among the youth in the age 7 to 19 bracket. I kind of miss seeing the Yosi Kadiri mascot now.

Antifaust has written several times about the hazards of smoking. Recently I came across an old entry from newleaf (another blogger who incidentally is also a medical student), sharing a cartoon about smoking. Although based on U.S. statistics it does put things in perspective.

My dad is a chain smoker so it is no wonder I tried smoking before. I never was a heavy smoker but the bad habit did last for a few years. I’m glad I quit. I still think I’m at risk for the detrimental effects of smoking though. Most of the occupants in my apartment building are smokers. I’m quite surprised they’re not smoking up a storm especially since it’s the finals week. Or maybe I have gotten used to the smell that I don’t notice it anymore. Oh well.

* * *

Naiintindihan ko: kanya-kanyang buhay, kanya-kanyang baga. Pero ngayon para sa akin:

out of time

No pictures. No posts (that makes any sense).

I woke up yesterday morning at 6 am having slept for 7 hours. Seven f*cking hours! I was supposed to sleep for only 3 hours and wake up at 2 in the morning. When I woke up it was already light outside. The sun was streaming in through my window falling right on my bed. I didn’t even have time to panic. My first exam was at 7:30. The only thing I could say was:

Oh well, that’s life.

I had two exams yesterday and I didn’t get to study much for both.



LSS: Out of Time by Blur
(I just changed all the you’s to I, and your to my and it was perfect!)

And I’ve been so busy lately . . That I haven’t found the time. . . To open up my mind . . .And watch the world spinning gently out of time

ignore this post

imagine the sunset

Alone. Feeling sad and lonely again. Surfing the net and not landing anywhere I can glean much insight from. All of the people I admire are getting old. Younger people are replacing them as they silently fade away. These people who stand in the place of my old greats are light years away from me. There is no connection anymore, no inspiration, no drive. All these are replaced by blank stares and an emptiness that never goes away.

Day 3 of the finals. Four down and four more to go. I am tired and saturated. The week might as well be over, 8 exams might as well have been finished. I’ve never felt like this before. All my energy drained. Only sadness remains.

I don’t want to be lonely.

Where are all the people in my life?

helicobacter pylori

H.pylori image courtesy of www.hpylori.com.au

Some people do go out of their way to learn something.

Barry J. Marshall, working with J. Robin Warren, had to swallow a culture of Helicobacter pylori just to prove its role in the causation of peptic ulcer disease and gastritis.

I suppose in the end it was all worth it:
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2005.

More about it here and here.

3 am on a school day

sundays are for fiction: [alas onse y media sa mcdo]

Alas Onse Y Media sa McDo

"Ate, barya lang po."

"Kuya, sige na. Pang-kain lang po."

* * *

Ang ihip ng hangin sa labas ay nakakapanindig-balahibo. Sa ibabaw ng hagibis ng mga sasakyan sa kalye ay maririnig pa rin ang patuloy na pag-ungol ng mga bata. Mayroong nakaupo lamang sa tabi ng kalsada at mayroon din naman kahit na yapak ay habol-habol pa rin ang bawat taong nagdaraan.

Humihingi ng limos. Nagbebenta ng sampaguita. Nangungulit. Malalim na ang gabi. Ang mga batang silang sa maykayang pamilya ay may ilang oras na ring nananaginip. Ngunit hindi sila. Ngayon, tulad ng karaniwang araw ay hanggang hatinggabi silang nakabalandra sa lansangan.

May mga mababait na lumalabas mula sa magkakahilerang kainan tangan ang mga tirang pagkain upang ibigay sa mga bata. Mayroon din namang kulang na lamang ay itulak at isubsob sa semento ang bawat makasalubong. May mga suki na araw-araw bumibili ng sampaguita mula sa mga bata. Mayroon ding ilang metro pa ang layo ay umiiwas na sa mga sumasalubong na bata.

Sa loob ng McDo ay nagbukas ako ng isang peketeng ketchup at pinahid ang isang french fry sa mapulang likidong tumutulo mula sa pinagbuksan. Masarap ang french fries, mainit. Sumagi ang kamay ko sa plastik na baso ng Coke at ito'y kinuha. Ilang lagok pa lamang ay naramdaman ko nang dumadaloy ang malamig na inumin sa aking bibig papuntang lalamunan hanggang sa tiyan na walang laman. Naaamoy ko na rin ang hamburger at napapatakam ako. Unang kagat na sana kung hindi kumatok ang mga bata sa bintana malapit sa aking kinauupuan.

Nakakaawa ang mga itsura nila. Lamlam na mga mata, mga pisnging walang laman. Gusgusin. Marumi't butas-butas ang mga damit.

"Ang lamig sa labas, hindi ba sila giniginaw?"

Pumikit na lamang ako at kumagat sa hamburger.

[November 27, 2000. Monday]