My boo

I just want to share my love for my baby: my Creative Zen Extra 30GB mp3 player. Yeah, you can call me pathetic or a frigging loser...but what can I do? Nothing deserves a write-up other than my boo.

Knowing that I'll be spending the next 6 months in solitude in New Jersey, I bought my Zen player last year before going to the States. My concern is to bring my 40+ CD collection to the states and thus, preventing looming states of boredom while I am in the snowy suburbs of NJ. I also need to smuggle pirated CDs of KAPLAN reviewer to the states that time so I decided to invest in an mp3 player which can also function as a hard drive.

True enough, my boo served its purpose. I ripped all my choir CDs, all my 17 albums of Broadway musicals, downloaded mp3's and the whole season 1 of queer eye for the straight guy (which I painstakingly downloaded from the internet) into it. And yes! it kept me sane all throughout my stay. Other things made me crazy but that's another story....

I was able to rip CDs I borrowed from friend on it, Spanish language learning CDs and even mp3 copies of KAPLAN lectures. I never got bored during the long subway rides from Manhattan to Queens nor the bus rides from Port Authority to our house in Union, NJ.

Yeah, sometimes I do envy the portability and sleek Starck design of the iPOD but there are a lot of things that iPOD cannot do. One major thing is that it doesn't support file sharing between computers. I get a lot of music files from my friends and I can't overemphasize the NEED to drag my boo from one computer to another to get the music albums that I need.

To top it all, I can take my important documents everywhere I go, including my resume, letters and transcript.

I love my boo.

BONUS TIP: your Bel Ami and Falcon files will never be discovered again. :-)

Food tripping in Angeles City

Its my second week now in Angeles, doing some moonlighting. My friend happens to own this school here in Angeles and we're doing a physical exam on all the students - elementary, high school and college. And it's about 3,000 students all in all. When I checked with the nurse earlier today, I found out, that we haven't PE'd even 25% of the student body!! Gosh. Its not that we've been doing really HARD work to finish all off...but then, after 2 weeks, we haven't gone past the high school students. We're only done with 2 sections of grade school. Ha ha.

But the best thing about this stint is that 1) the pay is good and 2) I get the nights off. That means I can go around Angeles and try all the nice restaurants in town. Unbelievably there are a lot of them here. What's nice about these quaint, homey restaurants is that the owners are foreigners: meaning you get authentic Italian, Creole, Japanese meals all the time. Lets have a run down of the restaurants that we tried:

HANAMI. Great Japanese restaurant off Friendship Boulevard. The sushi is made fresh and tastes different too! It's better than the local Japanese chains like Kitaro and Sushi-Ya. (Tokyo-Tokyo is out of the question.) But mind you, the stuff there is expensive. The ambiance is so-so and when we were there...they were showing a Japanese news program. Quite irritating. P1200 for a sushi platter (for 2), miso soup, tonkatsu and San mig light. Not bad for the experience.

COTTAGE HOUSE. A few meters down from Hanami. They serve authentic Creole and Southern style cooking in here. The ambiance is hole-in-the-wall kind with lots of shadows and cigarette smoke. Looks like a place where you deal with the mafia or have dinner with an awful date. Food is superb, though. The baby back ribs are mouth watering. I even dreamt about it when we were in Manila. P870 for a baby back ribs meal (which includes beans and mashed potato), buffalo wings and 2 san mig light. Cheap for a good meal.

ALING LUCING. If I dream about Cottage House, I'm getting an orgasm when I think about Aling Lucing's sisig. Not with Aling Lucing. It's just near the train tracks and they serve heavenly, cholesterol-laden, mushy sisig. Their burong kanin is good also. I must if you visit Angeles. Ultra cheap too. P456 for 2 sisigs, 2 pwet ng manok, burong kanin and 2 san mig lights. Yum!

BAMBINO'S. We just spotted this Italian restaurant when we came home one day (after eating I guess from Hana-mi or Cottage House) Looks tattered, though, but to our amazement and glee, they serve authentic Pizza Margarita! I never had pizza this good in the Philippines! Its a basic cheeze-tomato-basil pizza that needs to be cooked in a stone oven to get that right crisp. They did it the authentic way and I'm quite happy about it. Can't stop munching on those wedges! P850 for a small pizza, a serving of eggplant pagmigiana and a half carafe of red wine. Not Bad.

After all of those food trips during my stay here in Angeles, I'm worrying about squeezing myself into my old jeans. I only have size 32 x 32 jeans and I vehemently refuse to buy anything larger than that. If it doesn't fit, it means I have to do something about my weight. Not much of a problem, though, because I lose weight so fast. But how can you resist these fabulous eats in the Philippines? Oh well, as I would always say, life is too short anyway...

Just got back from Boracay

I had an 8-day stint as a physician in boracay last week. But due to the harsh weather, I need to extend for another 5 days. I opted to take the boat to manila to lessen my expenses so I have to wait for a calmer weather before I go.

I am beginning to loathe the little island now. It's becoming more and more commercialized. There's new establishments/resorts being constructed everywhere. These are not just the usual small scale resort you find in front of the beach but gigantic extensions of the small resorts like Hotel Seraph, Le Soleil, etc. Man, they're humongous! And soon they will be constructing a branch of Shangri-La hotel near Panoly and Discovery Suites Boracay near Friday's. Talk about raping a small island.

Nevertheless, the beach in Boracay is still gorgeous - with its torquoise-colored water and powdery, crystal-like sand. The sun glared for a day during my 5-day extension and during that time, my eyes did not leave the water. No kid!! It is simply one of the best sights for me. I've been to the beaches of Pattaya and Marina del Rey but nothing...absolutely nothing....compares to the beach in Boracay.

It makes me wonder if I am really prepared to leave all this for a residency position in the states. It is just okay for me to have a modest salary and a good job in the Philippines which will allow me to go back to the island once in a while. I won't become FILTHY rich that way but I can live a good, rock n' rollin' time for the rest of my life. Life is terribly tough sometimes.

Moreover, my 2-week stint has showed me that being a doctor in the Philippines is more emotionally rewarding. They treat you as a modern-day hero in this part of the world. In the US, you are practically a malpractice suit bait.

Being a doctor is never that easy. Especially in the Philippines. Its true that "you never run out of money in your pocket" - an amount to feed you for a day that is. But it never allows me to enjoy the finer things in life. Things that my contemporaries are enjoying right now. I am talking about the media executives, engineers and basically those who are non-doctors. I almost wished I never went into medicine. But then, I still have my own reasons why I love this profession.

It's the WORST choice of profession if you can't stop thinking about money but there are absolutely more than "perks" in this one.