I'm Back in the City

I've been in the hells Kitchen for 3 days now and I've been catching up for lost time. I turned again to my old New York City life. I didn't miss it, honestly. But it would be nice to sublimate for a while...forgetting all my worries for one or two days. I would want to have more of it, but just like anything good and pleasurable in this world, it disappears and sinks below the surface when real life sets in.

Its a nice time to be in NYC actually. The city is on fire with all the Christmas lights up around and it feels really good. Christmas mood is always nice. Since the cold has already set in, the ambiance is perfect for the season.

Sometimes, loneliness hits me once in a while, but I can never think of any place I would want to be. Its a matter of doing things I really want. I honestly don't want to be with anybody, and add up to the complexity of my current work and life situation, but solitude does kick your butt sometimes. I guess NYC has a lot of influence on what I am feeling right now. The city can be romantic sometimes, albeit most of the time people can be so distant and cold. All the lights in Columbus Circle and the Christmas songs in the area make you want to grab and hug someone. Nevertheless, I enjoy this moments of solitude. Being alone has its perks. Top of the list is that I control my own time; and for now, time is a precious gem in my hands.

Recently, I've been telling myself that I have a lot to do. I have several projects which haven't attained completion. Even near completion. Time is a huge factor for these projects but there's no reason to take it slowly. Good thing about staying in Pennsylvania is that I am able to focus on these tasks (although my friend's ginormous 51" television haunted me for three days. I did not let go of the damn remote for the whole time) and surviving isn't that expensive.

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Anonymous, You Make Sense!

Sometimes, it really sucks to admit that some people are right.

Also, I hate it when sometimes you have to suck your gut and inhale the air of retreat and do whatever is necessary. I think it is necessary to do that. Well, I kept it and decided to show it off again after I am in THE safe zone. It makes sense. I should think of my future now, which I have been continually discarding over and over.

I thought of the first amendment and my own history. I am notorious for speaking up my mind and telling the truth. In the past, I stumbled into HUGE trouble for telling the truth and now, my instinct would tell me to just blurt out the truth because if you got into trouble, at least you have dignity for yourself. But life is like medicine. You don't get the same patient and the same case twice.

It doesn't feel right, actually. But I think I have to do it.

Thanks, guardian angel out there. That's true, it may affect the course of things. So, I'm putting it down. But, if its up there again, you know that I am safe. I have landed on the safe zone. I owe it to myself to write with passion and honesty.

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Better The Second Time Around

Two days after my second interview, I have come to realize that Pennsylvania is not THAT a terrible place to work in. It is near New York (matters most), Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia. There's a lot to do in the backyard towns and it will keep me focused on my medicine. More importantly, my friends are here. I have tons of friends to in New York but my friends here go back to ancient history. Gosh, we went to first year college together and been friends since then. That's a whopping 13-year history of friendship. It trumps everything: it matters a lot when you are around people who you know you can depend on.

Anyway, interviewer #1 was pinoy. Boy, I was so glad. We started from standard interview questions, Tell me about yourself, What are you weaknesses and blah blah, but later on, we found ourselves talking about Filipino pop music. He even listed the artists I listen to! He is interested that I know how to cook pinoy (that's slightly BS, really) and computed how much I make in the Philippines (it was waaay below the poverty line). He shook my hand after the interview and told me di bale, gagawan natin ng paraan yan. I hope I made a good impression. I think I did, though.

Interview #2 was also plain great. It was more of an exchange of experiences as a clinician and I think I made myself clear that I have confidence in doing medicine. Moreover, I know what this profession needed me to do. Actually, it was this time that I lay down my rare cases card which hopefully will trump the researches of the Ecuadorian guy and the 99-nothing-could-be-better-scores of my aromatic competitors. (I will not elaborate on the olfactory torture.)

Lastly, I spoke to the PD and complemented her about the curriculum of the program. It was a tad of kissing ass, but I hope it didn't sound like it. For all intents and purposes, I meant it. Yeah, I liked the program. I would love to be their neophyte. She sounds really motherly and very accommodating, which I like.

Things were good, until we met the residents. Most of them are females and estrogen did flowed like water from Niagara Falls. Complaints popped here and there because of having a "bad" call, which I think should not be a topic of conversation since we (the applicants) are still there. As residents, you have nothing to complain about: its part of training. I used to run the NICU, PICU and wards of this hospital for the money and it took me two and a half years to realize its a waste of time. I did not exactly prayed for a bad call but, during those times I did not sleep a wink, I learned 10x more than when I am benign. A toxic call happens to every doctor on duty and its a matter of luck. So, shut the fuck up. OK, say your shit once and that's it.

Some moron guru gave an advice to ask as many questions as possible. So, every time an interviewer would ask do you have any questions?, one should be prepared with a question, regardless of how stupid it can be. Apparently, annoying co-interviewee read the same moronic advice. He was like shooting questions like a contestant from Jeopardy (What is blah?). I almost threw up. And, every time somebody asks do you have any questions?, my guts would move a peristaltic inch. Thats why I cannot eat my freaking lunch! This annoying intern who sat beside me kept on asking me that question. Worse of all, she would shrug her answer and starts asking me do you have any questions over and over. I gave her a NO and ditched moron guru's advice. Screw tact and reason. Can we be like two people in a bar and talk like normal people? They just seem not interested in you until you become their intern (read: slave). I would like to think that I am normal and I would like to think I am within the bounds of normal than most of them. I read, watch TV, listen to music, get drunk, get laid, skip class, wake late, smoke cigs, shop for hair products as a normal person would do. Apparently, they are not interested. I think I've learned my lesson. The next time someone will ask me for a question, I shall be bolder. I will give them one: when is the last time you get laid? If the answer is as often as Meredith or McDreamy, I'll surely beg them to take me in.

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I Am Giving My Blogspot A Makeover

I guess I cannot just let it go. I've been posting in my multiply forever (since its easier) but I think blogspot will catch up with the intricacies Multiply had done with its site. But I got this scritpting software which posts to blogger directly. So, I've decided to keep my blogger account for the small posts and rants and quirks that I would like to look back to when I'm old and gray (NOOOO!)

The weather has been crazy here in Pennsylvania and I am hating it. We had a few weeks of autumn weather (my favorite) but I guess we're doing winter now. Global warming really had sinked in. Bummer.

I'll be having another interview tomorrow, so I have to hype myself to it. Penn State is a university program and I have to appear more academic on this one. I also want to be accepted in program, so I want to do extremely good in this. So, I have a lot of work to do today: preparing my clothes, phrasing my answers and researching about the program.

I better get going.

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Everything is Driving Me Crazy

Oh, I entitled this one as such on a more positive note, I am not depressed nor anxious. Well, so-so. My day-to-day activities has been dimly unproductive for the past few days, and my obsessive-compulsive self is battling with my laid-back-I-don't-care self inside my head. It IS driving me crazy. Let me illustrate:

I have been studying Spanish for the longest time, right? I've been babbling about this obsession of learning this language since, probably, last year. I love books; so, I got my hand in every Spanish learning book I could afford. I surrounded myself with Shakira, Chayanne and Los Lonely Boys music and tried to dissect the lyrics of their songs. I have tried watching Spanish films without subtitles. I've done everything to learn Spanish but I still can't get it right. Conjugating verbs within the snap of a finger is still a Mt Everest for me. Its not easy, and its driving me crazy. I have to at least demonstrate what I know on my next interview, but here I am, stuck in perfecting the perfect past, simple past and the present progressive and the rest of the BS tenses blubbery that is espanol. I suck in this. Left brain needs a whacking.

Of course, I will not give up. It is just exasperating to know that there are common words between Spanish and Tagalog, but why did the stupid Spaniards declined to teach us their Spanish? Tagalog sounded like pidgin English compared to Spanish. It is just outrageous. They plundered us for 300 years, changed all our names to Spanish, but they thought Filipinos shouldn't be taught proper Spanish. It's like getting a white boyfriend and not teach him Tagalog; so that you can curse him to high heavens, during those deliriously stupid petty quarrels. And since we were in this topic, I just learned that Filipinos need to have a visa to go to Spain. What the hell? Thanks for the 300 years of colonial rule. The only good thing that happened to the modern-day Philippines after the Spanish rule is the 6-storey ophthalmology clinic in PGH, which was completed when I left the university. Big Whoop. We even need to ask permission from our oppressors to go to their country. Geez.

I met a Spanish tourist several years ago, who went to the Philippines and visited Palawan and Boracay for a month. He was with his French boyfriend and stayed in the newly built hotel in P.Gil (the one with the Casino). He was surprised how the culture was similar to his native Spain, which is 3,000 miles away. He was amazed that we call our cutlery cubiertos and we know how to cook adobo; we call our horses kabayo and sit on a silya. His ears would hear Spanish words, but when he talk in Spanish, no one would understand. Well, there you go. That was precisely my point. Again, thank you for the 300-year colonial rule.

OK, I officially sound uncool from all my rants. I'll get to the bottom of this. I swear. Change topic.

The show Heroes is also driving me crazy right now. Things are heating up in the show and everything will be exciting in the next three episodes. Monday has been my favorite TV day, so far. I've been watching Chuck and Heroes every Monday night and i can say its good. Monday is TV day because the rest of the week, I usually lock myself up in one of the rooms and study freaking SPANISH. Ok, sorry, totally uncool, totally uncalled for.

I need a fucking cigarette.

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Sad news brought me sad memories

Girl who killed self lamented family’s poverty in diary


I just read this article from a forum and it really broke my heart. Is our people really THAT hopeless? I have to share my thoughts and experience on this one:

I remember some months before I came here in the US, our regular maggugulay came up to our gate asking for help for his 8 year old daughter. Apparently, she was in the hospital and suffering from Dengue fever and his father was asking around our village for money, because her
platelets are so low that she needs to have a transfusion. I didn't
think it was a scam that time, because I saw the father's eyes as he
begged for a little cash. I am also low in cash as I only have 2 one
hundred dollar bills in my wallet. I handed out one 100-peso bill and left
out the other to sit undisturbed in my wallet. He was grateful for the money
and hurriedly walked away.

He ran away quickly and suspicion aroused in my part. What if its a scam? I really don't know the guy but he introduced himself as a vegetable
vendor whom my mom gets her weekly stash of vegetables. I shooed the
thought away and hope for the best for her daughter. It was just a hundred, I thought. But it is enough money for transpo and food for a day. That's ok, I assured myself. If it were true, I helped the poor guy out and my conscience is spared.



Two days later, he was back. He stood in front of our gate with a sad, long face asking once again for money. I thought, WTF? He
told me wasn't able to come up with cash to afford the platelet
transfusion the last time and this time, he needs it to bury
his daughter. My heart sank. Literally, I died, before him. I was standing upright but I can feel myself sprawling on the ground.

A lightning of thoughts flashed across my head: I should have given him the other one
hundred dollar bill. I thought about it a million times and scourged myself as I hear it in my brain. Oh, that poor girl. And her father: the thin, frail man before me, was asking money for her burial. It was the most heartbreaking moment to be in. Honestly, I never felt so helpless before. He told me that it was a great loss. She was a smart girl and could have been their hope. He told that to me with dry eyes, probably strained and dried up from all his weeping. He cannot cry anymore. Now, he has no money to bury his own daughter and all he has is this misery and twisted hope that people will pity his situation. All I could think of is giving him every cent I had in my wallet. I did not let myself to think. I was consumed by my guilt and thought of how to help this poor, poor man.

But, would
it have made a difference? Would another hundred dollar bill save her
daughter's life? It wouldn't be enough for a transfusion anyway and I
don't expect a lot of people in our small subdivision would believe his
story and could not beg enough money to afford it. I tried to blame the government, our corrupt governance and our stupid, imbecile of a health system. I blamed Gloria, Erap, Marcos and all the past presidents who promised us hope for this country. But, it is useless to blame. One life was lost and more will be at stake as we go through the "dengue season" year after year.

How can we bring hope for our people?

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On writing

Looking back on my interview a week ago, I realized that the more I think about my interests in humanities and literature, the more I wanted to write. Not just blog writing, but to take it to a whole new level and do writing projects that I am interested with. Honestly, I can think of three people who had motivated me to do so: One is my friend Beej, who lead me back to reading and realize why I read a lot of lit about humanities. I think life is too short to follow James Patterson's and Patricia Cornell's literary career. Learning about people and history has more thrill than reading about their brand of suspense.

Second, my friend M. from New York, who after building his own pharm company, went back to writing and created a lot of literary projects for his country (Iran). He wrote fiction, and was duly noted for that. He translated Persian texts and wrote a whole lot of short stories. He moved to the US when he was in high school, threatened by his mom to forget lit, otherwise, he has to pay for his education and then came out to be a successful businessman at the prime of his life. It was an inspiring story and it had showed me that people just have to do the things they deem important in their life and what they perceive as the most effective way to effect change, and somehow, the universe conspires to make it come true.

Third, I just read this book from Atul Gawande entitled Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. I'm just sorry because I can't really believe this guy wrote a book while doing surgery residency. I also admire his dedication to the medical profession. He writes well, too. I just can't think how he did it. AND he has a wife and I think, two kids. Gosh. It takes a lot of talent, courage and a whole gamut of good qualities to really come up with such a good book.

The whole thought about post colonial literature has also given me PURPOSE in writing. I have read several books in my humanities class about post-colonialism and it did not spark any interest on me. Then I understood about oppression, Social change and class struggle. I started appreciating these subjects when I started to understand the whole deal about EDSA. Before, I used to think that EDSA was just a hype: people throwing out a dictator. I just don't get all the hype and international media coverage. At that time, I thought it happens and to some point people just can't bear it. Anyway, when I learned about martial law, the Marcos regime and the human rights violation, I realized that it is something important and should be made clear what EDSA represented to each and every Filipino. We take our national identity for granted, and a lot of people here in the US would say unsolicited comment about the Philippines and how life will never be better for a lot of pinoys. But then, we should be blamed about it; for looking over the fence and seeking for better pastures. We chose to look for answers elsewhere. It is a personal matter for me, because it was my choice, too.

Funny, because I came to a point of realizing and pondering about this as I watch the TV show Kid Nation. 40 kids in the middle of a desert and struggling to make their small town work. The kids asked if they would want to go home every other show but surprisingly, only 2 have left after 20 days in the desert. They would rather stay and make Bonanza (the town) a better place and work hard with the uncertainty of being rewarded for hard work. (One kid is given a gold star every episode as nominated by the community; it is worth 20,000 in gold). The choice is there. Go home, watch tv and be a kid or work hard, stick to the desert but a possibility of earning money for the future. And at their age, and their Erikson's psychosocial stage of industry vs inferiority, these kids chose to work. Manual labor work. Amazing. It's just unbelievable.

And they stood by their decision. They committed in making the town work.

I had two realizations on this: one, as a smart kid and speaking for those smart kids that I went to school with, we could have chose to be where we used to be and make it a better place. But two, the Marcos regime has stripped our parents the hope of a better Philippines. It set corruption deeply imposed in our moral faculties and it would be impossible to escape in this quagmire of moral depreciation. And the only solution, is to flee. Sadly, we were born to a generation where hope is lost and we were educated to our fullest potential, to find out later on, that our bags are already packed, unknowingly by those who believe that there is nothing can be done and have resigned to our nation's purloined fate.

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Interview #1 down

I had my first interview last Thursday in Pennsylvania. I had a great time, actually. One of the attendings who interviewed me is an OB-GYN and we talked about my experiences as a community obstetrician. She is also apparently a musician, so we did have a common ground to walk upon. She was nice to me and I can see that she is, well, impressed with my clinical experience. The other attending is a behavioralist and has a BA in English. I can say that we can talk the whole day. We went past the 45 minute time for my interview and I can feel that I can talk to her until 5am the next morning, but I guess I need a lot of booze past 12. Anyway, we talked about books and my recommendations for her. We talked about humanities in which I am truly interested more than medicine. My medical career had failed me in a million ways that I can think of. I don't think a book failed my expectations ever. So we talked about that and my interest in books tackling cultural assimilation and psychology. I think I got her. Jerry Mcguire might have been caught with hello, but I caught her with Dogeaters (Jessica Hagedorn's book about the Marcos regime).

Nevertheless, I am not still saved from the search. Each of them asked if I could really speak Spanish. 'Cause it says so in my application. Sure, I can speak some Spanish but I am not yet fluent. Yet. I am still working on it. ALthough I pressured myself in learning the language prior to the interview in the aim of shedding truth in my working application, it wasnt enough by the time I had the interview. But, now I am still perfecting my spanish and learning 20 words everyday.

For those who think that Spanish is easy and would resemble our vernacular, you are a deliberate ignoramus. It is not easy , nor amorous. I had never found conjugating verbs as tedious as conjugating paramecia. (That's easy, dump them in a hay infusion and --tada--4 million paramecium by conjugation and of course, cell division. Now, you can tell that I really am a geek). Dang, I used to hate gerunds and other stupid English parts of speech but I never thought I would hate VERBS that much. Que asco!

Anyway, I just hope my interview went well and consider me as a family medicine resident in their hospital. I don't really care if I'll be staying in Lebanon,PA for 3 years (Hello, cows and salami). It is just such a relief that New York and 42nd Street is 3 hours away. Let's see in a few weeks.

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