the perils of

Why am I not asleep yet? It's 12:30 AM on THE first Saturday of the school year I'm going home. And NSTP (I think that stands for National Service Training Program) will kill me when I have to wake up later at 6.  What is up with NSTP anyway? The whole system is crazy. We're allowed only 9 hours of cuts, and already I've got 4 hours worth of cuts because I was late twenty minutes for the first meeting! >:( It's crazy. You can't be late, or forget your ID or your NSTP uniform or else BOOM you've got a 15,205-hour cut, and the next thing you know, you've FAILED NSTP, and you're spending your fifth year in Ateneo taking ONLY NSTP while your batchmates are off doing proper things with their proper lives.  I'm sorry, NSTP is not stupid. I really love the concept behind NSTP. It sounds revolutionary. But all these rules that they impose on us - it's FREAKING SCARY! I feel like if I wake up late, or leave my name tag or do even just the tinies...

Can you spot me in a sea of tired future doctors? (click to enlarge) Went to ASMPH last Saturday after a tiring NSTP session at Gawad Kalinga in Caloocan. Did you know some political figure has the slogan, "Tigilan ang KALOKOHAN, aasenso ang CALOOCAN!"? Anyway, ASMPH is so beautiful. Top-notch laboratory equipment. Quality faculty members. Only the freshest of corpses for the anatomy lab. However, the students themselves are starting to look like those corpses - how much sleep do these guys get? It's scary. I love sleep. I can't NOT sleep. Med school is so scary. Goodness gracious. Maybe if our film turns out great, I'll quit pre-med and get into film instead. Joke. Maybe.

Haven't posted in a while. I haven't been in the mood to write anyway, since I've been devoting most of my creative juices to a super secret film project that I really hope will be done by next week. Oh God. I'm scared. I hope we win.

I realize how strange it is that I never actually wrote about the things I wanted out of life in this blog. I guess it's because up until I saw  this video , I never really thought about it. I was always so certain of my future as a doctor, as an oncologist, but seeing how I'll still be stuck in med school while people like those guys in the video are off travelling and seeing sights and meeting new people - I'm not so sure what I want. Here's a question for you. If you were absolutely free to be anything you wanted to be, what would you be? (If you're thinking about leaving an answer in the comments section, by all means, please do.) Here are my answers: Traveller. Watching that video made me think about all the amazing places there are in this world, and about how incredibly vast and crazy and wonderful a place it is. And while the Philippines is easily one of the most beautiful spots on the planet, I can't help but feel I would have wasted what short time ...

Here's a story for you. It's a rather self-centered one at that, but maybe you could derive some amusement out of it, because in this story (as in many others), I am a freak, and people do love their freaks. So it's a story about my eyes. The thing about my eyes is that they are the color of the ocean after a storm. KIDDING! Like most other Filipinas and Filipinos, my eyes are the color of the grime that sticks to the bottom of your shoe when it's rainy out. The real  thing about my eyes is that they don't match up. Not just in shape too, but in the way they move. Gross, right? I unwittingly freak people out sometimes when my pupils aren't focused on the same point. I wasn't actually aware that they didn't always move the same way until a couple of months ago, when my good chum Rap pointed it out to me as I tried crossing my eyes. Tonight I wanted to see just how disgusting I looked when I try crossing my eyes, and lo and behold, it is pretty darn ...