the perils of

lindly following advice I found from a stranger online, I went to National Book Store this afternoon to look for "cheap, twenty-peso review pamphlets" that were supposed to help me with the NMAT. I didn't find any. Come to think of it, I don't recall ever seeing such a thing at National. You lied to me, stranger!        But my quest to find these mythical magic pamphlets was not for naught, for it took me to the less-explored nooks and crannies of NBS. And, in a stroke of serendipity, I discovered the Sale section! It's an inconspicuous-looking strip of short bookshelves on the second floor. If not for this one, medium-sized sign that said "SALE!" in bold red text, you would not have known that amazing deals were to be had here.          And what amazing deals did I find!           Squee! Books! Jessica Zafra is one of my favorite authors. Imagine my surprise when I saw that her book "Twisted  7," normally P150 or so, was on sa

any people come into Health Sciences dead set on being a doctor. But in the past few months of my junior year alone, so many Health Sci majors have shifted gears and decided otherwise. What's surprising is not that people are actually rethinking their choice to go to med school, but that so many of them are doing it in about the same period of time, as if it were a contagious disease.       My apologies for the horrible metaphor. I'm not saying that questioning yourself is a bad thing. In fact, it's a terrific thing. The huge, scary decision of what to do with your life after you graduate is a choice that you will inevitably be forced to make. There's just no getting around it, unless perhaps you plan to flunk your subjects and stay in school forever (a decision I actually mulled over for a while, because I really do love being in college). Otherwise, it's best to be prepared when that time comes. You wouldn't want to be stuck in med school knowing deep do

omething I often joke about is my ridiculously low standard for food, or my inability to distinguish a gourmet meal from five-peso siomai sa kilid kilid. I remember when Rap and I ate some microwaveable pizza (that we had used as a prop in this video).  Even after we had heated it up, it still had a stiff crust, tough meat-like particles, and bland cheese. Simply put, it tasted really cheap. But I still liked it, even though Rap said it tasted like Freon . I didn't understand what he was talking about, because I'd never tasted Freon in my life. The pizza tasted pretty good, like a less delicious version of the pizza I used to buy from across school when I was a kid.          I will never forget the look of horror on Rap's face as I reached for another slice.          But as messed up as you may now believe my taste buds to be, they're actually not that far gone. Believe it or not, I actually do have some standards for food, however low you may think they