the perils of

        Week two of the musculo-skeletal module is over, which means that we're halfway done with the module. And the semester is half over as well! Wow. Time really does fly when you're constantly cramming for exams, freaking out about SGDs, cursing the name of your Management professor, studying, splurging on a new Stabilo highlighter, taking a break from studying by discreetly sniffing your new Stabilo highlighter, buying microwave dinners from the downstairs Ministop, getting your car scratched by an old lady, looking at yourself in the mirror and crying a little, rocking yourself to sleep in fetal position, regretting several past personal decisions, eating breakfast the next morning while crying a little, and secretly promising to never return the hangers from a certain horrible laundry place because they delivered your uniform late, consequently forcing you to wear the an old dirty uniform for three days. While crying a little.     ...

      This week was wonderful partly because it was punctuated with two holidays. You know how, when you're driving in the middle of a crazy downpour and the rain is just so noisy on the roof of your car that you can barely hear yourself think, when you go into a tunnel everything just becomes so suddenly still and quiet? And when you drive out the end of the tunnel, the rain comes crashing down again on your roof. Those two days were like being in the tunnel: sudden, temporary, silence.       And thank God that there isn't an exam to study for on Monday, because now I can spend my weekend gathering my bearings instead of scrambling to memorize names of enzymes and co-enzymes.        Not that the workload this week has been particularly hectic. I mean it is, of course, but it's also very fun. On Friday, we had small group discussions (SGD) about the case of a young 12-year-old male named JVC. When the case came out on ...

Last night I went to the launching of Manila Noir , an anthology of stories told against the backdrop of (yup you guessed it) a dark and sinister Metro Manila. The book is the result of a collaboration between various Filipino writers, the most easily recognized one probably being the likes of Lourd de Veyra. And it was edited by  the  Jessica Hagedorn. Jessica Hagedorn isn't one of my favorite authors of all time, but when I received word that she would be coming to Ateneo, I just had to be there to have my three-year-old copy of Gangster of Love signed. I had read the book to fulfill a requirement for Lit class under Max Pulan, and I loved it. It was all sorts of twisted and funny, and after reading it I was certain of one thing: Jessica Hagedorn is one weird chick. Anyway, at the end of the talk I was lucky enough to go home with a freshly-autographed old copy of  Gangster as well as a pre-autographed and newly bought Manila Noir. National Bookstore was selling c...

All places have a story to tell. The challenge for you, the frazzled college student still brooding over last week's exams, is to just shut up  for a little while and listen to that story. Batangas was a conversation that I almost never had. I had found out on the morning of the trip that a revised thesis proposal was due in five days, so a few hours before we were scheduled to leave, I was 90% convinced that I wasn't gonna go. But I still wrestled with the question out loud, and I made such a big fuss over it that Rap deftly reversed my decision by telling me, "See this is why you need this vacation." And so I went. And I am really glad I did. It was my first overnight block outing, and also my first time in Batangas. It's a really beautiful place. What follows is not a narration of the events of the trip. Usually the best parts of any outing (the people you spend time with, the friendships that you strengthen, the priceless conversations that you share, t...

Blogging again to maximize the remaining time I have with the awesome wi-fi here at home. I'm going back to Manila tomorrow. I'm gonna wake up at four in the morning and endure an hour-twenty-minute flight, hopefully arriving just in time for my swimming class at 10. Let me seeeee, what else. I have Economics homework I haven't done, a Statistics exam on Thursday, and then German and Biology exams on Friday. Why have I not done any work this weekend? Oh, right. Because I am a lazy bum. Oh well. I'd been excited to see this exhibit called Dinosaurs Alive! ever since I heard about it in December, but I was bummed to find out that I wouldn't be around when they came to CDO. Two months later and surprise surprise, the weekend of the show happens to be a long holiday for Ateneo! Woohoo! Today, my parents said that we wouldn't be going to the show because so many people said it sucked. But I forced  coerced my family into going anyway, just for the heck of i...