The 15th President of the Republic

I spent my morning live-streaming the Aquino Inaugural, alternating between reading my parasitology notes and checking if my browser was up and about.
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Faculty

Faculty is a short film commissioned by the ANC and directed by Jerrold Tarog. Two teachers from a private college clash on their opposing views on education. The scenes are beautifully shot, and the message is powerfully provoking. If you have 7 minutes to spare, do take time to watch it. Whose side are you taking?



(HT: Hazel Baconga, via Twitter)

Walking through

The afternoon sun is turning us wet with sticky perspiration. As the jeepney swerves to make a sharp U-turn, we crack jokes and laugh like there's no tomorrow. Our subjects? Our more well-off classmates whose experiences of private transportation are limited to class-organized field trips. Like this.

"Guys, look for black cars. Tin's bodyguards must following us."
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Encouragement

I greeted my father twice today.

The first one was through text: "Happy Father's Day, Tay! I praise God for giving me the best father in the world!"
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Typical

For the longest time, I've been meaning to document a typical day in med school.



For the curious, it's a day spent inside a huge auditorium. There are lectures from 8 to 5, except if the speakers can't make it or if there are lab classes in tow.
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Waiting for sleep to come

It's 2:30 am, and I'm looking at my window, waiting for sleep to come. It's a hot night. The fan is at full blast. Its grumbling is the only sound I hear, drowning the the quiet, solemn classical music playing on my computer.
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Represent!

Today I had the privilege of being one of the country's delegates to the 10th Science Council of Asia International Scientific Conference at Sofitel, Manila. It runs until June 16.



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Food trip in Binondo

I belong to a research group of 16 people whose dedication, commitment, and passion have been an encouragement to me.

Last year we were so busy we didn't have time to hold a decent celebration party. We worked so hard on our Influenza A(H1N1) project, sacrificing hours of sleep and rest just to get things done. By God's grace, though, we were able to submit a good research output.
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Cry out to Jesus

I used to sing on-stage when I was little. My voice was like a girl's, my range perhaps higher than Charice Pempenko's Pempenco's. No kidding.
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Fratman

I'm not cut out to be a fratman. If you've seen me, you won't ever associated me with any organization named with Greek letters. I simply don't have the look nor the attitude nor the coolness or hotness, whichever way you look at it.
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To the freshman of the UP College of Medicine

I'm in my second year of medicine, and I still don't know squat. I have yet to work for real in the hospitals, but I think I know a few things—many I learned the hard way—that can probably help you, the young medical student, course through your First Year.
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The slow bureaucratic process called the enrolment

UP is notorious for its tedious enrolment process. This situation is something I see every semester, an irony in itself because the University has been around for more than a hundred years, but it has yet to perfect the process.

I recall a time when it took me three days to finish because there weren't slots in the subjects I needed. I would wake up really early, just before the offices opened, only to be disappointed by the long queue of even more early birds. Enlisting for a subject was a struggle for dear life.
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The breakfast table

Again I've found a beautiful prayer when I visited Pastor Scotty Smith's blog this morning. The prayer is called The Prayer About the Gospel for Breakfast.

It quotes Psalm 143:8, "Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul."

And it begins with these words:
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Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: a boy who can't read faces

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is a first-person fictional narrative. A 15-year-old boy tells the story in simple language and black-and-white illustrations any normal grade schooler can understand.

Interestingly, though, Christopher John Francis Boone isn't your ordinary kid on the block. He's gifted with superb logic, and he's autistic. I think he may have some kind of Asperger's—which means he can't understand facial expressions and other non-verbal cues, so you have to tell it to him straight in the face. He writes:
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