Displaced: Outtakes from the AVR

THE SMELL of something burning brought us all out of the Second Year Call Room. I think it was a Thursday, and I was sleeping inside my dorm room when I got the text pass: vacate the call room now. It was later traced to a defective electrical wiring inside the bathroom. The Call Room has been declared a fire hazard.

Since the weekend we've been sleeping, rather comfortably, like refugees at the AVR Conference Room, where Mang Dan made a homey place for us to lounge around as we wait for the next referral.

Here are scenes at the AVR Conference Room this morning during endorsements.  Bea Uy and Carlos Cuaño look pacified, readying themselves for the battle that is the ER.



Carlos Cuaño receives endorsements from the sweetheart ng bayan, Doc Abby Ortal.



Meanwhile, everyone celebrates Danes Guevara's new haircut—inspired, largely, by me. Hot-stuff PayFloor Flores and heartthrob surfer-dude Ulysses Gopez look on.



It goes to show that it's not the call room but the people inside it that makes all the difference—and the new Hitachi inverter air-conditioning unit that lulls us all to sleep, our temporary salvation from the heat and humidity. I miss it, too.