Rainy nights

ON RAINY nights such as the ones we’ve had for the past days, I wish I were curled up in bed, reading a good book, the blues playing in the background¹. But routines are meant to be disrupted, especially with well-meaning, insistent friends.

True enough. A few days ago, friends from work insisted that we study elsewhere. The weather was perfect for walking—the winds were just beginning to howl, the clouds were starting to pile up on top of Manila Bay, the way crowds in concerts do before any singing happens. I wasn’t too tired, so I gave in.

We passed by UN Avenue and hit the first Starbucks: full. We even saw Carla Barbon, fresh from her London-Scotland trip, already working on her meta-analysis.

“How many more blocks?” Racquel Bruno asked.

“Three,” I said. It’s the Starbucks facing the US Embassy. Karen Flores also came along.

We were greeted by an unusually familiar crowd: our very own colleagues in Internal Medicine, also studying for our monthly exams, except that their books were more colorful, after years of being highlighted and read and ruminated on.

Ah, didn't I say coffee shops are the new libraries?

We hit the hay at 10 PM, geriatric creatures that we were. Yes, including the cool surfer-dude Ulysses Gopez.

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1. I’ve been partial to Otis Redding’s “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” these days. Many of his songs in the Spotify playlist are fun to listen to. ↩︎