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my little hideaway beneath the waves.

I think I've moved.: I don't know, it wasn't a conscious decision. I used to keep my Multiply blog for things I wanted to share with a wider audience, and this one for things a little more personal. The thing is, I also keep a paper-and-pen journal. Which is for things a lot more personal. But categorizing my life stories into not-so-personal, kinda-personal and super-personal seemed kind of stupid. So yeah. I think I've moved.

Monday December 31, 2007 - 12:15pm (SGT) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
I Feel Like I've Been Going to School for a Month: I never thought GI would give us a mountainload of transes and self-instructional modules in our first four days of class. I never thought we would have two exams in our second week. Then again, I never thought there wasn't a Santa Claus up until I was in 4th grade. And I never thought listening to Bach in the rain would ever lose its charm. Except it turns out that not even Bach can make maneuvering through puddles in wet pants and with wet feet any less dirty and uncomfortable. And that the fact that Santa and my family used to have the same wrapping paper was no coincidence. And that I'm going to have to look for eight different parasitic eggs in formalinized stool on Monday for our Parasitology Exam when I only found four in our practice session yesterday. And that I have to study a mountainload of transes and self-instructional modules which will grow progressively taller with subsequent lectures for our first Gastrointestinal exam on Wednesday.

Let the new semester begin.

After I watch a DVD.

Tags: med

Friday November 9, 2007 - 06:29pm (SGT) Permanent Link | 1 Comment
Babbles: Here's an e-mail from the liaison officer of our BDI (Biopsychosocial Dimensions of Illness) Course (which is basically a mixture of Family Medicine, Psychiatry, and Pathology; our curriculum can be a little weird sometimes):

"the grades are already ready and as it stands, no one is going to take the finals. Dr. Dimacali cannot believe that no one will take the finals and that some even got grades as high as 97% so he wants to recheck everything. but we have dra. tan-liu defending us saying that dr. dimacali should let the grades stand as it is as it has been checked by the secretary already, but cr. dimacali insisted. so i'll have to go back to his office by the end of the week and hopefully i can officially release the grades by then."

Hehe, I just thought it was funny. I can imagine the motherly (and tiny) Dr. Tan-Liu scolding the ever-skeptic (and very large) Dr. Dimacali. I'm not really bristling with indignation though, because, well, my class is my class. Which is why I love it. More than once have I reached the passing mark in an exam because they curved the grades based on the class average. Some of my scores would probably have garnered me a final exam (as opposed to an exemption) if I had belonged to another class, say my brother's, who are best known for their scholarly ways (versus our reputation as the class majority of which are usually absent, late, or asleep during lectures).

Anyway, I don't want to talk about school anymore. We went to a concert at our parish last night featuring Mrs. Isay Alvarez-Sena, the UP Singing Ambassadors, and part of the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra. The first time the UPSA came onstage, I thought, Jeez, these kids look really young. And then I remembered that technically, I was a senior na pala. It's easy to forget when you're in med school; it's not called extended puberty for nothing. Anyway, they were fine; I have a feeling they butchered their French in La Vie en Rose, but it's not like my French extends beyond Bonjour and Au revoir so what do I know? Ms. Alvarez had mighty powerful pipes, but she had an annoying tendency of sixteenth-noting eighth notes and eighth-noting quarter notes; sort of like I-pray-you'll-be-our-guide becoming Ipray-you'll-be--ourguide. My favorite part of the evening was when the MPO played Penny Lane with a very cool classical twist. I googled "penny lane strings classical twist arranged" (it's amazing what a few vague words can do on Google), and found myself here. I remember hearing a classicalized Michelle on the radio a while back, and if both arrangements (or even one of them!) were indeed by Arthur Fiedler and The Boston Pops, then this is one cool album.

Tags: med, music

Friday October 26, 2007 - 11:48am (SGT) Permanent Link | 1 Comment
Coffee and pie, oh my?: Brick is possibly the coolest movie I have ever seen. The fact that it's a noir film set in high school should be reason enough to want to see it. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays his part so perfectly - the nonchalance, the stoicism, the nicknames, the glib retorts - he was Humphrey Bogart sans cigarette and fedora. No, scratch that, he wasn't Bogart, he was Brendan Frye - the kid who lost the only thing he cared about in this world, and tried to make sense of it by searching for the truth. And there were so many questions in this movie, you didn't even know you were asking them until they've been answered.

So. Let's have a rundown, huh?

Directing: Absolutely amazing. Absolute as in total. Complete. No holds barred.
Acting: Levitt was brilliant, but the supporting cast was a little weak sometimes. Nothing unforgivable.
Script: Perfect. It was so cool to hear teenagers (or actors playing teenagers) talk like they just came out of The Maltese Falcon and have it sound so right in the 21st century. In a high school in the 21st century.
Music: Perfect. Made me giddy sometimes.
Overall: Duh.

Watch it. You don't know what you're missing.

Tags: movies

Thursday October 18, 2007 - 12:19pm (SGT) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
The Computer Died on Me!: I can't believe the computer downstairs broke just when sem break was starting. That's the computer I always use pa naman. It's where I download, where I sync my iPod, where I watch stuff; it's where all my files are. I left it running before I went to sleep because I was downloading stuff - I even stuck a little post-in on the voltage regulator in my parents' room, asking them not to switch off the modem; imagine my irk, then, when I found the computer turned off this morning. When I turned it on, I saw that my downloads had progressed to about 25% last night, so the computer must have died an hour or so after I went to bed; I had barely just realized this when the computer shut down without warning. After several cycles of me turning it on and it dying on me, I remembered that quote (from Einstein or somesuch scientist) that went something like a stupid person is one who keeps doing the same thing and expects a different result everytime. So I stopped. And here I am now, ranting. Rant rant rant!

I hope they don't think I broke the computer. That would suck.

Tags: technology

Wednesday October 17, 2007 - 10:55am (SGT) Permanent Link | 2 Comments