Random, Semi-Secret Tales of Life, Loves, and Medicine. My days during the the Psychodynamic Leap, and doing Psych Residency in Manila.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Photos: that probably won't save the world :-p
March 26, 2012. My nephew (more like, cousin) Myles/Noyib before he bit into the Wasabi sushi roll. (Poor dude didn't know what hit him.) |
Myles and his classmate JR slept over at my place for a couple of nights, so I got to hang out with them. My conclusion? Teenage boys have a HUUUGE appetite...and are always texting. lol. |
Jan 2012. Oh look...a resto with my name on it (everyone calls me Manang/ "older sister", back home. Even my nanny as a child calls me that.) |
Friday, March 23, 2012
Video: Falling Slowly
I don't know you
But I want you
All the more for that
Words fall through me
And always fool me
And I can't react
And games that never amount
To more than they're meant
Will play themselves out
Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You'll make it now
Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can't go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I'm painted black
You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It's time that you won
Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You've made it now
Falling slowly sing your melody
I'll sing it loud
------
Extra: lesson from Today's Grand Rounds presentation:
" Crying is not academic, but neither is belligerence."- me.
:-)
Love,
S.
Photos: From Leila's birthday party
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
"I will have poetry in my life..."
This was the poetry scene, where David Jewell's "Delusion Angel" was read. One of my favorites. :-) Yes, I'm still a sap. Love, S.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Eureka (or “Why I Love Book Sale”)
I lay down all my bags and work stuff on the floor…shake my hair out from the tight ponytail, put on my dorky glasses, put on the most comfortable clothes and go to this little nook in the mall called “Book Sale”.
For an escapist in a urban landscape, I find it meaningfully relaxing to lose myself in the piles and stacks of books. It is a rummage of sorts, a free-for-all hunt for that elusive second-hand volume which you can’t otherwise get for less than 200 pesos if it’s new.
I’m a sucker for sales… especially for books. I’m a self-professed cheapskate who has never had a lot of books of my own growing up (unless of course they were text books.).
Whatever I learned, I learned on my own… I never had a teacher, a guide, no one to recommend to me the next Pulitzer prize read that would inculcate the values of the masters… And I suppose, not a lot of people who could talk to me about the finer points of reading the classics, such as Dostoevsky or Nabokov.
(My older cousin, a voracious reader himself, was, but he once told me that I was as fickle as they come, and that I had never stuck to one interest, so that turned me off.)
I would fancy myself a connoisseur, because I had read a little of everything, from encyclopedias, to comic books, to the illustrated books over the years, to graphic novels, and now, just recently, to the classics and poetry. I’d love to someday just be able to have the time to sit down and read through a book without having to worry about work tomorrow. I just plain love reading…
Satisfied, I suppose, she left me alone, and called another of my classmates. I had already read the all the stories in my third grade textbook weeks before, of course. I had moved on to other books. Sadly, I didn’t get to finish the book as English was the last class of the day, and the owner of the book took it home with her.
----
I don’t know why I’m writing about memories from when I was a kid. I’m not even middle-aged yet. *grin*
----
Anyway, I buy a book when I feel worn out, or sad, or just plain tired, usually. Its always a pleasure to burrow into the book shelves, and lose my self in the titles in the stacks. It’s a shot of dopamine right there.
I bought myself a bookshelf supposedly for my textbooks for residency…well, I ended up with books from Alvin Toffler to Tennessee Williams to even…Dacre Stoker (right, Bram’s grandson.haha).
A book is a drug, and I’m a junkie...
When I was younger, I was really into someone who read a lot of books… And you know how I have the tendency to try to do things for a boy if I really liked him (i.e. practice writing in Chinese, learn how to cook)? Well, I tried that…I tried to read books he had already read… so he’d be impressed, and maybe, well, like me too (haha).
It ended badly. It was fun at first, but then it seemed like a chore after a while. It was almost like a race, a competition…it even felt like…studying. *grin*
So I don’t do that anymore….well, maybe I’d read some of the books on his list, but I wouldn’t want that to be the end-all and be-all. The joys of reading is not meant to be of any pursuit of a goal, except of course, that of pleasure.
So help me.
Maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t have to do any catching up. Maybe someone out there might like the books I like too. Maybe he’d go giddy at reading Christopher Marlowe, or drool over the majesty of Neil Gaiman’s work…or, quiver with pleasure at reading Rilke, swoon at the or blush when he reads Shakespearean sonnets… *sigh*
I’m hopeless.
(haha.)
Speaking of books..and sales… here’s a line from my latest acquisition, a novel by Julith Jedamus, The Book of Lies :
Monday, March 19, 2012
Give me a C-, give me a D-, Give me an O! :-)
Got an invite, and this "save the date" from my old batchmates from Post-Graduate internship. :-)
Looks like I'll finally get to go to Cagayan De Oro City soon (and see if its funny moniker is true too. :-))
I'm getting my ticket, and fixing my leave for the 12th of May.
:-) if there's time, I could go home (which is 6 hours away), or I could go to a totally different place and have a Camiguin experience, as well. :-) Yey!
I've been looking forward to going there... and now I'll finally get to do it.
See you, CDO!
~ Love,
S.
Video: Honey 2
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Photo: Promise's tat
Friday, March 16, 2012
Photos: Sunrise, OPD
Sunrise. |
I don't know if my photos are any good, but I do love taking a lot of them.
I was talking to my friend about my blog, and saying that my biggest regret in past blogs was that I didn't put too many pictures in them. That way, if I didn't get to write about something, at least I'll have the pictures to remember things by.
A good picture, supposedly, is worth a thousand words.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Video: Love me Tender
I was doing rounds at the Psych Ward one night during duty, and one of the nurses asked me a question.
"Doc, would you tell your significant other if you had a psychiatric condition?"
Me: (after thinking for a bit) Yes, I would, but it isn't going to be easy...
Him: If i get a mental illness, I'll probably just tell my wife or girlfriend to just leave me...to think of herself first and just get on with her life. Taking care of someone with a mental illness is very difficult, and I wouldn't want that for her. I'd be good as dead.
----
We've had that conversation some weeks ago, and that's what always comes to mind whenever I hear Norah Jones' version of "Love Me Tender"...
Sometimes, during quiet moments, this gets me to thinking. Getting sick with a mental illness can be so crippling, a huge loss in terms of control of oneself and how one feels, sees, or even lives. All the things sensate and beautiful that we as normal people enjoy can become either a frightening reality for them, or a painful burden to carry, for most of them, the rest of their lives.
---
One time, during a consult, one of my patients told me, "Doctor, I want to know what it is to love...to have my own family. Please help me..."
(I'm a sucker for stories, but this was an honest plea. I pray I can always do something good for someone who needs my help from here on end.)
Love,
S.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Kimono ken part 2
Love,
S.
Photos: Lego Star Wars Exhibit
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Comfort food
“Teacher, Teacher…”
My job as a resident entails many responsibilities…quite a variety, actually. I’ve gone from being a program host, to being an errand girl, to being a mouse-clicker for a lecture, and most recently, being a proctor for a modular exam to first year medical students.
There’s nothing to it, really, and I’m not complaining. Where I do my training, they also require us to participate in the undergraduate curriculum, with us residents facilitating some of the activities of the medical students. Last week, I sat in for a lecture with Dr. Cornelio Banaag, on the developmental stages of life. A prominent psychiatrist, he is also known as “The Father of Philippine Child Psychiatry”, and I felt that I could not miss this particular lecture. It was a special lecture…it was videotaped and recorded, as Sir is 76 years old. The coordinators thought that maybe there would come a time when he would not feel well enough to do the commute from Pasig to Manila for lectures, so they decided to make it permanent.
Which is just as well. A Dr. Banaag lecture shouldn’t be missed. All those years of training, and experience really do come out in his lectures. The students were listening in rapt attention, and in the end, he had to field many questions, some of them even pertaining to how he lived his life. They gave him a thunderous applause ( a common practice after lectures) when he concluded the day’s lecture.
(I know I was absorbed…I filled up a lot of pages in my notebook. LOL.)
I think I got carried away… When Dr. Banaag asked me what I thought about his lecture, I enthusiastically answered, “It was very good sir, I was listening the whole time…I even took notes.” He chuckled, and said, “Yes, that is good, but did you think I made an impact on the students?”
(Oops… it wasn’t a lecture for me, I forgot. haha)
I can’t help myself, though. The Eriksonian stages and conflicts have always fascinated me, and I loved how things were both simplified and yet still explained in depth by Sir. And I was sitting in the front row…and it reminded me of medical school all over again.
(side note: I’m currently in the stage of Intimacy vs. Isolation, and I remember this conversation I had with someone a few days ago. I said, “It’ll probably just take a little flick of the finger, and I’m on the Isolation side of the spectrum…” It was partly because of the fact that I couldn’t settle (I was currently busy learning, and squeezing out the juice in life), and the fact that someone I was thinking about already had settled…on settling, on whatever was there…
(My wry thought? Psychiatry explains everything in life, actually. )
----
So this morning, I was proctoring the exam again…handing out the examination sheets, watching over the half of the class of 163 (Mia was at another classroom being the proctor for the second half). Dr. Chua, the coordinator, would transfer in between rooms), writing out corrections, getting asked questions, etc. I even had grown-up boys ask me if they could go to the bathroom.
(Dr. DF’s son, a tall, good-looking boy with a mop of dark curls and beautiful brown eyes approached me table in front and placed his test paper and answer sheet in front of me, and politely said that he needed to “visit the washroom”. By all means, do. My girlie senses tell me that in a few more years, he was going to be one heck of a handsome man, my teacher senses, on the other hand tell me that he was a bright young boy who probably studied hard.)
Anyway, that was that, and it ended 3 hours after it started…which was a good thing I scheduled my outpatient consults to start at 11AM.
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