Photos: Quiapo and Sampaloc streets

Video: I Wanna Dance With Somebody

I had a hard time sleeping last night... I had been on the couch all day because of the flu, but I couldn't seem to fall asleep. It was the 18th...and for some reason, I was kind of anxious... vicariously so.

At one point, I saw on CNN that Whitney Houston's friends and family were holding a "home-going" service for her, and many of the industry's artists were going to be presenting. In between little naps, I'd gone through announcements, to TMZ's spoofs of Bobby Brown's performance, until finally...I got to the ceremony itself.

"Wow," I remembered saying to myself. There was indeed a lot of love in that room for  Whitney "Nippy" Houston. Kevin Costner's speech was particularly amusing. And so was Alicia Keys' song. Kind of impromptu, but hey, that's talent. 

I grew up on Whitney Houston songs... my earliest one being "The greatest love of all", which my grandmother would let me sing at her CWL meetings when I was a skinny little runt of a kid...and probably the most fun one being the time when I lip-synched to "I wanna dance with somebody" when I was around 6 years old for a kiddie pageant (oh I loved being on stage! :-)). 

My favorite would have to be The Bodyguard's "I Will Always Love You", which up to now, I can still sing from start to end (but only when I'm alone, and only when I'm in a shower-like environment.) ;-)  The Bodyguard was released in 1992, and I was in grade school that time... it was the first movie I watched in the movie theater alone. I remember that it was packed, so i ended up sitting on the aisle. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed it, most especially "I Have Nothing". :-)

I like "Saving All My Love for You." too.

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I loved Whitney Houston. When you're a 90's kid, like me, you can't help but have her songs in your feel-good playlist. She was a familiar voice who always reminded me of home and good times growing up. 

RIP, Whitney.

Love, 

S.

Valentines Day.

Found photo. February 2012. Manila

A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy.

George Jean Nathan (I'd feel the same way, if I were a man. But is that ever enough?)

Love, S.

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 I spent the first few moments of Valentines day in the callroom, getting an endorsement from Dave, my Junior Resident on-duty regarding a patient he saw at the ER. Love-related. 'Happens everytime...', I went. Won't be doing much this Valentines Day... but I'll be watching Mamma Mia tomorrow night with my best friend and her family. Pretty good timing. 


I have nothing against Valentines Day, in fact, I love the whole commercial success of it all. not really. I'm glad some people still believe in it though...I need some form of mild remedial classes in it, though, although I'm still a case of the hopeless romantic heebie-jeebies. So help me. 

The Vday Series: A different perspective

After a long (and I do mean long), I went home and crashed on the couch… literally. I woke up a little disoriented, and hungry…and craving for Baked Zitti with meat sauce from Sbarro. Specifically. 

The sun had set and my plans of going for a walk and casually taking pictures (of people on the street mostly,of course) were dashed, and I instead decided to go run some errands and finally buy those folders like I had planned all week.

The National Bookstore was crammed with the regular paper-loving crowd… Valentines’ Day themed décor was all over the place. I suppose Valentines’ Day preparations were in full swing by now, considering “D-Day” is next week. I chuckled to myself. Hearts and red were all the rage, and there were stands everywhere selling everything from buttons to heart-shaped boxes to well, Valentines’ Day whatnot.

I somehow wandered onto a stand with a couple of self-help books on it. “Lovedecisions: A dad talks to his daughter about love relationships”. I remembered wrinkling my nose. I have a weird aversion for self-help books, because I’ve always thought that they’ll only say what you want to hear. Perhaps it is my stubbornness, or my impression that these kinds of writers just want to make a quick buck,  but really, I don’t know the real reason why I don’t really like them.  Still, I got curious… I’m a daddy’s girl kind of girl , but my father and I never talk about boys. Not as a lifetime partner or relationship or anything like that. Maybe in retrospect yes, but I don’t feel comfortable enough talking to my father about boys I currently date. (I think he’s pretty strict, which helps sometimes, especially when I don’t like the guy.)

I got a text message from one of my co-residents asking about dinner.  I was supposed to meet someone earlier, but it didn’t fall through, so I said yes. (And yes, I had him go over to Sbarro because of that silly post-nap craving I had.) Anyway, yes, I DID order baked Zitti with meat sauce. We were just hanging out, so it was kind of cool. He was supposed to stay off carbs, I found out later, but anyway, it was ok.

The conversation got down to Valentines’ day, and he asked if I had any plans. Apparently, he was organizing a “Singles Night” kind of thing with us single people in the call room, as there were a few of us there. I told him about one time when I had to brave the Valentines Day throng of people in MOA (The SM Mall of Asia) one Valentines Day. It was my friend Floyd’s birthday, and he was inviting med school friends, me included for dinner at Racks. I didn’t know where Racks was at first, so I had to go looking for it, and that meant running into Valentines Day revelers, of all forms and sizes…and ages.

There were couples in “couple shirts”, girls bringing all sorts of flowers, most of them bouquets. There were lola and lolo types wearing the same color shirt (98% of them were wearing red), there were whole families celebrating Valentines day together (all three generations, mind), couples were wearing “arrow shirts”, i.e. “mama/papa” and all that… nevermind. 

Valentines’ day is not really a big thing for me, I suppose, as I am kind of jaded. I recounted my above experience to RG as seeing Valentines as almost comical, a highly-commercialized holiday that was only propagated to increase horticultural and stationery sales the world over. Defensive, aren’t I? Well, I suppose. In my less than prolific dating history, or flower-receiving history, I had either had someone I liked give me the roses that I wanted (but he ended up breaking my heart), I had a friend give me roses (but I didn’t like him), and I had someone I really liked give me…well, let’s just say it has been only a partially-satisfying receiving history, and it seems I haven’t gotten it out of my system yet…

Anyway, RG laughed when I told him that story in my usual zany way, and then he told me that he had at one time during Valentines’ day, when he was getting flowers for his then girlfriend. He was at Farmers’ Market on Valentines Day, with a bunch of other guys who were also getting flowers for their ladies. The place was jam-packed, and everyone was hurrying, but surprisingly, there was not an irate customer in sight, he said. He told me that there seemed to a collective feeling of excitement and, well peace, as every guy there was happily content waiting their turn, eagerly awaiting their chance to get the blooms they had ordered to please their lady love.

(Oh boy, here’s another romantic. Haha.)

I suppose that was it, if you were doing something for someone you really loved, then nothing would be too corny, nor too burdensome for you to make the effort. I sincerely believe that. So it got me thinking, that even though I won’t be spending Valentines Day as a…ahem Corny holiday, at least I’ll be able to see things from a different perspective this time, that, well, people, when in love just want to make the people they love happy too.

And that’s good enough for me.

Love,

S.

P.S. Off the record? white roses mean “I’m worthy of you.”  Now those, I wouldn’t mind having for Valentines Day. :-)

Photo: Hide and Go seek

Hide and Go Seek. February 1,2012. Bocobo,Ermita, Manila.

The streets near where I live have a whole lot of things happening on them... I'd love for one day to just wander around and discreetly snap pictures. They're not all pretty, but they're so rich with people, and all the things they do. 

On the way to "Badminton Wednesday", I came upon this group of kids playing hide and seek...this one was particularly crafty. He had his eyes open the whole time, while he was doing the countdown. :-) And his green slippers that were 4 sizes too big and on the wrong feet? That was the detail that I only noticed afterwards. 

I wonder what his name is...

I think he's an "Oliver", but for all I know, he could be a "John Cena". :-)

(In these streets of endless possibilities, who knows?)

Love, 

S.

"The art of description"

The heavy scent of Dama De Noche blooms envelops the areas on the corner path which I take to get home every night. It is a curious smell, one would think that a place as far removed from rural scents and sounds as this part of Manila was, you would expect nothing as delicate, or as dainty.  Yet where the flowers are, I cannot tell yet. At certain times of the day, the scent is there, barely perceptible, but seemingly floating, an invisible nocturnal cloud which I imagine to be various shades of pretty ochre…

:-)

On that walk home, I was only paying half a mind to the “ochre breeze”, as I was busy keeping up with the barrage of messages on my work phone… as I rounded the corner, I nearly bumped into this massive hunk of muscle of a man.  From the periphery, I only noticed his legs, tanned trunks of sinewy muscle (could I have possibly seen the corded anterior tibialis? I think yes.) stemming out from white, expensive-looking Nikes. Up and up, he was wearing shorts, with the seams just cut off at the knee, a manly length, ensured to maximize athleticism and show off someone’s “body of work”.

“Hi,” he said.

Curious, I looked up from my red distraction of a phone… it took a while for me to see who it was, as when I looked up to see who the other person was, my gaze had to travel from my eye level …his chest (which I imagined to be lean and broad, judging from the comfortable way his dri-fit shirt was stretched over it), still upwards, until I could see the face from whom that one word greeting came from.

“Hey.” I said, surprised. There was no one behind me, but I was still considering that he might have been talking to someone else over my head.  My, he was tall, over six feet tall of muscle and manliness…and he said, Hi.

Cool.

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A little while later, I found myself in Book Sale, one of my favorite places to go in the mall, sniffing a book called “The art of Description”, by Mark Doty.  It was a book on just that, description. Putting into words just how we see things in the world, which, I believe sounds easy enough…until you start to do it.

(It’s not so easy, you know. Try describing the sensation of looking into someone’s eyes when you feel the deep stirrings of love that you can never tell them about, or try describe the colors of sunset, or even just the “reflectivity of the bay on an August morning”.  :-))

Well, it seems like a self-help book, but I cannot discount the fact that it has mellifluous words in it, and that is even a bigger pull for me. I just like to get lost in the sights and sounds of the wordplay.)

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My recent interest in honing my skills in “painting with words” was sparked by a very recent academic endeavor.

Last week, I went on rounds with my mentor to see one of his patients on the pay floors. It was about an hour long, and all I did was sit and observe. 

(Learning from the “masters”, is an active process, you really have to go out of your way to see them in action, as in Psychiatry, being asked to observe is not something that happens every day, regarding the very confidential nature of most of our work.)

I tried to learn from the experience, taking in all I possibly could, as much as my sensate faculties would allow me.  Everything had a purpose, the relaxing, comfortable atmosphere which he made in the patient’s hospital room, the way he positioned the family members, the way he placed himself in his seat, the modulation in his voice that he practiced, they were all for a purpose. I also observed how the members of the family acted, how they spoke, how they moved. I think I even had to subconsciously memorize the expressions on their faces while they were telling their  versions of the story…

Afterwards, Sir discussed the case with me. The afternoon’s learning session was to be focused on “what I saw.” The “mentoring” was very informal, mind you, we were outside the gate, and he was smoking, while he had me recount…and describe what it was that I had seen during the rounds.

I made the same mistake of thinking it was easy.

(Haha.)

My initial attempts at “describing” what I saw (My mentor and I talk in English, which works for me, because I think I would be at a loss for words to describe the episode in Tagalog) were met with, “You’re not describing, you’re making a cognitive judgment…Now, try again.”

“Observing and describing is very important…that is the best way to learn Psychiatry…”

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It took me a few more tries to actually get to “describe”, without “judgment”. At first glance, one would likely think, “Describing is easy enough.”, but why did I have such a hard time doing it? My mentor has a very eclectic way of thinking, and it’s never easy to really “get” what he wants you to say. He challenges me, but in a good way.

 Hence the book…

:-)

Like I always say, there’s never a boring day in Psychiatry.

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Oh, and about the super tall, muscular dude, I’m afraid to say it didn’t go anywhere. Flattering as it may have been that he was making the first move (he waited at the bend to see if I would reciprocate), I didn’t. My head, and my heart was simply too full, and my stomach too empty to think of any possible dalliances. :-)

And so I walked home. Looked out my 27^th floor balcony, and mused about the delightful possibilities.

So many things could still happen. :-)

Love, 

S.