Here You Go, Miriam!!!

Due to my good friend's persistent request for recognition of her unparalleled devotion to a canine being named Balou, I decided to post a couple pictures of the revered being, one with the rightful owner in it sharing a moment with it.

Miriam and Balou have their own love story. They lived most of their lives together in Seattle, reenacted the movie "Sleepless in Seattle" quite a number of times, they had coffee together (of course.) and they sleep in the same room. Unfortunately, Balou is a chihuahua. And Miriam had to leave Balou for this stupid thing called college. The good thing is, she is away from Balou in a very predictable manner, and they get to reunite everytime the warzone (university) ceases to operate (winter and summer).

As stable as this unity is, there is one big barrier to their relationship (aside the obvious human-canine mating barriers discussed in biology and, perhaps, psychiatry)- Miriam does not know where she would end up for medical school. Lucky if gets in and decides to attend the University of Washington. This is a logistically feasible setup, with only a few miles away from each other and a car/train/bus ride away. But what if she gets in to the prestigious Washington University in St. Louis? at her alma mater USC?

This is indeed a great story to follow. I do hope that everything turns out for the best.

Hung over?

So far, this is the worst hangover for me. After 4 straight nights of hepatic abuse and neurologic compromise, I finally succumbed to the crappiest feeling. The peak enjoyment that Jack Daniels, Coke, Heineken, and XX gave me has resulted in a direct reflection peak across the x-axis. I was, officially, fucked up.

I'm not an avid fan of drinking, only indulging in such a socially conditioned activity on rare, warranted occasions. I actually know my threshold- I can still drive from Long Beach to my Cerritos home safely after 3-4 beers (depending on what kind, too). Last night was really different. It was a bad positive feedback effect, just like sickle-cell anemia. The sickle-shaped RBCs cannot deliver more oxygen. Less oxygen, more hypoxia. More hypoxic tissues, more normal RBCs change conformations to its sickle shape. And the vicious mechanism perpetuates. Same here. More JD's, more ineffective decision making. Ineffective decisions= more alcohol. More alcohol=more alcohol. And so it perpetuates.

The day after:

Strangely woke up early. Thought everything was okay. Decided to go to school/lab to finish up lab chores for the week. Ate. The food comatose didn't help.

Got to the school parking lot. Wasn't successful on opening the door. Cherished the situation that is my ass embedded to the car seat. Realized that I was also having an annoying feeling on my skull's temporal area. And it was bilateral. It was a headache. Good thing Sam was with me. So I happily acquiesced to his decision of staying home and taking a nap.

Knocked out for 2 hours. It felt like 20 hours of sleep.

Now I'm energized with a small trace of a hangover. Thank you to Sam, sleep, gallons of water, and a grande coffee. I am here at starbucks killing time before my work. I just finished studying too.

Ugh.

Check this out. This is D'Sound's song, "People are People". I was on youtube just listening to random songs that I've learned to love when I was in the Philippines. This song has a very catchy, melancholic, and quite a monochromatic feel to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDu29rqasnI&feature=related

Some Drastic Lifestyle Changes (For A Few Weeks Only)

During the last few weeks of school, my life was basically at its worst, hectic period. I go to school six days a week with the remaining day (or actually, night) spent at work. It has always been school-nap at home-school-sleep-school. Rinse-cycle-repeat. My only break from the taxing schoolwork was when I'm at my workplace or when I'm passed out on my bed or on the couch (that's right beside my study table at home). Sounds harsh but I got really used to it and the routine proved to be efficient, hence lessening the incidence of burnout. I was like a Carnot Engine- craploads of info into my brain (QHot), then sleep, workout, guitar for a bit (Qout), then taking exams and finishing up on requirements (Qcold). Given the pressure, my physical condition, the environment, and the amount of work, I guess my Carnot Efficiency was close to .70...not bad.

After taking my last exam last Friday morning (that meant 2 hours of sleep and two cups of coffee taken between 7am to 9:15am and the exam that I took for an hour), I was finally done! It's over! All I have to do is worry about the results. I have them all now, and I am disappointed as usual.

Now, after all the madness that is the end of the semester...now what?

It's driving me nuts. It feels weird to have a complete sleep, to actually have time to waste doing nothing, and to actually have the propensity to not look at my planner and not worry about something not being accomplished.

To a certain extent, it feels great. It's my refuel time. It's all about relaxation. It's all about catching up with family, my dirty workspace at home, friends, myself. It feels really great.

It's not gonna last long, though. I am smoothly transitioning to my mcat study mode. I gotta start it soon.

Have a great Christmas everyone!

Vengeance is Pretty Darn Funny

"Hey Rei-rei, can you cover me in ED2?"

"Sure man...Lunch?"

"Yeah. There's nothing going on. Everyone's getting admitted. Doc may want some stuff done on bed 19."

"Got it."

I then checked the patients on the tracker and I did the scut stuff (stocking, checking monitors, getting labs, updating EKGs, etc.) afterwards. After a few minutes of nothingness in a quite unusually chill night in the ER, I was asked to do a couple things on bed 19.

"Hello Mr. Dunce, I'm going to do an EKG on you real quick." The guy was pretty chill and agreed without asking questions. As I was hooking him to the leads, he said " You're too young to be a nurse"

"Oh, I'm not a nurse, sir. I'm just a tech here".

"You must be Filipino"

"Yes sir."

Then this very caucasian gentleman started busting out his lingo skills on me:

"Talaga? Saan ka sa Pilipinas? (really? what part of the Philippines were you from?)

Holy cow. The freaking white man can speak an Asian language. I was quite impressed since he uttered a complete sentence without the slightest trace of an american accent. He sounded just like any other pinoy. So we had a conversation in my own language while I was taking his heart tracing. The conversation turned out being impressive at first to annoying. It reminded me of the upper-class social atmosphere in the Philippines that I have learned to hate.
Parts of the conversation went like this and it was all in tagalog. I'm just typing it in english to save me precious time and battery life since I got a sucky spot at this sucky starbucks at a sucky city close to my sucky workplace. It sucks.

"Yeah, so I went to Princeton for my undergrad and Harvard for my graduate studies. I speak a lot of languages"

"Oh how cool sir. That's really great (do you want me to instantly defibrillate you? I just want to electrocute you in a medical fashion)". "So why tagalog? How did you end up learning my language?"

"Oh I go there every two months. I live in Alabang (a high-end area that I've been meaning to burn a long time ago) and I own an Enzo....you know what an Enzo is?"

"No sir.(I don't give a crap sir. Can I go show the Doctor your EKG? I want him to see a fatal rhythm here by mistake)."

"It's a ferrari. I have one in the Philippines, and I have one here. I left it at work though because the paramedics had to take me here via ambulance"

"Oh. I'm sure it's gonna be okay at your workplace (wait til I get out of work in the morning and I will practice my demolishing skills on it)."

"Yeah. Oh, do you know Henry Sy (a business tycoon in asia)? He's my personal friend. He's got lots of malls here in Texas and he owns a bunch of malls in the Philippines, including The Mall of Asia (yes, that's the largest mall in asia, and it's in Manila)".

"Oh yes, I've heard of him (SIR, I FUCKING GREW UP IN THE PHILIPPINES AND I KNOW HIM.)"

"My family owns a lot of McDonald's here and in Manila and Makati too"

"Oh cool ( I own a nuclear ammunitions factory that will be ready to destroy all your Mickey D's)."

"Yeah, and-"

"Sir I gotta go"

"OK".

I went outside his cubicle, with my eyes rolling, and went to show Dr. Oxman his EKG. Upon showing the EKG, I realized I forgot something to do that's on my list.

"Have you done a fecal WBC test already?"

"Not yet, Doc. But I'll do it right now."

"Send it to lab right away."

"Yes, doctor."

Bingo. The perfect revenge. I forgot I had to do a fecal WBC test on him. What is this test? This is where I prepare a couple of microscope slides and get the patient prepped up in a side-lying position, his underwear off. Then I put on my clean gloves and stick about 2-3 inches of an 8-inch rectal probe. Yes, it's the Q-tip from hell.

"Mr. Dunce, may nakalimutan po ako (I forgot to do somehting, sir)."

The rest was history.

Hoy Nye!

ANG ARTE MO! Don't stress, de-stress! :D Only three more days!

Just kidding. :) Very... insightful! You'll make it!

Study hard! Books before babes! Remember, Med school is your GelPrend!

eye-riz

Physics Finals Rant

I just finished my physics final about 20 minutes ago. Yes, I decided to blog to help me relax my sore brain and perhaps to ponder my fate based on one exam.

Was I prepared for this stupid final? Yes and no. Yes, I did go to the review session last saturday morning (which, by the way, sucked- I came straight from work. That meant staying awake for about 26 hrs...straight), I did the practice problems, did the extra credit problems, and have skimmed through the chapter summaries. I also had a good amount of sleep despite the choppy pattern. Now, no- because I did not go through all the multiple choice problems in the textbook (tell me, is it humanly possible to correctly answer 10-12 problems x 14 chapters?). Now why make a big deal out of the multiple choice questions? Our exam, well most of the content, came STRAIGHT out of those MCQ's. God damn it. The simplest realization, or better put, just paying attention to this ever-present theme in our class never occured to me.

Shit. Is there something wrong with me? Should I rethink my philosophy of work? Now I am really confused. Maybe I should try the "work smarter" school of thought. Maybe not because it may totally change my time-tested ethic of hardcore suicidal work. I don't know.

So our exam was divided in two parts- you work on your own for the first part (a long problem, a bunch of MCQ's, some free-body diagrams, and conceptual questions), and you get in groups after an hour and ten minutes. As always, I only wanted the first part. I DESPISE GROUP WORK (btw, it's different from true teamwork). A felt good while working on my exam, uttering "BAM!!!" to myself after every correct answer. There were some informed guesses too, and the occassional hail mary shots. Then came the group thing- everyone can share answers and "work" together on the same MCQ's for the second time. The 2nd part was worth 25%. I benefited from the second part because it just confirmed my answers and it shed light on my hail marys.

I didn't get one problem, I think it was about radiation heat transfer and thermal conduction. I asked the girl who sat behind me and she gave me her answer. I wanted an explanation for such since I couldn't figure it out. I got a really cocky reply: "I don't do the work. I just know the answers". I said "How is that possible?" when I actually meant " Why don't you go fuck yourself?". She, and the other two girls in our group answered almost in unison: "Oh we memorized it from the textbook".

GODDAMIT they just memorized the fucking letter answers at the back of the textbook!

Who's smarter now, huh?

The whole thing infuriated me for myriad reasons. One, I never thought about it. Two, I was keen on doing the problems more. Three, I could go on forever with a bunch of excuses but whatever. Bottomline- I will suck on this exam and they will get really high marks because they decided to not study the material and I decided to kill myself learning physics. They will get A's for not knowing physics, and I might get a B for working my ass off.

No good deed remains unpunished.

Me No English

Some neat phrases to learn in my first language, Tagalog.

Your mother is a whore- Putang ina mo (Pooh-tung eenah mo)

Who's your daddy?- Sinong tatay mo? (See-nong ta-tuy mo)

Fool- Gago

Rice Cake- Puto

Gay- Bakla

More to come. I'm just bored. That's why I posted half-assed stuff.

Feels Great

Friday morning at 8 am when my cellphone alarm finally gave up on me after 6 successive snoozes in an hour. I finally decided to just get up, go on with another bad day, and suck everything up. This is my morning after a few hours of sleep after being raped by a physics exam, a tedious biostatistics homework, and a shitload of reading for ALL my classes the day before.

I got to school and signed-in to my tutoring hours. Still sleepy. Missed my alarm sound- that waking sound has gradually shifted to a subtle lullaby. I decided to get coffee to counter it.

Sweet...no one to be tutored, and I'm alone in the center. I stared at my coffee cup and spontaneously submitted myself to the reverse effect of caffeine; I fell asleep like a narcoleptic.

The student assistant woke me up and I had a few people waiting for my help on a subject that I haven't cared about in a century. Oh great. These poor freshmen are about to be screwed on their chem final. I started answering their questions like "How do you go about solving this problem?" with red eyes and a confused "Huh? Can I look at the problem again?". It went on like this for a few minutes until I felt the sudden effect of caffeine rushing through my system like that idiot Tommy turning into the gay Green Power Ranger. Sweet. I breezed through the material and was able to make these students happy by matching my answers with the posted correct answers.

It seemed to be monotonous from then. I became numb to the routine (as I usually do every tutoring session) of digesting their questions, giving an answer, seeing confused and clueless faces, patronizing them while jokingly explaining the concepts, and seeing an epiphany on their faces. Woohoo. Big deal. They're probably pretending only. Used to it. I've got academic leeches who have sucked on my blood like no other.

I thought that was the case. I realized that it really wasn't when I heard the best compliment I've got in life. This girl told me with her brightly lit eyes that "OMG the professor never explained to us like you did on how to work out heat and phase change diagrams!" Honestly, I thought it was a joke. I laughed. So they had to reinforce her comment. Feels great to have helped people and to to have known that you have really done something.

Tutoring hours were over. I stayed overtime again. Didn't mind at all. It was worth it.

nice

Report: American Schools Trail Behind World In Aptitude Of Child Soldiers

YAY!

Oh yes, yay I got in into all the classes of my preference. So I'll see you in class if you're taking Molec Cell bio with Lee-Fruman, Biochemistry with Myers, Physio Lab with Sak, and Physics with "I don't care I just wanna get this fucking shit over with", and a weight training class with a fake professor.

I guess it's that time of the year!

NO, I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT CHRISTMAS. It's finals week! Hence the rather unpleasant looking face to the right. Or anatomical left.

THE STAKES ARE HIGH, BUT THE REWARDS ARE GREAT. Yeah, yeah. Fuck my life at this point but if I do really good, it's gonna be on the transcript. Hopefully A's this semester then I tell everyone to go screw themselves while I isolate myself to sleep. Or maybe hibernate.

SURPRISINGLY, I AM NOW ENTERING THAT VICIOUS CYCLE AGAIN! No, it's not drugs, you idiot. Why do I always...always...always effin get attracted to a girl(s) during the most unexpected and (academically) inappropriate times? Now really, fuck my life. Happens everytime. Hard to get it over with but oh well. It's a normal psychological response, and it's perfectly biological. It does suck though because it's a roller coaster. Whatever that means.

I CAN'T STOP TYPING!!! I HAVE TO STUDY! I SAID I WAS GONNA STUDY A FEW MINUTES AGO! Help! Someone gimme a call and tell me to stop this and go study or shoot myself!!!

the homestretch

Only two more weeks left in school. It's definitely crunchtime! So how does my semester look like at this point? It's horrible! I'm all borderline A's in my classes and it so happened that all my classes are graded on a curve- at this point, no one really knows (no one in all of my classes) whether they're having a guaranteed A or a guaranteed bad Christmas break...

It's really depressing (or better put, demoralizing) to see that all your hard work, I mean real hardcore work, might all go to waste in the end. As Cathy Jalali, one of the most influential persons to me and to the adcoms at UCLA-Drew, told me- "just finish strong". So I am trying really really hard to finish strong. Shiiiiiet.

How does my real life look like at this point in the academic year? Equally horrible! I am being raped by my non-academic life as much as school does. It's getting busier at work with stupider (If that's grammatically incorrect, whatever. It's how I feel) shit. Bills and debts tend to interact with my funds in quite an inverse proportional manner. My car is dirty as fuck. My hamper is literally puking out my clothes. My girlfriend is no longer my...girlfriend (but I'm okay though- life's been kind to me at least at this aspect). My cell phone is broken and I wanna destroy it further...physically.

I guess my break is over. I gotta stop the whining and start studying in a few.
It's the homestretch...gotta gun it or die.