in UP again

For the nth time in a short time, I am in UP Diliman again, this time for the Physiology Society Annual Convention. And I am so loving being in campus again! Wwwwwhoooooooo hoooo!!

i once wuz here

This is one of the classrooms on the second floor of Palma Hall at UP Diliman, where we had a conference over the weekend.

I felt like a ghost revisiting a fave old haunt, knowing full well that I can't go back to that time and place, yet wishing so anyway.

F4

Even as the country reels again from another typhoon, other kinds of Floods are happening as well.

F1: Flood of donations from generous groups and individuals

F2: Flood of rebuilding and repair efforts for those affected by Ondoy and Pepeng

F3: Flood of plastic, by Miriam Coronel Ferrer, a comtemporary in UP

F4: Flood of memories as I walk thru the hills and halls of the UP Diliman campus

moving UP!

Yup, I'll be moving to UP Diliman this coming Friday, but only for a weekend conference.

Everytime I go to Manila, visiting the old Diliman campus is a must on the really-want-to-do list. And if time permits, I indulge and savor walking thru the Silliman-like grounds, reminiscing the past with nostalgia, as old people are wont to do.

That is why I was quite ecstatic when I learned that the venue for this conference would be UP Diliman and not the usual UP PGH or UP Manila or some other hospital or hotel setting. I would love to sleep in-campus and wake up in-campus again!

they light the corners of my mind

Ever had the experience of asking a casual question and then the answer makes you fall off your chair? I didn't exactly fall off my chair but I certainly jumped out of it a couple of days ago when I asked a colleague, who was operating, when was the last time he was in UP Diliman and he said he was there the other weekend, in the afternoon of September 28. Which just happens to be the exact same date and the exact same time that I was there, too. I thought that was just so incredible! Except that we didn't bump into each other there, as the campus is quite big and at some point he went to visit the current chancellor, Gerry Cao, who is an old friend of his and who was my dormmate in Molave, too. We had such a fun time reminiscing the good old days in UP and before we knew it, surgery was over.

Here's a collage of stores at the UP Diliman Shopping Center that have been there ever since the time I was a student there. As in, that was around 30 years ago! The rest of the stores there have transformed into internet cafes and photocopy shops.

Handog is a gift shop that has changed its facade and logo. That was a favorite 'let's pass by this store muna' place. They had such cute little thingies, books and trinkets that we liked to LOOK at. Yes, look only, no buying.

Jurozen's dresses. It used to be a dress shoppe but I'm not sure what it is now. There's a sign that says 20 pesos per hour and I think that is the internet fee.

Rodic's was a restaurant and still is.

G.Miranda and Sons was a bookstore and still is, too. I have an unforgettable vignette with this store. One afternoon during my freshman year, I was walking along the shopping center enroute to the Church of the Risen Lord to hang out with friends. When lo and behold, there, come rushing down the aisle, were several men wearing NOTHING at all. I can't remember if they had hoods or masks or rubber shoes or slippers. I was just frozen cold to the spot. When the first naked being whizzed by, I saw more were coming and the thought came to me that if I didn't run away I was going to be annihilated. Or turned into a pillar of salt, at the very least. I dashed to the right, right into the open doors of G.Miranda and Sons and sought solace there among the unopened notebooks and blank pad papers.

When the nude parade had passed, and the people had stopped gawking and had gone back to what they were doing, I slowly released my death grip on the bookstore shelves. On wobbly knees I finished the long trek to CRL, secure in the thought that my friends would nurse me back from state of shock to health.

When I got there, they greeted me, "Why are you so pale?"

With whispered words and quivering voice I told the gory tale.

Did they comfort me? Did they say hush hush?

No! They laughed at me as pallor turned to ash.

Next time, they said, the free show I must avail.

I decided then it was a pretty good time to wail.

Ooopps! I didn't mean for those last lines to be like that. They just sort of formed themselves that way. Guess I've been reading too much ancient poetry with rhyme schemes and all. Couldn't resist it. ;-)

What happened was anti-climactic. I thought my friends would comfort me and reassure me that everything would be alright and that those UP people were really out of their minds for doing what they did. Instead they laughed at me and gave me this advice: next time it happens, I shouldn't hide but look. That made me burst into tears. :'-(

luv d lib

SU Main Lib

With internet power and convenience, who needs libraries today?

Well, I do. There are things like copyright laws that do not allow some material to be available on-line. So, no problem. I love libraries. I'm one of the geeky ones who would be happier to spend the day at the library than at the mall.

For example, when I was in college in UP Diliman, I did not own a single textbook. Why? Because my dorm was just two blocks from the Main Library where all the lovely books were stocked so why would I need to buy my own?

Well, actually the real reason was I did not have the budget for buying textbooks. Nor for malling, either. So at break of day and at closing time at night, I was at the Gonzalez Hall, most often at the basement where the textbooks were, diligently lapping up the text or taking notes. Yeah, I didn't have a budget for photocopying, either. -_-

UP Diliman Main Lib

If the basement was for serious study, the topmost floor was for relaxation as the newspapers and magazines were there. That was a favorite place as the windows were wide and open and the breeze and sunlight would just flow in and around and carress us all pursuers of knowledge and truth.

One thing I remember distinctly about the UP Lib was the Quiet. Everybody was reading or writing or doing whatever, Quietly.

Not so at the SU Lib. Terribly not so.

student number

My UP student number was...

Asking for one's student number is tantamount to asking a woman her age which is always bleah. :-( But a doctor can often get away with asking questions that would generally be considered awkard like how many sex partners have you had? Or the precious query, did you fart today already? Like me, for example, the first things I would want to know about anybody would be age, gender, height and weight. Such simple data can give me lots of information like endotracheal tube size, rate of IV fluids, dosage of drugs, and the like. ;p

So my student number in UP was...

There are several fellows from the University of the Philippines in the Dumaguete Writers Workshop presently being held in Silliman. And in our conversations the student number always comes up. For example, my FAVORITE fellow (brilliant mind, beautiful writing), Lambert Varias, has a student number that begins with 01 indicating that he entered UP in 2001. Until now he is still a creative writing undergrad. The reason? It is one whole fun-to-read essay, an entry piece to the workshop. So the student number gives a clue as to how long a student has been in the university. They are sometimes called 'Super Seniors' or 'Magna,' as in 'Magna-nine years in college.'

My student number was...

something that I knew by heart, for three and a half years, which is the time it took me to finish BS Zoology, which is now a defunct course. Yes, even with eyes closed we knew our student numbers as it was our identity there, everywhere we went the only thing they cared about was our student numbers.

My student number is...

something that I have (partially) forgotten already! So here's a clue, to Meloinks, my co-Bisaya and co-MD blogger, I'm old enough to be your mother but young enough to ride habal-habals and go backpacking in the mountains. Can you guess my student number from this?

si sonny, si auring at si sawi

Most people would like to finish college and graduate in the shortest possible time. Perhaps I belong to the weird ones who can’t seem to detach themselves from the academe. I just love going to school. (Ouch, stop throwing that…)

Consider this: after B.S. Zoology, there was M.D. and D.P.B.A., then there was B.S. Nursing and now there is M.A. Creative Writing. Do I have a hang-up about collecting so many letters after my name? I want to defensively say, definitely not. I know those are just letters and I’m a believer in the journey-destination mismatch. I love journeys. And on these numerous sojourns that I’ve embarked on, I have had the privilege of meeting a lot of (tor)mentors, three of whom will receive special mention in this post.

First, there was Mr. Sonny Daria, my biostatistics teacher in UP Diliman. I do not know where he is now but during my college days he was quite notorious in campus for being a terror teacher and there were several complaints from parents because our exams would always be overnight sessions held from 6 pm ad nauseum which meant up to 6 or 8 am the next day. He did not mind how long it took us to finish the exam as he practically lived in his office in Pavilion IV of the then AS building, anyway. The exams were always “open-notes and open-books” and of course, the answers were not in any of the books and notes that we lugged to the exam room.

Mr. Daria was a nutty-Einstein kind of professor but I looked up to him with awe and admiration, which my roommates said bordered on being a crush-ko-si-sir adulation. And why is that? It is because of the way my brain is wired. It is not programmed to understand numerical equations and formulations and the other mysteries and intricacies of mathematics. But Mr. Daria had a way of teaching, which I cannot put a finger on, that made me appreciate, and dare I say, comprehend, biostatistics. I surfed the net looking for Mr. Daria and instead found another blogger who said Sonny Daria was his favorite teacher, too! Yey!

Then after med school and residency, I went to the National Kidney and Transplant Institute for a fellowship and there met the most-feared and most-revered Dr. Aurea Ambrosio, our beloved Nanay Auring who kept us literally on our toes. We were not allowed to sit during the entire surgical procedure. Indeed there were no stools or seats allotted for the anesthesiologist/s in the OR. Oh, our poor varicose veins! We did a lot of vascular surgeries there and we would look at the vein stripping procedures as our unanimous and inevitable fate.

Being a board examiner, Dr. Ambrosio was particularly hard on us in didactics and in honing clinical skills. She told us that she was that way because someday, in case she needed anesthesia, who else would she trust but us? Not long after that pronouncement, her words came true and I remember our senior fellow, Dr. Chiqui, intubating Dr. Ambrosio. I’m not sure if he cried before, during or after the process. When Dr. Ambrosio recovered, we looked at her, at anesthesia, at learning, and at Dr. Chiqui, with new eyes.

And recently, being a member of the Silliman University Medical School faculty comes with the privilege of taking up any course in SU for free. And this is where I met the famous (or is it infamous?) Dr. Cesar Ruiz Aquino when I enrolled in a Creative Writing course. I was very excited to have this acclaimed writer as my mentor but with each meeting I was growing disenchanted because Sir Sawi’s ideas and beliefs decidedly clashed with mine. His abstract and unstructured way of thinking did not help and I would find my mind wandering off during class. Later I would come to class very late or be absent a lot.

Things came to a head during the final exams when I submitted a shamefully execrable paper which earned me a call for a meeting at his office. It was like a “please-see-the-principal” appointment which turned out to be an almost-heated exchange of disappointments and misconceptions which ended up with me saying, “Sir, if you give me an F I believe it is well deserved” to which he replied “That is the only answer that I liked in this whole conversation.” Wow. Talk about intense.

And like a good narrative, there is a denouement to this story. Today we have come to a truce. I have grown to respect his impeccable wordsmithry and accept the complicated way he thinks and (I hope) he has come to acknowledge that my interest in literature and writing is legitimate and sincere.

So, as the debatable cliché goes, the journey is more important than the destination. I do not know where all these road trips I am taking will lead. But I do know that I have met some very interesting persons, mentors, tormentors and fellow students as well, along the way.

run for your life

Here's an important announcement from the webblogging Quezon City Councilor Doc Doray:
_____________________________


I'd like to advertise something that I'm pretty much sure some doctors might be interested in...

It's a Race, with a special category for DOCTORS!!!

What: Takbo Para sa Puso

Who:

5 and 10K Medical Doctor's Category
5 and 10K Open Category

When: May 25, 2008

Where: UP Diliman

How much: Entry fee of P100.

By Whom: sponsored by the Philippine Heart Association

And why? For life!

You can contact runrio for more information.

I hope you could advertise it as well in the next blog rounds. Thanks so much!!!

____________________

There you go, Doc Doray. Keep on runnin' and keep on bringin' other docs along!

banner images: one

the boulevard and the tartanilla

Photo courtesy of Tommy Schulz, a US Peace Corps
volunteer who was assigned in Dumaguete a few years ago.

The boulevard and the tartanilla ineluctably bring me back to my childhood.

It was September 1971 and I was in grade school. My classmates and I spent the whole day swimming in the then clean waters of the boulevard. We weren’t really swimming. We were just playing in the water and chatting about the things that were so important to us then. Our favorite movie stars perhaps. Or maybe that naughty girl in third row. The whole day, yes.

We got out of the water at dusk and I remember shivering under the acacia tree, embracing our own wet selves for we did not bring any towels or a change of clothes. It was just a spur of the moment decision to soak in the sea. Somebody said, “We have to go home now. And we can’t do this again tomorrow. Because of Martial Law.”

Of course we did not understand what Martial Law meant. We huddled and talked in hushed whispers, “What is Martial Law? What is a curfew?” It was so mysterious, so befuddling, so beyond our understanding. For us it only meant that our shriveled palms would have a chance to recover from a prolonged briny immersion before our next sea session.

For we had many sea sessions then. My Lolo Cente had a persistent cough and was diagnosed to have “weak lungs”. I think now maybe that referred to tuberculosis and his doctor prescribed that he take daily dips in the ocean. And so everyday he would go to the boulevard to take a dip and if we did not have classes we, my cousins and I, would go with him and bathe in the sea as well. On weekends our big family of siblings, cousins, uncles and aunties would have real picnics at any of the many beaches nearby.

After high school, I went to college in UP Diliman where to my silent shock and disbelief I discovered that a boulevard did not necessarily come with a body of water. For the longest time I could not accept that Quezon Boulevard was just a street and not a walkway beside the sea.

During summer and semestral breaks we would go home to Dumaguete and stroll along the boulevard, our boulevard beside the sea. The waters were not fit for swimming or dipping anymore, so polluted it had become. So we contented ourselves with riding the tartanillas parked along the boulevard.

The tartanillas again evoke distinct memories of childhood and youth. Even at a young age my friends and I already had "hectic" schedules. Classes here, practices there, meetings and play-ings everywhere. We did not like to ride the tartanilla because they were so slow compared to the motorized pedicabs. We only rode the lowly calesas when there were absolutely no more empty pedicabs to be found.

Today there are only maybe two or three tartanillas left in the city and lately I haven’t seen any of them plying the now very much congested city streets. The only time the tartanillas come out is during themed weddings and fiestas when the newlyweds or the reyna and the princesa would ride the flowers-and-ribbons-bedecked carriages.

This time, however, whenever anyone rides the tartannilla, the objective is never to hurry to the destination. We ask the cochero, " Go slow, Manong, we want to enjoy the ride."