Better Blogging

I still have my updated bloggspot!. This new friendster format really suck!

Like a ROCK, when shit happens…

Wednesday is a gloomy day. Predictions spell out mean challenges and offered la morale  of a just and glorious reward if you stay tough, like a rock.

A concept further espoused by no other than apostle Luke (Luke 21:10-19). Staying tougher during tough times is an accomplishment not for thyself but for GOD.

But an HBO movie made it more graphic. It depicted a struggling weatherman, who succeeded in accomplishing great things in his career but flunked badly in his marriage life, in his family and so many other important stuff. Things he tried so hard to mend but never had an iota of success. The movie really evolve on instilling the idea that after all, in this shitty life, one has to chunk some shit.

He was so miserable with his life he even got hit by junk food 9 times (mc nuggets, burger etc..). And then he realized he was often hit by a junkfood because he is like a junkfood- cheap, easily bought, fast, easily digestible but is actually nutrient less and is easy to throw. A very shallow person.

Life is as unpredictable as it can be, a shitty one, that someone has to chunk some shit to live on. There’s no easylife for grown ups, easy life isn’t worth sacrificing, easy life isn’t meaningful. And unlike the whetherman you can never really predict the life as it unfolds. But who cares?

Brazen Lies

Hard Rule #1. Never trust a sweet talker, more so a pretty sweet
talker. If you do, just make sure you’ll enjoy it without remorse.
Better yet play mean. And smile thereafter.

Hard rule #2. Never
trust someone who is perfect- beautiful, who can sing, dance and what
not.Chances are, she already sang, dance and whatnot, for someone else.

Hard
Rule #3. Never trust someone with you passwords or emails. Pretty damn
easy to hack into one’s email now and who knows what lies in your
inbox.

Hard Rule #4. Never give your number to someone you haven’t
seen. Better yet talk personally. That way, you can see what the other
person is doing while you talk over the fone.

Hard Rule #5. Never
believe a dance practice that lasts till 2 am. And if the dance
practice starts early november, make sure she/he’ll pass for a cultural
dancer.

Hard Rule #6. If the text messages are not only
inapproriately abbreviated but grammatically nauseating you’re dealing
with nothing but dumb..

Hard Rule #7. If all of these rules applies to you, smile, brazen lies are common.

Changing Lanes

I saw this coming, but I was never prepared for it.
Change is not only an inevitable consequence, but also a brutal impetus..
Indeed the coming and passing of a once endearing relationship is a tragedy of  circumstances-expected, yet disgusting.
Is it a question of "what went wrong?"
Or was it "You were such an idiot,you know nothing about someone beside yourself"
Academic.But not a futile exercise.
The acceptance of ones tragic and often fatal misgivings is a stormy alley of self guilt and doubts.
Yet in the end, You’re still left with no one, but yourself.
Rude self I should say.
You have to settle with that glaring reality.
You loose some, you gain some.
Shed tears, but bring laughter
Lose one friend, find another.
Earn another friend.
Yes, change is an inevitable consequence.
But it always gives us an impetus,
For another chance.

Paradiso: One Thousand Feet and Below

It was a sight to behold, a requiem to a lip service promise of a paradise  that is limited to the chosen ones.

Indeed the captivation of scenic memoirs  always  follow serpentine and inclined

paths- some at 45 degrees and sharp curves at that. Coupled with critical excitement and an off road Terrano , the journey to such place is as always WYSWIG-What you see is where I go my friend.

And I held my breath in disbelief.  In between two mountains of age old hardwoods and
rainforest, lies a crystal clear stream etched in the architecture of
rocks. The houses on the side where built to augment the beauty that was inherent in the place. The landscape manicured to look as pristine as the waters flowing.

And pristine waters came from upstream waterfall  that is eerrie  and oddly enough,  very cold  to

the skin. We saw three of the nine falls believed to be the source of
the crystal clear waters, and I can only wish the water was not that
cold I can bathe with fairies of the forest. It was three o’clock, but
sunlight could not break through the canopy of the high trees, giving
the place an enchanted tone. If fairies could just wear a two piece
swimsuit….

Hopefully, next time…

Games People Play

Sports was (and never will) be my forte. Except for the compelling scientific evidence of "wellness" vis a vis sport fitness , I could never see any benefit from doing sports-mania in my life. Not until you get two belly lines just above your navel. Then i got to a "Shitty-panic time". So much for the adolescent immortality.

My intention was perfectly clear: I had to shed off this  fat for health and aesthetic reasons, in the most utilitarian way- burning fat fast using lesser time, effort, money and yes, energy. When you reach my age, you gotta save a lot, even effort. Above all, I am scared hypertension, cardiac disease and diabetes that run in my family will catch up with me soon. My blood pressure is hovering in the gray zone. I have to stay in shape.

I clumsily held a badminton racket and acted like I knew something about the game. I then played just one game of three rally sets. I don’t know if it’s just stored sweats that flowed but I can feel perspiration dripping from my eyelids, my heart was beating 120 and I was running like hell all over the court. I was not panting, nay I was actually gasping for air. My joints wobbled and my muscles twitching like electricity. And that was a doubles game. I never played with such intensity and  perspiration before . i was never fit for this  game, but i knew I found a sport  I could get myself into  and sweat it out-for health and aesthetic purposes.

I got hooked into badminton. Now even doing research on the science behind it and creating my fitness program. My blood pressure? 100-110 systolic. I still have 120 bpm during a game. I got sore muscle every now and then.

But even then, Im happy wacking the bird for whatever reason.

Almost boredom

She was a sneaky sonafabitch. Her arrival was camouflage by silence. Her dark, gloomy and murky appearance is always a distaste to  everyone.

I though I’d never face this hateful figure, much less enjoy her company.Before he arrived, my life was such a happy song-well planned, well executed and enduring.I have everything, business is good, friends overflowing. No matter what i do, I seem to succeed.

Then she appeared in my doorstep stealthily, with a stench you can smell a mile away. I have premonition she was coming; my silver spoon falling off suddenly, water spilled for no reason, and headaches. I was in denial. I though she was a mirage, and I tried closing my door. But he keeps on knocking, this sonofabitch.

Then everything seems to fall. Slow days, more bad headaches and arthralgia. Friends dying.Loved ones keep fighting. Business never seem to be right. All i could do is stare, sleep and sigh, everything else is falling I thought. I got more headaches, i don’t know if it was her stench, but I’m allergic to any stench. My allergic rhinitis is not quite smart.

I fumbled on what to do. I could never ask her to leave. i can see that sarcastic smile on her face. She seems to enjoy my predicament. She even asked for half my bed. Half my bed!With a stinking sonofabitch! How can i sleep? It was almost eternity,until i realized She’s here to stay, for as long as i wouldn’t accept her.

Then we started talking. I listened. She will always visit me from time to time she said, especially if I’d been wasting time on so many earthly things. She is the enigma of what i forgot to do in the past and her stench, reminder of what I am before. "You can always enjoy what you have today, but remember what you were yesterday and what you want yourself for tomorrow". "Because if you fail, you can smell my stench a mile away, and i will surely knock again in your doorstep and occupy even the whole of your bed.I shivered.

She is the warning- a recurring, distasteful stench that reminded me of the foolishness I’ve preoccupied myself nowadays.For now I let her have her way. I can sleep on my own couch, which i did before. I called my friends talked to them about my visitor and said sorry If i was a total asshole before. I worked on my finances while sleeping on the couch (I do this before also). All these I did while waiting for the sonofaitch to go. Well, lately I didn’t care. Didn’t matter to me if she’s there or not. I can do my stuff, just like before, stench or no stench. And she went away, unnoticed just like that. That sonofabitch. I wasn’t able to get her name.

Most people around call her"BOREDOM". Maybe it was an appropriate name after all..

“There’s no way but up”

(I wrote this article while
savoring the brutality of starting a practice and endless whining of a slow
start.)

The best assurance one can get
whenever you start a career or something is an old adage that says “you can go
nowhere but up” or something to that effect. I fanatically held on to this belief
since high school days like a messianic prophecy. To a proletarian mind and
Spartan life like mine, the capitalist notion of incentive-driven improvements of oneself thru hard work is ironic. Nonetheless, I survived half of my
lifetime living in such ironies that I am still bewildered of my luck.

Fifteen years of studying and
training did nothing but shatter the idyllic misconceptions I once have about
the doctors and surgeons’ bliss. The childish thought of donning a white blazer
and treating a patient is as awesome. I was so awed I forgot I have neither the
financial capabilities nor the intellectual giftedness needed to attain such
lofty dreams. I went into this profession simply because I wanted to prove not everyone
in my kind has done before me- be a doctor with the least expense I can (financially and intellectually that is ). Everyone think it was suicide in the making. Heck, “I can go nowhere but
up”

Such dreams however grew into a
vision, thanks to my alma mater. It is never confined to the personal and self
gratification kind of success. I’ve finished top of the line training for a
career not everyone in my field will experience- not even in their dreams.
Years of learning and training taught me nothing but to think, research,
comfort patients, teach– all ingredients to the much coveted end in life that
is success. Such were big words, taught in bold letters, eaten in gastronomic
amounts and digested in Herculean way. It is a funny feeling that after the
words found its way into the neurons of my brain I have been deluded that I’d
live in the outside world like a renaissance man. Little did I know, about the
truth that lay ahead in real life Nonetheless, I was deemed ready, so here I
am.

Starting a midstream professional
career is never an easy thing for the not so typical surgeon wannabe like me. I
do not have the inherited practice most other surgeons have. Neither do I have
the fortune to buy a new one. Most people believe though (and I want to believe
too!) that having studied and trained in the best medical school in the country
gave me an edge over the others. What
consoles me ironically again was that “there was no way for me but up”!

Of course being out of the
academe and starting your own practice has its exciting advantages. The thought
of having to take control of one’s time and spend it according to what you want
is exhilarating. I can spend more with what I want most, or the one I neglected
much when I was still studying. Gone where the Sundays where you have to read
and prepare for pre-ops on Mondays instead of having to get Sunday lunch and
dinner with family. I can see non emergency patients on a scheduled time I
created myself. Most of all, I have time to take care of my body while taking
care of patients as well. I can eat full meals in a day and exercise regularly
to maintain a sound and fit body. It is ironic that while we take care of
patients 24/7 in a hospital, we loose tract of our own health in the process.

I am into the practice of my
profession for just barely two months, and it’s neither the blissful stride I once
dreamt nor the catastrophic frustration I’m so afraid of now. Somewhere in
between these extremes is the horrible spectrum of uncertainty I could only
imagine. I wish my practice was as dramatic as the scenes in ER and Gray’s
anatomy or as wacky as unnerving as House’s one liner ironic truths.
Nonetheless, the uncertainty gave me ample excuse to whine and be cynical about
everything I get my hands on and blame it on inexperience surgeon wannabe that
is me. Everyone says that staring a career is shitty enough to make or break
your soul. But no one told that the dividing line between making it and
breaking your soul while starting a career is mine to make.

I bet it’s easier to just look at
it as the paradigms of opposites. The definitions of success (and failure) in
ones’ professional practice defined by simplistic phrases like-great clinic
practice, successful surgeries, acknowledged researches, magnanimous services
to patients and yes, fees enough to buy what we want. The very opposite of such
adjectives and superlatives defines failure in essence. Of course almost
everyone believes that such simple dichotomous definitions don’t exist in
reality. The theory of relativity seems to apply even in the psychology of
success.

My first task then was to define
what success is for me and to plot the course of how I’m going to achieve it.
And of course, since I live in a lifetime (haven’t convinced myself yet that
there is another life I can reincarnate myself), I have to make a timeline. Far
from easy, plotting a voyage on an uncharted lifetime with an inexperienced
sailor that is me is daunting. Even if there were maps and instruments and
weather stations, you simply would not know what will happen until you are there.
Perhaps it’s a continuing phenomenon of defining lines and evolutionary visions
for oneself. But then again, it’s better to have maps or goals than none at
all.

I’m back!!!

I’m back!! kokeblogster and all!
I’d be posting a series of thoughts I made through isolation and boring duties.
Feel free to comment.

Ending up a day with diarrhea

Ever started and ended up a day with an LBM? You’d  probably agree that the CR has the best and hottest seat in the house no wonder.

Ok, I didn’t have breakfast. I swallowed 2 hot cups of coffee before I went to work. Cool but not healthy. I relished 2 pieces of macaroons and then drowned it with coke. I felt full, albeit of the itchy type.On I went to work.

Mid morning.I was served a buko pie with coke (again) plus durian candy someone brought from Davao. I devoured them in less than 15 minutes.Talking about voracious appetite.

I skipped lunch, one because I’m still working and two, I’m not hungry. So I just relished an other cup of coffee. Hot. Addict.

At 4 pm i had my lunch proper. Mouth watering adobong kangkong and fried chicken skin. Then I took a strawberry sundae for dessert. And I said it was a lunch proper.

By 6 pm my stomach is already jittery. I had goosebumps. Best of all i can’t decide if I’d go to the john now or shall I wait for the explosive jumpstart. Too many decisions for my stomach to handle. So I decide I’d go to the john every 15 minutes since 7 pm. By this time, I sat on that wonderful seat 8 times!

Isn’t that wonderful? 8 times for an explosive jumpstart?LBM? Who’s talking about LBM?