quack doctor

why

2009-10-25T21:40:00.003+08:00

how come everybody around me is losing weight while i'm going in the opposite direction?

why???

wag na talaga sana

2009-03-17T23:54:00.003+08:00

i just have to post this again after i received a call.

anakngkabayo nagparamdam ka nanaman. bakit ba di ka na lang manahimik sa sulok mo gaya ng pananahimik ko sa sulok ko. di naman ata mahirap gawin yon. pinili mo ang pinili mo. wala ng bawian. desisyon mo, sana mapanindigan mo.

kung kinakain ka ng konsensya mo, wag na, sayang lang. pero kung makakatulong ito kahit papaano, ayos lang ako. isa pa, matagal na panahon na yon. tumanda ka na, tumanda na ko at nagtanda tayo. kung hihilingin mong maging magkaibigan tayo uli, sana wag na lang. tutal masaya na naman tayo sa buhay natin.

ano man ang dahilan mo para magparamdam muli, tingin ko tama na yung mabuhay tayo sa mga sarili nating mundo.

i'm afraid, my sentiments are still the same.

guilty

2009-02-19T21:48:00.004+08:00

i'm guilty of not visiting my own blog for the past few weeks but checks my facebook everyday.

i'm guilty of not updating this blog as often as i should.

i'm guilty of not reading atticus' blog and just found out that she moved to the other station which i'm not a fan of. sorry atticus.

i'm guilty of going to work with the worst hangover in my life and passing it off as a migraine attack.

i'm guilty. but i'm happy!

now i have two

2009-01-01T18:00:00.006+08:00

in a previous post, i was looking for a hello kitty snowball/ snow globe to add to my "collection". in one of my trips to the mall before christmas, i found the snow globe in gift gate. there were two types available but i had second thoughts of buying because they were out of my budget and left the store empty-handed.

on my second trip to the store, the other globe was already out of stock and the one on display was the last piece. all second thoughts flew away and i went home with empty wallet.

i think i'm going through my second childhood, looking for things which used to make me happy when i was a child. and if i'm going through my second childhood, that also means, i'm growing old...not!

i just like to remember those days when everything is simple. and the snow globe collection and hello kitty are my links to those days.

happy new year to everyone. may you have your own snow globe to help you get through the not so simple days.

bunker hill bunny

2008-10-06T20:26:00.002+08:00

here's another favorite cartoon i chanced upon in cartoon network a few days ago. they don't make cartoons like this anymore. and i still cannot appreciate those anime cartoons... i guess that shows my age bracket.

my favorite line in this cartoon..."if you can't beat them, join them."

is this heaven?

2008-09-08T17:43:00.001+08:00

after one flight cancellation and endless hours waiting at the old domestic airport, my trip to basco, batanes via asian spirit (a.k.a. !%$&@%$*) airlines, finally pushed through. from 4-days & 3 nights vacation, i was down to 3 days & 2 nights because of the cancelled flight.

thank God, it was the only setback in my vacation.

will let the pictures talk...

i guess this is what you call heaven on earth.

gimme gimme gimme

2008-08-19T21:20:00.005+08:00

imagine going inside the bathroom and while you're sitting in the throne, you see this at the corner of your eye. it was really creepy when i saw this statue inside the common bathroom in cafe rallos.

i've been looking for this cartoon for a long time now. one of my favorites...

pizza

2008-07-13T16:54:00.005+08:00

i have a sudden craving for pizza. a thin crust pizza. i called up shakey's delivery and they said i have to wait for an hour. aarrggghhh.

i remember during my recent vacation to palawan, a friend recommended that we eat at mc coy's. it's a local pizza place and i must say, i wasn't disappointed. in fact, i was so happy with their thin-crust pizza, B and i went back the next day instead of trying out some other place. their pizza was at par with shakey's but their pasta is so-so.

i'm so hungry i could almost taste it. and i still have to wait for half an hour.

iya

2008-06-21T16:37:00.001+08:00

my youngest niece, angela, has no nickname. although a few weeks after her birth, somebody suggested her nick to be iya (short for iyakin), her dad, my eldest brother, didn't like it.

who would have thought this baby was born preterm? her mom has APAS so she had to be delivered earlier than usual. morbidity and mortality rate is higher for mother and baby if babies with APAS moms were delivered on term. in fact, her mom had a very complicated CS when angela was born that her uterus had to be removed. so no more baby brother or sister for her, just one kuya and ate.

right now, her mom is starting to make plans for her 1st birthday on september. although i wanted her to have a hello kitty party, but nobody else wanted it. i think they're leaning on a tinkerbell or fairy theme.

since i volunteered to buy the cake, i'm thinking of getting a hello kitty cake...sa akin pa rin ang huling halakhak!

new book

2008-06-06T08:10:00.006+08:00

a new book from david sedaris! can't wait to get hold of one. but i still have to check if i can afford the hardcover or if i have to wait for the paperback edition. but the paperbacks are usually released after a year. mahirap maging mahirap.

i hope the book would be worth it. i loved his other books. they're great reads when you're feeling low and need a good laugh.

dymo

2008-05-20T22:20:00.000+08:00

back in the 80s, my mom brought home a myna bird. it was still a baby then and my mom had to feed it (i don't know if it's a male or a female or do birds have sex at all) coz it couldn't feed by itself. my brother christened it dymo, after the label maker.

somebody told us that if taught, dymo could talk and so everybody did their part talking to him (i think he's a male). everybody was teaching him to say good morning, hello and of course our names. others taught him to say pangit. i tried teaching him to whistle the sexy whistle.

one afternoon, less than a year after we got dymo, as my dad was calling me (i think he was angry at me), my sister heard someone else shouting. dymo, at that time, uttered his very first word...and it was my name! maybe because my name was the most repeatedly called in the house for errands, reprimands and everything, it was the name he always heard.

soon enough, he started saying good morning, kamusta ka, kumain ka na, hello (when the phone rings) and of course, pangit! he could bark too with the dogs. and when he would see me, he would whistle ;-)

for years, he was our entertainer, conversation piece, pacifier for crying babies and so much more. a lot of visitors who met dymo wanted to take him home. some kids begged or threw tantrums just to bring him home. almost all my friends from grade school to med school met dymo and one of the first things they would ask after not seeing them for a long time would be dymo.

a year before my dad died, in 2003, dymo left us. he was 18 years old, i think. i was in my post-grad internship and was living in the dorm at the time. one weekend i was home, i saw a small wooden cross in our garden. i asked why it was there. my sister told me that dymo had died and my dad buried him there. she said she forgot to tell me. it was a very sad day.

nobody would whistle at me anymore.

i saw the myna birds in crocodile farm in palawan and kinda felt nostalgic.

same time...

2008-04-16T20:49:00.003+08:00

i suddenly remembered this song which reminded me of the movie. i tried to look for the movie so i could download it. instead, i found this which is good enough.

but i'm still looking for the full length movie.

snowball

2008-03-04T22:04:00.000+08:00

Cool Graphics @ Graphics99.org

for a while now, i've been planning to start my own snowball collection. so far, i have one. but if i include this hello kitty snowball picture, that would make it two! still a long way to go before i could call it a collection.

i wonder where i could get a real hello kitty snowball...

as if we're not sick and tired of looking at x-rays, day in and day out, VVV and i x-rayed ourselves, courtesy of a mac book in the power mac store.

i wonder when i could have my own mac book...

ash wednesday

2008-02-06T23:30:00.000+08:00

i didn't know that today is ash wednesday until some crazy friends called me up to greet me a happy birthday. although my birthday is still a couple of months away, my friends have marked every ash wednesday as my special day since i've got a birthmark on my forehead.

today is the only day of the year that i'm not so unique. on this day, i just look like the rest...with a black mark on the forehead. although mine isn't shaped like a cross, it's like a small thumb mark right in the middle.

the other 364 days of the year is another story. i get to hear people asking one another if it's ash wednesday when they see me. but some do ask me directly and my answer would vary from "it's not wednesday today." or "the lenten season has just finished." or "no, it's not." do i get irritated? not really coz i've gotten used to it. and some people are not catholics so they didn't know better. for the catholics...well...

a couple of surgeons have tried to convince me to have my birthmark removed. they have listed all my options or ways they would remove it without leaving a scar. one even volunteered his plastic surgeon son to do it and he would pay for the procedure. another told me that mine is a pre-cancerous nevus so i have to remove it. a part of me wants to but there's a bigger part of me that wants to remain different. it's one of those things that makes me, ME.

but for today, at least for most of the day, i was just like everybody. not until i went to the hospital chapel to have my forehead marked with ash and the priest strategically placed the cross below my birthmark! i was unique all over again.

greetings

2007-12-25T22:29:00.000+08:00

A BLESSED CHRISTMAS TO

EVERYONE!!!

you hold in your hands...

2007-10-07T20:04:00.000+08:00

taken from the back label of san mig light

it's that time of the year again...but i don't think i'd be one of the crowd. my drinking buddies all went AWOL. my tomador college friends who introduced me to this drink are all in the US. vna is in the US too, for the whole month of october. frd is busy with her new found passion. kt is not a beer drinker. as for me, i no longer enjoy drinking as i used to.

haay, i feel so old...

thingamajig

2007-10-06T00:35:00.000+08:00

i got my very first ipod a couple of days ago in the power mac store in greenbelt. since i'm a newbie in this type of thingamajig and i wanted to be sure it was really working, i asked one of the personnel to try it for me before bringing it home.

rather than listening to the guy's instructions, my friend J and i horsed around with their laptop and accomplished these instead!

how's my new gadget now? it's still in the box and have yet to try it since i brought it home. i'm still thinking of a name for it. any suggestions?

only in the...3

2007-09-01T20:14:00.000+08:00

where else do you hear radio stations playing christmas songs as early as the 1st of september?

earlier, while i was in a cab on my way home, i heard that mushy christmas song by martin nievera. very soon, i will be hearing george michael's song, last christmas, which i'm sure you've noticed, is not a christmas song!

i hate smart

2007-08-04T16:43:00.000+08:00

i used to say "i hate smart" for a personal reason before...but now, i really hate smart.

last month, i've finally decided to avail of the Smart Bro broadband service. my friend, J, has been teasing me for a while because, according to him, i am the only one he knows who still uses dial-up. applying for a connection was very easy, in fact, 2 days after i applied online, somebody contacted me that i could already pay so that somebody could come over to my house and fix the connection.

that's when the trouble began. a month after i paid for the subscription, i still didn't have an internet connection. though somebody did come a week after i paid, the connection didn't last for a day. and the vicious cycle started: somebody coming over to fix the antenna, then after a day, there would be no connection. at first, i was very patient about it, but after two weeks, i became homicidal. i made friends with the company's customer service representatives. i called them almost everyday, to no avail. they used the same lines when i asked what was wrong. they would either say, they're still coordinating with the concerned department or that a feedback from the contractors were not yet in.

i think i've been stood up by the contractors at least three times. the schedulers from Smart said it was the contractor's fault. however, the contractor would tell me that they didn't receive a report that something was wrong with my connection. i asked if i could terminate my contract since i wasn't able to use it and technically, the contract hasn't started yet, they said i have to pay the remaining 11 months of the contract. that's bullsh*t!

when i couldn't take it anymore, i finally wrote a letter to their customer care last week. here's an excerpt:

I am tired of calling your hotline and hearing your customer representatives telling me the same thing over and over again. I wasn't able to get the names of the customer representative I talked to but if you check your records, i think they would be there, as well as all the calls I made and my complaints. I think I have been patient enough and frankly, my patience is running out. In my line of work, time is very important and I've been wasting my time calling your hotline for nothing. Plus, I'm not getting my money's worth.

I don't know where the problem lies but your clients are not happy with your service. Smart is a very big company and everyday, I see your advertisements everywhere. However, you are falling short to the expectations of your clients. I've talked to other people who use Smart Bro and I found out that mine isn't an isolated case. Please look into this matter.

yesterday, the contractor came to my house and changed the antenna. my internet connection is working now. for how long? that remains to be seen.

universal law

2007-07-13T23:57:00.000+08:00

a friend forwarded this email to me and everything makes sense...

Law of Mechanical Repair: After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch or you'll have to pee.

Law of the Workshop: Any tool, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

Law of Probability: The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

Law of the Telephone: If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal.

Law of the Alibi: If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the very next morning you will have a flat tire.

Variation Law: If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will start to move faster than the one you are in now.

Law of the Bath: When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings.

Law of Close Encounters: The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with.

Law of the Result: When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, it will.

Law of Biomechanics: The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

Law of the Theatre: At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle arrive last.

Law of Coffee: As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, you boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

Murphy's Law of Lockers: If there are only two people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.

Law of Rugs and Carpets: The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich landing face down on a floor covering are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpeting.

Law of Location: No matter where you go, there you are.

Law of Logical Argument: Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

Brown's Law: If the shoe fits, it's ugly.

Oliver's Law: A closed mouth gathers no feet.

Wilson's Law: As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.

thank You

2007-06-30T23:50:00.000+08:00

i almost ignored her complaints. while i was waiting for my mom to pick me up from the hospital, she called me up. she said she would like to have her blood pressure taken coz she could feel her heart beating like a drum.

i almost told her i would get her blood pressure when we get home. i really wanted to go home early that day because i wanna try a new game in my pc. if i did just that, i think i would never have forgiven myself.

when my mom arrived in the hospital, we went to the ER so i could borrow a BP apparatus and a stethoscope since i don't have mine with me (radiologists don't really need those things). her BP was 120/80 mmHg which was normal, considering her age, weight and other co-morbidities. that was her usual BP, by the way. then i auscultated her heart. that's when i realized my mom wasn't just over-acting. her heart beat was really fast and the rhythm was irregular.

i looked for an IM resident in the ER and asked him if he could check on my mom since i couldn't just order an ECG there. the ER wasn't my territory. on ECG, my mom's heart rate was in the 150s which was way above normal. there were also some irregularities, i.e. premature ventricular contractions (PVCs). considering my mom's medical history, it was possible that she was having a heart attack at that time.

a cardiac monitor was immediately attached to her, they inserted an IV line and gave her medications to slow down her heart and prevent progression of her condition. a work up was done to totally rule out a heart attack and determine the cause of the SVT and PVCs.

thank God her cardiac enzymes were normal. the only thing that was abnormal was her magnesium level. it was below normal which could have caused the PVCs. just the same, they kept her in the hospital, corrected the deficiency, adjusted her maintenance medications and made sure it wouldn't happen again...knock on wood.

during that time, i kept thinking, what if i insisted on going home? what if it was really an MI? what if? then i realized, the what ifs were not important. i made the right decision. what prompted me to do that is, i think, Divine Providence.

thank You.

clean fun

2007-06-21T22:30:00.000+08:00

during a recent visit to boracay, B and i savored every second of our very short vacation leave from our respective jobs. from a party of four in the planning stage, only the two of us pushed through with the trip. and fun we had...GOOD CLEAN FUN! (i think i have to emphasize that, lest some people start imagining things.)

we didn't stay in the posh resorts in station 1 but opted to stay in the less expensive resorts in station 2-3. we tried to do everything our budget would allow, from island hopping to sailing. and when we got tired of the beach scene, we started to explore the island, this time, from the inside.

though i've been to boracay before, it was the first time that i went beyond the usual fare. we hailed a tricycle to take us to mt. luho, which was a great spot. at one point, during the climb, the manong asked us to hike a few meters coz his tricycle was having a hard time climbing. it didn't matter though, coz the view from the top was worth it. we also went to the butterfly farm, puka beach, etc. we even went to the dead forest. it was dead. period.

one of the highlights of the entire vacation was the happy hour, i.e, buy 1 take 1 alcoholic beverage. we tried to take advantage of it by starting at around 5 pm, but only after we were finished with the isaw rounds. and by 9 pm, which is the end of happy hour in some of the bars, i would be a little intoxicated. so by 10 pm, i would be snoring away! that, for me, is plain simple fun!

my next stop...batanes!

question # 2

2007-06-16T22:42:00.000+08:00

got this from grey's anatomy ...

if you knew it's your last day on earth, what would you do?

definitely, i wouldn't go to work.

and if it's a wednesday, hear noel cabangon sing for the last time.

other than that, say goodbye to family, friends and even enemies.

that's it for now.

bahala na...

2007-04-07T14:55:00.000+08:00

ang sarap ng buhay!!! i'm on vacation from friday to monday with nothing to do and with no definite plans. i could play the sims2, diner dash, etc. till kingdom come...well, till monday, at least. what kept me going for the last few weeks was the thought of this long holiday. i refrained from getting "sick" and skipping work.

haay. i know i should be remembering His sacrifice. I do. but in between, or most of my time, i'm just gloating the fact that i don't have to go to work until tuesday. so now, i'm blogging again courtesy of my ate's pc. hoping that friends still visit my blog after a month's absence.

last march 1, i officially started my 2nd year of training. hooray!!! two more years to go! i'll be finished by 2010, gray hair and all. wow. for those who has an inkling on my age, don't do the math anymore. =)

after months of whining, i've decided to finish this training, happy or not. i've realized (i.e., somebody pointed out to me) that what i feel is not important. what's important is i finish what i started. life is hard these days and my mom is not getting any younger. and so, i'm staying...unless, of course, i win the lotto jackpot.

by 2011, i hope to start my career. i'm not going into subspecialty coz that would take another 2 to 3 years. i don't think i'd like to endure that anymore. no way!

as i always say, bahala na si batman!

fire scare

2007-02-05T20:50:00.000+08:00

a few days after christmas, my mom called me up at work telling me she was on her way home. it was around lunchtime and my mom doesn't get off from work till 5 pm. she then told me that a fire broke out near our place. from her description, the fire was about 2 to 3 houses from ours! i didn't waste another second and went home with her.

it was a long ride home. my mom and i tried to amuse each other with stories and just about anything. but from afar, we could see a big black smoke and couldn't help but think it might already be our house burning. stuff like burning houses, i only read about in the papers or see on tv, but never imagined it could happen to us.

the house we're living in was built way before i was born. my parents built it when they were just starting a family. it's not big but it was enough for us. it was built to last a long time, sans fire or maybe a really major earthquake. if our house was destroyed, it was as if another memory of my dad was being erased.

when we finally got to our place, our street was filled with fire trucks. thank God, the fire was contained on the warehouse where it started. and it wasn't 3 houses from ours, which was what our maid earlier reported, but instead it was around 10 houses or more. still, we were very lucky. if it happened on a windy day or if the chinese volunteers didn't arrive on time, my mom and i would have had a homeless new year.

pinagpapala pa rin talaga kami. =)