Your face

JON BLOOM'S Not By Sight will probably end up as one of my favorite reads this year. Here we read of timeless Biblical stories with fresher eyes. I kept wiping my tears away as I read parts of the book in a restaurant early this morning, as I was eating breakfast. Good thing I didn't know anyone else there, or it would've been embarrassing.

Crushed

I DON'T normally blog about about my inner turmoils—those are the subjects of my personal journals—but, just a little more than two months after this year had started, I'm starting to believe that 2014 is going to be a hard and bumpy ride.

Photobombed

THAT SUNDAY morning was crisp, the sunlight just right for a photo. We were walking leisurely around the neighborhood, looking for a taxi. Manong asked if I'd care to pose in front of the green wall of the house very near his apartment. Like an obedient younger brother I did. The photo was taken, and he was wailing in laughter.



His trick involved organic canine excrement. As in the good old days.

A quiet habitation

PONDERING ON Psalm 91:9, Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote:

The Christian knows no change with regard to God. He may be rich to-day and poor to-morrow; he may be sickly to-day and well to-morrow; he may be in happiness to-day, to-morrow he may be distressed—but there is no change with regard to his relationship to God. If He loved me yesterday, He loves me to-day. My unmoving mansion of rest is my blessed Lord. Let prospects be blighted; let hopes be blasted; let joy be withered; let mildews destroy everything; I have lost nothing of what I have in God. He is "my strong habitation whereunto I can continually resort." I am a pilgrim in the world, but at home in my God. In the earth I wander, but in God I dwell in a quiet habitation.

Unborn

THE HARDEST part of going on duty at the OB Admitting Section (OBAS) is having to interview patients who have willfully aborted their children. They come in many forms: teenagers who think an unplanned pregnancy is going to cost them their future, middle-aged mothers who can no longer sustain another mouth to feed in the household, single women who believe raising a child would be burdensome in this harsh and cruel world.

Happy 58th birthday, Nay!

Happy 58th birthday, Nay! I cannot write a better piece than what Manong wrote for you in 2012. I want to say that I am grateful to the Lord for giving me a mother like you. I can never deserve you.

Jesus was a busy man—and He prayed a lot

MANY, if not all, of us, have so-called valid excuses for not praying. School work—upcoming exams, group works, research meetings—would probably top the list. Stress would be second.

I have my excuses, too. But when I reexamine them, I wonder: are these excuses valid? You see, Jesus was a busy man. And yet He always took the time to pray.

Coffee, puto bumbong, and funny words

THREE DAYS into OB-Gyn, and I miss my Community Rotation already. I'm sharing some photos I took during my six-week stint in General Emilio Aguinaldo (the town, not the hero), Cavite.

Coffee beans being air dried—a regular sight in front of houses and major roads. I guess you can safely say I've become a coffee drinker. I was offered coffee every where I went; it was offensive to refuse. The best cup I scored was at Kapeng Bailen, an unassuming stall just beside the Rural Health Unit. A cup cost Php 10—freshly brewed, which gave my tummy the right warmth on cold afternoons. Of course I had to suffer insomnia at night.

Alice Munro's Open Secrets: eight stories in Carstairs, Canada

JUST FINISHED Open Stories, Alice Munro's short story collection first published in 1994. (And I've convinced myself that I'm on a reading moratorium). The book contains eight stories. All of them mention Carstairs, a town in Alberta, Canada.

What I love about Alice Munro: her writing style, devoid of literary gymnastics, but evoking clarity and complexity at the same time. It's clearly the work a virtuoso of the English language. Its utter simplicity is its beauty.

Also: I get the feeling that a gentle old woman—or maybe my grandmother—is the one who's telling me the stories.

Juan-Wei, the first wedding in my MBB block

CONGRATULATIONS to my good friend Juanchi Pablo and his wife, Vivian Tseng. They got married yesterday. Ah, the start of a new life together! I'm very happy for them.

John Piper's When the Darkness Will Not Lift: a wonderful encouragement for the depressed

WHILE MY PRIMARY disposition is sunny, there are days when I'm down and lonely. This is true for most, if not all, people—part of the ongoing, unpredictable cycle of ups and downs we all experience. Sometimes the melancholia goes away after a few hours. Sometimes it goes on for days, even months, but we go on normally with life. However, there's what we call clinical depression, where persistent sadness already interferes with work or relationship. I know of some people, and I have diagnosed some patients, with this clinical condition. Christians, being humans themselves, are not exempt from this.

When the Darkness Will Not Lift by John Piper is a helpful book for me. Piper asks, "How can we help Christians who seem unable to break out of darkness into the light of joy?" I read it in the wee hours of the morning because I couldn't sleep, my mind wracked by so many thoughts and problems that I wished would go away at the flick of the finger.

Blue Jasmine: not your typical riches-to-rags story

I WILL watch anything with Cate Blanchett on it, especially if it's a film directed by Woody Allen.

Blue Jasmine (2013) is about a former Manhattan socialite named Jasmine (Cate Blanchett), at the time in her life when she's just about to hit rock-bottom. Her husband was charged with, and later on incarcerated for, theft. He has stolen from the government and from other people to further his businesses—think Janet Napoles if you're from the Philippines. Her husband would later hang himself in prison.

And all these leave her with an empty, pointless life—for what could she do, apart from holding New York City's most awaited dinner parties or decorating her home or going to galas? She doesn't have any degree. Her stepson has left her. She is alone in a cruel and unforgiving world. Until, as we see in the first part of the movie, she moves in with her sister Ginger, who lives in a small apartment in San Francisco and waits tables in nearby diners.

The ultimate community immersion: getting a haircut

WHEN YOU SEE ME this week please don't look so shocked. For the first time in 10 or 15 years I've finally changed my haircut. I hope you will still recognize me.
 
Two weeks ago my good friend Casti and I met Ian, the sole barber and owner of Onyx Barbershop, a small, unassuming stall along the highway that connects Alfonso to Bailen. On that visit we had our usual haircut -- semikal dos -- and we paid for half the price. Ian's hands were magical, his eye for detail unparalleled. Ian (who looked a lot like my roommate Bryan Jay) was so entertained by our banter that he offered to shave what facial hair we had. That was a first time for me, and I went home happy that day.

In shirts, shorts, and slippers: our day trip to Tagaytay

IT TOOK us a while to realize the big mistake we made after we had hailed the bus bound for Tagaytay: we forgot to bring our jackets. Already used to the rural community setting, we were dressed in shirts, shorts, and slippers—as if we were headed to the beach. We forgot how freezing it could get in Tagaytay, and the wind was so cold we felt we were being refrigerated.

The quick day trip to Tagaytay was largely unplanned, which was just as well, because sometimes the best trips are those made spontaneously. From Bailen we took the jeepney to Alfonso, which was 30 to 45 minutes away. From Alfonso we rode an ordinary bus (the Coastal Mall route) to Tagaytay. The trip lasted an hour. All in all, the bus fare totaled to Php 40.

Getting the hang of it

AFTER three weeks of living in Bailen I think I may have gotten the hang of provincial life. It wasn't that hard—I am a promdi. It should come to me naturally. I was born and raised in Southern Mindanao, where the malls start closing at 7:30 PM and most people are alseep by eight. Bailen, islands and seas away from where I was born, has its own charms, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to call it a home, albeit for a short time.

Bailen

AFTER MORE THAN a week in Bailen I'm glad I took a friend's advice seriously: bring warm clothing. Included in my luggage were a navy blue sweater I borrowed from my brother, a pair of pajamas, a limiting—and limited—collection of old shirts and pants, three real books, an electronic reader, and a reading lamp.

Albert Camus' The Plague: death is an omnipresent reality

SLOWLY I'm making headway to finish my reading backlogs.

The Plague by Albert Camus is what people have called it—disturbing—because so much of what happens in the city of Oran can happen to any city in the world. People in Public Health or those involved in epidemiological research must read this book. It is by no means a textbook about the do's and don't's in an epidemic, but it reflects the basic human reactions to helplessness: panic, submission, and acceptance of the new status quo. To the people in Oran, the epidemic has become an omnipresent reality.

It has happened before. It can happen again. 

My favorite twins

I LOVE twins. I've always wanted to have one: it's like seeing yourself every time without having to look at the mirror.

I've been called twins with other people, especially my brothers. People in church, for example, still mistake me for Manong; they ask me for legal advice, which I know nothing about. Years ago, my high school classmate Angeli yelled in excitement after seeing my brother Sean, whom she thought was me. I'm called a twin with another non-relative, my forever blockmate Casti, because we sport similar haircuts (semi-kal), and we bear prominent traumatic alopecic scars in our occiputs, which is a grander way of referring to a poknat.

Juan Pablo Villalobos' Down the Rabbit Hole: in the eyes of a clueless child

THE KID Tochtli only wants to own a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus. He's also fond of the Japanese samurai and French guillotines. He likes hats and big words—like "sordid." He lives in a mansion. He doesn't play with other children, but he is properly cared for by servants who do not speak a word—their tongues have been cut off. He gets what he wants. Daily he sees his father's gang members, guns, and prostitutes. He is the son of a notoriously rich Mexican drug lord. He doesn't realize how dangerous his life is. How far can a child's innocence get him?

Joseph O'Neill's Netherland: playing a game of cricket in New York

NETHERLAND is about a Dutch banker in post-September 11 Manhattan. His name is Hans van de Broek, a successful Wall Street analyst whose English wife had left him for London. She took their son with her. He visits London occasionally—he expects for the marriage to work, but it's on the verge of falling apart. Why all this is happening to him is something he grapples with every day. His solitude is so palpable it spills over the pages.