Bottled ※ Brain

Garden in front on Ward 3, taken on a lazy Sunday morning. NOTHING reminds me more of The End of First Year Residency than the prospect of seeing new faces applying for one of the 21 coveted slots in our training program. This limbo, called the “pre-residency,” is the worst of two worlds—the newly-inducted physician doesn't quite know whether he should celebrate his recent victory in the Boards or whether he should study again (as if studying ever ends in our line of work) to prepare. I do not want to go through it all over again. I will call a masochist anyone who claims otherwise. There is a reason why pre-residency is proverbially called The Hunger Games.

I WOKE UP this morning with this view from my hotel room––a huge one, and all to myself. I was picked as one of the participants to the 8th National Writing Workshop and 1st Writeshop for Young Researchers at Sofitel, Manila.

AS A CHILD I only knew of Singapore through its flag (there was a time when I memorized all the flags of the world—the era, for instance, when Czekoslovakia was still an entity) and through the hanging of Flor Contemplacion, then the highlight of national news. Since then I’ve had friends who’d visit the city-state occasionally, just for a few days, and never longer than that, to shop and dine and attend conferences, convenient excuses for free travel. For the last three to five years I’ve had friends, too, some very dear to me, like Kuya John, who have relocated there for work. The pay is better, the living conditions much more humane, and it’s only a three-hour plane ride from Manila. I decided to visit Singapore on my week-long leave out on a whim, thanks to my brother Ralph who encouraged it. “What about Singapore? Let’s visit John,” he said. That night, without fanfare, and with the sole request that I must escape the country, lest I lose my mind; our tickets were booked—never

After a hearty breakfast of kaya toast, soft-boiled eggs, and sweet hot tea with cream at a nearby hawker center at Sembawan Hills, I leafed through the final chapters of Elena Ferrante's The Story of a New Name, the second in her phenomenal Neapolitan series. Lina Cerullo and Elena Greco's friendship is complex, set in Naples and occasionally Pisa and Milan, all of which which make for an interesting story. They seem to idolize, and outdo, each other. Elena, having just finished a university degree, visits Lina at the sausage factory, while avoiding and antagonizing the other workers' sexual innuendos. Elena writes this passage, a beautiful and appropriate description of their unusual friendship. I understood that I had arrived there full of pride and realized that—in good faith, certainly, with affection—I had made that whole journey mainly to show her what she had lost and what I had won. But she had known from the moment I appeared, and now, risking tensions with h

WHAT surprises me the most is the strange, unbelievable chasm of time between my waking up and my leaving the room. Light years away, that void, unappreciated by most, except the very few who hardly have time for anything else other than the painful, occasionally dreadful, sometimes joyful, reality of work. The curtains are drawn, and my little bed is filled with sunshine. Everything is aglow. The house, in its stillness, beckons to be looked at, studied—its nook and cranny, the little specks of dust that have settled on the jalousies—just because I can. I have all the time in the world. There is time for contemplation, for prayer, for smelling the freshly brewed coffee as little drops of it falls from the machine. The phone is quiet, and I am not needed.  So this is how it feels like. My heart sings, leaps, and dances at this strange, new, free world that has opened up.

THE PLAN was to spend the afternoon to study somewhere else. Madame Julie, my January Gen Med senior who has long since become a dear friend, offered to bring us, Racquel and I, to Tagaytay. She did not bother to tell us it was her first time to bring her car to the area, lest we back down. Because she had GPS, we did not get lost. The voice of a lady, possibly Siri's older sister, entertained us throughout the ride. "Turn right. This is an accident prone area." We were thrilled.

BLOCKMATES are forever, they say.

Yesterday afternoon, as I was checking my phone while lying on bed inside my dorm room, still wearing the same clothes I had when I did rounds that day, my roommate barged in, as if in a hurry. I felt spent, with all of me, hands and heart, feeling the heavy burden of the month that was. “You’re not going home?” Tom asked—home being Quezon City, where my brother lives. “Maybe later, when the traffic dies down,” I said.  I watched him pack a few clothes and stuff them into his red backpack. He arranged some of his clothes in the closet before closing it with a sense of finality. “When are you going on duty?” I asked. “August 10 pa. Leave ko na kasi.”  “Wow!” was all that I could muster, until I had gained the courage to ask him where he was spending it. I knew I would falter somehow—my envy would make itself manifest. He told me, and I kept a straight face. “Oh, the whale sharks,” I said, to make steady conversation. Then I desperately wished for a chance to leave the hospital, too, eve