Putting my scanner to good use

The technicians told me my printer-scanner-copier is broken and is beyond repair. I tried printing some pages: an error 44 appeared on the screen. I had ordered another printer — an HP Laserjet, this time —and I was certain I was going to throw the three-in-one Brother device away when, of course, it proved itself somehow useful, still, It can copy and scan— both wirelessly and with an actual physical wire connected.

This led me to a resolution l am almost sure l will break sooner or later: I will put the scanner to good use.

I remembered the work of Jason Polan who died in 2020. I followed his blog, “Every Person In New York," where he posted drawings of people he met in the city. He aimed to draw every single person in New York — a quixotic quest that was also heartwarming. On the side bar of his unpretentious Blogspot is a note: "When the project is completed, we will all have a get together.”

I dreamt of using a scanner when I could not afford it yet. Part of that desire was to create something like Jason Polan’s website. But my scanner has largely been unused: instead of using the flatbed screen, I would simply take a picture with my phone and convert the file to a PDF.

Jason did not live to see his dream come true. Six years later, I am still reading his website, his small blog, written during the days when the World Wide Web was a much happier place.

Dot com

May is the month when I get reminded to renew my domain name registration. Web addresses are temporary. One rents them, until such time that the subscription expires and, if another party is interested, this web-based real estate can be owned by another entity. 

For me, the ritual of renewal signals the passing of yet another year. The domain name, bottledbrain.com, has been registered under my name since 2010. Previously, this blog could only be accessed through the address, http://bottledbrain.blogspot.com. (If you type the address in the web browser, you will be redirected to the dot com page -- which is essentially the same website.) It was Manong Ralph's gift to me. I was unemployed, penniless, still in med school. I asked Ate Kate, sister of my friend Wegs, for ideas on how to set up the domain name, and she gave me a referral to a Cebu-based company called Dreamcode Domains, to which I'm still subscribed.  A minor glitch happened in 2018: my domain name registration had expired, I couldn't contact Dreamcode Domains, and was forced to register a dot org address. 

But those were glorious days of the internet. People wrote in their websites. They got to know each other and made connections through shared interests. They left comments and linked to other sites. The internet was a growing, vibrant community. Blogs, or personal websites, in other words, were an important component of that ecosystem. That community began to crumble when social media replaced these personal websites. Many blogs became silent, or were replaced by companies that profited off them. People posted and interacted in Facebook-gated communities. Blogs were essentially forgotten. I'm oversimplifying things, of course. We know the internet's history is more nuanced than what I had outlined, but I believe that's the gist of the story: the blogs were taken over by social media, people simply got disinterested in them. 

But I kept on blogging because I like having a space in the web, a little corner I can temporarily own. Hardly anyone visits here now, I suppose. I stopped checking the web traffic years ago. I actually like the silence. 

I still check blogs. I read them regularly. I enjoy them and learn so much from them. These blogs are quiet islands in an algorithmic sea of social media falsehoods, hate, and pride. They are quiet cafes playing jazz music and serving hot coffee personally prepared by the owner, not run-of-the-mill, machine-prepared, AI-generated Americano. I'm over-dramatizing, but I hope you get what I mean.

Here's to blogs! May they survive another year! 

Busy week

This space has gone quiet for many days. Today, while it's still dark, I'm compelled to key in word after word to make coherent sentences. Blogging gets easier the more one does it. I find it a useful, enjoyable exercise for my writing muscles. 

The reason for the silence is generic: I simply had more important matters to attend to. Work, both clinical and academic; some family errands; and my hobbies. 

Last week, I was the overall chair of Kaalam 2025, a research forum in med school. As the college's research coordinator, the event made me proud. My students surprised me. They worked hard on their proposals. Their posters of completed studies were interesting. What gave me the most pleasure was seeing them get excited with research -- which can feel like a burden, a bureaucratic hurdle to overcome. Many of them approached me and asked where they could get their manuscripts published. It was a good day to be a teacher. 

Auntie Eva and Uncle Lars joined us for dinner at home. Manong and I spent Christmas with them in Hässleholm, a place I have to Google just to make sure I get the dieresis correctly. With them were Auntie Ailene and Uncle Rod, relatives I was meeting for the first time. Auntie Elsie, Tatay's second cousin, also joined us. She only lives next block, but the last time she had visited our house was a decade ago. The dinner was wonderful. We asked Auntie Nanic to prepare tinola with native chicken ("free range chicken," I told Uncle Lars, in case we sounded racist). I promised Auntie Eva we'd prepare it for her. It was Nanay's first time meeting my father's distant relatives. Just a month ago, we hosted Ate Nina and Jacob, visitors from Copenhagen. In both instances, Paul loved the international crowd. He literally got a Swedish massage: he kept asking Uncle Lars for a belly rub. 

Today is a Sunday, our church's anniversary. There's a special worship service in the morning, followed by lunch. I'm playing keyboards. Last night, Saturday, I was with Jason, Noynoy, Lance, and the music ministry, figuring out the proper chord progression on an otherwise familiar song: "Only By Grace." I'm excited for Auntie Morena's response song, "I See Grace," which we'll be playing. I went home a little past 8 in the evening, but I enjoyed the extended time of bonding with the church family. Many were busy arranging the stage and setting the place up.  

What else is there to write about? 

I'm still on Thoreau's journals, a quintessential read for bloggers. I've been reading Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro, my favorite Canadians. I enjoyed Anuk Arudpragasam's The Visit, a short story in my copy of The Paris Review. I look forward to my physical copies of magazines -- which also include The New Yorker and the London Review of Books -- which PhilPost delivers in bulk, every three or four months or so. In an ideal world, I should be receiving my New Yorker magazine weekly. But I have access to the online version; it doesn't feel unfair. Reading an old edition, say, from December last year, is like getting a missive from the recent past. Many articles in the magazine are timeless. 

I rediscovered Bones in Netflix. I watched the series in Star Movies, over cable TV, in high school. Now I treat myself to an episode once in a while; I can pause and repeat as I wish, without the ads; and I'm sure that each episode ends on a happy, if not hopeful, note. I miss the ads, though. In general, I miss cable TV. (We still have Cignal cable, bundled with our internet subscription -- but it's never the same.) Dr. Temperance Bones and Special Agent Seeley Booth are an interesting pair. I'm on Season 1, Episode 16: their friendship is blossoming.  The series makes me wonder: shouldn't the forensic analysis be done by pathologists? 

Why I've been remiss in posting anything for the past weeks

I know, I know. I should write something here. What happened to the supposed "weekly newsletter" I'm supposed to churn out regularly? Life got in the way. I have a life outside this blog, you see. What a liberating, comforting thing to write about. The remaining days of 2025 are a hazy mix of memorable meetings with old friends (not old old, if you know what I mean, but people I've known for many years),  travels to places that feel different to where I live, a deluge of work in clinics and the academia, with several things in between, and an ever-growing tsundoku, which includes a brand new ESV study Bible, a heartfelt novel about piano competition and friendships by Riku Onda, a meditation on Psalms by Ray Ortlund, and many more. 

So here's a quick update. And like this lady from Kariuzawa, 40 minutes (?) from Tokyo, I say, "Hello!"

How to resize embedded photos from Flickr

Some website housekeeping, in case I forget. 

If you were here this week, you must have noticed that the photos have not been loading properly. I figured, with some AI help, that it could be due to this CSS/xml script I added to automatically resize the image widths of my embedded Flickr photos. 

/*----- POST IMAGE -----*/

    .post-body .separator {}

    .post-body .separator img {

      max-width: 100%;

      height: auto;

      margin-bottom: 15px;

    }

.post-body img,

.post-body .separator a img,

.post-body iframe,

.post-body video,

.post-body embed {

  width: 100% !important;   /* always match the column’s width */

  max-width: 100% !important;

  height: auto !important;  /* keep the correct proportions */

  display: block;           /* eliminates stray inline gaps */

}

/* === EXCEPTION: keep Flickr photos at their native width ============== */

/* Full-width for regular images and the usual video hosts */

.post-body img,

.post-body .separator a img,

.post-body iframe[src*="youtube.com"],

.post-body iframe[src*="youtu.be"],

.post-body iframe[src*="vimeo.com"],

.post-body video,

.post-body embed {

  width: 100% !important;

  max-width: 100% !important;

  height: auto !important;

  display: block;

}

/* Let Flickr’s own script control sizing */

.post-body iframe[src*="flickr.com"],

.post-body a[data-flickr-embed="true"] {

  width: auto !important;      /* keep native width */

  max-width: 100% !important;  /* still responsive if wider than column */

  height: auto !important;

  display: block;

  margin: 0 auto 15px;         /* centre + bottom gap */

}

  .tr-caption-container {

      margin-top: 10px;

      margin-bottom: 15px;

    }

    .tr-caption-container td {

      width: 300px;

    }

    .tr-caption-container td img {

      max-width: 100%;

      height: auto;

    }

    .tr-caption-container .tr-caption {

      color: #555;

      font-size: .9rem;

      font-style: italic;

      background-color: #eee;

      padding: 5px 0;

      border: none;

    }

I did some tweaks—the closest I've been to vibe-coding—but AI couldn't seem to grasp the situation. With some common sense, I realize the issue could be the caption container. I never put captions in photos; I describe the pictures in the text. I deleted that part of the code and retained the following.

/*----- POST IMAGE -----*/
.post-body .separator {}
.post-body .separator img {
max-width: 100%;
height: auto;
margin-bottom: 15px;
}

/* === EXCEPTION: keep Flickr photos at their native width ============== */
/* Full-width for regular images and the usual video hosts */
.post-body img,
.post-body .separator a img,
.post-body iframe[src*="youtube.com"],
.post-body iframe[src*="youtu.be"],
.post-body iframe[src*="vimeo.com"],
.post-body video,
.post-body embed {
width: 100% !important;
max-width: 100% !important;
height: auto !important;
display: block;
}

Problem fixed—but I don't claim credit entirely. 

Solitary walks

 

Craig Mod describes himself as a writer, photographer, and walker. He takes solitary walks all around the world, mostly in Japan, where he has lived for more than twenty years. His book, Things Become Other Things, is largely based on those walks, a distillation of his writing much reflected in his website. I thoroughly enjoyed his walking memoir. His prose is terrific. His wisdom and kindness radiates through the pages. He shares about a life based on a scarcity mindset and discovers, when he lands in Japan in his twenties, that people in that country exist with a mindset of abundance. The closest Japanese word for it is Yōyū. As far as I understand it, the Filipino concept of kapwa seems to approximate what it means—sharing one’s life with others; the neighbor is an extension of one’s self.

Craig is so interesting, and I cannot recommend subscribing to his newsletter—it’s one of the best there is. I’m subscribed to Roden and Ridgeline. He writes about things that resonate with me: cameras, book printing, solitary walks, and humanity. His thoughts about living in an age of distraction are wise and generous.

He also gets me thinking about walking and biking, things I can possibly do in my hometown. Nature is just around the corner—we have mountains and lakes and seas and valleys. And, in all honesty, I haven’t explored my city completely. (A few days ago, my classmate Jeff drove me home from Daphny’s birthday party, and I was surprised that thriving neighborhoods now exist in places that used to be devoid of human dwelling. I told him, “Sigurado ka nga Marbel pa ni, Jeff?) Craig’s photography is amazing, too! He works with Leica and the iPhone; the photographs he features in his newsletters and his book are topnotch.

How strange it is that we never walk as we ought. When one’s foot touches the ground—one foot after the other—the spirit is connected to the ground, the mind is alert, the soul is comforted. But then, there’s the heat and humidity, and the clear and present danger of South Cotabato drivers who can squash you to pieces.

Life happened

I know. I don’t post here as often as I should. When I do, I hardly write anything at all. I post fillers: random photos of my daily grind; quotations from books and articles I like to commit to memory; summaries of my meditations; epiphanies and random links to miscellaneous items I hope to return to but don’t. When I scroll through my blog history, I’m surprised that I’d posted about a film I would have otherwise forgotten if I hadn’t written about it in the recent past.

In the early days of this blog I wrote many entries each month. There were years when I’d post something daily. It was fun. Updating blogger.com was enmeshed in my routine as toothbrushing; my day wouldn’t be complete without it. And then I gradually skipped it. The short of it is: life happened. And the internet became a dangerous place. I became more mature and private, relishing the absence of web footprint, while the world—including my circle of family, friends, and acquaintances—was only discovering the joys of sharing their lives. I joined the counterflow to the prevailing emergence of social media, which initially showed people around my private space in the web. Later, Facebook would essentially render my blog dead. I’m not around Facebook myself. My account is deactivated, except for the moments when I feel the need to poke around the Palengke to buy a cheap bottle of fountain pen ink.

But I still love my blog. That does not preclude my intermittent questioning about its existence. I’m surprised that some people still ask about if I’m still at it—blogging—a tell-tale sign that they haven’t visited in a long time. I don’t mind. I should at least post something substantial—meaning, an article longer than two paragraphs and a photo—once a month. I realize that this act of writing builds muscle. On ordinary days I write scientific articles, edit my students’ and residents’ research proposals, but I should write about other things, using my other writing muscle.





I also still like blogs and read them. I visit Dooce.com, many months after Heather Armstrong’s death. I learned about her death while I was on my way to the airport. It affected me, having known her and her family. By “known” means “having followed, tagged along, read about her life”—but that was, and is, the closest thing one can get to understanding a life shared online. I do log on to The Old Reader, my free RSS reader, which points me to, among other blogs, Paradox Uganda, about a doctor-couple in African who have chosen to share Jesus to part of the world. Their posts lead me to prayer. I manually type in LaVie Graphite in Safari; I appreciate the writer’s meditations, plus the fact that he uses pencils, typewriters, and notebooks. I visit Kottke.org; Jason points me to interesting parts of the web. His curated interests are far better than AI-generated algorithms. I visit The Homebound Symphony because Alan Jacobs reminds me what blogs can be; I also get teaching tips from him. I visit JosephPascual’s Livejournal; it has’t been updated in a long time. Life, for him, probably also happened, but his photographs remain beautiful and timeless, even if they feature people who smoke and look weary of this world. As a doctor, I’m obligated to tell you that smoking is dangerous to your health.

I’m blogging about blogging because I recently just renewed my dot-com domain name. My older brother Manong Ralph gave it to me as a gift many years ago. He just turned 40 yesterday; I’m 38; Sean, my other brother is 35. Bottled Brain is 24.

But we don’t feel old at all. 

Website was down, but it's running now

For the last 4 days, this screen showed up instead of my actual home page. My apologies. There was a delay (not my fault) in processing the renewal of the dot com domain, but that has been fixed. 

Under new labels

Did some spring cleaning here and re-organized the major labels. 

• Books/Reading: My latest reads, book recommendations, and thoughts on the writing life.
• Blogging: In which I share my latest CSS tweaks and general thoughts about blogs, which, according to many, are dying. I disagree.
• Daily: The daily grind. Also known as the "wastebasket" category, in which I clump posts that I can't otherwise categorize.
• Faith: On Christianity, theology, and spirituality.
• Film/Music: On movies, TV shows, and music. 
• Medicine: All things medical. My own experiences and reflections on internal medicine and oncology. Might also contain slide sets and links to journal articles — so it's easy for me to keep track.
• Pens: Fountain pens, pencils, paper, and notebooks.
• Travel: In which I share stories about where I've gone.
• Typewriter: I love typewriters. They don't make them anymore.

Removed photography and journals because I clumped them under Daily. Watching+listening is now under Films/Music. I removed links entirely. 

Because this post is about my tweaks in this blog, it's categorized under Blogging.

Updated blockquote styling

Used ChatGPT to make edits to the CSS code on blockquotes. I wanted a vertical line to the left side. I applied this update to the Blogger HTML. The result looks clean!

Keep on going

There are days when I think about shutting down this blog. Nobody reads blogs these days. I prize my privacy. I have rediscovered the pleasures of keeping a prayer journal in pen and paper, which has its own advantages: I can write anything I want without anybody reading it. I have become rather critical of my own writing—which can be a good or a bad thing, depending on the time of day. I cringe when I reread what I have written. So often, I forget that I have written anything about a subject at all.

But I realize, too, that writing for a potential audience here has been a habit of many years. Whatever I post here is meant to flex my writing muscles. Blogging helps me metabolize my thoughts and experiences for the reading pleasure—I hope—of others. I hardly edit my posts. The process I employ in writing a blog is different when, for instance, I submit a piece for an anthology or magazine. Those instances rarely happen.

I do not blog as frequently as I used to. Maybe I should.

Prayer and piano, gold and New Zealand

 Quick updates: 

1. Read Timothy Keller's Prayer. I imagine that I would go back to this yearly to remind my soul of the privilege of coming to God as one would to his own loving father. 

2. Reading The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. Gold digging, a murder mystery, and New Zealand! Excellent writing, too. Catton is the youngest winner of the Booker Prize. She won when she was 28. 

3. Still on prayer books. Reading The Collects of Thomas Cranmer. The more I read the writers from the past—Augustine, Calvin, Luther, Owen, Edwards, and the Puritans—the more I realize their breadth of wisdom. It seems to me like no idea or philosophy can truly be called original. They can be challenging to read, but the effort of putting in the work is well worth it. Consider this prayer of Cranmer, which distills doctrines from Romans and the Gospel: 

Almighty God, give us grace, that we may cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, (in which thy son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility;) that in the last day when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the holy ghost now and ever. Amen.

4. Learning to play the piano. Our teacher is Ma'am Deborah, wife of Pastor Richard, who visits our church for missions. My recital piece is 'Tis So Sweet To Trust in Jesus. Reading music is a lot like learning how to read letters again. My goal, and my brother's (who also takes similar piano lessons), is to be able to play the hymnal. I'm looking for an upright piano. I have my mother's blessing that I can install it in the living room. Any leads? 

Performative cruelty

Adrianna Tan, originally from Singapore, whose blog Popagandhi I have followed since college, writes about leaving Twitter and shares her thoughts on social media in general.

I am done, I think, with the performative cruelty of early social media. No more dunks, no more subtweets, no more yelling. If I am angry about something, and there are many things to be angry about, I plan to log off and count to five and go for a walk and write about it later if I am still angry about it.

Her term, "performative cruelty," hits it right in the spot. When Twitter and Instagram were starting, I found myself in a growing crowd of excited users. I itched to update my feed constantly. I followed writers, famous people, and random people I shared common interests with. But getting older has allowed me to gain better insight and to appreciate the value of restraint and privacy. I decided to "log off and count to five and go for a walk" instead of living my life online. I rediscovered the joys of keeping personal journals that nobody else will read. 

Since then, I haven't been around social media that much. My Facebook is deactivated most of the time. I only log in when I need to buy used inks on the fountain pen group on FB Palengke. I'm still on Twitter, a mere passive observer. The most I do these days is to "like" tweets in order to bookmark them for later. I archive my photos on Flickr, and write here when I feel like it. 

"Life is surely muted and compromised...": on the pandemic life

From a blog I've just subscribed to, La Vie Graphite: an eloquent meditation on pandemic life:

Enduring these months is a learning experience of what to eliminate or change. There are shortages and there are pinched resources. Less money, in the face of inflation and reduced pay, but less to buy. Three full tanks of gas in my car, in six months. Having less causes a discipline of needing less. As the workplace began requiring a weekly on-site workday, I’ve simply treated my department like a quarantine: A straight-out eight-hour day, with granola bars and thermos of coffee. There are no places to go for lunch, anyway. Then it’s become two days on-site. More granola bars for the perpetual motion. I just want to get the work accomplished, plain and simple. Perhaps it’s an imposed austerity, but the workplace is the place to get work done; there is no more socializing, and it’s hard to tell how much longer the situation will last. I’ve noticed myself working faster and more strategically, as I cram all I can into those hours. Working from home is no less industrious, but it’s much safer. Most of us are under pressure to make the best of a bad situation. I’m grateful, at least, to be working. Life is surely muted and compromised, but I’m always brought to step back and consider this context when I see the clusters of those encamped in the city park with no place to call home. The pandemic forces us to learn to not take tomorrow for granted.

On blogging

I stumbled upon Alan Jacobs’s blog. I’d been there before, but I hadn’t read it with sufficient curiosity to keep me going. Until now. An author, university professor, and blogger, he writes about cultivating his blog as a kind of a garden. He uses his blog to “generate and try out new ideas, get feedback from readers, develop the ideas a little further…” He writes about blogging as someone who seeks to understand this medium. Reading him is inspiring and instructive.

Part of me wishes I’d thought blogging through. When I published my first post in 2004, I didn’t think Bottled Brain would live long—at least, long enough to be older than high school students. Had I been a wiser 16-year old in that internet café in the row of houses near the UP Shopping Center, I should’ve planned out what content to put out. I could’ve chosen to write about a niche topic rather than post flotsam and jetsam about books, pens, faith, family, travels, and medicine. I could’ve planned to turn my posts into book chapters, which I’d subsequently publish. 

But I didn’t. Today the blog looks more like an online diary than a well thought out website. Perhaps that is why I find it so charming. Because it is my space—my own dot com domain—I can write anything. My friends and family are my audience. There’s no pressure to please or impress. There’s a sense in which I write for myself; my delight in the writing overflows to delight others, too. That is my hope.

What I can learn from Alan Jacobs is to make sense of my logorrhea. One of these sunny days I’ll find the time to organize my posts. Surely, several themes will emerge: my experiences in medicine, my thoughts about Christianity, my fountain pen collection, and so on. Maybe I can do something about them.

Moving forward, I envision more posts more about medicine, medical education, medical humanities, biochemistry, and technology in this space. I should also post more quotes from books I'm curently reading. Who knows? I might just develop new material from these! 

Innovative ways of disseminating research: an argument for blogs and podcasts in cancer research

I talked to Filipino medical oncologists about innovative ways of disseminating cancer-related research information last Saturday. I argued that, as part of knowledge translation/mobilization, it is important that researchers, clinicians, and people involved in knowledge generation and dissemination must creatively, proactively, and intentionally think about how to share their knowledge more effectively to their colleagues and the public at large. I talked about blogging—academic blogging—as a tool to accomplish that. I also spoke about podcasting—using recorded audio to tell stories—and conducted a workshop on how to record and edit audio files using Audacity. I've never done anything like this before—much less through an online interactive platform. Many thanks to Merck and to Dr. Mary Manalo, my boss in the research committee of the Philippine Society of Medical Oncology, for the opportunity to talk about a topic so very close to my heart. I love reading blogs and listening to podcasts. My presentation was an overflow of my fascination. 

Here's a copy of my slide set. 

Revisiting old haunts

With some free time for myself this Christmas season, I revisited blogs I used to subscribe to. These websites flourished in the days when the internet was kinder. Most of them are now dead or dying.

I was in college when I started blogging. The year was 2004. The place was an internet café past the parking lot of the UP Diliman Shopping Center. I did not own a personal computer. At 16 years old, I had many ideas. I wanted to tell the world about them. I was an English major, fresh out of high school from a quiet town most people in the big city never heard of. Realizing I could never start a newspaper column for national syndication, owning a small patch of land in the Web thrilled me. The design and coding, the posting, the linking to other websites fascinated me that I did them all for free. The process was the reward.

That seems like ages ago. This blog is now 17 years old—older than my inaanaks. I am now a doctor, more mature in my faith and thinking, more circumspect in my posts. I write this from my own laptop, connected to my own internet connection. I don't remember that last time I’d been to internet cafés. I suppose they, too, are things of the past.

Two days ago, I sent a link to my Christmas post to a colleague from the faculty. She asked me what Bottled Brain was. I said, “It’s my personal website. Nobody knows about it, except for close family and friends.” That remains true. I do not completely know what my personal blog is about. A workable definition is that it is an online journal where I write about my daily life, my meditations on God and Christianity, my books, my patient encounters, my fountain pens and inks, and many other things besides.

In 2021 I did not feel like writing at all, but force of habit kept me going. I pray I do better in 2022.

Jason Kottke wrote that the decline of the Blog should not be a cause for lament. But I grieve for the disappearance of my old haunts, in the same way I am saddened by the closure of a favorite restaurant or the burning down of an old building. Nevertheless, the old has gone—but not completely. And if you, dear Friend, have been dropping by my small patch of land in the vast, chaotic, noisy Web for the past years, I suppose you realize that, too. Blogging is not dead and will likely live on quietly, to give us joy and company for the years to come.

339th

Year 2020 is a great year for blogging. Since January 1, I have posted 338 entries. It is, of course, nothing to be proud about, but it functions as a landmark of sorts for me—a reminder, in a way, that time moves quickly. December, after all, is right around the corner. 

Updating this semi-secret space in the web has become a part of my daily routine since I began blogging in 2004. A blank entry is like an itch that demands to be scratched. To get things done—a technical paper to write, a book chapter to study—I post something, then move on to more important matters. I say "semi-secret" because even in my immediate circle of friends, nobody pays too much attention to blogs anymore. When I meet people from way back, they would ask if I'm still blogging. They are surprised that the site is still up and running. 

Facebook, Instagram, and recently, Twitter, absorb most of the people's internet-reading time. The advent of these social media platforms led Jason Kottke to write in 2013 that "the blog is dead, long live the blog." 

Instead of blogging, people are posting to Tumblr, tweeting, pinning things to their board, posting to Reddit, Snapchatting, updating Facebook statuses, Instagramming, and publishing on Medium. In 1997, wired teens created online diaries, and in 2004 the blog was king. Today, teens are about as likely to start a blog (over Instagramming or Snapchatting) as they are to buy a music CD. Blogs are for 40-somethings with kids.

But kottke.org remains as vibrant as ever—a testament to the fact that perhaps, just perhaps, blogs are here to stay. But who knows, right?

To this day I do not know what to make of blogs in general, how they are defined exactly. Are they forms of journalistic reporting? Are they art forms? I certainly never think of Bottled Brain in those terms; those are, I believe, too presumptuous. Surely, photos of my handwriting cannot be considered art! Perhaps the closest workable definition of the blog is that it is an extension of my personal journals, almost like an online diary—and nothing more.

Nevertheless, the beauty of blogs as a platform of information- and personal-sharing comes from their relative detachment to the reader. In contrast to the noise of social media, this blog is a venue where I can think aloud without bothering anyone unnecessarily. When I post something here, the whole world does not need to be alerted, unless you have subscribed to a mailing list. Not everyone cares about fountain pens or books or literature or medicine. If you are a reasonable person, you must have already figured out what you like, or don’t. 

Occasionally, though, friends remember and drop by. Even strangers stumble upon this neighborhood once in a while, writing kind words of encouragement. They do not need to stay long, but if they do, they are welcome. 

Writing the Pandemic

I'm honored to be a panelist in an online creative nonfiction writing workshop organized by the Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center (BNSCWC) of De La Salle University, Manila. It's called "Pathography: Writing the Pandemic." 

My gratefulness overflows towards Prof. Marjorie Evasco, the Filipino poet, writer, and fountain pen enthusiast, and Dr. Joti Tabula, my former senior in Internal Medicine, poet, book editor, publisher, and enabler of many things literary. Knowing them has opened a welcoming community of doctor-writers to me. "Thrilled" doesn't quite cut it; I am looking forward to the two-hour intimate online meetings where we will discuss the creative works of our select participants, doctors from all over the Philippines. Some of them are very dear friends I've not met in years. It is, in a sense, an excuse for a reunion. 

I'm basking in joy as I read the submitted pieces.

Journal of a Lockdown No. 25

Old house-turned-restaurant in Quezon City that I had stumbled upon while walking alone last year. I miss walking around. 

I'm running out of things to write about but intend to keep writing daily for the whole duration of the Lockdown which, I understand, will likely be extended. The evidence seems to point to that end: more time apart will lead to a better flattening of the curve. I'm not sure what it's doing to my curves, on a personal level. When I gain weight (and I've been snacking in between meals to pass time, since my brother loves the Spanish bread from the neighborhood panaderia), the first manifestation is an increased abdominal girth. I can feel my flabs now.

I had some technical writing done, watched a few episodes of Money Heist (or "La Casa De Papel," its Spanish title, which my friend Mervyn has been egging me to watch since our last Bangkok trip), and a restful afternoon nap that brought me to a kind of floating consciousness when I woke up. Sleep has been catching up on me (or I have been catching up on sleep--whatever! I love it, either way, as long as I'm caught), as if my body is eagerly compensating for the lack of sleep of years past.

I've effectively, but not completely, detached myself from social media. If I need to know something, my friends will tell me about it or it will be the topic of discussion of my chat groups. I get my dose of verified news from legitimate media sources. I subscribe to the New York Times Morning Briefing newsletter and to Jason Kottke's Noticing for curated news articles and other miscellaneous items. I sometimes post on Twitter but mostly assume the role of a quiet lurker. I check my feed once in a while, but I don't stay there for long. It has become like Facebook: an angry, angsty place full of people with opinions on every issue. But that's Freedom of Speech for you, the hallmark of a healthy democracy. Everyone has a right to self-expression: yes, even student writers for their school papers. That also means I have the right to step away.

My advice to people in general is that they start a blog if they need to express themselves more fully. Or write in a notebook. I do both. Writing allows me to process my thoughts more fully. During my quiet times, I write down passages of Scripture with a good fountain pen. Blogging, too, has done wonders for me. And not just during the lockdown. It has provided me a sweet spot--the proverbial best of two worlds--between publicly sharing my life and preserving my privacy. I love that this website is largely unknown to much of the world. The traffic has markedly decreased through the years, and my readership has been reduced to lurking friends who occasionally write comments or email me. Some of these emails contain corrections to my grammar, suggestions to improve my sentence construction, and mostly encouragements and kamustahan. Haven't I been blessed with an amazing readership*?

Thank you, dear friends, for sticking it out with me for these past years.

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*I'm not sure if readership is the right word, as it alludes to a huge audience when the fact is that the constant blog readers can fit nicely in a small kindergarten room.