Friday night events

As soon as I stepped out of the vehicle at the crowded parking lot of the Phela Grande Convention Center, it hit me right away: I was extremely underdressed. I was attending Panaghabi, the culminating program of Med Week organized by the MSU Medicine’s student body. The instruction I got: wear something cultural, which, of course, could mean anything. Normally I’d skip parties that require costumes, but my students worked hard to organize the event, and it would be insensitive of me to ignore it. I had already missed out on so many games and contests. Showing up was the least that I could do.

According to the email I’d also be receiving an award during Pagpupugay 2026, “a student-led initiative to honor the outstanding contributions, dedication, and exemplary service of the esteemed faculty members of the college. For the past weeks, the student body was given the opportunity to select the faculty members who have demonstrated a significant impact in their journey as future Dalubhasang Doktor, Makataong Doktor.” I replied that I had a prior meeting, and I’d do my best to drop by.

So, on Friday night, after a particularly long day at the clinic, I met Felise, Anj, Joy, Hannah, Jorena, and Korina, our existing internal medicine residents from St. Elizabeth Hospital. I hadn’t met them in a while. A feeding program was warranted. I had to atone for my lapses. We had salad, chicken, and steak at a restaurant across SM. They refused dessert and coffee, telling me they needed to sleep. Ah, residency life!

As the department’s research coordinator I’m expected to check on their research outputs. Previously the committee (Drs. Keth and Jun, overseen by Drs. M and Japit) had been meeting them over Zoom, my favorite kind of meetings, really: it saves a lot of time. One has the option to wear pajamas. But in-person meetings, over meals, and outside the hospital, offer a welcome alternative, too. The opportunity to socialize, to properly catch up. I saw them in their regular clothes—no white coats or scrubs. They looked and sounded differently as they discussed their case reports and research proposals. Was it because they were more relaxed and outgoing? A number of residents have come and gone—citing issues like mental health or the need for soul-searching—barely finishing their required three years. But these young doctors chose to remain. They are flourishing.

I told them I had to rush off. I had another event to attend.

I wore a batik polo shirt and an old pair of jeans. I immediately found my table and hid from the cameras. Meanwhile my students were dressed in their elegant barongs and gowns. They cleaned up nicely.  

As the waiter served me dinner, two students told me they’ve been reading my blog. These confessions often leave me embarrassed. I was a different person in 2004. I’ve seriously considered hiding my older entries because they make me cringe.

At the other table were my students—the first-ever batch of graduates, whom we fondly call the “Magic 12”—who had just passed the board exam. One hundred percent passing rate. Ikha told us she couldn’t make it because she is already starting residency in OB-Gyne at UP-Philippine General Hospital.

Getting acknowledged by students feels extremely rewarding. As for me, the fact makes me humble and grateful. Dr. Jean Alcover-Banal, who got the “Gawad Siklab,” spoke on behalf of the faculty. She said that we, the teachers, derive so much from our students—learning, energy, encouragement, joy, and the fountain of youth. I resonate with that: the secret to being young is being with the young. Teaching is a rewarding, humbling experience. What a blessing from the Lord to have an opportunity to meet and mold minds and hearts. 

But it was getting late. At 10 pm, I headed out, first to the bathroom, where some students interrupted me for a selfie (they love selfies!), then to the quiet empty road connecting General Santos City to Marbel. At home, Paul was so sweet that he woke up to welcome me. He then proceeded to sleep on the couch, only to wake up a few hours later, demanding that he be walked around the neighborhood. 

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Photo credit: My co-faculty member, the pulmonary medicine specialist Dr. Naat Montemayor, who takes the nicest and most thoughtful photos.

The Welder

This morning I treated myself to a short story in The Paris Review called by The Welder by Ingebord Bachmann (translated from the German by Philip Boehm and Tess Lewis). The story revolves around a utility worker named Andreas Reiter, 35 years old, whose wife has tuberculosis and whose children exist somewhere. Going back home to his home life must feel heavy for him. He hangs around in the cafe where he finds a book that gets him into reading. Books become his addiction, his way of escape almost. What struck me in the story was this section about this man seeking a third space—a liminal existence between work and home—where he can recuperate and transition.
 

The cafe was empty. Reiter had hoped to find someone with whom he could play cards or share a beer; he was looking for someone in his Nowhere, looking for some idle familiarity before heading home. Almost every evening he sought out a kind of floodplain between work and home, like the floodplain between the city and the working-class districts to the east.

Do you have spaces like that where you can read a good book and not be bothered by the cares of the world, at least for the time being?

Bookstores

Bookstores are magnets. (I realize now that the statement makes me the metal!) I gravitate towards them. I enter without planning to buy anything, but I almost end up getting something home. Unlike other people, but perhaps most people I know, I read whatever I fancy. No planned reading list, no check lists to tick off. 

Nathan Heller's profile on James Daunt, the CEO of Barnes & Noble and Waterstones, is just fascinating! Daunt commutes on a train, rides a bicycle, and drives an electric vehicle that needs washing. 

One morning, he met me at the end of the Darsham station’s platform with his car, an electric Polestar that was dark navy and caked in dust. “The filthiest car in Britain!” he announced and put the vehicle in gear. 

Why physical bookstores exist in the age of the Kindle and LCD screens is a mystery. The profile clarifies why bookstores remain. 

The tenor of alarm about new technologies was familiar. When Daunt arrived at Waterstones, bookselling was in a panic about the Kindle, said to be poised to replace paper books. Daunt was doubtful: he’d used the product. And he’d seen the advent of the personal computer during his time as a banker, when the arrival of the I.B.M. XT had carried him and his peers up the ranks. But books were more like rubber bands or bottle openers than like computers: their form was largely unimprovable for their function.

I like my Kindle. I like my printed books. I buy ebooks and actual, physical books made of ink and paper. 

I grew up in a small town with a small bookstore called People's at the Notre Dame Complex. Not a bookstore, actually, but a school supplies store with a two shelves of books. Hardly anything was "literary fiction." But the store introduced me to the works of John Grisham, Sidney Sheldon, and Twisted by Jessica Zafra. 

I don't know if there are bookstores in Marbel, or even in General Santos, other than National Bookstore. Might I suggest that someone put up a bookstore in these cities? 

Daunt holds that a literary culture is something booksellers are well placed to build. “Books aren’t a fixed market,” he told me in his office. “The more bookshops there are, the more people will read. The better bookshops are, the more people discover things. Online is an efficient place, but it’s not a place that can excite in itself.”  

We lament that not a lot of people read these days, that we live in a post-literate age. I'm not sure. We can perhaps start with building, patronizing, and supporting bookstores and writers. 

Liminal

It’s been a quiet October in these parts. I don’t have much to say, except that I have been writing but not publishing. Much of my life consists of work and home, with the roads in between, and it is a life lived because of God’s grace.

During the day, I relish the liminal existence lived inside the car. I like the quiet: it feels like a retreat. I listen to myself or to Ezra Klein or the late Tim Keller, whose words still profoundly affect, instruct, and encourage me. There are moments when I like jazz or any music the Spotify algorithm plays next: classical, opera, worship songs, OPM. Meanwhile I pay attention to the wide, sometimes empty roads, which can be deceiving. The haze from the Indonesia fires makes the sunsets in Allah Valley pop. 

(Yesterday I made a careful turn, a motorcycle interrupted me, and without so much as an apology or an acknowledgement that an error had been done, the driver swooshed away, as if nothing happened. I held my tongue and remembered Tim Keller’s preaching on self-control. I also thought that maybe, maybe, the driver could be rushing to the hospital for an emergency. I used to care for a woman with metastatic neck tumor. Her son was a Food Panda driver. I’ve never looked at motorcycles the same way ever again.) 

Fruits from Tatay's trees

I found a basket full of lanzones (Lansium domesticum) on the coffee table in our front porch.

My mother said, "These are from your Tatay's trees." The ones he had planted in New Antique. 

It felt as if Tatay were still alive on this side of eternity, tending to his farm, and hurrying to come back home to cook our lunch.

Solar

I took a break from rounds and observed, with curious eyes, the delegates to the Ornithology annual convention atop the solar panels of General Santos Doctors Hospital. I took the photo last July. The sky was blue and clear. You could fry an egg using sunshine, but the birds didn't mind.

Scenes from home

Terrible heat today, but it rained in the afternoon. Inside the clinic, I overheard the hard, pouring rain that soaked the streets and refreshed tired souls. When I got out, the rain had stopped. I'd missed out on all the fun.