Bottled ※ Brain

It is 24 minutes past 1. My roommates are soundly sleeping. The corridor is quiet, save for the hurried footsteps I hear occasionally. I should've drifted off to sleep hours ago, if not for the looming MBB 142 exam this Thursday. But though sleepless and exhausted I may be, I feel like an indefatigable fan, feeding my amazement of the Author of life Himself.

Hazel takes out her digital point-and-shoot as soon as I focus the specimen on the microsope: a preserved 11.5 day old embryo. That's one little mouse killed for the advancement of science. Arielle takes a second look, confirms my hunch by saying, "Ang cute!" and proceeds to explain what she just saw. Yeyen, standing behind me, makes a mental note of what we've uncovered so far before beginning to write them all down in paper. For that experiment, our final product is an interactive website . UPDATE: Removed the timeline.

Kalayaan Residence Hall always looms larger than life whenever I pass by it every day. Sometimes, I pause for a moment and look, from a distance, at the eager faces that live there. I was like them five years ago. If given the chance to bring back the good, old days of years 2004 to 2005, I would gladly do so, for those were the moments when I met my very good friends who would discover the joys and pains of University life with me. In my heart of hearts, I was, and will always be, a Basement Boy.

Josh Groban sings You raise me up from my roommate's computer. It is 10 am, and here I am, with the atrocious morning breath, sticky eye mucus, and bed markings on my skin that would disappear minutes from now. One of the greatest feelings in the world is waking up to a new day. I do not deserve any of this—with the multitude of my sins I committed yesterday. But thank you, Lord, because Your mercies are new every morning.

The lightning strikes, casting transient camera flashes, with the heavy downpour as the bleak background. Inside I wait for my experiment to finish. It's 8:30 pm. My stomach is growling. My mind drifts to sights of pasta and pizza as I look at the machine spinning my samples. I'm dying to go home. Then I hear Ate Madel call out, “Wanna eat at A Veneto ?” Minutes later, I'm eating—and laughing—my heart out.

It is 5:30 pm. I leave the building and walk past the trees lining Jacinto Street. It is drizzling. Everything is clear now: God is bringing me to a position where I can no longer rely on myself—and on anything else—but Him.

My friend, Renan Laruan, posted this artwork in the 'skine Art website . He used acrylic paint to color a page of his Moleskine notebook. I might ask him to draw one or two of my blog headers, if he has time.

1.The wonderful sleep last night 2.The beam of sunlight that greeted me when I woke up 3.The absence of horrifying, troubling, or hurting text messages when I checked my phone 4.My watch that gave the accurate time 5.The internet, so I was able to check my mail 6.My computer, because it doesn't give me headaches anymore 7.The peace and calm of the morning 8.The presence of my roommates who had enough sleep as I did 9.My safety in going down from the upper deck 10. My soft pillows 11. My fragrant blanket 12. My trusted electric fan 13. The refreshing cold water in the dispenser 14. The ample, clean water in the lavatory 15. The toothpaste and toothbrush I used 16. The comfortable sleeping clothes I wore 17. My functioning urinary system 18. The electricity; there was no brownout today 19. The short chat session with Floribeth, a high school classmate 20. The short chat with longtime blockmate, Wegs Pedroso 21. The short chat with Jaja Baculi, who's now in the States and who has

Distances in the Philippines are measured with respect to this landmark, a couple of meters away from the Rizal Monument in Luneta, Manila.

First time to be in a public market in Metro Manila. Took the train to Cubao, rode a bus to Nepa Q-Mart, searched cluelessly for porcine Achilles' tendons. Saw too many fake DVDs being sold. Witnessed actual butchering of pigs. Got referred to as “' yung bata, para daw sa klase niya .” Confused porcine for bovine. Now I have what I need to make that collagen gel matrix.

I think the Philippine flag looks way better than France's or USA's or Thailand's.

I came upon West Africa Always Wins about two years ago, but only enjoyed it these past few days. Written by Pauline (she doesn't reveal her last name), a journalist stationed in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, the blog offers an outsider's perspective of Western African culture. It's the newest addition to my Compilation of Favorite Blogs, an imaginary list I keep in memory.

1.Install Microsoft TrueType fonts through the msstcorefonts package. Now I can use fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, Trebuchet, among others using my wordprocessor, OpenOffice.org Writer. I'm presently downloading other font packages. Thanks to the Ubuntu Wordpress blog for the amazing tutorial . 2.Download Wine , “a translation layer (a program loader) capable of running Windows applications on Linux and other POSIX compatible operating systems.Windows programs running in Wine act as native programs would, running without the performance or memory usage penalties of an emulator, with a similar look and feel to other applications on my desktop.” If you're using Linux, Wine is definitely a must-have . 3.Get security and software updates. I simply clicked on the icon in my taskbar called Synaptic Download Manager, and it did all the downloading for me. All I had to do after was restart. After my font downloads, I'll get w32codecs so I can play other media formats using, sa

We did frog dissection in fourth grade. That day my classmate Jam Jover was rushed to the clinic because she felt dizzy after seeing blood. Joseph Reapor's frog was pregnant; all of them in the group looked terrified. Ours was, well, ordinary, except that we had a hard time pinning its limbs. The next frog I cut open was in a class in Bio 11 , seven years later. It was Valentine's Day . I was groupmates with Wegs Pedroso, Juanchi Pablo, and Ciara Alberto. I "obtained" nine frogs for the entire class--obtained being the operative word. That means I went inside the huge cage (at the back of Zoology Bldg.) where frogs were bred, took them by hand, and placed them inside a plastic bag. Now I'm done with frogs but stuck with mice. But each dissection--or operation--I perform still gives me that thrill...that sick feeling that comes with killing an organism for the "advancement of science." --- A dialogue between two frogs: “Hey, can I ask you something? Why d