Bottled ※ Brain

Photo by Hazel Baconga HERE'S the speech I gave yesterday, during the UP College of Medicine graduation at the PICC. My brothers, shaky hands and all, recorded it in its entirety. You'll have to increase the volume to hear it better. Full text below.

SHARED MY TESTIMONY at the Youth's Grad Fellowship yesterday. Here's how I ended my 15-minute talk:

MY YOUNGER BROTHER Sean graduates from dental school today. Every time I go home I request that he do dental prophylaxis ("cleaning") on me. His hands are light, and he works fast. My mother approves of his work. Sean enjoys what he does—and that's good enough for me. I'm a proud brother. All praises be to God!

I'M AT A POINT in my life when there are too many things happening all at once that I hardly have the words to write about them. Maybe that part of me has changed after ten years of blogging: the part that wants me to write everything down and share it with the world. I feel that there's already too much noise going on over the Web, and that I'd rather spend my time reviewing for the Board Exam.

BEING a "morning person," I found Haruki Murakami's After Dark intriguing. Two parallel stories occur, and it won't be long before we find out they're related. The first involves a weird 19-year old girl (Mari) who reads in a diner alone, at midnight. The second is about a beautiful lady (Eri) sleeping soundly, her TV set spontaneously showing what seem like real-time videos of a mystery man and, possibly, herself.

CALLING MY parents on Sunday mornings is a ritual. I rang them at the break of dawn. They were both up early, probably talking over coffee and breakfast in preparation for the Sunday worship service. At 6 am, my father would shine his shoes, take a quick shower, and don his best clothes, a ritual he ends with a spray of perfume behind his ears. He'd eventually find himself frustrated at my mother's leisurely stroll in her small garden, where she would literally uproot shrubs and transplant them elsewhere, something she does on a regular basis. She forgets that plants need to be rooted, quite literally, and are not movable like our dog Benjamin who, if left alone, will travel to as far as Ethiopia.