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?