…weeks have passed without me having written something. Usually I am unable to shut up. This is bad. The last time I neglected writing regularly, back in 2014, it took me years to write again. Not that there’s a lot of things to write about. But maybe just to recap some memorable non-events and thoughts that I should have documented in the recent past, I will just enumerate them. This does not only save me from having to come up with ways to smoothly transition from one thought to the next, it also allows me to just keep on going until I get tired without necessarily having to come up with a denouement.

1. My friend Marissa has been trying to come up with a Youtube account for her two interests: nephrology and music. She asked for some suggestions for a creative title, so I gave her a list. Such list includes: Music and Urine, Ihi at Musika, PeeMd, You Na Pee, Pee Na You, Ihi MD, Nephrologina MD, and other crap. Eventually she decided on the more sensible title MarissaMD: Crea at Medisina for her nephrology lecture series, and a separate Youtube account for her piano performances called Musika Ni Marissa. One of my other suggestions was The Golden Shower Lectures, but lay people looking for info on kidney diseases might be directed to videos of people fucking in a pool of urine.

2. We recently went back to Sonya’s Garden. We saw only about two other groups who had checked in for bed and breakfast, at this time the alert levels weren’t as loose yet and very few people were still going out. We realized that we could just sit down on a comfortable couch, stare at the ceiling, and be fine with it. And be gloriously happy about it. The only downside this time was they made Wifi available in all the cottages, so a full escape from the hospital and patients was not really possible. For instance, a patient’s relative messaged me that she needed a clinical abstract RIGHT NOW. On the drive home there was so much fog that I imagined myself driving off a cliff.

3. Speaking of Sonya’s Garden, my 7-year-old niece’s latest assignment in her online class is how to do ALMIROL. My sister, who was being driven insane by all the online classes of her 3 kids, sent me a copy of the steps on how to do a proper almirol. I love almirolled pillow cases. I like the coarseness on my face. But having seen the steps I decided to just go back to Sonya’s Garden if I feel like having almirolled treats. Too much work.

4. On Armando Garmando’s birthday we looked for some nice bulalo in Tagaytay. It was a Sunday, quarantine status at this time has been downgraded, so it turned out to be a terrible idea. I drove for a total of 6 hours. We told Kevin and David that we would meet them for coffee somewhere, whatever’s open. We decided to ditch that plan, everything was overly populated. Finally we decided to just get Starbucks in Mamplasan. The girl before me in the line was ordering 24 drinks, each with very definite specifications (a shot of this, a dollop of that). We gave up altogether and just went home.

5. Went back to a manuscript I’ve been writing for the past year. I’ve been taking breaks from re-reading and editing and revising it, because what seems funny and smart in one reading eventually becomes crass and offensive when read with fresh or rested eyes. I hope to finish everything this month. The tone of my writing varies wildly depending on the last book that I had read, and since I had just finished an Alice Munroe book the more recent entries turned out to be very pensive.

6. Christmas is just around the corner. Once again people will feel compelled to appear happy and festive, leading to overcrowding and traffic. While walking around Robinson’s Ermita I saw long queue and thought that it was for a vaccination drive or national ID registration, only to realize that it was a line for… Tom’s World! I tried peering in to see if there was a celebrity inside or a special promo, there wasn’t, kids were just playing Street Fighter and arcade basketball.

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