Was able to go to a bookstore after six months, and it was delightful. Of course I dutifully filled-up a contact tracing form with my complete details using sanitized pens from the sanitized bin of pens–I didn’t mind, I was… Read More ›
Blogs
In-clinic Bickering!
I was holding a tray full of reconstituted chemo meds, and I realized that if I so much as sneeze and drop everything on the floor and the bottles break or roll to the other end of the room only… Read More ›
Death by Tonkatsu
I saw this very nice photo on Instagram of the X-Men Gold Team featuring the Hasbro action figures of Storm, Ice Man, Bishop, Colossus, and Jean Grey. I realized that I don’t have Colossus yet, and after clinics I ran… Read More ›
For The Nasties
I’ve always assumed that home schooling was an urban legend, but apparently even before the pandemic it has already been a thing. And these kids, surprisingly, have been taking it quite seriously. My sister sent me a video clip of… Read More ›
This Could Be A Job For Mulder And Scully
My clairvoyant friend Namtab Pots declared that an asteroid will hit the earth on November. A quick google search revealed that the info wasn’t from his precognition, but from NASA. I didn’t bother to read the articles and scare myself… Read More ›
Profuse Apologization
I’m still on my pinoy rom-com streak, and I told Eleesabeth Lee Balwani that he should watch Us Again starring Jane Oineza and RK Bagatsing. Eleesabeth ran out of gas midway, and I had to narrate the eventful second half…. Read More ›
Hulaan Portion
I think I’m getting the hang of conducting virtual consults. And I feel like some of my patients, once we get past the clunkiness of the synchronized “Can you hear meeah?!”, are getting used to it as well. I haven’t… Read More ›
Coffin or Urn
In the spirit of panicking from the thousands of new cases reported daily, and some of our own patients dying from other diseases, my friends and I rekindled–with much enthusiasm–our discussions on death. The past few months we have forced… Read More ›
Pinoy Rom-Com Reportage
So I’ve been trying a few of these “prestige” TV shows from different streaming sites (ie, free trial), and I realized that you really need to be in a certain mood to get into them. Content has exploded in the… Read More ›
Kare-Kare Extravaganza
Whenever my mom decides to cook kare-kare it turns into a two-day extravaganza that begins with grinding the nuts and pressure cooking the meat, culminating in everyone getting all bloated from overeating. Since the 80’s mom’s kare-kare has become the… Read More ›
Catastrophizing
I don’t know what happened, but at some point in the aging process I stopped being… cool. Not cool in the sense that I buy all my clothes from Bench in Quad II or I would only snack in Bun… Read More ›
Bootcamp Bonanza
Last Saturday we had our fourth weekly Writing Bootcamp with Jessica Zafra via Zoom, and this time we presented the opening paragraphs of our short story projects. One of my favorite things about writing workshops is having a trapped audience… Read More ›
Imperfect Situation
Apparently the Philippines will be re-opening tomorrow. Of course we are told there are guidelines, but the guidelines might only look good on paper and too complex for the enforcers or the general public to understand and implement. Since I now… Read More ›
Dyspnoeia
Today I had a carpenter put in an extra level of wood in my closet to accommodate more stuff. Over the course of the quarantine I’ve tried to throw away so many things, but some very nice boxes of my… Read More ›
Tales of Lochia And Crap
Not related at all to the post: DC Collectibles DC Icons! As I’m typing this Frichmond is probably already post-partum in the recovery room. In true pulmonologist fashion she went on labor last night wearing wrap-around goggles and an N-95… Read More ›
SMF Cafe Friends Update
Frichmond has just updated us that she is already in the labor room, waiting for her third kid to crawl out of her. I miss all my Shrine Motherfucker Cafe friends, and I especially miss kumareng Frichmond because we barely… Read More ›
La Cuarentena Ayuda Espethial
For no reason other than there’s time, Sonny and I decided to study Spanish via Duolingo. It’s not like we’re going to any Spanish-speaking country–or any country, city, or barangay for that matter–soon, and I could die tomorrow making hours… Read More ›
Defer Toy Rounds
And just like that another month is about to end. In a few weeks it would be three months since the world has been brought to its knees, and from the look of things it would take years before we… Read More ›
Comfort of Non-Glossiness
At first I thought my cracked attention span was to blame for my inability to watch these sleek, new cutting-edge TV shows on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or HBO Go. Each episode in a series is usually 60 minutes long, a… Read More ›
Hairy Worm Larva Mutant Anaphylaxis
Twenty years ago Groin, Chel, Joni and I met in the kiosk in front of Palma Hall Annex. It was grad pic day, and we had to take a cab to Greenhills to the studio of Toch Peypoch. A few… Read More ›
Supposed Former Melancholia Junkie 