the boy who shouted the king is nude

Are you a Manny Pacquiao fan? Are you one of those who yell proud of being Filipino because Ronnie Alcano won the 2006 World Pool Championship, or that one of the members of Pussycat Dolls is a filipina? Are you one of those who say that the filipino people excels in too many field just because George “Dubya” Bush’s chef is a filipina, or because Ap’l d Ap of Black Eyed Peace is a filipino who once lived in Olonggapo? If you are, then you must one heck of a proud of your roots.

I was one of those who waited so long for Pacquiao Morales’ fight and got shortchanged when Pacquiao ended it convincingly. Sure seeing him win is not so bad at all, neither seeing filipinos excelling in whatever field they are in. It is great to once have a filipino in Linking Park, the Pussycat Dolls, Black Eyed Peace, and the Laker Girls, that only goes to show that the filipino people really are talented.

But what if Manny Pacquiao lost his third match with Erik Morales? What if it was he who knocked down in the third round of their rubber fight? Would you have been proud just the same? It is terribly absurd that we get our pride as a nation only when Pacquiao steps in the ring and win, when some Fil-American hits it big in Holywood. Never had we become proud to become filipinos because our culture is so unique and rich, never had we become proud because ours is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I have never heard a single Filipino of today say that he is proud of everything that happens in our country, I could even not say the same. We always forget what is essential: cooperation among us regardless of our ideologies and political leanings; food, clothes, shelter, and education for all; compassion and understanding for the masses; culture and arts for the Malayan people, and; truth and service for the governed. And yet, thanks to Manny, Ap’l, and the rest of the cast, we can say that we are proud of being Filipinos; because maybe superficial is what we really are.

too tired, lazy, and not so feeling well to read annotations

i know i sometimes have failed to believe in your ways. sometimes i have doubted your divinity, denied my religion, and neglected my duty. i know, as much as i have tried to become a reluctant skeptic, i have lived the opposite of righteousness and faith.

but not her, she has remained loyal and faithful to you. she has loved you and believed in you wholeheartedly. if i have sinned i know i am entitled for forgiveness. i ask for it to become worthy to ask for your saving grace upon her.

i love her, please let it be on her...

mother mother i am sick, call the doctor very quick

for quite a while now, a close friend and i have been discussing about the medical malpractice bill and have taken the opposite sides about it. i was supposed to write about my advocacy that it be enacted into law, but out of respect over my friend, who is about to become a doctor in two or three years tiem, depending on her conviction, i choose not to, but instead i endeavor to write something else about the medical education.

i totally understand the sentiments of some of the doctors and medicine students regarding their meager pay out of practicing the profession. indeed, in the present society, it is an injustice to them, who have spent a good fortune, liesure time, and red blood cells in the med school just to be able to practice the profession. for one, in this present society, they should be, at least, given the chance to recoupe the money they have spent, if not totally earn a living from it.

now, before you react, please dont get me wrong. i have nothing against doctors and med students. i have higgh regard on them, not just because i have a friend who is a med student, but also because i think that medicine is tougher than the course that i am studying, and a lot more noble than the profession i am aspiring to practice someday. but i think that somehow, med schools get it all wrong when they teach to the students that the practice of medical profession is lucrative, or should be lucrative in our local setting.

in the case of cayetano vs monsod, the SC define "profession" as a group of men practicing a common learned knowledge. now, the practice of medicine is a profession, it is a passion for the better understanding of the human anatomy. above all else, the practice of medicine should prioritize social welfare before personal gains, and in this society, med schools should make students embrace the reality that medical profession is not a lucrative practice. one does not enter med school merely out of desire to get rich, but primarily to put into practice every bit of medical knowledge in the pursuit of human well being.

unlike any other profession, particularly the law profession, which is more lucrative and glamorous ( a biased opinion), medicine deals with life as given by God. above all else, doctors should have a sense of nationalism and realization that social welfare comes well ahead of personal gains. social welfare should never be subordinated by personal gains, and thus, the practice of medicine is a public service and should really first be a publc service.

for the record, to avoid super sian-ic violent reaction from my friend, i do not blame this predicament to the doctors and students, but rather to the school system, partly, and the government.

fifteen year old unatoned sin

only this evening that i remembered the story of elisa. i can say that we were good friends who used to borrows stuffs from each other (most of the time i was the one borrowing pencils from her) and who used to trade snacks and "text" cards. she was an awesome playmate while waiting for our class and while waiting for our school bus to take us home. it was the typical my-girl friendship (remember the mcaulay movie with whoever that girl is), it was so great to have her as a buddy.

on a fine day of whatever month it was, our school bus screeced halt in front of their house to fetch her, i knew i heard something weird inside. it sounded like some animal doing some crazy incomprehensible sound, it was so loud that everybody inside the bus heard it. when she boarded the bus, she immediately sat beside me. i remember it clearly now, she was asking what is my lunch box for snack time, as we often did. i never knew that the next question i asked her would mark end to such snacks-trade friendship.

"bakit may kambing sa loob ng bahay ninyo?"

the sound was coming from her older brother who has a cerebral palsy, and yet i never realized the gravity of my question, but at such a young age, she already knew the pain that came along with it. i never knew how much painful it is to her and how much a grade two pupil like her is trying to learn how to read the alpahabet and understanding why such fate had dawned on his older brother at the same time. everything then was all play for me, and i knew no anguish, much, an apology. maybe, i was just still a kid to understand.

when we turned to grade 3, elisa was no longer in st vincent. i do not know up to now where she had transferred and i even could not rememeber her surname. but i do remember the snacks we used to trade and the pencils i used to borrow. i could not say that i never got the chance to apologize because i had a lot of them, only, i never realized how much painful it was for her for me to apologize.

maybe she had grown to become a loving baby sister to his brother. maybe, somewhere along her own jaded existence, she had finally understood the fate of his brother, much more than human anatomy could ever teach. or maybe not. i do not know.

now, somehow i wish i apologized for what i have said. somehow i hope she would know how sorry i am for it, no matter how long it took me to realize that. somehow i wish she had forgiven me. if not, somehow i wish, like the way did on her surname, she had forgotten...

kuhala bay

9 am, we were seated on a jeep heading towards binangonan. i knew there was a better ride towards cardona over at shaw boulevard, yet i took a gamble and we took the train all the way to santolan in the hope of finding another fx or van or whatsoever airconditioned upholstered ride. unfortunately, nada. so there we were sucking it all in, the smoke coming from vehicle exhausts and the exhaustion of the rough ride.

when we got to binangonan, we took another jeep heading morong, rizal and alighted at cardona. once there, we rode a tricycle and asked the driver to take us to kuhala bay.

when we arrived everything seemingly went to a halt and all that is left to be remembered is a weekend like no other. the exhaustion from the trip, the accident over the balcony window, the smoke belchers, and the sleepless trip; eveything was all worth it.

there is a point in your life that you would hate to stop from talking about. that weekend is definitely it.

weekend at kuhala bay was such a blast, i cannot think of a more concrete way to measure how it was so great to be so near to your own piece of utopia