The Freudian Slip Of A Bacolodnon

   It has been 6 years since I became a medical doctor. Before Day One I already decided to be a community physician. There were opportunities to do otherwise and not a day went by when I questioned myself for having chosen the "road less traveled." Somehow, I felt that my heart was in the right place, there in the deep recesses of the community, the most part of it forgotten by mainstream society.    Today, I look back thinking to myself, "Was it all worth it?"   I became a Doctor to the Barrios deployed in a mountainous area far from the comfort and safety of family and all things familiar. I served, for 2 years, a people not my own, a place where I never had prior connection. Yet, each day I spent working with them, I realized how badly they needed the most basic of health care services which perhaps have been deprived from them. Each day I resolved to not only cure the sick but to cure the illness that plagued the society at large, to acknowledge ho...

     This morning, I, along with thousands of Filipinos in Manila and across the Philippines, participated in a gathering to express our anger and indignation against the wanton greed that has gripped the government. In the past weeks, local media headlined what was supposed to be a shocking revelation: how our Senators and Congressmen misused their 10-billion pesos worth of Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or infamously known as pork barrel by siphoning them through ghost NGOs and transactions. One person who allegedly benefited from this corruption was a private citizen named Janet Lim Napoles who made up at least 10 fictitious NGOs which received billions of pork money from the lawmakers and used them instead to enrich her family. Social media was teeming with pictures and videos of Napoles' daughter living a high life in the U.S. allegedly using taxpayers' money.      Calls have been made to investigate the alleged corruption but the ...

      This year's Masskara Festival will be the first under the new administration of Mayor Monico Puentevella and as early as now, there has been a lot of noise already going on about the upcoming Masskara. The plans for the Masskara Festival 2013, Bacolod City's official festival and the country's biggest Mardi Gras Festival yet, are heavily guarded. This is what we know so far: 1.This year's Masskara Festival will be under the leadership of its new Festival director, Rhoderick Samonte. 2. The Masskara festival will include sporting events, the biggest would be the Football Peace Cup which will be participated by no less than the Philippine Azkals who are currently the defending champions of the tournament. The sporting event will be held at the Panaad Stadium. 3. The festivities will not only be confined in Lacson Street. It will also include Araneta Street. 4. There are hints of "light shows" and "masskara boats" near the Baywalk area. 5. T...

   Just like last year, the monsoon rains intensified by the nearby typhoon Maring brought flood to Metro Manila and neighboring provinces. For two days, we could not leave our apartment because of the rising flood waters in our area. Because of the bad weather, we even had to cancel our scheduled leadership retreat and colloquium for our mayors and municipal health officers who were as of this writing are holed up at the Retreat venue in Novaliches. Meanwhile, we are monitoring the latest weather updates and flood reports in the news.    The monsoon surge has brought a significant amount of rainfall in the area. The entire street fronting our apartment all the way to Taft Avenue (in the vicinity of De La Salle University) was flooded with knee-deep to waist-deep waters.    Early this morning, we went out of the apartment's lobby to take some pictures of the scenes in the neighborhood. Bring in the boats Ongoing excavation of Maynilad making th...

    As per tradition, I always require my third year medical students to submit as part of their requirements in my Primary Health Care class health promotion materials. This year was no exception. Six 1-minute commercials on various health topics were submitted to along with their proposed newspaper advertisement and a technical paper about the health program they would want to implement in the community.     What was different this year was for the first time, I asked my class to organize a health summit in our adopted community in Bacolod City. The Health Summit was about increasing the awareness of the residents of a Gawad Kalinga site in Brgy. Sum-ag about Dengue. The health summit was attended by almost all of the residents, including local politicians (City Councilor Em Ang and Kalaw Puentevella). Of course a representative from the City Health office was invited to give a talk to the parents about Dengue while the med students entertained the kids with fun ...

       For a cosmopolitan city-state like Singapore, a garden in bloom or a misty rain forest can be like an oasis in a desert. Luckily, Singapore has both. One afternoon, our hosts from NIHA NUS Business School brought us to Singapore's greatest landmark: the Gardens by the Bay. Located at Marina Drive, this breathtaking facility can be considered as Singapore's greatest contribution to ecological preservation. The Gardens by the Bay has two domes: the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest Dome. Even before entering the domes, one cannot fail to see the SuperTrees outside. These 50-meter tall structures provide nightly entertainment for visitors.           After dividing ourselves into two groups, we wore our headsets and went first to the Flower Dome. As the name itself described it, the Flower dome contains plenty of various plants from various parts of the world, particularly in Southeast Asia, Africa and South A...

    I was lucky enough to visit Singapore this week (and I am actually still here while writing this blog) and one of the places I was able to visit was IndoCafe The White House. Our hosts (the faculty of the National University of Singapore Business School) were telling us about the cultural value of this restaurant. It is an old Indo-Peranakan house converted into a museum and at the same time a restaurant.      Peranakan refers to descendants of 15th century Chinese immigrants who settled in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. Malaysians and Indonesians however use the same term to refer to 'descendant' without any specific to any ethnicity. According to history, it was economic hardships in China that pushed the early Chinese immigrants to move out and settle in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. As they migrated from China, they brought with them their own culture and mingled it with local culture.     The Indocafe White...