… and I’m freakin’ excited!

I have a lot to think about, but tomorrow’s the ceremony!  I actually have to go in a little bit to help out and set up the graduation stage tomorrow (it’s currently a quarter to 11pm right now and all the Seniors have to come together to put the stage together).

My family from Antipolo is here and also my aunt, uncle and cousin from California.  Actually, my cousin will be coming with me in a bit to help me out with the preparations so it will be cool.

Just wanted to post an update.  Tomorrow morning will be the graduation ceremony for just the College of Veterinary Medicine, but then later on the university wide graduation at the University of the Philippines Los Banos will happen.  It’s a whole day affair, but I’m excited!

The UPLB CVM Graduation Tarp!

Photo: I leave you with the graduation tarp that I designed for the ceremony.  IT’S HUGE!

Hi blog readers!

Gosh, I really have been absent from the blogosphere for awhile… I have to apologize for that, but I’ve had a pretty busy couple of months.  A previous WordPress update pretty much left my entire blog in pieces and I didn’t really have time to try and alter and fix it until now.  A few months later after the crash I finally have some time to actually do that.

Now this is a previous layout that I’ve created which I’ve used before, but it seems pretty simple and easy to work with.  I think I’ll keep this style of blog for now, but I definitely have to fix the background and such.  Until then this layout seems pretty good. :)

I hope that all of you are doing well.  I’ve gone through a lot in the past few months (some events bad, but mostly good) and I am a stronger person for it.  Maybe I’ll go into detail about it later, but for now, just know that I am enjoying my time now with some new people and that I am just about 6 days until graduation.

I’m quite excited to say the least about my upcoming graduation.  Graduation here in the Philippines is long and there is a particular veterinary ceremony in the morning and then another university-wide one in the afternoon.  My father will be flying in from NYC to see the graduation.

I have the pleasure of graduating from the University of the Philippines at Los Banos’ College of Veterinary Medicine.  Through the four years I’ve been a student at UPLB I suffered some hardship with classes, relationships, and other things, but I think I’ve grown a lot.  Being here has been a blessing of some sort, and honestly it will be hard for me to leave here.

After graduating, I plan to finally move back to NYC and start my board exam studying.  I’ll be taking the AVMA approved method of applying for a veterinary license which consists of a written and practical examination, so wish me luck.

All in all, I just want to say that I am happy with things now and will be even happier when I finally get to throw my mortarboard up in the air.  With the DVM degree in my hands I can finally start on living my dream.

I’ll update you all in the coming days, but probably after Saturday which is my grad day.

Take care peeps!

Almost Dr. Jonathan Perez~!

Mandu and kampungi... delish!

Whoa, I feel really bad for not being on my blog for the last couple of months. For that, I have to apologize… especially since this is my final year, there should be no excuse for me not documenting it!

So here’s the deal people: I’m finally a 4th year student. Been through many ups and downs, but here I am, in the final ( ::knocks on wood:: ) year that I’ll be at the University of the Philippines Los Banos.

I’m a Senior Clinician, which means that I go through rotations, just like any other student in clinics, except that this time, I’m one of the people teaching the Junior Clinicians and guiding them to become better at what they do. To me, that was a little daunting at first. I mean, when I was a Junior Clinician, I didn’t really know what I was doing then too and I had to practice and go through many trials and errors before I started getting confident in all the procedures and diagnoses that I was giving out. Of course, back then these were all checked by a supervising vet. Even though now as Seniors we still have to get everything we do checked, it seems like the resident vets at the hospital at both Los Banos and Diliman trust us a lot more. That means that whenever we diagnose something, we are pretty sure we are correct. Of course there’s the odd case where we don’t really know (but then again, usually the resident vets are sometimes unsure themselves), but for the most part we’re pretty keen on what’s going on.

I feel proud to have gotten this far. It’s been a rough journey, but I’m hoping that things will pull through.

And thus begins my final year in vet school. It might not have been the easiest ride to get through, but I’m sure finishing it will be the sweetest thing in the world.

Wish me luck guys. :)

Is upon me! I can’t believe it!

It’s almost the end of the semester and I can’t believe that I have 2 weeks coming up which won’t have exams in them. I’m really happy, but I still have to read a bunch of things for my Radiology, Canine & Feline Medicine, Zoonoses and Equine Medicine Courses. As much as it seems like I have tons of time on my hands since I only have class most days for a few hours, the exams are extremely difficult. So difficult in fact, that I’m not really taking my chances with the ones coming up since it’s the last few before finals week. Gotta make it count!

This past Friday I had an amazing experience going on my Poultry junior clinic duty. I usually don’t have an affinity for poultry… I mean, I don’t mind working with them, but I don’t see myself being in the poultry business in the future, so I was kind of disinterested in going to clinics and not expecting anything. We were scheduled to go to a few gamefowl farms (farms that raise chickens for cockfighting, which is still legal here in the Philippines) and so definitely was not very enthralled at the idea.

But take a look at this!

Look at THAT!

And this!

The 1st farm we visited. Pretty different layouts, huh?

Got to see a bit of this too…

What a beautiful coc... err... rooster!

And this…

They keep the chicks on the top part of the mountain since it's cooler and so older bird fecal matter won't affect them at the top.

You can tell that I was pleasantly surprised.

I love this place! The view was amazing!

Anyway, the pictures really say a lot. The farms we went to were 12 and 7 hectacres respectively. Both in Lucban in Quezon Province which is 1 1/2 hours by car from our college. We left at around 7:30am and got back at around 5pm. It was a long day but it was totally worth it. Got to learn that poultry (especially the gamefowl industry) has a lot of things that go into it. The production, the different birds, the profits made and the raising and selling of them were all pretty intricate. I learned a lot and this trip just made me realize that I am still surprised at how fascinated I am by some things in the animal world.

Guess this is why I decided to study veterinary medicine, eh?

Artistic, isn't it?

Besides that, this weekend I got to go back to Fort Bonifacio and then was able to meet up with some friends to go salsa dancing and clubbing a bit. I’m really starting to get into salsa, and I’m thinking of taking some lessons. It’s a great way to meet people and get talking. I met some really cool people this weekend and hope that I get to do more mingling with people soon.

Anyway, that’s all I have to update for now. Let’s hope the near future has some more cool experiences in store for me!

Now it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything related to food, but this one is so amazingly simple that I thought many of you would enjoy it. This past weekend I went out with my friend Kamille and she took me to a Korean chicken restaurant called BBQ Chicken. I’ve wanted to go there before since it’s endorsed by my favorite Korean girl-group the Wonder Girls, and so we took a trip over to Makati and ate there.

They had some pretty good fried chicken but we also got to try their rice cake dish called ddeokbokki. Ddeokbokki is essentially a dish that consists of glutinous rice cakes, spring onion, gochujang sauce (which is a spicy Korean pepper paste) and typically fish cakes. It was amazingly spicy, but still amazingly good so I sought out the ingredients to make it before I came back to Los Banos.

The recipe I used was from MyKoreanKitchen.com and can be found here. Although you can read what the author has told you I’ll just list the recipe here as well.

For a serving that will accommodate 2 people here’s what you’ll need:

- 300g of rice cake
- 2 sheets of fish cake
- 1/2 an onion, cut into medium sized pieces
- 1 stalk of spring onion, thinly sliced
- 2 leaves of cabbage, cut into medium sized pieces
- 1/3 cup of water
- Seasoning sauce (mix the following well in a bowl): Gochujang (2 tbsp), sugar (2 tbsp, I used brown sugar for this recipe), chili powder (1/2 tsp), and some garlic cloves that have been squashed (1 tsp)

Here’s a tip if you’re using frozen rice cakes instead of freshly made ones. Put the frozen rice cakes into a bowl of water for 30 minutes. This will help thaw them out. Many people say that you should put these in cold water, but I found that since the rice cakes are already frozen, the water will automatically become really cold once you put them into a container of water. Make sure the water covers all the rice cakes completely. After 30 minutes you should be able to pull the rice cakes apart easily, which is what you’ll need for later.

As for cooking the dish, follow the directions below:

1. Preheat the wok for 10 seconds.
2. Add some oil and add the onion. Stir for a bit.
3. Add the cabbage and stir it as well.
4. Add the rice cakes, fish cakes, sauce and water. Stir all the ingredients together.
5. Add the spring onion and stir again.
6. Once all the vegetables have been cooked, serve the meal as desired.

And there you have it. A simply made, but delicious Korean snack dish, ddeokbokki.

Here’s how mine turned out.

I didn’t have any fish cakes with me, so I decided to substitute some spam. I made double this recipe (so I could save some for later), so I used an entire can of spam. It was the right amount and went with the meal well. I suggest you do the same if you want to have some kind of meat in the dish if you don’t have any fish cakes to spare. I also added some red pepper slices because I like spicy food. But you don’t have to, if you don’t want to.

Simply put this had enough kick to make me sweat, but it was definitely delicious. You have to try this one at least once. I think many of you would enjoy it!

So… this past week on February 4th, was Chinese New Year (or Lunar New Year as some of you may call it). In the midst of my week which admittedly was not so bad in terms of exams and classes, we decided to get together at my place and have some great food and watch some TV and movies. We had a great time and watched a movie called 200 Pound Beauty. It’s basically a story about a very obese woman who sings very well and falls in love with her producer. She basically is the voice behind an actual idol who performs and can’t sing. And then she gets inspired to lose weight, and well… I don’t want to spoil it for you, so just go out and see it. You can check out some info about that here.

Here’s a picture of my vet rotationmates about to dig into the food we’ve all prepared.

Lunar New Year With My Rotationmates

I made some samgyupsal (unmarinated pork belly sliced almost like canadian bacon that is simply grilled). Alongside that I made some green onion salad with sesame oil, salt and pepper.

A lot of food for Lunar New Year!

This weekend I headed to Manila–mainly in Taguig (For Bonifacio) and Makati City. I met up with my friend Kamille and we headed around to find some of those small little Korean markets and other stores along P. Burgos Street and near Jupiter Street. I would’ve never imagined that there were Korean stores around the area, but thanks to Kam we found them!

Kam eventually took me to BBQ Chicken, which is a Korean BBQ Chicken restaurant which is endorsed by the Wonder Girls (and if you didn’t already know this about me, I’m a HUGE fan of them).

This is SunYe, the leader of the Wonder Girls, giving the thumbs up along with a few of the other members.

This is SunYe of the Wonder Girls, giving a thumbs up to the food!

Had some ddeokbokki as well, which is a snack meal that’s popular in Korea. I’ve had this before in Singapore, but it was good to see how a Korean BBQ place handled it.

This is ddeokbokki, a spicy rice cake dish from Korea.

It was extremely spicy, but I was willing to endure it since it was so good! I really enjoyed it, although I was sweating a lot and drinking all the water the restaurant gave me. I actually picked up the ingredients to make this at a local market, so I will be making this soon.

Also got to try their famous fried chicken. I actually wanted to order more, but Kam and I had a lot to eat that day… we had already gone to a Japanese place for lunch and then got some Korean ice cream at the local markets around Makati. By the time we went to this place I was kinda stuffed.

Had to try their fried chicken--especially since that's what they were known for.

But I guess that just means I’ll have to come back again.

We ended the meal with some rice cakes that Kam had bought at one of the local Korean markets we visited that day. These were yummy and even had a little burst of juicy flavor inside. A good end to a good meal.

Yummy rice cakes, from a local market.

I really wanted to eat more, but I couldn’t. These last few months I’ve found that my appetite has been decreasing a bit, or that I just can’t eat as much during one sitting.

Thanks to Kam for amazing meal, but dude I was totally stuffed!

And also, we did have a lot of food previously so we decided to head to our next stop: The Myth of the Human Body exhibit in Taguig.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures there, but here’s some info for those of you near the area who wants to visit it.

The exhibit was pretty interesting. I had been to two similar exhibits in the last few years, in NY and Philadelphia, but this was one of the nicest ones. This was actually an exhibit from South Korea and will be in Taguig until April and it only costs 350Php per ticket, which is much less expensive than the ones in America. I highly recommend going there if you have the time.

I then headed to the Fort where I had to say good-bye to Kam. I then hung out and had some drinks with friends at a few bars.

Now I’m home and trying to rest up. I have to assist in an ovariohysterectomy of our goat tomorrow, so I need to read up and get some sleep.

I hope you had a great weekend guys. I sure did!

… doesn’t come very often in my life at CVM. But here I am in the middle of one of the rare moments where I don’t have an exam at all during the week. And it’s pretty nice to know I can relax and just chill for a bit and not worry too much about any impending exams.

Lots of things are going on right now. About to really get started with my thesis work (which is the characterization of the heart anatomy of two native Philippine turtles by ultrasound and electrocardiogram) by trying to get people to sign up for my thesis panel. Continuing junior clinics with swine this week. Ended up winning 2nd place in CVM’s Rodeo Club Philippines Round-up quiz con last night with my friends Jae and Casey. Spending the weekends in Fort Bonifacio and Makati in Manila since I’m apartment sitting for my friend Isabelle. Got to do my first dehorning (cornuectomy) and am now preparing to be assistant surgeon for our next surgery for our ovariohysterectomy in a goat. Was approved as the first Filipino DJ on WGSpectacle to broadcast for all Asian listeners. And of course studying every now and then.

It’s just nice to breathe every once in awhile you know?

While I wind down for tonight, I’ll leave you with this picture of me performing the cornuectomy on our goat. (Don’t worry–nothing too gruesome… just a little taste).

Gonna go grab some dinner and maybe even watch a movie! I love nights alone at home. :)

I’m extremely tired right now.

This week has been extremely taxing, and I have three exams this week. Two of which I’ve already taken in both Large Animal Surgery and Zoonoses. Today was basically my “day off” with no exam, but I still have to finish studying for my final exam this week for Ruminant Medicine tomorrow.

Yesterday we just extremely tiring. I got up at 6am and didn’t get home until 8pm which pretty much made my day about 14 hours. Not to mention I still had to finish up some readings, edit some papers and also then had to finish my surgery protocol for my first ruminant surgery this upcoming week. I don’t think I went to bed until around 2am this morning, and then I had to get up at 6am to get started with the day.

I was basically almost falling asleep in class due to the lack of rest I’ve gotten these last few days. When I came home this afternoon from my classes, I literally dropped my bags and fell into bed for a short 3 hour nap.

Now I have to finish studying.

But I will leave you with a picture and a video from my wildlife rotation this past weekend at the Protected Areas & Wildlife Bureau in Manila. Enjoy!

Lots of snow which translates to lots of shoveling!

Okay, so not really, but it HAS been awhile since I’ve blogged and I thought that now would be a good time to update you all on what I’ve been up to.

Of course, the last time I put up a blog it was to say that it was almost Christmas time and I was about to fly back to NY. Well now I’m back in the Philippines getting back to the grind. But I thought I should summarize what I did this past break, such as:

Visiting my good ol’ high school friends.

Seeing my girlfriend.

Getting to see my brother’s show at Radio City Music Hall (he works with the Rockettes during their annual Christmas Spectacular Show).

Eating at exotic places in the city. (This picture was taken at Momofuku, known for their pork buns)

Hanging out with my cousins from Chicago (who flew in the same day I did coincidentally).

Having some much needed family time.

Celebrating New Year’s with all the people I love!

I realized that I don’t post much while I’m in New York. When I’m back there at home with my family, friends and girlfriend I tend to go out a lot and be extremely busy. And not the kind of busy that I go through here in at school at UPLB. No, it’s the kind of busy that is fun, relaxing and I guess just helps me unwind. When I’m at home I typically don’t do things that I do here in the Philippines. I was definitely not on the computer or my iTouch much at all this holiday season and I went a lot and reconnected with people I haven’t been in touch with for awhile. When I’m at school, I’m usually just focused on studying (or sometimes procrastinating) and while I do have outlets to have fun here, it’s not the same as when I’m in NY. I guess it’s the environment. The cold weather. The good food and enormous portions (which I’m not used to anymore). The people I’ve known for so long that I left about 2 1/2 years ago to start school here. Everything I’ve grown up with is in NYC, and so no matter how long I stay here in the Philippines, when I go back, I just feel… home. Subtle things happen to me that I don’t notice until I get back. Things like my face clearing up (probably due to less stress), me getting healthier, and me being happier in general.

Not that I don’t like it in the Philippines, I mean I do. There’s just something about being at home that livens me up a bit, you know? I guess it’s due to a combination of things that I mentioned above. It’s just something I’ve noticed.

Well, on another note, as I said I’m back from NYC. It’s nice to be back here. The weather isn’t so hot and it’s quite rainy nowadays. I like it. I think I like the cold weather more than I do the warm weather. I guess I’d prefer to sweat shoveling snow than sweat just walking around… haha.

Had a slew of exams this week and it will end Thursday. Just took a Diagnostic Imaging (i.e. ultrasound and radiographs) exam yesterday and today. Seeing different structures in the dog is somewhat difficult when you’re just starting. We had a practical today with only 5 minutes to identify as many organs and structures as possible. I realized that 5 minutes really isn’t a lot of time when you think about it and I was only able to identify the spleen, urinary bladder, colon, left kidney, heart, liver and such during the exam. There were definitely things I missed and next time I’ll be sure to keep on practicing since it’ll be pretty important when I start practicing. Finding the correct acoustic window isn’t hard, but it’s the manipulating of the transducer that I had trouble with.

The next part of the class will focus on radiographic imaging and I bet it will also be quite difficult. My teachers keep saying that the course requires a bit of “imagination” and I think they’re right. Just got to brush up on the orientation and anatomy of the different organs for this next part of the course.

I’ve got another exam in Large Animal Surgery this Thursday so I’m going to go hit the books now and read up a bit.

I’d like to hear what you’ve been up to this holiday break. Let me know! I’m interested in seeing how you guys spent your time.

I’ll catch you guys next time!

–JoN

P.S. — Just recently updated my desktop workstation today. Check it out!

Yes guys, guess WHAT TIME IT IS? It’s almost time for Christmas! Can you believe it? In just 7 more days it will be Christmas. And guess what? I’m in the airport right now about to leave for Hong Kong and then I go on a direct flight to New York City.

I’m again sorry for not posting in awhile. I’ve been busy with Christmasey stuff. Christmas parties, gift-wrapping, final exams and the like. I’ve had to deal with a lot of this stuff in the last two or so weeks and I’ve just now had the time to write a proper post on what I’ve been up to.

So I’ll be back home in NYC in just over 19 hours I believe. It’s going to be a long flight, but I think I’ll manage. I have my new netbook, my iTouch to tinker around with and my Nintendo DS to keep me company during my flight. Not to mention all the awesome movies that Cathay Pacific offers me. I think I will be alright. I just will have to figure out a way to get over that butt sore you get when you sit on a plane for more than 12 hours straight. Yeah, so I’ll just chill in the Cathay Pacific Business lounge contemplating how I’ll get around that (Yay for free WiFi and free food!)

Anyway, I don’t really have anything planned for when I get back to NY, except for just hanging out with my friends and family. I think that’s all I really go home for anyway. :)

So guys, what’s your plan this holiday season? Whether you be celebrating Haunakah, Kwanzaa, Christmas or nothing at all, I wish you all a cool, awesome and fun time. You know we all deserve it.

Take care all, and have a wonderful time this season!