Semester Start
A Special Date: A Recap
Hey everybody!
I thought I’d fill you guys in on what’s been happening with me these last few weeks, as I haven’t been around the last month to really say anything here. I’ve kind of been on a hiatus of sorts during that time, and wherever I used to be active online I wasn’t for that time period (sorry to all my readers and to those at WGSpectacle — mianhe)
As you all probably know, I ended my summer classes in UPLB in the middle of May and I subsequently left for my home in NYC for a short (but well-deserved) vacation. There I met up with my family, my girlfriend Jeannie and also my good friends Danny and Marlo.
I did a lot of things while I was at home, but most of it consisted of me eating lots of good food. When you realize what you have in America and the variety of things you can eat and how good things taste at home, it can’t be helped. I lost a lot of weight while I spent the summer in the Philippines, mostly because of the crazy heat and all the extra walking I did (just because I could), but I’m pretty sure that I gained it all back within a week because my girlfriend, her family and my family took me out to really good restaurants. I got a good taste of Chinese food (from my girlfriend’s side), tons of great homemade Filipino food (from my family), BBQ (courtesy of my aunt, uncle and me) and even a taste of Cajun (from a new restaurant that opened on my street).
One of the first things I did when I got to NYC was to take my girlfriend out on a date. Since I missed actually celebrating our 3-year anniversary together (which is at the beginning of May), I had to make it up. Romantic? Yes. Overly cheesy? Maybe. But considering that it was the first time in about 6 months that I had got to spend time with her, it was well worth it I think.
We first took a trip to Chelsea Piers, where I told her to dress up and look nice. She didn’t know why we were there or where we were going so I took her for a walk in Manhattan near the Chelsea Piers Sports Center. I ended up surprising her to a lunch cruise on Spirit Cruises, where my little brother works as a singing waiter. Yes, you heard right, “singing” waiter. I had arranged some things with him beforehand and by the time we got there she was shocked. She had no idea we were getting on a boat for lunch, and of course with a full tour of some of NYC’s coast line along the Hudson River. During the lunch cruise, my brother and some of the other waiters danced, sang and served amazingly well. Jeannie was satisfied… :)
Next, we took a walk to the Museum of Sex. Interesting place we always thought we should visit together. When you walk in, it’s a gift shop which is open to everyone. When you want to go into the actual museum you have to pay a fee–something we did. They have three floors of exhibits, with each one specializing in a different topic. During our visit the first floor dealt with sex in movies (e.g. straight, gay, and celebrity porn genres). The second floor focused on condoms and different fetishes of people. The third floor (which was my favorite) was about how animals have sex. The place had amazing papermache models of elk and pandas doing it. While it was quite interesting to see these animals doing that, we had fun looking around and learning about how different animals mated. Definitely a cool place to be.
After that, we ended up in Times Square. Since what was next was a surprise, I took her to a nearby area and we sat down to rest a bit. I pointed to a tall building and asked her,
“Do you know what that building is?”
She answered, “No, not really, but I think it’s a hotel… it seems to have the same layout in each room.”
Later on when I told her it was time to have dinner, she followed and I lead her to the entrance to the hotel. The hotel was the Marriott Marquis. The Marriott Marquis is one of the biggest hotels in Times Square and a pretty fancy one at that. On the 50th floor is a special restaurant, called The View. It’s special because it revolves around the top of the hotel slowly, allowing one to see the many attractions of the NYC skyline. Once there, she was shocked again. There was a buffet table full of good fresh salad, fruits, entrees and such and also a separate dessert table with different breads, cheeses, cakes and even a chocolate fountain. I sat her down at our table, ordered a bottle of white wine and we decided to eat and enjoy the view together.
All in all, I had a nice time with her during our special date. Afterwards, I spent the weekend at my girlfriend’s house where her family brought me to awesome restaurants filled with Szechuan and dim sum dishes.
During the rest of my 2 weeks at home I spent it with my family, helping to cook up some BBQ I had learned while I was in the Philippines. I also got to visit my friends’ place in Sunnyside, Queens. Both of my best friends Danny and Marlo had moved in together as a couple and for the first time are independently living together. Getting my own place is something that I hope to do in the future as well. Both of them are doing well and they have a nice apartment in an interesting part of Queens which I’ve never really gotten the chance to explore. Danny and Marlo gave me a tour of their apartment and their new neighborhood, which was really charming to say the least. Unfortunately, I was only able to spend one day with them during my two-week vacation, but it was a nice time.
All in all, my vacation consisted of a lot of family, friend and girlfriend time and I think I spent it wisely. I really needed to unwind from the schooling that I had done. It was something that I hadn’t been able to do since my week trip to Singapore earlier in April.
Now I’m back in the Philippines, getting back into the groove of things. And since it’s almost 10:30pm here I think I’m going to say goodnight. I have my first Pathology III laboratory tomorrow and I have to bring in my dog Whitey to examine his blood. It should be a short exercise, but I’ve still got to get up at 6am to prepare.
Oh, and before I forget I want to wish all of the 1st year proper students who are new to the UPLB Veterinary Program a great start to the semester. I had one reader of mine originally from Nepal tell me awhile ago that he/she was starting up at UPLB as a new 1st year proper student. (So if you’re reading this, then know that if you need help I may be of assistance.) Things will certainly be different once you start the proper subjects and if you guys are new and need some guidance don’t hesitate to hit me up with questions. You can use the “Contact Me” form here on the web-site to send me questions and/or comments. I’ll try to get back to you as soon as possible.
Okay everyone, I think it’s time for me to get some shut-eye. Talk with you all soon. :D
Back To School Again
Sorry for not posting lately. Things have been a blur since I’ve come back from NY and yes guys, this is the start of my 5th semester here at the University of the Philippines: Los Banos.
I’ve been in class for just over 2 weeks now and so far it’s been going well. Most of the teachers I have this semester are interesting people. I’m really excited for my surgery and clinician rotations this year. This time around, I’m a junior clinician, which means I’ll have duties doing different rotations in different places around Manila and Laguna. This coming week, we’ll be finishing up a 2-part orientation at the University of the Philippines: Diliman, which is about 2 hours away from Los Banos. That means we’ll have to leave very early in the morning whenever we have duty. When me and my classmates visited the clinic last week, it was cute. It wasn’t as big as I thought it would be, but then again, there were many patients there waiting to be seen. It’s more of a modern hospital I think than the one in Los Banos (which we call Tabon), in that there were sleeping quarters, teaching classrooms, exam rooms and such there in the facility. There seem to be a lot of people there that were students learning for the board exam so that was nice to see.
Also, this semester we’re starting Surgery II and instead of just having 2 surgeries this year, we’ll start to be doing them every week. It’ll be fun, but obtaining the right animals and materials and preparing the protocols for each one will be tiring. They say that the 3rd year is “physically tiring” because you’ll have to do a lot of running around. And already I’m starting to feel that.
I will post more later about my experiences, but I have to read up for my VMED 151 class which is essentially my first medicine course here at the college. Wish me luck this sem!
See ya guys on the flip side!
School Has Started!
So I embark on my 3rd semester here at the University of the Philippines: Los Banos. After registration that I completed last Friday, I patiently waited for school to start on Monday. During my last moments of freedom, I mostly spent my time watching old movies that I had downloaded, but never finished watching and cartoons. It was a nice. ^_^
Monday was the start of class and things went pretty smoothly. I say that, because 2 of the 4 classes that I was supposed to have that day were canceled or the professors didn’t show up. On Monday I was supposed to have the following classes in the following order:
Unfortunately, I only had surgery lecture and the pharmacology lecture. Actually, they weren’t really lectures as much as an introduction to the course and overview of the syllabi. Although we didn’t end up having 2 classes that day, I have to admit that it was kind of nice not having to go through too much. It was like we were easing into the semester, and today it felt the same way.
Today I was supposed to have my Veterinary Pathology II (VPTH 122) lecture class this morning at 10am, but our professor never showed up, so all of the students were once again left in the classroom to just talk. Next up was supposed to be our Virology (VMCB 123) lecture class but alas, that was canceled as well. So we had a long lunch break from 11-1pm. My friends James, Faye, Belle and I went to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) cafeteria for lunch. I had mentioned this cafeteria in a blog about my parasitology collection project for my Parasitology I course a few weeks ago. We usually go there when we have time to kill and are able to enjoy some good food.
After that we decided to hit up the Rice Research Institute Museum, because we had never been inside before. It was an interesting site. There were many different instruments they used to harvest rice and also many types of rice the raised and cultivated. Rice is really a staple food of many Asian countries and is major part of the diet for 50% of the population of the world. It was a small museum with very old artifacts and tools from different countries, but it was very informative and it was nice to walk around. When we entered we pretty much had the entire museum to ourselves. It wasn’t big, but big enough to kill about half-an-hour in. It’s too bad I didn’t have my camera. I could’ve posted some pictures of what was in it here in the blog. As we were leaving a large group of people entered the museum to explore, so we ended our tour just in time.
Anyway, we headed back to campus to go to our Veterinary Microbiology II (VMCB 122) lab class. Our teacher was about 20 minutes late, but Dr. Rovira just went over the syllabus with us while Ate Dang, the lab tech handed out our lab manuals and also accepted payments for materials we’ll be needing in lab soon. Dr. Rovira is a nice lady and has an interesting way of speaking. She speaks in a very reserved and somewhat slow tone, so it takes awhile to get through topics, but she’s a nice person and I think I’m going to enjoy her lab.
We ended class within an hour and after that we had about another hour to kill before our next class, which was going to be Veterinary Pharmacology II (VPHM 142) laboratory. So me and the other 3 friends headed to the Student Union to play a few rounds of billiards before class started. James drove us there, we paid for a table and played almost 2 games. We didn’t have time to end the 2nd game mostly because Faye took a lot of time shooting (she was a novice at the game and didn’t play much beforehand), but it was still fun nonetheless. I enjoyed playing with all of them, but the weather was hot and sticky. Since the billiard tables were located in the basement of the building, it was kind of stuffy in there. James and I couldn’t make accurate shots mostly because our hands were so sweaty and the cue stick didn’t come off very well during our release. But that’s okay. We still had fun!
After that we headed to our lab class where Dr. Ariel Bombio (our past Anatomy associate professor) was heading the section. We went over the syllabus, got grouped into pairs that we’d be working with for the rest of the semester and within an hour-and-a-half we were done. My partner is my acquaintance Andrea. I believe she’s a 3rd year veterinary student, but is taking some 2nd year courses due to extenuating circumstances. (Don’t quote me on that… she’s not in our batch so I don’t talk to her much… haha) Anyway, the lab will be interesting, mostly because we’ll be doing practical exercises relating to veterinary pharmacology. Things related to anesthesia, routes of administration, etc. It’s going to be different than last semester since back then all we did was really write prescriptions, memorize important drugs and do dose calculations. Now we’ll actually be able to work with real animals, so that’ll be a blast for sure.
After that I went home, typed up my notes and then had some dinner. And now here I am typing out this entry. So far, the semester has been slowly starting for me, which I kind of like. But I hope that soon we’ll be getting started on the real work… especially for surgery class. I’m REALLY excited for that course.
Anyway, I’m going to go. Hope all of you are doing well! Leave a comment if you have time. Thanks all!
