Marie's Birthday Part 1

My sister will be celebrating her birthday in approximately 7 hours. She's turning 19.

I love birthdays. Mine, most especially. Almost more, but not quite, than Christmas. I think it's because your birthday is YOUR DAY. YOURS. And on that day, people are extra nice to you and make it as special as possible.

And you do your best to make your day extra-extra special. So it sucks when the 12 hours of your day is spent within the four walls of your classroom. And there's still around 7 hours of sleeping. Which means you get 5 hours to make the day magical.

And it doesn't help when most of your family is far away and all you've got are friends who consider your birthday as the one day in the year that you get to treat them to dinner.

That's more or less what happened last year, on my sister's birthday. She wasn't happy at all. And if it happens again tomorrow, well...

So though my wallet's skinny, I'll try at the very least to make her a bit happy on her special day. I already bought two tiny cakes and I think I'll go out in a few minutes and buy some candles to go with the tiny cake. And if I get a little extra left, I just might be able to buy trinkets. My sister loves useless trinkets and stickers and stuff like that.

Actually, she's not that hard to please at all. It's just that few people go out of their way to please her.

Including me, if truth be told.

New Look

I love the new look of this blog. It's perfect!

Can you see that I'm just wasting my time? I should be studying now. But well, that's me. I need superhuman effort to refrain from procrastination.

First Day Reflections

1. Everything's strangely the same. The school buildings are the same. My classmates are the same. Okay, it was a different PBL Tutorial session but the atmosphere was more or less the same. Nobody looks remotely different. Except maybe Lise who had gotten bangs over December and then decided she didn't like them.

2. I was right. My "crush" was nothing more than a whimsical fancy of the moment. I think I imagined the whole thing. At the very least, it didn't survive the two-week Christmas break. So I'm back to scratch. I don't mind very much, although I know later on the monotony of it will make me blue and that would be the stimulus necessary to start for another man-hunt. However, the pickings are very slim. After 10 months, all the handsome faces have lost their ability to attract.

3. And speaking of back-to-scratch, that's what's going to happen to our research. The problem with our group is that our group leader is too nice so he let's us have a Christmas break while he does the whole thing himself. We might have gotten away with it although I do have qualms regarding the validity and reliability of the results. However, our research adviser got wind of what we did. She told us she was "almost at the point of being angry with us". Sounds like a good thing, doesn't it? It means, she's not quite in the anger stage yet. But she was very firm and told us we had to do everything again. Oh, and did I mention that we now have an extremely limited time left? There's no longer any room for any mistake.

4. Rumors from the other school. It seems as if they (my fellow first year medical students) did not have a Christmas break at all because they were studying for their unit exam. When I think of the hours I spent watching 45 episodes of bleach, Season 4 of House and Grey's Anatomy, I'm still not sure if I should pity them or myself.

5. Lyss and I are the only first year medical students left. We're in the PDR room studying. Or at least she's studying. I'm blogging. It's kind of like a loser thing to do. Studying in school during independent study time, I mean. The cool thing to do is to study at coffee shops or somewhere equally elegant and sophisticated. Oh, well. I am serious about turning over a new leaf and that includes studying during Independent Study Time.

6. I still have free access to the wifi here at school. Yipee!!!

New Blog Name

I changed the name of my blog. It's new name, plus my URL kind of gives away my identity. But then, since I'm 90% confident that the people who know me... who could possibly piece together the clues... could not possibly stumble upon this blog, my secrets are safe.

Besides, I do believe I am my only reader.

Haha.

One day, when I'm old and wrinkled, I'll read all the old entries and nod sagely at my foolishness and smile at the things that made me laugh and cry.

And I'll show this blog to my children and grandchildren and maybe, just maybe, they would get something out of my adventures/misadventures and my normal (a.k.a. boring) day-to-day life.

Extra Resolutions

These are the resolutions I failed to write about.

1. Be organized. Seriously.

2. Keep track of my money. Budget.

3. Buy myself new clothes every once in a while. I need them. I need to start learning how to look good.

4. Learn how to put on light make-up?

5. STUDY EVERY NIGHT!!! NO SLEEPING BEFORE 12 MIDNIGHT!! My study habits suck. I seriously need to work on this

6. No crushing on just anybody. Wait for true love. (Yeah... right.)

7. Get the Top 2 spot in class. (I'm realistic enough to realize I cannot catch up to the Top 1)

8. Finish my novel.

9. Hmmm.... I'm running out of resolutions.

That's it for now.

.xoxo.

Back to the Big City

Tomorrow morning, I'm going back to the Big City. My vacation days are over. I'm pretty miserable, mostly because I had been banking on two more idle days here at home. But because of the bad weather and the passenger season (I hate passenger season) and the fact that most of the ships are fully-booked, I had to get the one available at the moment.

The worst thing about this is that we'll be on a fast craft. It would probably be a good 3 hours ride. I hate fast crafts. My father is a seaman but none of us, his children, got the anti-sea sickness gene. So this means I better not eat a heavy breakfast so I wouldn't have a lot of stuff to puke out.

I don't want to go back. At least not yet. Life in the City is so fast-paced. Everything seems to move at fast forward.

I'm homesick already.

Looking Back

Yesterday was the first day of the year. So obviously, today is the second. However, as much as I wanted to write some "First Day of the New Year" reflections or something like that, I was prevented from doing so by menstrual cramps. I spent most of yesterday bent in pain and puking out my lunch and dessert.

2008 has been a pretty good year. Here are the things I wouldn't want to forget about 2008.

-the last few months of nursing student life

-16-hour straight shift and being the DR jinx

-pinning ceremony (I lost my pin later on)

-graduating cum laude

-review sessions: this includes coming in and sleeping during lectures and waking up during recess, skipping classes, Dr. Dy, skipping Frankie's lecture to watch a totally no-brainer movie, lunch at Bahay ni Kuya/Lola, topping the pre-board

-Board Exam!!!

-snagging the Top 9 spot

-MED SCHOOL!!!

-two new bestfriends and a whole lot of new friends

-Intramurals: Choir practice and choir competition, becoming an athlete for the first time in my life and getting a silver medal for the track & field, also making a fool out of myself during table tennis competion (I have never played table tennis my whole life before this)

-my first all-night party. I didn't drink a single drop of alcohol and I cried at some point during the party because I felt really miserable

-wall climbing for the first time

-attending a beach party composed of mostly third year students and actually having fun

-Medlympics! and Track & Field again...

-Marco Polo moments, McDo moments, KFC moments (I am choke!), Bo Moments...

-Simala and attending a procession (around 5km) in high heels

-Another choir competition (for Christmas); one of the most embarrassing moments of my life; I survived

-Christmas and New Year with my family

And so much more... I am excited for 2009.