Singapore Escapade

My three favorite words to describe Singapore is Clean, Disciplined and Expensive. There are other words to say, but these three about sums it up. The first two descriptions can also be coined into one word: FINE. Most souvenir T-shirts read Singapore is a Fine City. It can be understood as nice, pleasant, attractive or of high quality, but to Singapore, it means penalty. Singapore does have a reputation of imposing high fines for disobeying rules and regulations. But this made the city a clean and safe society. You can roam the streets in the middle of the night and still feel safe, like no one will touch you. And the transport system is also very organized. Traffic there is like no traffic here in the Philippines. However, living in such a society does have a price to pay. Cost of living is expensive, about two to three times the cost here in the Philippines. Regardless, there are good shopping districts in Singapore, where merchandise are sold about the same price if converted to the peso (Bugis, Chinatown, Orchard). And for an island-city state, there are lots of tourist destinations in SG. Due to constraints of time, I was only able to visit Sentosa island, the zoo and Night Safari, and the Marine Bay. This is to favor more time for shopping, which is relatively more enjoyable at times than sight-seeing. LOL. I'm only sorry I wasn't able to try the reverse bungee. Maybe next time. Oh yeah, I also wasn't able to take a picture of the Sentosa bus (crap!).

Testimonial Dinner

A tradition in the making, a testimonial dinner and bequeathal ceremony was held in our school last March 21 to celebrate the the graduation of the pioneering batch of the Silliman University Medical School (SUMS). It was a proud moment for the school to produce for the first time a set of graduates, and it was a sight to see all of our teachers getting so excited to be wearing their togas. The teachers were even more numerous than the graduates themselves.

The ceremony started with a pictorial session, followed by the devotion, with bequeathal of the white-coat, stethoscope, and candle from the seniors to us juniors, in preparation for our clerkship in April 1. In most part of the program, the seniors prepared video presentations and speeches about their 4-year experiences in the medical school--their most memorable experiences, most embarrassing moments (almost all mentioned being scolded by tatay for being late), most fond memories, and even what they want to be in ten years. They had an awarding for each graduate which best describes them and which they themselves created.

Here are a few pictures of the said event.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

No, this is not Lemony Snicket's but my own version of unfortunate events happening one after another. A month ago, my great-Aunt died. She was my grandmother's sister, and a second mother to my mom (my mom was actually led to believe she was her mother and sired by an American soldier, being a spinster herself. But that's another story to tell). So, she was very close to us, being the primary nanny to us siblings from the day we were born. She was apparently healthy in her 91 years, apart from the progressing dementia and had no previous complaints of any kind prior to the incident. After taking a bath that fateful Saturday, she experienced an epigastric pain, one that she would not admit to me despite her facial expression of pain and the obvious way she pressed her epigastric area. She kept spitting her saliva and I urged her to "sleep on it" (she had a history of ulcer 2 years prior). I had checked her vital signs and it didn't show any warning signs of impending doom. Nonetheless, after about an hour or so, my brother found her on her bed lifeless. We immediately brought her to the hospital though it was permanent (she was diagnosed of AMI--shucks! how could I miss it? And I call myself a medical student. I feel so inadequate, I should have considered that in the differentials). But she lived a good 91 years so it was not too hard to accept. It was bound to happen sometime. And she was lucky she had a quick and graceful exit. That brings a total to 3 living survivors of the 9 siblings of the Dael clan. A few days after her burial, her brother woke up, having difficulty in moving his body. The day before, he had been apparently healthy, going about in his tricycle, but had exhausted himself chasing after Chippy, the dog, who got loose from his chains. He was immediately brought to the hospital and was suspected of having a stroke. But it was ruled out as his symptoms were not really consistent with stroke. A few hours later, he had difficulty of breathing and was rushed to the ICU for ventilatory support. We later found out he had Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a rare disease that struck once every million persons (if this was a lottery, then my great-uncle is indeed lucky). He had never been hospitalized all his life but made up for it now, as his medicines are so expensive (8K x 8 x 5 = 320K). Anyway, this is another major blow to our family, afterall, his sister just died, I don't know how we can cope up with another death so soon. Fortunately, this disease is curable but he is 79 afterall, anything can happen (good thing now he is recuperating slowly, but he still needs the respirator though, so he's still in the ICU). A few days after this happened, a news came that would shatter my dreams. We have a school activity scheduled on the 21st. Originally, 3 of my classmates and I had planned a short trip to Singapore before we embark on our duties as clerks. We were scheduled to leave on the 20th. It would have been an easy decision--be absent on the 21st. BUT, our dean made this event a formal testimonial dinner/bequeathal and it is mandatory that we attend, or else we can not proceed to clerkship (*CRASH! there goes our hopes and dreams...) It was our finals week and it was so hard to study with this bothering our minds. Our plane tickets were nonrefundable, nonreroute-table and non transferable...how to solve? I checked with the airlines on the internet and there were no available seats for subsequent flights (*pouring my eyes out at this moment). We had a talk with our dean if it is possible to reschedule the said event however, the dean's schedule is also tight. If you think things could not possibly go worse, that afternoon, my mom messaged me and she was frantic. She said our mango tree cracked in half, and the smaller branch fell to the road, disabling the vehicles to pass. CRAP! I love that mango tree. I used to climb it for fruits when I was little, actually, even up to now, if my father doesn't find out. I felt like my spirit just left me. How could these things happen? I told my friends and one said, it's my own series of unfortunate events. Another said, when it rains it pours and right now, bad luck is pouring on me, but then, maybe, a string of good luck may follow it. I was depressed for maybe a couple of days. My intuitive mother bought me a half gallon of ice cream to cheer me up. And then I received a comment on FB that basically made my day. I was suddenly feeling optimistic. My classmates and I went to check again with the airlines, this time in their office and we manage to rebook our flight (though with 8K additional fee). I thank God that I'm an optimistic and cheerful kind of person. I refused to let it affect me because one, i have a lot more to be thankful for; two, I have a great family and great friends who support me; three, I'm in good health; four, I have good grades and five, everything is manageable.

Life's Comedy

I have this notion that comedies in the Middle Ages are those that usually end in tragedy. I googled this and found out I'm actually wrong. A Shakespearean comedy is one that has a happy ending, usually involving marriages between the unmarried characters, and a tone and style that is more light-hearted than Shakespeare's other plays. However, Shakespear did have an unusual tone of mixing humour and tragedy (tragicomic) hence it stuck in my mind that his comedies end in tragedy.

Two weeks ago, I encountered a case which brought Shakespearean comedy to my mind. One of my great-Uncle's neighbors in the ICU had a constant stream of visitors, teachers, who were past colleagues of my mother (now retired). As it happened, an elementary school teacher had been reprimanded by the principal for losing a sum of money from the PTA (about 9K). This incident actually happened two years back. The principal, being new to that school had dug up this inconsistency with the treasury and confronted the teacher. She demanded that the teacher own up the fault of using the money illegally, one that the teacher vehemently denied. She was "fooled" by a parent in a bank, who offered to deposit the money for her (budol-budol daw). This incident, happening two years previously, had gone unnoticed by the previous administration. Fast forward to the present, this teacher was accused and humiliated by the principal of something that she believes, is not her outright fault. She was greatly distressed. This woman is a timid, serious, and relatively protected from the cruelties of the world by six overbearing older siblings. She's never really experienced being reprimanded or humiliated so. And, having experienced what had happened, she can not handle it. As the story goes, that evening, she accompanied her husband to the grocery, something she doesn't usually do and picked up a bottle of muriatic acid to clean up the toilet. (Her husband actually encouraged her...yes dear, the toilet needs cleaning up). Unbeknownst to the husband, the teacher already had a plan. She wrote several suicidal notes to her family and colleagues, and even to the main culprit, the principal. She had every intention of ending her life.

Relating this story as sanely as I can muster, you can hardly grasp the dramatic intensity of what happened. Yes, it is a tragedy that this woman would feel this way after being wrongfully accused over a mere 9 thousand pesos to the point of ending her own life. If you have been carefully following my story, you would then ask, "so she was in the ICU...was she saved, afterall?" ...hmmm, tricky question. Long story short, NO, she wasn't saved. She died after 1 week in the ICU.

But that's not the reason why I wrote about this, and exclaimed it to be life's comedy. The thing that I found really funny with this story is that after concreting the idea of suicide, the teacher then proceeded to the CR to do the deed. She poured muriatic acid on a glass and drank more than half of it. What was really funny was, after drinking this corrosive liquid, the teacher realized that it was painful to the stomach (really? *rolls eyes* and I thought she wanted to kill herself). She could not bear the pain so she went to her sister in the next house and asked to be brought to the hospital because of stomach pains. How ironic!

(You know, it's hard to sympathize with people like this. They actually seal their own fate. As my cousin would put it, we would not fall under the same incident coz we were so used to being scolded--iron skins! LOL)