Trapped in a corner

Ok, that title seems more serious than this post really is. 😅

Things have been pretty busy lately, but not so much writing-wise, and I kinda need to get started again because of a lot of paperwork that is coming my way. I guess I got a little burned out from the previous month with all of the Lung Month stuff that went on, and all the work that went with it. So with that, I begin this post.

Life has been stable for the most part. Work is picking up somewhat, and referrals are really helping make ends meet. Still not confident though, because cash flow still is unstable.. 😩 I guess that's the problem practicing in the Metro as opposed to starting out provincial..

I guess that's enough for now. I want to make these kickstarter posts separate from the ones with actual content.

NBA Memories and the 2019 Finals

So my last post was way back in January huh? Talk about your long intervals..

Normally you wouldn't find me blogging about the NBA anymore, but I decided to make an exception this time around in celebration of this momentous event.

First off, you gotta give mad props to the Toronto Raptors. They pulled off a highly improbable victory against a feisty Golden State Warriors team that fought toe to toe until the end despite being hobbled with injuries to key players at critical moments.

I won't go into the debate wherein people would say that this was just a fluke for Toronto and that they would be forever be questioned since the Warriors did not have much of Durant during the series and lost Klay Thompson to an ACL during the final game. I will say this though, that people also need to remember that Golden State capitalized on injuries during their championship runs too. In short, "Quits lang" :P Ok, enough about that..

I have been following the NBA avidly ever since late grade school, around the time of Jordan's second coming. It started kinda late for me because I wasn't really into basketball as a child due to my physical limitations because of my neurologic deficits. That and the fact that the only NBA exposure I used to get was the odd episode of NBA action that I would see from time to time on Saturdays.

My interest shot up when I got together with the boys. One of my earliest NBA memories with them was watching the NYK-HOU Finals during a birthday. After that I was pretty much hooked.  BestFriend even gifted me with a Barkley jersey from one of his trips abroad for use during our jam sessions.

Eventually cable TV and the internet came around and made the NBA all the more accessible to my corner of the world. Dynasties were pretty much the norm in the NBA, what with all the championship gear the Celtics and Lskers have accumulated through the years. Chicago was also pretty dominant in the day, with Jordan getting 6 rings before eventually hanging up his sneakers for good and becoming a back office guy for the Hornets. Too bad Barkley was denied his own trophy though. :(

I was also witness to the impressive performance put up by the Pistons to win a chip against a heavily favored and methodical Lakers team bannered by Shaq and Kobe. That was a series for the ages.

One of my most favorite runs in recent years was the 2008 championship run by Boston's "Big Three" of Garnett, Allen, and Pierce. Being a Garnett fan since his time in Minnesota, it felt really good seeing the Big Ticket get to win one for himself.

The emergenco of Lebron James seems to have ushered in a new era in the NBA where the balance of power would tip where the players would want it. Now you have superteams of players getting together by themselves, putting  together their own teams for a shot at immortality. AS expected, the competitive balance of the league began to be heavily skewed. It seemed like the championship trophy would follow lebron whereever he went, although the Spurs had a lot to say about that. :P

The most recent iteration of a superteam is embodied by the Golden State Warriors. They have a pretty stacked team that was seemingly unstoppable. I initially had no problems with them, since the team was patiently built over the years to become the powerhouse they are. I respected that. Then came the serpent known as Durant. He joined a stacked team that had just beat his ass the previous season and didn't really need him to win anyway, and just made them totally unbeatable. That's when my interest in the NBA waned dramatically, since the championship outcome seemed to be a forgone conclusion. What would be the point in watching anyway?

That's why I'm really happy for Toronto. I seem to have this tendency to root for the underdog, and also tend to side with the team that has not won a chip ("Give chance to others" is a big part of my morality). I'm also happy that the stranglehold of Golden State has been broken and the NBA can be fun again. 

This may sound pretty cold, but I'm happy that Durant will be taken out for a season to recuperate. I hope when he comes back he would have reflected on the impact his actions have caused in the league and how he ruined the competitive balance of the teams. Truth be told, I liked him a lot when he was with harden and Brodie on the Thunder. That was a pretty fun team. 

Leaving a legacy

Ok, so the title seems a tad too heavy compared to the actual content. However, I had a moment of clarity a while ago (while in the shower) about legacy-building, and how the stuff we leave behind will affect others. It may be something grand like a monument, an amazing architectural feat, or an impressive achievement that would stand the test of time. Looking things on a smaller scale though, you would find that each of us is leaving his or her legacy in our own little seemingly insignificant way.. I'm talking about the stuff everyone puts online.. 

I won't go into the intellectual and philosophical arguments about one's online presence, but will instead be commenting on my own footprint on the web, particularly this blog.. Looking back at the archives, I apparently started blogging 15 years ago as a way to pass the time during medical school.. I believe I had started out in Blogger before I migrated to multiply, then back again when Multiply decided to sell out and convert itself into a pure online marketplace, which left the casual bloggers and photodumpers out in the cold (remember, this was way before Instagram became really mainstream). I do not remember what content I had there, or if I was able to successfully migrate the entries to Multiply. As such, 2004 will now forever mark the starting point of my official blogging history.

Going back to the theme of this post. When I took a trip down memory lane and viewed the blog posts from the very beginning, I realized that I wasn't really producing much content as I was just using this as kind of a stream of consciousness dump for catharsis. It may have been good for my psyche at the time, but now it all just looks so messy and disorganized. Having said this, it is now my goal to clean up this blog and get rid of all the unnecessary drama or negativity. I won't be altering posts since I still want this blog to be a life chronicle of sorts, but I shall be deleting what I would consider as just background noise which are deemed irrelevant to the overall narrative.

I guess that's all for now. This is gonna take a lot of work. :P

2019 Yearstarter (Better late than never)

I have been looking for an opportunity to just sit down and jot stuff down but the chance always escaped me..

It is now already a couple of weeks into the new year, and I have failed to put up my annual retrospective, nor the "yeartstarter" that usually takes its place when I lag behind. hehe.. 

Seriously though, so much has happened this past year that I don't know where to begin.. Couple that with all the negativity in the news and in the country at large, and I have an exhausting pile of data to sort through and work with.. @_@

So now it has come to this. I shall try to try my best to condense what has been a roller-coaster of a year into a few paragraphs. :P

------------------------------------------------------------------------

2018 has been a year of tremendous upheaval in my life. It was a whirlwind of life-altering changes and fresh new experiences I never thought I would witness..

Obviously there was \bringing everything to conclusion by passing the boards. At the same time my other half has began her training in earnest, and we're quite pleased to say that she hasn't looked back ever since. Sure she ran into some hurdles along the way, both academic and otherwise (especially the annoying problem of bad incompetent seniors), but I guess the experiences have toughened her up and helped her personal growth. The hurdling of the examinations led to a new frontier, the start of practice. I wanted to try to accomplish things firsthand, like registering with the taxman, walking the papers and whatnot, until I was satisfied that I had a grasp of how it was to run your own simple practice the right way.

I was also granted the brief opportunity to present a couple of papers at an international academic forum. Who knew that research could turn out to be so satisfying and rewarding? ;)

A great many minor things have also happened along the way, some of which I consider as big steps in terms of personal growth.

Overall, I guess the themes of this past year was LEARNING and GROWTH, and I hope this year will see more of both. :)

Having put this down has apparently defused my need to rant about the ills and failings of society, particularly the local variety.I guess that is going to be a different piece for another time. 

Science Fiction and Fantasy

I had an interesting conversation with a patient recently. I guess the topic turned a bit friendly when he was satisfied with my explanations of the disease process and treatment.

Basically he said that he was giving a piece of unsolicited advice, that I should look towards writing a book because he apparently enjoyed the way I conducted my narrative, that I was able to  hold his attention unlike the stereotypical doctor dealing out scientific jargon not normally understandable to the lay person.

I thanked the dude for his compliments, but it really got me thinking... Could I really transition into writing an actual full-fledged narrative?

I mean, it wasn't for lack of trying. I recall sometime in grade school when I first set out to write my own science fiction novel (since I was still on a high from reading all the Robotech novels from my collection), but this project fell short because (in hindsight) I really didn't have a concrete story to build around. I thought that I had shelved that idea for good, until now.

Structure. That is the one thing great stories have which I didn't prepare for. We learn in school about how stories  are made, about the different parts and how the narrative should flow together, but since that just seemed like a random concept, it never occurred to me that I needed to apply it to my own work.

AS you can see, most of the stuff I write here on this blog are pretty much free-flowing. I just pluck the thoughts from my stream of consciousness and hope that the thought will be cohesive enough for my readers (or even myself in the future) to understand.

To be honest, the idea of making a structured story now kinda intrigues and excites me. The fact that I would need to craft a dramatis personae with their own backstories that would provide a logical flow to their actions has piqued my interest..

 I had been reading my way through the Dune novels since I passed the diplomate exams and is my constant activity during clinic downtimes, but to tell you quite frankly, it has lately become a struggle to keep myself engaged, since the latter original Dune novels dwell a lot more on political intrigue and the inner workings of a prescient mind. 

This entry also has "Fantasy" in the title for good reason. I have recently come across a D&D-based story entitled the Tale of an Industrious Rogue, which basically details an entire Dungeouns and Dragons tabletop campaign conducted by a flexible and creative Dungeon Master (DM) and played by an equally creative bunch of players controlling the colorful and devious characters that serve as their in-game alter-egos. This story has renewed my interest in old-school tabletop RPGs (I used to play the Sci-Fi equivalent of D&D called Star Frontiers which was also made by TSR, the company behind Dungeons and Dragons). I realize that this would present a set of challenges, since the people I would normally play with (the BNO guys) ave much difficulty organizing our nights out, much less a long term campaign requiring multiple sessions. The magic of the internet offers some promise however, especially with the advent of videoconferencing. All we would have to do is work out who controls the dice so that there would be no accusations of cheating. Hehe.

Seriously though, I think I am yearning for a return to the good old days, when adventure games were driven more by imagination and creativity than visuals and gimmicks. We'll just see what comes up. ;)

Ang bagyong hinde

A couple of weeks ago, the metro was hit by a torrential rainfall similar to what befell us a few years ago when the typhoon Ondoy rolled into town. Memories of being stranded on the road until 9pm was renewed in my mind as the downpour reduced visibility to near zero.

The day had begun quietly enough, with a bit of scattered showers falling unpredictably here and there. The local weather forecast showed that there were storms located outside the PAR (Philippine Area of Responsibility) but had the side effect of bringing in these monsoon rains. I had just gotten in the car with my Other Half when the downpour suddenly came. It was a good thing the mall was nearby, but I found myself suddenly fearing any flooding that would occur in the basement parking.

We went on the date as usual but it was ominously dark outside. I remember saying to myself that it looked like it was evening already but in reality it was just a little past noon. The rains raged on outside until we got the call from her mother to abort and come home since there was flooding already at different parts of the metro. We hurriedly left and I got her home safe before saying a little prayer and heading out. Luckily I made it home unscathed. Then there was the long wait... I spent a great deal of my time waiting for everyone else to come home. My brother arrived first after dinnertime, but my poor parents got home at 3 in the morning already due to standstill traffic caused by severe flooding.. :(

I was really thankful that they got home safe and that the water level in the immediate vicinity had not risen to alarming levels..

We saw the news the following day... The riverside communities in Marikina had to be evacuated, and the dams were forced to release water because levels had gone dangerously high.. :(

It was really fortunate that the rainfall was not as severe as what was previously experienced. The cost to human life and property is presumably much less than before. From a physician's standpoint though, we have to be an the lookout for an increased incidence of leptospirosis, as this may progress to outright renal failure and fatal pulmonary hemorrhage. 

Net Negativity

A lot has happened in recent weeks, and foremost among them was the blatant doctor-shaming by an infamous media personality who in my eyes has devolved from a supposed protector of the oppressed to just a plain old mean-spirited bully who pushes people around just to get what he wants. Seeing as all this negativity has had a substantial impact on my general mood as of late, I shall not be dwelling on that much-publicized incident here.

AS you can see, there have been so many ups and downs as of late. The internet has now turned into a hotbed of hostility and negativity which is spread far and wide through the (mis)utilization of social media. Foremost among these sites are Twitter and Facebook. The supposed freedom and anonymity of the internet has turned people into such jerks and assholes that it sickens me.. Then you have all these fake accounts pushing a particular agenda or orchestrating demolition jobs on individuals. Then there is also the abudance of fake news being circulated by uscrupulous individuals who are often in the payroll of one moneyed faction or another. It's just so sad... I guess this is human freedom at it's very worst..It is impossible to tightly control the entire internet, although I think China has been doing a helluva job with its own Great Firewall.

I just want to comment of this foul nature of humans, particularly the aspect that we manifest when we are behind the anonymity of the computer. Free access to the internet has led to an exlosion of apathetic individuals prowling online doing hurtful things just for the hell of it. Basic decency appears to have taken a backseat (or even no seat at all) for these people. It is sad that such a wonderful tool like the web is used merely to spread hatred and evil instead of fully utilizing its potential to help  better the lives of everyone though the sharing of knowledge and the ability to connect earnestly with people who are far away. I guess it bolis downto education, and I'm not talking about those fancy degrees here. What I am highlighting is the "manners education" that a person should receive as a child, the basic rules of decency and good moral conduct that would ideally be ingrained in every individual from a young age. I look across the internet now and see a general lack of empathy with others. I mean, you don't have to cry and sympathize with every sob story that you hear, but at least you could be decent enough not to act like a dick and make fun of those aggrieved.

I have observed that the supposed "nice people" on the internet are often drawn out to become angry lunatics because they tend to have very emotional responses that the so-called "trolls" are skilled at eliciting. This used to be the domain of the crazy obsessed fan, the nutty conspiracy theorist, or the blindly loyal staunch political supporter, but has now taken a more sinister undertone as the trolls are now for hire. This makes them much more dangerous since they are able to focus their attacks on anyone or anything going against their agenda (as opposed to individual nutjobs who people don't take seriously at all).

I guees that's enough about the negativity epidemic. I didn't want to get anybody down, but I just needed to have some catharsis from this rough couple of weeks..