Dream Anatomy on my sneakers

I haven’t posted any shoe photos in awhile, so here’s some of the sneakers that I drew on with a paint marker. They’ve got vertebrae all over. I did these months ago when I had too much time on my hands, and they’re part of the very few productive things that I’ve done as a bum hahaha. Messed up my desk in the process, too. Oh wait, it’s always been messy.

posterior view + early bird

sneaker tongue

Inspired by the Dream Anatomy Exhibit and handouts from my zoology and anatomy classes. The half-man, half-bird skeleton is Barry Cleavin’s For the true anatomy – Early Bird.

I’m starting real “hospital duty” on Thursday. Looks like I’ve been assigned to the VIP unit. Waaa.

Music for the long weekend

Possibly the longest one ever. No training on Monday makes that a 5-day vacation. Yay! The bad news is that my evil stomach is acting up again and I’m stuck at home waiting it out. I feel like a bum all over again. The stomach has to get in tiptop shape soon because my cousin’s debut is coming up (read: tomorrow) and I’m part of the 18 shots. Perfect timing, Mr. Stomach. Behave because I have to at least tolerate one shot without vomiting.

Anyway, there was nothing better to do but watch youtube videos, and I found the acoustic version of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face. Since I don’t watch MTV or listen to the radio, I didn’t know any of her songs until Julie and Liz used Poker Face in our group presentation. Her music isn’t normally the kind that I would listen to (and it probably never will be), but I’d reconsider if she did more songs like this. This version really took me by surprise. She can sing. Really. I like it better than the original one. I’m playing it right now :-p

Here’s a video of a revised version of Vampire Weekend’s Walcott. Live strings! Compare and contrast with the original one.

And here’s another one from the same performance because I love Ezra Koenig’s eyebrows. That, and M79 is so good I could rave about it for days.

Hooray for long weekends.

Gentlemen on trains: giving up seats

It seems like chivalry still exists, even if it’s mostly confined within the cars of the speedy caterpillars known as LRT and MRT trains. I’ve never been comfortable with taking another person’s seat, especially if the person is only offering it because he’s male and that’s what society expects him to do. Still, commuting is nice if everyone acted like a gentleman would.

Out of curiosity, I decided to conduct my own little experiment. It’s a very unscientific one. I tried to refuse whenever someone offered me his seat on the train. I had about 6 commuters as my subjects, all on different rides on Lines 1 and 2 of the LRT. Most of them insisted on me sitting, and I kept refusing. I expected them to just sit back down, but not a lot of them did. Most just remained standing, or walked to the opposite side of the train until I was forced to take the empty seat. One of them even argued with me! It’s funny.

Out of my 6 subjects, only one sat back down on his seat. He didn’t seem too happy about it; the look on his face was annoyed and bordering on being offended. I stopped my experiment because of that.

Anyway, I gathered enough information to theorize that refusing help from a guy does something to his ego, and I bet that guy won’t be offering his seat again to anyone at any time soon. I really feel bad for discouraging one of the few gentlemen we have left in the world. It’s important that women show their appreciation and thus encourage chivalry more. I’m not a feminist (though I do have a few feministic beliefs). I think that we women shouldn’t always expect men to offer us their seats, but let’s not refuse unless we have a good reason to. (^_^)’

Oh, and we can’t just leave all the seat-offering to guys. As one of the commuters told me, good deeds equal good karma. If someone needs the seat more than you do, by all means, give it up.

Crybaby

It’s the last day of my batch’s 2-day personal growth & development seminar, which all of us must participate in as part of our training. It’s a lot like the retreats we have in high school. We spent the entire afternoon crying. I swear. They turned me into a crybaby. I think I even got dehydrated from crying.

It left me with good feelings though. I think we all need something like that from time to time, just to put things in perspective. And lighten whatever load we have on our chests.

Talking’s good. There’s comfort in the knowledge that you’re not the only one that knows…

I don’t know what to do.

Okay. The truth is, I am feeling down right now. Sore eyes is no biggie, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. I feel like trash. There, that’s how it goes.

Have you ever been in a situation where you know that a certain action on your part will hurt another person, and yet you can’t help yourself? That’s me, I still go ahead and do it.

I’ve been taking my anger and frustrations out on someone who doesn’t deserve it. And it’s not the person’s fault- the anger is not even related to that person. This is a defense mechanism, I know. It’s called displacement. I learned that in my psychology classes. See? I even know what kind of defense mechanism it is, but I can’t help but lash out. I just watch myself hurt the person. It’s like shooting a gun. You feel the recoil as regret instantaneously.

It doesn’t help that you don’t have anyone to depend on, because the ones that you actually can depend on, you spare from helping you with your personal problems. Why? Because you don’t want to burden them with that task. And then being alone with your problems takes such a toll, it angers you. And because anger seeps into everything you do, you end up hurting the ones you didn’t want to burden in the first place. Then you start wondering about the next time.. It’s defeatist.

I’m rambling. I’ll get over the drama soon. I just needed to say all that.

My eyes are sore. Not from crying, mind you

But I am sad. Siiiiiigh. Anyway, it’s summer but the weather is strange. Hot and humid today, cold and rainy tomorrow. Despite that we still have summertime diseases circulating, in addition to viral and bacterial flu. A lot of my batch mates have the flu, and I feel like I’m going to catch it soon. Been sneezing everywhere. Sudden changes in environmental temperature lowers our immune system, so we’re all the more susceptible. Good thing swine flu hasn’t reached the Philippines yet (but if it does, the hospital I’m training in has the facilities to treat and confine it… or so they say hehehe).

Speaking of evil summertime diseases, I think I might have sore eyes. Signs and symptoms are itchiness, weird spasms, and a grainy, sandy feeling in the eyes. No discharges of any kind though, so there’s a chance that it’s not really sore eyes. That’s the last sign I’m waiting for. I dread going through that same experience I had when I was a kid. One morning I couldn’t open my eyes because the discharge was so thick that it pasted my eyelids together. I honestly thought I was going blind!

For now I’ve been applying eye drops for relief. If this progresses I’m going to have to upgrade to antimicrobial eye drops. I can’t wear contact lenses or I might damage and permanently scar the cornea (that is, if I really do have sore eyes). I’ve also been constantly washing my hands and using alcohol and hand sanitizers. Gone into obsessive-compulsive mode because the absolute worst thing that can happen is to have sore eyes and spread it around, and then recover only to get sore eyes all over again! Arghh.

I guess it’s my fault for scratching my eyes. I remember scratching them a lot lately. Lesson learned: never scratch your eyes. Always wash your hands, it’s the number one way of preventing infections, like diarrhea and colds. And sore eyes. Bleargh.

I just got my first paycheck!

…well, it’s not really a check, but hey, i just received wages for my first job ever! Okay, so it’s not really wages- it’s more like an allowance. And it’s not officially a job- it’s a training program. Still, it’s a program that hopefully will end with me getting employed. I’m happy!

It’s the first thing I’ve earned that didn’t come from ebay and “freelancing.” And by freelancing, I mean looking so pitifully jobless that relatives will offer to pay you to do things that they could have done themselves. Like make an email invitation (yay! Thank you, tita). Their only consolation is that I can do it slightly better than they can. And slight is, well, not much of a difference.

Anyway, things are really looking up this week. I can say that I like most of my fellow trainees, and though my performance hasn’t been my best, I’m getting by, mostly. Hehehe.

Oh, and I got a very nice offer recently. Maybe I’ll talk about it later. I feel like my life just went and jumped onto a trampoline, and right now I’m in the part where I’m hanging in mid-air after that extra boost. Wheee!

So it’s been good for me, an especially good one compared to last week, when I went into a mini-depression and failed a good number of exams. I was feeling a little unloved, what with adjusting to a new environment, and no one on the same wavelength as I am. God just made up for that now.