Mental Debugs

Leaving on a Jet Plane... not!

2011-09-03T21:00:00.012+08:00

Earlier, I caught parts of a Claudine Barreto movie on a local network while channel surfing. No, I am not a fan and although the local film industry is having a Renaissance of sorts, it takes more than a Claudine Barreto to make me sit and watch a locally produced film in its entirety. The script, acting, cinematography, editing, directing, it all need to be impeccable. Sorry, I am just like

Waste Land (2010, Brazil): A Review

2011-09-02T17:20:00.005+08:00

This morning, I heard the faint voice of a kid. He was shouting basura, basura (garbage, garbage), cue that it was time to throw a couple of days' thrash. It is like this in our neighborhood. Since our house is situated walking distance from the road, we need to bring our refuse outside for the dump truck to pick up. In the process, we learned to segregate our waste: the recyclables from the

Hello (cyber)world?!?

2011-08-31T20:40:00.017+08:00

All right. I've been gone for quite some time... again. And this time I won't be promising that I will be back for good or that I will be updating my blog on a regular basis. But I have good reasons for my online absence. Well, at least as far as blogging is concerned. I'd like to think of myself as one with the denizens of the cyberworld. I am always online, whether accessing the Internet

Flying home on a Cebu Pacific piso-fare... NOT!

2011-05-13T12:37:00.003+08:00

I would have loved to fly back home on a piso-fare. After months of planning, I am finally heading back to my hometown, in Zamboanga, but hours of browsing on Cebu Pacific's website months before proved futile; it's like finding a needle in a haystack. Cebu Pacific is one of the country's commercial air carriers that sells tickets at a fraction of the cost, sometimes at just one peso (plus taxes

Good to be back!

2011-05-11T22:53:00.004+08:00

At some point, I've grown tired blogging here just because I've grown tired, too, of Blogspot. I went blogging someplace, at Wordpress, because of their various options when it comes to themes and widgets and the ease of use with writing online journals. Then earlier today, in the wee hours of the morning, I decided of overhauling my blogger template and did a fantastic job out of doing so that I

Looking for a home-based job?

2011-04-04T18:07:00.003+08:00

Now this question is for me more than anyone else. It’s been three months since I resigned from call center work in Makati in the hope of sitting in for the May NPTE. As I have heard of the application only in the latter part of November and as the pertinent documents required and fees to submit took time to process and to come by, I was not able to file on time. Now I am jobless. Being one may

One with the Earth

2011-03-27T18:29:00.002+08:00

Last night, around 8:30 pm, I was one with the world in celebrating the Earth Hour, a 60-minute lights-0ff undertaking to lessen our carbon footprint, one of the many things we can do to conserve energy and to combat climate change. From what I read, Earth Hour started in 2007 in Australia and soon enough, the rest of the world followed suit, the Philippines really taking an active role and

Buying a House and Lot

2011-03-23T18:30:00.002+08:00

No not me! How I wish one day I could say that with conviction. Buying a house and lot is one of those really important things a person could want or dream of in a lifetime, including that of the stable and fulfilling job or that successful business of your own and the car to die for. Getting these involve intense hard work and perseverance (especially if you were not born into an affluent family

The Elusive Happy Horse

2011-03-22T22:32:00.004+08:00

If you like binging or just plain and controlled beer drinking, you probably heard about the urban legend of a Red Horse bottle with a stronger alcohol content, and you can tell if it has that added pizazz if the horse on the bottle looks “happy” compared to its regular stoic-looking counterpart. I know of someone who once worked for San Miguel Corporation and I asked if he ever knew of the Happy

Giving Back

2011-03-19T18:36:00.001+08:00

Earlier I had the opportunity of joining two of my friends conduct an outreach program by way of a free clinic, giving pro-bono medical check-up, a fasting blood sugar test and blood pressure reading. I was with a medical doctor and a medical representative, and the makeshift, three-hour clinic was put up near a pharmacy, the nationwide drugstore my friends are affiliated with, and the patients

A Reason for Everything

2011-03-18T18:38:00.001+08:00

I don’t have the slightest regard for the Philippine Bar Exams not until my sister took part in the examinations last September, a culmination of her four-year stay at a law school in far-flung Jolo, Sulu and of the months of preparation afterwards. I could only imagine how hard the Bar was, seeing the amount of time and effort she put into it, taking into consideration the constraints she had

Saudi Council-Licensed

2011-03-17T21:40:00.003+08:00

One of my youngest siblings, one because she’s the other half in a set of twins, was constantly worrying about the examination she was to take in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She kept gnawing at the notion of finally sitting in and successfully passing the examinations that it became a regular “status update” on her Facebook account. I always consoled her that, unlike the nursing board exams or

Good News to the Pinoy PT with the American Dream!

2011-03-15T18:41:00.002+08:00

A text message was sent the other day by a colleague that the National Physical Therapy Examination, the US equivalent of the local PT Boards given by the PRC, will be offered for five more testing dates by the FSBPT, the agency that “develops and administers the National Physical Therapy Examination (NPTE) for both physical therapists and physical therapist assistants.” They have scrapped the

The Mini-Bus of Babel

2010-03-13T18:32:00.011+08:00

If you have been to the Middle East, you probably have noticed that expatriates make a considerable amount of the population. If the hospital I work for is made as a point of reference, you'll likely have a glimpse of a multiracial facility, a cornucopia of different nationalities housed under one roof: the Saudis, the non-native Arabs (Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, Sudanese, Lebanese),

Lost In Translation

2010-02-13T17:48:00.008+08:00

I remember back when my siblings and I were kids, our parents enrolled us in the madrasa (Arabic for school) to learn how to read and write Arabic. The course was basic enough; it included the Arabic alphabet, numerals, and some commonly used terms. We also did some memorizations of the surahs, the chapters of the Holy Quran, and learned the steps of the prayers and what to say with each movement

Resigning...

2010-02-11T02:31:00.010+08:00

This was never a hard decision to make. A year ago when I was the embodiment of an OFW-to-be, plying the streets of Mabini, Malate, and Ermita in Metro Manila to frequent agencies looking for employment abroad, I already made up my mind that when I get that Mideast PT job I was looking for the least three years that I would only stay for a year. I had it so engrained in my mind that I carefully

Ondoy'ed

2010-01-09T17:58:00.007+08:00

4:00 am. It had been raining the previous night. I was safely tucked in bed, with the blanket over my head. Sometimes, I and my siblings used to sleep in my mom's room since Dad passed away. We settled ourselves on the floor with only a one-inch mattress making our sleep comfortable. Even though it was cold outside, we opted to turn the AC on, enveloping us in moderate gelidity as we succumbed to

Hooked

2010-01-07T00:56:00.000+08:00

Okay, this is not the term which informally means addicted to narcotics. See, after months of frequenting the Internet cafe situated several blocks away from where I currently stay here in the Industrial City of Jubail, which meant walking and expending METs in a lightless, empty street around 10:00 in the evening, the only free time I have, I finally got the DSL connection I've been clamoring

An Update

2009-10-31T06:29:00.001+08:00

Five months have passed since I let myself loose in the confines of this webspace. I thought I would be able to live up to my pledge of religiously and diligently updating my blog with what life is for me living and working thousands of miles away from home. Sure the experiences that transpired in those blogless months were worthy to be remembered and written about; I have kept tabs and archived

Will Be Back Soon

2009-10-29T02:53:00.007+08:00

A glimpse at what (some of) the blogless months were... Taken before a colleague's vacay back to the Phils Goofing around in the rehab The Al-Haram Mosque in MeccaTaken during the Umrah my brother and I performed in September Garbed in the Pilgrim's Ihram Me, after the HAIRCUT Al-Haram Mosque in Madinah

The New Nokia Touchscreen 5800 XpressMusic is… (Part II)

2009-06-16T19:24:00.006+08:00

More...…my new toy. Heehee. About eight months ago, I wrote that I wanted to have the first of the touchscreens of the Nokia brand. I was so egged on to get one back then that I frequented the malls back home just to see if the phone was already available to the public. Early first quarter of this year, it reached the shores of the Philippines, but as I was preparing my documents to work abroad,

The Accommodation (Part I)

2009-05-31T19:23:00.003+08:00

It was another 30-minute ride to get to my accommodation, my home for the next year, or two years if I feel like finishing my contract (up until this point I am still having thoughts). If you have been following this blog, you would have agreed with me in saying “Alas! Sleep!” Well, I did finally get some minutes’ rest (not sleep sadly), but a displeasing dilemma would be facing me once I get to

The Hospital

2009-05-20T05:50:00.003+08:00

I have been to hospitals before, medical institutions where I once had my clinical internship and ones where I volunteered my services as a physical therapist after getting my license to practice the same. I am familiar with the everyday hustle and bustle that makes up the hospital framework and the usual his and hellos one gives to other allied medical professionals. However, in some baffling

The Hospital: Prologue

2009-05-15T12:58:00.007+08:00

We got off the van and headed to a building situated adjacent to the hospital. Walking under the high-noon heat, I was mulling over what was and whom I would be meeting inside. Could it be a physical therapist who will be orienting me on what to expect on my first day at work? Could this building be the rehabilitation department that would mold a better health professional out of me? Well, it

Twenty-Three More Months to Go

2009-04-18T20:01:00.004+08:00

Yesterday marked my first month living and working in the Middle East. It may seem like short a time, but the experiences I had were beyond measure: sociaizing with people of different races, learning a new language that is the heart of our religion, attending various lectures on hospital/departmental safety and infection control, training for BCLS/CPR, preparing for the hospital’s JCI