been busy giving birth to writing our research paper and being such a med student.

anyway, we visited DAMAS which is a shelter/orphanage in Manila.

Benign days are not just suiting me. These "lazy" nights spent reading fiction, writing and editing papers and sleeping early is not right. Still, my mind is a jumble with all the things I plan to do this summer and I just realized that I might have to seek approval of an ethics board for a project.

And summer just sprang upon our unprepared bodies. Morning commute is hot, sticky and uncomfortable. Noontime travel is just hell. I still haven't saved enough to purchase a new lens.

so my friend didn't win a councilor seat.

Too bad, I was hoping the student body will finally unite and demand that the CHDP program be fixed (they have 2-3 years more in that place) and coordinated instead of initiating a separate immersion program.

and the red party, got the two top positions in the usc. blame it on uncharismatic opponents.

I should brace myself for a year of stupidity and jumps in reasoning such as private = bad, not talking to us = no consultations, accreditation = tuition fee increase, attending rallies = serving people, attending class = ignoring national issues.

Maybe, they'll prove me wrong. I hope so. I don't want a USC who doesn't know how to work with the administration.

On beliefs: We never had religious ethics in class. The question assumes you will act as ethically as possible following secular ethical principles. Passing responsibility to someone thus delaying care is not ethical. And we have a method to show that it is.

So yes, our teacher is correct. There is a (note: only one) right answer.

Don't even get me started on how selfish you sound...

If you trace the sudden boom in attention, you'd encounter the start on the day Gibo Teodoro visited UP Manila for the Make Health Count Presidentiable series (spearheaded by the UPM USC).

In that forum, I was in charge of filtering the questions the audience can ask to the presidentiable. The event started late and just after a few questions, the Gibo staff were telling us we have time for one last question. Flustered with the number of questions flooding in, we had to choose the "last" question. It was narrowed down to two: smoking and HIV/AIDS. We chose HIV/AIDS. And apparently the one who asked the question was an advocate of the infection in the Philippines. And now we have this. Which is good. The NEC and DOH has actually been trying hard and failing to capture the mass and media's attention on the disease and they have the surveillance data to back it up.

How funny that I unintentionally played a role in HIV/AIDS advocacy in the country. This is  something to tell my grandchildren or students or whatever when I'm old and moldy.

In much sadder news, January 2010 had the highest number of news cases of HIV diagnosed ever in the Philippines. The NEC points to needle-sharing among IV-drug users.