Charming in Gray and Silver

They say when a student nurse is done with their capping and pinning ceremony, their real commitment to nursing profession starts. This is the first step to becoming a full pledged nurse of the community.

Last Monday (November 21, 2011), we had our capping and pinning ceremony at the newest and the coolest UST Sports Complex. All I can say was “wow” when I stepped inside the sports complex though it’s not fully furnished yet. It was so beautiful! But, I find the arena a bit small than what I was expecting. 

We have to look nice (I forgot to shave my awkward mustache that day, so I have to rush to the closest store to buy a shaver) and dress neatly in our duty uniforms and stay awake all throughout the solemn ceremony. But I fell asleep for couple of minutes. Who can blame me? (Calling out each student’s name to step on stage and I’m on the seventh block out of ten blocks consisting of 48 students each) But after the rite, it was so uplifting as it’s slowly giving off light to my goal.

Two of the most beautiful ladies of my life. My sister and my mom. This is the only decent photo we have before the ceremony because parents can’t go close to us during the rite since there are professional photographers around, hired to take photos of us and make us pay for unreasonable price. 

After it, we went home and decided to just celebrate my true acceptance of the path I’m taking, at night. With my surprise, my mom got me a new phone since the one I’ve been using for almost one and a half year is almost dying. Thanks, mom! You’re always so thoughtful and so sweet! She knows very well that I don’t want touchscreen phones anymore, so they gave me this sleek and classic blackberry.

His name is Gerry. There’s a senseless and a silly story behind his name. I named him after Gerry’s Grill where my mom and I rushed after getting ourselves starved, waiting for centuries for globe to process everything. (Gerry sounds nice anyway) I like its sleek and classic look! It looks so professional, sophisticated and serious.

I find this blackberry really helpful as it makes it easier for me to communicate with my friends especially that I have to do a lot of announcement for the class. The qwerty keypad may not be the largest keyboard I’ve seen, but it’s just easy to adjust and the keys are so responsive. I’m pretty sure we’re going to have a great time together, Gerry. Here’s my bbm: 28515B26.

It was one sunny morning of November 16 and I was in a hurry because I’m almost late for my orientation at Tondo Medical Center. Good thing my rlemate called me and told me that I can hitch a ride to her car going to TMC since I was completely clueless how to get there. The orientation took thirty minutes of preparing the speakers’ uncooperative laptop, an hour of monotonous discussion, and another thirty minutes of touring the hospital. I never imagined how huge and crowded TMC was; nevertheless, I’m excited to have an experience working and serving people there.

Unfortunately, it so happened that day that it’s also our dance competition at 10 in the morning. After the orientation, we hurriedly went back to school, praying so hard that we’ll able to return back immediately before the competition starts. It was literally an Adrenaline Rush for us. (the competition’s title was Adrenaline Rush, by the way) Luckily, we got back as the first performer stepped on stage. Then, we changed clothes, put on accessories and make up, rehears and review steps.

I was totally drowning in mixed emotion of anxiety, excitement, happiness, and sweetness that day. I can’t even completely grasp what exactly to feel but as soon as we entered the backstage and our block’s name was called, my heart jumped into blissful ecstasy of excitement because right that moment was the moment we’ve all been waiting for, to not just dance but to perform and express our heart.

I never thought I’d able to gain such confidence up on stage, wearing a muscle shirt though I don’t have any big muscles to show. The cheering and screaming of the crowd are still fresh in me because it was completely different from the cheers I get when I usually sing on stage. It was amazing! Definitely a noteworthy five minutes moment of my life up on stage which was built by thousands of priceless memories and lessons during practices with my friends. They say, it’s not always about where you go or where you’ll end up with; but, what is most important is how you get there. We won 2nd runner up in the competition and though we really wanted to get the champions title, we still feel grateful about it. No regrets, purely awesomeness and fun. It was a tough one and everyone did a very great job.

Congratulations to block 10, 4 and to my beloved block 7! Ahhh.. the memories we all made together. :)

Credits to Charles and to my twinbro, Jb, for the photos. 

Ending this blogpost with my photo. Haha. Another goal achieved!

Just so you know, dancing isn’t made for me. Not just because I wasn’t gifted enough to have graceful body; but I quite have a serious low self esteem with doing dance moves. I’m quite known to perform on stage through singing ballad or acting which I usually do when I was in high school; but never dancing. Aside from singing shows on television, I’m fond of watching dance reality shows like So You Think You Can Dance and I envy a lot those people who dance so well. And since most of my close friends are dancers as well, it adds to my frustrations to dancing.

So, after hearing about the interblock competition, I decided to myself that I should try and learn to dance. We started practicing few days before we went back to school and everyday was a struggle for me and every night is extremely exhausting. I always wished that dancing was just as easy as singing; but it never did. Yet, I never stopped trying. Though everyday I always get bruises and muscle pains from trying to do stunts and stuff, I always look forward to new chapters because I know that I’m learning everyday and I know that I’m having fun with what I’m doing. 

I’m still in big doubt of myself for tomorrow. I’ve never been this unprepared going back to school. I haven’t bought any school stuff yet! (books / notebooks which are exceptionally needed) It feels like that one month vacation isn’t enough. (our longest vacation, btw) But I’m excited to see my second home again and the people in it, not the stress it brings. I still feel grateful, despite that I only had few chances of going out, that at least I had a lot of time to ponder on important matters in my life and have valued bonding moments with my family. (And I’ve finished a lot of movies and series! Oh yes!)

Last Saturday, we had training again somewhere in Taft and it was extremely exhausting as I was trying to successfully do a hand stand and Chinese get up the whole period. I had fun tho because I was with amazing people. After the training, we stayed at my friend’s condo and played cards. The next thing we knew, we were drinking tequila and laughing madly while playing lots of different card games! I learned a lot of things that night because I wasn’t really into cards. We got plastered, cooked fail tuna carbonara (which surprisingly taste good, or maybe because our taste buds are intoxicated too much already), and went out so drunk to play arcades. Crazy! Never thought that the first thing I’ll be able to cross out from my list is this. 

Today, I went out to see my high school buddies to watch movies. And I tell you, we were drowning with tons of food! We watched Wrong Turn 4 (which is unfortunately an awful movie) and Hangover 2. Makes me wanna have a bad ass hangover experience. Haha. I totally had fun over the last three remaining days of my vacation. It was well spent! Photos below are the only crappy shots I had earlier. 

Second semester tomorrow! Goodbye lazy days, hello again stressful life.
Whatever stress or problem school will throw me this time, I’ll always be keeping in mind that it isn’t the problem that weighs us down; but, it’s how we carry it.

I got this amazing idea from some of my inspiration blogs I find over the internet (here) and I decided to give it a try since it’s approximately 58 days before we welcome year 2012. In this post, I listed 12 things I want to do before new year because I can’t wait to new year to set myself a resolution and since we can begin a few before the year ends.

1. Finish covering the remaining 2 shoe boxes for some important document-to-be-kept purposes. Hey! I can be creative and resourceful too sometimes. 
2. Read all the books I received from my eighteenth birthday. Sorry. Haven’t finished reading it all including some I wasn’t able to take picture of. But I promise to finish it. And buy new ones to satisfy my guilty pleasures in life!

So that’s practically it. As much as possible, I tried to make my goals SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time Bound) and that’s one good thing I learned from Nursing and doing NCPs. Haha. I’ll try documenting each goals when I get the task done. This is exciting! (Placing strikethrough to tasks done)

So, do you have a list you’re currently working on before the year ends? I’d love to hear what you’d like to accomplish. 

I know it’s kinda late to share photos from Halloween few days ago but I just can’t help it and my nephew’s just so adorable in these photos. I felt the need to have this here in my blog. He went as a cute dinosaur and people were all approaching and asking to have a picture with him. Instant celebrity! Last year he went as Robin Hood that some people hilariously mistaken him as Peter Pan. I didn’t dress up for Halloween this year because I think it is too much hassle to think about what to wear and I was totally broke and my life has been swallowed by catching up with my favorite series. I should probably buy myself a life outside the internet. There’s still next year anyway or other occasions perhaps where I can dress up and have a valid excuse to act like a litol kid again.

Here are few of the QT 3.141 photos last October 31:

I don’t mean anything casually promiscuous with this post. Really. Nothing’s bad with saying I love your anatomy. I just basically like to say it and I came up with that title just because of consecutive days of staying up late, watching Game of Thrones and The Big Bang Theory, and memorizing characters name and each character’s story. Thank God for google. Oh yes, ask me now! That may have sounded irrelevant with anatomy but if only you watch these shows as well, you’ll get what I meant by saying anatomy. Now I won’t begin to go into that since it’ll be a boring discussion and a humiliating fanboying moment. I’ve finished Game of Thrones few days ago, by the way. But I still can’t move on. Obviously.

So here’s the thing, I’ve been starting to practice my dancing skills lately which surprisingly happen to (at least) exist in my life. (I don’t have any photos or videos to share yet. Let me gather some guts first. Haha) I’m glad that I’m starting to make progress to improving my self esteem and my health. Oh, did I just say improving self esteem? Dancing’s definitely a good exercise, not only because you use your whole body’s muscle but you as well get to socialize and have fun while doing it. And what I meant by dancing is not the social dance type where you have a partner and you both dance like sweethearts on a prom night; but, it’s a more common type of dancing, a hip hop / contemporary dance. Fun, isn’t it? Actually, I’m only doing this because our class will be competing on an interbatch dance competition. Thank the universe for such great minds to conduct such thing to help me fulfill one of my biggest frustrations in life! Haha.  And this will happen this November! I can’t contain my excitement for this month! (Except for one sad thing which I’ll try to make a separate blog post)

The following photos below are some images I took over the week.

Amazing November ahead for everyone!