while the rest (mostly) of my batchmates are starting their review, i’m at home sick and tired. it started with a sore throat; swallowing became painful. then came the fever on sunday. maybe the trip to the beach saturday night for wenbert’s company outing helped trigger it. the fever’s been on and off since then. i’ve had sleepless nights and frequent vomiting. my run-in with bacteria (my tonsils are inflammed) has put me in some frustrating, awkward and well, funny situations.

there’s this famous pediatrician and family physician in our town. he’s really good. but the joke around town is if a dying patient goes to his clinic, he’ll die before the doctor can get to him. see, clinic hours start in the early, or worse, in the late afternoon… patients number up to 50 a day. but this soft-spoken doctor can only attend to an average of about 7 patients per hour. it’s not because he has a hard time diagnosing the treatment; he’s considered the best for miles, after all. it’s because he likes to make small talk, that well, usually stretches longer than the shores of liloan. so i was there last monday. i was patient #35. from 2 p.m. till 5 p.m., it was still at patient #23. i returned at 8:30 p.m. just in time for the doctor to take a break and eat dinner. it was already patient #30, so i hung around. it was 9:15 and still the doctor was out. then he had a personal visitor and frustrated, i resigned to my fate. i went home.

Complete story…