Posted March 12, 2002. I apologize for the long silence my computer has made.

     It has been a month since we left for the Philippines and back. It was a long tedious process and about a month of preparation at least. We had finally left on January 17th only to be stranded in San Francisco because we had forgotten an important document for one of our moms who was with us. San Fran by the way almost looked liked Manila. Yeah, if you live in Daly City. We ended leaving for the Manila on January 19th .

     This was the first time we flew Philippine Air Lines (PAL). The convenience was quite excellent though the food may not have really been that good. Well, we really didn’t fly for the food. The convenience of just walking through to the domestic airport was a big plus I say.

     At the domestic airport, a little dazed from the jet lag, of course, it was noon but where we came from was midnight. There I saw familiar faces… those of the good psychiatrists from Iloilo. The likes of Drs. Amantillo and Espaniola. But since I was looking out for my three bubbling kids, I didn’t really have the time to talk with them other than saying hellos and its good to be back sort of things.

     Hey, how’s the weather out there...coming in from a southeast winter to an eternally tropical island of Panay. My first goal was to down a big basket of lansones, which I had not had for the past 10 years. I must be the luckiest ‘cause in January you really don’t have much of lansones. Mangga was in abundance and the kids loved it.

     So here we are...Iloilo once more. It looked liked it, smelled like it, felt like it. But not the same when I came three years ago. The familiar faces were still there. But the essence of home, no more. So many buildings, businesses bustling around, internet café’s like sari-sari stores, and pollution. I think I saw soot when I spit one time. Iloilo is so different now. By the way, everybody, or so it felt has a cell phone. Just the days when tetris was a household name. Cell phones and phone cards are a blood line of everybody now. It’s so different, even the seniors do text messaging...and to think they don’t even know how to use a typewriter. Scary, I heard the Philippines is in the Guinness Book of World Records .. or it should be. I never heard text messaging here until the Olympics really started and this was this month.

     We spent the first few days meeting with family. I really wanted to see my dad, who in all those years remained ever so loyal to his practice and patients. A surgeon by training but really practiced family medicine in its true sense. Specialist be aware, without primary care you’ll never be where you are. So know where you fit in the food chain. Age is never graceful when your memory and decision making is clouded by less functioning neurons. But the experience and practicality of the years earned makes the art of medicine. So no matter how many studies you know and master, no matter how much evidenced-based you become as a clinician, these findings, in my few years of experience, can be disproved by a much larger study. So stop echoing what you have read or learned, rather realize what works, what is practical, and what is cost effective. So realize these older doctors, being the dinosaurs that they have become, they have all the compassion and ethics and not the greediness and big-headedness of their younger counterparts. I say this with emotion. I hope HE gets my point. (Aton-aton lang ini Rolour...hehehehe).

     I had met a few classmates who never left Iloilo. My big regards to Dra. Donna Briones, thanks for looking at my kids and the boundless recommendations, don’t worry you’ll get your chocolates. That was really the least in my mind to bring. My main plan was to really visit the Medical School and the Hospital to see if there’s anybody still out there that I know. In my excitement, I forgot the pasalubong.

     ...to be continued

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