Is there a plumber in the house?

Well it's been another weekend without water. At least they brought me a cleaner bucket of water this time around but the dishes in my sink are really starting to stink up. Apparently plumbers don't work on the weekends in this country especially on Sundays. Nope I'm not being sarcastic about it this time, that's what they told me.

Saturday evening, concerning the lack of water running in the dormitory...
Me: "Will somebody be fixing it?"
The little man who brings me food: "Umm, it's Sunday tomorrow. No one works on the Sabbath Day. Do you expect someone to be working on that day?"
Me now a little startled: "Well, um.."
The mad little man who brings me food: "That would be blasphemy! God have mercy on you for even thinking of such things. We will have a plumber here Monday and no sooner."

Ok, now I was being a little sarcastic about the little guy's response but he did basically tell me that there are no available plumbers on Sunday and that we would have to wait until Monday before anything could get done about it. Why is that? You could come to your own conclusions.

You know though if I was a business man I could see a really big opportunity here for me as Sunday only plumber. Hell, I would have the entire market to myself and I could jack up my fee really high. Who else are they going to get to fix their plumbing when they are in a jam? They would be at the mercy of my prices. But then would that be worth the price of your soul?

Mom, I'm dropping out of medical school and becoming a plumber.

Silly thieves

At approximately 9:45 pm two men walked into the internet shop asking to use two of their computers. After a few minutes surfing the internet the two men stood up, one brandishing a hand gun and the other man a knife as they demanded the shop owner's purse. The two men were then proceeded to flee from the scene of the crime on foot with the shop owner's purse. This all occurred as a guard stationed just out side the shop sat at his post complete unaware of what was going on.

Bah! All they got was a purse? Silly thieves. If I was them this is what I would have done. First I would have gotten the store owner to lock the front door to her shop. I would then proceed with her thru the backdoor of her shop which leads straight to the dormitory I'm staying in now. Once in the dormitory I would have the other guy watch her to keep her mouth shut as I went to the front entrance of the dormitory and lock it as well. Now the dormitory would be completely sealed off. As all the students sat in their rooms either studying or proceeding to sleep I would then begin to rob them one by one going from room to room. I would corral my latest victim into a single room with the shop owner and all the other students I had previously robbed, where my companion could watch over them. I would stash the most valuable of their things into 4 or 5 of their own school bags which I and my partner could easily walk away with. Once I had finished with that I would barricade off the room I had them all corralled into. I could probably do that by setting the door of the room they're in on fire. Seeing as how you can't really open any of these windows wide enough to fit thru this would prevent anyone from running out right away and alerting the guards. No one would see the smoke as the sky is already dark and no one would notice the fire either, especially if the room was on the first floor as the walls of the building prevent anyone from looking into the dormitory grounds. Don't worry about a conviction for murder, as long as the students stay away from the door none of them should get toasty in the fire. Besides the doors everything here is made out of concrete. Me and my partner could then walk out calmly thru the front door of the internet shop once again and make our get away with all their stuff.

Sheesh, just a purse? Amateurs. I would have at least gone up to rob that AM boy blind. Anyhow, now you know and knowing is half the battle.

...On second thought maybe you should forget everything you just read.

Delta Phi Beta or Binan's Badboy Barkadas?

Lately I've been entertaining the thought of joining a medical fraternity but have been having mixed feelings about it. The pros of joining one are the support from other medical students which includes access to their secret stash of notes and obviously an instant boost in your social network. Seeing how I haven't figured out yet where the subject matter for our test actually comes from all the time and how I'm not much of a socialist joining a frat could be especially beneficial for me.

So what's stopping me? Well the cons. Actually I guess technically there is only one con which is the initiation. The typical initiation into a medical frat out here consists of recitation, humiliation, and a good beating. I remember seeing these two poor girls from last year who decided to join one walk around for a couple of weeks with black and blue bruises all up and down their thighs and shoulders. I assuming this practice also occurs in the States but I don't know for sure. Anyway, I don't quite understand why an organization of soon to be medical doctors would condone such a practice. It would seem to me that beating someone like that is just a tad bit contradictory to a doctor's role as a healer. If these people were joining a gang then yes I could probably understand the mentality behind it all.

I remember back when I was in high school this... umm, friend of mine joined a gang. Why he did it I don't understood. You know kids. Anyway, his initiation into the gang also consisted of getting a beating. You could say at the time he did gain a lot of immediate support and his network did expand as well but looking back on it in the end overall the whole thing was... well, pretty stupid. Just to reiterate for my mom, I'm speaking here from second hand experience of course. I think she still reads this thing.

Anyhow a medical fraternity is nothing like a gang... I suppose or would like to believe so but as the old saying goes if it sounds like a duck and looks like a duck then it probably is a duck. Some of the guys here like to brag about how tough the people in their frat are and how other frats are scared of them. It's a freckin' medical frat what are you planning to do later? Bully the nurses in to give you their lunch money? I'm nolonger interested in joining a gang these days. Though at times I may still act like an adolescent, I'm too old for those kind of things.

There is one frat here though that seems less like a gang, in their initiations anyway, and doesn't inflict a beating. However, you just got to be prepared to be humiliated while doing some singing and dancing for them. Hmm... Well, I'm not really sure if that's for me either cause...

"gangstas don't dance, we boogie."

Are you gonna flush?

Well quite a few things have happened to me since my line was taken away, such as feeling as if someone kicked me in the crowned jewels, then took a bat to the back of my hip and suckered punch me in the kidneys for good measure. Every once in a while as I took a step I would also feel as if I was going to be folded in half backwards. Yup, I was in a bit of pain and my hip still hurts a llittle now actually but you know that story is a little boring. So I got a better one for you here...

I had been constipated for an entire week and after listening to a couple of lectures about Ascaris lumbricoides I started to get a little paranoid. So after my parasitology class I decided to perform a self diagnostic test of my own to see just how bad this constipation of mine really was. My plan was to start eating and keep on eating. I ate fruits, yogurt, oatmeal, and even some fruit bars (couldn't really find any true fiber bars). I also started to drink these bacterial yogurt drinks and lots of water on the advice of a friend. I figured if I actually had an obstruction some where along my bowls due to some parasitic worm or another, eating all this food would cause me to throw it up because it would have nowhere else to go. ...Right? Anyway, and if there was no obstruction then well it would just come out the normal route. Fortunately for me things came out at the normal end. I think it was drinking all that water that actually did the trick. Thanks Marms.

So as I got done with my double flusher I proceeded to flush the toilet for the last time. But to my dismay there was no sound of rushing water as I pushed down on the handle. It turns out that my entire building was out of water. Being late at night and with an oncoming typhoon I didn't think it was going to get fixed any time soon. Though I was glad that my constipation wasn't caused by thousands of worms obstructing my bowls I started to wish I was constipated once again because, once the flood gates are open it's not that easy to go back to closing them.

Usually when you are just standing in my restroom it's like being in a sauna, mainly because I can't install any air conditioner in there. Now imagine that felling along with the stench of an un-flushed toilet. But what are you gonna do? Crap in your pants? Fortunately, well kind of, that night it wasn't as hot as it usually is in my restroom because of the typhoon. The typhoon also actually brought back running water in to my room for a moment. It came in from the rusted open window of my restroom and it rained down on me as I sat there performing my duty.

It wasn't until noontime of the following day that my uncle had a pail of water delivered to my room. As the pail of water sat there in the middle of my room I stood over it for a minute trying to thinking of what I should do with it exactly. I could try to take a bath with it since I had class in about an hour or I could try and flush all that brown poopie stuff down the toilet. Now the bottom of the bucket didn't look all that clean but I figured it couldn't be any worse than the water silo where my water normally comes from. Hmm...


Why would a blue bucket have a brown bottom?

In the end I decided to use it for what smelled the most. No, not me. The toilet. There was a week of constipation sitting in there. To take care of my own manly smell I just hosed my self down with a bottle of alcohol. Probably not the smartest thing to do especially if I happened to pass by any smokers along the way to class. But, hey this is the Philippines and what'cha gonna do?