Celebrations

So I had my 19th birthday last Friday, and it was as I'd envisioned it to be: plain and uneventful, simple and totally unremarkable. I think the fact that I went out for lunch with just four of my closest friends proves the 'simple' point quite enough. 

I did have two celebrations that day. First one's the lunch. The second one was with family from my mother's side (we're huge on that side, you see, and quite small on my dad's - but all this talk of family deserves more than just one separate blog post). It was a joint celebration with my mom's second youngest brother, who happens to share my birthday. I wonder how it must have felt, him celebrating his birthday while his sister gave birth, almost two decades ago.  

The best part of my birthday? The surprise from my Intarmed classmates. For the day, they changed their profile pictures to ones which had me in them - sort of like Jarby Devotion Day on Facebook. I've never received such a gesture - ever - in my life, and for that deeply meaningful 'present', I'm forever in awe of these people. Especially to my closest friends (who are both awesome and brilliant). 

There was an even grander celebration two days after my birthday. 

My brother graduated from med school, bringing along with him the Most Outstanding Medical Graduate and Most Outstanding Straight Intern in (Internal) Medicine awards, in addition to being Class Valedictorian and the only Magna cum Laude among the roughly 150 graduates of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine Class of 2011. That means he's now an unlicensed doctor. The board exams stand massively before him now, and frankly, everyone's quite excited to see what happens after he and the rest of the Class of 2011 scale that wall.

In the meantime, here's to Dr. Marc Gregory Yu Yu.

Photo by Melissa Litao

I'll be publishing his valedictory address here sometime soon.