(Taken with http://cinemagr.am)

I’ve been up to a lot of crap lately lol. I’ve been celebrating birthdays back and forth in this wonderful month of March, and I’ve had my share of “firsts.” Well last weekend, I celebrated a birthday at KBBQ (Top left picture). Honestly a pretty fun night because of the awkward cooking and the many stories of various experiences about what goes down at the seminar I’m attending this weekend.

Last Monday, we had elections for the new executive board for my fraternity. It had to be cut short because there was another event being held by APhA, and the committee in charge entirely consisted of members of the fraternity, including myself. The event was basically a roundtable event which allowed students the opportunity to speak with pharmacists of various backgrounds and fields. It was definitely an interesting experience.

• First pharmacist was one of like 5 people within either the entire county, So Cal, or even California (I forget) that are within their respective field… Emergency response pharmacist. These guys are responsible for transporting, handling, distributing, and counseling various medications and medical equipment to areas that have been subject to disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. The things these guys do is nothing short of amazing and heroic, and this particular pharmacist has been in the business for a good amount of years. What’s cool about their job is basically the traveling… as weird as that sounds. Despite natural disaster, these guys go to these areas to give a helping hand to everybody in need, and this is a massive operation in every case. You essentially build such a crazy resume by being part of these relief efforts and you also get to serve many different types of communities with different cultures. 
• Second pharmacist was one of those guys who went straight into pharmacy school after high school. He is such a laid back pharmacist that is rolling in dough that he can be cocky about it, but he wasn’t. What’s funny is that he’s part of another chapter of my fraternity back in UOP. Anyways, this guy was probably no older than my sister, and he had the surfer boy accent that came along with the look. But despite his appearance, this was a down-to-earth guy that really wanted to help me and my fellow p1s be successful and take risks. He really opened our eyes to jumping on opportunities, especially with how he went straight up into a fellowship without doing residency first (let’s just say that’s way tougher, and there’s only like one fellowship that was offered for his respective field he was applying for). Honestly, I felt like this guy was a pimp, and that he did everything right to get to where he was.
• Third pharmacist was a guy from Kaiser Riverside. He was definitely someone to know because Kaiser is pretty much at the top of all health care settings. It has such a successful business model that they have been THAT much more stringent on who will get the opportunity to work under them. Anyways, he too gave us a good example of reality as a pharmacist. He told us that his most trusted and skilled pharmacy technician asked him a question about a certain injection, making sure they had the right dilution and whatnot. He gave a glance and trusted that she was correct. Next thing you know, patient has adverse reaction, turns out the tech was wrong, and his mistake cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars after a lawsuit. 
• Fourth pharmacist was an alumni from my school, and a fellow brother in my fraternity. His job is a “consultant,” and basically he goes to various places to do medication counseling for various nursing facilities, hospitals, etc. He’ll go through a patient’s chart and look for duplicate or unnecessary medication, adjust it accordingly, and talk to the patient about how they should be taking their medication and what to look out for in term of side effects. The bad thing about his job is that he has to drive extensively, but it’s also a good thing because of the many places he gets to go. He also has crazy flexibility in hours (no weekends), and he gets the crazy pay of course.

Last Tuesday was one of my Big’s (big = big brother, well in this case sister) birthdays. I must first say that it’s pretty sad, but it’s one of the first times I’ve been FLAT broke. I usually always have a little cash on me just in case I need to get food… but after the past few months, I’ve seriously exhausted all of my savings and allowance on various gifts and of course food. Some of those gifts were for the fraternity, gifts for the pharmacists above^, some for myself (spiffy pharmacy hoody and sweat pants for the class of 2015), and again, food. I literally had no money to get a gift for my big, unless I charged it, but I really don’t like using my card unless it’s emergency. I decided I would mess around with iMovie and I came up with the idea of making a custom video for her, which is below:

Honestly she’s one of the coolest people I’ve met, and by cool I mean that she does hip hop dancing, and she plays piano… by ear! I haven’t really heard her play yet, but I’ve been told by the other bros that she’s good, and that we were a perfect match. Anyways, This was my way of wishing her a happy bday. I’m glad it made her smile… and it’s also great to get everyone else involved :) So yeah this was the first time I’ve ever done anything special for somebody on their birthday, cuz I always fell like birthdays were overrated, especially since mine were always so bootleg. The pictures of me and her were also from one of the first fundraisers I’ve helped host, which was just a simple Chinese food fundraiser.

Last Wednesday, we finished up elections, and low-key, I’m the future historian for Kappa Psi - Epsilon Gamma chapter :D Honestly, the reason I was most suited and urged to take on this position was because of my latest P1 safari videos I made on iMovie and the amateur editing I did. Apparently it looked pretty good enough for being the historian for next year. So yeah… this is officially my first leadership position that I can actually put on a CV, as opposed to stuff like “Choir Director” or “Core team member” from Katipunan.

I also went to my first ever basketball game that Wednesday night. It was the Clippers vs. the Hawks, and something special about the game was that it was entitled “Filipino Heritage Night”, and USC Troy Phi and White Rabbit were there. The half-time cultural dance performance was ehh though (Sorry USC if you see this, but I’m pretty picky)… and honestly, the game sucked -_- No Lob city that night because there was too much pressure in the paint for Blake Griffin to get open. He even air balled 2 consecutive free throws. wtf. Regardless, it was a cool experience. We even got to see clipper Darrel after the game and take a picture. 

Now after that dreaded Wednesday night, I spent Thursday preparing for one of the toughest exams to date - Anticancer drugs. This exam was for my PBT IV class, the final installment of this pharmacology series, and omg there are SO MANY anti-cancer drugs. I was mixing up so many different categories/classes/mechanisms of action, side effects, UGH. It really didn’t help that I was busy my whole Monday and Wednesday, so I was realistically only using 2 days to prep for my crazy Friday exam. I had been tired the whole week because of everything I had to do (candid top middle picture). Of course I didn’t get any sleep (well actually 1 hour, but meh) and I was just TIRED all throughout the test and just the day… but my day was far from over… Let’s just say I am still the same guy I was in undergrad. 

With Spring Break finally here, I decided to take the Saturday completely to myself. I slept in until like 11am (well I won’t tell you when I got home from Friday night -_-), chilled in my bed playing Maplestory for the first time in forever, caught up in some anime, went to church, and I honestly don’t remember what else I did that day. On Sunday, my mom finally decided to take me to the Verizon store to get my long-awaited (2 years 3 months) upgrade to an iPhone. So yes. I am officially an iPhone holder and have finally received my first smart phone, and I can play all those spiffy games you guys were playing when I was crying in a corner with my enV3. Honestly good riddance to my old phone. It went back to its old ways and decided to turn off randomly, especially annoying when it would turn off in the night and so I have no alarm to wake me up.

Anyways, what’s funny is that when I got home, I didn’t even play with my phone or set up anything. I decided today was the day I would clean my deng room (Bottom left 4 pictures). It feels awesome when you have a squeaky clean and organized room, especially when you have a room as condensed as mine with a whole mess of stuff. I’m probably in need of shelves, but meh I doubt my dad would allow me to do that since my room is kinda suspended above an open space. Below my room is a metal chandelier, so I’m not even sure if I should have this much weight in my room, or if I’m even allowed to jump or nething like that. Kinda scary actually. and THEN after cleaning up my room, I randomly decided to break in the packaging of my brand new collector’s edition of FFXIII-2. I actually got it a week or two ago since the limited editions were selling out, and Jon already picked up his copy, so I was jealous and needed to show him who the real fanatic is. ANYWAYS lol, I really had to resist the urge to open anything up since I had such an action-packed week before Spring break. So far, I like the game. Cinematics are crazy, I like how it went kinda old-school final fantasy in that you actually have options of what to say in order to dictate the storyline, and yeah I think that’s all I’ll say for now. Definitely a game I want to play a lot more before Thursday.

So yeah Wednesday, I was planning to go on a hiking trip with my pharmacy homies, and then Thursday-Sunday I plan to go to a conference for my fraternity. Definitely going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and yet another First for me. 

Life’s pretty scary. I’m nearing the end of my first year of pharmacy school, and I’m doing a lot more with my life in this single year than all the celebrations and events I did in my undergrad. Then again, this isn’t just about the pharmacy school… It’s about what I got myself into, and I have no regrets :)