so, i am not photogenic

written dec 5 2012

And it came. I actually opened a blog today after all the pressures of life pushed me into not staying where I am any longer.

I almost had no night time sleep, about 3am to almost 6:30am was all that I had for a decent night-time recharge. Then I had to rush on another, a third set of parasitemia count. The crucial point was on. Calls kept coming while I was magnetized by the microscope into submission out of responsibility and goodwill to fulfill that arduous task. I lost sleep for that, six hours of concentrated toil for a part time job that pays me Php 280 per day. Not worth my effort. I viewed 106 fields last night to wake up that it was wrong.

Grabawashaxzcha. Yes. I hold my right to express with this new word the extent of my frustration, self-pity for how I allowed myself to be treated so cruelly and incompassionately, and my inert reasoning trying to hold it back into concepts of morality, professionalism and generally goodwill toward mankind, the same reason I conscientiously counted with clickers each RBC I saw. It was enough to substitute for my patience. Whatever fortitude I have exercised at that moment is well taken from the only wellspring of grace. Thank You Lord!

I dutifully accomplished all 53 slides again, breaking the last slide. No regrets or self-consternation at that. It happened already, take your salvaging-contingency-action-common sense-by rote protocol. I swept the shards and collected the sizeable chunks gone to the wastebasket. Remind me some other day to clean the house.

To top it, I have a scheduled application interview at 1pm. The pressure of the word interview on me is devastating. It froze me. I refuse to act myself when it takes over.

Solemnly, as if some sacred event was to take place, either I will go to the bellows or be on the electric chair, I fixed myself. Remember: first impressions matter so take care to project professionalism in all manners. I just can’t decrease the Pas (Pascals), my high inner Pa self-incites an increase in its levels. This unfounded fear was with me until I was at DOP territory.

Mona is more made-up today than the first time I saw her. This is the second day we meet in the same room and I took liberty to smile and greet her first. Incomprehensibly, my manners are better under pressure for I even took the time to catch up with DJ, my 2^nd year buddy then when I was still an undergrad senior, 21 months past.

I don’t want her to be disheartened by her backlog in micro. DJ is like me, somehow I see it. She’s inhibited and guarded, without a clique as well I guess. She must be uptight. That’s me there again! But I chatted continuously as if I’d been so used to doing that. Living my entire life that way. I know better.

She pointed out Sarah but I excused myself for Para. Where in the midst of conversation, I interrupted Ma’am Ellen V. and Dra. Rivera to deposit those troublesome money-making slides. After a few coherent questions regarding my engagement to those slides,

where do you view them? at pharma?

No I do it at home, they make me use their own microscope.

Whose? Aya’s?  no, theirs, corrina’s

the only plausible action for me would be to take my exit. Then I slumped, still poised with perfect posture (or perfect as I know it, no one corrected me for it), on the couch of memories, with a Christmas tree not so far on my left. Micai, I bothered. It was a good decision. Vexation overcame me. I entered the female’s restroom. I changed my hairstyle, reverting to that everyday uncombed bun. I waited, still breathing without hearing air.

Then finally, Micai! How different she looked. Being employed has a tendency to give us additional weight. I was initially shocked but it didn’t sink in. She’s still Micai, my friend, and my affection for her is non-negotiable. We took on the story telling time. I was babbling. And stuttering, my statements are disjointed and I don’t sense them being manufactured in my mind as they should. Micai gave leeway.

Their office wasn’t at all a chuch! It wasn’t quiet and people don’t talk in hushed tones. That’s the image of offices in my mind especially if they’re of the government, much more if they’re air conditioned. She’s so at ease and productive. And I’m high strung, miserable and idle. What a pair!

Being with her did not make me think so. By myself, I was able to come up with that very stark comparison.

Before her, she was able to make me forget my reservations. She’s making it, establishing herself and growing her niche, she’ll be Sir Edwin’s counterpart (Camelle was Ms. Dang’s replacement, Aids is the male Ms. Marianne who’s now Prof. Marianne). She’s already come that far and remained as if all that she has done through that time after graduation didn’t matter. Why she’s made it, she should be lambasting me with that. But even her confiding of that didn’t cause me at all to think that. Really, Micai’s marvelous! She doesn’t hold what credit is due to her for her professional advancement. I might be doing that. I actually am already, from the other side, since I keep hiding myself off from friends because I’m unemployed.

The chatter between us two went on, she kept me entertained and distracted me from worrying about the interview. There even was a time when I brought up the issue of her eyeglasses. From there I learned that she suffered poor eyesight wearing contacts when she was grade 3 and putting them on too some time during college. That’s why I never knew her eyesight was not 20/20. I conjectured, “Why don’t you have then lasered?” she replied that she was afraid. Afraid not of the procedure or the possible failure of It. its success makes her wary. Because with corrected vision, she will be declined from seeing the word in the hazy way she could see it now. Wearing glasses, Micai said made it possible for her to see the world from two perspectives. She would be rob of the other perspective with perfect vision. Having poor eyesight also is a relief from the world. With her surroundings clear enough to stifle her, she always has the option to sit back, take of her glasses, and rest in the vision of a clouded reality.

She also made it transparent to me that there’s nothing at all to be scared about interviews (without coming at me that I was silly to make so much out of it). I don’t even know why it makes me that nervous. Interviews related to job applications turn me that way. It makes me question myself, be critical of myself and belittle myself. It’s a competition to get hired. I just might not be adequate to project, impress and convince to pass. The interview’s the deciding moment. It grips me to my heart and I become different. I carried on that half-mindedness to the actual interview though Micai and Mona and Ms. Ellen’s presence were very capable of putting some ease on me.

As I usually did during lunch break back in those already eons away college days, I retired back to my camp. My budget is limited and the food I have not really enough but I do have something to eat still, I emphasized to remove the remorse. After eating the remains of an instant noodle from my breakfast and a coffee variant Voice biscuit, I again re-applied powder, blush and all those newly introduced grooming stepsto the routine before ending it with braiding my hair. I decided, this may not be professional-looking but I am comfortable with this. This is me and I won’t suffer to hide it to be employed.

I was still reminded myself of Stephenie Meyer’s abnormally still vampires. I rarely am still. Pressure causes me to move incessantly, pacing corridors even when I take phone calls. I can’t stand being static. But there I was, unnaturally unmoving as I wait to be recalled on the bench in NIH’s lobby. Through the waiting time I observed everything, so my mind won’t commit to a total blackout. The not thoroughly decorated Christmas tree, the centraI main door, the ceiling. I inhaled the little girl’s colonic gas. It can’t be helped. I still sat straight. Reschedule, interview at 1:30pm. Thoughtlessly I returned to Para. That was when I met Mona again, as I told earlier. Ms. Ellen, being cordial and professional with the civilians who were distressing her with their ignorant diagnostic demands was in the same room too.

Bureaucracy brings pain to those who understand. Yes, Ms. Ellen I see how you bear it. Knowing usually hurts, and it also stresses you out and dumps on you unnecessary hassle.

She viewed the slides, making it her breather. I was wrong. In my stain prep and my counting criteria. I count infected RBCs over total RBCs and pass that off as parasitemia percentage. . Vicarious learning is vital in laboratory procedures. It must be. That and cooking are for me. I would’ve known that pipetting the Giemsa from the bottle mattered in quality control.

So I also count even impending malaria infections, a dot as sufficient to indicate infection. How would a dot mean infection? It simply is RBC invasion. The certainty it would survive within is still unknown, like the seeds in my black plant bags, they are potent but I’ll never know unless it germinates. Ms. Ellen made it understood without condescension. I’ve experienced that lashing before during an egg hunting exam.

Repeat all slides. With that notion it is easy to accept that I’m wrong. The dot wasn’t even a parasite yet, not considerable for the parasitemia count I was commissioned to get. It was simply under invader status. Recount fifty three fields again. Not tortuously now. With that in mind, I excused myself, it’s three minutes to 1:30.

1:29pm, I was outside the door then called in and ushered to the inner room. It came. My uncharacteristic actions repeated as if mannerisms would mostly be squinting my eyes as I thought and looking away from the interviewer. Bad signals. My senses are taken over by observation. The knob of a door beside the interviewer is unsightly to me, the knob being a subtle circle with a proportionally incompatible lock button. It gave me the sense that it was wrong. I know now why. It alluded to me as a small breast with a large tit. That disturbed me because inwardly, I am accustomed that such vision be hidden.

This is fresh. I did less the talking and only confirmed or negated. In tagalong as well. My first interview pushed me to speak straight English and I don’t know why when I speak in English I end up expressing myself with a paragraph when a sentence would do. Am I haggling attention?

This was monumental to me. I didn’t react at all. After I was asked how I knew there was a vacancy in their office, and I explained, omitting the part where I was stupid enough to enter the men’s room to groom.

I retold that I happened on a lady whom I assumed as an employee on the ladies’ room and asked her if she knows anyone within the institute who was in need of a research assistant. She led me to Ms. June Rose. I even called June Rose on a first name basis, we just met and weren’t at all formally acquainted. There end of story. No need to hear that while in the men’s room I was vivacious enough to voice out loud my sentiments on the heavy urine stink on the latrines and an aide heard me and ushered me out as it was the men’s room.

Further on, after the full review of my resume, he said, the main point for granting the interview was my being a BS PH graduate and the add-on that I’m an RMT. So he was curious enough to give me a chance. My dull application photo, according to him did not look exactly like me. It was lifeless and sterile and stern. Here it comes, and that I look better in person than that photo. On that monumental part for me which I was building up on but only described now, my only reply was that the shot was taken for my postal ID. Reviewing the day’s events, I could’ve answered wittily that I am not photogenic. I always thought that. That I look better in person than on photos. Today I actually had it confirmed! Verbally confirmed to my face by a person whom I just met.

If my nervousness on my first interview made me talkative, the chill a while ago had caused me to be half there and half tucked away to I don’t know where. It decided, without my permission, to take a vacation. Until now that part of me won’t admit it left or where it went. Then the interview’s over and my employment status until the year’s end would be retained for until the first month next year.

I was grateful that I did less than half of the talking. But I was also dismayed with myself because I didn’t present myself as truthfully as possible. Unlike in Crispina building where the full force of my confidence though tottering, was out of balance and brinked to make me aggressive. Today, I did nothing much than being there physically and half-minding what I was to say. I squinted and looked away every time, as if my thoughts are too deep even for me to recover before I replied to any question. My mental preparation is non-existent. All that could’ve been beneficial was employed in gagging the nagger who condemns me of not being good enough. Well my credentials aren’t at all bad. Nevertheless, I felt like nothing. I could’ve done better than groom well and be on time for the interview.

My respite was Micai’s lepcon office. Comfortable enough to enter without knocking, I saw the three ladies hudled around the computer screen for Big Bang Theory. Initially I thought the room’s deserted. But the med student, a prevos bio student of my batch was there on the receiving couch outside the office.

It is hilarious. After about two acts, though I was having a good time, one without any guilt attached at all, I left for the recount of those accursed set of smears. It was finished by the time Aya required to me to pick up the new set.

I received my pay. And I had money! The agent I have in my purse was a crumpled, sweat softened twenty peso bill. Now it’s Php 1120! Praise the Lord! In that half-there state, I left from Paz Men. Now that I have money, as I vowed to myself, I bought a box of crayons. They are unbelievably expensive nowadays, costing at an average of 30 for 16 colors. I settled for the cheapest 8 crayon set. After that and the identical datebooks, I was at home with cheese bites for dinner. My body asked for rest. What energy was left after staining the slides was sufficient to lay me down on the sofa with Cz’s magic stone glowing beside me. Waking up after a few, I resumed my duties, not tediously but dissociated and not as self-righteously.

And at Sparklink by past 10, I was sending off the data and spent 2 hours on blogging. My time ending with laughter at more Big Bang Theory episodes.

Reading the part on the tug of fear on me now, I guess that dread roots from my self-esteem, how I envision myself. I’ve belittled myself and my potentials, even my training. I must always come to interviews now without that. I will always do well at it.