Down the Rabbit Hole

I came across Dr Cielito Habito's opinion piece entitled "Dumb and Dumber?" in the Philippine Daily Inquirer while browsing LinkedIn posts. This article highlighted the Philippines' poor performance in the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test measuring selected students' math, reading, and science performance. Because I now work in the public health space, the last portion of this article resonated with me: poor performance attributed to weak cognitive and learning capacity is brought about by malnutrition. The author then mentioned that children's academic performance is closely linked with agriculture (e.g., farm productivity). Dr Habito's article resonates with Solano County's Public Health Leadership meeting agenda before Christmas. During that meeting, I learned (a bit more) about how public health is not just about diseases (being a microbiologist, my focus is disease diagnosis). It also covers maternal and child w...

"The time has come", the Walrus said, "to talk of many things: of shoes and ships, of sealing wax,  of cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings..." – Lewis Carroll  I bought the Diono Radian 3QXT and the Clek Foonf many months ago because I preferred that Donan stay rear-facing for as long as possible (or at least beyond his second birthday). After all, this is the safest seat orientation for him as an infant and a toddler. One of his teachers commended me for keeping Donan's seat rear-facing as long as we had. I told her this might be the last week of it because Donan had figured out how to unbuckle the chest clip to look forward.  That same weekend, I worked on reversing the orientation of his car seats (one is in my car, and the other is in Daddy's car). I had entirely forgotten how heavy his seats were! They are both heavyweights! Anyway, uninstalling them was more challenging than I had expected. The anti-rebound ...

Mommy and Daddy recently celebrated their 44th wedding anniversary. In faithful Anna and Rochie style, we suggested eating somewhere "masarap" (aka fine dining). Anna suggested we go to a Korean restaurant in Danville; however, we discovered it was closed that day while en route. So I suggested (while we were on I-680) that we eat at Restaurant Abaca instead. After all, they haven't tried the wagyu salpicao and the bougie halo-halo that Ate Maddie and I raved about on a late summer visit. Thankfully, Abaca had an available table at 5:30 pm.  Abaca now has a four-course degustation menu called "Paubaya". However, we weren't too hungry, so we ordered a la carte for this occasion. We ordered wagyu skirt steak salpicao, sisig fried rice, Manila clams, pork lumpia, pork barbecue, crispy pata, and Java rice.  The portions were big enough to fill us but not overly so. In fact, we had room for dessert! Sadly, the halo-halo I was raving about a few months earlier was...

That's one small step for [a] man. One giant leap for mankind. – Neil Armstrong (July 20, 1969) My fascination with the space age began when I watched a 1980s cartoon about the different periods of human civilisation (e.g., Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Space Age). I seized the opportunity to visit the Kennedy Space Centre on my first visit to the USA almost two decades ago. I also saw the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. I probably have been passing on my interest in space exploration to Donan—subconsciously—because when he started to stitch words into sentences, some of his first topics were rocket ships! I only fueled his interest when we started frequenting NASA 's Ames Visitor Centre at the Chabot Space and Science Centre (I am not exaggerating when I say that he can lead a tour group before he's even potty trained; that's how interested he is about space exploration). Thanks to the wonders of the internet and supportive family members, Donan has ama...

When I was in preschool, Mommy gave me a red lunch bag with Woodstock and Snoopy prints. I remember being happy because I knew I'd be in school briefly. After all, the bag only had some snacks and a juice box. Back in my senior year of high school (and/or freshman year in uni), on the other hand, I ate more than 20 McDonald's Happy Meals to collect the Snoopy World Tour toys. I was so happy because I got several pieces featuring different traditional attire. Mommy threw those toys out soon after she saw my growing collection; kulatsang  ("junk"), she used to call them. It was a sad day because I had spent a huge chunk of my allowance to get those toys. However, Mommy was teaching me a life lesson at that point (i.e., do not accumulate junk). Suffice it to say that I had encountered Snoopy in various childhood moments. And my encounters with Snoopy did not end there. Decades later, I coincidentally selected a pediatric dentist whose practice features Snoopy and the Pea...

The Jelly Belly factory is a popular destination for families with young children. Tita Babie had good memories of it. Anna recommended riding the choo-choo train. Ate Maddie brings her school-age out-of-town visitors there if schedule permits.  On one of the last warm days of the year, my parents and I took Donan to demystify the Jelly Belly experience. The factory grounds were busy as a fair was going on. We rode the choo-choo train, but it was a letdown after the Tilden steam train experience. We bought a few books about outer space and about Santa Claus in one of the shops. We saw a glimpse of a cultural show. And then, there was the factory tour. It was worth the visit. The self-guided tour wound above the production floor. We saw hoppers, packaging machines, conveyor belts, spraying machines, ingredient pallets, and crates and crates of jelly beans.  View this post on Instagram A post shared by Rochie Cuevas (@rochiecuevas) The sights all reminded...

Donan's interest in animals started when he suddenly decided that he wanted to see beluga whales (but we found seals, narwhals, and blue whales instead). I thought he might be interested in seeing other animals but I decided that zoos might be too crowded on weekends. So instead, Anna and I brought Donan to the Lindsay Wildlife Experience in Walnut Creek's Larkey Park. The Lindsay Wildlife Experience hosts a wildlife hospital, where injured and orphaned wild animals can be taken care of. It also has a museum that features California's wild animals. On our visit, we met the first bald eagle I have seen in real life. Her name is Atsa ("eagle" in Navajo). She injured her right wing during a windstorm that toppled her nest off a tree; she couldn't fly anymore. The museum's website said that her enclosure was currently behind the scenes but we were able to see her because the door to her enclosure was open. She made such an impact on Donan that he decided that...

About 10 years ago, I drove to Pampanga (with Anna or my friends) for the hot-air balloon festival to see aeroplanes parked in the hangar , fly kites , and watch airshows. I had thought that these experiences wouldn't be replaced by something better... until Anna and I ended up watching Fleet Week SF (with Donan). It was unplanned; we were parking at the Bay Area Discovery Museum when Anna saw a United Airlines Boeing 777 flying low (which worried us because it's reminiscent of 9/11 ).  After visiting the museum, we decided to hike to Battery Yates (Fort Baker) to watch the US Navy Blue Angels' performance. It's an exhibition team of fighter pilots intended to raise public interest in naval aviation. The exhibition was awesome! For some maneuvers, the planes flew in close formation (one formation has an 18-inch gap between planes). In other maneuvers, the planes released smoke to create shapes. This airshow was more thrilling than the shows we've seen in Pampanga. A...

It's Filipino-American History Month in the USA. This piece is my small way of contributing to this celebration. --- While working in rice quality research , I encountered several discussions on why Filipino cuisine has not been "elevated" to fine dining and why it is not as popular as Chinese or Thai cuisine in the USA. I did not follow the discussions, unfortunately. However, I have been discovering Filipino restaurants in the Bay Area. Many of them, like Lutong Bahay  and Island Pacific's PhilHouse, are of the turo-turo style (think cafeteria). Others, however, have ventured away from this restaurant style and sought to feature Filipino food in their own way.  The fare has, so far, been satisfying.  Aldas Kitchen and Bakery My go-to pick-up counter for brunch. I found the owner's business model to be very smart because he/she can concentrate on preparing delicious food instead of dividing his/her attention between food preparation and service. The food comes b...

I didn't write blog posts for a while because I was neck-deep in studying for my Public Health Microbiology (PHM) certification. I underwent a six-month program administered by the California Association of Public Health Laboratory Directors (CAPHLD). The program was a combination of remote and onsite learning activities, including lectures and laboratory work. When my cohort began the program, the instructors warned us that we were undertaking what could very well be one of the most hectic and challenging courses we had ever taken. It was like an M.Sc. in Microbiology but squished into six months of intense training... a boot camp, if you will. We wouldn't survive by being lone wolves; we should study in groups to increase our chances of passing.  I felt like I just entered Survivor or The Hunger Games. The course started with the easy topics: basic knowledge, quality assurance and quality control, statistics, and laboratory safety... then we had our first taste of Microbiolo...

Val and I took Donan to the California Marine Mammal Centre because of Donan's sudden interest in whales (it seemed to come out of nowhere). During this trip, I learned that the centre caters mainly to the sick and injured seals and sea lions rescued along the shores of the Bay Area. The centre did not have cetaceans (e.g., whales, dolphins) in the facility. As a public health microbiologist , I became very interested when the docent we talked with mentioned that California sea lions are getting leptospirosis (leading to kidney disease). Leptospirosis is caused by a spirochaete bacteria called Leptospira . Humans and animals typically get infected if they wade into urine-contaminated water (e.g., flood). Aside from leptospirosis, marine mammals are also at risk of being poisoned by domoic acid. This toxin is produced by algal blooms, or "red tide". The toxin is particularly harmful to marine mammals due to bioaccumulation, the increase of concentration of domoic acid in t...