25 - The Homecoming

Next week, class '83 of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, University of Santo Tomas is celebrating their silver jubilee.

Like many silver jubilarians, it will be an austere event that everyone looks forward to. After a quarter of a century, you all gather "home" once again. From all walks of life, from various parts of the world where we have spread out after graduating 25 years ago from our alma mater, we will be back 'home' even for a brief moment.

The gathering will take place for 3 days, highlighted by the Mariano Alimurung Memorial Lecture, to be given by an esteemed colleague, Dr. Gregory Pastores, who has excelled in the field of medicine. Out of 400 graduates, one of us will deliver the lecture that emulates the outstanding physician from our batch in memory of one of the greatest doctor that the university has produced.

Aside from this academic exercise will be the various get-togethers which each section, and the jubilarians have prepared, as a whole. This will culminate in the grand ball at the Makati Shangrila. Every batch will be showing off each others talents, particularly in the field of dancing. I am not a ballroom "queen" so I opted to give a lecture during the postgraduate course instead.

More importantly, however, in this merriment is the fact that we will finally see each other again. Compare notes, exchange thoughts, dabble in rumor-mongering, flash our family pictures, and yup compare waistline sizes and facial sags.

For awhile, we will forget that we have all pushed to 50 in age and recall the days when we were all giggly medical students in search of the dream. For a while...we will all be 25 again in this homecoming...