More on the usual tambays at the cafe with a mission:
4. The autistic. These are the ones glued to their notebooks/journals, their novels or the internet and are oblivious to the outside world. For today, I have (again) flamboyant techie downloading songs and videos. He reports that he has taken my suggestion last time on searching for Alexandra Burke and has since become a fan. It’s cool to sit beside these people. I’m almost always assured that no sound will be coming from them nor from their laptops.
5. The weirdos. There was one who would tap the table loudly when the ADHD creatures become rambunctious. Or the one who actually had the gall to stand in front of the ADHD creatures with arms crossed and just stare at them. (weird).
But my favorite weirdo is not really that big of a weirdo. Daffy and I called him Old Man Tony, a 40 year-old dude whom Daf met while reviewing for the boards some 7 years ago. Old Man Tony wants to be a doctor someday, which was why he was reading an assortment of medical books. That would’ve been admirable, except that he has been doing this for 3 years – the amount of time he should’ve spent in medical school! Instead, he has been slaving away at these books so that by the time he reads them in med school, it would be easy for him. And by easy, that means he’d be topping the class.
Any doctor or medical student will tell you that this is not a guarantee.
Our impression of Old Man Tony is the classmate who always wants to get ahead in the game, would not be a team player, and would keep vital info from his colleagues someday. In other words, the classmate you wouldn’t want to have.
What made him weird, furthermore, was that he kept studying without actually finding out that the cut off age for NMAT (at that time) was 35! Imagine the look of defeat in his face!
“Sorry to burst your bubble, dude, but you’re little too late.”
We don’t know if he was able to make it to med school for whatever loophole he found. If he was, here’s a tribute to Old Man Tony, our favorite weirdo and (in my mind and Daffy’s) the iconic Starbucks Katipunan tambay with a mission!
I guess one would argue that if you do not want to be affected by all these personalities while studying, then proceed to the library immediately. However, all these apply to the libraries as well because the library is just the cafe minus the coffee. And that cafes are libraries minus the reminders of being quiet (which fall on deaf ears sometimes anyway.)
Well, back to mah books. (Oh yeah, today I’m both the studious/nerd and the autistic techie).
This post is tagged medical student mode
