DOMINUS VOBISCUM! I am from the Philippine archipelago. I am happily married with six children. I am a Doctor of Medicine and a practicing Internist with Gastroenterology as a subspecialty. I am a baptized Roman Catholic. I have been an orator and an English editor during my high school days. I love to sing and contemplate on spirituality. I believe in GOD but I do not believe in religion. Religion is the opium of the human mind and the toxin of the human heart. Religion is not God and God is not religion. God is a Person and religion is mere human perception. I was born a "blue baby" on a cold February rainy dawn in a chilly sleepy town at the outskirts of the "City of Pines" (Baguio City) in a place called Trinity Valley (La Trinidad). It is a rugged but verdant valley in the mountainous and pristine hinterlands of Benguet province in the Philippine islands known for its strawberry fields. it is the only locality in the entire archipelago abundant with strawberries. My parents were professionals. My father retired as a government executive with the rank of director. My mother was a schoolteacher at the the elementary level. I am married to a former nutritionist turned housewife. She is simple and beautiful and a joy most rare. My two decades of formal education began in a Catholic school and ended fruitfully in a Catholic university. I was conferred the degree of Doctor of Medicine at the Pontifical University of Santo Tomas a year after the first visit of Pope John Paul II in the Philippines. University of Santo Tomas is the oldest Catholic institution of higher learning in the Philippine archipelago. One year after graduation, I took the licensure exams for physicians and obtained the fourth highest rating among the examinees from different medical schools in the country. The Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of my alma mater honored me with an Achievement Award for the feat of making the magic circle of ten in the exams. I finished my residency training in Internal or Adult Medicine at the Veteran's Memorial Medical Center. Likewise, it was in the same institution where I took my two years Fellowship training in Gastroenterology under the auspices of Boehringer Ingelheim, Inc., a Germany-based multinational pharmaceutical firm. I got employed for a while as Assistant Medical Director of a local health maintenance organization. After setting up its satellite clinic at St. Luke's Medical Center, I gave it up and began with my private practice.