“Ten years from now, make sure you can say that you chose your life. You didn’t settle for it.”

– Mandy Hale

I can say that the last decade was the best decade of my life. It was a decade of many firsts. I achieved my PhD degree and traveled to many countries. As the new decade starts, here is a rundown of the milestones in my life from 2010 to 2019.

2010. I started my PhD in the last quarter of the past year. This year, the hardships of doing a PhD have struck me. I am managing many experiments. I have a demanding ‘sensei’ (lol). I usually get by with a little help from my international friends. I was assigned as the Secretary of the International Students Association in my university. Weekends will never be dull again because of all our activities.

2011. My PhD journey continued. My first paper was published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. As a reward, my sensei brought me to the USA for a conference. It was my first American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene meeting held in Philadelphia, USA, that year. My friend and I sneaked to visit New York and Washington, DC. I got the chance to visit Staten Island to see the Statue of Liberty. I also visited the American Museum of Natural History and Rockefeller Center in New York City. In DC, I saw the White House and the Lincoln Memorial. I also visited other memorial monuments there. My sensei also allowed me to visit my aunt for the Christmas season in San Francisco for 3 weeks! And we visited Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

2012. I watched the controversial Lady Gaga concert in Manila during my sampling visit to the Philippines. I got my second paper published in the open-access PLoS Neglected Diseases and graduated with my PhD. I am finally a doctor (lol!). I attended the ASTMH meeting again in Atlanta, Georgia. There, I had a chance to visit the Georgia Aquarium, which is the largest aquarium in the world. I also visited the Coca-Cola Museum and the Center for Disease Control.

2013. I got my first post-doctoral position from the Association for Preventive Medicine of Japan. I received the Young Investigator Travel Award from the Japanese Society of Veterinary Parasitology. This award allowed me to deliver an oral presentation. I presented at the World Association for the Advancement of Veterinary Parasitology. The event was held in Perth, Australia. I attended a Wellcome Trust Workshop on working with parasite database resources at Cambridge, UK. I also made a side trip to London. Additionally, I attended the ASTMH meeting for the third time in Washington, DC.

2014. I was given a 2-year Post-Doctoral Fellowship Grant from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. I attended the Schistosoma Life Cycle Training Course at Biomedical Research Institute in Maryland, USA. I also attended the International Congress of Parasitology in Mexico City, Mexico. Mexico City is one of my favorite places I have visited. The highlights of that trip were Our Lady of Guadalupe and Teotihuacan Pyramids. I also had the chance to visit Taiwan. I went to Vietnam for a friend’s wedding. Then I traveled to South Korea and Myanmar for another friend’s wedding. I also visited China, including ShangHai and BeiJing. Visiting the Great Wall of China was ticked off my bucket list. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter just opened in Universal Studios Japan. I visited the park the day after its grand launch. It was the 4th time I attended the ASTMH meeting. It was held in New Orleans, USA. This is my favorite place in the US for its food and dark history. This history is shown in one season of The American Horror Story. I also made a side trip to Chicago. This year, I also received an award for young alumni in my undergraduate alma mater.

2015. This was the year we got a paper published at the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. We also received a 2-year research grant from GHIT. I attended my aunt’s wedding in San Francisco, USA, and my friend’s wedding in Thailand. I visited Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea (again!), Germany, Switzerland (for the European Congress of Tropical Medicine and International Health), and very few of France. I also did a North Tohoku trip in Japan with a close friend before he left Japan. I again attended the ASTMH meeting in Philadelphia and a meeting with our collaborators in Seattle. As the year ended, I went to Okinawa to celebrate the holidays, escaping the Hokkaido winter.

2016. Our GHIT project continued. I went to Mongolia. I love seeing the nomadic herders. I traveled to Sydney and Brisbane for the International Congress for Tropical Medicine and Malaria. On my last trip, while in Japan with some of my international friends, I visited Cambodia. I then went to Atlanta, Georgia, to attend the ASTMH Meeting again.

2017. This was my last year in Japan. Before I came back to Manila, I went to San Francisco, USA, to relax for three weeks. I returned to the Philippines. I was hired as a professorial lecturer at the Institute of Biology, University of the Philippines Diliman.

2018. I waited for months. Finally, I was hired as an associate professor at the College of Public Health, University of the Philippines Manila. I also had the chance to go back to Nagasaki, Japan, for a conference.

2019. I became very busy at UP Manila. The highlight, though, for me this year was spearheading the 1st International Forum on Collaborative Researches in Parasitic Diseases. We got speakers from the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office. There were also representatives from the National Center for Global Health and Medicine in Japan. Additionally, the National Research Center for Protozoan Diseases participated. Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, my alma mater in Japan, was involved too. The University of Tokyo and the University of Toronto also contributed. It was indeed a successful event.

Of course, I also started blogging in this decade, August 2015, to be exact. I just hope the new decade will bring more adventures and achievements to my life!

Happy New Year! Happy New Decade!