I have to stop and scratch my jellyfish stings…
– Apr 23, ’07 11:50 PM
Category Archives: Family or Personal
Pangasinan: Bolinao & Alaminos(100 Islands) Apr 14, 2007 (Photo Album)
On 11:30 pm on Friday the 13th (April 13, 2007), I hurriedly threw my beach gear into my knapsack coz I decided to join the 100 Islands outing with my new officemates. It was a personal expense outing…and 9 girls got together at 1 am on Saturday to begin the long trip to Punta Rivera resort at Bolinao Pangasinan.
Itinerary included a visit to Enchanted Cave (well there was Wonderful Cave too and some other caves but we were pressed for time), the Lighthouse, Patar Beach and of course a visit to some of the more notable islands in the 100 Island Group.
After a certain point, posted pix here will be from the other girls’ cameras but since there were so many shots taken…I will not be able to post all of the interesting ones…there are just too many hehehe
– Apr 17, ’07 6:59 PM
Cebu City-Holy Week Apr 7, 2007 (Photo Album)
Somewhere somebody has read how my Holy Week started with a waiting period of 7 hours or more at Centennial terminal in Manila while waiting for my trip to Cebu City. Hence you will see a lot of pictures taken at Mabuhay Lounge, at the pre-departure lounge …well basically airport pictures.
I will be posting by phases…next will come pictures around Cebu City…not a lot though since I just vegetated during Good Friday and Black Saturday…but hopefully you will see some common Cebu sights. They will all be placed in this album except for the Japanese doll I got sent as a gift…wheee!
– Apr 13, ’07 12:11 PM
Eiga Sai (2008): “Linda Linda Linda”
Saturday at the movies: “Linda Linda Linda”
Jul 16, ’08 1:37 AM
for everyone
[L-R: Hannah-chan, watashi, Son-chan, Grace-chan, Chelle-chan]
On July 12, 2008, a bunch of us J-Club members went to see one of the films being shown on Eiga Sai 2008 and indulged in some girly-girl activites outside of the office.
We agreed to meet up between 11 to 11:30 am at Shangrila mall. I ended up taking a taxi because I thought I would be last however it is good not to rush too much.
Chelle and I met up the graphic novels section of National Bookstore.
Luckily she came in before I could be tempted to buy more books or graphic novels. After we queued for the tickets, and the other girls Grace, Hannah and Alyson arrived, off we went to have lunch at Green Tomato.
Trying to decide among the many dishes of pasta and pizza and the other dishes on the menu, the lunch talk was full of teasing and stories.
ready for pizza!
Pasta and its sauces and ingredients were varied, with plain OO, tomato-based, pesto, brandied shrimp, spaghetti, penne, fetuccine etc. while the pizza was for meat-lovers. Too bad no dessert was on the plate 😦
We had enough time before the 2 pm movie and ended up comfortably ensconced in the middle aisle though we at first kept on moving around due to the “Reserved” signs (which turned out to be disregarded).
Humming “Linda Linda Linda” after the movie was finished, we proceeded to walk around and do some shopping. Some of them apparently were going to go on a run the next day, therefore new running shoes were a must.
Of course, when one walks around with fellow girls, one gets sucked into buying some things too, even if it wasn’t on the agenda at the start *looks at credit card dolefully*
Before splitting up and heading home, we also decided to go to Glorietta and have coffee at Gloria Jean’s…there was an ulterior motive for that, which I shall not disclose here *wink* but the conversation during that coffee break was like an interview for each of us girls…hehehe…plus some other perks *sticks tongue out*
At the Eiga Sai (2008)
The Film: Linda Linda Linda
Japanese Title: Rinda Rinda Rinda
Director: Yamashita Nobuhiro
Cast: Bae Doo-na as Song, Maeda Aki as Yamada Kyoko, Kashii Yu as Tachibana Kei, Sekine, Shiori as Shirakawa Nozomi, Mimura Takayo as Marumoto Rinko, Komoto Masahiro
as Teacher Koyama
Synopsis partially taken from the brochure:
This film about youth is set in modern-day high school just outside of Tokyo. A couple of days just before the school’s culture festival, a girl’s music group is facing a dilemma. They planned on playing an original piece of music but, three days before the festival,
the guitarist appears to have broken her finger and an argument breaks out among the two band members who founded it. They need to find a new guitarist and a new vocalist. While the remaining three girls are pondering who to ask to be the new vocalist, they hear the song, “Linda Linda Linda” by the famous Japanese rock band Blue Hearts and decide they want to sing it instead of an original song.
A Korean exchange student, Song, misunderstood and said yes when they ask her to be their vocalist. Her Japanese is not perfect, and she’s never sung in front of an audience, but she listens to the song and says yes. The girls practice a lot but they don’t seem to be improving much. They spend a lot of time at Kei’s ex-boyfriend’s studio and at the school practicing late into the night..and with all these practicing a deep friendship develops among the four girls.
The night before the festival, they practice late into the night and exhaust themselves. They suddenly wake up the next morning and realize that they are late for the festival. They arrive at the school just as the festival is finishing and perform as the last act. The audience loves them and the four girls play their hearts out.
Linda Linda Linda was ranked as the 6th best film on the 79th Kinema Junpo best ten list for 2005. Director Yamashita Nobuhiro’s other films, Hazy Life (“Donten Seikatsu,” 2001), No One’s Ark (“Baka no Hakobune, 2002) and Ramblers (“Riarizumu no Yado,” 2003) also deal with the lives of youths.
In Linda Linda Linda, the film uses minimalism and a level-headed approach to convey his ideas to the audience. The Korean character in the film, Song, is played by a Korean actor, Bae Doo-na. She has starred in such Korean films as Park Chan-Wook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and Hyeon Nam-Seob’s Saving My Hubby (2002). The actress who plays the role of the bassist, Nozomi, is a real-life musician.
Well, I enjoyed the film. I am not really into drama and I honestly was dreading seeing the films being featured this year as some of the girls had attended the first night of the festival and according to Hannah it was “bloody” (aka dumugo ilong nya or maybe there were bloody scenes?). hehehe…
But this one film was light, youth-oriented, feel-good, enjoyable.
It’s simple, direct approach to telling the story is refreshing and the song’s tunes and lyrics were catchy too. Makes me wanna see what other Blue Hearts songs are out there.
The film reminds me of “Stand by Me” but on a lesser scale. It is more of a tale of friendship developing between these girls who worked hard so that they could perform in the festival. There are no tricks to how its presented and its strangely fun to see this kind of film these days when those marked as good or blockbuster films (not necessarily exclusive descriptions) we queue for feature either camera tricks, CGI or a bunch of confusing turns in the story. I had a good time watching it with the company I was with.
There were hilarious moments in the film – and when I least expected it! I emitted a couple of giggles in some scenes even if I was busy reading the subtitles. One was when this Japanese boy who apparently had a crush on Song arranged for them to meet so that he could tell her his feelings. Aside from the girls and the boy’s friend spying on them, the guy was trying his best to speak in Korean to Song (with matching script or kodigs or cheat sheet pa ha!) of how he felt, and the oblivious Song was answering in her not-so-fluent Japanese.
Another unexpected (somewhat icky!) scene was when Kei was gifted with a hand. Yes, a hand! I thought at first maybe the film had some horror twist when I saw the hand inside a box and being gifted to her on her birthday (?).
It looked real, big and hairy. Urgh!! Enough said. Apparently its because she needs help because her hand was small and she needed a bigger hand to play her guitar. WTF?
Though it was a somewhat rainy day in the end, this Saturday was a nice break from routine.
Instead of having classes, we had played hooky *grin* and watched a movie instead, and got to know each other a little bit more. I felt like a young woman again…este..correction much younger woman..again.
Street-walker, from the adventure of a solitary kit
I used “kit” since this happened way back when I was still in my little kitty years. *coughs up a hairball*
My work at one of my previous companies involved regular weekly traveling around Visayas and Mindanao, loads of stress, weird working hours, being more familiar to the night watchman and desk clerk at hotels and….. on one eyebrow-raising occasion, being picked up as a prostitute on the dark streets of Davao City.
Really, it was just a matter of time that something like this would happen. But I thought it would be more in the lines of the hotel loiterers thinking I was engaged in some nefarious orgy-related activities and pointing me out to prospective sex-inclined or at least myopic males who did not know any better, rather than having it out in the open on the chilly streets of pre-dawn Davao.
What could you expect from the pattern I presented?
I was almost without fail, out of the hotel/inn/pension house by night and came back only in the wee hours of the morning, or maybe 2 days afterwards.{because the work I do has to be done during the time the branches were closed so that operations and sales would not be interrupted}
I was in the company of different men on different occasions and at different times. It could be we arrived together in a taxi or car or it could be we came from different flights and just caught up with each other in the hotel lobby. {because managers and other co-employees would either be visiting the branch or staying at the hotel during my trips}
I was a regular customer of the various hotels and sometimes placed a “Do Not Disturb” sign on my door during the early half of the day. {because I needed to catch up on lost sleep}
Still, I shake my head and ruffle my standing fur indignantly when I think back on it.
On a closer inspection, one could see that I was loaded down with various paraphernalia such as big boxes of servers or printers or tool-kits or on days when it was a rush trip – luggage which had clothes good for one week of travel. {I try to travel light but I got stuck once in Zamboanga for more than a week with just 2 days worth of clothes}
One could see that I was dressed very casually in dust-covered jeans and wrinkled shirts and the obligatory rubber shoes and jacket. {if you are to travel around Visayas and Mindanao at anytime on any vehicle at a moment’s notice, the more comfortable clothes the better}
One could see that my hair was uncombed, my face was solemn and I had eye bags for accessories instead of necklaces and bracelets. {that is what you get when you are in IT}
Who in their right mind would think I was out looking for a romp in the hay? Or whatever surface available to do the horizontal tango?
Still, after all that is said and done, I really could only attribute it to the darkness – that and the undiscerning eye of the taxi driver and his customer. Either that or the guy was just plain horny that anybody would do.
It was before 4 am, and I had just finished ensuring that the server could be up and normal operations would go on that day for the employees. No doubt the security guard was eager to go back to snoring on the comfy sofa as after he closed the door and locked it, he disappeared quicker than I could walk towards the road. I crossed the street to wait for a passing taxi on the other side as that would be the direction of my hotel.
I waited and after a few minutes, I noticed that a taxi was parked on the side I had left, near the darkened corner of the neighboring bank. I waved languidly for the taxi to come over. I was tired, a bit hungry and travel-sore since I had just arrived the other day via a bus ride from General Santos City. I had not even gotten out of my rumpled clothes I traveled in yet, since I just dumped my bag at the hotel and rushed to our office upon arrival less than 8 hours ago.
I hoisted my bag of tools, smoothed my hair and bent down to the taxi driver to ask if he could take me to XYZ—– hotel. Before I could even open my mouth –
My jaw dropped to the road when he propositioned me blatantly. It was 3 seconds before I could react to ask dazedly as to what he was talking about. I incoherently mumbled “Pwe…pwe-de? A…aaah-nong pwede… sa ano?!! kayo!!…” {translation: Can? Can what…. On what?!! You two!!}
The last word was squealed in a high-pitched tone. I frantically looked around the area (darn, no other humans in sight!) and tightened my fingers on my bag. I was mentally preparing myself to skewer the guy with either my screwdriver or soldering iron if I could just open my bag quickly enough. Then run as if all the hounds of hell were after me back to the branch and pound on the door. That plan flashed in my mind in the next half-second. Plan B was to scream..but unfortunately on that side of the road, it was only a mental hospital facility which was at my back and I didn’t think it would do any good at all.
The driver looked at my bugged-out eyes and my bared teeth. After a long second, he said “Never mind,” and made a u-turn to park again at where I had first seen him. If he had waited a few more seconds I’m sure saliva would have dropped from the side of my mouth the way it would from a rabid dog. Remember that this was the time that you hear all kinds of stories in Davao.
I still had adrenalin pumping in my veins two minutes after when I was comfortably ensconced in another taxi and on my way back to the hotel. The driver this time glanced at me sympathetically and made conforting noises when I blurted out in a series of fast sentences what had just happened. Upon arrival, I ordered room service and promptly fell asleep.
The next week, I was back in my Cebu home. I eagerly told my parents over dinner what had happened, complete with gestures and even acting it out for them.
There I was expecting my dear ole dad having his protective instincts come to the fore and to loudly lament on how his beloved, precious daughter was almost thrown into the jaws of a hormone-addled wolf if not for her quick wits and daring (glaring eyes are still daring), and to give me a sermon on how I was to be careful and to make sure I was in bed before 9 pm so I could be protected from the evils of the big, bad men.
What was my protective, conservative let-me-shoot-that-guy dad’s reaction?
He laughed.
And he laughed some more.
My mom smiled sympathetically.
My jaw dropped to the floor…and it was a long time before I could pick it up.
Welcome to the mysterious world of …men!
– Feb 13, ’08 4:29
Nostalgia & Strange Eating
As I was doing some necessary grocery shopping this evening (the absence of washed sugar, brown sugar or any kind of sweetener in my cupboards finally forced me out of my bat cave…) – I came across a particular brand of sardines that I particularly love!
I love it so much so that whenever I do get my hands on a can, I hide it in unusual places so that my dad can’t get his hands on it before I open it to consume the sardines. This came about since my dad and I have a serious competition going on when it comes to eating that kind of sardines (yet we both wait for the other person to buy it instead of buying it for ourselves, and then we eat what the other bought….now isn’t that as clear as mud?).
Popping the flat, square can with rounded corners into my shopping basket, I was suddenly hit by a wave of nostalgia and tried to remember food which I like to eat (there are a lot!) but which I don’t indulge in (quite a few on the list actually)…either due to price, availability, season or something which I term let-me-practice-self-control-I-can-do-so-too!
I am aware it is a ridiculous notion, but sometimes it makes me feel satisfied that I can control my urges for food which would normally have me salivating like a dog when it sees a juicy bone. Then again, there are also some types of food that I can think of which amuses me – due to the memories associated with them, or the process by which I make them disappear from this world.
“Mabuti” sardinas con salsa de tomate:
These Portuguese sardines have approximately five (5) fishes in the small flat cans and could range in price from Php 99 (years ago) to Php 160. When I feel my appetite abandoning me (yes, Virginia it happens!) I open a can, then grab a pack of Skyflakes or some toasted pan de sal. I usually just eat one or two pieces of the sardines, and put away the can in the ref for the next meal. Anticipation makes me look forward to finishing the whole lot in the next 24 hours.
Sometimes I pour olive oil and tomato paste into the container, but it never tastes as good as the original sauce. My dad and I mop up the insides of an empty can with our bread when we do get to the final fishes..uhm..I mean pieces…..
Green tea ice cream:
I cannot always get this at Japanese restaurants and its an expensive indulgence…so when I sometimes see a Häagen-Dazs freezer, I stand in front of the freezer and try to pick out (only with my eyes though) the pint or cup which has this flavor. Then, keeping that picture in my mind’s eye, I fantasize about making my own cup of green tea ice cream and continue on my errands.
Well….either that or go home and brew some green tea and add sugar and milk and pretend that its the green tea ice cream…which has melted or phased into another form. Hmmmm, that reminds me that we have an ice cream maker at our house..which my dad bought ages ago (back in the ’80s). When I asked him why, he was probably pulling my leg when he said, he did it in case Magnolia stops selling ice cream 🙂
Crispy chicken skin:
This harks back to the days when my maternal grandmother roasted native chicken (bisayang manok) for my dad whenever we visited her in the town of Sibonga, Cebu. I do not relish eating chicken meat (I still avoid chicken though I can eat it on occasion for the sake of politeness), but there is something really uplifting about inhaling the aroma of cooked “tanglad” (lemongrass) stuffed inside a chicken which is roasted over hot coals.
And lest I forget, there is also a “come-hither” effect on me every time I see a roasted chicken’s golden-brown crispy skin encasing its shapely body. Ehem….I only like eating chicken skin though…and since my dear Lola P and dad indulged me when it came to chicken, by the time the roasted chicken (aka sinugbang manok) arrived at the table to be given to my dad or shared with visitors, it would be in all its skinless glory.
This is why I’ve never wondered why they called chicken displayed in the supermarkets as “dressed chicken”. Obviously, the ones I had already gone through were the undressed ones…or at least that is how I view it now. My mom always teasingly commented upon seeing the very bare chicken on display: “Nag-hubo na ang manok.” literal translation: “The chicken has undressed”. Doesn’t it remind you of bold stars?…
Durian candy from Davao:
I’m sure you’ve seen the kind which is flat and rectangular, probably more than 6 inches in length and about 1.5 inches wide..by 1/8 inch thick? Every time I received this type of candy from my relatives in Davao, I used to nibble it centimeter by centimeter (or maybe millimeter by millimeter) until all that was left was the wrapper (probably took me an hour or two to finish the whole thing). I took really small bites of the candy, so much so that maybe that bite may be non-existent and I just had a swipe of the candy’s taste on my tongue. Go figure.
Horlicks (chocolate tablets):
Think Ovalteenies if this is a BMT (before-my-time) thing for you. My dad used to buy them for me when I was in grade school, but sadly I don’t think its being manufactured anymore right now, or at least this is not in the Philippine market these days. I would open the jar, take out a number of tablets and arrange them on a napkin or plate. Then, I would put a chocolate tablet standing up-side in my mouth and crunch on one side of it. There is always a side of the tablet, where that “face” of the tablet falls off like a piece of paper. If you crunch on the wrong side, the tablet crumbles. I had great fun trying to figure out which side, then eating first the side which fell out, then the tablet itself.
Banana-flavored toothpaste:
aww-may-gulay! I suddenly remember this as I type away….I was either in Grade 1 or Nursery when I used to swallow little bits of this toothpaste…and not during the nightly-brush-your-teeth-before-you-sleep ritual too. I make an -eewww! sound now that I think back to how I could have done it, but somehow in my mind I can only remember how deliciously it all tasted.
Hmmm…all this reminiscing is making me hungry….I better stop here and eat my dinner (looks over leftovers on kitchen top): cut-up tomatoes with vinegar, oil and feta cheese with jalapeno, a few pieces of over-toasted french bread which are probably as hard as rocks, one slightly-burned pan de sal, a bottle of buko juice, a couple of kiat-kiats, two jaffa viennese, a few pieces of chili-flavored crispy seaweed snack and sweetened yogurt…till next time kiddies!
– Jan 24, ’08 8:46
Christmas Cheers from Cebu
Dec 24, 2007 – 11:50 pm:
I had written a nice, long blog…. 
Then Mozilla Firefox encountered an error and I lost it all –
pictures, words, and thoughts…
oh well….c’est la vie…
pictures, words, and thoughts…
oh well….c’est la vie…
at Lai Garden, SM Cebu
So I’m keeping to the short version
(which has the very basic recent photos taken yesterday and today and of course the thoughts that I wish to convey) .
In the final run, this is what I would just be saying –
at A Taste of Mandarin, Gaisano Country Mall, Cebu
From my dear dad and mom – Nene and VK
and my good ole Russian friend Stoli –
who is keeping me company while I surf,
(dad is snoozing and mom is cooking the prawns – yummy fave – for noche buena)
“Merry Christmas!!!”
from an island in the Pacific
– Cebu City!
at my work table
Here’s to the best Christmas ever!
*hic, hic, hic*
(that was Stoli, not me!)
– Posted on Dec 24, ’07 11:56 PM for everyone
Haynaku, haiku!
Its been a long, long while since I ever wrote anything literary…I think I’ve forgotten that part of my life way back when I was a teenager.
In high school at STC, words were powerful, fun and were something I wasn’t comfortable muttering out loud since I had a tendency to speak very fast – jumbling my speech since my mouth couldn’t catch up with what I thought I wanted to share. Still, I enjoyed English subjects and didn’t shirk my duty as a student when we had to turn in our random written English assignments.
In college at CIT, words were superflous, unimportant, and fleeting to me…except when they became part of a computer program. One didn’t think about diction, rhythm, rhyme or the resulting impact on the heart and thoughts on people who read one’s scribbles. One only had to think of logic and reason and syntax although structure was important in a way. I left behind my habit of reading classics and novels, and concentrated on poring over lines and lines of code. Debugging was some thing I enjoyed..especially if it was other people’s programs.
Did you ever see this comic strip featuring a programmer-applicant and his interviewer? The latter said the programmer was superlative in Cobol, Pascal, Fortran and C (well, during my time, those where some of the languages we gave instructions to the computer!) Too bad he was “lousy” in English. Sometimes I feared being lumped into a particular segment of software developers – tolerably good in coding and logic; and tolerably passable in English.
Now and then though, I become nostalgic, and I wonder wistfully whatever happened to the copies of the bunch of poems, stories, anecdotes I had submitted in our English classes more than 2 decades ago. I liked limericks, I liked puns. I enjoyed breaking into Walt Whitman’s “O Captain, my Captain! our fearful trip is done;” once in a while. I enjoyed a little bit of Shakespeare and a little bit of Robert Browning. I read Canterbury Tales in the loo. Ok, so I read Nancy Drew too.
I enjoyed various pieces of works but it wasn’t something I put a whole lot of my mind into. Some people could ponder and ruminate about great works and I? I was content just standing by and listening slash reading these words. At worst they floated like a wavering ghostly figure past my ears…at best they left a very subtle footprint on my cerebral cortex. Pfft!
I write this now since I had the urge to type about something I felt 10 minutes ago. I felt I missed going back to scribbling words on random pieces of paper and sticking them in various places. I wanted to write haiku at 2 in the morning, because when prompted, I can only remember one I wrote during my high school graduation…maybe because it meant something personal to me then. Since life at that point seemed to be complicated and exciting, full of various adventures and trails unknown. I wanted to express how I thought all the years of schooling (and waking up early!) culminated at last in that grand transformation. I was a young lady primed to go into the world of….college.
That haiku went this way –
green caterpillar,
spinning a silver cocoon….
metamorphosis!
At this moment though, I just want to randomly write more 5-7-5 lines because my work nowadays seem so far away from any creative leaning. I feel like I am slipping…into a world of contracts, timelines, milestones, engagement margins – everything is so cut and dried! so… so…blah! Hmm…how descriptive of me…is that the best adjective I can come up with?
Wait…wait…I am determined! Before I sign off, I must come up with one haiku! Maybe that will jump-start my brain. Maybe that will get my creative juices flowing. Maybe that will balance out my mind? Or maybe I can just say ..never mind the 5-7-5-7-7…just write the darn thing before your muscles lock in this position in front of your laptop!
Well, here goes nothing – let’s give it a shot then – it is not as if I was aspiring to become an award-winning writer…I just need another outlet once in a while so I can find my swing.
first raindrop trembles
poised on a withered leaf-tip..
falling on a frog –
slide and disappear into…
the cracked lips of thirsty Earth.
In tribute to my love of frogs, the rainy weather we are having and last but not the least, here’s to Mother Earth!
– Nov 22, ’07 3:14 AM
3-day weekend, snooze or bust
August 2007 had meant two 3-day weekends…one on August 20 and another on August 27. And what did I do on those exciting long weekends?
Well….*taps chin thoughtfully*…aside from watching “Ratatouille”, and doing the routine grocery-shopping (am on a bagel diet these days because as Chiara would say I got infected with tamaditis) and the weekend chores – and the unavoidable tv-watching and internet-surfing (at least on my first 3 day weekend)…well…nothing else except trying to erase my eyebags by catching up on more sleep.
True, I suffered from a pesky migraine starting Saturday morning last week (probably brought about by too by too much drinking of hot choco since Thursday)…but I admit, quite shamefacedly, that I only managed to rouse myself on August 27 to go out. I kept getting held back by Skycable!
There was an old movie of Sly Stallone (Escape to Victory in Cinemax), Midsommer Murders (on Hallmark), two Star Trek movies (I love Star Trek), CSI Las Vegas, The Da Vinci Code, and then a drama about a father and his estranged daughter (quite a long title so I forgot)..and so on and so forth.
…but weirdly, no anime…because my fave supplier in Glorietta for this is not there anymore. Oh dear, and they still owe me replacements for defective disks (Evangelion movie and a couple of Card Captor Sakura as well as GetBackers). The last series I bought from them was “Flame of Recca”…and ..its being shown on Animax..but as usual…in corny English dialogue. Bleargh!
I forgot that I was supposed to exchange a defective USB mouse, and that I had only 1 chicken egg in my ref. I just went out with no goal in mind. I just happily rambled about the household sale in Landmark…and the main thing which caught my eye is the item below. *sigh*
My shopping gene is dormant these days…but I found the wind chime amusing and conveniently forgot that I am not supposed to put holes or hooks (unless they be temporary ones) on my walls or ceiling. I finally found another use for the water sprinkler spout. Hopefully the fish chime would not be drenched ….ever!
– Aug 27, 2007
21 years passing by
August 12, 2007 (Sunday)- After watching a movie murder whodunit on cable and taking a long-distance call from Cebu…I trooped downstairs on the building where I currently live and I met up with waiting-for-more-than-15-minutes Paul Sy – an old friend, college classmate/batch mate (CIT, Computer Science pioneers) and a fellow Cebuano…who I’ve known way back in nineteen eight six.
I first came across Paul when he was knee high to a grasshopper (hmm….maybe not knee high?…..maybe its better to say that he was as tall as the grasshopper?).
And I can certainly remember his shenanigans and idiosyncrasies which drove other people mad during our teenage years, even his love-team-mate in our class..hehehe…ah…nostalgia anyone?
Everything was simpler then and we were all incorrigible teasers…I remember a question I asked him during summer classes – “Paul Sy, are you going to take up Pol Sci?” *ignores glare from said guy*
He had arrived from Hong Kong (or maybe another country in Asia) a couple of weeks ago, and said he’d like to meet up with me in Makati so he could drop off something for me … uhmm… ‘pasalubong’ ? Of course I will be generous enough to receive it…..enough said *grin*. I tried to get in touch with other classmates I had in Manila to see if they could also come over….
It makes me sad that my college batch mates and I who are in Manila never get to see each other together at the same time..
-Aug 17, ’07 1:16 AM
The Curious Cat 