1 Peter 3:8 (MSG)

Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble. That goes for all of you, no exceptions. No retaliation. No sharp-tongued sarcasm. Instead, bless—that's your job, to bless. You'll be a blessing and also get a blessing.
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older lady-friends

I like having girl-friends. Having older lady-friends is an extra blessing. ^_^


A lot of times, it's more refreshing to be with older (not necessarily "old") ladies than hanging out with peers. I learn a lot from listening to their takes on life, marriage, faith and things (Also it doesn't hurt that they have the natural tendency to offer a snack or a meal when we meet ^_^ ).

nomnomnom-ing

I arrived home at around half past two this morning, a full moon smiling with me as I stepped out of the car and into the threshold. I came from an awesome night with old schoolmates from the absolutely amazing college of UP Fine arts. It was great to see them all again, all in one place, all at the same time.


I've been looking forward to a rendezvous such as this. It would be a decade since I last saw most of them (online / television / magazine sightings excluded), so you could imagine how excited I was.

We had dinner and drinks at a really cute, cozy resto in QC owned by 3 other schoolmates. Really, really lovely place. Would you believe it? - It's called Nomnomnom Happy Food. Wonderful healthy gourmet-ish food at fastfood prices. Highly recommended.


Some 60 or so folk came, UP CFA graduates from different departments and various batches of the late '90s. There was a whole lot of us from our block and we filled half the smoking area. Everyone sort of just adapted into the scene, as if simply picking up from where we left off almost a decade ago, like we were never separated by years. Most of them looked just like the way I left them.

A lot of things were pretty much the same ...

R and J were still the fist to arrive and the last to leave.
D still has the nicest camera, and is still married to R.
MB still looks like she did in college.
MD still has her subtle-funny way of telling stories .
G is still nicey and unintrusive.
A is still the pretty girl who has never had a boyfriend.
JP is still on whatever regulated substances those are.
AL is still the weird artist type (with ultraman toy watch to match), still talks like a cool geek and is still a self-proclaimed closet gay.
D is still openly gay and openly flirts with AB. AB is still a sweet-and-sensitive toughie and is still dating C.
H is still a heckler.
L is still his heckle-buddy.
The single girls are still single.
And there was this whole confuddled commotion with paying the bill, like how things usually went when we ate at Mang Jimmy's ten years ago.
And JP hitched a southbound ride home with me like he used to.


... Though there have been a lot of interesting developments:

JP finally graduated (Centennial batch! Woot!) - big news of the evening.
D is a classy sort of sexy-manly gay who does some designing and a bit of modeling.
AB has a lot of uber-cool tatts.
MD just recovered from an operation that revealed she had a parasitic twin (oh yes, she gave us a detailed, descriptive report while everyone was eating).
MB, one of the owners of the resto we were eating at, is now a successful entrepreneur with a couple of businesses.
H is engaged.
D and R have three kids now.
R is a respected teacher at a girls' private school.
D spells his name differently now. He has a studio and does glamour photography; we see his work everywhere.
AL is a filmmaker and has a thing for K-pop.

It felt a lot like college hang-out days all over again - except that people were now more stable (in every sense of the word) and the guys knew how to handle their drinks (i.e., no drunken vomitfests). Too bad a lot of the other friends weren't able to make it.

It was a much-needed trip away from the usual everyday of present life. I'd love to call it a great night of catching up with old friends, but great is an understatement. Hoping and waiting for a second round ...

old photos and old phriends

My bunny Pepper got tired of his usual play space so he ventured into that hollow under the dressing table. At the end of the day I noticed that he left two slightly-yellowed sheets of paper on the floor, something I assumed he yanked out from under there. The corners were chewed out. Upon inspection, I realized that those were figure drawings I made as a college student - some stuff I forgot about in the past years. As when a window opens to let in light, I remembered some other stuff that should be under there with the old sketches - old watercolor drawings, technical plates, a plastic drawing board. A whole lot of photographs.

Photographs.

I decided to dig out the photographs and see what they bring back.


I inspected them one by one -the dog-eared, dust-mottled, faded prints. I let my mind venture into its storage area to pull out whatever i could remember about each image. I tried to clean them up and took photos of them with the borrowed DSLR, aiming to make digital copies. I downloaded into the laptop and tried restoring them via Photoshop but most of them are beyond bringing back to their original clarity - unless of course I slaved for hours and days on end with the brush and clone tools, but I didn't want to do that.

I shelved that project after getting bored with all the tweaking.

Then a few days ago, a Facebook contact posted photos of us and some common friends, circa 1998. The people tagged in the photos had fun tagging other people, as well as reminiscing what they can about the time the pictures were taken. Of course we couldn't help observing weight gain, weight loss, the awkward '90s hairstyles ...

Then other friends posted other old photos, and the fun multiplied. I wanted to add to the reminiscing, so I returned to the to-be-restored old images in my hard drive and worked on them (I tried not to be obsessive so I would finish fast; I just did what was necessary to improve on the color and contrast and removed the big stains). Pretty soon I had my own nostalgic photos to pool into the fun. I must have had around a hundred images of friends from several different circles. I just put them all in one album and tagged who i could.

I received comments almost immediately. Reminisce here, reminisce there - it was fun. Pretty soon my friends tagged our common friends who weren't my FB contacts, so I easily got to reconnect with them by clicking their "add as a friend" button.

It was fascinating - and funny - how we remembered trivial things about the captured events. What was amusing is how people remembered details about each other, and even bothered to remember. That was kind of touching. We had a blast chatting away and making fun of each other. It was a catching up of sorts.

Even if I haven't even seen or contacted most of them in a decade or more, it felt like we never really moved apart - with the familiarity we addressed each other, the unabashed fun-poking, the humor not to take offense at the childish comments and the incriminating photos. It reminded me that - though I've quite isolated myself from most of them - I've had some real friends in the past who still care somewhat about the friendship we shared back when ... whenever that was.

But I guess that was the whole point, right? ^_^

until then

A friend went to Heaven this week.

We all knew that his time was coming, but a loss is still a loss. We'll be missing him greatly, but we won't ever forget the things that he imparted onto out lives.

Saddened as I am by his passing, I have a reason to smile as I think that he's in a better place now. Streets of gold and pearl gates; no sickness, no curse of sin. He will never have to hurt anymore. He's probably young again, and strong again, feeling the joy and health and wholeness in his bones that he's been longing for all these years. Dancing again - maybe even dancing like he's never done before. Sitting at the feet of his Creator as a form of worship, and hearing the answers to those baffling questions he's always pondered on with Him. Witnessing first-hand, with each and every one of his senses, how his earth-wise theology pales in the light of the actual Reality. He's finally there, at that perfection that he's been preparing almost all his mortal life for.

(Now, I'm jealous)

We who know him will be in a period of mourning for a while, but we'll be remembering forever.

Goodbye, Dr. T.

At least, until then.