ties that bind

i was late for more than 30 minutes for my mandarin class last saturday. it's not even because i was reviewing my notes or studying chinese verbs and sentence structures the night before. but the night before which turned into early morning was spent in a text marathon with 2 of my college friends trying to squeeze in a late tete-a-tete for that day.

here's how it started. i remember asking nestor if he has ever tried applying at one of the hospitals here in makati - that was early morning friday. i got the reply late that night and i had to think for a few minutes there to recall what my question was; that i would merit such a late night reply that i couldn't make sense of at first. after i got it all figured out, i replied that i was afraid that smart servers have caught the bug that has inflicted our servers and also our latency problems with our mail servers since i just got a reply from the question i asked more than 10 hours ago. the sarcasm is of course lost on my friend who had no idea what i am talking about. anyway i suggested we all meet tomorrow, that is after i finally dug out the torn paper where i wrote down valdz new cellphone number. we've decided that we'll meet at gateway. i've been there but i couldn't really recall how i got there clearly since that part of manila is not really my territory. but i told nesty, i'll text valdz and i'll text him once i get valdz' confirmation.

sometime around 1am i think, valdz finally replied that he is about to leave. so i replied "leave?where? you're going back to naga? wait let's meet tomorrow first. nestor's here" and he replied "i'm leaving for dubai." and i'm like "wtf. ginagago na naman ba ako nito. or what?" if you know my friends like love and i do. one thing love has taught me is not to take everything they say seriously unless verified by another third party namely her. and love being love, i still don't take her seriously either until she gives the same reply under oath and under duress. since calling love at that time is out of the question. i called valdz and asked "seryoso ba to?" and he said it is indeed the truth. so alright that decided it, we all have to meet. so i texted nestor and said ok you have to be there because our tete-a-tete has just turned into a despidida party.

saturday morning. our 1pm meet up at gateway was about to get derailed because valdz has to settle something about his visa at the embassy. meeting on sunday is out of the question since i'm going back to graveyard shift on sunday. we all decided to meet at a later time and at a place nearer to mine. i asked nestor to call puds' landline number and see if she's back here already. i was gonna call her myself but i won't be in at the office till very much later. attended mandarin class. told my laoshi i still haven't managed to dig through the muck of files at home to look for my mandarin manuals but i promised to don goggles and a helmet sometime this week and look for them. apart from suncy and i, we have ourselves a new classmate and the new classmate blatantly berated me for texting in class. it's not that i wasn't seriously interested in the lesson but it's that part of the lesson i can get through with my eyes closed sans manuals. i didn't spend 12 years studying in a chinese school for nothing. plus scheduling this meeting is not becoming as easy as i have hoped. i still didn't kow if puds can make it or if she's in manila already but valdz confirmed that he will meet us at 5pm in g4. good enough.

after class, i went to jg and found out i just missed cut off and therefore i will never be able to file my overtime ever. so i just rendered an OT gratis. i swore some and swore some more. lots of shit happen after you come back from your restdays like the day i found out we won't be able to use maxthon or mozilla because IT is too paranoid. i swore even more on that day. i called puds and she said nestor just called and yes we can meet at 4pm at glorietta, by mcdonald's at the groundfloor. she'll text me before she leaves her place.

at a little past 4, got a text from nestor that he is already at our meet up place and asking if puds and i are on are way. i assured him i am about to go out of our building (i was actually just about to log off from the PC i was using) and told him that i'm sure puds is also on her way. i checked my cellphone, nothing from puds yet but got a missed call from valdz. cellphone says no space for new messages so deleted some old messages. got something from valdz that says we all have to be there. gave a positive reply.

debated on whether to walk to glorietta or to take a puj but the kuripot part of me won the debate. replied to nestor "be there in 15 minutes." considered running but opted for brisk walking instead. arrived in glorietta and couldn't find nestor immediately. my eyesight is not as good as it was. everyone looked the same in my eyes - blurry faces. he finally found me, just materialized out of nowhere. puds is still nowhere in sight. we both agreed it's not old news. he said i am late as always. he informed me i was 20 minutes late. hah! haven't changed. i'm like 'yeah.' i'm getting lectured on tardiness again twice in one day.

ever since i can remember, i don't think he has ever been late for any of our outings. i remember one time love and i were suppose to meet him. i called love who lives outside of naga and still found her at home and to think it's less than 15 minutes to our agreed time. she also said yeah i'm gonna be late too and of course we know that he would already be there, poor guy. he waited for us for an hour. he's the youngest of the group but he lectures us like a priest. as expected love and i got a lecture on tardiness among other things.

past 4.30 and puds is still not there. sigh... so we talked about what we've been doing. me stuck in this job. he's still reviewing for cg. he had the foresight to shift to nursing while we were all on 3rd year in econ. agreed life is not as easy as we all thought it was. he asked me about the the text about a few days ago. asked me who. why i was asking about such and such. told him flat out it's not open for discussion. not talking about it. he can be persistent but he left that alone. i felt guilty for being harsh. after all, i may have woken him up in the middle of the night and he did help me out then. but i don't want to cry and i'm sure i don't want to discuss something painful in a mall-full of people. got a text from tin that she is on her way. finally, but we both knew it's going to take some time until she gets there.

puds arrived in her usual breathless way. she's been running because she's late. nestor of course is not going to let that pass. 'you haven't changed tin but at least your'e only an hour late this time.' he proceeded to tell puds he was early as usual and that i was 20 minutes late. we decided to go to the glorietta's food court and wait for valdz there. we caught up about what has been going on in each other's lives. tin has quit ps. me saying i want to do that too. she said to stay. talked about how good the stocks were doing. asked her if she sold before she quit. nope. she never got around to activating her account. too bad. nestor felt out of the loop. doesn't know what we're talking about. we talked some more. life. work. love. and the lack of all of the above. how we all wish we were all still students. how pagsisisi is laging nasa huli. we would've have done things differently. talked about family, plans for the future, directions or lack of it. it seems that he has his life planned out so puds and i said why not map our lives for us as well.

valdz finally arrived. we berated him for a few minutes for not informing us earlier. asked him why he's leaving for that place. same reason as everyone else who goes out of the country. yeah life sucks here. we noticed how we were wearing color coordinated tops. puds and i wearing white tops while both of them wearing yellow. funny we didn't even talk about it. we reminisced about old times, talked about how love and pres ended up together and we not knowing about it. how they were not expecting it. i got to know before they all did and i have a pretty good idea of how it may have started. well we all do. but we all agreed we would pound pres to pieces if he played around. so pres watch out. we had dinner at teriyaki boy. couldn't recall all the things we talked about over grilled chicken, beef and tofu steak. but puds decided she's not going to get married. live in maybe but that's it. she and i both concurred that we are disillusioned when it comes to love and men. the guys being guys said we haven't met enough to reach that conclusion. duh, like knowing them is not enough to disillusion us already. however we all laughed and wondered what to do if she suddenly starts sending out wedding invitations a few years from now.

we decided to call love later. she's the only one missing from the group since she works in naga. we wondered if the 5 of us will ever be completed. we've always been together most of our college days that is unless the 2 guys were chasing skirts. we wagered on whether valdz would inform us when he's coming home. told valdz he better because i'll bet on he will but if he didn't he would pay for the wager. we joked about who's gonna do the dishes if our money is not enough to pay for the food. we all decided nestor would probably do a good job of it.

we talked about our jobs. what's good about it. the benefits. what sucks. yeah quite a lot. how most job opportunities you see in newspapers these days are call center jobs. why or how we econ majors end up working here. how everyone thinks working in a call center is an easy job when it's actually not. why everyone thinks you only have to know how to speak english to be here. well that's one but it's not only that. can you imagine working on the mangingisda shift,as puds would put it, while the rest of the country is in lala land? we also talked about how difficult it is to find a job you really like to do. some of us envied stars, they must like what they're doing, right?

we paid our bill and decided to go to greenbelt. we ended up sitting on the grass outside the chapel. there is some sort of performance inside by one of the groups that hold charismatic activities there. we pondered how our religious life has improved or deteriorated. we still attend mass. though not as often as we would like to. nestor being a former altar boy shared a sermon that he heard. he wants us to answer the question asked by the priest, "what is your greatest ambition?" everyone is like 'ok what is it?' we're too eager to know the what but we don't want to bother answering the question ourselves. must be a tough question to answer. since he won't let up i told him mine is (1) get married (2) have children (3) get divorce (4) live happily ever after. alright so i'm being a wise ass. if the priest heard that he won't be too happy. giving up on the three of us, he said that a man's greatest ambition should be to be the best person he can be regardless of who he becomes. he said it's corny. the 3 of us agreed it is. it's a cliche but we get the point. puds and i used to joke that if we come close to any church we just might burst into flames. but seriously we all like being catholics. there may be some things we don't like about it and some of us may not be as pious but deep inside we know. it's like your family. no matter how far away you go. you always come back to them.

nestor suddenly blurted out that i was too warm. asked me if i was sick? i should've answered "in the mind, yes." then he said something like, "you must be ovulating." wtf. leave it to this guy to leave us all speechless. we called love from valdz's phone. my phone's battery decided to quit of all nights it had to be on that night. all 4 of us here tried to cram how-have-you-beens in a few minutes before her load runs out. then pres called as well. another kumustahan. haven't seen him for some time. the last time we saw each other was at the bus station. he just got off from the bus that took him from baguio to naga while i was just about to board the bus that would take me back to manila.
it was getting late. i was suppose to go with pia to a party at grilla but the phone being dead and dragging my feet to that party have lost it's appeal. it's nice being with them again considering it's so hard to even gather all 5 of us together. but having all four of us together is a miracle in itself. felt like i traveled in time and got caught in a nice time warp. captured a little piece of my naivete and idealism even if it was only for a brief moment. felt like stealing a part of my growing up years because tommorrow we have to go back to the rat race. it was fun while it lasted. we all decided to take puds offer to crash her place. watch lost on dvd or do videoke.

even way back our college days, we always hang out at tintin's place. we eat our merienda there. they live just beside ateneo. that is why it is a great unsolve puzzle as to why she would always be late considering she lives nearby =_) seriously we would spend our time there when we're too noisy to stay in the library. having the rest of our batchmates in the library is even worse, we're a rowdy bunch. we get our homeworks done mind you, we copied assignments usually from love who's quite reliable on remembering them. that is how we learned paraphrasing. we don't want to end up with identical answers and arouse suspicions.

this time we were in pud's new place which is just here in makati. we did not end up watching lost on dvd but we watched a movie. couldn't recall the name but it was all blood and gore and i remember closing my eyes and swearing everytime someone's body part got severed or crushed to a messy pulp. we spent most of the night and early part of the morning calling down rain (read: videoke). the neighbors were pretty lenient. so far no one threw any rocks or bombs at tintin's place. if it rained on some parts of the country that day, it wasn't my fault. i didn't hog the mic, did i? valdz, tin and i sung like crazy (parang bawal na kumanta bukas). puds have a headstart considering she owns the magic mic err... magic sing and have had a lot of vocal practice more than we do. at some point valdz thought he was ricky martin but we let him be. after all he is leaving for dubai and we don't know if they have videoke bars there. nestor pretended he was disgusted with the rest of us. but early in the morning when all 3 of us have exhausted our voice to hoarseness, he was singing emo songs that normally would not end up on my play list. but we all end up singing the chorus with him anyway. hoarse voice or not we fought over the mic until we're croaking, too tired and sleepy to sing. when we have sung nearly all songs on the list and when we're pretty sure the neighbors must be cursing us in their sleep, we watched that movie. valdz took some pictures but i'm sure i look like a zombie. if he ever forwards us a copy of it, i'll post it here. we decided to spend the night there. we slept for a few hours only and left before 7am. we promised to get in touch and maybe do it all again.

after i got off the cab in front of landmark, i felt a sense of loss. will we ever get together like that again? all five us hopefully. but we are moving on with our lives. i will be going back to work that night. back to that hellhole that has become my life. now it felt like those few hours were just a reprieve. something to look back to whenever the rains that passed into my life have turned. themselves to tropical storms.



There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. -Nelson Mandela