Dear Jen

Dear Jen,

I was listening for your plane last Saturday, pero mukhang hindi dumaan sa bahay kaya wala kong narinig. Andun ako sa bintana for thirty minutes. :)) Anyway, I was thinking of yelling good-bye, but as there was nothing to yell to except the empty sky, I just ESP-ed you my love. Kuha mo naman di ba? :))

I have this weird thought that you'll be flying on the plane forever, so we can't contact you and stuff. Weird no? Parang pupunta ka sa lugar na walang signal kaya di ka makatext or what. Anyway, your plane has probably touched down on solid earth right now. At least, I hope so, so you can message us back and give us the weather report over there. I hope the distance and the time difference won't change things between us, because with some people, it has. Keep us updated with your life, so we won't have to be stuck with old memories. What I mean is, old memories are fun, but making new ones is even better. :) HUG!

We await your multiply post. ;)

Love,

Tina

And we sang, here we go again

I attended Melinda's debut last Friday, reveling in the fact that I was going to see my friends again after a long long time. It was fun, in the good old-fashioned sort of way-- you know, just hanging around, talking, goofing off and stuff.

I went to Noemi's debut the next night at the Richmonde Hotel. It wasn't too hard to prepare for it-- afterall, it just required a long gown and such; Melinda's party had everyone in costume, and compared to that, wearing a dress is so relatively easier. The tricky part was, I suppose, deciding on what to do with myself after wearing the dress. It might be just me but there was a niggling feeling I got at the back of my head that I at least had to apply some make-up and all that mishmash. Crap, I have no idea how to do that. I might as well birth a cow for all my skill and delicacy. Thank God I have two other sisters to order around and help me dress, or else I would've taken forever and ever because I utterly fail in that fancy aspect.

Anyway, I got to the hotel. I think, out of all the debuts I attended so far, this one was the most impressively organized. I mean, they had registrations, table designations, program booklets and everything. I sat down at table nine [:))], next to Ayesa.

They opened the buffet table a little while later, after Noemi's grand entrance and the regular picture taking. And the food...!!! Okay, there is something to be said about the food(!). We ended up taking at least three plates per person back to the table. HAHAHA!!! Table nine loves to dine. Needless to say, we were all agog with the salmon and the dill sauce and the dessert bar and whatever delicious things that were lying innocently on the buffet table.

They started the program not long after. Everything was followed right on the dot, no more, no less. Knowing Noemi, this didn't surprise me. But I liked it; nice, neat and everything very well-meant. I think the organizers did a good job of keeping it under two hours.

They opened the dance floor after Noemi's thank-you address. Fay and Muriel were dancing crazily, facing the mirrors. It was fannie, hahaha! There were flashy lights going on all over. This went on for a good while, with me watching and laughing with the rest of them, when they decided to go to the bathroom. I went too, since I didn't see the point of keeping my hair down anymore and I wanted to tie it up neatly.

So we were in the bathroom, Muriel, Nicole, Liberty, Joanne and I. I don't know how it happened, or whether it was the loopy feeling of happiness I had at the moment, but I mumbled something about a cute guy to Nicole. She bloody looked at me like I had an astonishingly fat slug coming out of my mouth. I blinked at her in return. I was perfectly nonchalant; I mean, it wasn't a big deal, was it? But it was only a horrified moment later when I realized that I had said the wrong thing to the wrong people. And all of a sudden, the whole situation was volatile. Everyone was like, which one? Which one? And of course I told them, and being girls that they are, they failed to be discreet about it altogether.

Which was alarming, I have to add. I didn't mind too much, even when they were pointedly making noises about it back in the room, except that Liberty called Noemi over and asked to be introduced to majority of table ten. Out of the ten seats on that table, I think eight of them were guys, and if you get my drift, then you know where this was going. It was mortifying. It was like I just hit puberty again and I have to say that my pathetic tween feelings were horrified.

There I sat, sinking into my chair, arms crossed, because I felt rather furious at the ambush; at the same time, I didn't want to appear badly unsociable. Crap. Whatever. Social exertion is just awful at times, especially when I feel so taciturn.

I learned their names, except one, and they were nice enough about it. I don't suppose any of us will ever meet again, since that doesn't happen to a room full of random strangers (not unless, of course, this was a cheesy movie and all that). But that's exactly the beauty of liking a stranger-- it's as inconsequential as a snowflake on warm skin. No need for names, no need for pointless socializing; it all boils down to looking across the room and feeling curiously glad, and you shrug it off again when the next day comes.

Awesome Spandex Powers

What does it feel like, graduating? This apparently is an irrelevant question, as the event itself occurred a good two weeks ago. You know, the Filipino, as a people, only has a memory of two days; after that, you have to give them another sensation. So I guess that to most people, discussing something that happened Two Weeks Ago is like taking a dusty book out of the annals of eternity.

Anyway, who cares? I just feel that it's important to mull over it, you know? Before handing it over to oblivion. I have to chew it up like a doggy bone. I mean, does a dog actually taste a doggy bone? Or is it in reality, tasteless? Memories are like that. And I've found out that the best way to preserve a memory is to immortalize the sensations before letting go.

So. Graduation. I've had twenty-four hours to think and recover (if you read my previous entry you'll understand). And then I knew.

Graduation is like dying a little. Chipping away at an old self and all that jazz. Or actually, it's like growing a new skin. In the span of a day it'll have fully grown around your old self, and you'll find that you're a different person altogether. You've just replaced your old self with this new thing, which I like to think of as tight and stretchy and terribly itchy at times. It's weird. People spend their lives trying to figure out who they are and then suddenly, they're different and they have to start all over again, just when they've nearly settled the pieces. It's a little depressing. I hate to think that I've outgrown myself.

I guess that's what they mean by "growing pains". If you stop and think about it, these cliches, no matter how dead they are, have become cliches for a reason: it's because they do hold true.

Oh well. Onward and upward. I think I've sucked all the flavor out of that memory, so I'm letting it drift off. What a relief, to have cut away so cleanly. It makes a reexamination of yourself so much... neater.

Ah college!!!! New sights, new smells, new places to piss on. No kidding. The smell of a new arena is exciting, all the more so when you realize that

we've grown spandex suits.

We're superheroes. Awesome. I don't think anybody else has this much power to change the world. We have so much potential in all of us, that to grasp the world and hold it in the palm of our hands is as tantalizingly close as smelling coffee in Starbucks.

And that's just one of the many possibilities.