nostalgic

i was just starting to read the first few chapters of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood and got to that part when the college guy Watanabe was exchanging letters with this girl, Naoki. I stopped and remembered i had some mementos i had from college. i stood up and found myself rereading those letters/scrapbook/test papers which i have saved from home. i became teary-eyed, well yeah, i have changed a lot since i had Xan. tears would well up even at the slightest provocation. heck, i even felt like crying when Jasmine was booted out of Am Idol and i don't even like her!

okay that was a bit of a distraction.

i read my theo reaction papers and was ashamed with what i wrote.

i leafed through my philo exams and missed Thirdy again. Thirdy was my teacher in Philo 101 and 102, yeah, i had a big crush on him more so because he made me fall in love with philo and with the Tagalog dialect. each class with him was like an entire Balagtasan session. i did meet Thirdy again years after college and he proudly showed me his wedding ring, ouch. but he did invite me to visit him in his office and talk Philo with him again sometime. well i never got the chance. those were them rotten days when i was always gallivanting around tsk, tsk.

i read a letter from Mario who was a batch lower but who happened to be one of my closest friends especially because he never called me ate haha! he was more like a partner in crime. he's letter was more of an answer to my birthday card to him which also asked, "kumusta ka?" well, with our penchant for giving out solid answers for this rather simple yet deep question he sent me a 3 page back to back letter recounting his day to day activities. those must be one of those rare times when we were able to catch up with our lives. serendipitously, i happened to catch him walking around campus last year with his then gf now wife, Gemma. thus i was able to catch his wedding a few weeks after that. hadn't it been for that chance meeting i could have missed that great event in his life. awww.

i saw another letter this time from Cherry, it recounted more her days in East Timor when she went there for a mission. i remember she went there after graduation for some soul searching, naks. that time she was contemplating on becoming a nun, but of course she got married to her bestfriend Macoy. I read some parts there where she said she was glad I have forgiven her, well, uhm, i didn't know we fought. Tang, what the hell did i do?? Haha!

then i saw my "something". something is the scrapbook i had when we went into the second sem of our senior year. it is like a logbook where we could write anything and everything in there. i passed it around my friends and they would write/draw/doodle/ write poems/songs whatever. Winfer wrote several notes and poems there. he told me how grateful he was that i was there during the Eheads fiasco. which led me to wracking my brains as to what that was all about? i knew they lost money there. i just forgot why and how.

i read Bambie's letter too ranting more about what must be life without the rest of us from the batch. and he said it must be "one dull day after another"...naks. Bambs, i know you've always wanted to preserve most of our memories by taking so many photos then. i know i said i had some of the negatives with me, and i remember i had them i just don't know where they are now. waah! i still have some snapshots here though. i've scanned some of them and i could send you copies if you want. when i go home again, i'll try to look for them again in my piles and piles of stuff back home. i'm sorry.

Donnie had a rather cute post there, he said that friendships are not supposed to end even if we're all far apart. buti na lang may multiply, ayan we've reconnected haha!

just atop Donnie's note was a caricature from Macoy with words that said, " i've watched sunsets with you and a few sunrises as well. they were the most beautiful sunsets (and sunrises) of my life. i think." sa likod ng Faura, before Prince David and Burgundy were up, we had the most beautiful conversations and reflections there while waiting for the sun to set. those were the goddamn good days indeed.


i miss Doms, my other trusted friend who painstakingly tutored me in math 11 and taught me philo even when we were still in freshman. yeah, Gabay made us study philo for four years hehe. we both worshipped Ayn Rand and followed her principles to the hilt. we were always the outcasts because we preferred going our own ways. i greeted him on his birthday a few weeks ago and he replied with another "kumusta ka?" to which i haven't replied till now. hmm...

Mike P., do you rememeber how they used to call us the "three rotten eggs"? Yikes, Mike P, my poor "soul". I don't think i was ever a good enough "angel" for you.

i recall how we had such grand times. but i regret more how selfish i was. i don't even recall anymore as to what really happened back then. i was so self-absorbed.

i was such a troubled soul and i couldn't even remember why. was it youthful folly? was i homesick? or was i just plain KSP?

i look back and realize how i could have studied more and gotten better grades. but i guess i was more emotional than industrious. i loved studying only the things that truly fascinated me. i only superficially memorized the ones i didn't feel like learning. okay, i'm just justifying my poor grades. well i graduated anyway, what the heck.

i wish i could have been more friendly instead of being indifferent. i could have been warmer instead of being snobbish to people.

but then again i'm glad who i was. i had the greatest friends. the very few who knew me actually understood me, i hope.

i wish i was able to write more letters or notes. i wish i could still have more mementos for me to go through and recall all those great times again.

i wish, i wish...but more than anything else i'm glad i had those things for me to recall all those memories that passed us by.