A big hello to my "scattered-around-the-globe" barkada from high school (and beyond): Deric, Betty, Jasmin, Celina, Cecille, Ria, Riza, Lisa, Noy, Pinky, Paul, Rochelle, Pris, Vivienne and Bliss (forgive me if I missed your name!). All these women! And yes, yes, I fell in love with two of them. And now, everybody is somebody somewhere else. Tempus fugit and all that.

Snapshots: Pris hyperventilating, Jasmin's big hair, Pinky's shyness, Rochelle's sexy way of saying "Filipino", Riza's novel, Ria telling me she loved me as a brother (!), Vivienne quadruple-jointed fingers, Paul's sense of style, Noy fainting when he cut himself, Celina dancing to "Electric Dreams", Cecille's love for Joy Division & New Order, playing Trivial Pursuit at Betty's house in White Plains, Bliss' poetry. Embrassments and lost treasures at the time when "Shout" meant something.

We'd hang out at the end of one of the corridors of UPIS and talk talk talk about everything and anything. What was good was that we found people with similar tastes and intellectual arrogance (well, we did feel smarter than majority of our classmates). We dreamed of doing things like forming a band called "Final Word" or writing a novel or being wildly successful doing something we loved. We thought of ourselves as writers and poets and aced all our English classes, natch. And what have we become? Educators and diplomats, doctors and managers, writers and lawyers, creatives and enterpreneurs. Not a single "failure" - whichever way that obnoxious term is defined.

Scattered somewhere between here and there, but still victims of 80's music, old cartoons and books that pumped words through our veins as we convalesced through our youth.