There And Back Again With the MetroWalk 5
January 11, 2009
(Note from YLB: Time is very short. Internet use is measured in slices of quarter-hours, half-hours and slivers of hours in our great Islas de los Pintados. Meaning, bawat galaw dito me bayad. It's not so much the fact that you have to pay as the fact that it makes you praning as to what to do next, and for how much. Not unlike living life by the meter. Maybe in the near future, I may be able to explain. Just setting you up for a haphazard email. )
Dear Batchmates, batch and kabatch :
It's becoming a familiar scene, but if our hearts could smile and our eyes could laugh, it would have done so many times over since we treated ourselves to a personal homecoming these last few days since the year left the womb screaming.
For the most part, it's been seeing so many old faces (and the bodies that go with them) staying intact the past 25 years, as if we never left them.
Likewise, its the deja vu feeling that you made the journey with them, literally your personal version of There And Back Again, that you were there almost every step of the way with friends and batchmates, just that you each had your own journey to undertake. And of course, you're back with time to spare, time to compare notes and find out how remarkably similar your journeys were.
Take last Thursday, when on a nearly impromptu whim, we chancedto enjoy a few beers with RonaldGwaping, OlyUy, DocJerryNgu, JeffCo and newest e-group member and sometime sprinter MartinGo.
Most of the everning was occupied with good natured teasing of DocJerry's inebriation during the Batch New Year's Party a few nights back (for reference, pls see pix on sjcs82.org ) but interspersed between were how YLB missed the camaraderie supplied by these sometime co-travellers through puberty and adolescence.
We have never been close with these kabatch (save maybe for Ronald and Oly, but even that is stretching it a bit) but for some reason we feel a special kinship with almost every batchmate in '82... but that is another story.
Turns out that these guys, along with Augusto Jun Yulo , Bun Hua Jr and KuyaChat, have stayed in touch and even been godfathers to each other's kidz for the majority of the last 2 and a half decades. It was only through the labor of love by YoungShi's e-group, website and facebook page that we were able to reconnect and touch base with this group.
The usual jokes about staying within the schedules set by wives, getting around these schedules, and staying young despite the rigors of work and age also kept the conversation lively, but we promise to get into more detail when we have more time.
Just please allow me to thank these 5 guys for sharing their time with me out of their busy skeds, and hoping that this wont be the last.
YLB
NOel