Reunited

Our trip back to the Philippines was not so much about seeing new places...it was more of meeting old friends. Therefore, this post is dedicated to all our high school friends who took the time and effort to meet with us despite their busy schedules. Thank you soooo much!



I'm officially addicted to slideshows! Can you tell?

Before we even landed in Manila, we had lunch- and dinner-dates lined up like crazy! On our first night, we met with Botsie, Curl, Basiao, Nigel, and Sol at Bacolod Chicken Inasal at Metrowalk (a new, semi-outdoor, dinner/hang-out place in Ortigas). We just had to have inasal on our first night back. Of course.

After that first get-togther, we had to make a mental note to ourselves to multiply any unit of time by 5. For example, when Botsie called us that she will be at the meeting place in 5 minutes, she actually meant in 25 minutes. When Curl called to say that she was in Robinson's Ortigas and will be there in 3 minutes, well...you get the drift.

And so, moving on to our next get-together with a different set of batchmates, we decided to meet at Masas in Greenbelt. Masas is a Filipino-fusion restaurant with good food and nice ambiance. My only complaint: the service sucked. The food arrived in, like, forever! Anyhoo, it was probably our 3rd night in Manila, and we must have totally forgotten about the multiply-by-5 rule...because, once again, we found ourselves to be the early birds. Those who made it to dinner were Juphel & Josie, John Hof, Ceds, Nige; Noel, Gigi, and Carla came at a later time. Most of us went to Seattle's Best after dinner to have more rounds of gut-aching laughter and coffee. Special thanks to Nigel for regaling us with his super-hilarious ninja story.

Our Manila trip was so short, we totally regret not being able to meet with other batchmates. It was time for us to move on to the next leg of our trip: Tagaytay. We were to pick up Tessa & Ronald in SM Megamall, then proceed to Tagaytay. We decided to be fashionably late. After all, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. bleeeeep...WRONG! We forgot that Tessa & Ronald are now Singaporeans. They were totally on time! After an hour or so of waiting on their part, Tessa & I finally saw each other, and off we went to Tagaytay.

We met with Botsie & Alec at Country Discovery Suites, where we all checked in. We were greeted with oshiburi and drinks. The service at our hotel was beyond excellent, it deserves another blog entry (promise). Then off to lunch at Sonya's Garden (another blog entry, I swear!). At Botsie's wedding, we met with Arik, Mirang, and Mitz. Unfortunately, we weren't able to spend a whole lot of time together due to bridesmaids' duties.

For the last part of our trip, we met with Ayn & Mosh, Susan, Remy, and darling Minchin in Iloilo. By then, we had the Filipino concept of time right down to a T. We were so fashionably late, everybody was already seated. Ahhh, we shouldn't have messed with the doctors! They're always on time.  (Mark's note: It's impossible to arrive later than Remy.)

The next day, we met with Jude, who teased us mercilessly =D. I had to leave the two buddies alone so they could get their quality guy time (whatever that means). Mark and Jude spent several hours together while Manang Bing & I went around town to purchase wedding-related stuff.

So there you have it...get-togethers in a nutshell. The end.

-posted by tanya-