my good friends J and C decided to throw me a mini despedida party in my office at lunch today. they brought tuna+tomato sandwiches, lime-flavored tortilla chips, salsa with cheez whiz, grapes, diet soda and a bottle of starbucks frappucino (now chilling in my fridge along with a can of beer someone gave me last january). there was lots of catching up and speculation and well-wishing and picture-taking and prayer and a bit of crying involved. can't remember when i last enjoyed myself this much in my office (hahaha). the one regret i had was i was too busy to prepare anything for our little lunch party. J even gave me a nice silk scarf and sparkly butterfly earrings. yay. i just love women pushing forty.
while we were eating, KLL also dropped by to show me some brochures about korea, except he brought stuff about another city whose name sounds like gwang-zhou but is spelled differently. he's also being invited to a 6-month writers residency starting may so if things work out with his thesis defense schedule, i'll be seeing him at some midpoint between seoul and wherever it is he's planning to go. he's been giving me good advice about stuff i may need to do or buy because he spent 5 freezing days there last december. strangely, he said it might help to stock up on camping gear, of all things. long story but he does have a point.
surprise surprise: i got email today from this young fil-am guy sorta dated briefly last year. he's about to graduate from one of the UCs (yes, quite young) and has been reading some post-communist thingy which he says doesn't take into consideration some diaspora of some sort. no idea what he's talking about. i can still see his tattoos and his backwards cap... hee hee. cute, considering how he's twice my weight and is probably 90% muscle. i just kept laughing at his thing for r & b and his "brotherhood" (read: frat) patterned after the keh-tsee-poo-nehn (not his accent). might have hurt his feelings a little there.
the night before, my friend R and R's friend C introduced us to C, an exchange student who was born in gensan but grew up down under. he has the cutest aussie accent ever. it went really well with the billabong shirt he was wearing. and at dinner today (at chateau verde with P, R and M--our last time together in the next 5 years) we were all gushing about C's accent. it doesn't hurt that he's really cute too. even my sister kept mentioning him the day after we met him. hot, young and aussie. heh heh.
we were at TOSH monday night. R said it was just going to be him & me so i asked my sister B to come along. R said to be there at 7 but we were late because we decided to get a massage. he called me just as the masseuse was about to end. i let it ring for a while then answerd. he didn't sound happy at being made to wait alone so i ran (after putting on my clothes of course) from the spa place to the resto. punyeta. when i got there, he wasn't alone pala. everyone was there: P, R, C, C, B & A. S, J, and even their prof CO came in after me. the suprise was at turns nasty and very very (cringe) touching. it's no fun getting roasted by colleagues when your students are having dinner at a table right behind you.
my tito's family is also throwing me a despedida dinner at a seafood resto at shang mall wednesday. had to cancel a boozefest with my daddy friends E, E and J. am hoping we can still get together before i go but the sked is super tight.
thursday is language exam and poetry reading day at the bonsai garden in UP. that's going to be a lot of fun. i asked A, P and B to go, as well as random people from my other classes. dinner and maybe some drinks after.
friday night will be good clean fun with proverbs31 girls after a whole day of oral exams. not sure where we're meeting but i'm sure it'll be great as always.
saturday night maybe in manila with G, turkish delight E and maybe B. E has been inviting us to this resto/bar at the top of some hotel in manila which has a spectacular view of the city. E's in china now but thankfully will be back in time to see me before i leave.
sunday will be relatively quiet. lunch despedida at lolo's house, church with ninang and some major paper checking with lola M at cbtl ruby in ortigas. lovely place now used to be a crappy vacant lot just recently. now there's a little park with benches and a nice cbtl on one side. great hangout for checking but not as convenient as cbtl gateway.
in between the partying, i have a ton of stuff to do. nothing i want to write about here.
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