Graduation, they say, is not “Goodbye” – only “See you later.” – Bienvenido F. Nebres, S.J. (2006)

Graduation, they say, is not “Goodbye” – only “See you later.”

And so we promise to get together with our college friends as often as we can. But “as often as we can” slows down to “every now and then” and even “not at all” as the months pass and as we get wrapped up in work and occupied with other concerns.

It will get harder and harder to find common free time for the old barkada to meet and catch up and just hang out. A special visit to the Ateneo to touch base and reconnect with something familiar will only make us feel strange. Then we will realize that Ateneo has changed because we have changed. We are not students anymore. There is no going back to the “good old days.”

the year so far – a time for coming, a time for going

The problem about being in a project, as it turns out, is that you often get left behind because people eventually move on to better things, and better places, when their assignments end.

This was the case back in early February. Our teammate Lyudmyla’s assignment ended on the 10th and she had to move back to Madrid immediately(what an awful deal! LOL). And HIK’s assignment also ended on the 16th, and she flew back to Korea that day. I was really sad to see them go.

You come into a project not knowing what will happen, really. July I arrived in Hong Kong, and was told to sit beside HIK. She gave me a few handouts to read. We barely spoke that day. It took us a couple of weeks to get around to speaking , having been placed across each other at some team dinner. And because it was in the evening and we were outside the office, I was a bit more relaxed. It also helped that Dianne was back from Berlin and I was much more myself. HIK then said “This Chica is more fun than the serious Chica! I like it!” Since then, as seatmates, we just shared knowing looks and then burst out laughing. She calls me her “favorite”. Before going home one day, she looked at me and said, “I don’t know why but I really like you! I hope you like me, too!” So many months together and our ultimate failures are: HIK did not increase my alcohol tolerance, and I never got her to like clubbing-dancing.

Lyudmyla on the other hand told me one random afternoon in the pantry that she thought I looked like one of the Spaniards coming from the southern parts of Spain. I shared with her that my grandfather was, in fact, a Spaniard in the Philippines. Months after, she gave me a Madrid keychain and told me in one note “Now, all that’s left is for you to come visit.” Around Christmas time, before leaving for holiday home leave, Lyudmyla insisted that we ride the metro together. She surprised me in the lift of our apartment, before kissing each other goodbye, with a box of chocolates and a note that said “I hope that his year will be THE year when all the lucky planets spin around and bring new adventures.”

   

In a few weeks, I will be one full year away from home on assignment, too. Looking back, I take with me, more than whatever knowledge or skills I have gotten from being away, the experience of gaining new friends. There are so few chances and I think we should be thankful for them.

Now I share with you my work wall. First is a picture of the Barcelona postcard that used to be on Lyudmyla’s wall. She approached me in her last minutes in the office to give this postcard to me and to invite me to visit her in Spain. And the last picture is HIK’s note to me when she left. If you can’t see it well enough (it’s so small), it says “I Love You” and inside: always. I miss her a lot. Our Pinoy-Korean-Ukranian mafia is now down to the Pinoy mafia. How time flies.

  

More writing soon. I know I need to catch you up on a full month of adventures. Hasta luego.

La Roja videos (2012 February)

Away kit for Euro2012

 

La selección española pone rumbo a Málaga

 

Xavi, ausente en el entrenamiento de la Roja

 

Reina: “A Torres le hace mucha ilusión venir a la Selección”

 

La Seleccion Española, concentrada en Las Rozas

Chelsea FC – Ask Torres (Friday Night Live)

You being in love (E.E. Cummings)

you being in love
will tell who softly asks in love,

am i separated from your body smile brain hands merely
to become the jumping puppets of a dream? oh i mean:

A Japanese Love Poem

I should not have waited.
It would have been better
to have slept and dreamed,
than to have watched night pass,
and this slow moon sink.

After (Niña Ann G. Suba)

Read this,
if you must know
how things have been
since he left.For six weeks,
I did not make my bed.
Then, the sheets
began to smell.

Ang Maisisilid sa Bulsa (Eugene Evasco)

Naninilaw nating larawan;
Talutot ng ilang-ilang;
Mga dahon ng santan;
Tatlong malagkit na tansan;
At turnilyong kinakalawang.

the year so far – of dragons and other tales

Ha! So it took this long to finally write again but I am back! We pick up where we left off, the 3rd week of January when we had guests from Manila.

It was a full week of dinners, drinking and going around HK. One time we went to Mongkok to show a teammate the Ladies’  Night Market. Surprisingly, one of the streets had a bunch of street performers! I never knew that before. This one in particular had a band who performed songs and had some birds on display. Strange.

the birds are just there in front while the band plays.

jill eating a tonkatsu one random night

To someone who has never been caught (Edgar Calabia Samar)

This is my memory of shadows:
like some forgotten regions
of our souls, they ran after us
or left us behind
in our childhood games
of hide-and-seek
where you always disappeared
behind the same non-flowering bushes
that will remain nameless for us.