Meeting the ladies of the Girl Racers Club

I was at the Fort Strip again this afternoon for Jazz-City United's monthly EB. This month's meet was a little more special: it was a joint meet with the now-famous Girl Racers Club.

Francis, one of our moderators, had the presence of mind to note two records held by this event. This was by far the meet with the most attendees at the earliest time, and 95% of them had no one else with them. I guess that's what a little "incentive" can do for EB attendance...

Anyway, I've always been a little hesitant about reaching out to the GRC ladies online. Let's just say I have my reasons. I'm happy to report though that the handful of members that did show up (today was a Sunday after all) were quite all right. They even found us "disappointing" because we were too shy.

After the EB proper, Jobs, Steve, Andrei and I hied off to Pier One for an early dinner with the rest of the GRC ladies. I got to meet Cherish, Chalie and Jackie.

All in all, a nice day.

I should cut down on these trips a little though...the expense is eating into my bank account. Heheheh.

Friday night barhopping

The past couple of Fridays, I've been going out drinking with work friends Mao, Anne, Candice, Tri, Beng, Adrian, PJ and Robert. I guess that's nothing special to most of you guys, but these are my first drinking sessions where I've had to actively monitor my state of inebriation. We all know we shouldn't be driving when we're tipsy or drunk.

So far, so good. I admit to a low tolerance for alcohol compared to many people my age, but I've managed to piss most of it out without the remainder affecting my driving. I had my first mojito last night and it was actually pretty good, although a little heavy on the head due to the gin content.

Worrying aside though, hanging out with these guys was fun. It was nice seeing Tri again after her resignation last year, and she had most of the stories last night. Last week we were arguably more animated, vocally laughing our guts out when Adrian and Beng cracked jokes.

This is an expensive habit, but it's great if done once in a while I guess.

Date with Denise: January

Continuing our promise of having a date each month, my girl best friend Denise and I went out to CPK Glorietta a while ago for dinner. All we ordered were my mom's favorites, the Tuscan Hummus and their Mango Tandoori Chicken pizza, but we walked away stuffed.

Well okay, technically we missed one month (December) already due to the hullabaloo of the holidays, but that was excusable. I'm still glad she and I see each other to relax and just be ourselves. Den was glad she discovered some new foods and new music too, as she enjoyed listening to Incognito and the Brand New Heavies' brand of acid jazz on my Jazz.

I'll just let the pictures do the talking.

Night of the bloggers

The meet-up with Joy went ahead tonight at Brooklyn Pizza in Alabang Town Center, along with her husband Tom, her friend Chingkai and her other WordPress-blogging friends Mervin, Laverne, Agnes and Malen.

Not even the decidedly subpar food and the insufficiency of the air-conditioning dampened the generally bubbly atmosphere of the meet. It was great making new acquaintances and friends. Tom and Laverne in particular were quite helpful with advice about the basics of professional blogging. Chingkai shared her colorful stories of being a writer in a country that doesn't appreciate them one bit. Mervin lamented the pitfalls of Smart broadband, while Agnes and Malen missed the Alabang exit on their way to the meet. As for Joy, she had a lot of fascinating stories to tell also.

I gave Joy my old "blue pill" USB flash drive, loaded with song rips of Sugar Free's first and third albums. She was looking for Filipino songs and those are pretty hard to find in Norwich.

I had fun, guys. Thanks.

Four years in the making

I haven't seen my friend Kathy in the longest time, so I was glad when we finally got the chance to go out last night.

After her party and my weekend work session, we met up at Shangri-la Plaza. The place is unfamiliar to both our peepers, so we ended up consulting the directory on where to go. After buying movie tickets, we ambled our way to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner, conversation and jokes.

We had an hour to burn before the movie began, so we simply walked around and window-shopped while laughing our guts out and making fools of ourselves.

Then "Hairspray" began. We marveled at newcomer and headliner Nikki Blonsky's perky sweetness, an in-drag John Travolta showing what he could have been before Saturday Night Fever, laughed at Christopher Walken's kooky gags and gasped at Michelle Pfeiffer's mean bitchy streak.

When big girl Tracy Turnblad's (Blonsky) dream to star on "The Corny Collins Show" comes true, she becomes a catalyst for social change as she fights for integration of African-Americans and plus-size women on TV in Baltimore, circa 1962. The movie is simply wonderful, both in message and execution, and within the first five minutes I decided I was going to buy this soundtrack.

In short, we had a rollicking good time.

Thanks Kathy! We should do this more often. I hope it doesn't take another four years.

Mao bids farewell.

Mao bids farewell.

And so we went to Mao's despedida party at Taberna Otso in Quezon City.

Being the typical early bird I am, I got there an hour before anyone familiar showed up. No matter, I had good food and pasta to keep me company. Mao chatted with me for a few minutes. She was leaving for Los Angeles on Friday in hopes of work, most probably for good. She then left to tend to her many guests, most of them high school friends of hers.

Later that evening my blockmates Rachel, Denise, Kate, Catcat, Isa, Zeri and Tantan all piled into the place at the same time. Apparently they met up somewhere, got lost and managed to find their way to the venue. Bottles of beer and a glorious amount of noise and laughter followed.

I'm going to miss Mao. Fiercely independent, very creative and possessing a style that's uniquely hers, she certainly brought a lot of color into LC24, and I'm honored I got to meet her, even just for a short while.

A night out with the boys

A night out with the boys

I haven't seen my neighborhood friends Paolo and Jared in a very long time so I jumped at the chance to hang out with them before the brunt of Holy Week comes along.

We all piled into my Jazz and went to Westgate in Alabang, in search of a meal worthy of "The Man Show's" seal of approval. We stopped at Brothers Burger where we decadently wolfed down one-pound burgers and onion rings while chatting over the stuff we all used to talk about. Mm-mmmm. I'm glad Paolo's done with his thesis and defense, and Jared's now in DLSU as well.

After that we all went back to Paolo's place to hang around. Eventually we watched "Talladega Nights" on DVD with beer in hand. Paolo got to show off his own toy, a Fuji S2 digital SLR based on a Nikon body of sorts.

Let's do this again, dudes.

Invasion of the English!

Invasion of the English!

This week was a pretty busy one because we had visitors from the UK, Paul Hepplestall and Mehret Habteab, and we took them out for three days. I guess it's a good break from all the project-related work that hasn't been going our way so far, and I only hope Paul and Mehret enjoyed themselves while they were with us.

Day 1 was lunch out at the Hard Rock Cafe. Next up was videoke night at Red Box in Greenbelt, and finally there was dinner and bowling at SM Megamall. Mehret was game for the singing, while Paul was a competitive fellow who liked shooting pool. Do click the links for pictures.

Over the course of the week I became less intimidated of them. Despite their accents, stature and Paul's expressions of disappointment thinly veiled with humor, they're genuinely helpful folks who are willing to share a piece of their mind when we needed help.

As of this writing, Paul has already left for Radbroke Hall because of urgent problems with our current project, while Mehret is staying until Monday afternoon, after which she'll be on holiday in Dubai for a week. It was good meeting them.

Thank you, Denise

Thank you, Denise

After all that's been said and done on this blog, Denise and I are really very, very good friends. That I can now say with the utmost conviction.

I tried calling her last Sunday on her cellphone, and I asked her if she wanted to have dinner sometime this week. She agreed, so I made plans to get off work early tonight.

Braving the Friday night traffic, I swung by her Makati office and picked her up. It was so great seeing her again after so long. We proceeded to the Old Spaghetti House along Valero St. and in seconds we were talking like the long lost friends we were.

Like me, she's also in IT now, having quit from her old job at a major medical goods manufacturer, and like me she's also enjoying the company of her coworkers. We shared stories about supertyphoon Milenyo, homey houses and personal lives over eggplant parmigiana and spaghetti aglio olio.

It felt so refreshing to be as open as I could be with someone who already knew me very well. There was none of the frustrating repression I felt for the last couple of weeks. Here she was instead, laughing along with me, unafraid of being misunderstood because we knew we wouldn't be. We were mired in traffic when we left for her house, but we kept chatting and singing away to jazz songs.

After so many years, it was tonight that I finally realized had we ended up together in college, we wouldn't have agreed to see each other like this post-graduation. I realized just how valuable our friendship is to her and how she wanted to keep it this way, without undue stress.

I missed Denise a lot, and she missed me as well. I am so glad and grateful we had this chance to reconnect.

We should do this again, Den. If you need me, you know where to find me.

Dreams and drinks

Dreams and drinks

The planned drinkout on February 9 isn't pushing through, sadly. Aileen has to be in Singapore on that date for work, and it was all a little sudden. The plan was to have the drinkout at her place.

So you can imagine my surprise when she invited me to go out for a drink last night. She wanted to relax with a weng-weng. Jajah and Denz were supposed to come along but we ended up just the two of us at 19 East. There we were holding hands (in a "frigid" way, mind you---Aileen's words), talking about life, interviewing each other about our lives and basically laughing our guts out.

Thanks, mare. Here's to Puerto Galera in March...and I hope it pushes through.

===

I had a wonderful dream about you Thursday night.

I had decided to forego asking people about you and just directly ask you out on a fairly casual date. You said yes and we basically had a wonderful time. You were finally opening up to me, finally comfortable with how I am, as I listened to everything you had to say. You were smiling all the time, that same cute way you always do, but the fact that it was because you were with me made them all the more special.

The only disappointment I felt was that it was just a dream and I had to wake up from it. But now I feel like making that dream a reality. It'll take longer than I thought, but it'll come.