Hangin' out

It hasn’t been often enough in recent history that my band, Still Oz, gets together to play gigs. Mainly because our guitarist, Bunky, works a 9pm-6am shift from Mondays to Fridays (well, Monday evenings to Saturday mornings, to be more precise). But last week, our saxophonist, John V, was in town for a business trip (he’s based in Singapore now), and we figured it might be a good time for an audition or even a gig.

So we got ourselves an audition in BG’s last Thursday. We were supposed to play one set at 8pm so that we would finish before 9pm and allow Bunky to get to work. Unfortunately, Bunky didn’t show up, and he wasn’t even picking up his phone. Needless to say, the band was not too pleased. Luckily, our original manager Mike, who is currently in Manila for a couple of months, convinced our keyboard sessionist John Q to swing by at 1030pm and play with us. It was cool too coz we had a few friends in the audience: Anne, Jay Gat, Bam, Mike, and Tricia. John V also brought a colleague, Roch, to watch us and she did stay til about 11pm which was a lot later than she had intended to stay so it was cool that she did.

John Q had to play main melody in lieu of the missing guitar, and since he hadn’t played nor practiced with us for several months, we struggled quite a bit throughout the gig. We did get to play our arrangement of ‘Iris’ once again and I thought that was one of the best songs we played that night. It was kinda good too that John Q was able to swing by, mainly coz he is leaving for the US on August 1 and at least we got to play with him (albeit badly) one more time before he left. Of course, it still sucks that we played 2 1/2 hours after we were supposed to start, and not very well at that, which I would assume essentially means we lost that gig. Ah well. Such is life.

Speaking of John Q leaving for the US, we had a despedida for him last Saturday. It started off at 5:45pm, with Che, Meann, Raffa, Joh, John Q and myself watching ‘The Breakup’ which I really liked it (it was funny and real, and Jennifer Aniston looked really hot). Afterwards, Mike, Tim, and Pia met up with us for dinner. Pia then suggested that we have dessert in 'Crepes n Cream'. I had never eaten there (I think among all of us, it was only Pia who had eaten there previously). I've heard mixed reviews about it so I wasn’t completely sure how it would be, but since it's cool to try new things out, we decided to have dessert there anyway. Which was such a good idea coz we al ended up really enjoying it! John Q decided to treat us (well okay, only after a lot of prodding from the rest of us =)) but since we were still quite full from the huge dinner we just had, John Q just got 4 crepes: chocolate, strawberry, mango, and banana. I’m not a banana fan, so I didn’t try that particular one, but I enjoyed everything else. And it’s definitely quite a large serving for the price (we got the basic ones which only cost about ~P100) so I will definitely be visiting this place again.

Prior to this gimmick, Meann came from Tagaytay with her team, and so she had a poker set, Taboo, and Guesstures with her. We thought it might be cool for us to play poker or something, so we all decided to swing by my place. Tim had to leave, Mike had to go to a wake, Joh and Raffa couldn’t stay too late, and Pia was riding with them, so at the end of it, it was just me, Meann, Che, and John Q. We played four rounds of bridge before Che had to leave (and consequently everyone else).

This was actually the second night in a row where I had visitors in my place. The night before (Friday), I met up with my college friends Anna and Lala. We had dinner and dessert first (are you seeing a pattern here about me and dinners and desserts? =)) before heading to my place where we just hung out and talked. I haven’t really seen Lala in a while so it was nice catching up with her. We are also planning to have a wine appreciation night in my place (where everyone brings a bottle of wine and we cook our own food) in maybe the next 3-4 weeks, and I'm sure that will be a lot of fun.

After hanging out with Anna and Lala, Tricia (who had just watched my gig a couple of days ago) called me and says that Mike was in the Fort, and asked me if I wanted to swing by there to meet up with him. It was still early enough on a Friday night and I still had quite a lot of energy, so I picked Tricia up and we headed to the Fort. Upon getting there, though, it turns out Mike was heading out to a party in Wack-wack. Tricia and I didn’t know the person having the party and neither of us felt like crashing, so we just spent the night chatting away in Café Puccini, where I saw my HP friends Gabby, Tonette, Tim (again) and Anne. At around 2am, Tricia gets a text from Mike saying his car batt is dead so I give him a call asking him if he needs a jump-start. He didn’t, but when he was on his way home, he asked me and Tricia if we could convoy with him to make sure he got home safely without his car batt dying on him again. So we do that, and when we get to his house, we decided to talk a bit more (a ‘bit’ = an hour so maybe that's not really a bit) before Mike announced he wanted to hit the sack.

Going back to Saturday night, after the folks had left my place, I get a text from Mike saying that Marga, fresh from her Spanish classes in Madrid, was hanging out in Mati. I hadn’t seen her in months, and so I figured I would swing by so I could catch up with her. Marga was with her friends when I got there, but they all had to leave by around 1am so by the end of the night, it was just me, Marga, and Mike. Because I was on meds the last week and a half, I couldn’t have any alcoholic beverages. That Saturday night however, I was finally off my meds so I had a few beers. Needless to say the beers tasted great.

So that’s how my week last week ended. It was also the first time in a long time that I had three night-outs in a row where I went home way past midnight on each of those nights. And I got to meet up with a lot of different sets of friends and catch up with a few who I haven’t seen in a while. Not bad. I should do this more often.