Sunday, January 26, 2020

Reunion Season

December and January are always filled with reunions and I'm fortunate to have had more than my fair share of them. The most significant one was also the most recent: I had lunch with my Grade 2 adviser, Mrs. Ontiveros, who is the best and most influential teacher I've ever had. I hadn't seen her in decades and while we talked about meeting up a couple of times, we never got around to finalizing a date. That is, until early this year. I asked if she was free one weekend, she said she was, and the date was set. I asked her if she wanted to see my family - she knows them and my brother was also her student - and she said she was actually about to ask me if I could invite them to our lunch date as well. Cool! We agreed to meet in Aristocrat Banawe and my mom and my brother were free to join. We enjoyed each other's company for many hours as there were so many stories to share. It was such an amazing, nostalgic, and soul-stirring reunion and I am so happy that we finally managed to catch up.


I also got to have coffee and dinner with Chachie right before Christmas. I think the last time I saw her was more than five years ago when we played board games in Ludo Cafe so it was great to see her. She's been through quite a bit over the last few years but she has maintained such a positive outlook in life which I find to be very inspirational. I got to meet her daughter for the first time and I also saw her husband whom I haven't seen since maybe their wedding. We hung out from the late afternoon until the early evening, when their family had to go to catch the evening mass. We met at Tyler's Cafe along Katipunan where I ordered the Ricotta Pancakes with chocolate chips, chocolate fudge, cream, and chocolate crumb and OMG it was sooo good! I need to visit Tyler's Cafe again so I can enjoy these delicious pancakes.


Another mini-reunion I had was with Ana and Earl at Motto Motto. I think the last time we had a decent conversation was when I was still working at my previous job. I did run into them quite a few times over the years but we never really properly caught up. We finally met up shortly after Christmas at Motto Motto in Serendra. It was great to find out what they were both doing over the last few years. We agreed that we needed to catch up more frequently.

Apart from these reunions with people whom I hadn't seen in a while, there were of course the annual ones. I had dinner with my friends from my first job at Relish Hello Happiness! My friends from our corporate social responsibility group in my previous company had dinner at Stock Market in Uptown Mall and we moved to Scout's Honor for coffee and dessert after. My college friends met up nostalgically at the house of the Jay's parents, which is where we had many parties when we were still in college. I had dinner with another set of college friends in Sentro. The team I last managed in my previous company had our Christmas party at TGI Friday's (a lot of them had moved on to new opportunities). Finally, I had dinner with my high school friends shortly after the New Year at my Michele's house.

As I look back at all these reunions, I can't help but feel very lucky to have made so many incredible connections in my life. Hopefully, I can continue to have these beautiful moments with people who mean a lot to me.

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