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connect & reconnect

It now really doesn't matter where you are. A simple click can transport you to your kindergarten classroom or to your highschool prom. The birth of online social networking have gathered old friends (BFFs!), childhood enemies (Do you remember hiding my lunchbox?), childhood losers (He's now an OB?!), childhood bullies (He's now a priest?!) & teenage love teams (How do his kids look like?). It brings you back to the days, reminding you of your foolishness that now makes you giggle. It's like 1987 all over again.

The other day, consumed with a deep nostalgia after one of my highschool batchmates made a video montage of our old photos & get this, the Bagets' Growing Up by Gary Valenciano as the background music, just made me laugh. The clothes, hairstyles & sunglasses just go well with the silly poses & candid shots. And looking at some of my photos I don't remember being taken or posing for made me somehow sentimental. A 15 year old kind of sentimental. I was timesick. I wanted to revisit the simpler days.

It was just not only about finding old friends but also a part of you. Where everything was magical. The smile in our eyes. Letting go, losing ourselves & not caring at all. I guess reconnecting to our past is like our tiny oasis from the big life of a grown up. A refuge from all the calculating. Being careful. Making decisions. Doing responsibilities. Sometimes you just want to recapture that part of you & use it in your daily routine. But it's just sometimes too hard now to look at things as if it was your first time. Everything now is just ordinary. I'm being nostalgic. So shoot me.

The oldest photo that surfaced on my network was our kindergarten class picture. And of course finding some of the other kids on it. So you can imagine what sort of other photos have been ransacked & shared. Our batch's 20th Year Reunion, both in Manila & the US, were a success because of this online network. You connect & you reconnect like 20 years didn't pass by. You reconnect like images flashing on how those 20 years have passed. So it doesn't really matter where you are. Just one click & it feels like you've never left. For a moment, there is no distance.

I really think I wouldn't be able to live without internet. Shoot me.

Makis

From Manila to Paris, then to Marseille & to the Côte d'Azur, now in Singapore, clinging to a map of three worlds, where everything becomes all relative.

5 comments:

  1. Ah yes, the internet, can't live without it! But what will you do once you have your own deserted island somewhere in the Philippines? I guess you'll have to get a banca to get yourself to the mainland from time to time for an internet fix... hehe!

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  2. It's amazing. What was life before internet again?

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  3. Yeah, I saw your photo on FB, good thing none of my high school batchmate have uploaded one yet..kundi baka masakal ko! I agree with you how internet could make the distant past so close! when i saw most of my high school classmates on FB, I must admit I was really nostalgic and happy to find most of them. But disgusted to discover that some have become so snob!! Bad trip talaga!!LOl anyways..musta ka na ati??

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  4. Kala, by the time we'd have an island, there would be a leap in internet technology by then!

    Loraine, there were phonecalls, handwritten snail mails & developed photo prints. Receiving an email is just not the same as a letter in the mailbox.

    Hilda, I'm really not too bothered about all these old photos of me popping up on FB. Wala naman akong NSFW shots. LOL. Eh diba being a snob is for highschool lang?!

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  5. internet! nah, cant live without it anymore. saw some of your old pix nga, kakatuwa, nobody in my circle had that good idea yet, umpisahan ko kaya? lol.

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