Browsing on the junk food shelf of my unplanned visit to the Philippine Store in Cannes, I finally met more Filipino shoppers. Our small talk sparked with the Korean owner cracking jokes about his Filipina wife. Then the routine questions when & where to which I said I have nine years of France & just moved to the bundok*. "Ah, your husband is French," one confidently concluded while the other added, "Yes! People who lives in the bundok are r-i-c-h." The Korean owner then asks me about Filipinos in our barrio when one of them casually offered her Filipina friend, who is likewise married to a French, to be my friend. I handed my homemade pink call card & left with a bunch of powered MSG food with probably a new friend I will never meet. Then I wondered about the bundok. Did I misuse the word or did it mean that I'm married to an old, retired French? We're surely not r-i-c-h & we just happen to hate living in the city.
*bundok = mountains
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.
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