Upon learning that I was spending half of summer in seething Manila, Cynthia Alberto Diaz, my ex-colleague at the now defunct Raya Media Services Inc., rounded up the usual suspects for a long overdue luncheon reunion yesterday at Pot and Noodle Restaurant on the fourth floor of SM Megamall. The others who confirmed attendance were our drinking mates at John Michael's, a restaurant at the original EDSA Central.
Few wanted to try out another ex-Raya officemate Joel Sarmenta's place on Morato Avenue, Quezon City, which they found too far (he is now in the marketing department of a food chain after a colorful career as history teacher at the Philippine High School for the Arts, University of Asia and the Pacific, St. Paul College, then onto more marketing duties for an insurance firm, a motorcycle manufacturer, among others).
It is not for anything that my life partner likes to call me and my friends put together "Baltic and Company."
My first stop once the glass doors of the mall opened at 10 a.m. was at the Pain and Rehab Care for my fifth physical therapy session to lessen the tenderness in my sprained left ankle and the shooting pains in my right knew joint (signs of wear and tear or degenerative conditions as I move ever farther from five-oh and closer to 60). As the therapist counted while I wrote the alphabet in the air with my pointed left toes, my cell phone pinged. Pablo Tariman announced that he was at the Chinese resto already, waiting. Give me a few minutes, I told him, to wind up my rehab session. He texted back: "In that case, I shall do my yoga."
I managed to walk with a cane to the fourth floor where Cynthia and painter Grace de Jesus Sievert, former Raya graphic artist, were already seated by a long table. Fellow freelancer Pablo was sipping hot tea, an image I still find incongruous to this minute, at a separate table. Apparently, they failed to recognize each other--that was how long they hadn't seen one another.
I ordered the jellyfish with century eggs and a bottle of San Mig Lite for Pablo and me. He didn't need to be persuaded to change his drink.
We weren't done knocking off our second bottle when the hooting and laughing began. Amadis Ma. Guerrero waltzed in, barely catching his breath to say, "I only have five hundred pesos in my wallet. Two hundred is my share for this lunch. Two hundred for the Aeta children. Leave me one hundred so I can have transportation money to collect my contributor's fee from Inquirer and go home." (A few days before the reunion, I had asked my friends to bring donations of old/unused children's clothes, old/new children's books, toiletries like shampoo, soap and toothpaste for 38 Aeta school kids in Dinalupihan, Bataan, where I am set to go to do outreach work with a friend and our daughters, but that's another story.) Forthwith, I fished out P100 from my wallet and handed it to Amadis. His P500 went to Jo Ladisla, the efficient executive assistant from our Raya days, who was appointed treasurer for that afternoon.
Then in came Bob Navarro, Joel and finally Rustie Otico. By this time the noise emanating from our table was making heads turn, especially when Pablo let out his signature laughter which we could only blame on natural exuberance.
Finally when the bill arrived after that long, lingering meal and drinking, there was enough change added to the common pot. Before I knew it, we managed to raise in one afternoon P1,460 for the Aeta children's cause.
Amadis quickly advised me to spend the money not on something "luxurious" like shampoo but on a basic staple like food...or maybe soap. He approved of the last item. And off to the supermarket I went late that afternoon for some serious shopping with the memory of friends having that long overdue "laughing break." This kind of break, I'm proud to say, I instituted at the old Raya office in Paranaque. Whenever I felt stressed out from pounding on my typewriter in the early 1980s, I'd go to the table of our circulation manager Jose "Ping" de la Paz, who'd cheer me up with one corny joke after another until a joke found its mark, and I'd be filled with an incredible lightness of being.
Next outreach is scheduled on June 12 . Please reach out to the children of Dinalupihan. Drop-off points for donations are these addresses: 3 Santa Clara Street, Barangay Kapitolyo, Pasig City, or 47 Mahabagin Street, Teachers Village East, Quezon City.
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