'Tis the season for frozen margaritas

From left: Vergel, Rolly, Chit and the blogger Photo by Kai Mykonos

We had dinner a few nights ago at The Manor's Le Chef restaurant with our journalism confreres from Manila, Vergel Santos and wife Chit Roces. It's almost an annual tradition for them to come up to Baguio for a whiff of our rarefied air in the few forested parts of the city.

Rolly Fernandez and Vergel have a history -- they worked together at the post-EDSA 1986 Manila Times and Manila Chronicle. They never run out of subjects to talk about when they see each other which is yearly. So their conversation goes on and on from the appetizers to post-prandial coffee and on and on until the waiters are already preparing the tables for the next day's buffet breakfast.

What are the waiting wives to do? Drinking ourselves blind is out of the question because we were still under the vigilant eyes of our partners. Chit has a history of passing out when under the influence while I tend to be a rabble rouser once the alcohol kicks in.

Lightheaded Chit

We settle for a strawberry flavored frozen margarita, a huge one, enough to be shared with Chit's son Tex and his wife. We each take turns scraping the mountain of ice and tequila with our respective teaspoons. Soon I complain about brain freeze quickly creeping from the front lobe of my brain to the back of my neck. Soon Chit is lightheaded with laughter. Vergel's eyes just grow bigger. Rolly is as usual silent.

Chit and I decide to quit early and leave the young couple to finish the rest of the margarita.

The guys get the hint. At close to midnight, very late by Baguio standards, we break up our little party, they to return to their rooms, we to drive home.

Sweet are the friends from girlhood

I wasn't much of a joiner in high school. I skipped the junior-senior prom when I was a junior, then skipped it again the following year when i was a graduating senior. The outsider feeling (OP or out of place) is quite pronounced in the teenage years. I guess that explains why I still like J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and his creation, Holden Caulfield.

There's still a little bit of Holden in me even as I approach the next decade: my 60s.

But life is short so when Bibit Esteva Llamas asked if I'd be in Baguio Feb. 25-26, I answered that I was scheduled to visit family here. That was how I found myself with my lively Class '73 batchmates. I served as their tourist guide. We all had fun and capped Thursday with wine and beer at home where they met The Wee One and where the sleepy husband showed how he cared for me and my friends by being willing bartender.

Let's do it again, sweet girls of my youth.

Our ground zero was the Europa Condo Villas on Legarda Road where we had a full breakfast, the works! The gourmet cooks in the group, Vicki Narciso Valero (second right) and Bibit Esteva Llamas (third from right) took over the kitchen and cooked well-marinated beef tapa, cheese omelette, etc. Others in this chorus line are (from left): the blogger, Marie Zamora Lazo, the balikbayan from Vancouver, Canada, Rita Heimbrod Fathi, and Marianne Martin Soriano.

Imitating the pose of some bulul or figures of rice granary gods as suggested by the Bencab Museum guide

We "bumped" into my husband Rolly and his fraternity brod Chibu Lagman (left) at the museum's Cafe Sabel after we toured several upper floor galleries. If I'm looking more lola-ish than usual, blame the flights of stairs that my creaky knees had to manage. I recommend the lemon grass iced tea to recover fast.

Another group photo before we headed back to downtown Baguio to meet up with our former high school principal who now supervises the canteen and dietary requirements of patients at the Notre Dame de Chartres Hospital on Gen. Luna Road.

At 70-something, Sr. Auguste is quite strong and refuses to slow down. Her problem that Thursday noon when she sat down with us was how to find 40 kilos of fresh fish in the public market. It's Lenten season. The hospital serves no meat on Fridays. Sister Auguste still goes to the market almost daily with her kitchen staff.

Stopping at Billy King's Le Chef at The Manor, Camp John Hay, for coffee and pastries

The girls just had to stop at Mines View Park to buy and eat pusit before going to the nearby Good Shepherd Convent's Mountain Maid Training Center for pasalubong shopping. I didn't join them and stayed in the van to watch shoppers go by.