VISIT TO THE SHRINK part 4

the last installment of my barkada blues series of posts. but this one, i end on a lighter note:

i guess in this, i'm facing issues more with myself than with my friends. as mentioned i didnt have a good experience with departing from friends. i'm the one who expects too much, and has learned that i shouldn’t. i'm the war freak. i'm the insecure one. i'm the one who finds it difficult to renew broken relationships, but is trying to. and suffice to say, i have learned much as i have written this piece.

all i need is a budge if anyone thinks they need to say something to me. nothing usually happens when things are not said. we all live in the darkness of miss- and non- communication.

mentality is to think that my friends have all changed. but maybe, it is i who has changed. i no longer think that company is enough. that a good get-together is quality when there's more than just the old things we used to enjoy. i value stories about how things are going more than ever. i'm no longer a hard core anime person, but still enjoy anime as much as i did before. i'm a lot more organized - call me OC i wouldn’t mind. but i guess the most important part is that i know better. that these are just some juvenile disappointment that will pass - and yes laughed about while happily reminiscing in the future. (actually i had realized that most kid stuff come to that, but i didn’t think this one was a part of that). that if no action takes place, even though i have made my statement, i would understand why.

ah! those days!

last week i was fixing my stuff and putting them in the proper places in the room. i came across my letter box, a few really big cards, and envelopes. and under the pressure to finish my chore i took time to open them up and read them one by one - well almost. it was nice to recall those days in high school.

i read through the letters i had received. there were the retreat letters, which didn’t contain much more than apologies for not coming up with a better letter or not knowing me much and little on how nice i had been-or how bad: points for Santa, or tips for the retreat, or just the cool of the things at the time; but were and still valued for the thought. there were the letters i exchanged with crissy over the summer before junior year. which made me think why don’t i write anyone instead, since i am 65 kilometers away from them now. maybe in that i would be able to get the updates i'm looking for. i think...

there were the birthday cards i got. including the XXXXX large - two 1/2 illustration boards taped together- one i received in second year when my friends gave trency and i a surprise. there was that big rose, which i picked the petals out of because i could hardly read the messages properly and so i could store it better. it was nice to read again the wishes, and finding myself smiling alone.

oh! i remember the birthday bashes! we tried so hard not to let the celebrant notice, but there would always be a blooper scene. as much as possible, each bash had to have a unique theme - usually reflected in the card, or birthday wish thing either video, large rose, sunflower ...-but could never do without cake.

there were karina's letters. it was fun to read her scrambled thoughts-as-of-the-moment when she wrote them. which eventually lead me to miss our relationship in high school. (smiles) i will always have loved her dearly. confused? its difficult you know! its not that easy!

a while ago my mom told me about her classmate in high school, one of her best friends i think. she was happily reminiscing and i interestingly listened to her story-grabe ang galing ng kaibigan ni mama, all around sa banda! haay! pangarap. she hasn't heard from her friend for so long. and i suddenly thought: like it or not this is what will become of my relationship with my high school friends now. a few years time will turn to years of not seeing each other. and before i know it i would be sharing this story to my own children. but for the meantime while we still can, i'd like for troika to still keep in touch.

pangarap ko? gimmick na ito!

unlike the cliché of highschool/college barkadas shown on saturday afternoon local TV - or is it sunday?-besides being an all girl group, my friends and i don't go out much. our gimiks together are limited to watching a movie at the mall or usually at someone's place - usually charleen's para na rin tumambay -, eating out - or sitting together at a restaurant (McDo anyone?) -, and presently anyone's debut - which is rare anyway since not all of us are up for feeling very special - including budget- for a night - i personally, feel special everyday. on very rare occasions which are carefully planned, there would be a trip to tagaytay, intramuros, or manila zoo.

to add to that, we would rarely be complete, or was there a time when we were ever? mmm, during grad pic taking we lacked marianne and paula, on mara's debut we lacked bom, elaine and marianne - but i really cant blame mara for that, its just an observation. come to think of it, the only times that we were complete were at troika - ok not to get confused more, i'm using troika now to refer to the corridor fronting the debate hall of that name. on our gimmicks we would be mostly ...7, 8. this already sometimes included our extension of trency, tasja and lady. i also noticed, that i would rarely share a gimmick with mara, paula and melai. but there are reasons for this, especially now that were all separated in college.

1) our parents don’t allow us, for reasonable reasons.

2) there's no transportation available-ah! gusto ko matutuo magdrive, at sana magkakotse!(sing to the tune of the OPM song).

3) they have something else to do - with family, for school etc.

4) they are 65 kilometers away from me.

5) the group has no contact with each other, and can't set up the 5 wives and husband - when, where, why, what, who, and how.

6) just cannot decide.

7) cant fit in schedule

8) not comfortable with everyone/each other

9) out of budget/have no more money to spend for that.

10) its a school day - for other schools which don’t have class for a special occasion.

11) want to use time for more useful purposes like rest - ah sleep! - and schoolwork.

12) the event is not planned and is just spontaneous

my point? i only wish that we could all go out together, overcoming the circumstances mentioned above. i miss you guys, all of you!

VISIT TO THE SHRINK part 3

obviously, to get at what i'm saying here, read the former post, if you still haven't :)

going off to college
this means that we had to separate ways because not all of us would be going to the same college and enter in the same course. its a fact of life. even though we went to the same college, being in different courses would also have the same effect - well even denise, crissy and charleen are i think sort of experiencing this effect. we have different dreams, and college gives us the opportunity to pursue them.
it was indeed sad, but it just basically told me that more effort had to be made to keep in touch and together.

i had bad experiences with leaving friends before
when i transferred to st. scho for high school, i had left the friends i made in grade school. not that they were many and that our relationship was very close to my heart. i guess i just valued it more. (buti na lang talaga nabitbit ko hangang st. scho si ate pam) my leaving was quite hard for those people i called my friends, i still remember crying on the phone with charlie-charlotte. they said they would miss me. but i guess it never showed. it was always i who would make the effort to call them or simply greet them on their birthday every year. for a while marino would send me some animé stuff through my younger cousin. but that was that. then it became tiring. someone told me i expected too much, and i guess that was it. i shouldn't expect, so i didn’t. i finally let the memories go after three years of trying to keep in touch. i said thank you, goodbye and see you sometime in the future. and i felt better about myself.
that was not the first time i had transferred schools, i guess i was just more sentimental.
i also transferred schools when we came back to the philippines. but come to think of it the adjustment i had to go though was more drastic. from a british system of schooling, and language to that of pinoy. the people were totally different. i remember i still wasn’t used to being teased by my last name, it meant nothing in english anyway. but i'm straying too far from my point. i also left some friends behind. i guess as a kid i took it a lot lighter, but it still was sad for me. kristina and i kept writing to each other, and still do. she visited me when she came to the country when i was in third year, she even sat in my class for two days. kristina and i were the best of friends then, to some point we still are. i guess the strong relationship we had as friends made us take the extra effort.
i guess that’s why i expected too much from my troika friends, well most of them. i have always considered them close to my heart. and i thought taking the extra mile would be easy for friends like that. and no, denise. i'm NOT saying that i'm the only one who takes the extra effort, in fact i feel i don’t even make an effort to reach everybody.

and here again... i see...
i am again in a situation where i have left friends behind. its not new to me, but the feeling of departure has always made me sad - well except for instances like dismissal from a very boring class.
i got the opportunity to study at UPLB with karina - she's taking up communication arts and i'm taking up development communication. crissy, charleen and denise are block mates taking up communication arts in la salle. bom and erryl are taking up engineering both in la salle but different kinds of engineering - sino sa inyo ang chem., at electrical uli?. keithly is taking up inter-disciplinary business studies in la salle as well. marianne is taking up psychology, and tina just shifted to the same course from english this year. both are in la salle. elaine is taking up political science in UST. cristina rabe is in st. scho, i think taking up education-rabe, what are you taking up? is it really education? i'm really sorry. jackie is in the makati medical center school taking up nursing. mara is in UP manila taking up filipino-right? i dont know where paula and melay went for college, but i would sure like to know how they're doing. note: la salle is the DLSU at taft.
i haven't seen my troika friends for so long, and throughout my first year of college you can count by the fingers on one of your hands the number of times i've seen them or been with them. let me enumerate. note: there never was an instance we were complete, that usually happens for big groups. i was only able to see some of them
the first time i was able to see some of them since the start of my freshman year was on olive's birthday. that was a july. we were still fresh out of high school, so not much new was about, well except for that eerie feeling towards karn, and a few fun new stories about our new schools. but all in all it was fun putting on ladylike clothes in a race - he he, and the food was great too.
the next was three months later. it was the regular semester break, unfortunately the most people studying in la salle had tri sem on their shoulders. one wednesday, crissy called a meeting at ... what was the name of that restaurant? it was the restaurant where the Quickly stand stood in along vito cruz. Mings something? oh well. i came late-sorry, peace tayo!-because i left late and got caught up in the commuter's traffic i'm no longer used to in manila. i didn’t get to eat lunch with them, but was able to catch up till merienda time. to tell you frankly i felt out of place and left out. in tagalog: na OP ako. i felt drowned among things i knew or hardly relate to. and i felt whatever i said was a different language to them. ok exaagg pero ganon ang feeling ko. its not their fault, its mine. i think i have an attitude problem. no, people would disagree. i have an attitude problem. i'm not asking for apologies, i'm merely venting out what i felt.
i heard they did some kind of jpop MTV together and submitted it to some contest. they put a lot of effort into it, even sacrificing their academics a bit. though i can hardly relate to that, i guess i could say i'm proud of them for making a big effort. i miss making productions. i just hope they had fun doing it together.
nga pala, i paid 50 pesos for the latest – noon - troika button pin, but i never got it. ok lang. masaya naman ang nakapagmerienda sa 50 ko. buti na pakinabangan na ng iba basta ba kinaliangan nila e.
the monday after that, tasja – a member of the extended troika, sort of - asked us out to Robinson's place manila. at first i was hesitant to go, but i was advised by someone very wise to go, and see who among my friends i should keep and treasure. ang sama tuloy pakingan. so i went. i saw tasja, karina, mara-who had to leave early because she had to register for the next sem. mas maaga sila sa manila- and keithly-who came late because she had to attend a class. jacke could not come and lady backed out- i think. yes it was eerie, i don’t need to tell you why. keithly, thanks for Auntie Anne's and everything that went with it.
i would see them 5 month's later on mara's debut. thanks for inviting me mara! her debut was really nice, and semi formal. we were all almost there, except for bom, marianne and elaine. i expected - here i go again at expecting - that we would be updating each other on how we were all doing and i would hear fun stories of their college life - take note, not how difficult school was, we all knew that. i was able to to some extent only, and the rest was play, in some sense. and that eerie feeling again. not to let mara down, it was a beautiful debut, and i hope she felt really special. oh! and the wine was lovely, i think drank almost half the bottle.
the last time i saw my friends was two months ago. we were only 5: marianne, tina, olive, keithly and i. i personally had a lot of fun. Glorietta, watch movie, eat lunch, and walk around, and talk about what has been going on with our lives. simple enough but well spent. we bought a listerine pocket pack and got a free 6-months valid movie ticket. sad that i still haven’t used it, even to watch Spiderman-ah! i still haven't watched it. who wants to go watch a movie with me? its valid till novemeber. keithly? anyway, we got to watch Shrek 2 for free, just because we were all globe users. he he he. before that we were able to chit-chat at taters for a while and as we met up together. we ate lunch at Komoro Soba at G1 and had a studio pic taken at Kodak. and the rest was just walking around Ayala. thanks to keithly for contacting everyone. he he sorry i was in Paete, Laguna with my dorm mates for fior's birthday.
i read from one of their blogs, i don’t remember who's, that they went to intramuros a week before. that could have been fun. but as a very concerned friend said, maybe they just want to go out by themselves, and i have to respect that, because we have every right to do that too. i do respect it, and i'm sorry for feeling bad about it. but it would be nice for the whole troika to go out on an .outing like that
denise went to japan...oh! she's back. ok what happened? den, bakit ka punta ng japan? may scholarship ka? project? wala lang trips lang? sino kasama mo? kwento naman o. ano ginawa mo? may pasalubong?-joke! sorry
i remember watching the movie of little women, the one where wynona played jo march. claire danes played beth march - she died. but before she did she said something that struck me. i don't recall the exact words but it goes something like this: its alright that i'm left alone, but i don’t want to be left behind.

posting sa troika
ok, ang kaugatan ng galit ni den sa'kin. i may have took it wrongly and misunderstood, but it still had an effect on me. sa bagay effective naman, napagpost siya, at ang iba pa. ayos pala, kailangan mo lang talaga magpapansin para may manyari. parang ang mga ipinapatupad sa pamahalaan.
i've noticed that since college the posts at troika have lessened by a large percent. a year ago there were more posts, others usually one-liners, or stuff i could hardly relate to, or forwards. now there are hardly any. it's just normal for that to happen. even when we were all in high school loads of school work took our free time, and it still does, in a larger magnitude. i understand why people cant post. even i dont post.
1. no time
2. don’t read email
3. have no access to computer with internet
4. not able to check when using internet
5. bouncing email
my point is this. i've made it a habit to post the question about how everyone is doing. i just want updates from those that have time and resources to answer. since i've noticed i don’t really get that much detailed information when we all meet, which is quite sad. the happy thing is we are contented with enjoying each other's company.

VISIT TO THE SHRINK part 2

i have a few things to say about the people i call my friends. some issues i - as a friend recently told me, i really need - need to vent out and just some thoughts i would like to share. and yes, in reply to to the comment denise posted which basically triggered my attempt to make my thoughts known. someone once told me i'm too much of a war freak, i take on issues face to face at once. its actually true that it hurts if its faced like this, but in my experience its already been too long of a wait. ok, hinay hinay lang. reward for my head will be up soon, i only hope not.
i do agree with denise. i don’t like posting details of my personal life onto the internet. this is why my posts are about my weird thoughts and not a diary of my life. but i do appreciate those people who post about their lives, its the only way i'm updated about how they're doing. but its not only dangerous, its giving out too much. but in this case i'll loosen my rules a bit.


i still dont get that marianne issue
it would be almost abnormal for a group of friends not to have arguments and issues - believe me it comes eventually -, it would only be...better. i guess i haven’t known marianne as much as the others who have known her since grade school and the earlier years of high school. i've been told i would never understand the issue, unless i've been with her.
on the contrary, i like marianne, and i'm not afraid to be shipwrecked on a desert island with her. i enjoy listening to her talk about her life, which is much better than watching napkins being folded up into underwear. i find no boast in it, and often find myself more boastful and boring to listen to. i do find some of her mannerisms amusing, like...but as of press time rejoice has made flipping your hair its theme in advertising.we all haveour ways, ika nga. i like having her around, and with reference to the group, it would seem incomplete without her, or anyone else for that matter. people talking privately can think up of better ways to avoid a private conversation when they think someone is intruding. people don't have the world to themselves, they make it that way purposely. even i am guilty of butting in.
i have to admit i really have no say in this matter, but as a part of the group i would like to give my comments on it. let's consider the second window of johari's window, and compare it to the third. i, personally like the latter.
i don't really recall the endpoint of these issues during high school, my thinking was that it became ok in the end. i hope i'm right. then i wouldn’t have addressed this at all. but i cannot prevent it if the others still feel something bad about this, i'm no telepath, i only wish to be. but i think that’s the case. though we've all gone off to college, and we barely see each other. some, i feel, still harbor these feelings. its just sad that they seem to not have been friends, in talgalog, parang wala namn silang pinagsamahan. (yes i'm addressing something in particular)

karina and i haven’t been seeing much of each other, care to ask why?
i really didn’t expect anyone to violently react, take sides, or care to ask the horse what had been going on, what i didn’t expect was no reaction at all. though they might have did that on purpose, not to spark up anything or get involved, but it was still... as karina put it – “odd”. in high school, karina and i had been the best of friends, well in troika terms for that matter. it would have been awkward in the troika days to have noticed us not even talking together or sitting beside each other. but to headline, this is what had been happening over the last year. newsflash: something happened that terribly damaged our friendship.
it was a long period of silence.
when i posted that we wouldn't be living together in LB (los baños, laguna), it was true. and there was something more to that, but to make a long-short confusing situation understandable, we didn’t agree on the terms we would be living together by, our parents didn’t. then we didn’t talk about it, for a loooooooooong time. we didn’t see each other. we became ill at ease with each other, ok i was the one who did. and there, crumbling, and to dust.
every encounter succeeding was torture to my bitterness, reflected but yet still in silence.
but that's no longer the point. we're on better terms now.
well, since we're updating each other, karina and i are on speaking terms now. but i must admit that the friendship we had in high school has been lost to the crumbling dust and left in memory. like a phoenix born from its ashes, but unlike a phoenix, we need more time for wounds to heal.
i guess this is the point where they can all stab me for criticizing them about harboring bad feelings towards marianne. oo para kaming walang pinagsamahan, pero meron, at kailangan ko ng panahon. ang kaibahan ko lang, ako, eto broadcast.

the main troika
even though it is sad that this thought ever came to my mind, i cannot help but share it. i do not ask for sympathy, nor explanation. i only ask to be heard. i don’t like this feeling and i apologize to those i leave out because of this thought.
it would seem normal to call tntc a barkada, but i have always thought that the phrase “group of friends” was the best term for it - even with my friends before st. scho. my thinking was we are unlike other barkadas. but troika is a big group of friends and i must tell you now, not all of us were really that close. remember in the story, troika was a unison of the groups that spent their breaks at the corridor fronting troika hall. we were not one big group to begin with and i guess we never really got to be one - big close group. like a class who could really never “bond” truly - hindi a shinampoo ko lang yan! - the small groups still remain. i can't blame anyone, we stick to the people who make us feel comfortable the most.
grouping together and naming ourselves after the debate hall the corridor was fronting was not an idea we all had in mind. this really came out in our fourth year, when we were seemingly left out by the batch twice already.
what i am trying to say is that all the troika stuff- the IDs, the telenovela, the yahoo group, the button pins, the quiz for our little sisters- were thought up of by one creative group among the troika people. i call them the main troika. i'm just glad that they included the whole group in their gimmicks, that really made troika into the “congregation”. just that in some they didn’t. its weird that i turned out to be charleen in the troika quiz than myself. but i guess its not their fault that the quizmaster - am i right, is it bom?- doesn't know everyone in the group well enough to make a quiz about all of us. these people in the group have been friends since grade school and i see why they still remain good friends.
its sad that i feel that i am left out some times when i'm with the group - yung OP ba. they relate to the same things most of the time. i read in one of my researches that similarity is one of the factors in friendship.
i guess mostly animé played a big part in bringing us together as with many of my friends. i realize that not all of us are hard core anime people, and towards the end of my high school i was no longer one. i hardly knew what the latest animé on TV was all about. i guess i got tired of it, ran out of money - its expensive to be an animé person if you really like collecting -, and didn’t watch TV - uy! nagaaral? i no longer moved on to jpop, and got tired of singing songs i barely understood. though good music is one of the things i still look out for in good animé- or any broadcast piece for that matter. i guess that contributed much to my being a soundtrack person now.
but a good friend pointed out that i shouldn’t think: epal lang ako sa troika. because i leave out so many people, and good memories. i may also be leaving people out in my conversations with others, and not the only one who is left out. to some point we are all OP(out of place) and can make people feel that way. and in this i apologize for even thinking this way and for leaving anyone out. its the worst feeling you can have when you're with friends.

VISIT TO THE SHRINK

about the people I call my friends (the tapat ng troika congregation)

part 1 in the series of posts about the people i call my friends

the tapat ng troika congregation story
i'm proud to tell the story of my high school barkada. i happily smile as i tell this story to the new friends i've made in college, or anyone who wants to know. the people i call my friends have a unique story which surpasses popularity, in most ways. i am proud to have friends like them, and i remember enjoying their company.
ours was a an exclusive girls school at the heart of manila. unlike co-ed schools, girls were easier to befriend. but without the boys around, having the most popular guy as a boyfriend was no basis for popularity. i'd like to think ,unlike most people, there were no popular people, i cared less weather anyone was well known or not. mine was if she was well respected. we didn’t exactly know each other during our first year, though some had been together since grade school.
food brings people together, and i guess that’s the principle behind this story - well almost. it was an issue of eating areas. you see, our school had assigned eating areas per year level. the freshmen stayed at the second floor of the canteen. the sophomores, you can say were scattered all over the place, some at the canteen, some at the college eating area, and some at the hall fronting troika debating hall. the juniors were at the lunch counters, this was a roofed eating area lined with tables and benches, about more than 12, where a batch of a8 sections could fit. and the seniors at the prestigious stone tables, that is an eating area near the field (to give you a better perspective of the size of this field say it how chipmunks would) which included 1) about 6 square cement tables, lined of course with tiles on top, and a set of benches to come with it surrounding a large acacia tree, 2) a long row of tables and benches stretching along the walls of the grade 4 classrooms and 3) which came in when renovations were being made at the canteen, a lot of blue tables and monoblock chairs under some tents.
since in second year, the sophomores were scattered, i, the people i spent breaks with - usually some of my classmates - along with and a few others made the corridor fronting troika debate hall our domain of choice. this we carried on to our junior year: basically, when my friends and i came to the lunch counters during the beginning of third year to find the eating area we would call ours for a year, we were disappointed not to find a vacant table. and that was that, troika became our home for another year to pass. during out senior year we were determined to get a proper eating area at the stones. we were able to feel that we would during the first days of the year, but since the policy was draw lots, we were either cheated or just plain unlucky. but still, happy enough to return to our beloved troika corridor.
now since we were all basically good friends at this time, we began to sit in one big circle - instead of the 2 to 4 little circles wed been sitting in since second year. however, i have to mention that not all of those little groups came together in this one. so, this is where it began. a few of us decided to give the group a name: tapat ng troika congregation. to get facts straight, it was the debate hall which had the name troika - not the corridor -, our tambayan was the corridor fronting it/across it so, in tagalog: tapat ng. the congregation, basically was the first word that came to mind that seemed big - and no we are not a religious organization. so, there: tapat ng troika congregation.
crissy began by creating the yahoo group, which we still have today. then came the TNTC IDs by bom/elise which we earned by doing crazy and unusual things - we were ahead of reality TV. (or was it the IDs before the yahoo group? my memory fails me, and i'm sure either one of them is ready to hit me with a mallet). during our integration with our little sisters, the fresh women, we introduced them to our little group and added a little fun with a little guessing game quiz. it really didn’t matter to me if my little sister though that i, along with my group of friends were just plain weirdoes who worshiped anime, though i had a gut feeling she did think of it that way. again bom had a fascinating idea of designing a botton pin for the group which we all had made care of her KKB(kanya kanyang bayad). one of the best i'd like to recall were the birthday celebrations we prepared for those who celebrated their birthdays. another is a script for our telenovela "cooking ng ina mo". and looking to the future, our dream business venture to "conquer the world".
the whole year was fun, even though we had to eventually transfer to the third component of what composed the eating area assignment of the seniors because of the implementation of a strict eating area policy. this we did with our request of the provision of a large enough table that would fit all the seniors at troika. ours was the longest table, nearest the new building, the closest to the end of the tent, and the lowest height above sea level in the stones area. in other words, though we had the remarkably longest table among the seniors, we were frequently flooded during the rainy season. but we enjoyed being together anyway.