CLASS '89 HIGH SCHOOL REUNION

WE WERE one in singing "Farewell," a ballad by Bagets star Raymond Lauchengco and a favorite graduation song of our time. It was a fitting way to say goodbye to our beloved alma mater, our teachers, our best friends, and the rest of our schoolmates. For the Class of 1989 of Narvacan National Central High School, graduation marked the end of a youth filled with intense emotions and excitement. It closed the chapter on our seatmates, group projects, high school crushes, the JS Prom, extracurricular activities, and the music we played during school programs. The friendships that had officially begun four years earlier had reached a turning point, and the years ahead would test our commitment to staying in touch.

Right after high school, we went our separate ways. While most of our classmates from the Acacia section trooped to Manila or Baguio for college, I stayed in Ilocos with Romano Peralta, Gilda Damayo, Mayrene Pintado, Joan Cauton, Jerry Cabanit, and Carolina Filarca. We enrolled at and graduated from the University of Northern Philippines in Vigan.

A LETTER TO MOTHER

Dear Inang,

I'm sorry this comes late for Mother's Day. During that day, I couldn't write a single note for you. I tried, but all I could remember was that morning in the kitchen a month before. It was the most poignant scene, the one I could easily recall; though at that time, I didn't realize its effect on me. I think of it now, like a reader flipping through the pages of an old photo album, turning back to that event in just one glance.

It was the morning I arrived with my brother and two sisters from the hospital in San Fernando. Tatang, whom we fetched with a hired ambulance, was lying lifeless, half-covered with a blanket on the wooden bed in the sala. While everyone around me was crying and groaning, I stood there frozen. My heart was in ecstatic pain. I was looking out the window, but seeing nothing. I was contemplating our loss when you suddenly came to me, held my shoulder, and sobbed.

5 YEARS OF FACEBOOKING

IT WAS December 22, 2008, when I opened my Facebook account at the invitation of Arlyn, a law school classmate. This was more than four years after Mark Zuckerberg and his peers first introduced the online social networking service to their fellow Harvard students. A day after my name and ID photo cropped up in a blue-and-white corner of cyberspace, my cousin Danny Cadorna—whom I had not seen since he left for Japan in 1994—sent me my first-ever friend request. Soon, other relatives, friends, former classmates, coworkers, and even strangers requested to join my friends list. They say that most people who know how to use a computer and the internet have a Facebook profile. Unsurprisingly, in just a short span, my notifications swelled with requests to connect, play games, join groups, and "like" various pages.