Almost summer

It was a nice day today. Summer is almost here. For the first time in ages, I went out today without any jacket or sweatshirt. The sun was shining.

Got the chance to finally catch up on some gardening this weekend. My herb patch is overgrown, thanks to the Vietnamese mint plant given to me by a work friend, Shane. This thing grows like a weed. The snails have been busy. There seem to be so many of them so I decided to spread some poison pellets for them to feast on. Sounds barbaric but they are pests after all. I'm also glad to see my chilli plant is starting to sprout some new leaves again - chemical damage....a different story. Oh yes, since it is spring, my garden is in bloom for a few weeks now. It started off with the cherry blossom trees then the roses are now full of buds which should all open in the next week. The weeping maple tree we bought a few weeks ago is also sprouting new leaves.


...


What else happened today...? Oh yes... I got email messages from two old friends from school back from wehn I was still in the Philippines. This is pretty much a continuation of my friendster post a few weeks ago. I contacted some people, added them to my friends list, some replied and accepted while others whom you expect to reply didn't quite. An old friend added me to his list. I didn't realise he was on it in fact. His name is Steinberg Tan. I new him back in elementary school. He use to live 3 blocks from my house. I use to go to his place (huge house), bring my fighting cock and we would "sabong" he fighter with his. That's the only thing I remember about him back then. When we were in grade 3 his family moved to Perth Australia and he's been living there ever since. I occasionally receive emails from him however, our interests have changed so much and I have not spoken to him in a while. After moving to Australia he became a guitar enthusiast. Much more I would say. He loves playing the guitar. He's got several. I think he and his siblings formed a family band of some kind. Anyway more info about himj on his site.

I sent him a message back and am waiting for his email reply.

The other person who contacted me was Roselle Teodosio. At least that was her name back then. She's now married to a guy named Kelvin Chan so she's changed her name to Roselle Chan. She's a mother of three now, 2 boys and a girl. She's been helping out in Kelvin's family business (Petron) and she just started her own with a business partner. It's a hotel. She opened up a hotel called Phoenix Suites in Makati last december. Her brother, also was an old friend, is in charge as manager. His name is Richardson Teodosio.

Now Roselle and Richardson were both my classmates. Roselle is younger by around 11 months or something. Richie was born in Jan and Sel was born in december. If I'm not mistaken I think The exact dates were Jan 19 and December 23.

Anyway, Sel and I hang out quite a bit in high school especially just before coming here to NZ. We were really close buddies. Her brother didn't quite like it though but we were still friends. I think it was also this reason that Sel stopped talking to just before I came to NZ. Richie was among the last people I saw and said good bye to before I came here. I still have the photo of that last day.

In our email conversations, I reminded Sel that I remembered the times when she used to pick my white hair. She would kneel on the sofa beside me and go through my hair. There were several things I remember. I went snorkling with them once. Them and there uncle. We went to Zambales. It is unforgettable not only because we had a lot of fun but it was also the time someone almost died. I've told this story quite a few times and I don't even remember to whom. Basically while we were snorkling we saw this beautiful white coral. It was a tall coral about a metre in height. For some reason we were trying to reach it. I think we wanted to take it home with us (of course at the time i didn't know anything much about caring for the reef). I don;t think Sel was there. Richie and his uncle was though. So the three of us took turns taking deep breaths and diving down. His uncle was the last person to go down and he was a few inches away from it when he felt he needed to get up for air. So he flipped up and headed towards the surface. Unfortunately in doing so, his snorkel snapped around the mouthpiece so as soon as he surfaced, the silicon mouthpiece of the snorkel was facing down and acted like a straw. He must have sucked half a glass of seawater. He started panicking. Richie and I was beside him. He grabbed both of us out of panic and we were both pushed down. Richie got away and signalled the boat to come get us. Fortunately for me, I was able to stay afloat just enough for my snorkel to stay above water. I clamly stayed under as his support.

Richie and I were gonna take up a PADI course and sit our PADI open water licence when we get back to Manila but Richie's mum heard of this news and disapproved and we never got to do our open water course. One day I will but not now..too cold here in NZ. Perhaps when Shakoo is emperor and he grants me some pacific island territories.