Ken, Lawrence, and I

I love my barkada to bits.

There is nothing in the world quite like spending time with them, all one bunch, despite all the crap that's been circling the clique lately. I feel so alive and at home with them (yes, even with my not-so-good relationship with Jackie. She's still my bestie).

But then there's that undeniably good feeling when you hang with a different group. It's not the same--and sometimes, when you're on not-so-good terms with other members of your kada, it can be even better.

Today was an example of that.

I went and got my barong from Xavier at about 9:00 this morning, then I walked to Ash Creek and met up with Ken (Go, not the beloved Kennzo we have grown to know on this blog). He was sitting at a table, cap and book on the table, bleary-eyed and stoic, staring at me.

I ordered a Peppermint Mocha. Ooh... pepperminty. So we sit down and get to talking, and eventually, he gets livelier and the droopy-eyed expression faded away. He and I were constantly throwing glances over my shoulder to see if he had arrived, and Ken basically briefed me on everything. When Lawrence DID arrive, we were basically just sitting down, and we somehow managed to insert some Caesarian crap in between talk about: Suck & Blow, last night's Soiree, slutty ICAns, ICAns with tongue rings, drunk ICAns, slutty, drunk ICAns with tongue rings that attempted to engage in Suck & Blow in last night's Soiree, peppermintiness and Lawrence wanting to get cold coffee (oo nga pala! He made a wisecrack that was something to the effect of "Cold coffee is the coffee for the young." (my Peppermint Mocha was hot.)). \

While Lawrence debated with himself, I continued to bash Dominic (yes, HIM again) (I swear, if he ever reads this, he'll so murder me. I mean we're fine, really, but I guess old stigma never really goes away.), and Ken continued to be the only productive member of our little temporal triumvirate. After a while, Lawrence piped up that we ought to go to the ITC in school to dig up some crap on our topic. We gave it a thought and decided it was worth a shot, so we schlepped right up and out of our seats (except me. I was too busy reveling in all the Fukien being yelled in the tiny cafe, thanks to that Chinese wedding down the road and all the Fukien oldies flocking to Starbucks to cool down in the searing Saturday heat) and headed down the road to Xavier. When we got in, we beelined the ITC, but upon getting there, we were only slightly productive, as after a while, the beautiful quiet somnolence of the place (sans any people) was just hypnotic. There was this heavy sweetness in the air that made me unbelievably happy. And I somehow "felt" America.

Yes, that's right. No, you didn't read/I didn't write wrong. That's America, not Canada. Haha. And while I wait for you to shake your head in disbelief, I'll insert some soliloquy about how I've been missing America a lot lately (like just this morning, in my classroom). But that sentence alone was enough for it to sink in, so on with the story!

The rest of the morning (eleven thirty something til about twelve something) saw us basically loafing on the two sets of three-couches stuck up against each other. While I catatonically dictated some squiggly figures in red ink on some pad paper, Kenzo leafed through the Spiderman pin-up whatever he found, and Lawrence just sat down.

Also, somewhere around this time, Lawrence saw a book on cars and went bananas over it. So cute! Like a second Kenn. Furthermore, we were just walking around in the library and picking out books, and I had already picked one out when, just when I closed it, Lawrence pointed out "Ooh... may dust pa!" or something like that, and we experimented with different books and seeing how much dust flew out. It was so fun.

So anyway, we began just lazing around, and I soon found even myself all stretched out on one of the couches and inhaling the atmosphere. It felt so magical--those few minutes we spent in seemingly eternal quiet and the long minutes of comfortable silence.

That was special.