My officemate Vincent saw this under my desk.
He came up with this question. My reply is below. It’s a joke, of course. Anand is my boss’s boss.
Suddenly I miss the handwritten note-passing days in school. In high school, Lyn and I used to write long letters to each other during class, where we would discuss a lot of things from our codenamed crushes to the “bulok na papaya na may helicopter sa loob” to listing how that cute white cat we named Jesuit died 9 times which is the reason why he went missing. In fourth year, I exchanged notes with Ira and we used newspaper or magazine clippings as our “stationery.” It was fun to look for the best ones to use. In college, I’d have conversations with my entire row. We’d pass the paper through all five of us. The piece of paper was our chatroom. There was also one instance when I was passing notes with my friend Apple, who was located somewhere across the room. After the nth pass, our classmate Dennis intercepted the note and actually joined in the conversation, joking that we should stop talking about him. Apple decided to get even by pulling a prank on him. I wrote several “love letters” for him from a “secret admirer” which Apple printed out on her computer so that he wouldn’t recognize our handwriting and guess that it’s from us. In the end, we admitted our identity and that it was all a joke.
And speaking of handwriting, I just realized the other day that I am not familiar with what Gelle’s handwriting looks like. I was waiting for her in our living room and idly picked up her planner and leafed through it. She had scribbled all throughout, and her handwriting was very unfamiliar. I mean, it’s not like Cate’s handwriting which I’d recognize anywhere. Then I realized that I can still remember what all of my school closest friends’ handwritings look like. (I wonder if they can remember mine, though, because it’s horribly inconsistent. Sometimes depends on what pen I’m using.) But Gelle is a friend from my working days. So that’s one major difference between school and work relationships, huh.