When Reylyn announced that she was migrating to the Cayman Islands with her hubby, an instant despedida was definitely called for. So I booked a one-bedroom condo in Millennium Plaza Hotels for Friday night and told the gang to be there then.
But the night before that, Gelle and I started singing “Lost in Your Eyes” over dinner and felt this urge to go to the videoke that very night. Now this would have been acceptable under different circumstances, but this was a work night, and on work nights you don’t go out at 11pm and crawl into bed at 5am to get 3 hours of sleep, especially if you know you have a presentation for your bosses the next morning.
Still, Gelle and I found ourselves making my goodbye video presentation for Reylyn while waiting for Yen to finish her call. When Thom passed by my area to offer me some walnut cake, we ended up inviting him as well. 11pm found us three girls in IO Videoke place. Our song list was composed of all the love songs we wanted to sing. We sang “Lost in Your Eyes” and “If I Believe” twice. Thom arrived at around 1am, and his brow furrowed at our choice of songs. Why were we being sad, he said. So he picked some upbeat numbers and after a rockin’ session of “Lakas Tama,” Gelle was suddenly in the mood to drink. So we ordered a round of drinks for everyone and rocked till 3am. After that we realized we were hungry, so we headed to Starmart for some coffee and doughnuts, my treat. After chatting for a couple of hours, I insisted that we head on home because I had to be at work by 9am, so Thom brought us all home.
The next day my head was expectedly heavy, and after what seemed like a harder day at work, I went home to grab a change of clothes along with Chu’s DVD players and discs then had a stopover at Starmart for food & drinks before heading to the condo. We had dinner then watched Maalaala Mo Kaya on TV, Reylyn’s despedida video on Chu’s laptop, then finally “Chicken Little” on DVD before falling asleep on the bed that Feb decided to split in half so that we’d all fit on the mattresses. The next morning it was time to bid our adieus, but we shed no tears, because we were happy for Reylyn. Have a great new life, Ma!
