Cheers to Fifteen-Year Friends

My brother asked me to help him design his wedding invitation. I don’t know where he got the idea that it was in my set of skills. Luckily, I do know how to use Picmonkey for designing stuff, so I managed to find a way. The perks of being a blogger, eh?

Then just when I thought it was over and I could finally get some sleep, there was the entourage page to do. I figured out that it was easier to use Excel for that, because the names had to go in columns and would look neater. The perks of being in finance, eh? So I did just that. I then copied the entire thing and paste-special as an image, save as image, then import said image to Picmonkey so I can add border designs and voila! I have something to add to my set of skills.

Anyway while I was doing all these, I saw my brother’s best man’s name and felt a teensy bit jealous. His best man was our duplex neighbour from our childhood days. They were friends from since they were babies, can you believe it? They eventually went to the same school and became partners in crime, like escaping from their kindergarten classroom through the windows then collecting Coca Cola bottles to return to the canteen for their 2 peso deposits. Even after BR moved away from our hometown for college and work, they remained friends all these years. Last year, I accidentally read their text messages, and they were calling each other “bes” which was totally unexpected of two men. That’s how tight they are.

So I was jealous that my brother had a friendship like that, because I don’t.

Then this morning I woke up and Timehop showed me a status and a tweet I wrote 4 years ago, saying:

So that makes today the anniversary of 15 years of friendship.

15 is a lot of years. That’s not bad at all.

During third year college, wearing business attire required by our Accountancy course

In the picture above, two are getting married next year, and the other two will be their maids of honour. If you accidentally read our texts whatsapp messages, you will see that we call each other “dolls.” (We call ourselves rag dolls now, ever since the Bali incident.) It’s no “bes” but it still shows how tight we are… I guess.

But you know what, it’s not just the rag dolls that I am friends with for 15 years, but a lot of other college friends, like the ones I had a Skype conference with two Saturdays ago.

Skype selfie. Skypie? This shot does not include Tyne, Jeff, & Zenie who joined earlier or later on.

Chu, who has recently moved to San Francisco, organised a Skype session to span across multiple countries and timezones – Philippines, Singapore, Canada (Halifax & Toronto), UK, and USA. It was a hilarious and slightly confusing hour or two spent on asking people to log off mobile Skype and log on laptop Skype so we can see them on video, scolding a certain person for not having a laptop and buying one stat, discussing weddings and kids and blogs and new lives… all of which ended when somebody’s smoke alarm went off.

And today I’ll be spending the afternoon on the Sentosa beach with Cate, another fifteen-year friend.

15 years of friendship is enough. I’m blessed to have it. A lot of it.

College freshman year, when we all first met