i was in a real senti mood today so i digged up old emails circa 2003. i found an email from meds where she said ‘the four powers of the earth are scattered’, referring to me, herself, mel and jing. i was in japan then, jing back in her hometown while meds and mel were in manila. the email brought back the yesteryears of when the four of us were one unit. inseparable friends. my college years were defined on the many memories i shared with these three girls.

some of my fondest memories with meds, mel and jing:

(1) the journal we shared. it was our own version of ‘the sisterhood of the traveling pants’, only it was a journal which we shared and where we all wrote our thoughts, feelings and what-have-you. the pages of our journal bore witness to tales of unrequited young love, of different ramblings, of trivial matters and consequences  but more importantly, these pages strengthened our bonds of friendship. i remember that there was an entry on our wedding songs in one of our journals. i can’t remember exactly now what i wrote. i suppose only one of them made it to my actual wedding CD (that being the wannadies’ you and me song) but it would be nice to see what my list was back in the day.

(2) overnights at jing’s. of the four of us, jing had the coziest place. it was also close to UP and so naturally, it became the tambayan of the group. jing had a bunk bed. she and i slept on the lower berth while meds and mel occupied the upper berth. my favorite days would be when we would stay up late talking about anything under the sun (mostly about our single lives) and then waking up to the smell of freshly bought pandesal , corned beef and hot chocolate prepared by may (rest in peace). on some nights, our other friends would sleepover too. sometimes, they would have their drinking and smoking session. the good girl that i was, i usually opted to stay in the room and sleep or study.

(3) wendy’s at 3am. something needs to be said about this youthful spontaneity that we all possessed back then. it was one december night when sleep was evading us and we all thought of getting something to eat. jing’s place was about a 5 minute jeep ride away from wendy’s and dressed in our sleepwear, we all decided to head out to the said fast food. jing’s area was surrounded by cheap pubs and cabaret and a cab driver actually mistook us for prostitutes. he hand-signalled ‘1′ to us and the naive girl that i was, i thought that he  would charge us 100 for the cab ride. jing, meds and mel knew better and told me that what the driver meant was that he would pay us a hundred for the you-know-what. although it was a laugh trip, even now i cannot understand why he would think we were out to sell our bodies when we were all covered up in our PJs.

(4) december 1997. sometimes when the hustle and bustle of adult life suffocates me, i would close my eyes and imagine myself back in 1997 when our friendship was in its early beginnings. the images that my mind conjures are so vivid that i could smell the breath of air or feel the atmosphere in it. one of those images was of me walking from quezon hall to masscomm and seeing mel sitting under the shade of a tree, her back on me. it was very early in the morning, just past seven. i went to her, of course. she had her typewriter with her (yes, that was how jurassic our era was) and was apparently finishing a paper due. in this particular image, i could hear her telling me that her father dropped her off, that was why she was earlier than usual. or sometimes i would think about how the four of us stayed for the lantern parade. we sat on the grass between quezon hall and cmc while waiting for the traditional fireworks until exhaustion from previous night’s FC christmas party got the better of us and we decided to skip the event and went home. or sometimes i would vividly remember the day before we the start of he christmas break. meds and jing were to go back to their respective provinces. the three of us went to SM north because jing went to buy pastries for her family.

(5) the music galore. much of my taste in music now was influenced by these 3 girls. among us, jing was the most musically inclined. i remember how some nights she would play the piano and we would sing along with her, never mind that meds and i were tone deaf. or how meds and i would sing our hearts out every song we knew from the thick song book (another proof of how ancient our period was) i had at home. of course, there were also occasional dancing and clubbing whenever meds and i were involved.

the friendship that i have forged with meds, mel and jing is undoubtedly special. even now that we are all apart  and living different lives, i still consider them my best girl friends, my soul sisters. to say that i miss them three is an understatement. i long for the day when the four of us would be together again, perhaps with our own families. we had a conversation once when we were younger about how we would spend weekends together with our husbands and kids. i still wish that one day we’d still have this one weekend we dreamt of. we have a lot of catching up to do. indeed, the four powers of the earth are scattered. and yet we remain.

to meds, mel and jing, cheers to our friendship.

i woke up this morning and felt a wave of nostalgia seep through me. i realized it’s almost five years since raj, bong and i made our journey to the sleepy town of beppu (in my opinion), which ironically enough is in the land of the rising sun, japan. five years since then and yet many of those fond memories remained vivid in my mind.

i remember the 24th of september 2005, the day we traveled to japan for the first time. we went to the centennial airport very early anticipating the problems that we could run into checking in our oversized luggages. despite the fact that we were only allowed 20 kilos of luggage, we brought more than we should, hoping that they would go unnoticed. unfortunately, the airport officials noticed how heavy our carry-on baggages were right before we entered the immigration area. all three of us had to re-pack the last minute and we ended up paying USD200 for all the extra baggage that we had combined. bong also had to turn over the forks he brought from home. funny how he could have just thrown them away but as we were expecting a hard life in japan (with buying forks as an added expense), bong thought it best to turn them over and to collect them when we arrived in japan.

because of all the last minute rush, the plane had to wait for the three of us and so when we finally boarded the plane, the faces of irate passengers greeted us and we just had to sink low on our seats and hide ourselves from embarassment.

the flight from manila to fukuoka took about more than four hours. the airport was small in comparison with the other international airports we had been into. the three of us decided that we didn’t need anyone from the school to pick us up so we just waited for the bus that would take us to beppu to arrive. we bought food in a convenience store at the airport for our dinner. they were actually snacks as we were still converting from peso to yen then and we thought that everything was expensive. with my little knowledge of japanese, we were able to send some of our luggages via courier.

it was a two hour ride from fukuoka to beppu. we slept mostly in the bus as there was nothing else to see but trees and mountains. we arrived at the university almost 6pm. at the bus stop, we were greeted by the RAs. thankfully, we had decided to have our things sent by post from the airport because we had to trek down a long path of stairs (later on, we counted them to be about a hundred steps). under normal circumstances, i would have kvetched about the whole thing but  the novelty of being in a new place and experiencing new things won over.

the first thing we did was to check in our residence which would be our own sanctuary for the next 6 months. we found out that bong was in AP house 1 while raj and i were placed in AP house 2, the newer and better building. julie, the floor RA ushered me to room 521. it was a small room which had a single bed, a closet, a desk with my own phone and a fridge. i also had my own WC in the room which made it a bit convenient. she showed me around the whole building. all five floors had their own communal kitchen, showers and laundry areas. julie also informed me how to borrow a vacuum cleaner and iron. i remember that  one of the questions i asked julie was where can i get drinking water. she told me i can get it from the sink in my bathroom. growing up in a third world country, i thought it strange and unsafe to do so but later on, i learned that tap water in japan was safe.

after roaming around the building, i managed to locate raj. we lost bong as he was in the other building but we managed to find him too after one hour. we had dinner together. our first dinner was an instant cup of noodle for each which wasn’t really fully cooked because we didn’t have boiling hot water. the meal was a disaster to say the least but we were just happy being there after all the preparations that we took which lasted almost a year. (we were actually scheduled to start march 2005 but due to financial setbacks, we deferred our attendance to september). we parted ways that night with a pact not to wake each other up early the next day. it was actually more of a reminder to me as i was the early riser among the trio and both bong and raj wanted to sleep in late. but i was also exhausted that day and i wanted to relish my first night in japan. my first time to be truly away from home.

now that i think about it, i regret that i didn’t keep a journal of my first few months in japan. it would have been nice to have something tangible to read and see how much life had progressed since then for the three of us, and to have a testament of how we survived the test of time. our stay in japan wasn’t a bed of roses as some people would have imagined it to be. it was a humbling experience and an eye-opener.  and something that i would truly cherish forever.