I get by with a little help from my Frendz

Here's yet another reason why I always look forward to coming home and why being out of Manila for a month feels like ages:



More than a decade after graduating from THE university, my college friends and I still hang out and hang around like we usually did at the UP Journ Club tambayan at CMC. It's funny because often times, we goad each other because a lot of us still carry our mannerisms from college with us. Among them, being kuripot (though a lot of that has changed already, thankfully), our ability to talk at the same time, our penchant for not letting anyone finish their stories, our passion for travel, our craving for food, and of course, having our photos taken.



I find it amazing how everyone is perpetually young and wacky in this group that we call "D' Frendz" (tagline: D' Frendz - D' friends with a diffrenz). A couple of weeks ago, I emailed a recent photo of our group to another college classmate in China, and he was amazed at how everyone still looks the same after college. I guess it's our perpetually youthful mindset and our ability not to take life TOO seriously that has kept us this young and this rowdy all these years.



Another thing that has kept us together all these years is the fact that we expose each other to our individual dearth of emotions, and still love one another despite our showing of weaknesses and strengths. In our group, it's not unusual to cry, laugh, release angst, head bang because of rage, and even fight among ourselves. But at the end of the day, we're still there to lend a hand, offer a shoulder, or provide some mindless joke to make everyone laugh.



Yup, our group is the best example of the adage: "You've seen me at my best and my worst, and still love me anyway." We've seen each other go through a lot: falling in love, falling out of love, getting one's heart broken, getting back together, getting married, letting go, holding on, moving out, moving in, and everything else in between. And despite all that, i'm looking forward to going through a lot more: getting married (since a lot of us are still single), having kids, attending baptisms, organizing kids' birthday parties, exchanging child raising tips, and ultimately watching all our kids grow up together.

What I think would be ultimately cool is that in 20 years or so, we'll all have kids, and our kids will have pictures like these as well. And they can be D' Frendz 2025!