Friends of long standing

One of the campaigns I'm currently working on is about long-standing friendships. My clients want to celebrate the joy and beauty of friendships, particularly those that have been around for decades.

I'm totally on-board when it comes to campaigns like this. After all, it's something that I'm a big believer of.

My longest standing friend is Eric, who I've known since we we're in kinder. (Yes! Kindergarten! At Learn and Play school in Sct. Gandia.)

Last Christmas, I got together with two of my close high school friends - Gary and Aldo. (And yes, Gary and I still talk about Star Wars as if we were still in high school.)

Then, there was the wedding in Boracay and Batangas, also celebrated with longtime and lifelong friends.

And the list goes on.

During last night's wedding reception, I met a lot of Mark's grade school friends. Which means they've been friends for more than 20 years! Amazing!

Some of them I've actually known for a while. Like Eric, Mike and Gelo - who is definitely one of the most genuinely nice people I've met.

But the others, I only met last night. And they're such nice and fun people. It was so refreshing to be surrounded by bright, happy people who exude so much humor, warmth and positive energy. It's just too bad that we didn't get to spend more time with them as we had an early flight the next day.

The good thing is, I'm sure that last night was just the first of many times I'll be spending with them. And that's something that I look forward to.

Firsts of 2017: First wedding

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of weddings. Whether I'm organizing it or attending it, there's an overwhelming feeling of love and magic that I experience.

Tonight, we attended 2017's first wedding - Gelo and Angel's celebration of love.

As expected, it was such a warm, heartwarming and emotion-packed event filled with happy moments spent with friends both new and not-so-new. And even if it was raining throughout the mass and reception, it didn't dampen the joy that everyone felt. Not one bit. In fact, it brought people even closer - figuratively and literally. (We were bunched together while dodging the rain. Harhar.)

This is a great way to start off the year of weddings. And I'm looking forward to more this year.

The honorary student

In Japan, I'm commonly known as "the honorary student." That's because the Pinoy students often see me hanging out in GRIPS, and Sunday afternoon was no different. With the cake that Ate Bullet made as centerpiece, we had a coffee and cake get together in school, and I got to meet the new batch of kohais.

This is actually the 4th batch of Masteral and Doctoral students that I've met in GRIPS. The first one was the batch of Mark, Ivy and Macel. They were followed by Laarni, Kruni and Daniel. Third was Maraya, Ayla and Yvitte.

It's nice to get to meet my new "classmates."

Bill, please

Today, we had lunch with Mark's schoolmates to celebrate the birthday of one of my new friends here in Japan - Karen.

And we didn't eat at just any restaurant, we ate at Gonpachi.

If the name sounds familiar, it's because this restaurant where Kill Bill was shot. Particularly, that awesome fight scene with The Bride and Gogo.

So, whenever you're here, you don't just ask for the bill. 

You ask for the Kill Bill.