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What began as a little dinner devised by fast food-hungry, McCafé-enthralled friends has now blossomed into something of a tradition.

Since November, one of the favorite Atenean hangouts closed for renovations. To cater to the coffee-requiring college crowd, McDonalds was being transformed into a McCafé. And Ateneans waited, impatiently for its return.

When it officially reopened during the second week of January (which was the first week of school), students would flock to the “new” restaurant and were fascinated by the changes made—new chairs, new ambiance, a new bar. Everyone was just awestruck by the alterations, and my friends and I were no different. So of course our first school day into the New Year definitely warranted a trip to the promised land of fast food, McDonalds/McCafé.

So there we were, four college students, walking towards the brightly-lit, packed restaurant with eager smiles on our faces. After ooh-ing and ahh-ing (of course it wasn’t my first time to visit since the renovation, I was still fascinated like the rest of them) at McDonalds’ facelift, we seated ourselves and ate ordinary McDonalds specials.

After quietly eating for about thirty minutes (except pal Anne Silva who nearly double that time to eat), we’d just sit back, scrape off even the tiniest crumbs off our food baskets (hey, McDo guards are really strict), and ignored the menacing glare of the restaurant security who shoo away customers who’ve finished eating, and just talk.

It’s corny but we’d talk about school, evil professors, injudicious homework, nameless people; we’d hit each other, cut across one another, eat each other’s food and then find a way to laugh about it. It’s not a one time thing and we’ve been doing it for a month now. In fact, we dubbed ourselves as the “Monday Night McDo Club”—four (usually more) quirky people who will never run out of things and people to talk about.
So every Monday you could see us, at the loudest table—the artist, the weirdo, the visionary, the normal, and occasionally our mommy MM (who’s in the picture and who’s younger that half of us) spilling juice and cracking jokes until one of us remembers that we still have homework and tests to do for the rest of the week.

Most people hate Mondays. Who could blame them? It’s the end of the weekend and the beginning of another dreadful week. But with friends like these, Mondays are definitely moments to look forward to.

Since the month of “hearts” and “prom” is just around the corner (a.k.a. February), let me start by sharing with you a story that I know of…

It was high school prom and there was this guy who really liked this girl but he didn’t have the courage to ask her out. The girl was aware of the affection of the guy for her but she ignored him because she just didn’t feel the same way. Fast-forward years later, the girl (who’s now a lady) becomes a successful doctor and so did the guy (who grew up to be a gentleman.) However, the lady stayed single and the man had a family, but they already lost contact since high school.

The man had two sons and a loving wife. Unfortunately, his wife is dying because of an incurable disease and she knows very well about the lady whom his husband had feelings for when he was still in high school. She knows that his husband’s feelings towards that lady was real and so she told his husband that if ever she leaves this earth, she wants that lady to be the one who’ll be able to make him happy.

The worst scenario happened and the wife died. The husband still doesn’t know where to find the lady until one fateful night. It was their high school reunion. Some may call it “serendipity;” others would say that it was just plain coincidence. The man and the lady started talking again after so many years have passed. Months later, their regained friendship bloomed into something else. The man finally decided to be on bended knee and asked the lady in marriage. However, they’re now in their 40s and there’s still the fact that the man has two sons. The lady said “yes” and until now, they’re happy as any family should be.

My dear Candy Girls, this story is based on real-life. In fact, this “guy and girl”” happen to be one of the important people in our family. They are friends with my sister and I can’t help but get inspired whenever I hear their story. Honestly, I don’t really believe in the term “soulmate.” But in the case of this couple, I believe that they are really meant to be. Imagine being lost in touch for so many years and yet fate still finds a way to bring you back together? Sigh. Destiny can really be tricky at times but in the end, it’s all worth it!
I believe that love is truly unexplainable. I once asked a woman close to our family (and no, this is not the “girl” in the aforementioned story I just narrated) how she met her husband and I found out that they’ve only known each other for one week before they got married. Yes! ONE WEEK and they already decided to get married! You may ask if it’s worth it? I guess so because they now have three grown children and they’ll be celebrating their 26th wedding anniversary this year. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve known each other or how you met. What matters is your ability to keep the love alive no matter what. Do you get what I’m saying?
Anyway, ME? I once developed feelings for a good friend of mine and everything just became complicated between us. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a really nice person and I know he has every right to feel “awkward” towards me just because. The sad thing is, the “moving on” process was a torture because I knew my feelings for him will go nowhere… C’mon! It’s only one-way for goodness’ sake! But at the end of the day, you know what? I realized that there are more important things than dwelling on a sick feeling like that. I guess time has dawned on me to finally have some real self-reflection because after almost 3 years, I was finally set free. It’s true that I love him and I always will but it’s not the kind of love I used to feel for him. I finally accepted the fact that the only thing we can ever share now is our good old friendship and I think that’s more than enough!

After all, the only medicine for a broken heart is LOVE—and it doesn’t always necessarily mean that it has to come from the opposite sex. Besides, what are our family and friends for anyway if not to love each and every one of us too, right? <3

I write poems for fun. I don’t really know how to write poems. I don’t read much poetry and I haven’t enrolled in any classes. I just write them for fun, for memories, for de-stressing.

I’m not sure if I’m good at it. You know those moments when you’re just overwhelmed with emotions that you just have to do something so you’d remember it forever? Yeah, I write poems on these occasions. When I feel the adrenaline rush brought by things like kilig and stressed moments, all coherent thoughts escape me. Usually, my ability to write complete sentences abandons me along with my rational mind. Instead, phrases are formed, random words are brought together, and I just begin writing and writing and writing.
I want my emotions to pour out of the things I write. I want my reader to feel how I felt when I wrote that piece. Like every writer, I want to be understood. But most of the time, I keep the poems to myself and write them in a notebook safely hidden somewhere in my room. So, I have no idea whether people understand my work or not.

Here’s one poem that I wrote three years ago in a school computer laboratory.

This feeling inside me

This feeling inside me
Is making me crazy
Daytime, blinding me
Noontime, starving me
Nighttime, tiring me—don’t know how

This feeling inside me
Is making me crazy
I want to run
I want to hide
I want to forget—don’t know why

This feeling inside me
Is making me crazy
I write stuff
I sing stuff
I talk about stuff—don’t know what

This feeling inside me
Is making me crazy
Daytime, I can’t see when I write so I run
Noontime, I starve so I sing when I hide
Nighttime, I’m tired so I talk when I forget

This feeling inside me
Is making me crazy
Blind, starve, tired
Running, hiding, forgetting
Write, sing, talk

This feeling inside me
This feeling inside me
Is making me crazy
Is making me crazy.

That’s it.

It’s not much. The persona sounds like a stressed girl obviously smitten with a guy. But actually, it’s really up to how you understand it.

In just a couple of words, random and repeating, I think I was able to fully explain how I was feeling when I sat down on that plastic chair and began typing. I remember shaking my head as if to relieve it from the stress that weighed like a sack of rice on my back. I just loosened up. I just de-stressed with poetry. I write poetry for fun.

And in this time of academic pressure, Candy Girls, my advice is to de-stress! Inhale, exhale, and do what you enjoy doing!

1. In matters of the health, there’s no such thing as being TOO sure. I was at home with the fever for four days, and although the thought crossed my mom’s mind, I never thought I had dengue or hemorrhagic fever. I thought it was the same old flu that took just took its course, and within a week, I’d be just fine. But we went to the doctor anyway for a check-up, just to be sure. We took that extra blood test, just to be sure. We had ourselves put on the waiting list for a room, before I was diagnosed, just to be sure. All the worrying and planning paid off in the end.

2. You can never drink too much water. In the span of 9 days I was at home and in the hospital, I went to the bathroom about 23948230120398 times — I’m not exaggerating! I literally drowned myself in fluids and became the bathroom’s best friend with all the water I was drinking. At first, when I didn’t know I had dengue, I simply thought it would send my fever away, so I was ingesting water like it was going to save my life. And when my platelet count started going down, it really was a lifesaver, so drink water was all I could do to help myself while I was at home.

3. Blood and needles are your friends in the hospital. Do not fear them. I am squeamish at the sight of my own blood, and needles really, really creep me out! Back to back episodes of Grey’s Anatomy or House, I love, but real-life needles, I cannot take. But I had to suck it up and cope (I hugged Ducky, my moose, tightly, looked away and breathed noisily through my mouth!) as I had needles stuck in the crook of my arm every 6 hours.

4. Learn to do things with both hands! One of my hands was always incapacitated, due to the IV drip, or because I didn’t want to move my arm right after blood was taken from me. So I learned how to eat, text, brush my teeth, and basically rely on my left hand more!

5. They don’t use needles for IV drips anymore! When it came time for the nurse to remove my IV from my hand, I watched intently, waiting for her to pull out a needle… and no needle came! Apparently, they only use a needle to puncture my skin, and there’s an extremely thin and straw-like contraption that’s left there in my hand instead.

6. Devise ways to keep yourself occupied in bed. Nine days meant A LOT of downtime, and most of the time, I was too sick to even watch TV, read, or use the computer. Count clouds, daydream about my dream house, my dream wedding (HAHA), sleep, pray – that’s what I did to pass the time.

7. Patience is a virtue I needed to acquire. Yes, the past nine days was one big exercise in patience. I had to wait for blood tests, wait for doctors, wait for results, wait for rooms to be vacated, waiting was a part of every little thing. And I did learn to wait.

8. Sometimes, all you can do is laugh and take a picture. Just when I’d been admitted, I was feeling relieved because finally! We found out what was wrong with me! But I was also feeling the tension because I hated blood tests, hated needles, and they were about to put an IV on me, so I just lay there, anxious, when my mom pulls out a camera. I was like, what! How can you take a picture at a time like this?! Besides, I looked really sabog, ugh. Haha, but the mood was lifted, plus, I had a picture to document the moment.

9. It’s never too late to start living! I consider myself the luckiest ever that I got through this okay – no complications, no bleeding (thank God hahaha wouldn’t have been able to take that!) nothing of that sort whatsoever. I’m so thankful that I am healthy again, and have the strongest desire to live life the best I can!

Royce and I have a history.

We met at my house, and we were introduced by a mutual friend. It was a warm night, a typical one in Manila, where temperature fluctuates between hot and dry and hot and humid; or between cold and dry and cold and wet, depending on the season. I was dressed casually, in a matching shirt-and-shorts combination that had never failed me (since, well, I’d never used it before in front of strangers); my hair was up because of the heat.

I thought he was attractive, but, as soon as I met his eyes, I knew that he was trouble. He had tanned skin, orbs of the same color—and probably insides just as dark. He wore a white sweater, which baffled me, but my mother explained it in a whisper, later on.

As time passed, I learned more about him. Beneath his flawless exterior, he’s bitter, really, in the way that a player is—as smooth as powder, hiding everything, or as much as he can. He’s the type who is difficult to understand—so complex, in fact, that you have to take him in little by little, savoring what you have of him before you can get more.

And, though I hated to admit it, I was interested.

The tension built up, but, still, I was cool—or as cool as a normal teenager could be under the circumstances. I smiled when asked about him, saying little, which was strange for me. I was different, but the same. I was the girl who’d always been hidden.

I met him again a few months ago, when Mom returned from Singapore. I was shocked to see him, but glad, too. However, I tried to play hard-to-get, putting on an expression that showed quite plainly that I didn’t care that he was around.

But it was an expression that lied because I did care. I cared more than I wanted to admit.

So when I saw him that morning, I didn’t pause. For once in my life, I took a chance.

I went for him.

He’s just delicious, isn’t he? :>