It has been 12 years since I finished university and 16 when I stepped out of high school. Yes! That is how old I am!!! Anyway, before I digress, keeping in touch had always been a challenge. The first one being — obtaining and maintaining contact details. Once you have it, you’d probably slip into another no-talk gap and then you remember that you have this person’s email address and you drop him or her another line as if you have re-acquainted again for the first time after a long time of silence! Phew! That was a long sentence. I told you, I digress.
Anyway, when I first moved outside of the Philippines, it was really difficult, not entirely impossible to have kept in touch. But with the advent of the internet (bright glow with a ta-da sound effect!) keeping up to date had really been easy, and cheaper, too. However, with this technology at hand, I was just in touch with the same people I kept in contact with since I left school. Same circle.
Then came Friendster. At first, I refused to accept all the invitations sent my way by different people from work. I succumbed after much prodding especially when my 2 other closest friends (not from school) also signed up. I was amazed at how by ex-schoolmates suddenly found me. First from my high school then followed by friends from uni.
Not being contented with the growing number of “friends” (note: the ” ” does not refer to these people not being your real friends but referring to the terminology used by the Friendster site), Yahoo Groups started to pop up as well. Of course, Yahoo Groups were there before Friendster was but with the case of me and my ex-schoolmates, the establishment of the Yahoo Group came after the Friendster discoveries.
So there it was, we had a group where we could easily get in touch with one another. And this time, it is each and every member of group’s responsibiliy to keep their contact details up to date. During its beginning days, messages were being posted left and right. Now, there are still quite a few but not a prolific as before. Then, last week, our group’s moderator was contacted by another moderator of an even bigger group, the entire alumni of UP College Baguio — now UP Baguio. This was a result of a workshop organised at a recent alumni homecoming in preparation of next year’s event. Actually, I’m not sure if only those who graduated during the 80s and 90s have been invited. Well, it is still bigger than the current one we have, which is just for those who were freshmen back in 1990 — the earthquake year therefore we were the earthquake batch or freshies.
I joined this bigger group in the hope of finding other people that were part of my formative years in the state university. Indeed, it did not fail. A warm welcome by the moderator followed by the discovery of the email address of the musical director of our college choir (yes, I used to sing in a choir!) and responses to the welcome message from my “ates” (big sisters). By Friday night, I was so nostalgic.
It is definitely a wonderful feeling to re-connect with people who were at one of the most memorable times of my life. Now, the challenge is to really keep in touch.
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