Sunday, September 16, 2007

bai 8 presents...



we call ourselves "bai 8". pronounced "bayi", bisaya for "babae". 8 because, well, walo kami.

it started when the barkada of an ex, composed of nine dudes, put up their own store on campus as part of their marketing requirement and named it "laki 9". theirs made semantic sense at least while we...wala, mga copycats lang gyud, hehe.

but the name stuck. it was how our friends and admirers (ehem! haha!) knew us.

the friendship began in carson hall, way back in '93. it managed to survive high drama, individual neuroses, occasional mental derangement, boyfriend horrors, physical distance, and time. it is still a wonder to us why we've gravitated to one another, why we are still truly, madly, deeply bonded.

we all have dominant personalities. when we fought, we fought passionately. no one backs down. i suppose along the way, we all agreed to disagree. oddly, we've observed na nag-aaway lang kami ng todo 'pag kumpleto kaming walo; but if even just one is absent, peace is somehow kept.

wowie is a nurse in the US, chevas works in dubai, bing remains a silliman professor in dumaguete, ana is a wildlife advocate in subic, joko works as a nurse in zamboanga, rhina runs a business in dipolog, while tootsie, registered physical therapist, and i, interior design-slash-travel consultant, are finally together in davao.

thank God for technology, we are able to keep in touch no matter the location and timezone. sillimanians.com was our salvation, up until it shut down. bing said mura siya ug napi-angan because we suddenly had no access to bai 8 talks. we all felt that sense of loss and that is sincerely the truth.

as independent as we all are, our bond is as essential to us as breathing. we are who we are because of what we've been through and because we've been spiritually together for every "been-through", our self-identity will always be intertwined.

2 comments:

Olga said...

Hi teng,
what dont you start an e-group? i have no idea how to do it but some of my high school classmates started one, and that's how everyone communicates.

teng said...

Hi olga!

narcissists that we are, we actually have our own website, hehe. but i got tired of maintaining it. we finally ended up creating a bai 8 account on friendster that's for our eyes only :)