“No way!”
How very much like me to forget the reason why I started on my blog tonight.. or this morning, rather.
The trip to Vigan took only about 5 hours and 30 minutes. That was quite a feat and our driver was in no way apologetic even if we all went flying everytime he hits a bump on the road, or even if we sway 90 degrees each time he makes a turn. Not that I’m complaining. I like fast rides, and the bottomline is that we got there real quick and it was a safe ride.
The trip back was another story. We left Vigan a little after 12, had a break for about an hour for lunch in Candon, Ilocos Sur, and a washroom break somewhere in La Union. The worst traffic we faced was in Urdaneta in Pangasinan, and somewhere in Tarlac.
The nine-hour trip is perhaps one of the longest ones I’ve taken by land. Sagada took about 15 or 16 hours, but I was asleep most of the time then. After lunch yesterday, I slept in the van for about an hour, and was wide awake until we got to Manila.
The other passengers in the van were asleep so I was left with my own thoughts from around 3 till 9 pm. For that six hours, my mind wandered about investment ideas (as if I had the money to invest), and even I toyed with the thought of putting up a cacao farm. The guy I interviewed last week at the AsiaFood expo made it sound so simple.
I thought about getting a 2,000-square meter land somewhere in Zambales where half would be turned into a farm lot, with all sorts of fruit trees aside from my cacao plants. I have also pictured the house I would build on the other half of the land, sort of like a resthouse for my mom and my lolo.
My thoughts wandered a bit more and reached a point where I realized the nickname "Kiko" actually sounds cute. Now, don’t get me wrong. There is an editor in BW called by that nick. It’s got nothing to do with him.
I really just thought it’s a cute nick. Then I remembered that my first boyfriend’s first name is Francisco (though everyone knows him by his second, James; and I call him Ja-mes, which totally irritated him). So there. I remembered his name, which led to remembering how he looked like. He was actually kinda cute - fair skinned, 5′8, pretty eyes, big smile. None of my friends found him as attractive, but then again, that brought me some sorta relief cz at least I know nobody would steal him away from me. He was also sweet, like, he’d walk with me after school almost everyday, but only up to the street corner. He also tried to call, pretending he’s someone else so my mom won’t suspect anything. I was a sophomore and my mom would have killed me had she known I was going steady with someone, a senior at that, who’s about to break my heart by going away for college. Sheez, what a teeny-bopper telenovela.
The rest of the ride got me really nostalgic that I even thought of how things could have turned out had I accepted him again. I recalled trying to review for a morning exam, just like everyone else, when my classmate handed this piece of paper with his note in it. I can’t exactly remember what’s in it but it was something about getting back together. It was more than a month after we broke up and the whole thing came as a surprise. I thought I was talking to myself but I said, "No way!" just a tad to loud that I attracted some of my seatmates’ attention. I can’t recall ever considering his offer after that. It’s plain crazy and regrets are, as of yesterday, eight years too late.
