{"id":1204,"date":"2009-05-10T06:46:25","date_gmt":"2009-05-09T19:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seawind-network.com\/?p=1204"},"modified":"2009-05-10T06:46:25","modified_gmt":"2009-05-09T19:46:25","slug":"mini-reunion-in-sydney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rommelpascual.com\/index.php\/20090510\/mini-reunion-in-sydney\/","title":{"rendered":"Mini-Reunion in Sydney"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>
\"Wilma,<\/a>

09-May-09, Sydney - Australia: Wilma, Menchie, Cynthia, Michelle and Jeanne at the Old Quarantine Station in Manly.<\/p><\/div>\n

Mixed feelings of anxiety but mainly of excitement were in the air with the impending mini reunion in Sydney\u00a0of\u00a0 five 1979 HFA high school batchmates.\u00a0\u00a0 Menchie (Maicle- Castro), Cynthia (Baron-Cunanan)\u00a0and I\u00a0had a mini-reunion already a few years back, but this time we have two additions.\u00a0 Wilma (Bravo-Palor), who we found out from yahoo group is based in Melbourne, and our special guest batchmate, Michelle (Micu-Velasquez) from Manila!<\/p>\n

About a month ago, Michelle has alerted me that there is a high chance that she and her husband, Tony, will be visiting Sydney.\u00a0 Once she has confirmed that they were granted their visas, I immediately advised Menchie, Cynthia and Wilma of her upcoming visit and proposed a mini-reunion here in Sydney.\u00a0 I was surprised having\u00a0 many missed calls from Menchie afterwards.\u00a0 When she finally got in touch with me, I was in awe of her goods news that she would be able to come to Sydney for the mini-reunion.\u00a0 Her plan was to fly in early on Saturday, 9 May, join the mini-reunion, then fly back home to Brisbane\u00a0early evening of the same day.\u00a0 As I knew this would be a rare opportunity, I immediately booked Michelle and Tony’s time to secure that we would be able to spend the day with them.\u00a0 Soon as I have confirmed this with Michelle, Menchie rang up both Wilma and Cynthia.\u00a0 Amazingly both ladies are also available to attend!\u00a0 Wilma would be flying in from Melbourne and staying overnight with a friend.\u00a0 Cynthia is from Mascot here in Sydney,\u00a0 just few kilometres away from Sydney Airport.\u00a0 So everything has been set and confirmed.\u00a0 We have decided to keep it hush-hush from the yahoo group just in case for some reason the plan doesn’t push through \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

About 2\u00a0weeks heading towards the day of the mini-reunion, Menchie and I were so excited we started planning our itinerary for the day.\u00a0 Next we presented our itinerary to Michelle and found out that\u00a0 they’ll actually\u00a0be staying within the city CBD for\u00a04 days and may actually be going to the places we were planning in our itinerary!\u00a0 My heart sank and panic started to set-in because it meant we needed to change the itinerary quickly!\u00a0 We wouldn’t want to bore Mitch and Tony with the same places!<\/p>\n

\"View<\/a>Anyway, about a week towards the reunion, I started searching for other Sydney attractions not too far from the airport.\u00a0 What kept coming up was Manly.\u00a0\u00a0I’ve been to this place about four times before and at each time, all I remember was taking a ferry ride from Circular Quay and from the wharf, walking down The Corso to get to the other side of the town which\u00a0was lined by the beaches from the Tasman Sea.\u00a0 Along the way would be small specialty\u00a0shops and in front of the beaches would be a selection of cafes and restaurants.\u00a0\u00a0 As I didn’t know the place well enough, I searched for places to eat.\u00a0 One place kept coming up with a good review, fairly new, and from the write-up at its website, seemed an interesting place.\u00a0 This was the Boilerhouse Restaurant at the Q-Station (Quarantine Station).\u00a0 It’s an old place\u00a0 where people used to be quarantined and now converted into accommodations, a museum and a restaurant.\u00a0 To get there we had to ring for their shuttle service to pick us up. \u00a0 So there, I thought, a new and interesting place!\u00a0 This will be a viable\u00a0alternative to the original option.<\/p>\n

Two\u00a0days before\u00a0the day, \u00a0Menchie rings and confirms, although recently she had a scare of missing out because of\u00a0 having\u00a0a flu.\u00a0 Mitch rings me up and tells me that they are now staying with her brother in Green Valley.<\/p>\n

One day before the day, Cynthia\u00a0rings up and requests if we could pick her up from her place right after we pick up Menchie and Wilma from the airport.\u00a0 I ring up Wilma to confirm that she’s coming and as an extra measure that we don’t miss recognising her, I asked what colour of clothes she might be wearing\u00a0 to which she said bright yellow \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

So anyway, everyone knew that the original\u00a0itinerary may be changed slightly but the\u00a0 meeting place would still be at Circular Quay at 10 am.<\/p>\n

\"At<\/a>“D” day comes.\u00a0 Everything is on schedule.\u00a0 Menchie arrived on time.\u00a0 I met up with her\u00a0where she was waiting for Wilma’s arrival.\u00a0 I was telling her about Wilma’s bright yellow coat, when suddenly we see this lady in bright yellow coat\u00a0 so we yelled, “Wilma!”.\u00a0 We were on the spot, it was her!\u00a0 Of course we had warm embraces for each other, imagine almost 30 years of\u00a0 not having seen each other!\u00a0 So catching up with one another started as we drove towards Cynthia’s house.\u00a0 We finally find Cynthia and\u00a0 Jo’s house after a little mix up with house numbers.\u00a0 Jo tells us that Cynthia is still dressing up and invited us to their house while waiting.\u00a0 And woh!\u00a0 We were impressed by their huge house!\u00a0 Anyway, Cynthia comes out and says how about having a bit of\u00a0coffee first?\u00a0 After a little cajoling, we all gave in because we all haven’t had breakfast yet!\u00a0 Wilma says she brought some homebaked almond cookies and tikoy\u00a0that we can\u00a0have with our coffee. \u00a0Yes!!!\u00a0 But just as we were about to start to squash our hunger, I said, “Oh no, Mitch will miss out on this!”\u00a0\u00a0 So Cynthia says why not call Mitch and tell her brother to bring them to their house instead.\u00a0 Simple, we thought.\u00a0 But not really because Mitch’s brother is not that familiar with Sydney CBD.\u00a0 \u00a0So it took a lot of phone calls and driving around the CBD maze until we finally pinned down the place where we could meet up \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Fortunately, Mitch’s brother, Jojo is kind natured and left Mitch and Tony with us with\u00a0a smile on his face even after the gruelling cat and mouse chase we subjected him to \ud83d\ude42\u00a0\u00a0 Anyway, all frustration of the cat and mouse chase went away as soon as we warmly welcomed Mitch and Tony.\u00a0\u00a0We briefly introduced the men to each other, Rommel, Tony and Jo.<\/p>\n

\"Wilma<\/a>Back at Cynthia’s house we finally sit down for some tea and coffee, cookies & tikoy, tarts and muffins.\u00a0 All through out we’ve been catching up on each other, remembering some old classmates and teachers, remembering some funny incidents, etc.\u00a0 We didn’t realise that time has passed by so quickly that it was now 12pm!\u00a0 So after a brief tour of Cynthia’s house and some photo opportunites, we headed towards Circular Quay where we would be taking a ferry to Manly wharf.\u00a0 On the way to the ferry, we had photo opportunities at the Sydney Opera house.\u00a0 Wilma’s good looks attracted a special attention from\u00a0a moving statue:-).<\/p>\n

At the ferry, there would have been good views at the outer deck but because they were full, we opted to stay inside and just continue catching up again until we reached our destination.\u00a0 At the wharf,\u00a0 we phoned Q-Station for a shuttle service which picked us up\u00a0 and brought us up to the Boilerhouse Restaurant.\u00a0 The 5-10 minutes drive was reminiscent of the drive inside Camp John Hay.<\/p>\n

\"Lunch<\/a>We enjoyed our lunch at the restaurant.\u00a0 Food was okay and service was great.\u00a0 Without wasting any time, right after lunch, we took more photos with the interesting views\u00a0outside with our new pashminas – c\/o Mitch.\u00a0 Time was ticking away and our “Cinderella” aka Menchie had to be brought back to the airport to catch a 7pm flight.\u00a0 Wilma’s friend, we found out, was just a few metres away from our house, so we brought her there.\u00a0 Tony and Mitch were picked up by her brother at Cynthia’s place.<\/p>\n

And that’s how our satisfying day ended.\u00a0 The experience of\u00a0 this mini-reunion\u00a0is priceless.\u00a0 The moments we shared, matchless.\u00a0 And stories we exchanged, unforgettable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"In<\/a><\/td>\n \"Outside<\/a><\/td>\n \"Bridge<\/a><\/td>\n \"Almost<\/a><\/td>\n \"Opera<\/a><\/td>\n \"Look<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

… Click this link for more photos.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

09-May-2009: Mixed feelings of anxiety but mainly of excitement were in the air with the impending mini reunion of five 1979 Holy Family Academy high school batchmates. Menchie (Maicle- Castro), Cynthia (Baron-Cunanan), Wilma (Bravo-Palor), Michelle (Micu-Velasquez) and I had a mini-reunion in Sydney, Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feature-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rommelpascual.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rommelpascual.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rommelpascual.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rommelpascual.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rommelpascual.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rommelpascual.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rommelpascual.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rommelpascual.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rommelpascual.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}