Friendster@Herbench

this has been written when I was in second year college.

“At last, it’s all done, it’s lunchtime!”

I said to myself when our professor in Philosophy had ended our discussion for that day.  It was already second semester and my stay in the university for the first semester has brought great transformation in me.  I have learned to be an independent critical thinker and have gained self-confidence which was indispensable in our everyday living.

It has been part of daily routine to drop by the Learning Resource Center Computer Room to avail my thirty-minute free internet privilege.  I have acquired the notion to always maximize my resources and time – squeeze the most out of everything – that is why I absolutely made it sure to utilize my leisure time for worthy things.  In the computer room, I checked my emails. As I went through every email, my attention was aught by this invitation to sign-up for friendster.com.  Without wasting time, I created my own account and thought that it would be a way to interact with other people and obtain new knowledge and insights from them  “That would be cool”, I said.

I was not betrayed by my preconceived notion and it has paid off.  Everyday as I check my account, I found a great deal of new friend requests and messages.  I even got the chance to reconcile with m old pals through friendster.  Eventhough my friends and I were always together, I still deemed that something was missing – gimmick.  My friends were aloof from this idea instead they chose to go home early to study.  I was upset for I certainly believed that I must enjoy life because it is too short and that the best experiences can be found outside the confines of the academe and that through frequent interaction, development is imminent.

I went to the computer room, opened my friendster account and started to browse accounts of other people, read their profiles, and seemingly ransacking the entire network for that one - gimmick buddy.  I was lucky to find some with the same interests but most of them were from far places and usually foreigners until I found one.  At first, I was hesitant to send this guy a message for all I knew that in the Philippines, a conservative country, it was a rare thing to do because of the attached notion of homosexuality to it.  A firebrand, I was.  I sent him a friend request with a short message – Hi! Can we be friends?

The next day, I found a warm response from him that it was fine with him.  I replied his email telling him that I am looking forward to get acquainted with him and maybe could hangout together sometime.  He responded that it was his pleasure to be friends with me.  Days have passed by rapidly; we have had our communication through offline messages and became ‘cyber’ chums.  We shared thoughts and ideas, argued about matters of life and issues, and even advanced in asking personal queries regarding each others’ personal lives.

Second semester was about to end, examinations queued up; both of us became busy so our communication has temporarily subsided.  At that time, most of my attention was diverted to boning as part of my plan to shift to another university.  My assiduousness conferred me the opportunity to be admitted to the said university and of course it did reach his knowledge.  Our communication became frequent again and it was no longer through offline messages.   We exchange contact numbers.   It seemed that we now had a better communication.  In an instant, we could text each other wherever and whenever we wanted.   Similar to what we have been doing before, we exchanged forwarded messages, quotes, and jokes.  We were both open-minded and so our conversations indeed touch hot topics including those of the homosexuals.

Half last semester, I almost got tedious of my sedentary life in school.  I spent most of time surfing the net and so I was able to exploit the friendster network.  For the second time, I checked his profile and have drawn mystery out of his being.  His descriptions of himself were very far from what can be seen on his pictures which I did not notice before.  At that moment, I was bombarded with so much perplexity and filled with so many inquiries.  I came up with an idea – I would meet him soon.

The day has come; I went to SM after class and have decided to meet up with him.  I walked directly to Bench store.  I was nervous at that time because it was my first time to meet someone in person and it was intensified by the perception that whom I would be meeting up was a guy too.  At the same time, I had no iade of how he really looks except that according to him he was tall, dark, and handsome.  I thought of putting off the meet up not until I realized nothing was wrong with it.  I approached the guard and asked for him.  The guard answered that he does not know someone with that name.  He pointed the facing Herbench store and told me that I might find hi there.  I took my chances and proceeded to Herbench.  During that day, the people were massive and from afar I saw someone cleaning the glass panes.  All in my mind was to find him and did not bother to text him anymore because I wanted to surprise him.  I went near this guy cleaning the panes and without timidity asked him if he knew the guy I was looking for.  A moment of silence followed.  Both of us were mouth shut and in deep thought.  I broke the silence and asked him again the same inquiry.  This guy who appeared stunned abruptly revitalized from a seemingly state of coma and answered in a ludicrous manner that he was the one I was looking for.  The situation is now in favor of him.  I was now the one who appeared astounded because I never thought that I was already talking to the person I was looking for.  It was definitely a hilarious encounter and we laughed aloud without thinking that there were other people around us whose attention would be caught by the explosive sounds of our laughter.  He wiped his hands and gave a firm handshake.   We talked how our friendship has started and were amused how it has flourished.  He gagged that our friendship has outweighed love stories ever known and a sudden burst of giggles followed.  I went home filled with happiness.

Time flung so fast and it has been a year now since I have known him.  I learned so many things from him.  He taught me about life and served as my mentor.  I have come to realize that friendship is like a seed.  Friendship, like seed needs nourishment, must be nurtured with love, trust, and good communication.  It would mature in due time and would eventually bear fruits.  These fruits add spice to one’s life.  All you have to do is to harvest and eat it.  I have eaten a great deal of them and one of the delicious fruits I have tasted was the fruit from him – by the way, his name is Jayson.