Google me

Sometimes during the week, it dawned to me to google my college friends, wondering what ever happened to them. It was was more than twenty years since I graduated from the university and tracing them will surely be fun. Of course, it sould been easier to trace them using a more specific search engines like going to university alumni web pages, but googling may give a more skewed perspective: listing of published literatures, conferences attended, social clubs, blog-sites, and, court cases. In this process, a little of something were revealed, perhaps un-conspicuously.

First, I started to wonder about my girlfriend. Back then, losing her was a big deal. More, after losing her to that mongrel-replacement-boyfriend. The last news I heard about her was she had gone to states to pursue graduate studies and leaving her boyfriend. I thought they would marry. University days were surely hell seeing them together. But that was long time ago. And like anything else grounded by time, pains, like roses, were whittled to become dust.

Search gave me interesting results. She finished her PhD and working in a US-Federal agency on brain- research. She was here last year, and married now. She seems very active in Balik-scientist programme of the Philippine government, which I found to be very responsible. I looked for her pictures, in case if she retains her youthful features. Of course, expecting twenty-plus years to unchange and un-age her is absurd. But somehow, our mind remembers the features we love from the person we cared: pinkish cheek, kinky eyes, hopping gait, boisterous laughter, happy lips, and, un-kept hair. We remember by the context of appearances. And memory, is itself a double-helix: double strands of feelings and features caressing.

And surely, I found her picture, together with the research group in her office. She gained weight, but not that heavy. Her hair remained un-kept, which may be rude, considering it was a formal group picture. I searched for more for her husband's pictures and children (if any), but I came back empty. Though contacting her is possible, finding her again is enough.

I looked for more about my batch mates, or my co-graduates back in 1986. Most of them had gone to finish their PhD's abroad and resided there. Their published technical research works can attest to that. In my latest count, out of 13 that graduated in chemistry that year, only four was left to practice chemistry in the Philippines. That was a third of the class! We may have the most number of PhD's, but surely a brain drain for the country.

Of course, this is nothing to inveigh. I remember a professor once said, 'We don't need them here; They do not want to be here!' Well said and dissonantly pointed to un-nationalistic.

Then I went to search more for my not so close friends and, best friends in the Dormitory. Most of results returned empty and un-related court cases. Maybe they were not that internet savvy at all. Or my method is obviously droll.

Until I wonder whatever happen to my friends Andoy and Toto. Nothing special, but plain curiousity. Back then, my life in the university can only be defined by my two friends. They defined my day by being the measure of variance. Toto was the assertive type, with the talent to yank from warlike stance to a spiritual duff . I never saw him fight, nor hurt another person, but somehow, I couldn't figure out if it's all but acting.

Andoy, on the other hand, was the writer. He was emotional and a mathematical nerd. He kept a gray-linen journal and carried it like a bible. It contained poems and write-ups of things for persons and places. But I think, it was more of poems than anything else. He had this passion to join quiz competitions from different academic organizations. I thought, it was really his knack to join and win, but I realize now, it was more of economics than anything else; Having the chance to win a month's allowance at the same time had fun, was not bad at all.

Searching for Toto was like playing an un-even handed dice at the beto beto stall. No chance of winning and finding relevant results. He might be too disinterested in the internet nor just too clever to be untraceable.

Finding Andoy was totally different. His digital footprints were swaggerly plastered all over the place. He is a major contributor to Pinoy Poet club, and continually been an active member. And his blog sites are virtual window to his life. He was blogging since 2004, and his initial entry were poems from that gray-linen journal. Even scanning the hand written pages of the poems.

Transferring the journal logs to blogs is virtual resurrection of dead poems to digital universe. And with links to various diggs, no one knows where and, when, your blog will end up. It may end up to a complete stranger, enthused by your blogs, may pun your words to a radical idea. Or it may end up to your long lost friend, with common stories re-told, can cascade years of treasured memories. And all of these, can be uncanny, and yet funny; human, and yet technological; emotional, and yet, mathematical. Journal log, and yet, web log.

Start: 25 October 2008 7:43 pm Sunday
End: 26 October 2008 11:00 pm Monday
@ home in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental, Philippines