eyeball

I started maintaining this blog a couple of years back.

it was the early part of this year, when she started reading and posting comments on my blog. she is a filipina lawyer based in new york. she stays in manhattan with her italian husband and one year old daughter, jada. together with them is her pet akira, a one year old female alaskan wolf.

akira's actual photo courtesy of nova

yes you read it right. a wolf. uhuh. its not a huskie. its a wolf and don't ask me, how it play bites because i don't want to know either.
i remember the first comment she gave me:
"Just browsing through and saw that you're a fellow Filipino, and studying law..."
after that, there were already exhanges of thoughts and ideas. but it was just this holy week, when we both didn't expect something to happen.

i think it was black saturday when i've posted something about the film "kailangan kita" by aga mulach and claudine barreto.

basically the film was quite nostalgic for me and very well done. for it captured atleast the real picture of bicol and the families living within it. with my delight i also wrote something about my dad in the same post. I described how he basically looks like, his roots and how he is inside our family.
the next day, she left a comment, "Chinese bicolano father? My heart raced just a bit faster as I read about your family background. My father is also chinese bicolano, from Juban, Sorsogon. "
"what?!" this was the first word that came out of my mouth after reading it. juban, sorsogon is my father's hometown. i spent my four years of highschool living there, when the entire family migrated from manila to this place because of my dad's job.
and she continued, "the way that you described the typical bicol personality, well, I can honestly say you have just described my father in detail. Perhaps, we may be related in some way. How strange that would be, but in a good way. My family name is Alindogan."
i literally fell from my seat. Alindogan is not a common surname compare to cruz, reyes etc.

"this woman is probably throwing a prank at me," i thought. then i realized, i am blogging anonymously. so there's no way she'll know anything about me. i asked her if she can send a sketch of her family tree.
coincidentally, we found out that we're closely related. surprise! surprise!
then last week she flew here to the philippines and invited me for a meet up. at first sight, i was really hesitant since i really never do eyeballs before. but i realized that it was a different thing. so i agreed.
the moment i saw her sitting at starbucks, i already knew that we're related. she looks exactly like most of my female counsins. She is fun to be with and we share a lot of things in common: travelling, art, piercings (she has atleast four: two in her L.ear one in her R. ear and one on her nose. she also has tattoos) and movies. except for the wolf, ofcourse.
we walked and strolled all day. it was actually a good thing that she speaks and uderstand perfect filipino. although she was born and raise in the US.
unfortunately, we weren't able to have a drinking session to test if we really are both alindogan. because some relatives actually say that aside from the bold star reputation brought upon by our aunt, liz alindogan, we are also deemed as heavy drinkers.
she already left last monday back to new york. but we both assured ourselves that it would not be our last eyeball.

see you in october, novasan!