It is difficult to gather friends who are already adults even if you live in the same place together. Work or the "more important things" in your life will always be among the top execuses not to attend a gathering hosted by a friend, for example. In my case, I'm always available, actually too available that I've become the group's icon. lol! I'm talking about my friends back home. Last time we finally got together as an almost complete group was last Sunday, a post birthday celebration of a friend who now works and lives outside our city. We did not try to remember the old times, of course, why would we waste our precious time for that. Instead, we ate and got a little drunk, and talked and laughed like kids. We were supposed to sing in the videoke, but forgot about that bec there was just too much to catch up on. These are my childhood friends. And below is a list of other friends, of which I have at least one of almost each kind.
I got this one from a website, and i'm posting it here (wa ko nananghid). The author posted 19 types of friends, which I cut, revised, made some comments (in
italics) for this blog. Here goes...
The Best Friend: The gold standard of friendships. A best friend
listens but never judges, helps you out of a jam, tells it to you
straight, and often forgives a debt. Best friends resemble invisible
friends in that both are most common in childhood (and may not really exist).
I used to have a bestfriend before. And it's true that your bestfriend
always listens and never judges like what the author says. I remember those younger days, this bestfriend would never get tired of my telling her my problems and all. She would even cook my favorite food while i sit in their kitchen chair telling her all my present aches. And eveything would be over og mangaon na ming duha. It was at this stage of life that i weighed 56 kg while she 72, and we were both
teens then. Five years ago, she went abroad, and even with the distance, we've managed to keep our friendship, i think. And our weights as well.
The Old Friend: Ideally, a lifelong bond that stirs fond feelings and cherished memories...In reality, most old friendships are embedded in a complex economy of favors. President Bush rewrote the entire tax code for his old friends.
I am no president. But I'm almost always around for my friends. That sometimes they can become abusive of that benefit. Pero no worries, that is just a bit of a price to pay for keeping someone who is demanding, obnoxious, mean, annoying, and i can go on forever enumerating the bad side of me. :P
The Older Friend. Someone your senior who mentors you with wit and wisdom, as portrayed in the best-seller Tuesdays with Morrie.
I like this one. Good conversations, free coffee, and more freebies.
Because he/she earns more money than you do. Lol! Seriously, this type of
friend can also be an older sis/bro that you never had, minus the sugo. Hehe
The Wild Friend: The friend whose bad behavior never ceases to
entertain and may at times inspire you, for better or for worse. Though
wild friends get a bad rap, they save as many lives as they ruin.
Boring people—writers, for instance—desperately need wild friends.I don't I have wild friends in my list. And godhelpme, I'm not a
boring person. Lol!
The Ex-Friend: Don't ask, but if you do, the answer may well involve money or sex. Or both.
Former but never enemies. That'd be fine.
The Scary Friend: Someone who never fails to nudge you out of your comfort zone—way out. Scary does not mean quirky. If a friend likes to spend his weekends re-enacting Civil War battles in period dress, that's quirky. If he shows up at your door in uniform late on a weeknight, that's scary.
I'm so glad that although most of my friends are crazy, none of them
is scary. Ako ra ngali. nyahahah...
The Boss Friend: A person higher on the org chart who thinks your
brittle smile and the startled look in your eye is an invitation to further terrorize you outside the workplace.
People, stay away from bossy people. That's an order!
The Confidant: Someone who wheedles more out of you than you planned
to share. Sadly, many confidants are also talented gossips who will soon be bartering your deepest secrets for someone else's.
Oh, never trade secrets to people not in your circle. Seriously, you
know even from the first encounter if the person is "it" or not.
Well, anyway, secrets are secrets, they should be kept where they are
safe. Keep them here! (points to self!) ;)
The Single-Modifier Friend: Any companion you proudly describe, if
only to yourself, with one word: for instance, "my gay friend" if you happen to be straight, and vice versa. You can train yourself out of the habit by slowly adding modifiers, as in "my neat gay friend" or, with practice, "my socially inept and secretly homophobic straight friend with a godawfully bad haircut."
...I'm already used to hearing my college friends (most of the time if not always) introduce me to another person as a "classmate from college." While my workmates, me their “workmate” or “officemate” or former workmate, for that matter. When it should have been workmate slash friend or a college friend. Yeah, I like it when the word friend should always come in the introduction, I don't mind if adjectives like sexy, voluptuous, talented, or anything else that is
also me will be omitted. Just being "your friend," it's fine. (LOL)
The E-mail Friend: A digital update on the kind of letter-writing
friendships that thrived in the era between the invention of ink and the arrival of cable. If the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan claimed, then the message of most e-mail friendships is goofing off at work.
I think it's much better than textmates. Because you both get to exchange longer messages, and it's more fun than sending messages through SMS, which is bounded by characters and load. Emails give you more chance to say anything you want, and you know when a person is serious with your correspondence when he/she replies to your mails. Libre na bya ni, syaro moingun pa jud siya nga way load!
The Special-Interest Friend: Group friendships form around a shared
passion—for diving, food, movies, et cetera.
Because you share the same passion, this type of friend can actually make a very good company, bisag makadlawnan pa mog tabi.
The Friend-You-Only-Drink-With Friend: A subspecies of the
special-interest friend. In extreme cases you might not even recognize such people in the harsh light of day, having only seen them in the barroom glow—and from the side.
..I'm sorry I don't drink.
The Secondhand Friend: When someone introduces you to someone
else, supposedly because they think you'll hit it off, it could be a clever strategy to ditch you both. Which is good: Secondhand friends are a better deal than new friends, which, like cars, lose 20 percent of their value once they leave the showroom floor.
Secondhand or not, if you hit it off you hit it off. The value will always be there, granting it has been there since. Because a person is different from a thing of which value depreciates by the second!
The Dormant Friend: Every so often a dead friendship will spring back to life, bringing two people even closer together than they used to be. The reawakened friendship speaks to the mystery of friendship in general—especially
if you've forgotten why you drifted apart. But give it time; you will be reminded.
Basta ba, no bad words said during the hiatus.
The Friend with Benefits: Not the kid down the street with a
trampoline or a parrot that swears. We're talking sex buddies. Popularized in a lyric by singer Alanis Morissette, friends with benefits....
Hmmm...apart from that, there are also friends who only remember you when they need you. Ack!
The online Friend. The author forgot to add this. But this is self-explanatory...
I have a number of friends I only met online. And because I'm a bit of an internet freak, it feels good to have some familiar people in this new-age tambayan, too. I'm not talking about chatmates sa ym, bec I don't go there that often, and I don't enjoy chatting with strangers. I'm talking about fellow bloggers that have also become friends bisag di magkita. So there, i thank the author for providing me a nice material for this blog that has been dormant for over a week already. Baboo!
Past 7Am, the group started the first dive. a few-minute ride by speed boat from the resort's shoreline is the resort's marine protected area that was unfortunately littered by trash.
Hilton at early in the morning. All clean.
Shangri-La. Just adjacent to Hilton, which was my base for this activity. Just so glad they had me there ;) 
Tambuli Beach Resort is next to the Shang. This photo was taken when we were moving out of the place to proceed to Maribago, our next stop. 
This is already outside of the real thing. Taken on the morning before I went down to work. You see the rest of the island of Mactan gleaming with its beauty complemented by the nice sunrise. It really feels soo good to be up so early sometimes. Yep, with such a grand view, who'd ever complain. =)
Sunset. Another view from room 1213, where I was.
Sebu, Hilton's stuffed fish (sold for P500).
