White hair chronicles XX - death and reunion

This past weekend I met old friends from two different chapters in my life. The two vastly different reasons for the occasions are becoming recurring themes for my white hair chronicles. They always remind me of my graying hair.

An office mate from my first job lost her year long battle with cancer. She was a comadre, a very close friend, a confidante. She was a vibrant, colorful personality, definitely a character that you will never forget. When we learned about her diagnosed condition last year, friends and colleagues immediately offered prayers for her quick and full recovery. For a good part of the year, the prayers seemed to work. She regained her strength, her hair and her zest for life. But cancer is such a traitorous disease. It came back to attack her other organs. In the end, her illness may have claimed her mortal body but we, her friends who had a sort of reunion at her funeral wake, know her faith and spirit are unbowed.

Still on reunions - Facebook has brought together my elementary school classmates. A classmate who had lived in Texas for more than half of her life flew into town. She isn't the shy, innocent, prepubescent girl that we knew anymore. She metamorphosed into a sophisticated, articulate, tennis playing mom who can fix flood soaked homes DIY style. Another classmate, who we remember to be another shy girl, has a rather winsome smile and intriguingly fairer complexion in her profile photo. Facebook updates, however, can never be enough. We had to meet in person. And so we did. And we're glad we did.

Thirty plus years may add white hairs and 60 pounds (kilos to some). It may ravage our bodies. But we, my comadre and my batchmates, no matter what, will always stay forever young.

White Hair Chronicles IX - COBOL is 50

We mark this month the 50th year of the COBOL language. COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) is one of the oldest programming language. It is also the first computer language I learned. I had to study it back in college. We used punched cards then for our programs that run on big-double-cabinet sized computers at the university.

According to Wikipedia, a specification for COBOL was initially designed by Grace Hopper. Committees were set up to recommend an approach to a common business language. On September 18, 1959, they decided on COBOL for the name.

I also used COBOL in my job as an Operations Research analyst, though I didn't use punch cards anymore, I typed directly on to dumb terminals of a ref-sized mainframe. That mainframe, which had a 90 MB hard disk (yes that's right 90 megabytes) that took half-day to format. There were no defragment tools then. But it also had a BASIC (BASIC itself is 45 years old) version that can do matrix algebra. COBOL is still very much around, though largely unseen.

Those were the days. Life was so much simpler.

"Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now" - (My Back Pages-Bob Dylan)

Before the end of the innocence

Remember when the days were long/ And rolled beneath a deep blue sky/ Didn't have a care in the world/ With mommy and daddy standing by/ When "happily ever after" fails/ And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales...
...Who knows how long this will last/ Now we've come so far, so fast/ But, somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us/ I need to remember this/ So baby give me just one kiss/ And let me take a long last look/ Before we say good bye...
...But this is the end/ This is the end of the innocence - Don Henley "The End of the Innocence"

I met with some of my elementary schoolmates still based in Manila for a few hours of banter over pichi-pichi, barbecue, and originally San Juan fare pancit from Aling Banang and Big Scoop ice cream. There was plenty of food to go around for the eight of us who made it to the feast. Some of us have not seen each one for over thirty years. This is catching up bigtime.

I had to give them something, a small token for finding time to meet a classmate who came all the way from the south. I knew copies of the latest scandals will be a good give-away. I was not wrong. It was well appreciated. We went online for a video chat with classmates now based overseas but we were only half-successful. Still we had a good chat with those sacrificed sleep just to stay with us.

We first knew each other when we were in the age of innocence. As I recall now, we did not even had romantic notions then. It was the age for fairy tales, the happily ever afters. After thirty-five years, not everyone has her happily ever after, but they live more happily even after. That is what matters.

Today we can talk without embarrassment about anything. And I mean anything and everything. Someone in the group said this would not be possible a few years ago. We are once again at an age when we can get away with most things. It's a big jump from our simple innocence then to the harsh cynicism today. Don Henley sang about the end of the innocence and one's need to go back, to take one last look, before we all say goodbye. I think that's the reason why we like these mini-reunions.

White Hair Chronicles II

"'In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." - Benjamin Franklin

I am in that part of the demographics where you have reunions of your nth reunion. Actually, it is that age where you go to more funeral wakes, some 20+ years after the spate of weddings, baptisms, birthdays. This year, I've been to 3 or 4 wakes, the last one just the other night. My father died 2 years ago, after an uncle died, then last year another uncle and my grandpa also died.

Icons from childhood fall one by one. Yesterday, David Carradine, Kung-Fu's Caine, was found dead in a hotel room in Thailand. His character was a boyhood idol of mine; philosophical, inquisitive, bright, pacifist. Another boyhood favorite who recently passed away is Marilyn Chambers. She starred in Behind the Green Door, a porn movie, which by today's standards would bore one to stiff. It did that to me then, in another sense.

People, by nature, are afraid of death and dying. To conquer that fear, we turn to religion which assures us that death is not really the end but the beginning of some other life. Science says that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it merely changes form. But still, it is this life, as we know it, that we want and not some unknown afterlife. So we fight illness, we find ways to hang on to dear life.

No one can win over death. It is a natural part of life that will happen sooner or later. All of us will go, cliche-ish but true. Some have gone, some are in the pre-departure area, all must be prepared. So before we all go to that great big reunion, that great gig in the sky, we hold many reunions here on earth to banter, reminisce, recall our youth, while partaking cholesterol-laden food that will hasten our progress into the afterlife.

Meeting old friends II

Facebook reconnected me with friends way back from my elementary school days. The virtual reunion on cyberspace and the photo/video sharing whet the desire to see old friends in person. It is a logistical nightmare when half of the people are abroad and the rest are scattered all over the country. So we do it in small steps. We hold mini-reunions to plot the big one.

As in my reunion with former office mates, it is uncanny to vividly remember how we all looked before and now see the changes that thirty-five plus years can do. To me, reunions are always heartwarming. We had halo-halo over halo-halong kwento. Alas, three hours of chit-chat are never enough to catch up after thirty-five years of being apart.

It was a roller-coaster ride of emotions. For a moment grieving for those who passed away, then sympathizing with romantic heartaches, then feeling good for the big winners. We truly enjoy these mini-reunions because we enjoyed our previous time together, thirty-five plus years ago. It turned out to be so enjoyable that we resolved to search for others from the batch. So this is a shout out for graduates of San Juan Elementary School-1974. Get in touch. See you soon.

Meeting old friends

I got word that a couple of co-workers got back in town and would like to meet old friends. It would be fun to reconnect with friends who once shared the same passion for OR and IT in the early days of the PC, so to MOA I went. It's uncanny to vividly remember how we all looked before and now see the changes that twenty plus years can do.

Reunions are heartwarming. Old friends sharing lunch together after years apart, retelling tales of old memories always with a laugh, even the ones that hurt before. Folks enjoy reuniting with people only if they enjoyed their previous time together. I am sure we all enjoyed the brief time together better than the lunch we had.