When my friends said there was gonna be a farewell party, I thought it would be just lunch and a little chitchat. Turned out, it was more than just a lunch.

The first surprise came after the waitress at Pancious got all our orders written down and left. Seno pulled out a black fabric from his bag, and it turned out to be a handmade backdrop for our photo sessions, with ‘See u again Dixie. Good luck for your master’ written on it. It touched me that they were willing to go into that much trouble to make something heartfelt like this. Ocha told me she used her office’s printer to print all those letters. A thank you (and apology, I suppose) for Ocha’s office!

The lunch was fun, seriously. We got engaged in gossiping our acquaintances (after catching up with each other, of course), who got together with whom and who broke up with whom. We’ve never changed when it comes to digging dirty secrets and such, I guess.

Then suddenly Khemal came with a cake (I didn’t even realize that he had been gone), and told me to make a wish, although he didn’t bring any candles in fear of triggering the fire alarm there. He handed out blowouts before urging me to make speech, so I thought hard while they were blowing those and make serious noises (thank God nobody complained). I felt a lump in my throat when I said thank you in my speech. Really, the time and effort that everyone had put to make this farewell really means a lot to me. So then I made a wish, cut the cake into tiny pieces for everybody. Iota LOVED it, I think she had gone to cake heaven while munching that.

We finally left Pancious and took LOTS of pictures with the backdrop. Ocha insisted I took picture with each of them, so yeah, that took quite some time. I was so happy.

Then for some wild action, we headed to fX for a karaoke session. And somewhere in the middle of the session, I felt a lump in my throat (again!), and surprised to realize that my eyes were already welled up. It hit me that instant that we wouldn’t be having this fun gathering in the near future, a fact that I somehow had failed to realize before.

In the end, Khemal handed me a piece of paper and a pen, and asked me to write how I felt about that day. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I remember writing about how thankful I was to have friends like them.

Thank you, you all. It’s an honor to have such great friends like you.