There’s a trending topic on Twitter today with the hashtag #10yearsago. I shared this picture. It’s the two of us outside our apartment in Marikina where we lived one door away from my best friends, Ron and Joyce, their children, Wolfie and Diandra, and extended family of animals — a dog, a couple of cats, hamsters, and a turtle.
It was one of our favorite places not just because we were right next to friends who were like family, but because it was our first two-level apartment.
This was also the time we discovered The Adventures of Pete and Pete on Nickelodeon. Every morning, we’d have to wake at 4:45 to be at the station for my morning show. (Yes, we. Kyera would have to come with because we didn’t have a live-in helper at the time so I had no choice but to bring her to work with me.) Pete and Pete would be on and it was a good way to wake up watching them learn about life.
After my show, she’d stay at the station while I ran around to studios if I had freelance voicing gigs lined up; if I didn’t, we went home.
This apartment also brings back memories of my season in theater. I would drive home in rush hour traffic listening to rehearsal tapes of music from Once Upon a Mattress. I ended up quitting. I just could not juggle being in a current production — Our Town, I believe it was — doing a daily morning show, and juggling a freelance voicing schedule.
It was a busy, stressful time of life that now feels like a lifetime and a country away.
It is.
So how did we ring in the new millennium other than with these “2000″ glasses? Next door at Ron and Joyce’s, talking, eating, and laughing until 4AM; Kyera, Wolfie, and Diandra, upstairs doing the same.
It was a good time.
