A Day After the Glorietta Blast

A day after the bombing incident, there was a semblance of normalcy in the Makati Shopping District. Except for Glorietta 2 where the blast occurred, the rest of Glorietta opened (Glorietta, 1, 3 and 4). Likewise, all shops in Greenbelt were open, too. But there were few shoppers.

The original venue for our meeting was Super bowl in Glorietta (is it 1?) very near Oakwood. It was quite far from the scene of the blast. Even if we held our meeting there last Friday, we would have been spared. But the resulting panic and confusion would have been traumatic.

While we condemn the bombing, and condole with the families of the innocent victims we should not forget the issues that are hounding GLORIA before the Glorietta incident.

I thought the ladies would be intimidated by the bombing and request for a postponement of the meeting. But no, they agreed to go on with it. Until the late hours of Friday evening, Alot was busy looking for alternative venue and confirming our attendance. Ok talaga tayong mga gurs… ano, malalakas ang loob!

We met at 12 noon at Fish & Co at the third level of Greenbelt (?). I was the first one there ahead of Alot by just a few minutes. Then Lina came followed by Mendy, who was escorted by her two lovely daughters (who also left after making sure that their mama was already safe in our company). Last to arrive was Susan, who had to pass by LandMark to buy something (hale pa lang Bangkok yan, nagpara-shopping na, pero dai pa nagsawa). (By the way thanks to Mendy and Susan for the pasalubong of pandesillos and pili.)

This is the first time Lina was able to join us since the despedida for fechie. She’s in mourning because of the death of her father last month. She didn’t notify any one of us about it. We had good food at Fish & Co (which is on the cover of Inquirer Magazine today) even if we did not order fish. Except for the seafood paella, we ordered pork and chicken – we’re still meat lovers.

Of course we did not forget to discuss the main agenda (the highlights will be posted in the email). At 2 pm we moved out of the resto to go to Dulcinea in Greenbelt (?), first level, for coffee and pastries courtesy of Bert and Marie. The place was quite far from where we had lunch. Good exercise but this got Tess peeved because she parked her car near Dulcinea, had to walk to Fish & Co, then back to Dulcinea. Baby (Banaria) who went to Tagaytay and contacted Marie when she came but we have already disbanded by that time.

For the complete set of pictures visit our photo gallery at http://picasaweb.google.com/gold50/Oct20MeetingAfterTheBlast
(The place where Danny treated us for lunch was in Greenbelt, while Rudy’s treat and the Despedida for Bruce were both in Glorietta).