12:56a

friends
once again we had another one of those weekends where we saw everyone and their momma! ;)
friday night was cool.
We went to Sno-Drift for my friend's b-day party.
Cool club.
'Got to bounce for a while to some pretty dope beats.
The DJ played a really good old school mix, too!
my body automatically reacts when I hear Hip hop/r&b/soul playing.
it's like I get possessed or something! ;)
I LOVE DANCING!

'sported my new cream hat for the first time and
got lots of compliments on it.
I LOVE THAT HAT!

The party was full of folks!
It was another one of those SUPER-SARDINAS-PACKED parties.
And of course, we saw almost every single pinoy we knew in the Bay Area.
Talk about 6 degrees of seperation!...It was actually more like 2 degrees in this case.
Even my boyfriend's 8th grade classmate was there (and he hadn't seen her since 8th grade)!

While I was dancing with my friend, I realized that I knew the guy dancing next to me and said hello.
Then, after a few minutes, that friend asks me if I was friends with the guy I was dancing with. I said yes.
Then, both of them begin to tell me how they knew eachother from grade school!
GOOD GOD! All I could do was shake my head in disbelief...

It was confirmation to me that ALL of us Pilipinos in the world are connected in some way.
That 6 degrees game should be named after US!!! hehehe! ;)

more friends
tonight (saturday) we went to a wedding.
I went to high school with both the bride and groom, and the groom and I went to college together.
That's where he met my boyfriend who became his first roommate in college.

We ended up sitting in the "nose bleeder" (way in the back w/ a pillar blocking our view of the bride and groom)
seats at the reception and met 6 new friends.
We already knew one of the couples from college.
It was great...we all clicked.
In fact, before the party started we had already taken our first shot of Remy Martin together! ;)
'love that.

pondering
oh, and it was my boyfriend's and my first Vietnamese wedding.
The ceremony was Catholic, but spoken in both Vietnamese and English.
Everything was pretty much the same as a traditional Pilipino wedding, except they don't do the whole
cord/veil/arrhae thing...remnants of Spanish colonization.

What i really loved about the ceremony was when the priest invited the
non-catholic folk in the house to come up during communion along with the Catholic folks.
They were invited to receive a "blessing" even though they could not receive
communion.

I was so impressed with that gesture!
It was so inclusive of everyone there,
...'something that I had never seen done in a Catholic Wedding Ceremony.
That really made me feel good, because oftentimes religion can be so exclusive, you know?
especially with all the religious practices and stuff.

Also, something that the priest said made me think:
" Wars and conflict are not caused by religion...they are caused by people"

(still thinking about this one)