Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Together forever

The strains of the popular song "Together" of the late 60's floated through the air as I made my entrance to the million-peso raffle fund-raiser. The olde gals of St. Scholastica's Academy-Bacolod had the whole of Lacson Street in a traffic jam as parking space of busy, busy Business Inn overflowed for the sell-out crowd. "Oh, oho, we could be, In a desert, Lost without a place to go…"

Well, honeybuns, it sure wasn't in a desert-what with all the dressed to the nine-rs alumnae filling the Grand Ballroom with jostling, beso-besoing most familiar faces of Bacolod's Buenissima Familias galore. A sprinkling of royalties, royalettes and a drop, just a drop…of nouveaux names lent glamour and intrigue to the most successful shebang I have attended for the last year.

Grinning from ear to ear was SSA-B Directress Sr. M. Lucy Togle OSB and elegant in silk Foundation president Pili Luzuriaga Mendezona '82, who ably handled the organizational networks all over the world. The evening was pure Scholastican with dances from Janette Garcia Sanchez's Dance Academy that had class of '97 nightingale-voiced Din Din Arnaldo, pixie Prissy Abueg and bombshell Gianne Sanchez sizzling the floor with their energy. Program host Al Melgar and able assistant dark-eyed Kring Locsin featured love baskets from Santa as giveaways to the guests. Nostalgia blues squeezed my tear ducts as Christmas songs were sung with the German "Stile Nacht" turning to White Christmas with jolly Beth Pison '68, Chole Cuenca Chua '82, café bee Marili Bascon Gonzaga '87, Jinah Tupas Cuenca '89, twinkle-eyed Jean Torre Rivera '68, my cowgirl Sally Feria Ocampo '68, Mabet Eusebio Udarbe, bon vivant Anne Lacsi '88 and Handmade Gallery queen Maryanne Feria Colmenares '81 puckered their reddest lips to enunciate the best sounding carols that season.

Visions of my first jam session sprung forth when my social antennae zoomed in on doe-eyed Lina Ascalon Castellano and her Boy, porcelain Alice Chang Zayco and her Bibing, drop-dead glamorous Fatima Ongsingco-Corona, lovelier than ever Nana Infante Jalbuena, steadfast Marilyn Villarosa and my belle-of-the-ball Patching Alunan Puentevella looking so happy and so much in love with my winningest Bacolod Congressman Monico who couldn't take his eyes off his beloved member of class '66. Of course still prettiest of them all was raffle committee chairman Susan Angodong Locsin forever fluttering those thickest eyelashes!!! What a lovely sight. What a lovely night…Bravissima!