Mini-Reunion in Sydney

09-May-09, Sydney - Australia: Wilma, Menchie, Cynthia, Michelle and Jeanne at the Old Quarantine Station in Manly.

Mixed feelings of anxiety but mainly of excitement were in the air with the impending mini reunion in Sydney of  five 1979 HFA high school batchmates.   Menchie (Maicle- Castro), Cynthia (Baron-Cunanan) and I had a mini-reunion already a few years back, but this time we have two additions.  Wilma (Bravo-Palor), who we found out from yahoo group is based in Melbourne, and our special guest batchmate, Michelle (Micu-Velasquez) from Manila!

About a month ago, Michelle has alerted me that there is a high chance that she and her husband, Tony, will be visiting Sydney.  Once she has confirmed that they were granted their visas, I immediately advised Menchie, Cynthia and Wilma of her upcoming visit and proposed a mini-reunion here in Sydney.  I was surprised having  many missed calls from Menchie afterwards.  When she finally got in touch with me, I was in awe of her goods news that she would be able to come to Sydney for the mini-reunion.  Her plan was to fly in early on Saturday, 9 May, join the mini-reunion, then fly back home to Brisbane early evening of the same day.  As I knew this would be a rare opportunity, I immediately booked Michelle and Tony’s time to secure that we would be able to spend the day with them.  Soon as I have confirmed this with Michelle, Menchie rang up both Wilma and Cynthia.  Amazingly both ladies are also available to attend!  Wilma would be flying in from Melbourne and staying overnight with a friend.  Cynthia is from Mascot here in Sydney,  just few kilometres away from Sydney Airport.  So everything has been set and confirmed.  We have decided to keep it hush-hush from the yahoo group just in case for some reason the plan doesn’t push through 🙂

About 2 weeks heading towards the day of the mini-reunion, Menchie and I were so excited we started planning our itinerary for the day.  Next we presented our itinerary to Michelle and found out that  they’ll actually be staying within the city CBD for 4 days and may actually be going to the places we were planning in our itinerary!  My heart sank and panic started to set-in because it meant we needed to change the itinerary quickly!  We wouldn’t want to bore Mitch and Tony with the same places!

Anyway, about a week towards the reunion, I started searching for other Sydney attractions not too far from the airport.  What kept coming up was Manly.  I’ve been to this place about four times before and at each time, all I remember was taking a ferry ride from Circular Quay and from the wharf, walking down The Corso to get to the other side of the town which was lined by the beaches from the Tasman Sea.  Along the way would be small specialty shops and in front of the beaches would be a selection of cafes and restaurants.   As I didn’t know the place well enough, I searched for places to eat.  One place kept coming up with a good review, fairly new, and from the write-up at its website, seemed an interesting place.  This was the Boilerhouse Restaurant at the Q-Station (Quarantine Station).  It’s an old place  where people used to be quarantined and now converted into accommodations, a museum and a restaurant.  To get there we had to ring for their shuttle service to pick us up.   So there, I thought, a new and interesting place!  This will be a viable alternative to the original option.

Two days before the day,  Menchie rings and confirms, although recently she had a scare of missing out because of  having a flu.  Mitch rings me up and tells me that they are now staying with her brother in Green Valley.

One day before the day, Cynthia rings up and requests if we could pick her up from her place right after we pick up Menchie and Wilma from the airport.  I ring up Wilma to confirm that she’s coming and as an extra measure that we don’t miss recognising her, I asked what colour of clothes she might be wearing  to which she said bright yellow 🙂

So anyway, everyone knew that the original itinerary may be changed slightly but the  meeting place would still be at Circular Quay at 10 am.

“D” day comes.  Everything is on schedule.  Menchie arrived on time.  I met up with her where she was waiting for Wilma’s arrival.  I was telling her about Wilma’s bright yellow coat, when suddenly we see this lady in bright yellow coat  so we yelled, “Wilma!”.  We were on the spot, it was her!  Of course we had warm embraces for each other, imagine almost 30 years of  not having seen each other!  So catching up with one another started as we drove towards Cynthia’s house.  We finally find Cynthia and  Jo’s house after a little mix up with house numbers.  Jo tells us that Cynthia is still dressing up and invited us to their house while waiting.  And woh!  We were impressed by their huge house!  Anyway, Cynthia comes out and says how about having a bit of coffee first?  After a little cajoling, we all gave in because we all haven’t had breakfast yet!  Wilma says she brought some homebaked almond cookies and tikoy that we can have with our coffee.  Yes!!!  But just as we were about to start to squash our hunger, I said, “Oh no, Mitch will miss out on this!”   So Cynthia says why not call Mitch and tell her brother to bring them to their house instead.  Simple, we thought.  But not really because Mitch’s brother is not that familiar with Sydney CBD.   So it took a lot of phone calls and driving around the CBD maze until we finally pinned down the place where we could meet up 🙂  Fortunately, Mitch’s brother, Jojo is kind natured and left Mitch and Tony with us with a smile on his face even after the gruelling cat and mouse chase we subjected him to 🙂   Anyway, all frustration of the cat and mouse chase went away as soon as we warmly welcomed Mitch and Tony.  We briefly introduced the men to each other, Rommel, Tony and Jo.

Back at Cynthia’s house we finally sit down for some tea and coffee, cookies & tikoy, tarts and muffins.  All through out we’ve been catching up on each other, remembering some old classmates and teachers, remembering some funny incidents, etc.  We didn’t realise that time has passed by so quickly that it was now 12pm!  So after a brief tour of Cynthia’s house and some photo opportunites, we headed towards Circular Quay where we would be taking a ferry to Manly wharf.  On the way to the ferry, we had photo opportunities at the Sydney Opera house.  Wilma’s good looks attracted a special attention from a moving statue:-).

At the ferry, there would have been good views at the outer deck but because they were full, we opted to stay inside and just continue catching up again until we reached our destination.  At the wharf,  we phoned Q-Station for a shuttle service which picked us up  and brought us up to the Boilerhouse Restaurant.  The 5-10 minutes drive was reminiscent of the drive inside Camp John Hay.

We enjoyed our lunch at the restaurant.  Food was okay and service was great.  Without wasting any time, right after lunch, we took more photos with the interesting views outside with our new pashminas – c/o Mitch.  Time was ticking away and our “Cinderella” aka Menchie had to be brought back to the airport to catch a 7pm flight.  Wilma’s friend, we found out, was just a few metres away from our house, so we brought her there.  Tony and Mitch were picked up by her brother at Cynthia’s place.

And that’s how our satisfying day ended.  The experience of  this mini-reunion is priceless.  The moments we shared, matchless.  And stories we exchanged, unforgettable.

… Click this link for more photos.