November 21, 2022 —- more than 6 years have passed since we got together in one location.
Back then, we love to have a good conversation on some secret floors in a secret building at a secret location that has a coffee vending machine. Times were simple back then. We write codes, write documents, beat deadlines, sometimes stay longer in the office to either release a build or fix one, LOL.
We all loved to go to work, not because of work itself, but because of the people we interact with. There was a sense of “being in a team” that you felt when you were in the office and you see all these smiling faces whether they’re just happy that day or they messed something up 🙂
Back to the future
They say the best road trips are those you didn’t plan, and it’s often true especially in our case. We’ve been planning on doing this meetup for years and never got around to do it, until we decided to “just do it” (after work) and there we were.
Reminiscing about the good (and goofy) times and how far we’ve come along. We’ve changed so much and yet somehow remained the same. We’ve changed jobs, some of us multiple times since our previous work. We’ve learned a lot in terms of skills and experience. We’ve met new people. And yeah, we’ve achieved the “dad bod” or what they call “beer belly” 🙂
Yet, the interaction we had back then stayed the same. It’s still the same as it was — the only difference is this time, we had a lot more stories to talk about.
The Crossing Cafe
Our venue for this mini reunion is The Crossing Cafe, located at Daang Hari (Philippines, in case you’re reading this from another country). This place is a really nice place to hang out with friends and/or families and it wouldn’t be a stretch to bring work-colleagues as well.
If my math is correct, it has 3 floors or levels. The 3rd or top floor was amazing and yet we realized it too late.
We were on the ground or first floor since we had to wait for our orders (food and drinks), and as they say, “time flies”. If that was a Friday, we’d probably stayed longer. But it was a (manic) Monday and we all got to report for work the next day so we had to cut our meeting short. That’s when we decided to visit the upper floors and saw how amazing it looked!
It’s an open-air environment and you’ve got a great view of the Daang Hari and neighboring establishments. When we saw it, we all agreed that we should get back to this place and on this top floor. The goal is early next year, but here we go again with plans, so let’s see 🙂
Pictures
Here are some of the pictures we took.
This is from the top floor:
And here’s from the front-side (ground floor) just before we left the place.
Thanks guys! Let’s do this again next year! 🙂