Unlikely

Ever experienced a weird day? A very, very weird day that almost all of it is spent with unlikeliest people to contact you or see you at the unlikeliest place at the unlikeliest time. This is that day.

Started off with a morning text from someone you have been pining for. Longest time. Your mobile beeps, expecting promotional offers from the bank or your favorite restaurant for a discount on weekdays ending with -day for food ending with "+ 12% EVAT." But then, it's that "someone." It's that feeling that chills and warms you at the same time. It's that unlikely feeling on a -day you initially planned to end with "+ 12% EVAT."

Went on to have my regular Baclaran later that night, praying for the impossible yet surprised for a different impossible. I met my former bosses. Plural: 5 of them. Five of questioning where I have been hiding, why I have been hiding; to which, God seemed to instantaneously reply on my behalf - soul-searching? I love God's sense of humor. Something between the unlikely morning and the unlikely evening was a foreshadowing of some sort. An outsourced partner asked me whom I have worked for back in ABS-CBN. I mentioned Ginny Monteagudo Ocampo. She was there in the church, gobsmacked as I was. The universe granted a wrong different wish. Or was it just the right answer to a question that hasn't even been conceived to this day? "Depressed ka ba? Ako rin e. Pagod na ko. Gusto ko na ngang mag-retire." Man, she's only in her 40s. Foreshadowing of some sort.

We parted ways, them asking me to take a picture. No, not of me with them; this is no souvenir item for a rarity. Neither was it to corroborate a gossip of the kristopersnickety's whereabout. I repeat, there's 5 of them. Like one of those mortifying times at a club when a bunch of girls asked me to click their cameraphones for their monopod-less heads, my lady bosses simply asked me to snap for them. Probably with a suppressed thought bubble, "Sucker! WE gotcha! And we GOTCHA!" Is it wrong to be in the church, praying this wasn't happening?

That fateful coming upon climaxed to a series of double takes on people I thought were all too familiar. Ethan Hunt Mission Impossible-esque paranoia came upon me. I thought I saw a former fling's boyfriend. My eyes were sore from computer that day. My hunch couldn't be 20-20 certain. Ten, fifteen minutes later, in another area - my favorite candle room, I saw my former fling. I love God's sense of humor.

This short film of unlikelies never stopped at "fling." I flirted with the universe and dared to bring my favorite Japanese candies Hi-Chew into existence in the convenient store located in the slum. Family Mart never has it, 7-11 never has it, Mini Stop never has it. The odds with Lawson! Yet universe won, albeit a rip-off. My, oh my.