Blast from the past

When I started spending summer at my mother's almost 10 years ago, I brought with me several items. To name a few: a Sony Walkman cassette recorder (a Christmas and birthday gift from my dad which was pretty neat back then because it had a plug-in microphone and customizable features), my first laptop (it weighed a brick), climbing gear (I was an avid sport and rockclimber back then), and clothes I wore throughout college.

As Mom—the one who basically took care of my wardrobe needs as a vain kid—left for the States middle of high school, by the time college rolled around, my wardrobe was at its most streamlined. When I remind her of those years, she gets really sad and refuses to listen any further. So in the last decade or so, she's compensated by buying me one too many things.

During her first trip back to Manila after being gone five years, she noticed I looked "yagit" (a Filipino word meaning really, really poor) which broke her heart. Immediately she took me on a shopping spree that practically lasted her whole vacation. (I still have underwear from that shopping trip.)

Anyway, she saved some of my old clothes—mostly T-shirts—from those years and a couple of days ago, I unearthed the contents of the box. So I'll share them with you.

I had a Mickey Mouse T-shirt fixation that stemmed from a high school crush who wore a vintage one at a party. I was a senior and he was a freshman (or sophomore?) at the university. I never really got to know him, but the Disney shirts outlasted my crush on that guy.

If there was one thing I distinctly remember wearing during freshman year in college, it was this Seventeen top from Cinderella. It just went with everything! Plus, it was a hand-me-down from my mom.

If you asked people who knew me back in college, they would say I was perennially clad in shorts and Birkenstocks. The particular piece in front is a Collezione "skort"—a bottom piece that looks like a skirt outside but is actually a pair of shorts underneath and from behind. Clever, eh?

This shirt was special because I got it on my family's first trip to Pearl Farm in Davao and my first time to ride a plane ever—at 17 years old! Anyway, I had another shirt with the print, Durian Republic. Years later I would meet the owner of the shirt company, who now owned a famous coffee shop in the south called Blugré.

Like I've mentioned earlier, I was an avid climber. And this is a tank from a national sport climbing competition I'd joined in Cebu. I have wonderful memories of those years and to this day my palms get sweaty whenever the subject of rockclimbing comes up.