  I will not be pragmatic and useful and political today. I am in my office, bound by my brown-nosing timecard, which will faithfully record the exact time I slip past the door and into the elevator and out into a world that has a sky. At precisely five o'clock, however, I will be free again, and I will no longer be Reichel, Technical Assistant for a government agency - I will be rei, dipping my toes in the wind to see where it will take me. I'm cheating, of course. I know where it is taking me tonight. Tonight it is taking me to Baguio, city on a hill, where there are strawberries and peanut brittle and shopping bazaars and flowers so vivid that you cannot believe they have been cut, and so cheap that you can have them by the armful.
I will go and have dinner with my parents and their friends first - a sort of apologetic good-bye, because tonight is their last night in Manila before they take off for their honeymoon in Geneva - and then K and I will meet up and go to the terminal. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing - I did not know until yesterday that we were actually going - so I wasn't able to take leave on Monday. I will be heading back again, alone, on Sunday - but first, this madcap weekend. When was the last time I cried Let's go!
and just went, laughing? I can hardly remember, through the haze of events that has been the past nine months. Reichel, Technical Assistant, MBA graduate, BA in Political Science, editor-in-chief of several publications, responsible student and dutiful daughter, will not be here this weekend. Try her number again on Monday. rei, dancer-in-rain, pointer-out of ridiculous things, funky-hat-wearer, lover-of-red, is here. 
