I've been making the blog rounds lately, more than I'm used to. And, the more I surf, the more quality I find -- a very pleasant surprise.

Today, however, was different. For about half the day, we lost out internet. And, like the rest of the city, we were paralyzed. Determined to make a lousy day productive (a day where three meetings were cancelled), I set out to meet some people I promised a long time ago to meet up with (and one I said I will look up this week). It turns out, "no comm" is an improvement on "comm" itself.

I sat down for lunch with two people whose combined ages would surpass that of the Republic. They shared stories of a country where the gap between rich and poor was the difference of having shoes or your own books in class. They talked about their first car ride like it was just yesterday. And how Manila used to have sweet-tasting air.

Still, one walked me through the entire process of taking yellow cake and making it electricity (someone had to digress); the other talked about nuns in the late 80's who lived among the urban poor. Over a bowl of arroz caldo, what would normally have been spent as time reading blogs and visiting websites, I spent traveling through time. When I left, I thanked my hosts exuberantly, still realizing that they couldn't possibly understand how refreshing our time together was.

The best blogs are conversations that, like my lunch, would fascinate. Now that the internet is up, I'm back in front of the computer reading blogs. Some now are making my after dinner tea a lot more satisfying. I'm determined to ways to thank these people.