CAFA Birthdays

This February month is birthday month for several CAFAs. The guys who are now a year older are Nore Lim, Alex Villaflor and Milu Einsiedel. Coincidentally, a lot of US CAFAs happened to also be in Manila now. This was an opportunity to have that "Getogetha" – as Dinky would put it. A Getogetha was quickly planned out resulting in a pot luck party in Oni’s house on February 4, Saturday.

In the party, the guests of honor were the celebrants mentioned above. Meanwhile, the balikbayans are Tong Salgado, Rita Salgado and Tito Valbuena. Including celebrants Alex and Milu, the CAFA locals were: Dinky Einsiedel, Oni and Bili Mayo, Pearl and Vic Ortega, and Cynthia Henson. Nore Lim, Didi Lim and Emi Masigan are also in town but unfortunately, they couldn’t make the CAFA party for important reasons.

As the CAFAs were enjoying the party, the door bell rang. It was late-comer Tito V who strode in with a surprise guest in tow. The guest is Lydia Cruz - a retired MD and a balikbayan (out of Texas). Lydia was a HS classmate of Tito (Mapa High) so it should have been nothing extraordinary since the two came from their reunion. The CAFAs are always nice to extended friends of CAFAs. The CAFAs were however stunned when the beaming Tito introduced Lydia as his “kasintahan”. Ayos.

The party was lively from start to finish, and had a Part 2. The Part 1 plan was to take dinner in Oni’s house. The Part 2 would be to proceed to Chef and Brewer Music Bar after dinner (Dero and his Rockin’ 60s group). By 9:30 PM, Dinky, Alex, Tito and Lydia proceeded to music bar so as not to lose the reservation. The others however were not planning to go the show and decided to stay a while for coffee. Being the hosts, Oni and Bili stayed on. As expected the guys who remained behind immediately made intriguing chika about those who just left.

Everyone had a laugh when Tong admitted that their ‘sundo’ was there for some time now but they dared not leave for fear of being talked about. To resolve the issue everyone agreed to leave at the same time - the visitors back to their homes and Oni and Bili to Chef and Brewer to join the CAFAs there. The time was already nearing 11 PM and Dinky had been frantically texting for us to already join them since Dero had been wanting to put the CAFAs on stage.

At Chef and Brewer it was another kind of night life fun. The place was packed and the Rockin’ 60s were doing their thing. Old friends Titus and Botchi Santiago were there. Bili spotted her high school classmates from St. Theresa. (Nancy Reyes of the Rockin’ 60s is Bili’s school mate). At the CAFA table, Dinky and Alex were found finishing a bottle of wine. Through all these, Tito and Lydia, seeing the show for the first time, were enjoying not only the show but each other..

And then the CAFAs - boldly introduced by Dero as Pilita’s mainstays in the 60s - were called on stage. Objectively, I thought that the CAFA rendition was pretty good that night. The Boomer crowd was particularly familiar with “Summer Song” and “If I Fell”. And so it came to pass that the CAFAs came through once again. They ended each number to the applause of an appreciative audience considering the impromptu performance. One guy in the audience even approached the CAFA table afterwards to express his delight at hearing the memorable numbers once again. Ah, another night, another song.

See slide show for more photos.