Getting "adopted" for New Year's Eve

It was my first new year without Sandra and family. I would've wanted to just troop down to Ayala avenue and just get lost in the street party crowd all by myself. But I decided against that and accepted an invitation from the neighbors to watch the fireworks from their penthouse.

It's 2008. I'm a big girl now, and if I still go on with my being introvert, nothing would ever happen to me. So for the first time, I attended a party where I knew nobody but the host (and not very well at that). The host was a mis-transplanted Aussie who didn't have a family here. Come to think of it, most of the people who attended didn't have families. So we were like adopted misfits, warmly welcomed to his home to partake of spaghetti, sausages, grilled chicken and booze.

My co-adoptees were also a mix of characters. Engineers, stock brokers, IT geeks, a Harley biker, housewives and provincial natives, and ehem, bargirls. All of us had nothing in common, except for the fact that we were all alone. I came in a proper suit dress, and was surprised to see some girls wearing revealing tube tops with their breasts almost spilling out. One girl looked at me oddly and I looked at her back oddly, but decided... oh what the hell. We exchanged hugs and greeted each other happy new year. Just for this day, I suspended all judgment.

And from the penthouse, we had a 180 degree view of fireworks from Ayala and the rest of Manila. And for someone whose lonely, it wasn't such a bad place to be in.