Barbra Streisand Joined Us In Baguio One Weekend

When three best friends as merry as the sun took a vacation to the country's summer capital, expect the pine trees to laugh with them as they hilariously painted Baguio City with silly laughter from sun up to sundown.

- BUM D. TENORIO, JR.

And that's no exaggeration.

Three raconteurs and okrayeras (opinionated beings) were together in the car — Jay Capiral, the college best friend I met in 1988; Manny Marinay, my first best friend when I started working in Manila in February 1995; and I — so ribbing was expected. Onion-skinned we were not, so the good-natured teasing started the night we all met up at UP Diliman's University Hotel where we spent Thursday night. I came all the way from Cabuyao; Jay from Antipolo; and Manny from Apalit, Pampanga.

On Friday at 8 a.m., we rolled to NLEX after breakfast. Manny, on the passenger's seat, vlogged away in the car. Outside it was beginning to rain; inside the car, it was already raining joy. Manny held on to his camera phone to record our madness masquerading as childlike joy.

When we hit San Fernando, we were already singing the songs of Barbra Streisand. Of course with a caveat to our driver, JP, that he should not be bothered at any time by the live singing in the car. JP, bless his kind soul, controlled himself despite the spectacle taking place in the car but later on burst with uncontrolled laughter. He was one of us, we thought — except that he's married with five children and his passengers are all single, as single as the ones in the song of Beyonce — Single Ladies.

There was no karaoke playing in the car. What was captured in the vlog of Manny was all live singing, a cappella. I forced a baritone excerpt of Papa Can You Hear Me?; Manny did a sustained falsetto of People; and Jay purred like Grizabella in his rendition of Memory.

Memory — that's what Baguio is all about. To the initiated, a trip to Baguio is always a beautiful trip down memory lane.