BAD Girls, good times: a reunion in Taiwan

I was in Taipei, Taiwan, for four days starting last weekend for a reunion with my college barkada. Our batch in the BA Mass Communication program of UP Cebu was already small, and thus our barkada within it, made up of just six close friends, made it even easier to muster the will and resources to create new memories and bond in a place far removed from our familiar surroundings.

My close-knit college friends were known back then as the BAD Girls --B.A.D. for Beautiful And Daring, though the other 'inside joke' meaning is something I can't print here. I became the 'plus one' of the group because I’ve never really had problems fitting in with a group of girls, having grown up in a household with six siblings where I’m the only boy.

The BAD Girls supported my political 'misadventures' in college, forming a cheering squad that led to my losing the student council election by just one vote (haha) and later to my becoming president of Comm-UP, our student organization. Thirty-one years after first meeting in the halls of UP Cebu, we found ourselves reunited in Taiwan. As it turns out, we’re actually the good girls (plus one), with our respective spouses giving us the green light for this ‘laag’.

Some of their names may sound familiar in Cebu media. Minerva Gerodias, the ‘baddest’ in the group, is now the information officer of MCWD. Christine Campos Bonjoc, who works at a medical company, and Jeanette Malinao, an LGU consultant and a public information specialist, are both former Sun.Star Cebu journalists. Fritzie Joy Dungog, now with the Interior Health Ministry in Ontario, Canada, and Anne Gail de la Peña Balaba, a proud mother of some of the brightest kids I know (one of whom studies at UP Cebu in the same college where I teach) are both former journalists of Cebu Daily News.

This wasn’t exactly the perfect time to travel, as we’re at an age --our late 40s--when the responsibilities of family life and children’s education are at their peak. But we made it happen because we realized that Father Time won’t wait. If not now, then when? In our fifties or sixties, when our knees might already be shaking, our backs aching after standing in long immigration lines, or when even the process of checking in and walking long stretches to reach our gate counters feels like an endurance test?

Surprisingly, except for a misunderstanding with the airline in Manila regarding our luggage and the long but efficiently moving queue for foreign visitors at the immigration counter at Taoyuan International Airport, our trip to Taipei, and back to Manila and then Cebu, went smoothly. Some of us worried about encountering the horror stories we often hear about Manila airports (we intentionally spent a day in Manila), but none of that came true.

Perhaps there is some truth to the observations that NAIA has improved its facilities and service flow design under the new private management of a conglomerate led by San Miguel Corp. I’ve been to NAIA 3 a couple of times early last year, and one improvement I noticed during my recent travel this month was the air conditioning --it was comfortably cooler, unlike in July 2024, when the terminal felt warm.

The travel tax counter and the immigration counter at NAIA 3 processed transactions smoothly. Thanks to the e-Travel card, an electronic registration system which made the process of exit and entry more efficient and convenient. The self-service electronic entry counter at NAIA 3 also reduced wait times and interaction with authorities.

We thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Taipei. Although I took my postgraduate studies in Taiwan, I never really spent more than a day in Taipei since my university was in Kaohsiung, a good two-hour trip south via high-speed train from the capital. We had a wonderful time reminiscing about our college days and relishing the familiar quirks and attitudes that made our group so much fun to be with, even in a new setting. My most memorable moments included dining at the night markets in Ximending and Shilin, enjoying an authentic Taiwanese breakfast at Da Dao Cheng (popular among famous food vloggers), and spending a pleasantly cool evening at an outdoor café beside the historic Ximen Red House.