Looking back to our “growing years”, boring is certainly not a word in Elna’s (aka Kaloka) vocabulary; where there’s fun and excitement Elna was sure in the thick of it. And when I say “growing years”, I mean almost the whole span of it for Elna has been my longest running classmate ever – we were classmates since 1st grade and got accelerated together in 5th grade (accelerated being we jumped to the next higher grade within the same year, hence graduating elementary a year ahead from our real batchmates). We were both quite active in academic and extra-curricular activities back then and as Math Quizzers in high school, together with Rezza and our Math mentor Sir Iroy, Elna and I also went to trips to different towns to compete (and win! Hehe) against other students with our Math prowess. Those girls and our Math mentor surely made Math easy and very interesting despite the fact that we had to spend even some of our weekends with Math. Had I pushed with my plans months before graduation to pursue accountancy, Elna and I would have been classmates all the way to college since we also went to the same university. But I found out about Chemical Engineering and pursued the course and so struggled with Math from thereon hahaha (thankfully, struggled just enough to keep my scholarships).

Ever the fun and interesting person that she is, Elna has been maintaining a blog for the last couple of years or so where her posts on fashion are among my favorites. I remember in grade school how we waited with big-eyed excitement as Elna sketches pretty girls in pretty dresses.

Do visit her in her new address — thekaloka.com. I especially liked her recent post on marriage.

Elna also did a touching feature on us when our wedding got featured in the Martha Stewart Weddings Philippines magazine. Thanks for that El! 🙂

Here’s to more years of friendship! 🙂 albeit separated by continents. 🙂

Cheers!