pink.blush*

Milk tea, frozen yogurt, Forever 21 and Twitter. Today's teenagers integrate their daily lives with these four. A day is impossible to end without tweeting how your day was, or how you failed to stay away from your favorite milk tea shop and/or frozen yogurt parlor, and how you gave in to temptation not to leave your favorite apparel shop empty-handed.

When I was a teenager (oh my gosh this made me feel so old), the only milk tea I drink was Chowking's Nai Cha and it was only Starbucks where "cool" people hang out. When I was a teenager, Red Mango is just a red mango just like a yellow mango is a ripe mango. When I was a teenager, Forever 21 is just an American brand and there was no such thing as Twitter.

My teenage years may seem boring if you tweet to live, but there's one thing that I absolutely love during the years where crushing on the same guy is a big deal and Johnson & Johnson's cheerleading competition is the next big thing to watch out for next to UAAP: it's going on line to meet new friends via Candy's Teentalk and Seventeen's Sigaw.

Young ladies of my age will definitely agree that skipping a monthly issue of Candy and Seventeen magazines will boo you down. If you are a regular collector/reader, then you'll know how Bianca Gonzales, Rhian Ramos, Mikaela Lagdameo-Martinez, Georgina Wilson and Maja Salvador looked like when they were younger. You will look up to twins Klaire and Klau Yapyuco and that you'll find Jenny Rockett a goddess. I am proud to say that I have learned so much from reading Candy and Seventeen. I am who I am now because of these two magazines.

As I've said, Twitter does not exist (and mentions, DM, timeline and followers) but there's Teentalk and Sigaw (username, newbie, ranking, avatar and thread) where I used to spend sleepless nights posting on somebody's threads, replying to someone who asked if Bread Talk is okay or simply having a good time following a certain topic of ABC's of everything. And no, we were not looking for a date (I don't even remember seeing a post asking about ASL--age, sex, location). In this forum, we call each other sis, sister, girl, twin or in my case, I had sizh, sish and twin sister. And I was pink.blush*.

In Candy Teentalk and Seventeen Sigaw, I met wonderful, "online" friends. What is more wonderful, the word I quoted became for real as years go by. I'm no longer pink.blush*. For them, I am me, I am Marianne, Yannie.

When Summit Media stopped the local franchise of Seventeen, I knew its website will also be closed. I was right, they shut it down. The most awaited ranking after Dean's Lister (I ranked the highest, hahaha) will be forever a question mark. But hey, never underestimate the power of kilobytes and megabytes! Multiply, Facebook and Twitter became popular and kept us intact.

After years of friendship, we set dates to finally meet each other in flesh. I met Krissy, Alice, Justine and Jasmine for the first time during the 2008 Candy Fair, Sel became my schoolmate in FEU where we regularly bump in to each other and most recently, I had coffee with Joyce, Krissy, Ahn and Camille. We've been planning this for years and I can't wait to meet and greet the rest this Christmas. The Yuletide season won't be complete without having a party with them!

I'm running out of words now. Let these photos I grabbed from Krissy, Camille and Ahn speak for themselves:

L-R: Joyce, Ahn, Krissy and Camille.

 Happy birthday Krissy and Joyce! Haha! :)

Check out Krissy's blog about this coffee date here.

Marianne + Joyce.

Dear Camille, how come we don't have a photo together?

Krissy's tsunami pose!

Staying with them for two hours is more than enough. I'm really crossing my fingers to write down our Christmas party in my planner! pink.bush* now signing off!

♥,