In 1997, God gave me the best birthday present: I met Jeroen.
Sixteen years later we are still together as married best friends with three boys.
Jeroen had just arrived from Sydney, Australia and decided to stay after meeting me.
Jeroen at a friend’s house in Mandaluyong, 1997
Luckily my sister was just opening Dôme Café at the Shangri-La Plaza and needed a foreign chef.
Jeroen got the job. Soon after, we got him a pager too.
On his free time he would visit me at home and play Super Mario or watch movies on LaserDisc, which were rented from a store on Mabini Street, San Juan.
When I told our son Ben this story, he asked me to show him what a LaserDisc looked like.
“Oh my God, that’s huge!” Ben gasped, when I showed him this video:
Life was awesome. Here’s Tony Hadley on LaserDisc:
You’ve got mail
Jeroen and I got married on November 25, 2000. He moved in with me, which shocked the hell out of my baby sister when she saw him sleeping on my bed one morning.
“Natulog dito si Jeroen!” she came running to my parents, very upset.
I was already subscribed to a Tri-Isys dial up account, which needed a few tries before getting connected.
The thrill of listening to your dial-up connecting is something today’s kids won’t ever understand, said my Twitter follower.
I still have fond memories of personally going to the Tri-Isys office at Robinson’s Galleria to pay my monthly bill.
We were billed by the hour back then, so we didn’t spend the whole day and night online. And after I went online, I would ask Jeroen, “Do you want to use the computer?” before logging off. Because sayang the minutes!
It was during this time, the year 2000, that I started blogging.
(To be continued)
Originally published at Chuvaness.com. You can comment here or there.