Blog Contest 2nd Runner Up

"Lady Luck"

by Veronica Sapasap

"We were the words that washed from the sand,

I still prayed we wouldn’t give it up

We were the wings of a hummingbird,

But I grew tired as I would wait for lady luck…"

Maria Taylor’s single," Lady Luck", was playing on the background that Tuesday. Café Antonio has always triggered that certain feel on me- of lazy afternoons as light and as laidback as non-mainstream music. I remembered how my friends and I will put up the tables together and create a large circle occupying almost half of the café. That day was clearance day for us graduating students and it only means that we will have much lesser chances to meet at our favorite coffee shop. Sadly, it was also the day I sent my farewell to a special someone.

Nevertheless, I still consider myself lucky that day. It’s not because I have found Lady Luck or good fortune but it’s because I have learned to accept things as they are. I was lucky because I had two semesters wherein my friends and I shared the same tables, played a variety of games, and poured stories over glasses of cold coffee. I was lucky because I had a year wherein I have learned to share my life with someone. At the end of the day, what remains are the good memories and we begin to move on from that point. We move on from college to med/grad school or from school to work, carrying with us the good memories that we often associate with certain things or establishments like Café Antonio.

When I entered the university four years ago, coffee shops are not very prominent with the students. The sudden bloom of coffee shops around UPLB may be seen in different perspectives. It may be accounted with increasing consumerism due to the influx of students paying one thousand pesos per unit. Social stratification now comes in. How can one avoid thinking this way if he enters a coffee shop and see expensive slippers for sale, or students preoccupied with their laptops (quite expensive, of course) and busy with these arbitrary friendships formed on social networking sites?

Coffee is a part of our Filipino culture. Aside from providing a nice place where people can just basically hang-out without distractions from the internet, Café Antonio is a brewing place for the coffee culture and even intellectual discourse. The needs of a consumer may be commercialized, but the love we have developed for places, friends, or a special someone can never be. Café Antonio is going on for two years now and though we can never be on the same ground forever, we can always consider ourselves lucky. Cheers!

"And you'll meet a friend along the way

You can't wait for each new day

It doesn't always work the way you planned it

I like it better this way."