Ironically, I was lugging a tripod I had bought earlier that night.

I had fun hanging out with Tess, her friend Aiyleen, and Sarah.

I also got to meet other bloggers like Noemi Dado, Melo Villareal (wherein he gave away calling cards, with an accompanying wallet), Arbet, Jeff, the Jester in Exile (he still doesn’t want to say his real name), Jeric and Shari, aside from seeing Benj, Aileen and Juned again.

And the schwag was heavy. LITERALLY. Like, a case of Coke Zeroes. 24 cans and all. My arms hurt lugging it back home, to think I practically lived in the area. No, that wasn’t a complaint

Oh yeah, Coke announced a video blogging contest that night, so if you’re interested, check out the details here.

Marj is a friend from Canada (she migrated there around 1995) who I met over mIRC in 1998 and met in real-life around 2000. We lost touch after I started working in 2002. A month before my wedding in 2004, I asked a common friend for her number because she wasn’t answering my text messages in the one registered in my phone book.

That was when I got the shock of my life — our friend told me she had died of leukemia two months before.

She never told anyone of her friends about her condition, so when she died only the friends her parents knew were informed. A few weeks later her father answered my text messages through her number that I had texted, confirming what I had been told.

And up until now, three years after, the Friendster reminders continue.

I could just imagine how I would react to this if I were her father or her brother. In one hand, it might hurt me for reminding me of her birthday, a celebration of life, which she had already lost. On the other hand it might remind me to celebrate the life that she had and she lived — and it will remind me for the rest of the years until Friendster closes shop — though there might be a Google cache of the profile pages.

The implications of our personal details being stored in electronic form means that she, and all of us, would be immortalized online until our accounts have long been inactive and purged from the Internet.

What do you think? Should there be a way to inform Friendster that a person has passed away so that such reminders would cease, and their account would be disabled? What about our blogs? Our writings? Our opinions? Our comments? Our arguments?

When we die, what legacy of our persona would we leave behind in the Internet?

Something to ponder on, and remind one’s self of, whenever we write a blog entry or comment, post in forums, upload pictures, or even twit.

Happy Birthday Marj! I know somehow you’ll get to read this, now that you’re with the Savior you have so much loved.

Last Thursday, I picked up my wife from and my mom from their respective offices and was hurrying home to be able to have some dinner before I went off to work myself (I was supposed to be on night shift then). I was turning into our street from EDSA just as Lolo Enrique decided to cross the street to get to the row of tricycles waiting at the other side. Just as I completed the turn, Lolo Enrique apparently got surprised by our pick-up truck and lost his balance — he ended up holding on to the pick-up’s radio antenna and wedging his left foot under the still rolling tires of the truck.

By the time I was able to stop, his daughters who were accompanying him were screaming at me to back up. I did, hitting a tricycle behind me (and ignoring it) while my mother opened the door at the back and told Lolo Enrique and her two daughters to come in. She then instructed me to drive to the Pasay City General Hospital.

It was during that drive that we learned his name. They lived in a depressed area of Pasay City, and that he was 78 years old. His daughters were lamenting that they only recently lost their mother last September. They had come from the GSIS office near Batasang Pambansa, where they inquired about any benefits they would be getting from the death of their mother. And then the mishap happened. They went on to comfort Lolo Enrique, telling him not to be nervous or worried since his blood pressure might shoot up.

A lot of eskinitas (side streets) later, we got to the PCGH. Lolo Enrique’s foot was X-rayed (which came first before the physician on duty cleaned the wound, much to our chagrin). The X-ray was a bit blurry though, and it was unclear on whether there was a fracture or not. The doctor advised us to proceed to the Philippine General Hospital, as PCGH didn’t have an orthopedic surgeon. I told my wife to go home ahead of us.

On we went to the PGH Emergency Room. The hospital was crowded, as usual; companions were sprawled across the walkways as only one companion is allowed inside the ER (and Pinoys tend to bring whole barangays along — even if the “event” was a relative needing medical attention). In our case, Lolo Enrique’s niece, grand nephew and son arrived at the PGH some minutes after we did. My mom and Lolo’s eldest daughter Ate Elena accompanied him. Since it was a traffic mishap, having two companions was allowed.

Roughly an hour later, however, real attention had yet to be paid to Lolo Enrique. Apparently the records section was ensisting that Lolo Enrique produce his existing “blue card”; the manual paper patient’s record used by the PGH, since according to them patients weren’t allowed to have more than one. Fortunately luck came our way when I recognized a highschool batchmate, Doc Aggie, who was on ER duty at the time.

Doc Aggie helped sort things out. While I went out with Ate Elena to get meds in the pharmacy and some food for I and my mom (we had yet to have dinner), my mother accompanied Lolo Enrique in the ER and X-Ray wards. My mom later told me that if not for Doc Aggie, they wouldn’t be able to get the X-ray results as soon as we did. At one point the orthopedic surgeon insisted on admitting Lolo Enrique to the hospital. It was a big sigh of relief when he gave the go-signal to release Lolo Enrique; the X-rays showed that he wasn’t injured at all.

After Lolo Enrique was released we went on to buy some additional meds for his foot. Roughly five hours after the freak accident, my mom and I finally got home.

We visited Lolo Enrique last Sunday, this time with our Barangay Captain, so that we could formally file what had taken place. We left our contact details so that they could get in touch with us if Lolo needs some more medicine.

I used to always tell my wife how pedestrians nowadays should get a license to be one. I’ve had close calls with wayward pedestrians ever since the first day of driving school. But I guess Lolo Enrique was fate’s way of turning the joke on me.

I had the biggest scare of my life, but I definitely still am lucky. Lolo Enrique brought up a family that was corteous and honest in spite of their poverty; there were probably three families in what they call their home, a small room in an old, run-down building. I can’t apologize to them enough for what had happened. My mother’s level-headedness despite the tension saw all of us through it all; I doubt if things would have turned as well if I were alone dealing with the situation. And Doc Aggie was a Godsend.

And so I add a notch in my list of driving mishaps: a flat tire, a bent fender, and a pedestrian hit.

Hopefully this notch would be the last.