I had my first-ever New Year’s gimmick yesterday, and it was a blast. Every New Year I spend with my relatives (Christmas is with immediate family). But this year, I got a pleasant surprise because I met up with Quark and Mich and the popettes and Joey and Margie. I thought we were only going to rescue Mich from “cigar-chomping old fogeys” and I’d get to greet my friends a Happy New Year. But we went to this party at the helipad of the Rizal building in Rockwell. First, the parking in Rockwell was horrible. The mall was closed, so their parking was too. Everyone had to park on the side of the street and it was pretty full already. I had to leave the compound and go back in, finally finding a spot beside the exit of an office building. Then I went to meet the kids at this waystation, where exclusive vans would bring us to the building. There was some other minor rave also in Rockwell that was the reason for all the traffic, I found out later. Then up to the 46th floor, then up another few flights of stairs before you get to the actual helipad. At first it was boring, but it started getting more crowded later on. The idea of a party on a helipad is certainly appealing to me: the view’s fantastic, and there’s a cool breeze. With free drinks, we crashed on a giant pillow and did the usual: make fun of people around us, shot the shit and traded tsismis and news. Joey got drunk fastest, I think, because he was telling the same pieces of news several times over. Margie and Quark and Mich all knew a lot of people at the event. Goldie got knocked out again, though she didn’t have any blue drinks this time around (to our knowledge, anyway). So she collapsed on the giant pillow and slept half the time. Whenever Mich and her popettes would start dancing these two skinny old bald men would approach and start dancing, until Mich would let out a piercing cry like a child lost in a mall and then the baldies would sheepishly slink back to their corner. There was a fire raging on the roof of another building that had me mesmerized for a few minutes. Food was served, including champorado, omelettes, tocino and tapa. None of it was good. Finally the whole thing was ended when we saw the sun rise. Cool. I don’t remember the last time I did that. It was fascinating to watch because while you could look down around you at the view, you couldn’t see the stars because of the smoke from all the fireworks that had gone off when it hit midnight. So gradually, everything just got brighter and brighter, the canopy of smoke above becoming more and more clear. And then the sun actually showed itself for a few minutes before disappearing into another bank of clouds, and then we went home.

So it was also the first time I’d ever partied ‘til dawn. Even if we did begin at around 3, 330.