Here’s a familiar story everyone can relate to. Neighbors see life through its many milestones: fun, academics, holidays, graduation and what have you. Eventually, they part ways, as their fates and dreams dictate. Then time becomes an element. The neighbors, childhood friends bump into each other years, or even decades, later.
How do they keep the bond intact?
While this scenario is all too familiar to anyone who ever had friends or has been part of a barkada, life truly has its way of keeping people together. No matter how long it has been, generations of barkadas have come together to rediscover their long lost moments.
Ask this barkada—two guys and two gals—who have remained solid through the years. Their secret? Devoting time to their friendship, making it better than any other.
All are in college, with courses ranging from management, to advertising and tourism. What do they have in common? Three were teammates in their high school pep squad. All are athletic and adventurous.
Twenty-one-year-olds Jonas Asug and Karen Quinzon and 19-year-old Kyla Louise Bautista may have varying professional ambitions, but their ideas of bonding are one and deliciously the same.
Greenwich Pizza chain lovers, they highlight the value of precious quality time through good food.
Arch-rivals? Real buddies!
Jonas Asug and Tobs Castañeda are unlikely best friends. Their universities have one of the country’s most fabled rivalries in sports and other fields, yet their friendship is as tight as ever, going back to grade school.
Both are 21 and seniors, and they easily align on the concept of bonding.
They see the barkada as that basic unit of friendship where comfort complements trust among its members.
Jonas loves Greenwich’s pizzas; Tobs worships the Greenwich Special Overload for its “right mix of 13 delicious toppings, cheeses and hot, freshly made crust.”
The two friends reveal they have 13 others in the barkada to share bonding time with. “Anywhere we can have fun and get good food, we’ll be fine,” says Jonas as he defines his perfect hangout.
Tobs believes in being less nostalgic and being more active in enjoying moments together.
