Flickr loves me

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BusinessMirror pictures

OR to be more precise, Flickr Pro loves me.
As it should.
I just spent money on the company which runs its website, an amount more than my monthly allotments for beer and books, items which happen to be my top priorities, next to rent, cat food, and pulutan.
In a fit of sentimentality and perhaps, inebriation, I took out my credit card and used it to pay for a one-year upgrade of my account at Flickr.com, the online photo storage and photo sharing website.
Besides entitling me to upload as many photos as I want—free users are limited to only 100 megabytes a month—the upgrade also allows premium members such as myself to put notes on my photos, enabling me to make fun of my friends’ pictures.
It was a privilege I immediately indulged.
After all, it may take awhile before I saw my friends again and crack jokes at their expense.
Just this Thursday, after working at a business newspaper for nearly two and a half years, I closed what would most likely be the last few pages in my career as a newspaperman. (Although archaic, the term, I think, best suits my job description because not only have I closed pages for various sections for the past two years, I have also written and edited newspaper stories, including but not limited to editorials.)
In any case, the decision to leave the paper I worked for was not easy.
Despite the unusual hours, the unimpressive salaries, and the undisguised public contempt for journalists, working for a newspaper had always been—and will always be—my dream job.
Although the profession, like all jobs, came with perfectly legitimate privileges, perhaps the best fringe benefit that I enjoyed for the past two years was meeting, hanging out, and eventually drinking with this fantastic group of people, all employees of BusinessMirror.
Every time I stayed longer than usual at the office, I would get invited to and participate in the many drinking sessions led by a number of people—not identified here for obvious reasons—who welcomed me as if I was their long-lost best friend.
Although I’m moving onto a new media job, I will definitely miss the people at BusinessMirror, both rank and file and managers who have made my stay at the paper more enjoyable than I thought it would be.
Which now brings me to why I paid an arm and a leg—and a few appendages—for my Flickr account upgrade: I just want my friends to access photos of our last times together, inside a mid-end Makati bar, enjoying another night out. I want them to remember the times when we went out, grabbed a beer or two or more, and simply relished the times when we were all together, under one newspaper called BusinessMirror.
Thank you, Rey and Rita Abarquez, Sean Basilio Castro (hope we’re not related), Nonie Reyes, Claudio Basibas, Eric Losloso, Jimbo Albano, Ruben Cruz Jr., Norberto Rea, Angel Fuellas, Roy Domingo, Diosa Panganiban, Mary Louise Francisco, Jesse Edep, Dominic Menor, Maui Daton, Renie Salvador, Dexter Tiratira, Ed and Maricel Davad. Thank you for allowing me to have a good time for the past two years. I am not good at goodbyes but hear this—I am going to miss all of you (or in other words inuman na).

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More pictures of my BusinessMirror despedida can be found here.