3… 2… 1… “Happy birthday!!!” yells Dij in his excited tone that I hear every so often. It’s 12 midnight in Seoul and I’m caught in an internal debate of whether I should throw my hands in the air and hug him tight, the tightness being indicative of my thanks and acceptance that I’ve really turned 24, or forcefully say that it’s only 11pm in a more familiar place called Manila and I have an hour more to relish this age of my alleged early 20s (and yes, my thoughts really are long enough to turn into run-on sentences and be followed by a parenthetical remark when translated into writing). I wrap my arms around him anyway and say thanks.

We put on two more layers of clothing as we prepare to head out of our hostel. With wobbly legs and shaking voices, we brace the cold to find a place to drink. I honestly just really want to enter a random bar and cozy up in the warm indoors. It’s my first time to experience winter and the coldness really is numbing. My fingers feel like they were dipped in a stainless steel bucket that’s supposedly for chilling wine. It’s not such a nice sensation when you don’t have a towel to cover it after.

We once again end up in Wabar, a pub we chanced upon yesterday on our way home. Only one other table is occupied by a group of men, proposing cheers on a Saturday night. This really is a nice place, mostly furnished with wood and raggedly designed as if to say they don’t really care about how the bar looks like. But really, it looks like they’ve given it much thought.

Dij booked us tickets to Korea when I was 22 and a half. It was one of his gifts for my 23rd birthday. It’s almost surreal that I’m here, one and a half years later, sipping on my bottle of Cass thinking in general about the years behind me and the years ahead of me. Contrary to popular belief, I’m far from being an expert at living in the present. The past enthrals me. It’s my comfort zone – a place I love talking about, even the bad parts of it, because I’ve surpassed it. The future scares me. And it’s difficult to let go of a thought that scares you. It’s indefinite, something to be cautious of, a zone of the unknown. And yet, here I am, struggling to live in the present since I know it’ll comprise my done thats and outline a silhouette of what’s to come.

Maybe a way of living in the present is accepting that I’m already 24 because right now, I’m in Seoul. And the small hand on the clock has been pointing at a line passed 12 since some 50 minutes ago. I now think about how my 23rd year went and I realize it was about a series of nows. I allowed myself to live in the now that time I set a meeting with my former boss to tell him I was leaving. Have I been happy? Of course, I have. But maybe now is not a time for assessment because then, I’d be contradicting myself.

Seoul has been a charming city so far and I’m sure tomorrow will yet again bring us a good dose of fascination. But for now, I clink my bottle to Dij’s glass to being 24 and having been 23, if that even makes any sense.

We head out of Wabar and endure this negative something temperature, or something that feels like it. I realize that I don’t feel any much older than I have earlier. Maybe I really should look at age as just a haunting figure. Anyway 24 feels much like 23, just maybe a lot colder.

*Photos by Dijo Songco