Flashback

I was driving in my car today and on the radio the DJ said a couple of things that brought back some good memories ...

-she said Carasauga is this weekend ... I remember seeing an advertisement for it a couple weeks back and I was actually thinking about going, but I forgot, ahh well ... for those of you who don't know, it's an annual multi-cultural festival held in Mississauga, with pavillions of various cultures in various locations all over the city ... For a couple of years, I was a part of the Phillipines pavillion, under two different dance groups ... For a couple of years our pavillion was held in Square One, then another it was at Mississauga Valley Community Centre ... Performing on those weekends was fun ... it was our Superbowl, all of our practises were to lead us to Carasauga, then a few guest performances to follow at other cultural festivals, ie. Caravan (Toronto), CHIN picnic (Toronto), one year a Filipino festival at the SkyDome in front of 60,000 (I was front-and-center stage, got my mug on the jumbotron!), even did a halftime performance for the Craptors ... Anyways back to Carasauga, what I remember is being there from Friday night all the way to late afternoon Sunday ... sure we were tired, but we got fed ... During breaks between performances, I remember being bogged down with homework, because I was such a slacker in those days ... Performing is what also brought me close to my old crew CPO, we were like a family back then, it was non-stop jokes, even messing with each other during performances ... boy do things change ... performing one year was even more hectic because I had "Grad Night", which brings us to the second thing the DJ on the radio mentioned ...

-"Grad Night" is held at Canada's Wonderland, for, yes you guessed it, the graduating class of all high schools in the Greater Toronto Area ... the DJ was saying thanks to everyone that made it out for "Grad Night" this past Friday ... What happens is that Canada's Wonderland keeps the park open Friday night all the way until the early hours of Saturday morning ... My Grad Night was fun, and tons of jokes ... I was rolling with my boys Sketch and Leash, while this guy Wong was taggin' with us ... Rode every roller coaster in the park, in the dark ... One of the things that made the night fun was seeing classmates intoxicated out of their minds, most on ecstasy (the drug of choice back then) ... It was funny even hearing them talk afterwards of how they didn't remember anything ... There were 'nuff people getting into fights that night as well, over stupid reasons, ie. giving dirty looks, LOL ... Oh and who can forget seeing classmates, that were in relationships, cheating on their significant others with total strangers in some cases ... gotta love the effects of ecstasy! ... I also ran into friends from Mississauga and Scarborough that I hadn't seen in years ... If memory serves the park closed at 7AM the next morning, then I got back home around 8-8:30, then I had to be up for 10 that same morning for Carasauga ... I remember just running on pure adrenaline for the rest of the weekend performances ...

Ahhh great memories, some which make me wish I had a videotape of it all ...

One,

- J -