An old photograph started it all – a chain of comments that drew more comments. The picture shows a newsroom scene, just before airtime,  in the good ol’ days of my broadcast journalism experience – as part of my Mass Communication Department headship —  at then GMA-7 at the Recoletos campus.

Just a souvenir shot – which someone, now in the United States – kept in her albums for so long until it was posted online early last week and triggered a chain of sentimental and funny recollections.

Thanks to  this social networking online that  soon others in the photo joined the comments – one of them someone I’ve never heard from for years – former Negros media colleague and photography hobbyist John Marie Gomez, or just Nono to us  in the media and his co-employees at the Sugar Regulatory administration.    That started the reconnection and soon I was into Nono’s online network. I had not gone deep when I saw an album in his Facebook page which drew my attention – Ati-atihan in Stockton, California, where Nono is now based with his family.

With the Ati-atihan and Santo Niño-related festivals  going on around in Western Visayas and other parts of the country, the set of photos, indeed, struck a timely appeal. I sent Nono a series of messages and the result is our back page pictorial feature of the occasion which, as an interesting community event, was featured in the city newspaper, The Stockton Record.

I am pretty sure that, with Nono’s great interest in photography, we will have more of his pictures published in the near future.

And speaking of online friends, we welcome home Perth, West Australia-based Maita Visitacion Del Mar, who is visiting with her two children. We hope to catch up with Maita, also my former MassComm student at UNO-R, who is out to enjoy the festivities across Guimaras, before she returns Down Under early next month.

StarLife is also running an interview-feature with Miao Jing,  the current head abbess of the International Buddhist Progress Society  -  Philippines, who was in the city last week to, among others, promote the Buddhist Chinese New Year next month.

Indeed, exciting days are ahead of us even before many of us can get over the thrill brought by the holidays just past.