Except for my right index finger scrolling down the mouse, the rest of my body literally froze. My heart stopped. My breathing suspended mid-air as photo after long-lost photo showed themselves to me after all this time that I thought I had lost them all. A belief I had already learned to accept, especially after the heartbreak of a corrupted external hard drive where a lot of beloved memories were forcefully laid to rest.

But… surprise, surprise. Google had saved most of them. I may not have any idea how but it did. The whole time I never knew, as I never was well-versed in the intricacies of the technology.

Photos of my dad from way back when resurfaced. Blurry photos taken using Jurassic phone cameras with pixelated images in all its aged glory.

I tried to search my blog to see if I could find an entry about them. Some I wrote about, most I didn’t.

This one I definitely didn’t. Father’s Day circa 2014. At this restaurant along Jones Avenue. Cafe Sarree was what it was called. Recommended to us by my sister. Daddy ordered the beef salpicao, a random memory my brain chose to store. That was the first time I heard of that dish.

I don’t even remember what I ordered.