Crow is now (offline, offline)

A teammate of mine recently resigned from work to transfer to the "other" company. In the office, we jokingly refer to his new company as the "Happy Place", deliberately changing what the actual acronym stands for. You do the math. (I feel like it's bad form to mention the name outright.) One of the reasons he's transferring is that he wanted to be nearer his girlfriend.

Our sendoff brunch for Patrick was a bittersweet affair. I can't believe I just described something as a "bittersweet affair". I haven't written in a long while and I'm resorting to cliches. Pathetic. Anyway. It's been more than a year that we have all been working together in our project and we are known as one of the closest teams in the company. So it isn't really overboard to say that it was somewhat a big deal that one of us is leaving. But it turned out to be a lighthearted, cool affair. We laughed while recounting funny moments we shared. The screwups we did. The time we generated that fake urgent email addressed to our team leader for her congratulatory promotion surprise party.

It's tradition to send a farewell email addressed to all the employees when someone resigns. Usually, general thank yous and goodbyes to the company as a whole. In Patrick's case, however, early on his last day, he mentioned that he wanted everyone to know the real people behind each of us, his teammates.

I was the only other person left in our block when Patrick logged out for the last time. He came by my workstation and we hugged. I told him I wasn't going to mushy since we'd still see each other around. Of course, he said, and finally left.

And then his farewell email popped in my inbox. It was a long email. He had a paragraph for each one of us in the team, mentioning our trademark characteristics and quoting our patented lines ("Are you mocking me?" - Karl; "O, ha? Sabong panlaba!" - Virg). It was hilarious. He thanked us for the sendoff, for the gifts, for the card we made him with all our pictures. He said that no matter where he goes, he will always look for the feeling of being part of our team. Aaww. That was so sweet. It was so touching without being sappy. In his email, he answered the question I asked him that he was unable to answer early that morning. What his best moment was. He wrote that it was that time not long ago that he finally got to see me frazzled.

The next day, a lot of our officemates came up to our team to joke about the Patrick's farewell email. One of them asked me whether one of the things Patrick said was true. I told her laughingly that he was just probably misled.

Patrick thanked me for being a good person. And that because of me, he is inspired sometimes to be a good person himself. Just inspire and only sometimes ("hehehe").

That was sooo Patrick.