December Weekend Warrior, post #1

All these things happened in less than 24 hours, from 0900H Saturday to 0400H Sunday.

1. The Malarayat Company Party

On Saturday morning, I drove from Batangas City to Lipa City's Mt. Malarayat Country Club for the annual company party. Traffic was very bad, but the party was worse.

Malarayat is a good venue for golf tournaments, reunions and teambuilding exercises. It is NOT a good venue for company parties attended by more than 5000 employees and guests.

The vast property was a disadvantage to all the attendees. The activity venues were all scattered about, and it's a 20-minute walk from one venue to another. There were vans going about to shuttle the people around. If there were five thousand people who want to go from one place to another and there were only ten vans available, think of the waiting time you have to endure just to get a ride.

The program was lame.

There weren't any 'big' activities.

You can't relax, specially if you have kids in tow.

There are so many other things about the party that were unsatisfactory that I could point out, but to keep this post short, I concluded that this year's company party is the worst one I've attended so far.

And to think I endured walking and standing for 5+ hours there.

Beer count: zero


2. The EB Block and Ampons Christmas Party

Leaving Malarayat Country Club at 430 in the afternoon, I arrived at Tom's place in Cubao at around 930pm. (Had to pass by our house first to shower and change, then a quick stop at a Teriyaki Boy restaurant to buy some tempura...)

After 12 years of knowing each other, our college gang had a Christmas/Reunion Party on Saturday night at Tom's house in New Manila. Food was great -- tempura platter, fried chicken, pansit palabok, grilled spareribs, chocolate cake, mango pudding, nachos, wine and beer. I haven't seen a lot of the gang for the longest time.

Funny thing about the party is that about half of us turned up wearing black. Hehe. Anyway, black is formal.

JP, our batch's resident geek (not me, by the way) made a 10-minute AVP of our batch. It was a heart-warming AVP --- watching ourselves develop from totoys and inengs into the current cast of yuppies (young urban professionals) and yupas (young urban parents). JP spent a lot of time soliciting and scanning old photos for the AVP.

Now that was a Christmas feeling.

Beer count: 3
Time: 2340 H


3. Mike's Apartment, SAGUIJO

Quito and I had to leave the party earlier than usual (around 12 midnight) to catch his cousin Mikey play at SAGUIJO. Meeting up with a couple of other friends, we went to the place and cheered Mikey and his band (Mike's Apartment) at their debut performance in SAGUIJO. The venue wasn't brimming with people -- there were just
enough patrons in the place to consider it 'fully seated, standing room only'.

Beer count: 5
Time: 0145 H


4. ARUBA, Metrowalk

After Mikey's performance, Quito and I decided to bring a couple of our friends to Aruba at Metrowalk for some talk-time and more beers.

Can't remember everything that transpired there, because I was already drunk. Hahaha...

Beer count: 8
Time: 0320 AM

5. RUFO's, Makati

After bringing our friends to their respective houses (Quito was driving, we carpooled), Quito and I decided to end the 'night' at Rufo's over tapsilogs. Good idea with me (since I emptied my stomach's contents earlier, hehe).

I can vaguely recall what we were talking about then, but I do remember that both of us really sounded like a couple of drunks.

Beer count: 8
Time: 0359 H


Oooofff... got a terrible hangover when I woke up later.
I think I'm getting too old for this kind of escapades.

POSTSCRIPTS
Belated happy birthday greetings to Nikko (Dec 3rd) , Bettina (Dec 4th) , Geland (Dec 9th) and Tinters (Dec 10th) .

Kelan ang blow-out? Hahaha.

I wonder how my next December weekend is gonna be?