Pasigarbo DisCon - Friday: Run-offs, and Opening Ceremonies

Friday morning started with an early Buffet breakfast for Director Dan and myself. After all, call time to the District Run-offs was at 7:30am. So we wend down to eataround six - ready to face the day. I won't bore you with details as to what we ate - this isn't the blog entry for that.I'll just say that breakfast was filling - and we would need the energy to work through a long day. You see, the Convention has not yet started, so there would be no lunch served to the delegates - unless you were party to helping the Run-offs er... run off.

As Division N's Director, I needed to be on Batch two's location to watch my contestants compete. Though I would have also wanted to watch Batch one, because HOLA's contestants were there. Ah, the travails of having these simultaneous events happening. THe venue of batch two was also st the Belmont Hotel - just beside Savoy, So after breakfast, Direk Dan and I went to Belmont. He as a judge for the first two contests. He would later transfer back to Savoy to catch the last two contests.

A bit of a back story, before we continue. The evening before run-offs, and before the welcome dinner, we - District Council, had a quick meeting to discuss what would happen (hence my watching Division N's competition, as the Director), and I volunteered for an additional task - that of being a 'watcher'. My role, disuade Toastmasters from taking pictures and videos of the contest. There would be assigned media coverage people for the constest, so the DisCon organizers thought that the members should sit back and watch - and not take pictures, nor videos. As a watcher, I (and anotehr volunteer) would watch the audience - and if we see someone taking photos or videos, we would be armed with laser pointers to signal the Toastmaster to stop what they were doing.

So, there I was, watching and monitoring the crowd - and true enough, I caught two Toastmasters in the act. I later caught a third one - but the point was, our group was able to limit the taking of videos and pictures. I watched Division N's contestants - noticing a few discrepancies in their delivery, but in the end, two N contestant moved on to the Finals - Humorous and Evaluation. On a side note, we later heard that our room had the better acoustics, and the otehr site was not strict with the picture-taking consideration. This is something that future organizers will have to consider. After all, it didn't seem fair to the people at our location that we were strict and the other side lax.

Anyway...

The next call time for us was 4:30pm for the Street Dance / parade to the event's place where the Opening Ceremonies would be.` All Directors were to also wear a Pasigarbo t-shirt... basically a limited release shirt only for organizers, Directors and VIPS, so yeah, glad I have one, as seen in this picture with Director Dan, myself and TM Marge. Direk Dan and I were wearing the shirt. Marge was a bit more formal because she would be singing the National Anthem later. We paraded to the beach area of Newtown where the Opening Ceremonies started as evening came - and boy were we glad for that too, because the heat and humidity was intense. Despite this, we were all having fun. The trio started the parade of Toastmasters after some street dancers, then we all followed, and as Division N, we arrived last. Along the way, posing with the tarpoline posters of N's contestants.

A minor huccup for the organizers... when we arrived there was no reserved table for us, hence we ran our of a tableto use. I asked the organizers to correct this and they later added another table for us. It took some time, but it finally happened. Meanwhile everyone else was linnig up for dinner - so yeah, we kinda ran out of food too. Bummer... but both eventually got resolved. Still, it was a ggod time, and the Fiesta Atmosphere that I mentioned I'd be looking for was finally here.

As the program officially started, we had the parade of banners, and I carried Division N's banner to the stage.

There were dance exhibits with Lapu Lapu and Magellan, and the rest of the evening was a large party with music, fireworks and fellowship. I hopped around between the N corwd and the H crowd as much as I could - but I also wandered around greeting friends and having pictures taken. The crowd enjoyed themselves and I eventually got tired and had to walk back to the hotel because there was also a free concert nearby, and the streets were closed with a sea of humanity. As I was winding down to sleep, Dan comes into the room and says a group of people from H were thinking of having more beers at a place nearby, so I got up and accompanied him to Chicken and Beer where we met up with a couple more Toastmasters to continue talking, and laughing.

We ended around 1am... so much for sleeping early. Tomorrow would be another activity-filled day - but before that, breakfast buffet again around 6am.