Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

The acquaintance party last Friday started with a Eucharistic celebration at 3pm, which I didn’t attend because suddenly felt drowsy after my classes, and I didn’t want to be nodding off during the service. So I decided to just sleep it off in my cubicle to be somewhat refreshed when the party proper did start at 5pm.

Unfortunately my nap wasn’t as restful as I wanted because even though the other faculty attended the mass, the Computer Science interns making the student enrollment software didn’t.

In fact, either because there was no one else around to make noise or they were really just is a contended part of their programming, their discussions were louder than usual and clearly audible from my cubicle ten feet away.

At 530pm the Dean made his opening remarks and handed out the Dean’s List certificates. Not surprisingly, a quarter of the recipients were not present because they were part of the organizing committee who still had preparations ongoing in other parts of the building, and another one fourth were in the Dance Troupe who were going to perform later on in the program.

Another twenty five percent of the awardees that also had assignments for the party were there because they were either in the raffle committee or supposed to work in one of the later parts of the program.

It is interesting to note that none of the band performers (among the upperclassmen) were in the Dean’s List. But I’m sure (from current class standing) that one or two of the freshmen that performed in the musical intermissions will be in the Dean’s List at the end of the term.

I’m sure also that the certificates were handed out on that occasion instead of during the Foundation Day next week just for the purpose of “inspiring” the freshmen to strive for the same goals.

The auction of the popular students (and one faculty – not me) for the Student Council’s charity for the most part became a monetary tug of war between people wanting to spend time with the survey winners and their friends trying to rescue them from a day of “slavery”. In fact, one of the hosts joked, after they guys from their dorm bid on one of the Dean’s Listers, that they now had someone to clean the house.

The raffle started out using numbered balls checked against the names on a list of stub holders. The first of three numbers drawn had to be five or below though, because the highest stub number sold was 500+. The last number had to be even because only even numbered stubs were printed. This made for several redraws during the first part of the raffle.

After the food stubs were collected though, they just used the torn off portions placed in a small ice cream cup. The grand prize was a school jacket, worth about eight hundred pesos, and it went to a sophomore-engineering student.

The last part of the evening was the dance, which started at past 10pm, was when most people started leaving, and it ended well before midnight when less than twenty people were left in the auditorium.