Prudence and Madness

The first Barkadalympics was held last Saturday and Sunday (June 16-17, 2007). Pre-game preparations included buying groceries at SM Hypermart Marilao with Serj, Ronald, AJ, and Ram. AJ also bought her two-piece swimsuit (how I wished I took a pic of her in the fitting room hehe). The rest of the gang looked for the prizes for the would-be champs. I bought the souvenirs and printed the certificates the night before.

After buying grocery, they went back to Ram’s house to cook food while I went home to fetch the water and the froggies, Axle and Kero.

We got to Latian by 4 p.m. and immediately disembarked to explore the house. It was a two-storey house made mostly of narra and other kinds of wood and marble. There were numerous but small windows that it made the house look dark without the electric lights. One would even think it is a haunted place. With all the loud creaks and occasional heavy thuds which we cannot seem to attribute to the usual creakings of an old wooden house. But the place wouldn’t really be exciting without those, right?

Soon we got comfortable and were making loud noises since we have the house to ourselves (though my friends tend to think they can sense poltergeists with us there hence the “silence is golden” and “no smoking” signs all around the house, even inside the bedrooms. Apparently poltergeists don’t like noise and are health-conscious).

If it were my goth-loving days, I would have liked the whole house very much ( I mean, it was even fully furnished with its own house ghouls and poltergeists). But now, I find the whole setup too dark for my taste. I still want a white house with minimalistic decors and accents of pink, green, yellow, and blue.

There was a little mishap, though. Mutya and Nelson, thinking that we’re still pushing with the original plan of going to Pandi, Bulacan, were already on their way there. They were at the Sta. Maria area when by some awkward and unfortunate (fortunate?) instance, they discovered that we’re only at Latian. The couple were really mad and just dropped off the other foods they brought and went home. We felt bad it happened and I’m sure nobody meant to have forgotten to tell them about the change of plans. But we know we are guilty and ought to have been more stringent with the planning and organizing. However, we cannot do anything about it anymore so we tried to cheer up by starting with the games (and the drinks).

Okay, which is the drink and which is the chaser?

First game for the night was Clover and Cream. We were divided into 2 groups and one per group will have to put whipped cream on his face and serve as “target board” for his teammates who will be throwing the pieces of Clover chips at him. The group with the most number of chips on their teammate’s face wins.

Group Dambuhalas were composed of Ram, Ronald, AJ, and me (because we’re big!). Ram was our unfortunate target board. Group Gulliver and the Lilliputs were Serj, Jo, Diosa, and Grace. Grace volunteered to be the target board for their team.

I was laughing so hard all the time I can’t even manage to make a decent throw with my chips. But still, our group won the game (with the help of Serj a.k.a. Gulliver who crossed to our team because he finds it funnier to throw chips at Ram than at Grace).

Our next game was the Cheesebread Eating Contest. Each group was given one huge cheesebread. The first group to completely devour their cheesebread wins the game. I thought my group was a sure-win because, obviously, we are big-eaters. But in this game, those who did it slowly but surely won the challenge. I don’t think I’ll ever eat cheesebread again.

The third game for the night was the Videoke Kings Challenge. Each group will sing 3 songs and the group who gets the highest average score of the 3 songs wins the game. The songs were:

1. To Love You More by Celine Dion
2. Baby One More Time by Britney Spears
3. Salamat by the Dawn

WTF?!?! I can’t believe they made me sing Britney Spears!

Gulliver and the Lilliputs, again, won this round. They have louder voices, I think. And they have Gulliver, the Magicsing Master on their side.

Next, we had a game of Charades. And the theme? Of course, English and Pinoy movies! I think in every occasion that the barkada played charades, we always use this theme.

Here’s a sample of what I gave them to guess:

• Curse of the Golden Flower
• The Jackal
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Battle of the Bulge
• Pacipiko Palaypay
• Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros

Tough, eh?

Hmmm…in retrospect, I should have given them Death Becomes Her. It’s always a killer. Nobody can guess it, no matter which way they try to act it out. But I forgot. Nevertheless, we still won.

The last game for the night was Group Arm Wrestling. I didn’t expect to win this round, though because the other group had Jo and Serj who are powerful badminton players. And yeah, my team were losers again. Haha.

So, at the end of the night games, the score was 3-2, in favor of the Lilliputs. We’re still not sleepy and so, went on with finishing our Grand Mas and a case of San Migs.

Beds called us at around 4:30 a.m. Ram, Ronald, and Serj occupied the room on the first floor while the rest of us have bedrooms upstairs. I share a room with Diosa, and Gracie, my best friend. And we can’t seem to fall asleep and so we’re still chatting while lying on the bed. It wasn’t long when we heard some strange and firm knocks on our wall. They got scared but I tried to dismiss it as mere creakings of bamboo trees near our window.

“Maybe the poltergeist doesn’t like us to be noisy anymore,” Gracie said and pointed to the “Silence is Golden” sign above our heads.

And as if in answer, there came another heavier and firmer knock, this time, above our headboard.

Now I think that did us in. We quickly pulled off the mattresses and dragged them to the guys’ room downstairs, while Grace was calling Ram’s phone so he could fetch us. We put the mattresses down on the floor and didn’t mind even if the room was too cold for comfort.

Minutes later, I heard someone crying outside the door. I swore I would have roused the others from sleep, if I didn’t recognize the cry.

I knew then it was AJ, even before she knocked on the door. She was carrying Kokak (her stuffed toy frog) and with Jo right behind her carrying their mattress. They heard some loud knocks in their room, too. So it seemed that the poltergeist wanted the whole second floor to himself.

Good thing the guy’s bedroom was huge (even the bathroom and toilet was more than roomy) that it was able to hold 8 people. Surprisingly, we didn’t hear any more knocks or creakings.

I still had trouble sleeping, though. Maybe it’s because of the beer. I thought of pulling Ram’s and Serj’s legs just to awaken and scare them. But I remembered how Ram is when he’s angry, so I didn’t push through with the plan. Finally, sleep caught up with me at around 6:00 a.m.

We woke up at around 9 a.m. and had a breakfast of chicken adobo, fried eggs, rice, and the leftover baked macaroni. It wasn’t really a good morning for me because I woke up at the sound of my cellphone’s message tone and my supposed reliever at the hospital just texted me she won’t be able to relieve me of my duty in the hospital because her reliever in Laguna wasn’t able to come. That means I have to find another reliever, which at that time is almost impossible because: 1) It’s Father’s day and; 2)Nobody would want to be bothered going on duty and on short-notice on a Sunday. I called up all the relievers that I know and everybody seemed to have a Father’s day celebration or something. I was fuming mad at my supposed reliever. She’s supposed to come because I’ve already informed her about it 3 weeks ago. If there’s a problem with her reliever, then she ought to have done something about it. It should not have been my problem anymore since she already said that she’d relieve me of my Sunday hospital duty.

I tried to keep my mind off it since we’re starting with our day games.

Our first game for the day was the Kokak Relay Race. That’s what Axle and Kero are for. Each member of the team will carry and pass Axle/Kero to the next team member until they’re able to complete the run around the perimeter of the pool. The team with the shortest time wins. Again, I thought my team’s going to win since I’m used to holding frogs, and I’ve got two guys in the team who have no problem holding it. But AJ really couldn’t stand holding the poor frog and so we finished the run at 48 seconds. The Lilliputs, finished their run at 38 seconds.

Ah! What misery! Will our team still be able to recover?

There are still 2 more games left. The second to the last game was the Drain The Pool Challenge. The team should be able to fill a small bucket with water from the pool, using only the water dripping from their hair or their swimsuits. No other props are allowed. This one’s a close fight, though. Both teams were able to fill their buckets but the Lilliputs’ bucket was overflowing so the game was theirs.

Last, but not the least, was the game finale which was the Barkada Amazing Race. Serj and I cannot play in this game because we prepared the tasks and the clues. We started at the swimming pool and scattered the clues in the surrounding restaurant and other cottages. Serj followed my group, the Dambuhalas, while I followed his group, the Lilliputs.

I don’t know if Serj was intoxicated with beer when he wrote the tasks and the clues. But it was marvelous and the barkada had fun searching for the clues among the monkey cage, the dining tables, the plants, and then back to the pool. One remarkable task was the third task in which the group has to fill up the missing words in the poem, “Rhapsody in a Windy Night” by T.S. Elliot. Serj used that poem because everybody (except for Jo, who’s a year older than us) should know it because we used it during our Fourth-year Speech Choir Competition. We won and received many praises for the originality of our interpretation of the piece (We still have a video recording of it and if I can convert and upload it to Photobucket or YouTube, I might be able to share it here in my blog).

AJ still know the words by heart (I can even recite the poem, complete with intonations, but I can’t play in the game) and so, the Dambuhalas won the Amazing Race and was the overall champ for Barkadalympics ‘07.

Tired from all the running and searching, we went back to the house and had a late lunch. We should be leaving the place by 3 p.m. but since nobody is going to come in after us, we were able to stay a while longer. Each of the Dambuhalas got a cute little mug like the one in the picture. I also distributed the certificates of participation and the souvenirs, which are cute friendship bracelets. Blue ones for the boys and pink ones for the girls.

After some more picture taking, courtesy of the cook/photographer, Serj, we left the place at around 5 p.m. We would have wanted to stay a while longer. Even stretch our outing to 3 days. But Monday is a workday. But the barkada already made an agreement that we’re going to have another outing by September. Maybe back to our favorite place in Zambales.

That was a good start for the Barkadalympics. Hopefully, next year, there’ll be another one and there isn’t going to be one less barkada to participate in it. And maybe Serj will be thinking up of crazier games.