Coming home where it all started

It is the theme of the general assembly last Saturday which turnout to be quite disappointing. I find it disappointing because it was not supported by the alumni themselves. Maybe many are not informed about the said get-together but I heard that a lot them showed no interest in attending at all. To make things worst, the event was challenged by rain and by two big television specials - Pinoy Big Brother Big Night and the Coronation of Miss World 2005.

This is the second attempt to conduct an alumni homecoming. The first one, from what I heard, failed due to the former school administrator's lack of support. And this time, due to lack of information dissemination and simply by support of the alumni. Too bad.

The gym is arranged as if there's a wedding reception whose motiff is red and white. The HRS students provided the catering service and I could say that the food is good especially the fish fillet (if i know that only few will attend, I surely ask the server to give me more pieces). Due to the poor turnout, the program started very late. We (Me-an, Jheck and Than-than) arrived past seven and we were expecting that we're kinda late. It's such a surprise for us to discover few people in gym and most of the tables are still unoccupied. We were settling ourselves in a table in the middle of the court when Bernadeth approach us. She's with her older sister (one of the first graduates of CDSC) and brother Francis (of batch 1991). The song "Salamat" by the Dawn played loud and repeatedly. Since the music is so loud, we decided to get out of the gym and take a look around the new school. We happened to pass by Mrs Nayo's window who is the currennt high school and elementary principal and have a chance to have a photo sessions with Mrs Lim, Mrs Salvador and Miss Somoza (I'll post the pics later).

When we go back to our table, we were told that dinner is serve. Since we're really hungry, we went to the buffet table and started a line for the food. They served rice, beef steak, steamed vegetable, fish fillet and buko pandan. A power point presentation of old pictures were shown during dinner. Among the pictures, we saw our old ACP picture taken when we won in the Flight Drill Competition in Villamor and a Christmas party picture when we were sophomores.

The programs started very late around nine pm when everyone starts looking at their watches thinking what they are missing with Pinoy Big Brother. The program started with the usual entrance of color, doxology and rendition of national anthem. While the student cadets are marching during the entrance of colors, Me-an can't help to comment that the marching is noisy and then we recalled our ACP days. The current uniform looks great but our ACP uniform is still the best. At the midst of discussion of ACP uniform, Than-than spotted a papable one. His eyes were still stuck his "papa" when the dancers come to the stage for the doxology. Bernadeth told him that the one of the prettty dancers is the papable's girlfirend. He retorted "Hindi naman sya kayang buhayin nyan no. Sa akin na lang sya." Then came the national anthem rendered in violin by a student. Jerrick commented that the school really improved because they have student violinist. When we were in highschool, teachers just randonmly assigned a student to give a vocal rendition in acapella. Me-an even recalled a time when Jheck sang the shortcut version of Lupang Hinirang during a program when we were highschool. We were kidding Jheck that he might get asked to sing with the violin tha night. After the national anthem, the lyrics of the school hymn/march appeared on the mini-widescreen. Earlier, we were discussing that if there's a singing contest for the school hymn, we will go for it. As Than-than says. "Talagang eeksena ako". Unluckily, there's no contest. But there's an unexplainable feeling while chanting the hymn. Can't explain it but all I can say that it felt like highschool. Must be school pride.

The program continued with the opening remarks and talks from the current administrators talking about the plans for the Alumni Organization. Then came the game. Since there are lack of participants, they merged us (Joy, Me-an, Than-than and me) with the batch 85 graduates. Each of us have an assigned letters pinned at our back that spelled CECILIANS and we were asked to form words based on their questions. The game went well despite of the loud background music causing us not to hear the clues being read. And we won a pin for a prize. I dunno how could we ever lose if there are no oppposing team? When we went down from the stage, a man from the admin table approached us smiling and shook our hand saying thank you for participating. Later, we discovered that the man was the current school president. WOW!

The next game is a trivia questions and "bring me" where I won another pin because i still have my 3rd year high school id. Then came the portion when every batch elected a batch representative. For batch 93, we have Engr. Jonathan M. Cano F.D. What's FD? Fashion Designer. Than-than have lots of idea for our batch for next year's school silver anniversary.

It is almost at the end of the program when the Bucio twins (Pip and Pol) came.

The night ended when the Pulang Ipis Band (they are alumni from Bryan's batch) start jamming Eraserheads song after it took them so long arranging their stuffs on screen. People quickly disappeared. I think they are in the hurry to go home hoping they would still see the announcement of the first Pinoy Big Brother winner or whatever left to see.