Today's the birthday of two major geek friends - Beejay and Gigi! Happy Birthday to both of you! May you Live Long and Prosper or May the Force Be With You (as appropriate).
Yesterday was ridiculously busy but amazing fun and fulfilling at the same time! I think it's only now that I've fully recovered from all the alcohol I drank last night and thus I should be able to manage a decent accounting of the night's events. I think. This is going to be a long entry.
The day started with a quick nap after a light breakfast, then it was off to Malate for Tobie and me. We were a tad later than planned in terms of our departure plus the streets seemed to be filled with holiday shoppers on the road, so the traffic situation was pretty bad. As the minutes past, Tobie and I became more and more worried that we were going to miss our first-ever Pride March. Oh noes! Still, we pushed on and remained focused on the goal of getting there in time for the march proper at 05:00pm.
We arrived in the Malate area just past five so Tobie had me get down and look for our friends Nico, Sam and Ian on foot while he tried to find parking. I ran off to Remedios Circle and began to panic - I couldn't find the registration table! I bumped into Nono and his Pink Rockers group and he told me that the registration folks had already packed up given the parade was already starting. I continued my search for our other friends and eventually bumped into Sam and Ian who were standing together with Ang Ladlad. They just had me join them and not fuss over the registration and I continued to frantically try to coordinate with Nico where we were - but we were already marching! Then Tobie called to let me know that he had found Nico but had no idea where we were. Again I tried giving our approximate location and direction as our group made steady progress towards Roxas.
Then I finally got to see the Haters.
Along the sides of the road were members of some religious group with placards, T-shirts and very angry shouts, calling for us to repent for our sins and constantly telling us that God loved us but not our sin. Great. Ian decided to have some fun with them by standing next to the various Haters with his make-shift posters that either read "He's Gay <--" or "Power Bottom <--". Of course it was quite a hoot and we all had fun taking photos of Ian next to various protesters, all the while wishing them a Happy Pride or admonishing them to learn to understand their Bibles before they asked us to read it.
Another call from Tobie and it turned out that they had somehow overshot our group. We eventually reunited as we walked down Roxas and then we were one big happy group. Tobie and I were in our black Star Trek movie shirts just to have fun by wearing something matching, so we made for an interesting site amongst the other colorful queers. The march brought us to Gil Puyat, then down to Taft and finally into Nakpil. All the while we'd encounter the same group of Haters who would leapfrog across the parade path to greet us whenever we passed. The marchers remained in high spirits the whole time and some tired flirting with some of the theoretically cuter Haters by asking for their numbers and such, all of which clearly bothered some of them. At one point, we were in a pretty quiet area and started to sing Lady GaGa's Bad Romance and started to hear a bunch of other queers singing along.
Finally at Orosa, the parade ended and the formal program began. Tobie and I fell in love with these rainbow rings formed as a pendant and so we bought one for each of us to mark our first Pride March. They were obviously over-priced, but it didn't matter. As the program began, I also managed to bump into Fire and then Barbie before we had to dash off to our next events. I had a company Christmas party to deal with while Tobie still had to finish his work for the day. But still, we did promise ourselves that this would be the first of many Pride Marches that we'd participate in and with luck this was the start of a brand new tradition for us.
The company Christmas Party at the Mega Tent was pretty much almost entirely devoted to the various Christmas presentations of the different campaigns. With 9 different departments / LOBs presenting, you know that's a major time-eater that just took over the night. I arrived at the venue just in time to catch the first presentation and since I was a manager, I was fortunate enough to have food served to me as a set rather than deal with the ridiculously long lines for the buffet tables. I juggled eating (I was famished after the march), watching the presentations, talking to other managers and documenting the whole thing with our camera all throughout the night. The presetations were hilarious and really, really well done given all the various impersonations of Lady GaGa, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, The JabbaWockeeZ, The Wonder Girls and even Hayden Kho! I can't imagine how the judges managed to pick a winner given all the presentations were just totally insane, it was fun beyond belief.
We also had our first-ever Employee of the Year Awards per department and a big congrats has to go out to Nestor for winning for the TQD group! Beyond that, there was another minor celebration of employees who had stayed with the company for more than 5 years which mainly consisted of our names being flashed on the big screen and us being asked to go up on stage, smile for photos and pose with our Country Manager. Some tried chanting for a bonus, but as expected this didn't get anywhere. There were also lots of raffle prizes given out during the night but I think my being a manager now automatically disqualifies me from winning anything. Boo.
From there, it was back to Malate with Perry and Von (via his very yellow car). Tobie was still finishing work so we ended up hanging out in the street watching the weird parlor games on stage. Given the sponsors were makers of lubricant and condoms, you can imagine the games were pretty...interesting. Eventually I had Perry and Von go on to Bed as planned since at least I had seen Fritz on my way to withdraw money and the waiters at O Bar were already prepared to assist me to the VIP area and to take my drink orders. Yay life.
Eventually Tobie arrived and we found out from Fritz that there was a free rapid HIV testing booth set up just outside O Bar. As much as the notion was scary, it was scarier not knowing so Tobie and I decided to do the responsible thing and finally get ourselves tested. Neither of us had ever done this before so I have to admit that it was a little scary, but definitely something I was sure about doing. It took about 15-20 minutes for the results and we spent most of that time answering this lengthy survey about our sexual habits and our knowledge of HIV. Finally the results were there and we were pulled to a side to discuss things. As much as this felt scary, my knowledge of such things reminded me that they'll always call you aside whether your negative or postiive, so that kept me from panicing as we found a quieter place on the busy street and went through the mandatory speech about HIV and responsible sex. We had opted to hear the news together rather than one at a time and so it was a tad confusing later on when the guy turned to me and said "You're negative, congrats!" and then continued with his speech. As much as I felt relieved, Tobie got a little nervous since he thought the guy was only referring to me. When he already got to the part where he hands us informational fliers, Tobie just had to confirm that the negative pronouncement was for both of us, which was pretty funny when you think about it in hindsight.
The rest of the night was a blur as more and more of our friends arrived, many of whom didn't even know there had been a Pride March earlier that day. We were definitely on a high for finally facing the dark beast in everyone sexually active person's life when you finally get tested for HIV and that really helped make the night allthe more special. It was our first Pride March ever and our first HIV test, something we'll definitely get into the habit of doing at least every 6 months from now on. I don't trust myself to remember everyone who was there eventually - there were just so many of us plus the generous amount of beer I decided to have that night along with the Kamikaze that Tom had ordered and that blasted pitcher of Bailey's that Arvin (I think that what his name was) kept offering everyone. It tasted really good though.
So there, that was my Saturday. In a nutshell, I just upgraded my life experience bar by a notch or two and found even more reasons to be happy and more importantly proud to be the gay man that I am. It's hard to top something like that and I don't think I'll even try to do that. I'll just wait for life to surprise me with bigger and better things, as it is often want to do.
OMG, this sounds way too much like work! LOL
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sick
loved
indescribable
excited
chipper
sleepy
contemplative