Day Four
May 28th, 2011
Jeez, they weren’t kidding about the down and dirty part.
So for the final day of the ME Prep Course, our venue changed from Escaler Hall to Leong Hall. Leong Hall was way bigger than Escaler Hall, and it was colder, too.
Today we didn’t start with an exercise, instead… well, I can’t remember what we started with. All I remember is that there would be a talent show before lunch, so we should practice. Oh, now I remember what we did. We had more talks.
The first talk was from this guy who shifted out of ME. When the screen showed ‘Shifting Out of ME’ we all went “Ohhh…”
Elroy Rendor
An incoming senior currently taking up AB Developmental Studies and taking a Minor in Filipino Literature
Though being an ME student is such a big honor, Elroy has chosen to shift out of the course for reasons only he himself know. However, shifting out of ME even gave Elroy a lot of opportunities during his stay in the Ateneo Loyola Schools. In fact, he is currently the President of the Developmental Society of Ateneo, the home org for AB Developmental Studies majors.
But this guy shifted out of ME intentionally because he felt that it wasn’t the course for him. He was probably my least favourite speaker from the entire Prep Course, mainly because he was talking about his passion for Filipino literature.
Another speaker was this guy who, after graduating from ME, worked at Unilever and got promoted 6 times in 7 years (wow) before he quit and co-founded Happinoy (I don’t know if that’s the exact spelling). He talked about ME students learning Corporate Social Responsibility.
Mark Joaquin Ruiz
Graduated in 1999 BS ME
Mr. Mark Ruiz spent seven years of his life working in Unilever Philippines. He has had a number of different positions in the company but later on decided to pursue his true passion: social development. Mr. Ruiz is currently the Managing Director of Hapinoy and the Founding Partner and Vice-Chairman of Rags2Riches, a social business enterprise helping a Payatas-based community create fashion-designer items from recycled rags.
He was another speaker that I connected with because he said that his dream was “to change the world” and yeah, he acknowledged that it was cliché. He pointed out that remote areas had no access to the supplies that they need, and they also don’t have access to the market to sell their produce.
The final speaker for the entire course came as a surprise. The hosts—by the way, I remembered their names! Kim, Paui, and Mark—said that he was someone we already know. It turned out to be this other gay guy (the other gay is Mark) who used to host the Prep Course for the earlier batches. He also hosted our Prep Course and made a lot of jokes. His topic was what we all were dreading: what happens when you’re forced to shift out of ME.
Mico Suba
An incoming senior taking up BS Management
Mico Suba was forced to shift out of ME after he got his second D during his second year in the Ateneo. However, amidst being forced to shift out of ME, Mico has managed to show everyone that being in another course is not bad at all. In fact, Mico is not the Business Cluster Head for the Council of Organizations in the Ateneo.
This guy was really funny. He always says this “echos” thing that makes us laugh. So he recalled how he was asked to shift out of ME because he got a D in Accounting under our previous speaker, Dr. Darwin Yu. He said he even tried to beg, and was daring enough to jokingly flirt with Dr. Yu haha. But wala talaga, he was forced to shift out to Management.
He told us at the beginning about his achievements in the Ateneo High School. He was really smart, got exempted from many exams, he was a winner of many awards, etc. And just like that, he was out of ME. He told us that it wasn’t until 2nd Sem 3rd year that he finally told his parents that he wasn’t in ME anymore.
But when asked if he could have a second chance, he said he wouldn’t do it differently because after getting out of ME, he wanted to feel better about himself so he joined many organizations.
Anyway, I can’t remember much of what happened during the talks…
So next was the Talent Show. Since the guys on our team were epic dancers, we decided to dance to this song I can’t remember the title of. I am a person who really hates dancing, but when we entered the Hall again after practice Cam Ang said we should do our best and “walang hiya-hiya!” so somehow when team Star Wars was called on to the front, I danced for fun for the first time in a long time. And get this, I even had a semi-solo freestyle haha, by semi-solo, I mean there were two of us. But I was forced to do that, so that doesn’t really count as daring…
So they told us to get ready for lunch and leave our stuff because after lunch we would immediately start off with the Amazing Race. Oh! I just remembered about some of the talents.
The most famous one would probably be the beatbox girl. She was really good. And the guy who can finish a Rubik’s cube in less than 20 seconds, and a 4x4 one in less than 90 seconds. These were probably the more stand-out talents, because the rest were just good dancers or good singers.
So after all the teams finished showing their talents, the hosts said that all the seniors saw that there were a lot of really good dancers so they decided to have a dance-off. They were five people, and yeah they made us go “woaaah!” But nothing you can’t see on TV. Enrique and Rommel were a part of that. There was also this one girl who was really good.
It’s now time to explain the Amazing Race. It was EPIC. Basically we had two hours to complete as much tasks as possible, there would be 16 stations all around campus and we were 14 teams so that gave us some margin. There were designated people in charge of each station and they would give us points based on our performance in the tasks.
The first task was to tie our ankles together and we had to run across SEC field to our team flags. We would then get the flag, cut ourselves free and move on to the next station.
We had a problem walking together so we decided to hop on our left foot since the ribbon was tied on all our right feet. But then when we did get there, our knots were really tight, and we didn’t have any scissors (Aldrich ran off to get some but he wasn’t there yet) so we were kinda the last team left of the field haha. Cam Ang and Paeng Valenzuela even had to help us get out of the ribbons haha.
So then we ran to… I don’t know the name of the building, but we ran towards it. The next station there was a white square tarpaulin on the floor and the rules were that we had to flip the white square while we were all inside it (we were 12 and the tarpaulin was like, a square meter) and we couldn’t let our feet touch the ground. So imagine twelve people squished together on top of a white square tarpaulin trying to flip it without ever leaving it.
Note: If you recall, I said we were 13 in team Star Wars (not including the facis) and yes, we are 13, but sadly Caje couldn’t join us because he was having family problems (I overheard Aldrich).
We managed to do that by folding it and then tucking the edge between our feet and then jumping all at the same time. We had a five-minute time limit and we did it with few seconds to spare.
The next station was right beside it. There was a cooler, ice water, and some apples. You can already guess what we had to do. We had to dunk our heads in the freezing cold water and transfer an apple to another container beside it without using our hands. And remember, it was raining THE WHOLE DAY so we had to dunk our heads in ice-cold water and then stay under the rain.
It was really easy for me to get the apple, but harder for the others. So after that we ran to a small clearing in the forest-like places where there were upperclassmen with water guns. The next task only required 10 freshies so I didn’t join because I didn’t like getting water gunned in my eyes. So their task was kinda like that baseball bat thing where you spin around for like, ten times and then you try to run. But instead of running, they had to frog jump and go around an orange marker. One of my teammates got really dizzy and stumbled around like he was drunk.
So the next station was where it got really dirty. There was this supposed ‘electrical wire’ (made of string) that we had to go over without touching it. The boys lifted the smallest but fairly strong boy in our team, Sam, first and then next was Enrique. So now we had two boys on one side, and two boys on the other to just lift the girls and the rest up and over the electrical wire. We have this one heavy guy, the same guy who stumbled around, and so he went third to the last. The last was Rommel and his was the most epic. He’s a dancer, remember, so he took a few steps back and started running towards it and did a 360 flip and landed on his back on the floor.
The floor was full of that light brown clay-ish mud that made a weird splack sound when you land on it. Rommel wasn’t hurt, his shirt just got really brown.
Our next stop was—wait, you should understand that this isn’t just any ordinary walking around to the next stop, this was RUNNING like freaking hell to every stop! So we ran to the next station and the task was for two people, they tied a stocking around their waist and on the end of the stocking was a tennis ball. Their task was to try and knock out bottled spread across the small field using the tennis ball.
After that task we did a bunch of other physically challenging tasks. There was one where we had to use our hair (we were four girls in the team, the guys just used their hands) to transfer water from one bucket to another. The water just dripped to the floor all the time, and don’t forget: it’s still raining. Every single task we did, we did under the rain.
There was also a task where you slide on your tummy under strings; you’re not supposed to touch the strings.
There was also a task where you lay flat on your stomach side by side, then one person rolls on top and then the next person, and so on.
There was also a task where we had to carry a tire like, a block distance away—UPHILL--and shoot it through a pole, all the time holding it. We were twelve people trying to hold a tire. Some of us just pretended to hold it, but holding it wasn’t the challenging part, it was walking back and forth THREE TIMES.
There was also a fun task at the Social Sciences building where we weren’t allowed to speak, and we had to follow the instructions given to us without making any noise. The first task was to line ourselves according to height; the next was according to foot size, and the last according to tongue length.
There was also a weird task where we had to pass around an orange using only our mouths. That was really awkward because for some reason, we were positioned boy-girl-boy-girl when that wasn’t even a requirement.
There was also a task where we had to eat this Sweet Corn, marshmallow, and chocolate syrup mixture without using our hands. And after we finished that, one guy had to sift through a bowl of flour to look for the hidden Polo candy… using his FACE. This is when things got crazy. Remember when I told you that Micx was going to do something crazy? Well, this is it:
While the person in charge was explaining, she cracked an egg over the flour mixture, and we were all “ohhh” and then when they said “go!” Micx simply ate the raw egg. He opened his mouth to the one in charge (I think her name was Coco) to show that there was none left and she just stared in horror at Micx.
We all stood there for, like, three seconds, frozen.Then somebody somewhere yelled “di mo kakainin!” then we all erupted into laughter. Micx was still clueless so that Coco girl explained that he had to find the Polo candy and not eat the raw egg.
Another task we did was in the middle of a soccer field (still under the heavy rain). There was a stretcher made of bamboo and cloth and two guys had to carry everyone halfway across the field to two chairs one by one.
There was also a task at the JSEC where one of us had to be blindfolded (it was Rommel) and the rest of us would run to cups placed on tables far away and then hop on one foot back to Rommel and give him the drink. He would then have to taste it and guess what drink it was. We got 8 out of 15, I think.
There were other stations but we could only do those in the span of two hours. We then ran back to the walkway in between the SEC and JGSOM buildings to hang our team flag on the clothesline. We were, I think, the fourth team to finish.
Tired and aching, we shlopped-shlopped (our shoes were filled with water) back to the bathrooms beside Leong Hall and I stayed in the stall for maybe 15-20 minutes because I wore skinny jeans and they’re really hard to get out when wet. Plus my Converse shoes were boots-ish with double laces so that took me 5 minutes to get off.
I left the comfort room barefoot because my feet were aching so bad and just fell so good being released, and my shoes we dripping wet. We weren’t allowed to make a mess in Leong Hall so that was another reason why I didn’t wear my shoes in.
And also, remember my pitifully damaged Motorola phone? Well it just got even more damaged because I kept it in my pocket throughout the Amazing Race. Remember, we lay down on wet grass and mud and rolled around and ran through the pouring rain. It’s safe to say that it’s pretty much like I dunked my phone in a bucket of water and swirled it around several times.
Every time we had an activity outside the halls (Escaler and Leong), the hosts (Kim, Paui, Mark, and the gay guest-host, Mico) always do this matchmaking game. They call in freshmen guys and introduce them to the VIP people of MEA like President Tel Ang. Then they’re asked hypothetical questions like, ‘if you were to take Tel on a date, where would you go and why?’ and the guys would have to answer.
It wasn’t an official game; it was just something they did to pass the time while waiting for the other teams.
The last part of the program was the awarding ceremony, there were individual awards and there were group awards. Team Star Wars won twice; once for being 2nd place in the Hollywood Squares game, and the second time for being the overall 1st runners up. Yaay!
The ME Uncut Movie
One more thing, throughout the three-day Prep Course, as a clever introduction to each speaker, the MEA made a short film starring Rafael Valenzuela and Cam Ang, the project heads for the ME Prep Course 2011. The movie was a mix of Saw, Inception, Sucker Punch, and the movies that made up the different teams.
The plot went like this: for some reason, Paeng (Rafael) got an F and was in some sort of detention place, and then Cam came and saw his F and was like, “F ka nanaman?” and Paeng said, “At least di ako cheater like you!” and then they started arguing.
Then suddenly, everything stopped, and a voice said that they had an hour to find a glass, or else they would die, or something like that. So they went to look for this Starbucks glass cup thing. The voice also said that there was a bomb in the school and they had to find it and diffuse it. The bomb was planted by a non-ME student. In order to find out who planted the bomb, we had a talk about ‘what makes an ME student’.
Throughout their adventures, Paeng and Cam Ang kept meeting the TLC’s of the teams who were dressed up as their characters.
Somehow they got trapped inside a room haha, and they saw the bomb, which was either an iPod Touch or an iPhone. They made a light joke about La Salle here because there was a green button and someone said “Don’t press the green button! It’s green eh, ;)” and we laughed.
So after they were able to diffuse the bomb using stuff they learned from ME, the glass Starbucks cup thingy appeared. The voice then said they had to find more things: a key, a map, and the last thing was a mystery (Sucker Punch haha).
They found the map with the pirates from the Pirates of the Caribbean team. Then Cam was “kidnapped” and Paeng was alone, trying to find her. While he was searching for her, he saw one of our funny bading hosts, Mark, preparing to jump off the ledge or something. Paeng asked why Mark wanted to jump and Mark said something about how ME was really hard and he wanted to shift out na. Then we began our talks about shifting out.
A funny part there was when Paeng asked Mark how he felt ba talaga and Mark had a flashback to him singing ‘Bleeding Love’ and dancing around a black curtain.
So somehow Paeng found out that it was Jacob Black from team Twilight who kidnapped Cam Ang and this other girl. Jacob said that he hated ME students because he wasn’t able to make it in the course. Jacob had a flashback to his times with Edward (the other TFC of team Twilight), when they used to run around the Ateneo campus.
While he was flashbacking, Paeng freed Cam and the other girl and they started running. Jacob caught up to them and Paeng said “Let me handle this,” and they fought kung-fu style. Paeng won and Jacob disintegrated and left behind a necklace with a key on it. Paeng caught up with Cam and there was a kilig moment when he put the necklace on Cam hahaha.
There were other more adventures with the other TLC’s but I can’t remember much, eh. There was also this part like Slumdog Millionaire where, in the video, Paeng and Cam entered Escaler Hall (where we were at that time) and then, in real life, they were acting in the Hall with us there. So on the projector screen there was the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire question thingy and the questions were like, ‘what do you call the Math for Management Engineering?’ and they chose ‘Call a Friend’ and so we had the talk with Mr. Chan Shio (do you remember him?) about Ma18 a/b haha.
Another question was ‘what field do ME students usually end up in’ and the correct answer was, of course, the one about financial or business whatever, but the choice for D was Medicine and Paeng chose ‘Ask the Audience’ and we were yelling “D! D! D!” so that kinda ruined their plan haha.
But it was alright because that’s when we had the talk with that guy from P&G.
So finally, the last part of their adventure: the mystery. If you watched Sucker Punch, you’d know that it would be a sacrifice. So they went to the MVP building and to the elevators there. The voice said that there would be a message on top of the red button (the red button was the fire alarm). Cam took the piece of paper and read out loud, “The one who enters the elevator… will leave this limbo.” Not her exact words, but you get the point haha.
So they started arguing about who should go in. Cam was saying that she never really sacrificed anything in her life, and that she was a cheater and she deserved to stay in limbo, and that Paeng should be the one to go. Paeng refused, he said that she should be the one to go in the elevator (I don’t remember his argument haha).
The elevator doors opened… and inside the elevator were my TLC’s!!! Hahahaha, Aldrich and Bea were in there dressed in their Star Wars outfits. Bea asked something like, “So who’s going in?” and, having no choice, Cam went in.
Funny fact, Aldrich plays Anakin Skywalker, who is also Darth Vader, and if you watched Star Wars you’d know that Darth Vader breathes like an asthmatic person, so Aldrich was breathing so loudly behind Cam like “Fssshhhh, Fshhhh!”and he was staring at the camera.
So Cam entered and Paeng had to be left behind in limbo; they played emotional music and everything was in slow motion when the elevator doors closed.
Paeng looked at the floor and saw the crumpled piece of paper and he read it to himself. It said, “The one who enters the elevator will be stuck in limbo forever…” or something like that. Then we were all “woahhhh” and Paeng was devastated hahaha he started walking around like he was lost.
Then he woke up and he was back in the detention-like room, but Cam wasn’t there anymore, she was supposedly stuck in limbo then. So he left the room and was looking really sad, he was walking by the glass stairs in the JGSOM building. He was looking down at the floor so he didn’t notice the girl he bumped into. They both dropped some stuff and when they bent to pick them up, Paeng saw that it was Cam Ang and didn’t bother picking the stuff up anymore.
I don’t think Cam remembered what happened in limbo because she walked away kaagad . And when Paeng called her she said, “Ano? Tatawagan mo nanaman akong cheater? “ and started walking away again. Paeng did this goofy smile and then ran after her (it’s supposed to be romantic haha). Then the camera panned down and showed the stuff that Paeng dropped. It was his token shaped like a top. If you watched Inception, you’d know that their tokens determine whether they were still dreaming or not.
The token was still spinning.
Oh! There’s one more thing I have to say about ME that isn’t said much online because I heard it the first time during ME Prep Course.
There is an old saying in ME:
“Look to your left.”
We looked to the person on our left.
“Look to your right.”
We looked to the person on our right.
“One of you won’t be able to finish ME.”
Obviously we were all “woaaaaahhhhhhhhh” when they first told us that. But every speaker that we had also mentioned that and said that it wasn’t true. We are a batch of 222 people. Professor Chan Shio or… something like that… even said that maybe 100+ of us will graduate.
So anyway… our prize for winning 1st runner up, by the way, was a lot of Fudgie Bars and Jelly Sticks. We also endorsed Fit n Right while doing the task in the middle of the soccer field. We drank Fit n Right in the rain and looked sexy.
I can’t think of any more, so bye-bye.
And oh yeah, one last thing… remember when I said waking up at 4, going back to sleep, and then waking up at 5 again was relevant throughout the story? Yeah, I lied. It’s not.
I’d like to acknowledge the sponsors of this event
Jansport, Yoh Froz, hp, Krispy Kreme, Lipton, Rebisco, Fit ‘n Right, Dewberry, Pepsi, and Bacchus.
Speaking of Bacchus, they gave us Bacchus energy drinks after lunch today to get us high and energized so we could perform the tasks. I didn’t drink mine because I’m strict about what I drink. There are a lot of things more that I could say but just can’t remember.
EDIT: I just saw an article on Yahoo! that children should not be drinking energy drinks. I'm a child at heart, so it's a good thing I didn't drink Bacchus. #:-S
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