Saturday was a hectic day. Had my admission exams for The LaSallian in the morning, then had this talk for Philosophy (which was incidentally more political than philosophical -- the talk may as well have been for POLIGOV, not INTPHIL). In the evening I went to Angel's debut at the Pan Pacific Hotel.

The exams were long. Whoever made that news test made damn sure applicants like me wouldn't take exams for other departments -- but I got the one for graphics and layout too, hahaha. It didn't help that I was an hour late for it either. I felt like my writing skills were being forced out of my latent laziness because I haven't been writing news full time for about a couple of years.

The debut was okay, but so many irritations spoiled my evening. With the Pan Pacific Hotel being in the heart of downtown Manila, I got lost driving around in circles because of Manila's maze of one-way streets. The debut was right in the middle of the Manila Filmfest as well, so traffic was rather bad. When I got to the restaurant, these waiters served an extraordinary amount of Chinese food; I think I counted at least 12 entrees. Just trying to sample them all was a chore, being all sated with food.

The greatest disappointment, though, didn't come in until I left the damn place. Since I parked in the basement and it was my first time in the damn hotel, I didn't know I had to validate my parking ticket (no one ever told me, and I swear it wasn't on the ticket). That made the difference of paying PhP90 for parking (expensive enough, but manageable) and PhP300 for parking. Frustrated, I simply palmed the bills to the parking lady and drove off on full throttle. I left there broke. I was hoping to save that, you assholes...
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Oh well, I guess what matters is that I actually went there. Happy belated "debut," Angel. You know what I mean.

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I finally met Pam Pastor in person. And what a surprise it was.

It was one of those spur-of-the-moment meetings, actually -- she had to do an interview of our basketball training team, and I was up long enough to be able to talk to her on her home phone the night before. I arranged to escort her around DLSU right in between my tests and my lecture.

We met at South Gate, and then I proceeded to escort her to the Sports Complex's hardwood courts. After her interview, we went down to La Casita for lunch. Far from being an awkward meeting, we were talking and laughing like two old friends who hadn't seen each other in years. It was also great to be able to be with Pam without being hassled by cell phone credits or excessive Net usage. As we found out, we actually had a common time where we could just hang around in Makati. Yes, Pam, I agree: we really should go out more often.

I loved making my friend smile and forget about all her recent troubles with weird guys. 'Twas just too bad that I had to leave for my Philosophy lecture, as she was free until 5 pm that afternoon. We'll do this again, Pam, I promise. You make me realize how nice I really am.
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As I was typing this I've had to rewrite and rewrite this post at least four times. My four-year-old computer's uncooperative again. I thought I had the problem fixed when I removed 75MB of junk and temporary files from this lump, but no...

Methinks it's about time I took up my mom's suggestion of getting a new computer.