Monday, October 21, 2013

The Morong Experience

Last Saturday, October 19, our company went to the Phi Phi Beach Resort in Morong Bataan. It was a tad late for a company summer outing, but the wait was all worth it.


After an almost 6-hour drive from Makati, we arrived at the place exhausted, hungry, but definitely looking forward to a fun-filled weekend. And we were not disappointed. The organizers, the HR team, made sure of that.


The Boss decided to sit beside me, but told me to keep quiet. It was the longest ride ever... 

The Triad: Itamar, the CEO; Clayton, the Marketing Director; and Bernard, the Ops Manager, were the Kings (team captains), while Gaia, Zhai, Carla and I were the princesses. Hell yeah I got to be a princess for a few hours, how fab is that?!!!. I picked Bernard's team. I knew I was in good hands! Yay! Bernard’s misery was just about to begin.

The first game is Sandcastle Building. Each team needs to create the sandcastle within 15 minutes, with the company logo properly included. I tried to sabotage the other team's castles, but the Game Marshalls were too strict!

Next is Amazing Race inspired. Each princess and a pawn have to find the sticks with the King’s picture, scattered all over the shore. I chose one of the Onpage guys, Jojo, and made him search for all the sticks. I didn't know that I had to find the sticks with him. I just hopped and jumped all over the place and realized we were losing. I tried to cheat and convinced the other players to give me their sticks, but they were all so sticking to the rules and didn’t give me any.




The third game is finding those plastic spiders, centipedes and rats. Each item has an equivalent point and the team with the most number of points, wins. Again, I tried to cheat and steal one of the other team’s loot, but was booed instead.

The fourth game - The Voice spin-off - was the best seller and had everyone screaming -  boys and girls alike. Each king had to sing and the one with the loudest  applause (or scream) wins the game. Clayton sang an NSYNC song, which had those girls screaming their lungs out. What?!!! It’s your first time to hear a white guy sing?! Duh!!!

Itamar sang My Way (he played it safe, but the girls were also screaming like it was Justin Timberlake singing, huh?!!) Our King, Bernard -- Oh gawd, I can't remember what he sang, but we cheered for him anyway because he's our King! According to Karen, it's a Kris Allen song, "Live Like We're Dying".



After the screamin' comes the grossin'. Inspired by Fear Factor, the players need to gobble up all those gummy worms placed in a baby's diaper. I wanted to join and decided against it coz I don't really like the idea of eating something from a diaper. Like hellooo!!! My 19-year old son was once a baby. Yuck!

And the last game, where I did my team shame, was called "Coke Sakto." There were 3 pitchers of coffee or chocolate (can't remember) and 3 meters away were 3 empty bottles of coke. We need to transfer the coffee to the empty bottle using either our hands or mouth or both. I thought we were going to drink up the coffee once transferred to the coke bottle and thought it would be so gross, I decided to just use my hands and failed miserably. I tried to cheat, like pour the pitcher directly to the coke bottle, but got disqualified.

I dunno why they take games seriously. I mean, hello, games always have cheats. How else do you explain those cheat websites for Dota, Angry Bird and Candy Crush?!!

After the games, we went back to our villas and Mike (who, along with Sam, did a great job hosting the games) decided we have one more little game before dinner. Like they didn’t have enough games already! While everybody else was busy swimming, taking pictures, playing frisbee or volleyball, some of the Content Boys, SEO guys, and I were busy getting drunk.

There was a little program before dinner for the 3-year anniversaries of 3 employees: Jonas, Mica and Clayton. I kinda missed the program because I got busy puking my guts out (imagine drinking on an empty stomach) and waiting for the heater to turn really cold water to hot.

After what seemed to be an eternity waiting for the dinner to be served, Content Team and I went back to the boy's villa and continued Pik-Pak-Boom and got drunk again. The guys were kinda pissed that I rarely made a mistake so they sort of it made it a mission to make sure I will get the game wrong and get a penalty (drink one straight shot of rum). It was so much fun, we consumed about 5 bottles of Emperador. I decided to go to bed at 10:30. No way I'm going to stay up and drink side by side with those kids. This old woman knows when to stop.

I tried to wake up early the following morning, but having just 3 hours of sleep the night before that, I woke up at about 6:30 and missed the sunrise. After coffee, I joined the winners of the game (Team Clayton) to Turtle Island. The boat ride was fun and boring. Fun because I got to see some salt water (I love the sea) again, boring because the boat was too slow. Had a blast having photo-ops at the island though. My chance to be an ANTM model was fulfilled.

Here, see how fab my shot is:


Thanks Mafe!

After Turtle Island, it was brunch and prep time. I didn't want the day to end. It's one of those badly needed weekend. But all good things come to an end. The bus ride home was faster than I anticipated. No heavy traffic.

The  best part of the outing? We had a really great weather. While it’s  been raining consistently this past few weeks, that weekend, there was not even a hint of rain! Just sun, pure glorious sun to let us enjoy.

As always, bonding with co-workers is always a blast. Memories like this are forever treasured. Hopefully next year, it will be this awesome again!



Sonnet to Fathers