The Week That Was

It's been almost 15 days since I last updated this blog. It's been a hectic week for me. I was fully involved with a community organization where the members are people from my hometown in the Philippines, Maasin City. We called ourselves Kaba-Maasin Las Vegas and I have partially talked about it in one of my very old posts maybe in my previous blog.

Anyway, every year we are celebrating the feast of Our Lady of the Assumption here in Las Vegas at the same time the feast is being celebrated back home. It's been six years now that we are doing this and it's been twice already that we went back to Maasin to celebrate the fiesta in there. Every time we celebrate the fiesta, we have the Novena prayers for 9 days and the culminating party on the 10^th day. We assigned sponsors to act as hosts in every Novena so the daily prayers were held in different venues. Of course food and drinks are always abundant and overflowing meaning the usual Filipino fiesta spirit already started on the first day of the Novena.

I refused to be one of the officers of this organization but I gave out all my support in order for the celebrations to be successful. I preferred to work in the background, acting like an adviser to the officers. I preferred to work this way and even with the prodding of the members to make me the group's president, I refused it but I promised to do the dirty job and let the officers do the things they're supposed to do. What are they supposed to do? I honestly don't know since I practically covered everything…well all the details I mean. Budgeting and other administrative jobs, I left that for the officers to do.

One of my main focuses is the production and program for the Dinner & Socials after all the Novena prayers were done. I also do some detailed jobs like printing tickets, promotions and maintaining the group's website, The Kaba-Maasin Online. Part of that is to come up with dance routine where the members can present during the culminating party. Coming up with a presentable production is already a big feat with people who has little or no idea in performing on stage. You still have to force them to do their assigned part but fortunately enough; most gave out their support and participated in the production numbers. As the day comes near, my "To Do" list grew significantly and this gave me some pressure to complete everything on time. I have always anticipated some minor problems that would come up on the day itself and this year is not an exception. We were holding the party in a hotel last Saturday, Aug 15^th but since Friday I already stayed in the said hotel in order for me to cover all the aspects needed for the party. By Saturday afternoon, the sound system was already set up but when I actually checked the venue or the ballroom that we were renting, the size of the dance floor is not enough for any production number that we prepared. The hotel's person-in-charge could not provide more of the wooden panels to cover the carpeted part of the ballroom to serve as the dance floor. On the party itself, during the dancing portion, our president hired the wrong person to do the mixing of the dance music. He was not actually a DJ. But in spite of all these minor screw up, I would say that the whole event was successful. I was afraid that people would actually leave the party when we realized that the music was not at par with the club music we are used to hearing and enjoy during night outs. I was kind of proud of all the members and guests that night because they still tried to make use of what music was available and enjoyed themselves up to the end.

After all the celebrations, I still have lots of things to do and that is to upload all the pictures and videos to the internet and make some links to our website. I've done all these things already and I can release a sigh of relief knowing that everything is done and here's looking forward to next year's festivities.