Overnight ordeal

After several awkward social functions, one exhausting store visit, and a night of tossing and turning on an uncomfortable bed, I came home from Dumaguete with a monster headache, aches and pains in my joints, and a high fever that gave my parents (actually, just my dad, who's the more paranoid of the two) a dengue scare. Fortunately, my temperature never went over 39 degrees Celsius, and it went down the following day, apparently cured by the tried-and-tested home remedy combination of Biogesic, Gatorade, and lugaw. Although I was severely pissed at what Dumaguete had done to me, getting sick did allow me a few luxuries: I got a day off from work (it's easy to apply for sick leave when your bosses are the ones sticking the thermometer in your mouth), I finished reading Kane & Abel by Jeffrey Archer (very entertaining read; I intend to check if my mom's old Betamax tapes of the TV miniseries still work), and I watched Finding Neverland on DVD (Freddie Highmore is truly a boy wonder; he reduces Macauley Culkin, Haley Joel Osment and Jonathan Lipnicki to funny-sounding names).

* * *

This morning I received an invitation from Sir Mike Tan of Ateneo's SOM (School of Management) to panel this sem's final OpMan (Operations Management) defenses. Sir Mike was never my teacher in college but he became a trusty academic adviser and friend because of certain personal connections (he became the boyfriend of one of our barkada, hehe). He knows I love being on the panel for defenses, taking evil pleasure at picking apart papers Management majors slaved over for weeks (or more likely crammed in a few hours the night before), and assaulting the poor fools with absurdly simple, completely unexpected and utterly devastating questions, leaving them dumbfounded, depleted, and in some cases, near tears. Admittedly I grew soft after I became a teacher (too much empathy for students, tsk), but I still relish the idea of demolishing underprepared, overconfident whippersnappers unworthy of being called Ateneans (hmm, I wonder if I'll ever panel for some of my former students, that ought to be loads of fun! :p).

Sadly, I could not accept Sir Mike's invitation, because defense day falls on the same date as ICA's intrams, September 24. And I'd much rather be a Fyrinx fan than a bitchy panelist that day.