It's all over

The day of two events I had been looking forward to for the past month finally arrived last Saturday. Around noon, Pia Girl and I headed to Ateneo for the OpMan defenses. We met up with some of the other LM girls-- Anj, Yang, Ria and Juls-- in the SOM office and partook of the free buffet lunch. Sir Mike Tan (who happens to be Juls's significant other) told us we were the oldest among all the panelists (ack!) he had invited, which put pressure on us to be even nastier than usual. ;p With the exception of Yang and Juls (lucky!!), we all got MEco groups who had done audits on existing companies' operations (unfaaaiiirrr, LM had to formulate start-up businesses; why does LM always get the short end of the stick?).

After lunch, we proceeded to watch the benchmark group present their project on frozen chickens, and since they didn't exactly wow the panelists, they set the bar for even lower scores to be handed out the rest of the afternoon. I didn't flunk anyone though, and admittedly the groups I got this year were slightly better than the ones I got last year (or maybe it's because an audit really is easier to do... or because my 2 fellow panelists were too nice and they hampered me from flexing my evil muscles :p). The highlight of my stint as a panelist this sem was when I chewed out 1 group for having used plagiarized material in their paper (yes, Ms. Lim, the scourge of plagiarism strikes again, haha!). Almost 3 whole pages contained material copied verbatim from online sources, plus 1 very poorly paraphrased page. I couldn't fail the group because of it though, since I wasn't grading their paper, but their presentation. All I could do was report them to the SOM faculty, and hope that their teacher deals with them justly. I did manage to give the group a piece of my mind (and scare them shitless) before I let them leave the room. I told them that even if they did cite their sources, it's no excuse for the word-for-word duplication, and I reminded them that in the Ateneo handbook, plagiarism is an offense punishable by disciplinary action. I ended by saying that as a former teacher and an Ateneo alumna, I was disappointed at their disregard for academic integrity (how's that for dramatic? :p).

I hate plagiarists. Especially Atenean plagiarists. They give writers and my school a bad name.

After the OpMan defense, I rushed back to Greenhills to catch the fashion show of the ICA Variety Show. I thought Joy Lo and her VSC girls did a terrific job putting everything together. Our Ep Espada items were given a very young, hip look the way they were coordinated, along with various accessories and "bling", as Joy put it. :) The models' funky hairstyles and makeup also helped, as well as the disco dance moves they had to do as part of the show's retro theme. It would have been all just peachy, but one not-so-little incident did piss me off: the dumbass emcee (Vince somebody from Wazzup Wazzup) mispronounced our brand name not once, not twice, but several frickin' times!! He said "Ep Espada" ("Ep" as in "ep-isode") instead of "E-p Espada" (as in the letters "E" and "P"). The more infuriating thing was, after screwing it up in the introduction, he corrected himself after the fashion show... and said the EXACT SAME WRONG THING AGAIN!! He even said "MISTER Ep Espada" (whatthehell?!?). At that point I felt like picking up the vacant monobloc chair next to me and hurling it at him. I had to run up to the ballet room and get Joy to straighten out the inept emcee. I shall have to do some editing before I can send the fashion show video to our principal in Thailand. The introductory spiel was so nice too (mispronunciation aside) but now I'll have to cut out that entire embarrassing bit. =S The only good thing that came out of the whole mortifying gaffe was that we got more verbal exposure than expected-- the idiot emcee did mention our brand more than a dozen times, never mind that more than half of those times he got it wrong. :p

One last thing: after over a week in confinement, Guakong was discharged from the hospital today. =D His sodium levels are still low, his vision is blurry and the fingers of his right hand are still stiff, but he can walk slowly by himself, and he's very much lucid. I still feel happy whenever he calls my name. :)