UP Centennial Kickoff!

The UP Centennial kickoff celebrations today started off rather slowly but finished rather well.

Classes were suspended at 1 pm, leaving people with nothing to do but wander around mostly at random and spend money on food and drinks while waiting for the festivities to begin. We bumped into a few orgmates: Racine, Aragorn, Kate and Jeriel, Nadi, Paula.. The class suspension/special day atmosphere is always nice, and the carless oval sections were fun, as always.

The weather didn't cooperate much, though, and by midafternoon the heat was making everyone uncomfortable. We were almost about to go home at this point, at nearly four o' clock, but we were already in position to watch the skydivers land, so.

They landed, yeah. One of them apparently missed the target quite a bit, but three of them did manage a nice fairly synchronized arrival. A few more stayed in the air, we're not sure why, but they must've come down eventually. All in all, pretty anticlimactic. I don't know what we were expecting of the skydivers, but, yeah.

Then some more aimless wandering (after meeting up with Jeanne's sister and her gay best friend), during which we met Ryan Cayabyab along the oval. (Bodjh had his picture taken with him, haha.) Eventually met up with Bodjh's boyfriend, er, Mark (?), and dropped by Quezon Hall to see what was happening.

Nothing much, so we got some food first, so we wouldn't go hungry during the concert and the fireworks display afterwards. Adora's shawarma equals not very good. If only there weren't hordes of people at nearly all the Babba's and Khaleb's.

So then back to Quezon Hall. We stayed at the front part near the clearing there for a bit, trying to get a glimpse of the pep squad performing, but soon rushed to the ampitheater for the concert. We got into pretty good positions, thankfully, although it was crowded enough to make for uncomfortable seating positions. Had to keep shifting my legs, which wasn't really easy with all the people being squished together.

There were a gajillion people at the ampitheater, seriously. When the camera shows the crowd, it looked like a shot of bleachers or seats at some stadium. Really packed.

The concert had its moments, but maybe about halfway through I bet many people were already impatient for the fireworks to go off. (I know I was, at times.) But yeah, there's nothing like feeling the ground tremble beneath you as an orchestra crescendoes into a climax.

Speaking of the orchestra, they were playing while the fireworks were going off! Very very spectacular, bombarding both the eyes and the ears. The entire crowd seemed to react as one organism, oohing and aahing at the flashier parts of the display as if on cue. (No one could help it, I think.)

No pictures of the fireworks this time, though. We thought that we would rather enjoy the fireworks display live by not worrying about taking videos or pictures, and I think it was worth it. Yay. The fireworks used were already familiar from previous years' Lantern Parade displays, but tonight's display did seem... grander, which of course translates to bundles more expensive. It couldn't have been just the orchestra, could it?

The smoky exodus was rather picture-worthy too, I thought, but we doubted we'd be able to capture the visual qualities of the scene that we would've wanted to (and besides we were tired and lazy by then), so we didn't bother trying.

[Requisite senti bit coming up, sorry.] Some people would take this opportunity to talk about how the university has changed over the years, some would say for the worse, and maybe others for the better. But I'd just like to say that, all in all, I think I don't regret choosing UP over Ateneo. Whee. Happy 100th birthday, dear UP!

(Pardon if it's a bit less smooth than normal, I need to go sleep now.)