Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

There was a megaphone missing from the Open Campus day two Saturdays ago. Ronnie had written a permit to borrow one of the school’s two megaphones for that day, and since there was a sound system set up for the opening ceremonies near where the registration table was, there wasn’t really any need for the megaphone until after lunch.

During the noon lull in activities I felt the need to remind the people in the cafeteria about the events for the afternoon. But the megaphone that Ronnie borrowed was being used by the basketball officials. So I borrowed the second one from housekeeping, to use for the announcements.

Afterwards, I used the same megaphone to herd the people around during the tour. Since this was my last job for the day and I knew from earlier that the person in charge of housekeeping was somewhere around the campus supervising some clean up that couldn’t wait until Monday instead of in her office, I left the megaphone in Ronnie’s cubicle (where I saw the other one placed the previous day) before I departed the faculty room.

The faculty room was open though, and had been since early that morning, with students going in and out using the computer and printer for last-minute sign up sheets and announcements to post.

Monday after the Open Campus I saw the megaphone still on Ronnie’s desk, although someone had opened the battery case. The next day Ronnie said that the other megaphone was missing.

It seems that after being used by the basketball officials, it was brought over to the paintball area, where Ronnie last saw it before he also left for the day. The student whose family company was in charge of the paintball, Lyka, said she brought the megaphone to the faculty room and left it on the secretary’s desk afterwards.

The secretary confirmed that she did see a megaphone on her desk Monday morning, and she put it on Ronnie’s desk. Which means that it was the megaphone I used that’s missing, and that someone had gone into the faculty room after we left and swiped it.

At the start of last week the secretary said that Sir Ronnie was already going to charged for the missing megaphone. I told her that since I felt partially responsible, that they should split the P3,000 cost between the two of us. Ronnie, on the other hand, was insisting that the security personnel be liable for the loss.

During the field trip last Sunday, Lyka, who it turns out has at least two houses, said that she went to their second house the day before (where all the paintball paraphernalia is stored; she had been staying at the other house the rest of the time) and she was told that the second megaphone was there.

So no salary deduction for us after all, but stricter rules will probably be implemented from now on concerning the borrowing and use of school property.

But the story’s not over yet. Lyka seems to be one of the few students who got sick after the field trip, and has not been to school the past few days. Same with Ronnie, although for him he used the “chaperoning” he did last Sunday to take yesterday off. He doesn’t have anys schdule on Mondays. And I had to be the one to tell Housekeeping that we should be expecting the megaphone returned soon.