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

I’m still talking about the night of the Band Fest: we had dinner off campus with one of the participants, and the drummer of one of the bands playing was our driver. It was already past 7pm, the supposed start, but we were not in a hurry.

It was a good thirty minutes before the emcees even started asking people to approach the stage, set on one side of the covered court. Annoyingly, I was called by name to be told I had to take a good ten steps forward before I was anywhere near being inside the court.

The first band was plagued with technical difficulties. The amp of their lead guitar was crackling like a breakfast cereal. There was no mixer (the auditorium has one, but I guess they couldn’t bring it down) so the microphone of the singer was not louder than the instruments.

It was also then that I realized each band was given time to play four pieces, not three as we once agreed. I don’t even know if the songs were screened. What a way to stretch the event to an hour before midnight.

One small blessing was that there were only four bands participating, not including the guess band (led by the chairman of the board of judges). This is because the last contestants had the gall to think they could arrive on time coming from their own school more than an hour’s ride away.

In between sets the awards for the student sports fest were handed out. Our team won in badminton and volleyball, and the awards were just packs of bite size chocolate.

Only one other team won two events (chess and basketball) but it was neither of us who won the overall prize (the only trophy). I guess they included the points earned from the wacky games held during Halloween week.

Not that the scoring was transparent. But my frustration from the Band Fest is just leaking towards the organizers of that separate event.

After all the bands had played, there was an unexpected change of emcees. Even the new emcee admitted to me afterwards that he was just ambushed into the role that very evening.

When the third place winner was announced, and it was the first band that played, I knew that the last band would be declared champs.

The last band, after all, was the only one composed of all students from this school. Besides having the best audience impact, they were the ones whose playing was the most natural (I guess from having the camaraderie outside of being a band for money or for their worship service) and who had the best selection of songs.

There were some female students walking around giving food and drinks to the judges, and asking me every now and then if I was enjoying myself. It turned out that they were part of the organizers. I should have known from the fact that two of them led the National Anthem and the opening prayer.

I will have to finish this narrative next time. There are still three big bombs I will reveal. For now, class dismissed.