Founding Day Celebration-A Long Day

December 6, 2012

Dennis giving me thumbs up. He works in Solid Waste Management

This is the 160^th anniversary of the founding of Inopacan. This is the day all of the frenzied preparations have been for and it was a long day indeed. It began with a parade. I wore my new ‘Inopacan' tee-shirt and joined all the other LGU employees in the parade.


This is with nurses in front of the Rural Health Unit where Anita works
 

Sheryl Miraflor, the Villarubins' niece, a nurse and one of my close companions

Lina is head of the Planning Department.

The nice smiling lady across the table from me is Sole Lamarda the mayor's wife.
She's started leading Zumba at the baywalk.
I thought the baloon table centerpieces were creative.

Festivities continued throughout the day including a priest led procession throughout the building, blessing all the rooms, congratulating speeches given by the Provincial Governor and mayor of Baybay, lunch and evening meals for what seemed like hundreds of people with seating areas set up throughout the new building.

Boss Cito writing checks for them

In the midst of all this, all these people came to the office to be paid for their participation in planting mangroves as part of a Department of Natural Resources reforestation project.

It was a very warm day. My arms were sore from fanning myself for 15 hours straight.

I really wanted to join in the evening of dancing. I went home to freshen up, showered, changed into party clothes and went back at 7:00 thinking the music would be starting up.

Oh no not even close. A man told the story of the history of Inopacan, the architect gave a speech about his life and gratitude for being so blessed, awards were given to barangays for good waste segregation practices, different groups performed dances and a popular Filipina singer was brought in to perform.

At 10:30 she was still singing and I was spent, went home and collapsed with what I think was the second time I’ve suffered from heat exhaustion.

Apparently the music and dancing started at 11:00 and went till 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.

Anita’s brother Menandro, we call him Menance like Dennis the menace, runs a business providing the sound and light systems for big events like this. It was the first time I saw the extent of his equipment. Two huge trucks hold the banks of speakers and lighting equipment. A big air-conditioned motor home houses the massive computerized sound and light mixing boards. Everything is the latest state of the art and best quality. They use one of those big lights that beams out a beam like Gotham City calling for Batman. Laser lights spelled out dancing words across the front of the new municipal building “Inopacan’s 160^th Anniversary”.

His employees are very skilled in setting up, running the show and taking everything down and packing up. About 6:00 in the morning they came here to eat a meal. They’d been working about 24 hours straight.

Menance's crew started setting up in the morning.