The MU Philippines Battle Soccer Tournament/Convention

"What if you threw a party and nobody came?"

That was the thought that kept running in my mind the Friday before the tournament/convention we had organized. We had a full two weeks to slap together a decent tournament/convention to select the official Philippine representatives to send to Korea. TWO WEEKS!!! Any events management group would sweat at the prospect.

That night I couldn't sleep well. I mean, the thought that more of us employees than guests would be there was haunting me.

Saturday came and when I got there, a different nightmare awaited me. The eighty computers provided us by PC Express was having virus troubles. Everyone was in a panic. It was the kind of virus McAfee had no defense against.

I called out to download Panda Antivirus and we got to work. Meanwhile people were gathering at the entrance of the registration booth and the previous nightmare went in reverse. What if people came to your party but they couldn't get in? Or worse, they don't have a good time?

An hour and a half later, we had enough computers running to get the game going. We started letting people in and, surprise surprise, we filled up our quota of contestants within the first 45 minutes or so. People were still registering as contestants in the hope that they could compete if anyone was disqualified.

The tournament was underway, and I'd be lying if I said that it went without a hitch. A few miscommunication problems happened and it was rough getting the rules down pat. We settled for the easiest, quickest ways to resolve problems and eventually managed to whittle down the contestants to the most competent, the most likely to win the battle in Korea.

In the meantime, guests milled about outside the perimeter of the competition area watching the progress. Mitch, our resident mother hen, was conducting tutorials off to the side and the WeAreAnime group was conducting cosplays and artist conventions at the other end. Neutral Grounds taught newcomers the basics of tabletop gaming and the Gameophilia crowd was wowing them with an Xbox and GameCube demonstration.

Eventually the competition came down to the contingent from Cebu and a mixed group. The action was intense but eventually the mixed group won and our calvary was ended. We had found the official Philippine representatives and had conducted a successful, crowd pleasing convention.

The whole thing was capped by a performance by a well-known local artist named Bamboo. It re-energized us as the music washed over us and we jived to the groove as people moshed in front of the stage.

All in all the whole thing was sensational. I know that we'd get negative feedback later from the things that could have been improved, but I personally think it would be hard to top what we brought together very much at the spur of the moment.

I can truly say that I'm happy with the company I work. It combines my two great passions: technology and gaming, and even better, I get to work with an insanely great group of people.

My hat is off to Mobius

Am I a netizen?

Something just occurred to me. I started to wonder if I was a “netizen”. The short and simple definition of netizen is “someone whose life revolves around the internet”.

Let's see:

I check my email every single day.

I read Dilbert, Userfriendly and Garfield strips every day of the week.

I post in forums, most especially that run by the company I work for.

Whenever something stumps me, I Google it.

I chat with the friends I can't see through Yahoo Messenger.

I blog.

Yep. I'm a netizen all right.

On a gaming note, I installed Singles: Flirt Up Your Life last night. It's essentially the Sims with sex. I honestly don't know if the goal of the game is to get your Singles laid, but it sure seems to be headed in that direction. I'll be playing it a bit tonight to see how it all turns out.

Friday happenings.

It's a Friday and I'm so looking forward to the weekend. My head hurts slightly but I'm trying to fight it off without taking Biogesic. It could partially be because I didn't wear my glasses today but it could also be because I haven't had enough sleep lately because there's so much work to do at home.

A little about myself: I live with two of my brothers in our house. Since Dad died my family has been sundered because of my Mom and my brother's being required to go to the US to process their immigrant visas. They're staying there for the time being and my youngest brother has taken a job as an auditor and my Mom is studying to become a medical assistant.

Since there are only three of us in the house we've had to shift the duties around and honestly there aren't enough hours in the day to keep the place clean and the chores done. Clothes that are piled up that have to be folded stay in one place for a week at a time and dust settles like a blanket all over the house with our nary having any time to clean it up.

We have got to work out a system to clean the house more often.

On a gaming-related note, I've been reading the excellent book “Masters of Doom” by David Kushner. It chronicles the rise and fall of the partnership of John Carmack and John Romero, the creators of such classics as Doom and Quake. It's fascinating to read the history of two people who changed the face of gaming as we know it. They're also partially the reason why most people are now starting to consider gaming a legitimate entertainment industry. I was lucky enough to download an ebook of it and I'll now be able to archive the hardback I've been carrying around and install the ebook into my PDA.

The wonders of technology.

Motivations.

It's payday today and I'm three and a half months old in this company.

First a little backgrounder:

I work at an online gaming company launching an MMORPG here in the Philippines. I'm an assistant manager here and my job is to keep the people who marketing pulls into the game playing.

My office is completely different from where I used to work. My first job was in government collecting taxes. That was a full three years of facing angry taxpayers and explaining to them why they had to pay more money.

My next job was community officer for the World CyberGames. It was fun at first but I got forcefully recruited in the middle of it to be the Finance and Administrative Head of the company hosting it here in the Philippines. Needless to say I hated the idea of accounting for display cabinets and crab meat.

Now I work in a company where the age of the average employee is 25. I'm all of 31 and I look it, but I'm still very much a techie and a gamer at heart.

Back to payday. I'm using up most of my paycheck to pay off my debts, those I incurred mostly when my Dad got sick and the whole family had to pitch in to pay for the hospital bills and buy medicine.

I'm saving up for a Nokia NGage QD, the phone that doubles as a portable game machine for me to play when I'm commuting to and from work. When I get stuck in traffic it gets boring and sometimes it's hard to bring a book, that's why I want it. Besides, Civilization is coming out on it.

What can I say? Gamer at heart.