Pizza, Peace Bear, GPS, Flow Fest, Alcohol and HTC

Last Saturday, February 2, 2013, my cousin invited us, I meant me and my sister Ate Len, to attend the Gala night of the first Philippine Flow Fest. We were a bit hesitant to attend that day since the venue was far from our place and we don't even know how to get there. Our cousin won't be coming with us since he'll be attending the workshop in the afternoon and the spin jam after it (his coach sponsored him so he won't need to pay for anything and honestly, things could get a bit expensive). He did give us directions though.

So first, we went to Cubao first to get some dinner. We had some at S&R New York Style Pizza at Puregold beside Gateway. They have giant pizzas in there with extra large  drinks. And what's more they're having a promo right now. Normally, pizzas in there could go for around 150+ php and I'm not so sure if they include drinks. But with the promo, every pizza and burger + extra large drinks are only for 99 php. Absolutely worth the price. I had pepperoni pizza and my sister had garlic shrimp pizza. We also bought a burger for my cousin. 




After eating, my sister dragged me to the toy store upstairs to look for some Beanie Babies Bear. She's collecting them. She has more than a dozen in her office pedestal. We bought a colorful one for my cousin. She said it'll be some kind of prize for my cousin since he'll spin for sure. 

We were told to take the MRT and get off at Ayala station and take a taxi to the venue. But my sister was feeling a bit lazy so we took the taxi from Cubao. The venue was at Venice Piazza. The only thing we know of that place was it's name and it's in Taguig. Nothing else. The taxi driver wasn't sure about where it was exactly either. Thank God for GPS! We were able to arrive there safely.

We called our cousin so that he can pick is up from the fountain at the entrance. He guided us through the registration. The entrance fee was a bit expensive. For a walk-in for the Gala Night, we had to pay 300 php each. But given the venue and the guest performers, I'd say it was actually worth the price. 

He introduced us to his friends in there. The community is a bit close knitted. Everyone pretty much know everyone's name. He introduced us to a lot people that I could not even remember a single name. OTL And someone even told us that of we ever need someone to teach us poi, we could have our cousin teach us since he's very good at it. We was amazing on his first burn! (With burn, I don't mean literally burn. Burn as in he spun with fire.)

It was only later that I found out that that person was one of the four organizers and was a good instructor.

I could not remember exactly much of what happened that night because there was a lot. It was really a flow fest. There were different bands and groups of different genres. The gala was started by a band performance which was kind of an all-rounder. They had rap, rock and reggae. The guitarist was freaking good. There were also ethnic/traditional, local and Indian , I think. There was a group of guys, who looked like they just cut class, that performed beat box. Honestly, I'm not a big fan of hip hop and beat boxing, but they are so freaking good that I actually enjoyed listening to them. I might include here a video of some open spinning (anyone can do their thing while some band was performing) and the background music in there was not actually a soundtrack but beat boxing. They're that sickly good. Open spinning was welcome. There was this around-7-year-old boy who was so good with hoops and another probably-younger-than-five boy who was doing poi. That poi- spinning kid actually did fire poi that afternoon during workshop session, according to my cousin. Fucker. How can he fire-dance? 

And of course, there were  flow art performers. A lot of them actually. Most of them performed fire poi but there were a lot of other flow art tools used too, like staff, fan, glass ball (for contact juggling) hoops, levi-sticks and buugeng. That was the first time I saw buugeng. It's an interesting tool. It was used by Alvin Lopez. He was one of the performers I really enjoyed watching. He also did the contact-juggling which reminded me so much of Labyrinth and David Bowie. I also enjoyed Thomas Johansson's performance. Astroboi's spin was amazing. He literally spun around for more than 3 minutes. I dunno if he rotated more than his hoops' revolutions. I don't really think I enjoyed Rachel Lobangco's performance. I was kind of looking forward for it. If Melisandre was there, she probably would. With the fire sword and all. It was there that I saw fire tools incorporated with different dances. There was jazz, or at least his movements were jazzy, tango and even fucking burlesque! I enjoyed that burlesque performance. I feel like I just said something a DOM would say but yeah, Justina Flash's performance was amazing and entertaining. My sister was kind of worried that her shiny bra might do some wardrobe malfunction but in the end, she removed them! Haha! What was left was just some tasseled nipple tape. And she's so freaking cute. Yeah now I'm freaking myself out.

The Gala Night program taken from their Facebook page.

Anyway, more than half-way through the program, I opened my tablet to talk to Bekiderp. She was annoyed about being in a bar with the people, the noise, the smell of beer and smoke. I told her I was in a kind of similar place but with the added smell of kerosene. Just then, a guy at my back chose to spill some beer on a great part of my back. I was pissed off. He was apologizing to my sister since I was kind of ignoring him due to annoyance. Really. And internet that time was proving to be a bit more irritating.. 

But then, the raffle started. They were going to draw one lucky winner for an HTC phone. My sister and my cousin were discussing that it'll be an HTC Desire X. The winner would be drawn from the registrants. And I was busy playing with some game in my tablet to settle my irritation from the beer-dousing earlier. A name was called. But the winner wasn't there so they decided to call another one. It perked my interest there. The second name was called and she wasn't there either. Everyone was kind of in an edge. THEN MY NAME WAS CALLED! FUCK! In panic, I raised my hand and stood up. My cousin and sister were in shock. My cousin was shouting, "Go there! Go there! Faster!" I was really panicking that I went to the front with my bag and my tablet in my hands. I did not really remember what happened around that time. I remember though that I was asked to have my picture taken with some different people. Hopefully, I won't be seeing any of those photos since I probably look so messy in them. Anyway, I WON A PHONE just minutes after I was doused with beer. I forgave that guy then and there. 

HTC Desire X specs It has a good screen resolution. I love how crisp the colors are in its LCD.

My sister wanted the phone too. So we had a deal. Actually, this tablet was technically hers but I think of it as mine since I'm the one who processed the purchase of it and I was the one always using it. So the deal was, I get the Nexus 7 tablet and her old Samsung Galaxy Y for the HTC phone. So yeah. It was a deal. I own the tablet, she gets the phone. And I'm a happy ghei. The end. 

Yeah I'll edit this when I get the motivation to look for the photos in the laptop.