Protected: Beach Snapshots
TDP Send Off
Last Friday’s TDP send off was overwhelming. It moved me to tears — like a gallon of them and at least its not just me who cried 
Muchos Gracias to everyone who gave thoughtful farewell messages. Thank you for the cheesy “We cannot spell the Design People without D-E-S”. It was cheesy but in a good way. 
Everyone prepared and brought alcoholic drinks and I had to stay away for my own good. LOL. Thank you to my happy bunch, the Lunchies, specially J, who I know orchestrated the whole surprise.
I was trying to hard not to cry during the morning but when the clock striked 3:00 pm Beng started crying, kainez. Hands down the best part was the highlight of the gifts…I will let the pictures tell the story.
Is it a wabbit?
I hadn’t even opened the wrapper but one touch was enough to figure out what was the content.
Literally, rolling out the floor laughing and crying. I can’t breath. Kaloka.
Now what on earth is this? And who is Sister Guia?
What’s Sr. Guia got to do with it? With all due respect to this person who has been subject of this weird fixation.
For almost five years we always had our lunch at Megamall. Part of the lunch routine was withdrawing money from the ATM near the Food Court. While waiting for everyone to go through their transaction there is about 5-10 idle minutes to just observe. Unfortunately I always fixate my observation to a novelty store located just across the ATM machine. The store sells a lot of wooden novelty stuff that I would never put in my home. Haha. They had really cheesy stuff like avant-garde looking Disney characters, Last Supper frames and souvenirs with odd messages. Then there was this unusual wooden plaque with an image of a nun prominently displayed by the window. I was over analyzing it every freakin’ day and what it meant that it became part of my daily habit. Every now and then we would discuss and formulate the story behind the wooden plaque of Sr. Guia.
Who is Sr. Guia? Why would anybody want an award from her? Was there a saint named Sr. Guia (I was never good at saints)? Was this some sort of plaque of appreciation? Did she keep a stock of this so every time she wants to thank a person she draws out a trophy from her bag? It came to a point I seriously wanted to have one made for the TDP The Design Person monthly awards. I even took pictures of it and showed it to random people in the office and asked what they thought of the “design” of the new TDP trophy. Wouldn’t that be cool and fun in a weird way. Imagine the best employee awardee expressing…”thank you …but what the eff is this?”
Now I would like to commend among my Lunchie’s the brave soul who bought the wooden plaque. J, being the decent man that he is apparently said something along the lines of “tangina…I can’t believe we’re doing this”. He then excused himself and went to Fax and Parcel and had some collage printed. I think it was Preck who asked the sales lady how much was it. The sales person said there was minimum order of 50-100 pieces. Oh wow what to do with 100 Sr. Guia plaques?! HAHAHAHAHAHA. They initially thought they wanted a batch made and they were asked in great curiosity “Kilala nyo si Sr. Guia?” Hahahaha. The sales person was baffled why the hell they wanted to buy this wooden plaque when they had no association with Sr Guia or the institution she represents. Intervention had to be made, they had call the owner because they didn’t want to sell it. The persuasion worked and thus my gift. It’s now proudly displayed in my work table. LOL. Every now and then I should be prepared to tell the story of Sr. Guia.
Thank you J, Preck, Joyce and She to go through all that weird trouble and entrusting me to take care good care of our Sr. Guia.
Special thanks to Mike and Tiger for the food and drinks and for giving me the opportunity to work with The Design People. Did you guys know it was a choice between me and another designer. J didn’t want to hire me (you bastard). But I think god made it happen for a purpose. TDP will always remain an inspiration to me specially the story of its humble beginnings in a tiny apartment. It was wonderful that Tiger can still remember my interview and he said he remembered asking me that time where do I see myself in five years. I answered, I wanted to have my own business.
Thank you all the departments - AI, Dev, Designers, HTML/Flash, IMD, Night Shift Dept. and the Aquarium peeps.
I will miss many daily routines. Breakfast in the morning, monthly awards, drunken nights at Stir, design psychological warfare, manita ng late (LOL), my Lunchies, eating, more eating, TL meetings, Owtee’s morning greetings, cooking for my Lunchies, fashion anecdotes with Alex and Camille, crazy TDP Christmas parties (where there is always one drunken casualty), “solid with gradients”, yun crush ko, hehehe and just goofing around.
I will be jogging near that area (Gold Loop) so I guess I’ll see you around.
And in true spirit of Sr. Guia - in gratitude, xoxo, Des.