Team building in Island Cove

What a Friday it was! Our department had a team building event in Island Cove and was a blast! I was worried it wouldn't turn out well coz I was running on very low battery to begin with - I had been sorta sick for the past few days and I ended up having only 1.5 hours of sleep! I wasn't in very good condition, and the sore throat and hoarse voice gave me little confidence that I could pull of the 5 songs I had to sing that night (6 if you count the song I would be singing back-up for). But a lot of water and fluids as well as several doses of Kamillosan during the day helped keep me positive.

The games were a lot of fun too. Some of my favorite moments:

• I successfully guessed Mt. Apo in "Pinoy Henyo"
• I got wrapped up as a mummy while others formed pyramids in our photo-shoot for the Best Egyptian pose (we won that!)
• A few teammates and I figured out - in only a couple of minutes - the sequence of "countries" that we visited as well as the corresponding flags

But my absolute favorite moment came during the logic question. We were given 5 first names, 5 last names, and 5 countries that each person likes to visit and you had to match each first name with a last name and a country based on the 5 clues given. Our big boss plus two other managers were in our team, and a lot of folks were trying to solve it. I initially left several people to solve it - this is one of those cases where too many cooks spoil the broth - but after a while I wanted to apply a different methodology to solve it so I got the question and tried solving it again. A couple of my teammates assisted me and in only a few minutes, I figured it out! I was so proud. :)

The night event while lasting more than four hours was also fun. The organizers gave the band 30 minutes to play at the start of the event and another 30 minutes at the end to kick off the party. And it turned out fantastic! This despite my bad voice LOL. Our setlist:

Set 1:

• "Wavin' flag" by K'naan (theme from the World Cup - I sang the bass back-up vocals)
• "King of Pain" by the Police (I was so pleased I pulled it off given that it's a tough song to sing and I wasn't in the best condition)
• "Hungry like the wolf" by Duran Duran
  
• "I want you to want me" by Letters to Cleo
  
• "Basket Case" by Greenday
• "Sexy Back" by Justin Timberlake (I performed this, although we kinda adopted the Poison version and rocked it out a bit)
• "Paradise City" by Guns N' Roses

Set 2:

• "Ignition Remix" by R Kelly (I sang this, can you believe it? :))
• "Tik Tok" by Ke$ha
• "Take you there" by Sean Kingston (I performed this as well, the band practiced this for our team building last year but it didn't push through, and we couldn't play it in our Christmas party last year as well, so this performance was a year in the making :))
• "Empire State of mind" by Alicia Keys and Jay-Z
• "California Girls" by Katy Perry featuring Snoop Dogg
• "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers (everyone in the crowd was singing along with me for this song)

In our final set, everyone in the audience got really into it. They were singing and dancing along with us and the energy from the crowd made us feel like rock stars. :)

I ended up going home that night actually. Due to a strange series of events, I got dumped in a room with 6 other people who I didn't know at all (and apparently our room had been turned into party central, with more people I didn't know being invited to the room), and there was just no easy way for me to find another room I could crash coz everyone was already partying. So I asked Island Cove reception for instructions on how to get back to Manila using public transportation at 1am. Net - I took a tricycle and two jeepneys to get to Baclaran where I had a midnight snack in McDonald's before taking a taxi home. The hot shower I took once I got home felt amazing! :)