Urban Club, Davao City

May 2, 2008

At around 10:00 pm, delegates assembled at the Marco Polo hotel lobby to wait for the vans that will take us to Urban club.

Urban Club is located within the Wheels and More Drive compound, J.P. Laurel Ave. cor. T. Palma Gil St., Bajada. The Wheels and More compound (sometimes referred to as "Autoshop") actually has a lot of restaurants/bars to choose from, and each has its own crowd.

Urban Club is a popular, "happening" place among the young ones, and is sometimes considered Davao City's equivalent of Club Embassy - a popular hang-out of rich kids, celebrities, and social climbers in Metro Manila. Actually, DJs from Club Embassy would sometimes pop in at Urban Club.

I think the entrance fee to the club is PHP 100.00, which includes two free drinks. No one cares about the rate tonight though since the tab will be picked up by ACI. All the delegates just had the doorman stamp us with the Urban Club logo on the wrist and got in. We (PNB) placed 3 tables side by side and ordered food and drinks.

We were able to get tables since we were among the first to get there. In a few minutes the place was SRO. The waiters had a hard time remembering who ordered what that we had to actually watch each waiter going out of the kitchen just in case they have our order but delivering it to the wrong table.

Teddy ordered at least 4 dishes, but the only ones I liked were Crispy Pata and Crispy Tenga. One dish was cooked in a different way than we imagined, and one dish had beef that was hard to chew.

Left the place around midnight because the others in the (PNB) group wanted to go back to the hotel and sleep ... their decision was a bit abrupt - I had just poured out some wine into my glass when Che told me they were leaving. Not wanting to be left alone, I left with them.

May 3, 2008

I still ended up sleeping at around 4AM ... Rhoda and I spent the rest of the "night" talking. We weren't sleepy.

ACI Phils. Dinner and Convention Proper

ACI Philippines holds its annual conventions during the summer.  Usually it's Boracay.  There had been one year when it was Mactan in Cebu.  This year it's Davao City.

To give the delegates more time to tour Mindanao's premier city, the convention proper is held tonight, the first day of the 3-day event.

Dinner was supposed to start at 7:00 p.m. at the Marco Polo Ballroom but it was only that time that people started trickling into the venue.  Actually, some delegates were only just arriving from the airport.  I thought I lost my food stub for tonight's dinner since I couldn't remember where I absent-mindedly placed it while I was talking to Rey about today's transactions.  That was after I got a call from Shayne who we realized had not yet left the PNB dealing room because she hasn't finished balancing the figures on the blotters.  By then, she had already called Rey at least twice.  Poor kid, she didn't hear part of the instructions I gave her before Boss Dan and I left for the convention.  She called in again 30 minutes later to say that it's almost 7:30 and she's going home.

Took some pictures when everybody from PNB had taken a seat at our table.  Ted was tired of sitting waiting for dinner so he accompanied me to the lobby to follow up on the extra bed I requested for the hotel room I was sharing with Rhoda.  We saw Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte at the hotel lobby hounded by reporters while we were walking back to the ballroom.  Mayor Duterte is one of the guest speakers at the ACI convention.

Dinner, and the program, started right after Mayor Duterte entered the Marco Polo ballroom.  He was followed by ING's economist/strategist, Jose Mario Cuyegkeng.  The third and final speaker was Sudipto Lahiry, Bloomberg's Senior Specialist for Southeast Asia.

Took a break after dessert and since there were a lot of people in the restroom near the ballroom, I went up to our hotel room instead.  As I rode the elevator on the way back to the ballroom, I got interviewed by the only other passenger, who happened to read from my ID that I came from PNB.  He was interested in the PNB-Allied Bank merger.

When the elevator stopped at the 4th floor, the elevator was filled by military people.  Which made me a bit nervous, since I was thinking that if any insurgent decided to ambush them, I would be too near for comfort.  He he he!  I think that whenever I find myself standing near a uniformed soldier, whether I am in Manila or any other place in the Philippines (Note: I would learn later from the Mindanews that AFP Chief of Staff, Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, was having dinner at the Marco Polo with his Malaysian counterpart on the topic of Malaysia's pulling out of its peace-keeping forces in Mindanao).

Saw that the convention was over when I got out of the elevator since people were pouring out of the ballroom.  Others were still holding on to their luggages since they went straight to the ballroom the moment they arrived at the hotel (either they really took late flights or their flights were delayed).

The night wasn't over though since ACI booked Urban Club for the night cap.