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.

To Davao City

By jingfrey73

Got the tickets, and the "IDs" from ACI for the convention in Davao last Tuesday. Five of the delegates, two of them actually brought a son each, were already in Davao since yesterday, which was Labor day holiday. The remaining three, including myself, followed today.

Rhoda went directly to the airport from her house, while Boss Danny and I would be coming from the office. The bank car was scheduled to take us to the airport 11:30 am since we were on the 1:45 pm flight.

OPICS had an unscheduled break-down, which IT would prefer to call maintenance, so we weren't able to start loading deals till 11:15 am. It was around 12:00 noon when we finally got into the car that was going to take us to the NAIA airport.

We landed at the Davao airport as scheduled and it was raining heavily. Got wet even before I was able to hop into the Marco Polo hotel shuttle service ... and it must have been an old van for rain to drip slowly through the roof and onto my seat. Good thing I was wearing a jacket with a hood. Nestled between mountains, storms almost never hit Davao City, but it is not spared from heavy rains.

At the hotel, we were told to go to the Mindanao Borneo room near the lobby where the ACI secretariat and hotel staff are handling registration. For some strange reason, the lists posted on the board do not have Boss Dan's or my name on it, and neither does it list more than half of the remaining PNB delegates. Since the two lines for actual registration is long, we first lined up to get our food stubs and freebies from the secretariat.

The freebie bag, made of batik cloth, included:

• a "Welcome" pamphlet that lists the events scheduled for the convention as well as the tourist spots in and around Davao City
• a pair of beach sandals from Bloomberg
• a baseball cap from Tullett Prebon
• a small bag from Amstel
• a summer kit from ICAP containing lip balm, sun block spray, and after-sun spray by Watson's... it also had a small pamphlet listing Davao City's "places to go"

We got in line at both registration lines before the hotel staff found our names on their lists ... those lists were not alphabetical nor were the delegates grouped by bank. We already know our room numbers even before the staff told us, since Boss Dan's roommate Ted and my roommate Rhoda arrived at the hotel earlier than we did and had already checked in.

Rhoda was already in the room when I arrived and she told me of our little problem of only having one queen-size bed. We requested to be either transfered to a room with two beds, or have an extra bed brought into the current room.

Julpha from our Bankerohan branch came over to the room to talk to Rhoda and plan their shopping tomorrow.

She brought along boiled white corn on the cob, large guavas, and a box of pomelos.

The three of us left the room around 6:30 pm, Julpha headed home while Rhoda and I proceeded to the Marco Polo Ballroom for the Dinner and Convention Proper.