A History to Remember

This article was inspired by @HOULTEE5's article entitled: One of the happiest moment in my life.

In there, he introduced us being the "floaterist".

What he means by floaterist is that we are the people who leads and who made our float for the float-making competition on our University's lantern festival.

Just like the title of his article, this is also one of the happiest moment in my life so I just really want to share it to you while reminiscing on our memories that time.

For a little background, I am a student from Central Luzon State University and annually, we are celebrating our week-long Christmas Celebration called Lantern Festival. Actually, our lantern festival is quite known not just on our province but also on different places here in Central Luzon. The Lantern Festival is open for all that's why many people coming from different places are celebrating with us during this festival.

Lantern Festival for me is always one of the best time of the year. Even before when I was still in High School, I always go to the University to watch their Lantern Festival. And last 2019, when I was already in college, I was so excited to celebrate the Lantern Festival as an official student of the University.

The whole festival have different competitions such us Dance Craze, Christmas Concierto, Ms. Q&A, Comedy Duo, Street Dance, Lantern Making, Float Parade, Float Making and Mr&Ms Lantern. Those are the different competitions on Lantern Festival but band performances until the sunrise is also much awaited. The fireworks display in the final day of the celebration is also one of the main attraction of the festival.

By the way, I am talking about my first lantern festival experience last December 2019 since what we had last 2020 is just a virtual celebration because of the pandemic.

Our college which is the College of Business Administration and Accountancy or the CBAA is pretty known in this festival because we have been the overall champion in 3 consecutive years now.

Usually, the college is dividing all the block sections, assigning us to what competition we are assigned so that we could focus to that. And that time, we were assigned in the float making competition. As the block president in our class, I was assigned to manage the class and monitor them as we make our float.

Above here is the photo of the most amazing team behind our float.

As I've mentioned, our college is known for this for being the defending overall champion but what's more pressuring here is that in the whole history of Lantern Festival in our University, our college never won the float-making competition.

This team really works hard for our float. I can say that we are the most hands-on people behind the float making for we stay in our college for a week in making our float during morning and until midnight.

It's funny how we work until midnight, just enjoying ourselves and the different taste of coffee that is being served to us to keep us awake the whole time. We literally tasted every taste of coffee that they prepared. From bland coffee, to being too sweet or too bitter. (I don't know why they make coffee like that but we just really need coffee that we drink everything that they serve to us, not minding it's taste.)

In all those days, nights and midnights that we are together, we have created a strong bond of friendship while working on our float. In those one week, we stick together with each other until the last day of the Lantern Festival.

All those experiences, no matter how tiring it is, is just unforgettable and I treasure every moment of it.

Fast forward to the final day of the competition.

The above photo is our final entry for the float parade. And during the night is the final evaluation for the float making competition.

So here is our float during the night with the fireworks display. The photo was so nice because of the fireworks but we were not able to enjoy the fireworks because during that time, we are in trouble.

The grading system for the float making competition is 50% during the day when the parade happens. The floats from the 8 colleges of our university, together with us students will be parading from the starting point until we reach the university oval.

During the day, we are so confident about our float because we heard such great responses from the judges, students, professors and visitors on how beautiful our float is. But when night came, when we have to light up our float so that the judges can give the remaining 50% of the grade for the float making competition, we experienced some difficulties regarding our float.

After the fireworks, it is the cue for the judges to start judging all the floats one by one. And as you can see on the photo, the fireworks is already out but our float is still not lighting up.

We have some trouble with our generator. It was too small to power up all the lights that is attached to the float. We are so worried back then. Shouting here and there and asking our operator why it wouldn't light up. We lost our hope for a while, I almost cried that time because we think that our efforts might go to waste if it won't light up.

But thankfully, just after the fireworks display, finally generator works and every lights on our float lights up. What happened was really nerve wrecking but it is worth it the moment that it the lights works well. Our efforts didn't go to waste and we didn't lose the chance to win the competition.

So after the grading of our float, me and the team enjoyed the night together. We go around the oval, buy foods from the stalls that is surrounding the oval and just enjoyed each others company. After we got tired, we go back beside our float and rest in there.

The moment we rest beside our float, it was the time when TJ Monterde, our guest performer for the night went out to perform. So the people went wild by his presence but we are too tired and too sleepy to care.

We were so sleepy that even with the wild crowd, we fell asleep on an open space not even caring about our surroundings.

We slept there for a while then later on, we woke up and we find a place to the middle of the oval to watch what's happening on the stage.

But because of so much tiredness, we fell asleep again despite the cold breeze of the wind and the coldness of the ground. (Yeah, nothing can stop us from sleeping).

We woke up again and it's already past 3 am and it's the time for the awarding. We are so cold and nervous while waiting for the results of the competitions.

And just when it's the time for the float making category, our world literally stopped as we heard the name of our college, the CBAA. And there, we make history. We won! For the first time in history! But for me, it is not just the history of us winning in the float making competition, it's the history of our friendship, where we became close, where we became so attached to each other and where we make so much good memories with each other.

Everytime that i'll look back on the CLSU Lantern Festival 2019, it's them that I'll remember. Also, there's a saying that the person or the people that is with you during your first lantern festival will be with you for a long time. And i'm really glad that they are the people that I am with during my first lantern festival and I hope that our friendship will really last for a long long time.

And yes, it was indeed A History to Remember.