Oops, I Did It Again....

Picture this.

I was at the grand ballroom of The Manila Peninsula. On stage is a panel of distinguished intellectuals discussing federalism in the Philippines: a lady professor and two swiss (not to mention--young and attractive) male professors. Opposite the stage, on the far wall, is a long buffet table laden with the afternoon snacks. In the middle of the room is the LCD projector and the desktop computer on which it was attached. One my colleagues, was manning it, assisting one of the professors with his presentation. I was sitting on a corner, resting, having just finished documenting one of the proceedings in another room. I was checking my email (entire Penn was on wifi - at that time, it was a first.) waiting for Allan, who was somewhere inside that ballroom to finish whatever he's doing so we can get a snack together.

We were both on yahoo messenger.

I was looking at the discussants on the panel, and couldn't help but notice how cute the swiss professor was. So I buzzed Allan. And sent him this message:

aggie_nonog: psst, psst. malapit ka na bang matapos? meet you at the buffet in ten minutes?

After I sent that (because I type rapidly), I typed another message: "by the way, the swiss professor on the extreme left of the panel is CUTE." Before I pressed Enter to send the message, all hell broke loose.

There was a collective noise of some sort from the conference staff. I glanced up at the wide screen on stage.

My message was there.

On my peripheral, our Dean was thundering in my direction.

"Aggie, why is your name and picture (gasp!) on the LCD projector?"

"Sir, I honestly don't know po!" Heat climbed to my neck and face at an amazing speed. I snatched off my ID and was quickly scanning my immediate surrounding for a huge brown paper bag to pull over my head.

I saw now that Allan was the one manning the LCD projector on the desktop in the middle of the huge ballroom. He was laughing his ass off.

After a second or two (though it felt like millenia), he killed the LCD projector. But the damage has been done.

I was more mortified that I was this close to sending the second message.

And that the only thing that stopped me was the ruckus the girls made, as they tried to scramble in my direction to stop me from sending another message. And our Dean's frantic question.

The entire staff didn't allow me to forget that particular conference.

Fast forward to today.

I was just blogging and because uploading photos took forever, I scanned my YM list and decided to buzz a few friends. One of them was a girl I worked with in the conference. This is what I sent her.

Aggie Nonog: hi ely! kumusta na? i ran into MikeT yesterday

It took Ely forever to respond. And I thought the dilnet servers were hiccuping again, and that she'd probably get my message tomorrow morning (this is true, I swear!). Then I got this:

ely_cureg: truly? baguio ko ngaun. makulit talaga tong YM mo ano. lumabas msg mo sa participants namin sa training dito, mga bgy capt. naalala ko tuloy poninsula.hehe

A beat. Then comprehension dawned on me.

Aggie Nonog: oh CRAP! not again!!!

ely_cureg: hehe saya nga e, magiging popular ka someday.haha

Aggie Nonog: stress stress stressssss


Here I am, hundreds of kilometers away, and it happened to me. Again. When will I ever learn, that they don't know how to shut off anything on their laptops that might cause pop ups when they're on the LCD?????

The real punchline here, is that the director, who was my boss then at the conference and their boss still, just buzzed me to tease me about it. And he's in Japan!

WTF???