by Kryzl Pascual and Jen Santos

                An offhand comment was thrown by a blockmate on one of our mega-chill sessions at the Colayco Pavillion, and somehow, for the next four days of going there to “derp” around and just do stuff, that phrase kinda stuck.

He said, “Pansin niyo? Hiwa-hiwalay ang mga year sa bawat bench? [non-verbatim]”.

Tambay Weeks such as this always give off that kind of feeling whenever org members come together in this melting pot of some sorts; it’s as if there is a fixed place for every group to chill together. But, for some reason, it didn’t give off some sort of divided atmosphere. As a matter of fact, nothing said bonding more than the occassional chants and happy cheering from the different tables, and instead of getting annoyed, you find yourself nodding at their direction, understanding everything. We freshies have no way of knowing what exactly the others were up to (with all the laughing and noise, it was probably some form of mischief), but maybe it wasn’t so different from what we were doing ourselves.

There was a table in which people from different year levels gathered though—the E-Drive table. What is the E-Drive, you ask? It’s a joint project of CompSAt and AESS that aims to lessen electronic waste or e-waste, which if not disposed of correctly, can cause harm to the environment. To those who donated their gadgets at the E-Drive table, they were given raffle tickets for the chance to win prizes at the raffle. The proceeds of this event went to the relief operations for the victims of Typhoon Yolanda. By donating, people were able to help those in need, get prizes (maybe) and save the environment—three benefits in one event!

This was basically Start App for the first four days of the Second Semester, and we quote the ever famous pun, “…START APP the semester the CompSAt way!” Indeed, it felt like the right way to start any semester. The event venue had everything you’d need to kill time (a mean feat for us freshies who, as we guiltily admit, have long hours of break): from board games, to video games, to free food (happiness—they just kept coming), and even to free spaces where you can do pretty much anything you like (except sleep—that is, unless you’re good at hiding, then you can go sleep). But of course, the best thing is that we were able to somehow bond with our fellow CompSAt members in a way that only we can. That is, be different faces of the same cube.