Joining the selfie craze... I just noticed that we've been doing the business for quite some time and I really haven't taken my own pic with our photobooth.  So here it is in one of the events we had in amdocs, an IT company contracted by Globe to provide service to them.  There were some big time guests including the Ambassadors of Israel and India and Globe's CEO.

Scottish Rite Temple, March 9, 2014 - It's difficult to start off a blog but can't resist on not blogging this special event that we cover for today (March 9, 2014).  

We were invited to serve in the 65th Anniversary of Demolay Loyalty Chapter.  We absolutely have no idea what to expect and who were the Demolays.  So as a first action plan, I went to wikipedia to find out who they were and here's what I got from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demolay:
DeMolay is open for membership to young men between the ages of 12 to 21 of good character who acknowledge a higher power. Currently about 15,000 active members are in the United States and Canada[1] and additional members have active chapters in Italy, Germany, Romania, Peru, the Philippines, Australia, Aruba, Bolivia, Serbia, Japan, and Brazil. At present Brazilian DeMolay has more active members than even the United States, making Portuguese the most commonly used language in DeMolay chapters. The group model is of mentoring; adult men and women called advisors, often past DeMolay members or parents of DeMolays, mentor the active DeMolay members. An advisor is referred to as "Dad Smith" instead of "Mr. Smith". Appropriate ways for the young men to address their adult guides were discussed by the members and advisors early on, and "Dad" was adopted as the best way to convey both friendliness and respect. Advisor mentoring focuses on the development of civic awareness, leadership skills, and personal responsibility.

Founded by Frank S. Land, a Freemason, DeMolay is modeled after Freemasonry. With the sponsorship of a Masonic body, a DeMolay chapter often meets in a lodge room or, if not in a lodge room, in some other appropriate room within the same building. Although none of the youth groups are "masonic organizations" as such, DeMolay is considered to be part of the general "family" of Masonic and associated organizations, along with other youth groups such as Job's Daughters and Rainbow. As with Rainbow, a family connection to Masonry is not a prerequisite for membership into DeMolay.

DeMolay has seven Cardinal Virtues, which constitute the basic ideals and essential teachings of the organization. They are:

• Filial love (love between a parent and child)
• Reverence for sacred things
• Courtesy
• Comradeship
• Fidelity
• Cleanness
• Patriotism

But even with this wiki description, I still didn't understand what they do.  Like Masons, their organization was enveloped with mystery.

So we were quite early setting up in the Scottish Rite Temple.  In this event, we're providing both photo coverage and photobooth service  We were lucky enough to have our friend Freizer, do the shooting for us so we can man the photobooth in our assistant's absence.  So during ingress our sponsor told us that VP JC Binay will be their guest of honor as  he was also a DeMolay during the 60s.

Wow, we have a celebrity, err, politician guest in our coverage.  It was exciting to see the vice presidential security group doing a thorough security check hours before the vice president arrives.  Then the time came when the special guest of honor walks in.

My first thought when he walked in... "Nice, I'm whiter than he is :)".  When everyone settled in our photographer waited for the VP's speech being the highlight of this event.  Of all the time that he would need to answer the call of nature, it was during the time when it's VP's time to go up the podium.  I could see that there were some panic attacks from the security when my friend went to restroom while I took over the photography coverage tasks.  Later I found out that there was one security personnel guarding my friend inside the restroom while he takes a dump thinking he's preparing for an assasination plot.  That's just great timing :)  Well, hopefully he was able to SMELL the evidence that nothing's being planned on killing the Vice President.

Overall, it was very kind of our Vice President to finish the whole activity and even dropped by to pose in our photobooth.  So there you go.  Hope you enjoyed our exciting "In-the-line-of-fire" action packed coverage and photobooth session with the DeMolays.

'Til next time.