Feb Fair — the UPLB way

You know the man next to you is from UP not only because of his intellectual prowess but also because of his knowledge about the Feb Fair. Yes, the Feb Fair, the annual “fiesta” of the university celebrated on the days surrounding Feb. 14.

You know the man next to you is from UP Los Baños if he does not only know about the Feb Fair but is also excited to be part of it. Even if many times through vicarious experience only.

To the many alumni of UPLB, the Feb Fair is a red-letter day. Hyperbolically speaking, every Feb Fair to a UPLB resident student or alumnus is a “holiday” of sorts akin to Christmas season — primarily because, just like on Christmas Day, one is happy and jubilant during the week-long celebration of the fair. It is the time of the year, for those who traditionally bask in the fair’s glory, when all their cares are thrown to the wind, which, thankfully, is still fresh because the university is within the vicinity of Mount Makiling. Every reveler is not without a smile running brightly — so much brighter than all the glow-in-the-dark loops sold at the fair — on his or her face. To some extent, for the many alumni who have not been back to UPLB for a long, long while, experiencing the Feb Fair again is like celebrating Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve combined. Again, pardon the hyperbole here but that previous assertion is something experiential, both in my case and in my many friends’.

The UPLB Feb Fair is held at the vast open field of the verdant campus. As soon as night drops its cloak, the fair takes a life of its own, with fever-pitch revelry, with the returning alumni’s hearts leaping out of their chests.

To the untrained eye, the fair is simple and ordinary, what with makeshift booths. Some booths are crudely constructed by the many students’ organizations whose knowledge of carpentry is almost next to nil. Well, even their knowledge of interior design is very challenged because inside the booths are mats or cardboards splayed on the floor. But life goes on at the fair. As they say, it’s not the house that is important but the people living in it.

Surrounding the booths are stalls selling palamig, hotdogs, barbecue and sweet corns. Some enterprising students even peddle balloons and roses. There are also the usual rides like Ferris Wheel and Caterpillar. (In the past, there were jail booths. There were also students selling “stamped” kisses — yes, kisses from stamp pads. Now, there are bands performing — student bands, mainstream Pinoy rockers and other wannabes.) 

To the UPLB insiders, however, the fair — its totality, its charm, its pull — is not just about finding half-finished booths around. It’s about finding again full-grown friendship, the kind that was left and planted on the UPLB grounds. This friendship has grown fruits and has also given life to other saplings. So, come Feb Fair time, the closely-knit community of UPLB gels again like Mighty Bond. Many alumni come back to harvest anew the same friendship that was sown in the campus several years ago. Returning alumni from different distant batches may not necessarily remember or know one another but bumping into each other at the fair is enough to elicit that convivial, infectious smile. 

If you really want to see the culture of love the students have for UPLB, all you have to do is to enter one booth of a students’ organization. Inside that booth are students and alumni members who merge merrily as they talk of UPLB’s glorious past while lounging in the air of the present. The animated storytelling sessions meander till the wee hours. Others sing old and new songs as someone strums a guitar.

You’re lucky if you find food inside the booth — perhaps that food is a “donation” from the nearby dormitories.During Feb Fair, many dorms inside the campus (Men’s Dorm, Women’s Dorm, YMCA,Vet Dorm among others) hold an open house. An open house is the only time when even non-residents can freely enter and eat in this and that dormitory.

But normally, the booth is devoid of food. However, don’t be surprised if your arrival is met with a welcome drink. Indeed, a very welcoming drink.

Even those who don’t have a booth — because they are “barbarians” or students who don’t belong to any organization — enjoy the fair, too, as they frolic on the grounds and make merry the whole night.

The Feb Fair in UPLB is like an opium that attracts many of its present and past students to savor the revelry year after year. Many of the alumni I know who live in different parts of the world even go to the extent of timing their vacations during the Feb Fair week. But those whose vacations do not coincide with the fair will always find time to visit the campus. Many alumni always, always yearn to return to the campus — to have a photo at the Humanities Steps, to promenade in the field, to sleep under the Fertility Tree, to have a photo op with Oblation, to visit former instructors, to reconnect with their “brods” and “sisses,” to eat the Original buko pie, to buy fresh milk at DTRI, to feel once more the warmth of home in the cool clime of UPLB and to be Peter Pan again even for a moment.

To the purists, they come back to UPLB to renew their love for the university that was once their cradle for four or five years, even for 10 years to those whose excuse for their delayed graduation was their “love” for Maria Makiling or Mariang Palayok. But don’t be fooled because some even come back to consciously fool themselves about their past dalliances with the rumored spirits of the alleged “never-ending” bridge behind the Main Library.

Those who finished on time or ahead of time, in one point of their lives, somehow envied those who remained in the campus. Well, it’s not really that easy to leave the university. At UPLB, it is not an uncommon tale to hear students from Visayas or Mindanao settling down in Los Baños for good. Even some  foreign students have relocated in the vicinity of the campus because they have fallen in love with the place.

But for us who live far away from the campus, we always wish to find the time to come back to the university. We return to UPLB not to sing UP Naming Mahal but to once again give our ode to the community that saw us through. And one of the best times to be at the university is during the Feb Fair. The fair is our link to the past — because the past explains the life we live today.

Fourplay at UPLB

If you happen to be in UPLB next week, please watch the original theater production of the UPLB Com Arts Society titled Fourplay on Feb. 27 and 28 at the NCAS Auditorium. These four original materials are Lipstick (directed by Clarence Joy De Guzman and written by Oscar John Bartolome), Ang Huling Rekado ni Emyong (directed by Pol Singson and written by Oscar John Bartolome), Reunion (directed by Foxy Enriquez and Tracy Quila and written by Pol Singson) and Paperclip (directed by Paul Sargei Azurin and written by Tabitha Jules Cariaga). For more information, please call Chachi at 0906-436-5680.

(Please e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com or my.new.beginnings@gmail.com. I’m also on Twitter: @bum_tenorio. Have a blessed Sunday!)