Reflections of 2006 (Part 3 of 6)

Jan 03, 2007 19:25


(07) 12th Student Leaders Convention

By the time competition was over, the June Holidays were arriving. It was now a return to Chinese High to see how the 12th Student Leaders Convention was progressing. I've heard horror stories from my juniors but never did see for myself how mortifying the situation exactly was. When I first returned during their 1st facilitators briefing, I was greeted with profuse tapping by Yuhui on my shoulder (thinking that I was a facilitator). Oh yeah, it's fun that your juniors can mistake your identity. Well, they probably weren't using any discretion anyway. I guess the real horror started when I began to read the Concept booklet. Just within that hour I spent reading the booklet, I had made god knows how many markings all over the place. The scariest thing was the conceptual flaws that accompanied the booklet. I mean the convention was going to be held in 2 weeks time and this was the material that was going to be printed? The entire convention was going to flop without doubt. I don't know what's wrong with their working style, but they all seemed laissez-faire and passive about their work (Ok, there had been a few that had been pulling their hairs out over the months but these are the rare gems). Ah, I'm going to plunge into that entire frenzy over Mrs Giam, Mr Fong and Ms Foo again. Nope, I shan't go there but in summary, they were being annoying and not entrusting the seniors to do the advising, not to mention giving ridiculous feedback calling for more informal sessions and asking the seniors to stop being 'self-righteous' (Oh please, look who's talking!).

I guess their current batch of seniors tried to save them desperately, but in the end needed saving themselves from the diabolically evil teacher advisors. Yar, teacher advisors that give useless advice. Well, I think when Bingqian, Erik and I stepped into the picture to try and work something out with the seniors to rectify the problem, it was already too late. It could actually be rectified if the OT were more nibble and receptive, but nope, they weren't. Not to mention their OS seriously had some personal issues to clear up. And one particular committee comprised of extremely disappointing juniors. The biggest scare still came when they announced the name of the emcee. Seriously, what's wrong with the teachers? Even basic things like this they can't even get right. When I was there during Day 0, the whole OT was rummaging in chaos. So many things were not done, this wasn't organised, that wasn't organised, the seniors were sent back home to pack their things and move into the boarding school, then rushed to the airport to pick up the foreign participants. What kind of planning was this anyway? Even I had to go and ask people to do things. I was suppose to just observe them, but seeing that they were only less than 12 hours from the start of the convention, things had to be done. In the end, all I could ensure was that they had a clear idea of the things to be done tomorrow and to confirm that what needed to be done had already been done (which some of them still forgot eventually).

Anyway, when convention itself came, certain people suddenly outshone the others, while there were those that were still rotting all the way down there. Thanks to the suggestions of "informal sessions" (contributed by the lovely Mrs Giam), the seniors had to go around doing discipline enforcement. When Grace and I stepped into Joanne Chan's room (The Space), we were totally appalled by the scene that we saw! There were paper aeroplanes, Joanne was losing control over the entire session and everything was swerving into absolute anarchy. In the end, we had to shout at people, issue severe warnings and even asked Joanne to consider using Point of Orders. Not to mention it doesn't help that you had councillors like Alfred leading the sessions in warm ups or have your facilitators go against you. Perhaps the only proper SLC moment was during the second half of the final assembly. After 1 day of chaos during preparation, you'd thought the OT should have learnt their lesson. Didn't seem to be the case until the second half of the last assembly. In the end, it was the current batch of senior advisors that made the push for a proper assembly. And only then did the OT Concept members finally realise what a SLC assembly should be like (the throat cutting remarks and rejecting proposals that were highly unfeasible).

The finale was sadly, rather unmemorable for the most part, and their selection of song for the OT slide show is horrid! What's with choosing David Powter’s "Bad Day" as part of the tracklist?! Allison Anne Joseph and I were totally complaining about the standard of the performances. "Some performances are so bad, they're good. These performances are just horrid, plus they've got no entertainment value at all!" I'm just glad Yuan Jun, Che Hao, Yi Da, Sin Hwee, Bingqian, Erik and Xin Ying still bothered to come back. The best part of finale was how our 11SLC OT juniors burst out crying already even though it wasn't their SLC. I guess it's the "SLC finale" feeling that came creeping back. Oh yar, from Mr Tejwant to Yi Da: "You're a fine young (handsome?) man". (I shan't comment further on what Tejwant has said, but you could probably guess what I'm going to say) And for the record, even the 11SLC people who came back for 12SLC felt that it was not up to standard. They left like half an hour into the finale because it was simply, B-A-D. The 12SLC OT was sweet to have an OT song, but since Jianrui was the lyricist, you can be sure this song is definitely getting a Golden Razzie Award (given to the worst of the worst) for his lyrics and music composition. Just a sample from their song: "What you want, you tell me" Urgh, I don't know. Sounds crude and unrefined, you bet. I still applaud Jianrui though for his poetic compositions but I think he should ditch that fast and focus on other things.

And the most insane of things happened during the final moments of finale. The OS went missing! Guan Yu apparently went to cry (since I guess he knew deep down the convention had fallen short of expectations) and their senior, Shi Wei, also had a mental breakdown (since he felt he was responsible for how the convention had turned out). Haiz, how to be a senior to your juniors when they need you for emotional support but there you are, unable to do so? I think Shi Wei had a valid reason though, I might cry too if I was in his position. But Guan Yu? Of all people the OS. Just when the OT needed him the most. Never mind about that, I guess those are issues that he personally needs to address.

I think Sua Yu made a good conclusion for the debriefing. All he said was "I know all of you are tired already, you should get some rest". In a way, I guess the juniors got a hint of how the convention turned out in our expectations. Disappointed, sure. Feel like killing the teacher advisors, bring it on. But I guess even the teacher advisors realised they had problems with their advising. (Many thanks to Yi Da and Sin Hwee for talking it out over with Mrs Giam, Mr Fong and Ms Foo. At least there's a higher chance they'll be using their brains more next year.) Although they still seem unwilling to admit it. They're adults I guess. They need an ego and some self-worth to continue living. It isn't easy accepting what someone younger than you by a whole generation has to say, though it might be the truth.

13th SLC? I don't even dare think about it. They probably are already in the midst of preparing for it now, but hopefully they can triumph against the odds and bring the standard back up. I don't know, do they really know what SLC is? I guess it's up to their seniors to take them. Afterall, it's their responsibility. We can only hope that they don't continue their destructive paths to undo all the work that their seniors have done in making SLC one of the leading student conventions in Asia. It's cliché but truly, only time will tell.

After that horrific encounter with 12SLC came the dreaded Block Tests. Well, what can you expect to blog about except that the Block Tests were annoying tough and that the library was always crowded with people mugging 24/7?

(08) 第27届中文学会会庆

From this time on, it officially marks the start of the most busy period for everyone in Chinese Society (with the exclusion of Huang Cheng). The first event was that of the annual Chinese Society celebrations in July. Planning was a bit of a mess, as we were still a bit unsure of our duties. But I won't forget the seemingly impossible task of making those golden boxes to store the programme booklet! We were folding them non stop, during script writing lessons, during our free time right till the night before the event itself! As me and Si Ting tried desperately to learn the society's dance from Ji Qing and Boon Han, everyone else was either cracking their brains to think of money making methods, calling up seniors to invite them to come back or fumbling over which caterer to use. I don't recall much of planning though, perhaps due to my involvement in helping others out with their tasks. (Like c'mon, there was nothing to do after typing the meeting minutes!) When the day itself came, it was particularly memorable, especially climbing up to the 3rd level of the hall without harness and draping red and yellow coloured cloth down with Lee Heng and Yihan. Extremely adrenaline rushing, but extremely dangerous as well. As the floor had holes, you could see all the way down to the 1st level. I suffered mild fainting spells standing up there and drapping the cloths down, but thank God, we had no accidents despite the high risks involved. When the event itself came, a lot of our seniors were stunned at our decorations. Moreover, the programme itself was like formalised, so a lot of seniors were a bit surprised as well. (In the past, Chinese Society celebrations were more like a 'come-eat-and-go' affair whereas this time round, we had games and performances planned, not to mention our exquisitely hand made programme booklets!)

Still, there were annoying individuals from council who '顺手牵羊'. Although some of them weren't invited, they didn't hesitate to rummage through the catered food, and as my dad puts it "吃完后拍拍屁股就走了". Disgusting behaviour. Can someone tell me what's wrong with the 33SC? They should totally be slammed into condemnation. The guilty councillors? People from SnR and a few from PUBCO as well as ECACO. I know who you are, just that I don't want to mention names here. Please, you people have an image to uphold, but all you people do is spend all that time destroying it.

Back on topic, this almost slipped my mind too, but then there was the 'bloody' Keropi banner! What happened was that we were painting this Keropi banner intended as a gift to 余老师 (since his nickname is Kapo). However, thanks to the particularly violent storm that erupted during that afternoon, the red paint on Keropi smudged and spread to the entire banner, leaving us with a 'bloody' Keropi (despite my desperate attempt to save it from being destroyed). Oh yeah, I looked like I came out from a war scene with the splattered red paint on my t-shirt and my spectacles covered entirely with rain droplets. Anyway, we managed to give 余老师 his bloody Keropi banner ultimately but on a separate occasion.

Anyway, the celebrations were really good. We ended off with college songs and of course, it wouldn't be complete if we hadn't sung "我要唱一首华初的歌" for 2, 3 times. Haha, we're like overcrazed fans of the song. It was great seeing all the seniors come back together for the grand reunion! Once the event officially ended, it marked the beginning of the photo taking madness. It was particularly memorable though, as Ms. 叶海蓉 gladly squeezed herself smack right in the centre of the group photo. Oh yeah, it was totally ruined by her. Thank goodness her contract has been terminated. Who knows what other crazy stuff she would do? Back on photo taking, we had lots of fun taking photos in whatever sorts of affiliations we could find. By batch, by school, by our posts in Huang Cheng! I'm so glad for the 司仪 photo we took, in which the emcees of Huang Cheng from 2001 right till the current batch (which means Ming Ming, Yawen and me) were in! Haha, I am like totally in awe of my Huang Cheng emcee seniors, they're super cool!

(09) 歌谣2006 - 创Sing

Moving on, the next event was 歌谣! (which unfortunately, was smacked right before the September Holidays started and in the middle of the mugging season) I don’t really know where to begin as well, but I know it started off as a small meeting with 歌坊 at KAP to do a concert, though not as big as how we have eventually made it out to be. A lot of people have this misconception that 歌谣 is a new event. Nope, this year would mark the 3rd year that it has been in running, and I guess we’ve managed to propel the concert to new heights. Organisation-wise speaking, it was definitely more organised than the annual celebrations, but this event stretched the limits of everyone and their abilities! Having invited celebrities (with our own Huang Cheng-Celebrity status seniors as the emcees) and with Diya (the Project Superstar 2 ‘winner-to-be’; c’mon, if she doesn’t win, who else deserves it?) aiding the contestants in their composition and vocals, the stakes were really high. It was a school thing, yet highly commercialised! I don’t know why we couldn’t find sponsors, maybe it was time we established ourselves as being credible before they would be willing to sponsor us.

歌谣 is kind of like any performing arts CCA’s nightmare: not having enough people to watch the show. I think the odds were truly stacked against us. We did initially think that by inviting celebrities, it would boost the ticket sales and more people would come! However, it seems like we overestimated Hong Jun Yang’s sales potential. Moreover, it was during the Promos mugging period that the concert was held (It was the last school based concert to be held anyway, and I don’t see how going for a concert can potentially affect your mugging) and sales were surprisingly low. I don’t know how we managed to pull close to 800 people to come in the end. One of the main problems was also that our concert coincided with a road show Mediacorp was doing and another concert that SAJC held recently (in which Hong Jun Yang went back to his alma mater to perform), so we were kind of left at the bottom of the sales potential scale. Advertising gimmicks and word of mouth went full force though, and by the time we were ready to show people a new advertising video during CT session, people were like “Bah, bored”. Still, luckily for us, the video did receive good response and we got more tickets pouring in. (Not to mention it marked the first time we experimented with movie parodies and the horror genre. Oh yar, and it was the first video to be shown on loop on the school television.) Yup, despite Mrs Chin, who other than sending the school into a mugging frenzy by flashing our promos grades, commented that “I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go for歌谣”. Well, it was a close shave still, no doubt about that.

Again, something that irks me about 歌谣 was the attitude of many 歌坊会员 towards their jobs to sell the tickets. When we first started out, it was a 歌坊 in charge, 黄城人 supply the resources to run event organization. However, somehow, in the end, it became a solely 黄城人 organised thing, with some of the more hardcore 歌坊 people like Frederick, Jing Ting and Yi Bing supporting us. The rest? 不懂死到哪里去了. With the exception of people who managed to sell tickets. When it came to the crunch period, when Xin Yu gave all of us 10 tickets to sell, I don’t know why some 歌坊 members can just return all 10 tickets without selling even a single one. And to think some of them are performers! Don’t you want people to come and support you when you perform? Seriously, some of them need to fix the screw in their brains. It’s just logic defying. It’ll all make sense though if they’re labelled slackers. And more horrifically, some of these people who returned all 10 tickets only asked us for tickets on the day itself, not for anyone but themselves. Couldn’t they have first bought from their own slot of 10 tickets?! Another thing was also about Chee Yang. I mean yar, he’s a nice person, knowing him since primary school, but when he said that we were exploiting him when we asked him whether we could use his name for advertising, I don’t know, has stardom got into his head? Even though you’re the winner of the school version of Project Superstar, that doesn’t mean you can shrink responsibility from your CCA. Anyway, this is something Frederick and Jing Ting will be working on next year; hopefully the situation in 歌坊 will take a drastic change for the better.

Going back to Chinese High to promote 歌谣 was thoroughly scary. The school changed so much after our batch left; I don’t recall studying there at all. Anyway, Lee Heng and I had to brave the storms, pull strings and establish connections to get an EMB message put up (which was still wrong anyway, as the message somehow became contorted to mean “Buy 1 ticket get another free”). Not only that, due to communication error with Mr. Jason Wong, I ended up making a disastrous announcement during morning assembly (which generated Jason Wong’s wrath) and I had to literally ‘sell my body’ out of it. Well, knowing how Jason Wong is like, all I had to say was “Mr Wong, I’m willing to do anything (note: ANYTHING) to salvage the situation” (It wasn’t very severe anyway) with a particular innuendo. Hence, I managed to get him to give me a ‘naughty grin’ and effectively get myself out of any trouble. All I got was a mild warning and nothing else. I’m not risking any announcements back in high school from now on! Urgh, I sound cheap, but I guess that’s how you play the game of politics.

Back on preparation for 歌谣, I don’t know where everyone found the courage to continually prepare for the event and yet neglecting their studies when the Promos were so near. Continual frustration and stress got the better of both Ming Ming and I, together with Kia Hui and Kia Mian. I recall the late nights spent in LEP room tabulating the total amount of tickets sold, getting frustrated, doing more SMSing and then reassuring each other the event will be a success ultimately. I guess Qiu Ju and Suq Ping can attest to the huge amount of pressure and stress Ming Ming and I exhibited (since we had to sell like 500 tickets out within a week) and trying to pull together everyone’s resources and contacts for the event to be a success. All while facing Wang’s non-stop bickering that it was a distraction from Huang Cheng. I’m still amazed at how Xin Yu kept her calm during that period. All I can say is that she’s a cut above the rest!

When the day itself did finally arrive, I guess most of our fears were set to rest. Despite problems with the stage set up and mike problems, the entire show went smoothly. We sold around 80 tickets on the spot (that’s A LOT if you think about it) and most people commented that the standard of the performances exceeded what they had predicted, which was great! I know there was a bit “too much talking” at the second half of the show, I don’t know why as well, but on the whole, YEAH, we all managed to pull through. Performers were performing better than their usual standard and the emcees did a superb job of getting the audience hyped up. The greatest takeaway was still seeing how everyone managed to put such a large scale commercial school based concert together in spite of the odds. It’s through adversity that everyone manages to pull together and be more united (as I’ve learnt from my Chinese High council days).
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