Unwritten

It has been a while since I last updated my blog. Despite my task to update my blog at least once a week religiously, I skipped the CNY week. Okay, so let's say that I took a break for the holidays? Seriously speaking, I enjoy the weekly blogging time that I have. After having so much fun throughout the weekend (especially this week – shall elaborate further), when I think of the unfinished homework gathered, blogging is the only “homework” that I look forward to do, instead of the routine academic papers and readings that Humanities students are often expected to do. Not that I dislike humanities, I love humanities (Geog and Literature, not so much on History) and languages (all three! English, Chinese and Malay [third language subject all Malaysian scholars are expected to take]), only that I prefer writing on a free topic, instead of the usual “How far”s, “To what extent”s, and “Discuss”s sort of questions that HP students usually get for homework.

So I had a really enjoyable weekend, up till the point when I realized that I have not finished a lot of homework :P. But then the delay in my homework had nothing to do with my lack-of-discipline, I WAS very much engaged in interesting activities during the weekend! I had two performances to do, one was on Saturday, and the other on Sunday. And Saturday night was Urbansound performance <3! So the only free time to do homework was actually after lunch on Sunday.

I'd prefer to talk about the performances first. The usual threesome of Shien Yang, Zhi Hao and I (“马来帮”–crudely translated as “Malay Gang” [kudos to Ms Shieh for this “creative” name] ), plus Benjamin Chin, were grouped up to perform tongue-twisters in Chinese for Saturday's CNY celebration for foreign students in Drama Centre and Sunday's CNY celebration for school alumnus in Cheng Yi Block (in College section). This particular performance was previously done during last year's Chinese Drama annual performance as a “performance within a performance” where we performed the tongue-twisters in the play itself, so performing that wasn't all that hard. Mainly revising the old techniques used and devising new ones. What's new is the addition of a solo part for us all. Being confidently bilingual (in my case, trilingual) HC students, it ain't much of a problem for any of us. Anyway, I enjoy the very thrill of completing a tongue-twister and performing in front of a crowd (depending on what the performance is). Furthermore, doing it with friends makes it much more enjoyable thing.

For the Saturday performance, the audiences were “foreign students/scholars”, which means we were performing to the familiar faces in the boarding school – my fellow Malaysian scholars ex-classmates, juniors, seniors, PRC, Indonesian, Vietnamese scholars. But we were forthcoming, professional, and finished the performance with the crowd erupting with enthusiastic applause. The satisfaction is truly indescribable and the simple thrill of it simply rocked! And my peers did not tease us for the performance :D.

For the Sunday performance, we kinda screwed it up due to domino effect Benjamin created with his mistake, and only Shien Yang managed to evade his trap. But we got over it I'd say rather quickly, judging at the pace we were going, which was somehow faster than normal (especially towards the end). Anyway, it still managed to get applauses. When we settled for a seat at the college auditorium, somehow we were praised endlessly by some alumnus we encountered sitting in front of us, it was like they did not even detect our mistakes. An uncle (you know, calling him a “senior” seems kinda weird to me) even mistook us to be of Chinese nationalities, presumably because of our precise, clear pronunciation in Chinese and perhaps of our smoothness in presenting the tongue-twisters. Anyway, we were supposed to get an angpau for our performance as a token of appreciation. However, the emcees ignored us somehow and we didn't get the angpau. Okay, so I wasn't very much fussed about the money, I suspect it's a small amount anyway, I was just a little disturbed by the fact that our performance had gone unacknowledged. Never mind, I suppose things like that happen rather often.

Moving on to Talentnight 2008 Urbansounds, the result of being very much hyped up after an okay CCA day. Somehow we (now the foursome of Cui Sheng, Shien Yang [again], Zhi Hao [again] and I [again] – the “华岗帮”[translated as Chinese Drama Gang]) went “high” that day and joined this Talentnight thing without much thought and discussion, and we pulled Theron in to sing with us, and this founded our Talentnight group!

So after two rehearsals and a few practises on our own part, this was it. And I personally thought that they screwed it up. Well, the singing I mean, I was the pianist. After the first chorus, the whole song went in a wrong key. Furthermore, a few problems with the microphone and the PA system contributed. Yeah, so we had lots and lots and lots of cheers and applause (sarcastic ones I presumed). So after our performance I was rather unhappy, and I scolded my team a little, sorry about that though. I momentarily forgotten that we joined this purely for fun, but I just wanted us to do the best that we can. Now here's the surprise, almost everyone we asked said that our performance was very good, which actually shocked me big time, even boarding staffs Ms Pauline Yee and Ms Quah had endless praises. At first, I thought they were being purely sarcastic, then only their sincerity in their tones struck me.

Therefore, I came out with a few explanations for this. Firstly, the audiences are tone deaf. Impossible I know. Just listed this as fun factor. Moving on... our friends are being friends. You know, friends would try not to hurt you, I guess. But anyway, my main theory is that it has nothing to with the audiences and our friends. The voices of my friends were so amplified with the microphones that it covered the melody of the piano that did not have a microphone attached to it (I can't really hear myself even playing even though I banged the piano throughout the whole song trying to balance their voices). Therefore, once the audience hears a correct melody and not a out-of-tune one, the transposed version did not matter, the wrong key did not matter, it was fine by them. Best part – we were asked to perform for the Boarding School Investiture Dinner. Just hope that they don't screw up the next time!

It's funny how people keep praising us even when I felt that we screwed up. The tongue-twister performance, the talentnight performance... Maybe it's because the standards I set for myself is too high? Anyway, that isn't a bad thing. Always aim for the sky, because even if you don't reach the sky, you reach the clouds! Just play it safe. Okay, I better conclude this blogpost faster so that I could finish my homework as soon as possible. In conclusion, I had a great weekend! Hmm... if I just could get myself off all these homework now...