Urgh— it's 1.30 am and I've only just finished doing everything that I need to do.

AI LIAN TAO HUA YUAN WAS SOOOO GOOD!!!

(Note the rarity of me typing a complete sentence in caps.)

Sadly I had a throbbing headache on the right side of my temple then. During the last scene, where the two requited lovers in their old age at a hospital room, the slow, dramatic movements and minute and meticulous details that dragged the scene further only exacerbated my suffering and misery. By the time the strange women in a double-creasted pea coat danced and threw confetti/snow into the the air in momentus actions that were pregnant with a meaning that I presumed most of the audience could not understand but enjoyed anyway, I was starting to lose my balance (and I was sitting down too), having to resort to closing my eyes to avoid throwing up on the poor lady with the beehive hair and embarrassing husband in front of me.

Oh yes, have I mentioned how much I love that play?

I could not understand what the program booklet was explaining about two different plays, but in essence, the show is a rather comic one with two intertwined productions that are rehearsing at the same time. A sense of rawness is achieved when at the end of the 1st scene when dramatic farewells are made, the director cuts in and makes the actors redo the scene again. I think it breaks the 4th wall in some jokes, where some emphasis is placed on awareness of the theatre surroundings, and exposing even the backstage to indicate incompletion (to a very comic effect in Tao Hua Yuan).

It started off quite romantically, in 1930/40s Shanghai, where the moon never seemed to hide behind dark clouds and where the water seemed like a dream-pattern and where lovers sat by swings, whispering their endearing love for each other. OK, I cheated and read off the English subtitles— but I think Mandarin is such a poetic language. English is so flowery and painfully elaborate. Translated Mandarin sounds like minimalist poetry. Very Zen. Very evocative.

After they redo the first scene, characters dressed in very classical and dynasty-period clothing start wandering at the back of the stage. Only then do we realize that a seperate theatre company wants to use the stage as well. This time, they do Tao Hua Yuan, a very humorous farce on the classical folktale about a fisherman who discovers a land where 'petals fall and beasts live in harmony'. Something like that. This time, the fisherman has an adulterous wife and her lover who desire his death (though not in a proactive way). There is a running comment on the over-exaggeration of facial expressions, choreography and sound effects in the style of Chinese Opera that sometimes borders on sarcasm. It was really very funny, though perhaps some did not understand, anyway. Annoyingly, a dialect that is very foreign to me is used throughout the production so I had to rely heavily on the subtitles (perhaps having to dart my eyes around the stage to read and concentrate on the actions gave me that headache) that made some jokes less funny when told in English.

Resonance was one technique that was heavily used, Nelson told me after the show. There was certainly many themes that occurred in the beginning and at the end, for example, the girl 'has to go now because it's really very late', and the idea of things that cannot be forgotten. I did not understand the part where the young girl (young, in the past), flings angrily the letters of her lover (old, in the present) and accuses him of transforming Shanghai into what it is now. However, the use of nostalgia in the scene via low-fidelity Shanghainese songs played on the radio evokes quite an ethereal quality; one can almost empathize with the dying lover as he struggles to walk over to her, only to be shouted angrily at.

Speaking of nostalgia, I found myself showing Kat and Clarinda the 60th Anniversary Book in the office while waiting for our photocopies. It's that strange feeling of telling your grandchildren a story, or of looking back to the past and finding everything so recent, as if it was only last week when you were sec 1. Pointing at all the graduates and talking about them, laughing at the seniors' sec 1 photos, reminiscing the ups and downs of Mrs Low's era, the somewhat Golden Years of Xinmin's allocades. I kind of miss her now that she's with scgs, but still, Mdm Liew is like a breath of fresh air in Xinmin, focusing more on developing the individual rather than the name of the school.

I had two writing tests today! One English descriptive and a history test (essay question on WWI). I hope I can maintain my calibre and improve further, it isn't very encouraging to drop below the 25 mark range. Perhaps I could be crazy and aim for 30. Whatever. My spelling is atrocious for someone supposed to be good in EL. Then again, Shakespeare wasn't a good speller.

But I don't want to be like Shakespeare. I dislike being bald and being accused of not being the original writer of his works.