pictures of me pictures of you

<3, CTITW
May we continue aging gracefully together! :)


So during sports day, liren was like, you don't have to attend any training now right, and I was like, gosh yeah, I have like, totally just realized that only. Freaky innit?

And yeah I could not believe that chee kit sprained his ankle on someone's rubik's cube lying randomly around! It has never once occurred to me that those things could pose a health hazard.

truly madly deeply

The Coolest Team In The World threw Andrea a birthday surprise today!

And yeah before that there was this incident between me and the "bird stuck in the hollow railing" at McDonald's. I actually thought I was on Gotcha, can you believe it? Every time I wrote something on the table, the "bird" kept "chirping". But when I got up to inspect what it was, the "chirping" stopped. Then Mingting the super-sleuth discovered something. Can you guess? ;)


Anyway this wasn't our party. This was taken after Melizo had ended, and when I still had my paint-on nose still on me. I kinda looked like the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz.


This was after bowling; those silly photos of bowling shoes that have no relevance whatsoever to the team, except to put on a stirring display of unity and knowledge of geometry. (hey! a star has five points!) But it's still cool anyway.


On a secret mission. We even had to put on masks to protect our identity.


The mess of hands as we tried lighting the candles on the cake.


Birthday Boy cuts Birthday Cake into huge chunks. So rich and full chocolaty decadence, I have developed a sore throat now.

And Andrea turns 16 today!

Kitteh!

My sister and I have made a new friend! She lives 2 blocks away, and likes to snooze in the afternoon when the sun's out.




She totally reminds me of zsa zsa and mochi.

Melizo IV

Melizo IV was awesome and terrific and amazing and surreal and super cool! I could really sense loads of energy coming from the choir, and entering the stage for the first time in the concert is one of those experiences you keep replaying in your head after the entire thing just to comprehend the whole awesomeness of it. And sneaking off to peek at the choir from the windows in the front doors in-between my scenes was probably the most poignant memory I have, because the stage was awash in orange lights and everyone was bathed in sepia tones that gave the musical a very arthouse-y aesthetic.

Now, much like post-natal depression, I'm feeling a sense of emptiness after Melizo ended. There's a rose in my kitchen and stacks of chocolate gifted by friends in the kitchen awaiting my recovery from a bad throat, and these are but all the last remaining vestiges of Melizo IV. I wonder what the next musical will be, but I have a feeling that we'll be departing from our usual Disney fare.

I shan't speculate though! And had this strange urge to hug the seniors on that day in my fluffy brown costume, but it would have been, like, really creepy. I think that choir seniors are totally boss (okay I know, pretentious Juno quote), because they were backstage helping out, and passing me water and stuff when I realized that I was losing my voice minutes before the musical started.

I really can't wait for Melizo V! :D

Melizo IV was GREAT :D
Will blog about it when I actually do have time!

spotlight's on you

Hi.

In 25 hours' time, I'll be in Victoria Concert Hall, probably half-dying by then. I'll look at the bouquets for the teachers on the table backstage and heave massive sighs of relief because I know they'll be safe there, after we did last-minute ordering at 5.30 PM the day before. And then we'll do a cheer backstage, and we'll wait patiently for everything to start, and we'll try to suppress our nervous excitement at the same time.

Then they'll call out our name and proudly, we'll walk out of the holding area while everyone applauds. And we'll sing our first song, Exultate Justi, and we'll totally sound freakin' awesome.

And here I am, fretting myself stupid about the bouquets. Sheesh.

Hm.

It's 11.30 pm now. I've finished a powerpoint and am still printing out slide handouts for tomorrow's aesthetics showcase, and doing the script, and helping out with my dad's primary school's EL debate team in their competition prep, and I have totally left like 95% of my holiday homework untouched. Ergo, I am so truly and honestly screwed for the start of Term 2.

I feel unmotivated, because I'm having those moments where I start to question the entire point of studying. And I don't feel rested at all. I'll be the one laughing bitterly at one corner of the quadrangle tomorrow when the principal welcomes everyone back, assuming that everyone had a very wonderful and rejuvenating break.

Uh huh

as long as I have music

You'll probably not feel much when you look at these pictures. But to me, they represent a precious part of my final year in Xinmin, and how much everyone has grown. When I look at the others from my batch, sometimes all I think of is, wow, we're already sec 4. Like when mingting, gwen and I sat in the AVA room in the darkness, just sitting around and talking for close to 45 minutes, I felt the vestigial bond from our sec 1 Perth trip overwhelm me. The darkness, the cool air, the enjoyment of each other's company — I find comfort in savoring these moments and their poignancy when I soon start to long to live them out again.

Choir camp last week was great. There was lots of fruition and bonding that at some points I wanted to hug every single member that I saw. And then there were times I wanted to pick every key from the piano and fling them at some just to wake them up.

I think I've learnt a lot. And I owe that to many people as well, especially to my committee members who had to sit through the nocturnal debriefs and preparations during the unearthly witching hours, and whom I obviously irked by holding seemingly random meetings to clarify stuff. I've experienced for myself how we can never make decisions in a vacuum, because the schedules of all the CCAs having their camps at the same time started to get interlinked with each other, like how the choir guys were chased out of the showers by the ncc, which, in retrospect, is actually quite a laughable occurrence. And wow, the media did so much for us by getting loudspeakers and spongey balls for captain's ball for us. I could go on to talk about how table tennis helped out with clearing some of the trash, and how ncc extended their nightwalk to choir, and how the understood our reasons for pulling out of the campfire on the 2nd night, but 夜幕低垂，纸短情长， 我该停笔了。<--- :)

The Night Before

Things that have changed about me since my last post:

1. I've become one of those people who pry their eyes open to insert floppy plastic discs every morning. Wearing contacts has been, like, the best thing that has ever happened to me — not. Actually, it's hard for me to say. I didn't get the ones made for my astigmatism because I'll only be wearing them for Melizo and Xinfony and Xinthesis seasons, and the astigmatism ones cost too much really. And I still haven't warmed to the idea of having lenses stuck to my cornea for the entire day. 
   
2. Although, yeah you've probably heard me already, Juno is good and all, but Persepolis really blew me away when I watched it yesterday. However, it left most of the movie-goers depressed when it ended without much of a happy ending. I am still suffering from the gloom after watching post-apocalyptic-type scenes. Even though they were in black and white. And were all drawings.
3. I have never felt so surprisingly calm the night before a camp.

marathon of depressing movies, 1

Requiem For A Dream


Here, you see Ellen Burstyn delivering Sara's monologue in a trippy, drug-tainted stupor. She has delusions of appearing on a television commercial in a red dress. It gives her "a reason to smile, [to make] tomorrow all right". She believes she is "lonely" and "old", but still "likes the way [she] feels".

Well, most of the characters in the film are totally involved in drugs, a central theme in the film, which reels them to their fates, and end their stories in pained/relieved/tripped-out foetal-positions.



I think I'll post Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides next. Incredibly depressing ending.

Sometimes

Sometimes I'm totally lost, and confused, and upset with everyone and everything. Sometimes I wish I would just disappear or fade into a wall somewhere. And sometimes I just feel all by myself.


But despite all that I face now, I'm glad to call myself a child of God. Because I know there's someone who will always listen to me no matter how crappy I'm feeling, even though I find myself only going to Him in times of need.


For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
- Psalm 139:13-14