Thursday, April 09, 2009

Eurhythmy, Lumos, Council Campaigning, Speech Day, Council Elects' Camp, Council

Hello, sorry for neglecting this blog. Very very busy with school stuff.

Eurhythmy: It's the SCGS dance concert which was very nice. Bryan, Zhaoming, Yicen and I went to watch Kelly dance; she had 2 solos in it. She can dance really really well! Hahaha something interesting happened. I was waiting for her after the dance to give her this huge mini garden of flowers. Saw a lady standing near us waiting too. I told Bryan that it'd be really cool if that lady was her mum. Bryan and I kinda agreed that such coincidences don't occur that often. In the end, that lady really was Kelly's mum! Was a little shocked and Bryan was trying to hold back his laughter. Hahahaha Life is so unpredictable. :D

Lumos: The Hwa Chong charity concert in aid of autism. It was really nice and funny as well. Hahaha due to the lack of time, they had to cut one band out who overshot the time. NJ Western dance had 2 items which were both great. Hahaha went home with Kelly after the show. She looks very different in her guyish attire, cos she was dancing as a guy. Hahahaha either way, she still dances very well. :D

Council Campaigning: The 2 weeks of campaigning was very very tiring but rewarding. I remember meeting in LT3 after the results of the interviews was released on Thursday. The student council unleashed a humongous pile of work to be completed within the week. They wanted posters, videos, proposals etc. I got sorted in campaigning group no. 4 and hence our name "FOuR THE WIN". Vanessa, Hsiangway, Song Ko and Zheyang were in my group. We came up with 4 proposals which got rejected one by one, making us scramble frantically to re-do them and we had to re-film a scene in our campaigning video due to an inappropriate theme. Our banner only came up at the last moment. We had to reach school almost every single day at an unearthly hour to gather and get shouted at by the campaigning disciplinary committee. We had to stay back till late almost every single day to wrap up all our tasks. We had to be punished for our mistakes by cleaning up the school. We had to wear the bright red tie and a name tag every single day for a fortnight. At the end of it all, we had to do a post project elections proposal and personal reflections. Looking back, I totally can't believe that I've managed to accomplish all that. Hahaha I have to thank my group members too for making this journey bearable and I hope we can continue to stay together even after we all get separated into our different committees. I feel blessed to have them as my group members after witnessing some other groups' dynamics. Hahahahha and throughout the 2 weeks, I can proudly say that I did not sleep in a single lecture! Hahahah cos the red tie on a grey shirt screams "Look at me to see if I'm sleeping". And there's dire consequences when we get caught sleeping while wearing a red tie. Hahaha so yea, I'm grateful for the tie too. :D

Group photo of all 59 of the candidates


Creative planning for video with even more creative handwriting. I SWEAR I only write like that under conditons of extreme stress, lack of sleep, 76cm Hg, 8.31J k^-1 mol^-1, backlog of tutorials and while wearing full grey.


3/5 of a Group photo. Hsiangway had training while Zheyang was somewhere else. :D We were all quite shagged after doing the banner.


Our HOT PINK banner. Why hot pink? Cos we're cool like that. HAHAHAHA Vanessa INSISTED on it. Hahhahah :D

Speech Day: NJ dedicated an entire day to speech day. Hahahha it was quite an experience. First venue was in LT5 and the second was in the hall and I was the first candidate. Managed to plow through my speech at both venues. Witnessed a lot of people getting shot and arrrowed during the Q&A round. Hahahha the hot seat round was fun. I had to dance and make some poor guy dance with me cos daryl and yijun ran away. Overall, I guess everyone had a lot of fun for speech day and yea totally an experience we will not be able to forget.

Council Elects' Camp: Received the results of voting on Wednesday and had a briefing for Elects' camp which spanned friday to sunday. Got posted to group 5, the BLUE group! Had Li Shang, Zi Kai, Nazira, Zhu Wei and Shamera for group mates. Elects' camp was totally an adventure. Hahahaha I was already quite used to the punishments a la NCC style so it wasn't too much of a culture shock.
Day 1: Reported slightly later than the rest due to a meeting with Mr. Ng about my PI. Had dinner that was catered from the Chinese cuisine stall. Went for an night hike briefing cum informal gathering with the seniors, including those all the way from the 35th batch. Got to know a bit about the 5 different committees. We had a night hike on the first day in Macritchie, in which Fiona got lost. She took the wrong rg as partoute, which I almost took as well. Fortunately she got out of it unscathed. Rushed back to NJC after the night hike, bathed and laid down to rest. Didn't really sleep as I was guarding the flag to prevent seniors from stealing it. Had to guard the black card they gave us too to prevent it from getting lost. Luckily no incursions happened. :D

Day 2: Woke the rest up at 5.40, about 2 hours from the time we slept. Assembled for breakfast, in which we played a game. Our hands were tied up and we had to feed each other bee hoon. Quite a dumb game and it wasn't filling at all. Zi Kai got the flag stolen. Only managed to get it back after we promised to sing two songs for Mr. Teo. Afterwards, we had a land expedition briefing. Within our groups, we were supposed to discuss and walk from NJC to Bukit Chandu. It was a very long walk and we enterred through the back of the park. So basically the entire morning was spent walking, walking, walking, walking and playing a few station games. Poor Li Shang had a sudden bout of diarrhea in the mdidle of the canopy walk, which meant he had no choice but to directly fertilise the trees. Hahaha, he was like 1000km away from the nearest toilet. Zi Kai got the flag stolen once again. Hahaha Edmund and I had to sing a cantonese song during lunch to get it back. Assembled for lunch before taking a bus to Kallang for our sea expedition (dragon boating) afterwards. Dragon boating was dang fun cos our instructor encouraged us to splash water at the other team. Hahahahha :D Went back to school in time for Payback session 1 aka punishments for our mistakes. Had to do a lot of bridges, push ups, sit ups, crunches, leg raises, running. Did payback session 2 later on in the night after dinner. Everyone was really shagged but through mutual encouragement, we managed to pull through! :D
Had to clean up the canteen after that and we discovered rotting pizza in one of the bags that tore. A few of us stayed back after everyone was dismissed to clean up the mess. Totally saikang to the max but it was quite fun! :D

Day 3: Woke up at 3.00am and assembled to play some blindfold game. Had to do a bit of running around before we started the game cos there were some people who were still asleep. After the game, it was finally breakfast and another dumb breakfast game. After breakfast was another round of payback, where we managed to finish all our stuff with help from our Seniors, the 41st Student Council. At the end of it all, everyone was happy that camp was going to be over and we went back for one last debrief. "Marched" in the flags for the last time and watched this very touching video made by Albert (kudos to him) which highlighted our elects camp. We all opened our black cards together, found a note inside from Letts encouraging us for our term. Looking back, I feel we have learnt a lot from the camp as well as bonded from 43 individuals to a more cohesive group of councillors. Though we are not yet 1 perfect council, I believe we will be able to reach it soon. After we were all dismissed, a few of us headed to Macdonald's for a much needed break from Khong Guan biscuits. I swear the salt on the fries have never tasted so good before. :D
I totally hate Khong Guan biscuits now cos there was a lack of food in the camp and the only thing available was Khong Guan biscuits, which I spammed throughout the camp. After the camp, there are 14 tins of Khong Guan biscuits left! Apparently the school overordered the biscuits. Well, I guess I have a love-hate relationship with Khong Guan biscuits though. I love it cos it saved my life. I hate it because it was too much to handle after eating it for breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper. :D

Council: The next big thing after elects camp is on this wednesday (6th May); the exco-exco elections. The excos of the 42nd council will be delivering their speech and get elected in on the same day. I wish all candidates all the best for their campaign and hope that they will practise fair competition as far as possible. The politics have already started but I hope it doesn't get too ugly or overboard.

I've been getting a lot of calls/smses/lectures from the seniors to run for exco. I will like to apologise to the seniors for not running despite all their efforts of persuasion. I will like to thank them for seeing potential in me even though the only potential I see in me is the potential to have potential. Hahaha personally I've no wish to join in the tussle for power. I feel that some of the candidates do have potential and they require an opportunity to showcase this. I hope that this time round, they will be able to grasp this opportunity. Hopefully, the right people are elected to the right posts and they will be able to serve the college well. :)


The booklet in which my group leaders wrote very encouraging words! Hahahah I will really like to thank them for all their help and guidance during the camp. Thanks to Eugene Ke, Daniel, Rachel, Qingwei, Kuan Loong, Audrey, Venezia and Hui Shan! :D


Black card! Some senior almost tried to fish this out of my back pocket while I was blindfolded. Hmmm, of all places, why the back pocket?! Hahhahahha XD


Inspiring message stuck inside. Was expecting a jigsaw piece though. Hahahaha Idea for next year's camp, we give out fortune cookies and we attach such notes inside. :D


One of our tasks where Zhu Wei was supposed to describe to us what we were supposed to draw under a certain time limit while using simple shapes to describe, while Li Shang was elsewhere ensuring our plants grow well. Hahhahaha XD


The end result! Hahahah totally abstract art.

Hahaha yeps, so that's about all for this update. I shall update this blog soon! I'll be back! :D

Aaron

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