Saturday, October 13, 2007
'Here I am and there were you and it looks like it's just tea for two again...' Electrico - Good TimeAh. Today was Farewell Assembly. The entire thing was surprisingly nice.
In the morning I came to school and then hurriedly went to the ODAC table where it was a furor of taking pictures and running around and saying hi to each other. Fariha and Smee finally had a picture together where they were poking each other. Classic fun. I think we inconvenienced quite a few people when we asked them to be our impromptu photographers. There was this picture where we were taking and Joycelyn was coming towards the table and Jiachang was telling the photographer to hurry and take the picture before she arrived but Joycelyn ran over instead and bopped him hard on the head before smiling prettily for the camera.
Yes, fear the ODAC girls indeed.
Anthony was really nice- he got us normal 2B pencils with ‘ODAC XXIII’ carved onto them together with a sweet generic message. I finally got my autograph book back from Rachel and Fariha but now it is with Veronica who will probably write many random things. Pity. I haven’t read it since I started distributing it out.
Then was assembly where I poked Smee on the basis that I was never going to be able to do this again and she poked me back and we had a bit of randomness poking each other. And oh! I took a picture of Raktim and Anushka together. Mua hahahaha. Now we have evidence!
After normal assembly, it was the farewell assembly where they had this ex-AJCian come back and speak for about fifteen minutes. He’s the best speaker ever. Everything was almost impromptu (he had a card to refer to for his main points) and he talked about nuts.
Anushka had a dilemma. She had brought for the class this lovely packet of chocolate coffee biscuits and was very hesitant to distribute it out to the class in the hall as she didn’t want to be caught for passing food around in the hall when Fariha, our dear friend, was very happily eating Toblerone in front of us without a care in the world. When we told her that someone could have caught her eating the chocolate, Fariha bent down her head to eat it instead.
That didn’t stop her from opening another packet of the lovely little chocolates though. And Anushka gave us the cookies. They were nice and delicious and made me high.
Then they showed us random presentations before the award ceremony thing then they had some performances by the dance and choir before resuming to the award presentation thingy.
Dance was supposed to be an interpretive dance I hope, because it looks really disorganized and crazy. Even Weivien, a Dance senior was like saying that the dancers were very individualistic and didn’t dance as a group.
The choir teacher, Mr Terrence Toh sang the choir song together with them! He was very good, until this part where his powerful voice wavered because he was trying not to laugh or something. It’s quite funny – sorry Aggie, the video shook a lot when he did that – I was trying not to laugh as well.
And there was this performance by this quartet who played Canon in D. It was quite okay I guess but Smee said that they weren’t really playing together and I was thinking that it did sound a little weird here and there…
The teachers came up with nice video presentations for us. The GP teachers came out with a classic video on a conversation between a Ms. Rabbit and a Ms. Turtle.
‘Hello! How was your day today?’
‘Ah! I have a lot of papers to mark!’
‘Oh but how does that make you feel?’
‘And it was also raining today!’
‘But how was your day?’
‘Oh! I had a stomachache too!’
‘How do you feel about that? Can’t you simply answer a question quickly, coherently and concisely?’
‘Huh? What was your question in the first place?’
They ended that off with a warning: NEVER, NEVER, NEVER NAQ.
It was rather cute. They did many things but I didn’t tape it, which was a pity. Then the Science department took over and they went into overkill as they loaded us with lame jokes and puns on Biology, Physics and Chemistry.
It was really bad. I can remember the entire school groaning in agony about Maxwell Boltzmann diagrams and how activation energy is required to study or something. And oh, the chemistry teachers rounded everything off with a rate equation determining question, where they measured the amount of effect to the grades that you get and deduced that rate of reaction = [effort]^2[attitude][sleep]^0. As such we should all become pandas.
This contradicts nicely with what our Chemistry teacher specifically told us to do – which was to get enough sleep. All in all, the assembly made us all feel vaguely nostalgic as it sort of reminded us of things we’d never be able to do again – like prodding Smee in the morning or glomping Aggie or saying ‘Jolly’ to Anushka. Then they hurried us to our homerooms where they gave out our entry proofs for the examination. (Oh so
that’s why all the guys came yesterday… I was thinking that they’d pon it…) Ms Koh is a very amusing Form teacher. She was giving us out our things and we had this A*Star booklet thing which no one wanted to take and she said that no one would leave the homeroom until there were no more booklets left. Eventually the booklets were given out and then we clamored her for pictures. She was kind of reluctant but succumbed to a picture.
A few actually. There were about six cameras in the class.
Oh and while we were getting people to take pictures of us, Yide was completely ruining the mood by discussing a serious Chemistry question with her. Like
why, Yide!
Why?! Okay… my pictures are worth, in total, 153MB of space. I
knew I shouldn’t have set my picture quality to 5M (which is the highest quality, which means they’re enormous). Who wants them? =D
So after that little session of class time, some people disappeared to take pictures with their CCA – ah where was ODAC? I didn’t know – so we dispersed to take pictures. It was mostly me, Smee, Anushka and Veron. Aga had to take her commendation certificate from Mr. Chin, and we tagged along for that and took a picture with him.
It was all very official looking – we all held our certificates for the pictures as Mr. Chin commented that we had brought Smee and Veron along for the exact purpose of taking pictures for us. Ah haha.
After that we had nothing to do as the place Aga recommended only opened at noon we had to wait till it was time before we could leave. The thing actually ended quite early, almost ten in the morning too. Since we had cameras and people and time, it sprouted a really, really long and tedious bout of running around school and taking pictures. It was mostly ambushing teachers and taking pictures with them. We entered the library to take pictures as well and we invaded other places to take random pictures.
We took pictures in the class, of PW groups, the econs group, the lit group, the girls, the guys, the lit girls, etc and more. Litian, Nigel and Fitrah vanished after the assembly, which was a pity as they were the only ones who didn’t go for the class outing.
Which was organized quite a while ago. Which was organized by Agapera. That lovely girl is a great organizer. She even reserved seats for us at the place! This huge class outing thing was mostly a girl-initiated event where the guys just tagged along because they actually felt like it.
I feel vaguely impressed with the guys.
It was quite fun – I have a lot of pictures in my camera. I’ll probably upload it and send it to everyone… if I remember. Ah the way everyone was taking pictures it was like we were never going to come back to school!
I felt that it was quite weird but tagged along all the same and got carried away with taking extremely random pictures.
I had no idea just how gay the guys in our class were…
But then again, it’s nice to see them *hem, hem*… come out of the closet just before we all break to study hard for A Levels.
Ah... that reminds me… I totally didn’t study today… meh.
Caught up with some of my manga, finished a series (2 books only and it was quite sad) and started another one. Adeline should know it – Boku wa Imouto ni Koi Suru. It’s okay, really, though I don’t get some of the scenes, like what is his reason for this and doing that and etcetera. It was quite confusing in some places as they would go back to the past then come back to the present where the couple is doing really weird stuff and then bounce around the recent timeline until I really don’t know who the brother is going out with now.
Ah but yes, Yori really does like Iku.
(Well. Only people who know the manga/drama/movie would know what I am talking about. This is to protect innocent eyes.)
We ran around taking pictures and finally yes, I have pictorial evidence that Zhiwen does exist and is in our class. And he is potentially in a gay triangular relationship with Yide (sorry, Yida) and Simon. And that Simon is very, very scary and frightening around the guys. It is freaky. I think being in his secondary school
does things to you. Then again, Nigel is from his school and look how
he turned out.
… okay… not that there’s much to compare anyway.
Yes! Please ask for my pictures! Mua hahahaha. I have taken evidence of many things which have been hidden for a while…
Anyway, so we hung around school until around eleven thirty where we finally, finally had everyone gathered and set off to Raffles Place MRT, at Boat Quay where the MindCafe was located.
Anushka, Smee and I got so bored of waiting that we went to the foyer and waited for everyone else. Apparently the guys were already there and mumbling darkly amongst themselves, or in the case of Boon Siong, discussing it loudly with other guys.
And predictably, the last person to arrive was Agapera. We glared darkly at her as we left the school and promptly got distracted by Shirong, and took another impromptu picture of our Lit class.
Apparently, the MindCafe was discovered by Odacians who went for the AJventure and they gave out little vouchers. And generally people know what Aga is like around free vouchers. It’s this little place where you get to go and play games and eat nice food for a few hours. And they’ve got tons of board games and random games and stupid games which are just so reminiscent of when we were kids that well, one gets distracted. With good friends and a free flow of drinks around and people doing stupid dares every now and then, it’s easy to forget that our A Levels were in two weeks.
The MindCafe is this really cozy place somewhere at Boat Quay where you can sit down at play games for hours at end. And it’s really tucked away and relaxing as they’ve got comfy sofas and low tables, along with nice lighting. It helps that they have enough games to line both ways fully and nice people to help explain the games to you. The price of staying there isn’t bad as well – just make sure you go during their happy hours: you get $5 for 4 hours worth of free drinks and games. Having completely invaded the area – I remember the man at the counter saying ‘Ah so you’re the group of 20 people’ when we arrived. He had this vaguely apprehensive look on his face.
I had really imagined it to be this chic, quiet place with muted lighting and sofas and low tables – I really didn’t imagine it to be really what I thought it was. The first thing I had thought of was ‘Wow, it really is what I imagined it to be!’
Anyway, we came, made ourselves comfortable, with most of the Lit and History girls in one big table – 10 of us – the Econs girls in another table – 4 of them – and the guys all crowded around one table. The counter person was introducing us to some games, especially when we specifically asked for brainless, stupid and funny games. First off, we played this weird monkey-banana-tree game thing where you’re supposed to remove some sticks poking through this plastic banana tree without letting the monkeys drop. The one with the most monkeys loses the game.
Somewhere around here, Wei Xun began to ask the girls for their shoes… no one lent theirs to him though.
Then we played this game called Ugly Dolls which is really very fun – you basically have this pack of cards that have pictures of monsters on them (pretty cute ones too) and everyone flips over a card to see the monster picture on it. When one has three of a kind, you’re supposed to try to take those three cards. When two people snatch the same card, the first person to say ‘Ugly, ugly, ugly’ wins the card. We played this game first with Agapera who was generally very loud and insistent, and didn’t exactly win. This game obviously calls for good recognition skills as well, as the cards kind of look like each other. So we have little arguments here and there and screams of ‘Ugly!’ all over the place.
It was very amusing.
Eventually our food came and we cleared the cards to eat them. Aggie had arrived by now as she came late because of her choir friends. I had Fish and Chips while Smee had Fish and Shrooms Pasta while Anushka took the vegetarian Mediterranean Pasta. It was really pretty and good to eat! They put the pasta in this pretty shell-like plate and Anushka was just squealing over.
That reminds me: Anushka, get a new memory card or something.
Aggie had some of our food and shared some gossip with us. We had fun stealing and poking each other’s food, because Aggie asked for my fork to poke Smee’s fish pasta and I didn’t know she was going to do that so I lent her my fork and she started poking it (rapidly). Smee just turned matter-of-factly to my food and started jabbing it as well (vicious girl), just as Anushka decided to do the same. So my poor fish and chips got prodded at a lot. We had fair trade as well – Anushka wouldn’t eat her Shitake mushrooms and gave them all to me in return for my fries. I was quite disgusted with her. Shitake mushrooms are one of the better mushrooms of the world.
And she didn’t eat a full egg today. Before she runs back to India, we must make her eat one full egg.
During the meal, Xinli had arrived and she was poking at our food as usual. Xinli and Smee had this very curious love-hate relationship. Xinli would very happily squeal out ‘mee meeeeeep~’ from across the parade square and at the café, she kept making pouty faces to Smee who just ignored her completely.
After we ate, we played Ugly Dolls again, this time with Aggie and Xinli together with us and it was particularly louder and more amusing as they were suspicious about seats and how it gave them bad luck. Xinli was generally being blur and confused by the cards as they really look quite alike and mooning over how cute the monsters really were. Anushka was so amused by the entire thing that she asked Jo to tape a sequence of us playing the game, and it was coincidentally the loudest and messiest time of the game, which made the video even more priceless. She was doing horribly until she changed seats and eventually won the game with 14 cards stolen from the pack. Aga lost with only 3 cards stolen. I can’t remember her dare though.
Never knew that Smee, the quietest of us all could be so successful in a game. She is scary and admirable. I regard her highly. Every time she flipped over the card, it was coincidentally the third card and so she took it.
After the food, we played more games – Jenga, where it’s like Uno Stacko, just that you have dares and questions written on the blocks that you have to do. The truth questions were quite repetitive so we didn’t really bother to answer them after a while. One dare was to kiss a member of the opposite sex. We modified it to blowing a kiss to the opposite gender. Natalie was shrieking her head off, saying that she didn’t want to do it but we made her blow a kiss to Simon who was just politely confused.
Some of them were fun (I had to yodel) but others were just downright lewd and annoying (pole dance around a member of the opposite sex – since all the guys in our class aren’t really considered guys, there was a bit of a puzzle over this). Xinli had a dare to dance like a ballerina around the room and she just focused on glomping Agapera who was making frantic motions not to do anything to her. The guys were playing amongst themselves too and they had really outrageous dares for each other – I remember having recorded down an entire dare sequence where guy A is in a gay relationship with guy B but guy C likes guy A as well and guy C proposes to guy A when guy B finds out –
Now you know what kind of directors Boon Siong and Joel can be. Anyway, it’s recorded. I will watch it once in a very long time, when I need to remember what the storyline is.
Then there were dares where the guys had to hug each other ala Brokeback Mountain…
And Simon had to pole dance around an
umbrella.
I rest my case.
So generally, yes, we had a lot of fun.
We ordered so many drinks as well then finally we sat down to play Monopoly.
It was a long and hard game.
I was the banker and there were so many transactions and deals between the players themselves that I just concentrated on reading the rules and giving out money and houses.
Natalie and Aggie were busy haggling over this street – Anushka and Smee had a deal: if she sold her railway station to Smee at a higher price then she didn’t need to pay her at any of the railway stations; Aga was trying to buy over this street from Aggie while the latter owned the richest streets in the entire board. Xinli just focused on buying the orange line from Aga at a thousand dollars for two streets and paying me money to get herself out of jail.
There were so many changes to the rules, Natalie was very focused on reading this pack of trivia cards that she wasn’t really paying attention to the game – Smee had landed on one of her streets and she was keeping quiet as Natalie took no notice of the movement. It was a mass buying and selling game as Anushka kept wailing about how she would always lose money. And for the Chance cards, she kept saying ‘Give Anushka $50’ until once it really came true as Smee was said to be the Player of the Year and had to give $50 to every player. She was very happy when that happened. They kept buying and selling streets to each other and there were mass upgrading and everything – Aggie sold a light blue street to Aga who had the other two streets and in return, everytime she landed on that street, she didn’t have to pay, like the deal between Smee and Anushka.
I got so irritated with Natalie not paying attention to the game that I just took her trivia cards from her and kept them back in the box. Natalie had a sure-fire tactic for playing Monopoly – every time someone bought something, she’d ask to buy from that person until everyone got so irritated with her that they didn’t bother. She eventually became a better player.
Smee was a scary business woman, ‘shrewd’ as Aggie put it, and she successfully brought all the railways in return for her property and kept to that. She didn’t bother to do anything else and no one bothered with her because she was already established as a very smart and scary player.
Anushka was quite amusing. She didn’t like Monopoly as she kept losing money in the game but still she did quite well. Eventually she got bored of it and was fiddling around with her camera and lost her memory card for a while before Aggie found it on her blouse. She really wasn’t interested in the game, I’m sorry to say.
Agnessa was alright; she brought and sold stuff to people, collected her rent and was quite a decent player and a nice person. She was quite smart as well, when Aga wanted to buy property from her, she held out until Aga didn’t want to buy it anymore. Eventually she sold her some property but still played the game as quite a good and nice player. She owned the most expensive streets of all but didn’t really do much to them as we didn’t have much time to play the game.
Xinli was basically, quite a weird player. Within the first round, she had landed herself up in jail and stayed her for pretty much the entire game. Yes, she did get out and all ($50 to me) but she kept returning back to jail and hence never did collect her roundly income of $200 and blamed me for it. I think she made a record for going into jail the most number of times – at least three times within the first two rounds, because the Chance card was not kind to her. Xinli had the entire orange street (whatever) thingy but was unable to pay for anything. Ah haha.
Agapera was quite a funny player. She tried to buy things from Smee and Natalie and eventually when Anushka decided to drop everything, she earned quite a bit of things from her, making her one of the richest players. Then when Xinli finally gave up and gave her everything, she really became the richest player and improved upon the red street so much, with three houses. Smee was currently in the Free Parking space which was before the red street and was glaring darkly at Agapera who had just upgraded her streets to such a degree. She earned quite a bit of money in this game as mainly two players combined their assets with hers.
When we ended the game Agapera was quite sad as she was saying that she had never earned so much money in the game before, or was this successful in it. She wanted to take pictures…
We sat there for four whole hours, just sitting and talking and laughing and taking pictures and videotaping each other and listening to random talk – ANUSHKA I WANT THE VIDEO OF US PLAYING MONOPOLY AND UGLY DOLLS – AGGIE I WANT MY DARE VIDEO – and all the other lovely memories that will stay with us when we sit down and bully our brains into studying.
Please send each other the pictures! They will be fondly treasured.
And study hard for the A Levels! Let’s do this again after them!
I realize my posts are getting shorter. I used to be able to post ten pages for ten hours in font size 10 but now I’m barely two-and-a-half pages in font size 12 for almost 6 hours of pure nonsensical fun. Hum. I shall predictably forget to full in the gaps for this.
I am dead tired.
Okay, I changed it. Now it’s almost 4 pages worth of nonsense in font 10 size. And I checked it to my older posts, 10 hours was about 5.1 pages, so 6 hours for 3.5 pages is quite a decent turnover. Yay! I have not lost my ability to bore people with many words yet! All’s well!
Posted by norbert at 10/13/2007 03:39:00 PM