Silence!

xxx typed*: mind (blog)

(Sunday, 24 February 2008-)
+2/24/2008 11:16:00 am]*

Title: Solas for four days!-

I have no idea why, how, or even when; this dream seems like it will stay on in my brain for many many years to come. From the very first moment when orientation started, getting paired with Shantini and ironically receiving the first index group amongst all thirty-six of them, in addition to the fact that I was afraid of the trouble my studies would bring about, plus plus; the hatred feeling for some people who made things go haywired in the schedule, my life was dull. I never wanted to be part of the function at all. In fact, every time when there was any training or something sort of like that, I tried to skip, pon, siam… there was never a bit of enthusiasm. But thankfully, we had a group of golden warriors, real fighters at war right at the start.

Immediately our committee members were announced, honestly, I think our group was really blessed with captains who plan to every single detail before announcing anything to us. Meanwhile they were discussing about the overall plan. Maybe that’s the way it should happen, but this style of leadership was something very new to me. All the more this was very effective so both my captain and vice, Ian and Kubo, earned my respect a lot.

On the next day after we were given our roles and houses, we met up at Melissa’s home to do three things with about ten people. Of the three groups, we were blessed to find that our group had so many talented people. Ian, Kubo and Adriel helped out in doing the house introduction with some music and script, Marie and Guan Wen, Kai Chuen and Clare plus Sashangar and Boon Hong helped out in painting the headbands while Jessica, Jocelyn and I were thinking of the cheers for the house. Well, Melissa was mostly busy at home then, yet she set aside some time, even sacrificing her time to send her close relative off just to think of cheers for us in the end!

So the following 2 days of practising mass dance and preparation for house introduction forced us to stay up late. In fact, Kubo and Ian were almost the last few to leave for our house all the time, which kind of made me feel the rest didn’t do much for the house.

Day one; all the juniors were put to sit in the weirdest positions which was horizontally when the more effective way and fairer-for-all method to put them vertically. But who cares anyway? My group is sitting in the first row and so it didn’t really caused much trouble for Shan and me. In fact, I’m very grateful that I have enough space to mark attendance while trying to interact with the juniors. As for the introduction to us, Shan and I deliberately chose to dance at the furthest end, far away from our group. We danced the most horrible way, forgetting our steps and having fun with ourselves.

The ice-breakers were the most boring ones to play with, especially when they have been repeated close to three times with the same old rule. With wacko, forest game and one bounce, this managed to last everyone for eighty minutes, ironically. But seeing some of them knowing the rules so well just gave me the laugh. Apart from the intelligence by some, the forfeit I randomly thought of just struck me, even till now; first was to call Joshua to propose to Denise by saying “I’ll dump Shan for you, will you marry me?” while second was to ask honest people who didn’t get caught by the one bounce game to go on four feet as the rest guess what kind of animal they’re pretending. Trust me, when I’m looking at how these ideas came about, I’m also giving comments to myself at how retarded my mind can be.

Next was the registration. It was so sad that my group had to split into two. ): Shan took the batch that she knew while I did the other group, since I gave all of them the call they needed personally some time earlier. And especially when Jocelyn said something about the school acting like mine tries to get personal with your juniors, I felt all the more to handle them all by myself. But somehow or rather the subject talk took exceptionally long for all sorts of delays that forced everything to push back by 30 minutes. Perhaps that’s one mistake the organisers failed to take note then. Anyway, in the attempt to try and bring those kids as soon as possible into the computer lab, I led them to the wrong venue. Honestly, that was all because of my blurriness to the schedule given to us. In all, everything turned out fine, including the survey and stuff like that, for those people were too afraid of offending anyone on day one, so it was, in a way, a time when I could make all the decisions smoothly. And HA! Shane didn’t attack me with my slow reactions. Bleh! Anyway, as the ten of us stood outside the room while I tried my very best to smuggle in and ahead of the next group, which was Jessica’s group. But, once again, I was such an ignorant fellow that I could actually get into the room since that was my shift, hers was the next shift! What indifferent side of me! Next was to take them to the newly renovated LT for some survey. It was in a horrible mess when again, I sneaked them into the front row out of the pile of chaos. Still, everything turned out well till I led them through the passage towards the staff room. (: That’s also when I had to leave the kids to Shan in preparation for my bench game. ):

The bench game was madness! At first I thought that the rules were too lenient, but it turned out that people didn’t understand in whatever way possible so we had to stick to the original one. But here’s what’s interesting, Nicholas, my partner, was so nice to the J1s such that he gave the usual rules. Compared to me, I came up with weird themes like ‘shoe size’ and ‘hair length’. In fact, shoe size was so much easier since most had similar ones. Oh wells! Hair length was a killer. I tried to slow the teams down by being picky, but they were so fabulous that left me stranded. If hair length killed, then height must have been the worst, really. There were some teams that expected to arrange by hair length since they might have seen the previous groups’ ones, but too bad! I’m in charge and tilted things around. Bleh! Oh oh! Maybe I’m the founder of group 21, because when they came they had no cheer I think, and were trying to do some cheers that sounded so much like my group’s, so I simply spontaneously coincidentally called them ‘blackjack’. A few days later, they had the two cards on their placard. But here’s something embarrassing. I wanted to give winning teams their surprise, but I left them somewhere and in the end lost it. It wasn’t any big deal since no one really cared about it, but john that joker bugged me for that. Anyhow, the rest were fine.

Day one almost ended pretty soon. But for me, I was in great stress, don’t really know why. Oh yes, because I remembered that leaving the group was not fun at all when both Shan and I could have spent time bonding with the group more. So I was so busy asking around if anyone could take over me in the Frisbee game the next day, and for Shan the following. Actually I felt a little bad since I think it was real selfish but hope others won’t blame me for that! Especially those in Solas! Because indeed, we came up with the ideas written down rather quick for the skit; probably for the trust they gave us.

Erm. I forgot the details that happened on day two, but I remembered some things anyway. Firstly the house introduction was horrendous. Ours was the first but the music was so horrible that everything went wrong. But the content of it was quite fun. The carrying of Ian, our pharaoh, was quite scary when the four of us, Alvin, BoonHong Elton and I couldn’t time things at first. However that was hilarious. I particularly loved the scene when Kubo and Piong were holding the disc-framed “sun god” and using their hands to scold the mortals while Sash was making full use of his angry voice. Another thing was the part when we were doing the “1985” song. In fact the making of our actions was so fun when we were discussing towards the end of our meeting on the earlier Sunday. And this was all because of everyone’s efforts! Oh oh! Also the banner and “1985 BC” line were so memorable!

My memory could only recall from the time when we did house cheers. Basically I was pretty much running around and trying to ‘spread’ to be a watchdog that everyone did contributed to the cheering part, but couldn’t do anything for the uncooperative bunch of juniors were sitting at the furthest corner which was so isolated that I had to cut across the crowd if I were to reach them. Instead I had to go around the five metre wall at the cave which was unnecessary if they participated well. Other than this appalling side of the group, the rest were rather satisfactory. Or perhaps, I enjoyed the times when we displayed our version of the cheer lyrics. Why? All because Joc, Jess and I were the lame ones to think of such retarded shocking yet fun cheesy lyrics and odd actions. So for the modified version of the ‘Lollipop’ song was shown. Miraculously I somehow remembered every line of the altered song. So the actions were the things that we were not unified. Anyway, when I was doing the “bow down” line, I was bending my wrists while leaving my hands facing up. At first no one really get what we were doing, and those sitting in front gave the “huh? I don’t get what you bunch of monkeys are doing.” It was alright with the optimism that they will get it soon. Well, it was nice to see them following by the next chorus came. Still, the numbers were small and I was sort of staring at those who looked like they can do but didn’t want to because no one else was doing. In fact, I could imagine that there was different colour shade on them compared to those surrounding them, as if there was light glowing in them compared to the darker surroundings. Moreover the tiny actions and lip cheering part showed a lot on their part when they attempted to let their embarrassment go just to take part in this. That’s when I began to give the ‘come on’ hint and encouraging smile to get them a little hyped up. In the end they led the pack which was good. But on my left I sensed something wasn’t right. Apparently they were laughing giggling and passing around their secrets. The worst was Tara when she joined in! Thought she would be more mature than the rest, but… Anyhow, Denise made things seem horrible with her crazed laughter. Either way, I tried to ignore them at first when I thought I could handle them later and teach them at our free time, yet they did that for the action I was doing earlier on. At first I thought they laughed for the homo action of bending my wrists, which I told almost every fellow house mates about it. Even they joined in. But very much later when I asked them I found how foolish I looked like. They were saying that I looked like I seem to be teaching babies about the moves. I could understand their point, but unknowingly, when I was doing this I had the idea as if I were facing the kids in Mae Sot. They might not understand us at first, but later they followed our actions, just like the kids! Well, they managed to learn, and the most basic method of teaching works best!

Immediately after house meeting was lunch. I tried to fight for our group to leave first in order to grab seats in the canteen in advance by asking if we could be dismissed first. Yes, we were allowed. But the ironic fact is that, Shan didn’t see my point such that the whole group became one of the last few to arrive. So there I was, placing my booklets and pens on both round tables in the canteen extension and trying hard to convince the uncles and aunties not to remove my things. What tough job to handle! For some reason, the active group decided not to sit on my table. That was fine with me, as long as I remembered what Elaina taught me last year; the job of a facilitator is to help his or her juniors to bond. She didn’t elaborate on the methods, but I was sure this was one of the ways possible. After all, they did try to talk and make their table louder than mine! So, towards the end of the one-hour break, suddenly Denise (I think, because I wasn’t sure who that girl was) came up to me with gestures and sealed lips yet not making any sound at all, something that no one would in any way know their meanings. She was pointing at the back of her wrists, towards the quadrangle, to her three friends, to my uniform… … all leading her to mean something like this, “can we go to the uniform shop and come back to join you later in the games?” That was conveyed through my foolscap pad which was brought to aid them in planning for the script. Oh yes, and the reason for doing so? “Shane made a bet with her to force her shut up till 1 o’clock (where break would end)” It was around 1245 then, so I guess making such a bet never looked like a difficult task. As for Shane, I was thinking which person would be so free to think of such a game to play on day two. I repeat, day two! Moreover I couldn’t distinguish him from Karthik when both are tall and similar skin tone. In fact someone pointed to me who he was, but all I could see was someone familiar and belonged to my group. That’s all, and that’s when I started knowing Shane from his character. Oh! Back to Denise, for security reason, I asked for her number, but I couldn’t believe that she didn’t question anything about that. After all it seemed so easy to ask for one’s number. Sigh! Another interesting fact was when time was up and the group had to go for their handball game, both Shan and I weren’t done with our lunch and Joshua wasn’t back from his buying of uniform. So this fantastic plan was used; split. Shan, with her protective tone, sacrificed some of her eating time to bring them for the game while I left behind waiting for Josh. Thank goodness he knew the school compound rather well, so moving to the playing arena was an easy task for him when I pointed to him. Phew! Meanwhile, the substitution of Shan for me took place in our table we sat earlier. Just imagine, during that time at near the grandstand no senior was there, and we would have been in deep deep trouble if anyone went missing or we were caught. Good that they were good then!

Hurriedly I took quick steps towards the handball court. Yes the game started some time ago, but another thing caught my eye. There was a tiny little group of about seven people crowding at the edge of the court. They made some noise that the other group never did. When I got closer that’s when I found that they were cheering with the lyrics I never heard before. Wow, something new was created by them, I thought. To be honest, I was really proud for them at that moment when their impression given to was that they were going to bond well as a group, especially when the opposition’s intention was to win the game on its own… so the first half lost three goals but the other half fought back with one. But our loudness of cheers never died down, beating the other group by miles. Later I then found that this group was Nicki(Nicolette)’s.

The schedule was altered such that the first game would take half hour while the other two allocated ones would take up fifteen each, something that fumed Guan Wen for not informing him earlier. When I asked Cheeko (Audrey) about the same questions he questioned later, she said the game masters would “know”. That’s when the problem of the system floated, and taught me that people think very differently in tight schedules.

The two groups moved together to the next game; Frisbee. It wasn’t a game meant for us to win despite having Samuel and Kubo as our game masters. Nonetheless, the way they threw the disc was rather hilarious even if their method of running into space was wise. Yet the highlight of this game was when the rule was a little problematic which said that no guy can score in the zone; but left the no guy can defend rule out. We lost the game by a goal with our first half for the time limitations eventually, but again, seeing the other half trying to cheer for them was another pleasant sight, leaving Nicki much jealous.

For both our groups, the following was dodge ball. Our people, apparently, weren’t proficient in this field that caused us a defeat here. In this case whereby we weren’t concentrating or good at throwing, the idea of team spirit rose amongst our groups when the seriousness in both teams and calling for danger simply reflected that.

Finally, broke free from Nicki’s group in the last game. It was starchy chair and some asked to sit out of this game. Shan let them, but this made Shauqi and some of the guys wonder and began asking around. They didn’t look too innocent but ironically knew nothing about this, so I tried my very best to explain to those guys. Tara was quite near to us then and when I said “ok, so you know ah, this is about the cycle… …” she interrupted with “eh! You really going to tell them is it?” Nodding with the intention to help those guys into getting used to life, I sort of ignored her and carried on explaining. But thankfully she cut in again with the Biology context, and here it went, “did you study biology in secondary school? Did you learn about the reproductive system?” By then, we didn’t need to ask anymore when he learnt this till sec two, and whatever he told us never tallied to what we wanted to say. Well, that’s what happens when one stays in a single sex school for too long. But wait! He was in for four years only; perhaps he was simply innocent. Anyway, the game eventually started, which halted the explanation. He never asked about this again, thankfully. With lady luck flying off, we were forced to trail three-nil. But she came back to guide us back to four-three and drawing twice to end things off at five-all. It was a simple score line in brief, because the details were forgotten, except for one of my group members when that person fell off the chair by leaning backwards. Ouch! But I guessed it was alright since that person’s energy came back as soon as he or she got on the chair again. However this scared the game master. In the end, as I said, there was a draw, but the friendliness between Elton and WeiQi’s group and ours was definitely one to remember. In fact the three cheers item wasn’t initiated by us!

At around four in the afternoon, somehow there was this chaos whereby everyone had to rush down to the grandstand. It was the “support” as people called it for singapore’s bid in the youth Olympic games. But here’s what was interesting. One of the teachers in charge for this was standing at the top of the stands and staring at how things were going. Thinking that he would know the arrangement of the groups, I asked him if he would tell me our position. Guess what? He told me, “Sit anywhere.” I know that for organisation purpose groups should be arranged, but this fellow replied me as if I’m a pest to him. That’s when he gave me the impression that he deserved no respect from me, which made me spill this out, “Wouldn’t it be smarter if we sat accordingly?” But it was alright, because I knew he wouldn’t understand me at all! After some time, I had to bring Russell and Nicolette to sit for their KI test, a test which had no paper and so I had to run around to t-fourteen for test pad. It wasn’t that nice to ask out of the blue, but the excitement was fun. By the time I came back all the facils were at the pitch with some instructions to be given. As I said, I was late, so when I came back we were supposed to line up that lasted all the way from the piazza passage to the edge of the pitch. Along the way there were many rebellious acts, including Joy’s demonstration and that useless teacher’s pointless talking, but best of all, the running team only came at five, which meant that the time management killed all of us.

That night, we had our Solas team discussion for finale night at the canteen table while I was eating my dinner there. The highlight of this was when Boon gave a remark that made the security guard real angry with this “we had permission from teachers” when he was trying to clear us off from there. The guard stormed to us and the tension was there. Thank goodness everything was gone in here soon after. Yet the ideas generated during this time were very constructive.

After everyone left Shan and I began to stone in the quadrangle at the stars, hoping to bring in ideas those lads had earlier. The night sky was beautiful, and triggered many moments in Mawai or in Mae Sot. Alright, back to the topic. She had a fantastic memory with everything, including those the IG had and also what Kubo contributed some time ago. But the problem was that the IG’s idea was rather controversial so we had to stick to the plan by Kubo. Anyway, I liked the way the notion of stone and rocks came into the picture from “rock-a-pharaoh” which derived from “rock-a-fella”, the school’s rock charity concert. Stoning, playing five stones, rock someone to-and-fro, fight with the Rock and form a rock concert… things that I could never ever have thought of in my entire life! But the feeling after that was extremely good! That’s also when I got up at four in the morning to type the skeleton and print the sheets of paper out when everyone in the house was sound asleep!

Day three was the day we went to ECP, east coast park for those lazy to speak in long sentences. In fact I took a long time to realise this acronym. How embarrassing! Having to leave the school early meant we had to reach there early too! And especially when Shan had to be at ecp to prepare for the games, I was left alone. Anyway, it was worth it, after a long negotiation that exchanged Samuel and WeiWen as game masters. Samuel came with us from school though.

The hay-wired bus arrangement forced to settle for the fifth bus. Amongst them I encountered things like seeing the displayed buses with deceiving tags, overloaded buses going to the same location, sitting on luggage deck, splitting groups which I didn’t liked. After all the hassle, I ended up getting to the bus with Clara’s group, the second one while losing Russell and Hansel to Elton’s bus.

In that bus something was real hilarious. Joshua started making fun sji being his washroom to Shauqi (I think) which couldn’t stop me from laughing. Then he and Shane began to sing all sorts of funny songs where I took one of them down. So we got down at station two, somewhere super far from where we were supposed to be. But for some reason, knowing the schedules the committee planned earlier gave us more time; the booklet said things should start at nine, but committee said nine-thirty and by the time we got off the bus it was ten past nine. So those kids had so much time to spend in the washroom and stroll along the footway there.

Our main and only competitor that day was tee eighteen, Nicki’s group. By then eighteen had hurried and reached the first station when they were too excited in the games. Yet early didn’t mean punctual! Anyway, it was rather hectic for this station since I was introduced to two foreign human beings. Well, not that foreign after all. They were the teachers accompanying us, but till now, maybe I was too engrossed with the group that I have no idea the teachers’ names, except for one. Another reason was that I had to ensure my group’s Nicolette get to the group safely and also Shan knew her way here. Still, the safety and responsibility words are so important these days… Alright, the first game was ‘human bowling’. The unique part of this was, it was on coarse sand; not on grass since they had bumpy roots and fine sand meant that the game would send people bowl out to sea which wasn’t feasible. So I turned out to be the first guinea pig. I slid on the mat that gave me cuts on my calf and minor slashes on my knee without tripping the game master. But on the outside everything looked fine; it’s just some red spots, nothing much. It was quite true for me since I loved the group too much; any little injury meant nothing to me, even leaving my hand phone on the grass patch, keeping myself from being contacted by Nicolette or Shan, happened. Anyway, the facilitators except for Shan were placed as bowling pins. Some people were real funny, they had their ferocious look as a group but when it was time to take us down, they were either too slow or were off target. There were also some girls who solely wanted to glide on the mat together as one and never seemed to want to topple us. I remembered Joshua’s attempt to crash me off. It was somewhat like a tackle from behind and I was ever prepared to land on my hands when I fell backwards. In reality, the slippery surface made me fell almost all the time. It was either trying to dodge that lost my balance or back-tackles, but every time was fun. The game was so high-tempo that those kids wanted to be part of the bowling pins too. It wasn’t really allowed in the game, but somehow the game master allowed it. But for the last five minutes and too many wanted this position, they had to settle for two rows instead with some space to fall behind. Sadly, those bowling balls had lesser space and speed to slide, but my attention was focused mostly on the pins, or my responsibility would be questioned again. In all, this game was so special when other groups didn’t had the chance to experience since I think the organisers called it off for its dangerous features. So we were lucky!

From the first to the second station, as I said earlier, they were very far. So by the time we left it was rather late, so one of the teachers Ms Chua decided to advice me on trying to make the kids go faster. She said something like threatening them, but after she said I had to ponder a little. Whatever she said would work logically and theoretically, but knowing them for two days with this kind of attitude meant I didn’t need to scare them. They’re the motivating ones, so I said “hey come on IG one, if we go quickly now we can play all the games and finish them!” At first I could sense the temptation to ignore me since it would be odd to be abnormal, but later someone thankfully paced up. “INITIATE! COME ON, WHERE’S YOUR INITIATIVE!?” was what inspired them by their own group members, followed by their running, whether they were barefoot or with footwear on. I didn’t dare to look at the teacher again, for the fear of those pair of jealous eyes.

There was another game, the slippers-blind-folded game. Shane didn’t have a partner, so I went to be his. I hated this game since my voice is monotone and no one would be able to hear, which was why I thought of having the grid method instead. He further developed it to the number pad on hand phones. This idea got me so excited that we started the game late. In the end, we were the last to finish, but the satisfaction of this was to the fullest, despite Denise overhearing about our “secret” tactic of this.

There was also the endo-exo game which had no meaning at all. It was supposed that the teams would send in pairs where one would be blinded by blindfold while the other being lame, so one of them would carry the other. The pairs were to race towards a pile of water bombs to collect them, as many as possible. In this game the pairings were rather interesting when there were so many combinations and variations the group could produce. In the end, we were much quicker than the other team and fired more than they could on us. Good job! The amazing part was that one of us smashed a water bomb to the butt of the red shorts girl who wasn’t well liked by many. Anyway, here are the pictures during the collection.

The balloon-mah-jong game, an obstacle course was incredibly fun, right from the time when we facilitators tried the games ourselves at first. It was a time when we Solas people had this fantastic idea of tackling this game against Arator by using the elastic shirts as our umbrellas to shield the balloon, but failed miserably when there was no space to such stunts with all our feet tied as a group. So to our group, our people had the privilege to get throw the bombs first when later the next group found theirs were infected with red ants all over. Our side were smart enough to target balloon or human. And once again, the red shorts person was so eye-catching that it was close to impossible that anyone would miss out on noticing that as a target. And yes, by the way, that girl was holding onto the balloon, which meant that all the more our guys and girls should attack on her. Results didn’t matter since I forgot about it, but the cheer we did was during exactly the same time we did during the training. We did the “three cheers and three cheers and three cheers for eighteen! Cheers! Cheers! Cheers!” something that Kubo thought of, but this gave everyone the ‘huh’ look. Who cared anyway? It was fun, and that’s all we cared!

We then moved on to the station whereby the group members had to sit on a car tyre while two members, strongest guy and girl, would have to pull all of them through. When the game masters said this, they somehow reminded me of how LTC was like; I learnt then that a good leader should move across the finish line and pull all the members across. Anyway, I think Hansel and Nicolette were chosen, so the game began. There were so many fights that made the other team block us in moving through. It was alright since the rules permitted those who passed the line to add sand to provide force against the tyre. But our opponents, especially the red shorts girl, were rather fierce and built sandcastles in us. Later, I got a little bored in blocking those resilient juniors, so I turned to help our team pulling the rope which stretched so far behind when many more came back. That’s when the team spirit once again inspired me to carry on despite the tiring days. In the end when the game came to a close, Joy called for all those j1s to dump us into the waters. I was right behind them then so I was the first to get in. They submerged me for awhile and when I got up, they splashed water. The feeling wasn’t the best when anything within my lips was so salty and everything seemed gross! The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was that Shan was wet too. Well, that was it, so unpredictably I started calling out cheers to “JJ”, Joy and James. While the rest were busy trying to dry themselves under the tree, I suddenly realised that Joy was rather dry in a distance. With a sneak attack, some of us dragged her and tried drenching her. After some time those kids went into the toilet nearby and it was a little embarrassing when I almost stepped into the female washroom while calling them to be quick. Anyway, it was such a memorable time then!

Leaving from the furthest station meant we had to rush to the next. But the thing was that we couldn’t wear any footwear with our wet bodies! So during this time we went passed the teacher that I mentioned earlier. He called us to wear our shoes before continuing. But I was at the back of the group, so only I heard that call; the rest had zoomed ahead. To satisfy him, I slowed the later part of the group, advised them to wear their shoes in a pretending manner. But really, who would care for that? Those concrete pavements’ only danger was the stones, the exact same things which we went passed in the previous game! So we carried on without his instructions, noting that he was impractical towards the environment, yet again.

This station was the one where I begged WeiWen and Samuel to help in this game for Shan. When we got here there was something interesting. There was no sock as expected! And the reason for this was that they got washed away by the high tide rising since the morning. How hilarious! The game was rather gross when people had to dip their so-called “socks” after being worn on their hands or feet and wheel barrel together back into a bucket of food stuff made up of biscuits, tap water, weird smelling sauces, honey syrup, chocolate syrup and many more; I browsed them the day before that, and they aren’t pleasant at all! So the game began, with Samuel rewarding the winning team with KGB. Sounds odd right? That’s what I thought too, which meant “Kong Guan Biscuit”. Just couldn’t believe how lame he was. The best part for the group was that they, especially Tara, were enthusiastic in eating the biscuit. Yes, they said it was nice, but I decided to be nice to them and shut up about the food. In fact, those things should never be put into the mouth when they were left open in the council room where termites and all sorts of creatures could pass by. Oh wells.

We were running short of time by the time we went to the spider web game. It was quite unexpected for me when the rule was that the group had to try transporting group members across, but must use different routes for every time. The result was that, we drew! But the highlight for this was that the game master thought I was a j1 when I was without my tag. Anyway, it’s alright! But the situation was rather odd to be called this way.

Oh yes! This part was real fun. Because some of the bikes came by occasionally we got the chance to ask them for some drinks and bent the rules a little!

The following was the one where Rheyza (I guess…) was in-charge; the leaves collecting game. Supposedly it was to collect leaves, but maybe because even we could cheat during the training by picking leaves for ourselves, they changed to the speed game instead. So the guys had to wear trash bags with the hole for the head to get through, run to the pile of starched-filled leaves and roll onto it. Then jump five times before coming back. I remembered our side were disadvantaged, and we crushed their morale into the game when one of us said that they’ll lose their “face” if they lost. Well, everything was tight, but I was heartened that they initiated to line up according to heights and when the bag came they were also eager to move on.

By then I had the will to try force the time to make us play all the games allocated for us. So after the splashing of starch and leaves, we hurried to the final one. In fact, our group raced there. Along the way I saw that the bowling game was cancelled, which meant that we were very lucky to play this! Anyway, seeing the whole group running towards the final game was nice. Perhaps the adrenaline helped a little! Nicki’s group wasn’t that quick, moreover the final game wasn’t done when we arrived, so embarrassingly, and I brought them towards the side of the pavement to learn about the tactics. When the game was about to begin, I felt so safe that Jocelyn would take care of them well that I rested on the barbeque table nearby with Shan and Nicki. Thank goodness I played this so-called “DOTA” where players had to place a strip of cloth at their back before going to war. Everyone had to try removing opponents’ cloth while shielding theirs from others. I think our side won eventually, but our time at the bench was more fun.

When we were about to get back to school I got extremely fumed by the way one of the teachers left to the other bus without informing anyone. They might be old enough but (hello?) at least tell us! That’s when I began disliking irresponsible teachers.

The time without the group was when they went for their shower break. Then, the feeling seemed like the way in the first orientation; I was held hostage by the vice-principal when my bag was in his car… long story though. So, we facilitators managed to get together as a group for lunch when there was no hope in squeezing any place at that time. It was also when I really remembered Sherman’s name; I had forgotten lots of times before that and pissed him off. But not this time! Anyway, regarding the plan for the script I gave them early in the morning, they chose our plan where they were so odd that they drew pictures – lame ones – instead of discussing the script. Example, if a line is a television, what’s a line? There were a few more, but this impacted me the most.

So based on the schedule they then learnt the school song and had a long cca talk while we took a rather comfortable break with a shower and trust me, it has never been as good, for all the salt and stinky things on the body.

The bazaar was horrible. There were so little numbers entering, to the extent that Natalina, Shane and I were sitting outside the LT yet no one wanted to get behind the doors to see what’s up inside. Soon I figured out why; the video was out of topic and made no sense at all when the people looked like they were playing more than anything else. Perhaps if they were humorous I would have laughed a little, but a hell no! Those videos were the probable ones that forced people to break into cold sweat and really, my tolerance level propelled me out shortly I went in. Anyway, the dance performance was awesome and the fake baking society looked pretty real!

There was debrief after everything, but I was really glad that everyone in the group tried to rehearse a little even when some were too busy. Oh, here’s something interesting. Because I was inefficient I led them to places to discuss that were either too noisy or quieter places but many incoming people soon chased us away with their voices. That’s when we settled in the cave. The casts were superb, even though you could argue that there was no backstage person at all, which equates to everyone, were good! Their discipline was definitely admirable when I could never achieve that myself.

During the night we were crazily practising on the dance in the house item which was to dance. It never looked easy to me, but I madly took up this tried my best to mug the steps; super tiring!

Day four was when I came late. Woke up later than usual by an hour, I could only join the rest at the first game. Thank goodness Shan was there and managed things well, and I ought to give her a huge treat soon.

There were games like the tube game, shampoo game, ‘colour my life’, watermelon race, colour plates game. Basically the pictures were taken, but the highlight was when the girls started telling me about this scary object that had been haunting them since the start of orientation. This creepy thing even extended to Shan during the colour game. There was also the Cleopatra pose which was so memorable… Anyway, the only thing I thought I was helpful in was during the group picture taking session.

Surprisingly the canteen was opened on a Saturday and it made the school seemed to be like a school day…

Now for the final preparation I had to juggle myself at three different places; second floor pac, third floor pac and auditorium either for house skit, house entrance or facils’ item where in fact I left the house skit on their own, learnt the final parts of the entrance and had been missing in action from the item.

In between I had a chance to get into the control room up in the gallery when Tara, Shane and I were trying to fit the songs in. The feeling was nice when they were cooperating well with the control-man well. In fact I began to play with the buttons of the cd player and indeed, it was fun!

During the final rehearsal when GuanWen wanted to see the standard of the skit even though it was very late, we displayed a performance that shook his head in disappointment. Well, it was rather obvious when we couldn’t speak loud enough. There were many flaws too, but the way Shane and Tara led them was fantastic and so kept the morale high for all of them. The best of all, they cheered for themselves, something that I never did in my skit last year.

Meanwhile the setup for finale was extraordinary, thanks to the ideas on second night. There were the hanging light sticks right from the gallery, from which I heard that Kubo and Ian fought their way to bargain for that spot, and attached to the badminton posts in front (I’m still fascinated by the idea they thought of!). Then the Rock-A-Pharaoh banner hanged at the corner. The view was simply amazing. I went upstairs to the gallery to help tie them up the nylon ropes to the sticks and really, for a moment they looked like firecrackers and weapons of mass destruction! Our huge banner with our pharaoh’s picture hung right from the gallery.

It was then the time where a few of us, WeiQi, Melissa, Elton, myself and some other dancers whom I can’t remember… Oh yes! There were two juniors who joined us as well! During the rehearsal we were so tensed that we forgot most of our steps. During the entrance, I forgot anything after the third eight counts. So for the remaining time on stage I spent it was useless crap of moving to the beat. Anyone watched it would have known it was horrible. But what I liked was when I jumped high up and landed on the badminton courts like some superhero. The hang time was amazing! After that was when we did the “one two step” song. My sequence was also wrong and off for this too, but time passed quickly for this part. That’s when I preferred the dive into our “time machine”. By the way, this machine was a fluke creation such that it was only thought of on the second night when we were discussing on the canteen table. Anyway, I wanted to do somersaults after the dive, but after I pierced through the strips of cloth my knee landed on the ground first. This was the pain; the knee cap had a bruise, which was after my top part of my knee hit my chin, so all my teeth had the jerk that almost gave me the “ouch” that instant.

Immediately I rushed to see if our house skit was ready to perform. That’s when I rushed up to the gallery where Shane and Tara were watching everything from the top view. Tara told me my performance was fine, but what comforting lie! In fact I wanted to thank her for times when she said ‘don’t be stressed’ or something like that. The wait to get into the control room was long. When it was our house’s turn to cheer, actually I couldn’t hear our cheers properly while at the control room, but I thought that the coordination was there. So the play began. I screwed some parts such that I asked ShaoRen, the dj then, to fade out for the first music. It was fine, but when I wanted to play the second music with fade in, I clicked the soundtrack of the second song without calling him to fade in. It was till he sounded a little pissed and asked why I didn’t ask for fade in by the third song. It seemed a bit scary, but a learning experience. The only excuse, something that shouldn’t happen at all, was that I was too busy with listening to the cues given by Shane and Tara. Well, as I said, it was my fault. Everything went on smoothly, thank goodness! Hoped everyone had their fun time watching!

I managed to steal some time to join in with the entire house until someone called me to prepare backstage for the ‘deal or no deal’ game. It was superbly fun when Marie, Matthias, Guinevere and I were the so-called family members for Nicholas ZiJun. The host was Shaine. He began with the perfect style of English as he spoke to the audience with the little step of the mini-stage being the stand for him. Firstly, he introduced his self-proclaimed ‘hunks’ and ‘babes’ on stage. I remembered clearly Clara’s shiny red pyjamas and GuanWen’s dead-looking white pyjamas. They were so striking and stood on the top row of the four steps! Anyway, it was humorous when NgeeDerk wore his shades and fell asleep while standing. That sudden moment almost caught me laughing. Meanwhile, ZiJun started to ask Shaine if he was from HK. This instigated the odd style of speaking English when Shaine was fabulous in speaking this, so was ZiJun. During the time when we were sitting I had lots of plans as to what to do if we were in action. Yet before I knew it it was break time. In other words, the commercial break which I didn’t watch Sash and gang doing it. But this was when ZiJun had to perform for both parts, so in order to make him to seem different I took off my white sweater. It was such tough job when I had to untie the yellow knots from the yellow ribbon that I put on a few minutes earlier. Despite this I’m going to bet on the fact that the rest were more tiring when they had to remove the heavy stages just for the commercial programme. Sash’s show was rather cool when there were lots of feedbacks to it, but too bad, I didn’t watch it. Anyway, back to our side, everyone wanted to cut the game short when it dragged for too long. So attention soon came to us. For this I especially loved the way Shaine spoke of us. I was closest to stage centre while the rest were at stage right. He called us as ZiJun’s “brother”, “sister”, “mother”, “father” that responded so well! Anyway, when Shaine advised him to ask us, we gave random comments at first with contradicting answers, or at least for Marie and I. But later when we realised that the show should be cut short all of us just popped up and shouted for ‘deal’. The funny part was that, everyone was saying it in the most violent way. Well, for the game, no one cared. Best of all, ZiJun didn’t know that this was vulgar in the first place!

After everything was done I went back with the house to enjoy the rest of the finale. There were times when I wanted to call the juniors to cheer and compete with the others, but they weren’t coordinated at all. I wanted to tell them what cheer to do; they had to pass the message all the way to the back before doing it. By the time we did our cheer, others have done several already, how sad. In fact, I saw the crowd and found that there weren’t many people who were interested in joining the party then. Thank goodness my group still had the mood when Denise, Jeanne and gang were jumping behind the rest and clapping, even though I have no idea what they were doing at all.

So about five minutes before the announcement of the results, BoonHong popped up from the back in a position as if he was going to tell us a secret. He told us we had won the ‘best house’. It was rather surprised for me since it was the first time I was in touch with it, but I wasn’t the most excited one. The rest were gasping and made quite a loud noise that caught the juniors’ attention. So, how he knew this? Here’s what happened. He was beside Ian and overheard it, giving us the secret info. That’s why when the results came out everyone of us were keeping our fingers crossed and hoped that the rumour was true. After all, our spirit could be seen as ‘not the most participating house’. With each of the houses’ names being called, I was surprised by them since they began with a boom and stirred the crowd as if they were politicians rallying for votes. In fact I felt sorry for them when the order was red then blue (oh! I liked the way Fuoco house with their instrumental captain MingXuan and his cheer full of beats!). The last two left; I heard later that the other captains were going to praise the green house captain Daniel for winning, but when it was announced to us, there was half a second of silence. Yes, that period of time was when all of us stood up to cheer and it was so anti-climax!

At the end we went up to the stage for the mass dance. Again, I was dragged up but this time, we went to the back. The experience was fun, when everyone was with their smiles for all the guy-guy partnership, foolish movements and oddest outfits people wore on stage. Lastly, we were so lucky for the encore given to us!

The way the group reacted was superb and I want to thank all of them.

But the cheers were nice too!

1
I say burn! (clap x2) It’s hot in here. We have some solas in the atmosphere! (x2)
Hey Solas in the house let me hear you clap your hands.

(clap to the beat 1 1 2) x3

Now that we have got the beat, let me see you stomp your feet

(stamp to the beat 1 1 2) x3

Now that you have stomped your feet, (one beat pause) let the whole house go

Ooh ah ah ah (x3)
ONE MORE TIME!
Ooh ah ah ah (x3)
SOOOO…LAS!

2
(To the tune of Mika-lollipop)

Clap to the beat 1 1 1 2 2 (x4)

(Single beat clap)Take a look at the Egypt sky, our sun’s gonna get you down (x2) (Stop clapping)
Bow down bow down, our sun’s gonna get you down (x2)

Take a look at the house next door
They’re here but we own the floor
Look at us, you want more
Oh Solas’s gonna get you down!

Sing it!

(Single beat clap)Take a look at the Egypt sky, our sun’s gonna get you down (x2) (Stop clapping)
Bow down bow down, our sun’s gonna get you down (x2)

3
(To the tune of don & drew-bouncy bouncy smack smack)

AHH AH AH AH AHHHH AHHHH AHHH AH AH AH AHHH AHHH AHHH…

Guys: Solas Solas win that,
Girls: You’re gonna get a heart attack
(x2)

So-las, who knew
That we are coming thru
Smoking up this entire room
When we come, BOOM BOOM!

(Both) AHH AH AH AH AHHHH AHHHH AHHH AH AH AH AHHH AHHH AHHH…

Guys: Solas solas win that,
Girls: You’re gonna get a heart attack!
(x2)

Where did you get your hotness from? (x2)
I got it from my mummy (x2)
Where did you get your body from? (x2)
I got it from my pharaoh (x2)
Where did you get your spirit from? (x2)
I got it from SOLAS! (x2)

Ooooooooohh….SOLAS!!!!

4
(To the tune of Jesus is a rock)

Solas is our house and we’ll burn your house away
Shap du bap shap shap du bap
(x2)
Solas is our house and we’ll burn your house away..ay..ay
Burn Solas burn, (x2)
Burnnn…(clap x2) all the way

Pharaoh is our king and he’ll whip your house away
Shap du bap shap shap du bap
(x2)

Pharaoh is our king and he’ll whip your house away..ay..ay

Burn solas burn (x2)
Burnn…(clap x2) all the way.

5
My heart goes Solas las las las (clap x3)
Solas las in the morning ooooooh
Solas las las las (clap x3)
Solas las in the SUNshine
My heart goes Solas las las las (clap x3)
Solas las in the evening ooooooh
Solas las las las
Solas las las just for you…