Opening Week

It has been the first week of school, and what a great start to the year! Usually I'd be a bit reluctant to go back to school, but it seems that the best holidays ever, coupled with all the people and events in school, and the spanking new facility, has actually driven me into something akin to eagerness, if that's believable.

The first week has been quite fun, actually...on the first day, there was no furniture in our classrooms, because after tossing us to the edge of the campus (Block J!), they happily forgot that there were classrooms in places other than Block A. That meant that no one at all felt like having lessons, so everyone just ran off. The thing was that no one checked with the teachers whether they were really calling everything off, and so it fell to me, who was still in school following Orientation, to cover the caboose of the class. Bleh...why do I always have to deal with this kind of fallout?

The new classrooms in Block J are really a blank slate, just waiting for us to add decorations and perhaps a coat of paint. Personally I quite liked the idea of having no furniture...then we could carpet the area, bring in throw cushions and all sit on the floor or something =P But Turkish-style upholstery aside, I think the whole Block J can do with a tad of colour. And our classroom has a window view, and what a view it is...two storeys' worth of windows. We don't need to turn on the lights during the day. But then, only the bottom row can be opened, so the class does get quite hot. Heh, and Mel put a plant into the class, but then it started wilting...

They were asking for suggestions on what we could do to make the place more homey. Besides adding a lounge, a TV, a library of the Economist and Time, I would personally like to coat the partitions and walls with mahjong paper so people can just scribble on them. And the windows too...so much class there for us to apply markers or chalk to. And if we have all this stuff in place, the it'll begin to feel like a place inhabited by youths. And I was thinking that we could start a tradition of having student performances around Block J, and inviting the Arts people and indeed everyone else to visit the poor outcast Block J once in a while. It really is quite sad that we're so physically isolated. And while I maintain that we're not doomed to elitism yet, if we don't do anything about it soon, then it'll be a moot point. And I do hope we don't HC-fy our Humans programme too much...our own block, our own LT, and what seems to be shared home rooms with our juniors seem to be our fate in the new campus.

Speaking of sharing home rooms...I wonder how that'll work. Heh...they'll have to really chew up the curriculum of the juniors in order to fit them into the same room as us. Oh, but the juniors are pretty much still an unknown. We kind of saw them on Thursday morning. This year, it seems that the Humans batch has a better spread of schools...with people from CHIJ, NY, CHS, the other CHS, ACS and Dunman inside, with the expected RG and RI intake. But the bad thing is that it seems like the Raffles proportion has increased. And there's only one CHS guy in the batch, as far as I know. Hmm...I like Glenn, the CHS guy, and I think the RG people will be manageable, but the RI people seem...frigid at first glance. Well, it's just a first impression, but it looks like the attitude of the RI guys during the start of 2004 in our class isn't a one off thing. How odd...a school that consciously produces extremely capable people that know that they're extremely capable (and that others are not).

Oh, and Orientation was great. Heh...I was crashing OGs like nobody's business, especially Shirin's and Wenxian's one...if I recall correctly, their name was Konfusion, or something like that. Thta was because they happened to be using our class as a dance prac area on day 1, and I happen to know both OGLs, and Orly from Frexprog One is in there too =P It was cool to stand on the fringes and watch them praccing their really nice batch dance (theirs comes with retro as well as break dancing moves, and has hand moves as well as feet moves. Clearly the councillors put a lot of effort into it), playing their station games and basically breaking in the new campus. Heh, I hope I didn't annoy them too much with my unwanted and unannounced appearances.

O Night was really a great party, though. This year's OGs really got down to the costume dressing up thing. I spotted Karl as an angel, and Jes's OG was dressing like babies =P One thing you don't want to hear under any circumstances..."I thought it was a joke". I particularly liked this green dragon made out of one long stretch of green cloth that everyone could wear at the same time. Heh, and from the specimens that made it to the stage, Chern thinks that the J1 girls are generally more attractive than the ones from our batch. Hmm...I can't really say, of course. But I have to admit that they're a lot more sporting and a great deal braver with their sexuality...heh, these are people who know that they look good =P It does look like it's going to be fun interacting with these new people.

Ah well...it was fun crashing the whole Orientation. Storyline was actually quite good, and it's good to immerse oneself in the spirit of the moment, when everyone's swaying to and fro during their batch song, or dancing their batch dance, and the councillors letting everyone dance the Raindance and the Sundance. Ther was a particularly nice moment when they were singing their batch song, and then they started throwing lightsticks around, and these streaks of light arced all across the hall, making quite a spectacular spontaneous show of happiness. And when you get 1200 J1s to do something together, you have real energy going. O Night may be the only time when something close to the elusive "Rafflesian Spirit" manifests itself.

But of course, there were moments of awkwardness, because it is clear that we are only crashing, and that this Orientation was not ours. But all the same, it was good to touch base again, to feel the electrically charged atmosphere of the O Night party, to hear the songs, and to see that some traditions, some idiosyncracies, and some practices survived the change of campus. I guess J1s will be J1s. And I have to congratulate all the councillors for a job well done for this Orientation, and especially for a splendid O Night. Heh, it seems that the tradition does carry on.

* * * * *

It really is a great pleasure to go to Bras Basah with classmates to bookhunt. With our long break on Fridays between the end of lessons and the start of S papers, we went all the way downtown, and had quite a nice haul of books to show for it. I was looking for S Lit texts, but the main source of budget fiction down there was closed for the afternoon, so I came back empty handed. But it was really fun to be with people who love books, and who would go through all that effort to look for them, and take pleasure in finding them. We must do this again.

* * * * *

I'm working on a new drama script. After seeing the VJ TSD Public Performance yesterday, and all their pro facilities (studio, black box) and pro talent, I was hit by an idea to write a play about directing. Hmm...but yesterday's performance wasn't as good as last year's, perhaps because this was a collection of promo exam pieces. Hehheh, Conan and Carol were doing R&J's balcony scene...it was spooky hearing all the R&J quotes coming back to me even after all this time. And I'm glad that RP people did come down...they need to realise that they can't claim to be in the same league as the TSD people.

Anyway...I digress. So after realising that it's quite hard to write a play within a play, I hit on the idea of writing a play about memory. So basically what I have now is this guy who unconsciously starts to forget everything that he's experienced, so he's day by day regressing into childhood. At first everyone thinks he's fooling, then they get spooked out because his condition gets more and more serious. And beyond that, I haven't worked it out yet, since I'm still only at the third scene. But no, this isn't for RJ Dramafeste, which traditionally only accepts comedies, or at least comedies are best received.

But then I had more ideas splintering off...one is about a guy who remembers the future...so he's convinced he's done things that haven't happened yet. And then there's this guy who can only remember through associations, so it's like the regression thing, except that the time period he regresses to changes as he remembers certain periods due to certain stimuli. And of course, all these plays will be to examine how people will react to this kind of thing. Although I haven't really worked that out either...

* * * * *

And so, this is the one-month anniversary of returning to Singapore. Hmm...I miss them all, but it's just a comforting presence at the back of my mind, and occasional flashes of memory. It's not annoying at all...in a way I think I feel secure with this memory load, and if it went missing then I would really be disturbed. Everything's where it's meant to be, I guess. But I've finished uploading a major update to the phoenican network, with photos from the Singapore phases of Frexprog Two and Texprog, and more poems, wallpapers and a story, and a new cataloguing format for paleblack. So if you have time, guys, feel free to take a peek!

pondered by phoenican @ 9.1.05