Sabbaticals
Ok lemme get this over and done with. Sabbaticals. Blogging has almost become a chore. I need to force myself to start writing a post. Of course once I start it's all good. But it's the starting that's hard.
Sabbaticals at the college side are a little different from the high school side's. It's not a five day course. Instead we got to choose two different courses, each lasting for two days. There's a catch of course. One has to be from cat A and another from cat B. Loosely put courses from cat A are the sports, while those from cat B are, erm, arts? In between the two courses we all have to go back to school for some talks. Oh, and if it wasn't obvious enough, most of these courses weren't held in school. How'd you windsurf in school for example?
Anyway I chose unicycling and lomo art (lomography- some form of photography). I wanted to go for this chem thingy at first, but then I gave it a second thought and decided to go for something that would be more fun. We don't need any ACE points anyway, unlike last year. haha.
Unicycling- I persuaded quite a lot of classmates to join me. Don't regret it one bit. Fun. And really gruelling. Who would've thought unicycling would be that tiring? It was mostly the gripping onto the sides of the basketball court that was physically gruelling, not to mention the hot sun. Not that I minded the sun. I got back a bit of the tan I lost since I quit softball. We needed to support ourselves using something else (holding on to something or someone) practically the whole time for the first day, but things started to pick up on the second day. One of us - ruihong- managed to master unicycling at the end of the two days! Sort of master anyway. Cos he still had to flail his hands around to maintain balance. The instructors could ride their unicycles without much effort. Still, fun fun fun! Unicycling's fun! I loved the temporary adrenaline rushes when I managed to cycle for short moments. I still haven't mastered it though, and probably never will. Or... hm, should I take up the instructor's offer and sign up at forgot-which poly? It does seem like a bit of waste to practice so hard, only to stop. Oh well. Maybe after promos. I only hope I don't have to start at square one again.
Wednesday- Talks? Lol I didn't go. Cos of SYF recording! At the request of Iskandar Ismail, us J1s of rioHC went down to record 4 songs. We weren't really that prepared, even though we got the scores about a month or two ago. Too many things going on I guess. So in the end we only managed to get two songs done. Gonna do the other two (and an additional two that were 'given' to us last minute) this saturday, with the help of some alumni. But the recording last wednesday was quite interesting. The room was almost entirely wooden. Acoustic properties? I dunno... maybe. First time in a recording room for me. They did do repeated recordings of certain parts, but it wasn't as tedious as Miss Lim described. For me at least. Maybe I just didn't expect much in the first place. But it was tiring.
Lomo Art- I called calvin (classmate who also signed up for Lomo) late wednesday to ask about Lomo Art, cos the briefing was done after the talks. And guess what. Lomo was CANCELLED. Wth. I couldn't believe it. I was so looking forward to having a slack but fun time after the tiring unicycling and recording. And then Lomo got cancelled. Aargh. So apparently we had to choose from the three courses that weren't full yet. Chinese Painting, Western Oils or Batik Painting. Hm. Calvin put us three (plus lien, another classmate who met with the same stupid fate) in batik painting. When I first heard him say it over the phone, I was in disbelief. Then shock. Then rejection. Then, finally, reluctant acceptance of cruel fate. Aargh. Batik Painting. I was quite sure I wasn't gonna enjoy it. Batik, for goodness' sake?! So stupid.
I actually woke up late on Thursday. I wasn't planning to- however rebellious I felt, I still wasn't gonna be late or skip school la... I just woke up as usual at 6 to get my brother up (he still had normal lessons), then I reset the alarm for 8, cos the course started at 9. And I ended up waking at 9 plus. Hm... I guess the alarm didn't ring. Incidentally, just the day before, I almost ended up late. Woke up at 7 when was supposed to reach school by 7.20+. I had to rush, and skipped breakfast (or brought two lousy pieces of bread which I later threw away for a real sandwich at fishtank actually) for the first time in ages. That time I didn't mean to sleep in for a bit after waking my bro up. I just wanted him to go use the toilet to wash up first before me for a change, cos usually I was the one who got up and changed first. And then on Friday I was almost late again. I tried resetting the alarm for 8am again when I got my bro up at 6, but in the end I woke up at around 8.30. Hm... luckily I live near school.
So anyway, batik. Like I said, I was late the first day ( and just a few minutes late the second). Got there almost an hour late. I think I missed the introduction part. Didn't really care for that. I went in the classroom (batik held in school. so was unicycling) without an open mind. I was planning to just slack around. But I didn't get the chance. The rest were already working on their "pieces". Pieces of cloth. They were making patterns with wax, using some strange instrument (called a , erm "cantik". not sure how it's spelled) to pour molten wax onto the cloth. The whole point was to make sure the wax seeped into the cloth and stay there, so the wax had to be poured back into a heating pot and replaced with a new batch ever-so often. Tedious stuff. So we were making our design on the cloth. I didn't have any inspiration. And I also didn't have to motivation. So I just hastily copied some patterns off the whiteboard. It was quite messy on the whole. Ok, so what we had to do after that was to soak it in water, and crush and squeeze the cloth (to 'crack' the wax and make for interesting "effects") before dyeing. Someone said orange, and another said purple. And we could only choose two colours for the whole class. Oh well. Girls obviously. I went with orange. The purple turned out nicer, but so many people put theirs in purple it ended up blotchy on some.
Besides that whole-tone dyeing piece we had two others. Both were coloured ones. Meaning after we made out a drawing (one was a tracing of a pre-drawn sketch, the other of a self-drawn sketch) with wax we had to colour the spaces in between. Hence the wax, cos it acted as a barrier between each space, so the colours wouldn't mix. Of course we could 'blend' colours to get interesting effects. Oh, and my "own drawing" wasn't so much an "own drawing" as it was a instructor drawn representation of my real own drawing. haha.
I'll post some pics (including my own sketch and the instructor's) up once get hold of them. (Lol I just realised everytime I say I'll post some pics up soon, I end up never posting them)
Oh, and if it still doesn't seem so after all that I typed, batik turned out fine. Not too bad. Even going in without and open mind, I actually ended up having fun! The painting! Painting's always fun. haha. Not drawing though.
Well so that was about it for the last week of school. It's the HOLIDAYS NOW! Yay.
hyperxi's life @
5/31/2006 09:09:00 pm
Hello there.
Aha... the blogger post page. Haven't come here in a while. What started as "wait-for-something-special-then-blog" became "hm-I-don't-feel-like-blogging" then "huh-I've-got-a-blog?"
So much for my special 200th post. Oh well. This is my 200th post! Yay.
Haven't blogged in almost a month. I suppose this will sort of become my first (and hopefully last) 'dark age' of blogging. Should I recount all that's happened? Nah. Can't remember much already anyway. Brief highlights then.
School. Just when I thought I was improving (83% for a chem test!), I failed my latest chem test, and barely passed my econs. I wasn't really that surprised actually, what with everything going on. The high school sabbaticals we (some choir J1s) were conducting, preparations for concert and syf recording sure took up a lot of time. I didn't make use of what time I had in between to study though. I slacked. So I failed. No excuses and procrastination anymore. I will work for the block tests.
Aspiration: Voices in Flight. What a day. It was really a new experience standing on stage with everyone and performing with Miss Lim conducting in front of us. First time on the stage of VCH for me (not counting nyps choir syf). It definitely wasn't a perfect performance, but that didn't matter. rioHC singing together. That does. Actually, to tell the truth, I didn't feel that the concert was all that grand. And as unbelievable as this sounds, I don't have much of a sense of achievement. Why? I dunno. After every "big thing", I never really felt relief. Someone said I'm numb. Hm... Am I?
What a month, May was (and still is). I'll blog about this week's sabbaticals and syf recording another day.
I got myself into a dilemma. Am I waiting for nothing?
hyperxi's life @
5/25/2006 08:17:00 pm
