pseudo-graduation

Triple A is overhyped. The guys in our gang bought their suits long ago, but I left the shopping to the last minute possible (got my outfit on the afternoon of the event which I highly discourage to avoid repeating my stressful shopping experience) because I couldn't decide whether I should go for the imaginary Best Dressed Female or Best Dressed Male Award.

The first hour of the event was probably the most fun. This was when our friends started appearing one by one looking super dapper. Afterwards though it was just sitting on the round table in unsurprising boredom waiting for the food to arrive, watching Karu draw a pig on his plate with soy sauce. After a while the other guests got pretty bored as well and started leaving the tables to take lots and lots and LOTS of pictures.



The highlight must have been the dance party right after the last performance of the night. The DJs started playing rave music and the lights came on and the guests rushed to the front of the hall to dance. Our gang pushed forward and jumped around with everyone else for a bit, then I dared Ian to lead the dance party to the stage. We both ran onstage followed by our gang, caught up in the loud music and in-the-moment craze. I turned around, and saw the crowd rushing onstage. That felt pretty awesome.

More photos on Flickr

after class

They don't understand
we don't choose to be wicked.

christmas is a feeling

Today my friends and I wanted to take a Christmas family photo in front of the new Christmas decorations in the Pyramid. We were all dressed up in Christmas colours for this. So imagine our sadness when the teacher announced that he will be continuing the lesson well into our breaktime. But whether we had time or not, CHRISTMAS MUST GO ON. Even if it meant skipping our usual weekly mid-morning breakfast at McDonald's.

Stuff A-Levels Students Say (and do)

In the past month I have been involved with the making of a parody video of the perceived lives of A-Levels students in the school. There was initially a written script that was about a page long, but on days of video shooting the presence of the cast members was completely unpredictable, and we couldn't follow the script word-for-word. We had no choice but to improvise, meaning we would scrape off the script entirely, and make up a script on the spot depending on the number of the members of the cast who would show up. Even so, video shooting took up to three weeks. Sometimes we couldn't get enough people to fill up the frame, and we had to pull in random familiar strangers from the sidewalks who would eventually become friends, and I think this must have been the nicest part of the entire video making process. Some of the people in the video didn't know they were going to be in a video until ten minutes before the camera started rolling. And when we got desperate, there were always my dear classmates to fall back onto (which is why the video features so many scenes of them).

Video shooting days are completely uncertain: we've learned to not expect anything. It's terribly unsystematic but I go into every video shoot only knowing vaguely what will happen, which is generally me directing and Michelle recording the audio. We go into video shoots without a script or any idea of who will turn up but somehow there is always the assurance that we will have some kind of footage when it is over. A typical day of video shooting would be me and Michelle arriving early on the proposed venue of meeting, wondering if anyone will ever arrive, and while we do that, we think of potential scenes that we can shoot. When the cast (or half of it) starts to arrive, we have a brief conversation about what is expected from their scene, then it's me shooting and Michelle recording the audio, and repeating until a decent footage is captured. Most of the lines used in the final video were actual lines said by my classmates or things I hear from Janice from her stories of her classmates. Some lines though were inspired by the cast themselves. It is especially a good video shooting day when the cast have their own ideas and are excited to act them out, so essentially the video is made of everyone's ideas, and me and Michelle are just there to collect them.

Today though was the premiere: a video premiere being nothing fancier than the video being uploaded onto YouTube in the morning right before a pure mathematics test, and then spamming FaceBook groups with links to the video. During breaks I walked casually into the class next door and screened it onto the projector, shutting off the lights as I left the room as smoothly as I had come in intrusively. Michelle and I (okay, and Ian and Austin and Taliza and Euzarif) would look into the glass panes into the classrooms to watch their reactions to the video. And it was sweet beautiful amazing when they laughed collectively at the funnier/ more relatable scenes, such a beautiful sound it was, their laughter at something we had made. The entire five minutes I watched not the video but the crowd, relishing every time they found humour and relishing the entire while that they kept their eyes on the video. I repeated this four times in four different classes and clearly classes whose inhabitants were acting in the video enjoyed it more, and it doesn't matter how many people enjoyed it, rather it was amazing enough that someone laughed at it. It got emotional when I played the video in the first and third classes and because the classes had see-through panes, people passing through that corridor actually stopped and peeped inside to see what the hell was going on, and found themselves enjoying the video as well. And then people who had already watched the video the first time, nevertheless still stopped to peep as well, to watch it again.

It just feels amazing to have made something, and to see it so well-received.

The Shuffling Unicorns

Is there anyone out there??

Because I need your help.

I've been involved in this cancer awareness campaign project (CARIF- Be Frank) for so long that it feels like it has become a part of my curriculum. Our planning and fooling around and hard work for two months have finally reached its climax: The popularity contest on FaceBook.

It's funny that our first meeting in September was like me and KF fighting over whether or not I hated him for one brief moment when he rejected my membership in the bro club way back in July. Subsequently we had many, many other meetings which were more like hangouts and watching YouTube videos on the projector than actual brainstorming. Despite which we managed to come up with three posters and a video (the idea of which came in two days before the official deadline, and we decided to risk it and scrape everything we had done before to start anew, and luckily the deadline got postponed by a week afterwards).

Vote for them posters please?  [link goes to FaceBook]

Vote for the video that Taliza and I stayed in school until 10pm to edit? [Link goes to FaceBook]

We're on a honeymoon

It's taken me so long to get to this point, but I've finally reached the honeymoon phase of being in a new class. I'm feeling comfortable with all these now familiar people; I can even safely say that I'm very fond of them. We see each other every day, but the newness of the friendship keeps things interesting and fresh. They invert the workings of a traditional week: I now have a 5-day weekend and a dreaded 2-day weekday; the dreaded weekdays being Saturday and Sunday of course, which are so mind-numbingly dull in comparison.

We've also developed a penchant for swag shots, taking inspiration from Converse advertisements. Or maybe it's just me.

a friday-like monday

We were five: Taliza carrying the tripod extended to its full length, a DSLR slung around my neck, Austin in his creepy-ass white phantom mask and hoodie zipped way up in the afternoon heat of 5pm, Ken Fui in a red splattered T-shirt and drenched in sweat, and Ian in matching shorts and slippers carrying an eco-bag like he was about to help his grandmother with grocery shopping in the wet market. We were shooting for a breast cancer project, shooting everywhere in the public: scenes of Ken Fui running like a maniac as Austin chases him while hitting him limply with one gloved hand. I thought it was funny enough standing behind the camera but when I looked at Ian's behind-the-scenes I believed we had reached a new level of absurdity.

 

   

a twitching eyelid and insatiable hunger

This whole week felt like an extended chill-out session spent with good company, with abundant free periods and snacking in our bunker classrooms, messing around with the projector to project Youtube videos onto the screen, loud music in the small room like our own private lounge, with intermittent lessons to remind us that we're still in school.

I feel like I'm not going to do much besides this: take the morning bus to school, go to class and have my daily dose of laughter, anticipating innuendos becoming second nature already. It's so easy to be content with all this mindless fun, no expectations and no pressure. I'm in a good place, but I'm getting too comfortable, I'm slipping into a routine, and I'm sure that is not a good thing. But for now I don't want to resist it; I want to think that I deserve to be here. For now I want to think that it's all right to stay for a while.

Vagrant

Today is one of those rare days when I feel a bit sad and reckless and need to do something impulsive to kill the negativity before it sinks into my system. Which is why I am glad now that the worst I did was midnight swimming and chilling out in the college's main entrance by lounging across two benches.

It was too bad that the news came during the walk to catch the 1D movie in 3D (which I have been looking forward to due to the lack of access to Tumblr for my daily dose of 1D). The news, in one swift and clean blow, tore down all the foundations we've laid over the past week for the founding of a Photography Club in our school. The news, in one easy and solid sentence, wiped our entire pro-tem committee members for the writing of the constitution irrelevant and jobless. The news, in one conversation over the phone, made me not want to go back to my hostel (despite it being a really long day with an intense Economic lesson and a class test for Chemistry) and face myself and consequently what I've failed to do (again).

And so that explains how during the One Direction movie I was screaming like the quintessential fangirl but I was doing it more for getting rid of the toxic building up in my mind rather than getting excited over the appearance of Louis Tomlinson. And how after that I followed Austin, Michelle and Zitian to Nando's and during that time I managed to procure two free tickets to the ensemble performance tonight held in our university hall. I was not interested in classical music at the moment, but I took the tickets anyway and walked back to college thinking I could sell them then at least my day would have been productive. When I got to college though I changed my mind because I really didn't want to go back to the hostel yet. I might as well go to the concert. Then it occurred to me that I have no one to share the second ticket with so I called Huimin and invited her over. She said OK. While waiting for her I lay down on the bench. For the first time in a very long time I felt a sense of calmness and tranquility that comes with you being totally comfortable with being thoughtfully alone with yourself in a very public area.

About 50 minutes later Huimin arrived and she said I looked like a vagrant. And I think that that reflects what I was feeling at the time that I looked like a vagrant: I felt like a wanderer, an observer, momentarily disconnected. I was in my own bubble, not thinking about my course of life and my relative uselessness to society, but rather, simply existed as a product of thoughts of the present. I was also thinking that I could extrapolate this experience and spend one night in the college just for the heck of it.

Anwyay me and Huimin went to the Mozart on Silk Road concert at the University Hall. We had balcony seats which were more private than the formal seats directly in front of the performers. And then Huimin said this was the most civilized thing I have done: attending a classical music performance and I agree with her. It was pretty much the epitome of civilization; being able to verbally appreciate the fineness of art in the presence of so many socialites. And it would have been civilized if we had quietly listened to the passages but of course not, yours truly has never been a civilized person. We were more akin to your typical teenage assholes who made stupid commentary and talked about how one of the performers look like he is wearing a helmet on stage and how one of the pieces sound like we were riding sheep into the sunset.

But we stayed the whole way through and when it ended we walked back to the hostel because I couldn't delay doing laundry any longer. While waiting for laundry I went swimming at near midnight and it was an exhilarating experience. I had Janice texting on her phone and Huimin trying to sing in the soprano range to the same songs over and over again by the pool. I was alone in the whole swimming pool under the dark sky and I felt free. Until I stepped on something in the pool that suspiciously felt like a tangle of human hair. I got so disgusted that my mood was killed.

I might have been running the entire day, but eventually we had to come back to the hostel after laundry. In my room where I am now there are no more distractions and I am faced with myself and my failure but fortunately I am so exhausted I cannot do much thinking.

Objectifying the Other Gender

Yesterday I did one of the more bizarre things you can do in college. I had always wished I were a guy so I could do an upper back photoshoot for myself (among other reasons) but wishes don't work that way so I projected this wish on the guys in my class instead. Surprisingly they were cool with it, and even brought their assigned props on Friday for the photo session, and that made me very nervous because:

1. This is my first time shooting guys
2. THEY ARE SO SUPPORTIVE I FEEL EVEN MORE PRESSURED TO PRODUCE GOOD PICTURES
3. I wasn't sure if the low-key look I was going for would work in a small crammed classroom
4. My flimsy homemade foam-and-aluminium-foil reflector was going to fall apart anytime soon (should have gone for the RM5 car sunshield instead)

But anyway if you suck at photography you have to make up for it with your editing skills and luckily I've got the Internet to help me through and I got some decent pictures thanks to that:



I'm planning to have another session with the other guys who couldn't make it this time so I will be posting the whole series then. I was working with very limited equipment: a tripod, a speedlite, a wireless trigger and the stupid reflector so I was really glad when half the class turned up to watch the photo session like it was a performance art show. They were my light stands and my reflector holders and also musicians to lighten up the atmosphere in the room and make the models less nervous about being topless in such an unfamiliar setting.

I was thinking that we really need a photography studio in our college, precisely because you don't want to be going into a classroom for some study time only to find a topless photoshoot going on.

Bojio Friday

There is this bojio trend going on in my class, 'bojio' in Hokkien meaning 'I wasn't invited!' in a half protesting half joking kind of way but it sounds a lot cooler in its original language. And I feel like this trend is going stale now but every few sentences or so I hear people going "bojio!"

Go to the toilet bojio!
Stand together bojio!
Do homework bojio!
Sleep in class bojio!
Take selfie bojio!

It kinda feels like my classmates have lost their ability to do anything if they're not invited to do it. So to avoid being a victim of the bojio accusation every single one of our classmates was invited to go on a burger lunch trip during lunch break. There were four cars and there were 22 of us which equals about a squeeze of about six people in each car (all Myvi's coincidentally). And then we drove to Crayon Burger in SS15 and filled up the burger shop so much so we even got fries on the house.



(Thoughts on the burger: MARSHALLS IN PENANG WAS WAY SUPERIOR IN TERMS OF PRICE AND YUMMINESS OK but company more than made up for it)




(The hermaphroditic stickpeople were not our creation but bojio is)