Snap I've always known that, with the miscellaneous activities I've immersed myself in, sooner or later, I'll snap. Apparently, without realizing it, I may already have. Or, perhaps more accurately, maybe this snapping process isn't as instantaneous after all, and I've been continually "snapping" in slow-mo for a long time now.
Don't get me wrong, I'm loving what I'm doing. I'm mighty proud of KR Choir and NUS Choir, which I am both happy to be part of. It's my decision to take 6 modules this semester, and that ambitious double-minor (in Business and English Studies) masterplan was of course my own doing. I guess I have nobody else to blame for not keeping up with my lectures and tutorials, and I am fully accountable for picking up what I missed this midterm break. And of course, there are the little "messes" here and there, starting off with the current state of my room, which I suspect is beginning to affect me subconsciously, or at least, maybe hindering me from whatever relaxation I'm supposed to achieve (frankly I've forgotten how it is to relax.. makes me wanna go home and sleep all day). And I dunno, I think the monsters in my head just won't hush themselves up, and so it's been a pain trying to bear with them.
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It was Amplitude last night, by the way. It's this showcase of hall choirs and a cappella groups in NUS. I performed with Kent Ridge Choir, and later, with NUS Choir (although technically Amplitude was for halls of residences, it's been some tradition to let NUS Choir sing as well). I thought we did fairly well, and I'd like to think I enjoyed myself. What I did enjoy too, is the company. I've always been vocal how I love the NUS Choir folks, but yep, same goes with the KR choirmates. I tend to be closer to NUS Choir, I guess, but maybe only because I spend more hours there (>6 hours a week) and we've had a number of scarier trials on a larger scale we've had to face together. But I love my KR choir too of course.
Much as I want to comment about how we sang in both choirs, I guess I'd just keep it to myself as I don't really know how we sounded. The UCC Theatre environment sucked the sound from us as we were singing (btw, we couldn't see the audience too), so I don't really know. Bottom line is I enjoyed myself with both choirs, and I am tremendously pleased and thankful to those who came down to support me (OK, even if you didn't really come to support
me, thanks for coming down to watch. Special thanks to the Pinoy community of course.
I saw my old friend Zhou Yang after the show too, and yep, I'm reminded of all the many old friends I've always appreciated, even if it sucks that we don't get to have much contact of late. I treasure my friends, even if it doesn't show sometimes.
After the show, the KR Choir and Aca groups sang our KR Goodnight song loudly in the lobby. That was some 40 people crowding the UCC lobby man. Sometimes I'm mighty proud to be in KR, and I'm gonna miss it when I eventually leave.
I went off with the NUS Choir bunch for supper, and since Fong Seng was presumably full, and when we dropped by this pub called Blooie's there wasn't any more food but only drinks, we decided to go to Holland Village. It was me, Iris, Huai Zhi, Kurien, Aaron, Visayon, Hui Yin, Adyll, this new girl Mianzi. KK and Michelle went back to Raffles and Winnie went off for home earlier, as well as ex-NUS Choir basso Weizheng. I'm beginning to appreciate suppers more now actually, and the food at the Holland V hawker center is yummy yummy, I like. The company was even better. Arrived back at KR around 2:30AM and I just sank into the bed.
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Monday, 20th February was an interesting day. "Interesting" is by far the safest
smart word I know ("nice" and "good" are safe words too, but putting them in your English essay won't do you any good).
Mugged at the Central Forum from late morning till afternoon with so little progress it's virtually negligible (cause for self-annoyance and mild self-bashing), adn went for voice class and later choir practice. Choir practice was heavy today, as we were split into 3 small choirs and the section leaders or SLs and the student conductors gave their critique. Interesting, I must say. Nelson also came down and we fixed Missa Brevis, and sang through the Beatles medley (I love it.. feel-good).
In any case, I dunno what got into me later on and I was feeling tired and stressed and semi-pissed for whatever reason (partly due to those people who did not turn up last week and thus did not get their Beatles scores, and were now pouncing on me asking for their copies, when in fact I had told them to SMS me or gimme a private message me on the choir forum or email me if they lack any score, because it's crazy to bring all the scores around all the time).
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So when, during announcement time and big boss KK was done with a good chunk of announcements and I raised my hand to speak, and speak I did, I guess I suddenly snapped. The stimulus was something that even Kirsten and the other Filipino exchange girls last sem told me. People always laugh when I begin to talk. There's this running joke about me and how my r's are defined and sounded, as when I spoke to the choir during the first few rehearsals about "four scores". See in Singapore, they don't pronounce the r's much, so a car is /kah/ and scores is /skos/ and seniors is /seenyas/, something like that. The four-scores thingy has been going around tickling everyone for quite some time, coupled with the fact that I speak at lightning speed. Treasurer Li Yi jokingly mentioned sometime in front of the choir that I should speak more slowly because only 70% of what I say can be understood (or was it 70%
cannot be understood?), and at that time even I found it amusing and funny.
But today, what with the stress and all, I absolutely nothing funny at my mere mention of "Can I say something?" While I would usually smile or put a dumb look and just let it pass, today I just held silent till they wiped off those smirks. Respect, people, respect. It just hit me that they've alwasy been laughing at me, and for some reason, they don't take me seriously. Now this is not gonna be a weepy second to the last paragraph, but I love these guys so much and I take extra effort to fix up their scores well and make sure they're nicely stapled and that everyone gets good copies, and this is how I'm treated. I was walking with Huai Zhi on the way back to hall, and he said it's okay, it's quite cute actually, and they didn't mean to laugh
laugh at me. KK also told me through SMS that in his opinion, it may not be a matter of respect, but it's just some quirk I have that makes me funny and endearing I guess. I dunno, I'm just tired of being constantly associated with an unintentional joke.
But I'm okay now, as predicted (then again, "okay" is another very safe word so yeah..). There are still many things troubling my heart (ooh that sounded so drippingly sappy), but I guess I'll just wake up later on and hope I can well, just focus and accomplish the more important things to do, like study Calculus and Actuarial Stats and Accounting and Regression Analysis. Sometimes I think a personality change is in order, but nah, that would just flush away my real personality I guess. (OK, the preceding sentence seems a bit random but what the heck)
My life's a mess, but like everyone else, I keep on moving on anyway.
And oh yeah, I miss home, and everything and everyone associated with it.
