dance dance

This week has been a Dance Week.

2 sets of auditions this week. @____@ Eusoff Dance Corps and NUS Dance Blast! auditions. this is kinda how the week went:

Monday.

Blast Open Class: Adv. Beginner.

i love Karen's style, so gangsta and LA Hip Hop-ish. i had a lot of fun doing this choreo.

Tuesday.

Blast Open Class x 2

Eusoff Dance Corps Auditions.

Open class was really fun but sorta tiring too. first one was taught by Claudine whose style i also really like! the choreo was really fast too, since it was to Just Dance ala Lady Gaga. but weiting and i both agreed that being able to catch the steps to the music gives us a Really Awesome Sense Of Satisfaction. and also, an involuntary adrenaline RUSH.

Karen's girls' hiphop class was a lot easier to catch, and just as fun. :D but with all the head flicking, i foresaw myself as unable to move my head properly for the next few days. :/

Eusoff Dance Corps audition Day 2 also took place this tuesday night.

weijie and i were persuaded to come on Tuesday night because there were supposedly ALOTALOTALOT of people auditioning on Monday night. in Eusoff's very nice but also rather small studio. in order to avoid the crowd, we were urged to go on Tuesday instead.

so we did.

but there were still alot. alot. A LOT of people. x___x

omg i totally got hit by someone's butt 2-3 times. (and she didn't even turn around to see if my traumatized face was alright T____T)

the last part of the contemp choreo involved a roll to the floor. people like me and weijie totally didn't have space to even get our butts on the floor, so we just stood there and watched everyone else roll and bump into about 4 people around them.

thank God this was only the practice round.

the auditions went fine. especially liked doing the hiphop choreo. because there were 2 and a half eighths of freestyle, and it was GROOVE FREESTYLE. YIPEEE i just went full out.

apparently wj also went full out with his popping (cuz everyone was urging him to) and totally intimidated the other 2 girls with us. oops.

on a side note, auditions ended around 12 midnight. @_____@

Wednesday.

Dance Blast! Auditions.

yes the bigbig day i had been worried about for months finally came.

i just really want to thank God for our good timing. because Debbie and Sali came a little later than 12noon, we registered for the last group, group E for the first time slot of auditions.

this meant we had more time to practise the moves than the other groups. :)

no doubt the judges would definitely take this point into consideration when judging our dancing, but i'd rather they do that than us having much less time to put up a substandard performance. :[

Claudine taught the choreo pretty fast. so the extra time with a senior called Kelvin was really very important for us to clarify moves and timing. i was nervous, but when i entered the studio, Patrick (the instructor) was surprisingly friendly.

he totally had a chat with us about joining the committee. which threw me off guard.

all i want is just to get into Blast! x(

haha he also told us we need to undergo very intensive and rigorous training. which i will, no doubt, grow to dislike muchly, but am willing to undergo if it'll help me improve.

so that's the end of auditions. they went ok for me, not fantastically well, but i think i did my best. really praying that my best will be good enough for Pat. :/

Other Things to note for the week.

I got into Eusoff Drama what the poo. xD

I made it into Dance Corps.

I bought colourful rainbow AA shoelaces. HURRAY.

I need to go shopping soon. Next week sounds great.

here's a list of what i need to get:

=new high tops

=new baggy cloth hiphop pants

=new shirts for dance

=colourful caps

=3 quarters

=pencil case

oh well. i shall have to wait patiently for Blast! results to be out. hopefully i don't die of anxiety before then. :x

*needs to choreograph a K Pop routine by this week omg*

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Japanese Studies Lecture : Random Trivia

there was a point in time when evangelists came to Japan to spread Christianity to Japanese folk. this was when the Western nations began to interact more with Japan, under the approval of a political leader Oda Nobunaga who saw Buddhism as antagonistic to his rule.

as a result, many Japanese converted and became Christians.

however, after other dominant powers took over Nobunaga's reign/rule, they began to slowly wipe out Christians in Japan. thousands, even those who went into hiding, were rooted out and eexcuted. a later ruler even forced Christians to become apostates by torturing them.

those who refused to apostatize concealed their faith and became "hidden Christians".

...this little bit of information made me feel...sad. :(

the only part of Japanese Studies lecture that i could actually feel that i could relate to.

----------------------

Random News Article : Muslims banned from Black Eyed Peas concert in Malaysia

...because the concert is organised by Guiness, an Irish beer giant.

what drew my attention to this article wasn't the fact that Muslims were banned, because that's an understandable point.

what DID draw my attention to this piece of news was that under normal circumstances, the government would have banned concerts organised by beer companies to even be held in Malaysia.

yet, they made an exception this time, in an attempt to boost tourism in their country.

(something i've never really seen happen before)

shows how important tourists are to the economy, eh? ;)

to start anew?

new blog layout! it's still orange though. :D the old one's pictures disappeared from photobucket so i had to stop using it. i'm sorry ichigo :C

(complaint warning)

i do not, for the life of me, know how to change my blog layout using my mac. i had to use another PC in my house (thank goodness i'm at home during the weekend, or i'd have to live with the ugly pixelated "the picture you are looking for is no longer available on photobucket" crap till the next time a Windows is available to me) to open the layout in notepad. my mac kept opening it as an image document, even in text edit. :/ yes TEXT edit opened my layout in an image-like form and allowed me to change the text on that page ONLY.

times like these always make me wonder whether my mac has parallel. and if it does, how do i activate it and go back to Windows? also, whilst it is running Windows in parallel, does that make it susceptible to viruses? or does it being a mac make it completely immune, even when Windows is running on it? so many questions, NO ANSWERS.

this coming week is a week full of auditions and dance for me. hence my mixed feelings. nervousness + excitement, tension + anticipation.

MONDAY

open classes

TUESDAY

Eusoff committee interviews

Eusoff dance auditions (changed it lol, after being persuaded by wj)

WEDNESDAY

Blast! auditions omgggg D:

a fun week ahead. not to mention this week marks the start of tutorials for all of us. whoopee.

another point i'd like to share with everyone:

i really don't like how 10% of my Japanese Studies grade is dependent on IVLE Forum participation.

"You will be graded for your quality AND quantity of posts."

i.e. 5 sentences -- 5 paragraphs. @____@

i cannot stand reading chunks of poorly paragraphed long-winded maybe even copied/paraphrased text on ancient Japanese history. so ancient that it's before the Samurai period.

YES IT'S THAT ANCIENT.

we have had ONE lecture, and already the JS forums are nearly flooded. Singaporeans ah. *shakes head*

i realised i'm becoming more critical and cynical in my blog posts MWAHA i should tone down a little before i become guilty of SLANDER. :O

heh also, Nick Oh's facebook status caught my eye the other day. xD a few of his friends, including me commented on it. here's how it goes:

Nicholas Oh clubbers dance like they're possessed lol.

and here are (most of) the comments:

Nicole Tay: i totally agree.
Nicholas Oh: and it's actually pretty SCARY haha.
Vincent Khoonz: Clubbers club like they want to lose their hearing
Nicholas Oh: yeah! and the woofers can alter heart rhythms LOL.
Vincent Khoonz: I won't be tempted to go back anytime soon.

Ng Yijing: LOL that guy who was like jerking all the time?

Nicholas Oh: well all of them. they throw their heads back and forth like their c-spine's broken while they do half squats lol

XD

made me laugh and also smile to know that HEY THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE WHO THINK LIKE ME. XD

"I won't be tempted to go back anytime soon."

Quick to judge.

any recurring thoughts that do not find their way to someone's ears somehow find their way to this blog.

one of my favourite photographers and cosplayers on deviantArt posted this description on his deviation recently, which i feel i can relate to a lot, especially at this point in time.

"So easily do people hastily pass judgment to those whom they don't understand, often to the ones they perceive as threats. They force their false assumptions onto the other person without bothering to find out what they're truly like, and fail to consider how much that person may actually be hurting."

-behindinfinity on deviantArt/Jin

though i doubt anyone i know actually sees me as a threat, the rest of this quote makes a lot of sense about how people pass judgements quickly, insensitively, and unfeelingly on people they don't really understand, but THINK they understand.

people like to think that they're smart, even if they're not. i don't think this is entirely terrible or "bad" in itself.

but what i do think is that sometimes people should stop for awhile and think, "would this person really be ok with me assuming him/her to be this way? do i really know this person well enough to be sure that he/she is truly this way?"

...or am i just being too quick to judge him/her?

i admit, in such scenarios, i am not always the victim. sometimes, i am hasty to judge people as well. we all are, at some point of time in our lives.

the key is in realising what judgmental bastards we can be at times, and making an effort to correct it.

no point if your realisation isn't accompanied by action, is there?

"So easily do people hastily pass judgment to those whom they don't understand..."

you don't even know me that well.

"They force their false assumptions onto the other person..."

so stop trying so hard to act like you do.

"without bothering to find out what they're truly like, ..."

i'll give you time, i'll give you many many chances, i definitely will.

"...and fail to consider how much that person may actually be hurting."

but can i suggest that you spare a thought for how i feel, every once in awhile?

...or is that too much to ask of you people?

i miss having conversations about Nothing.

and i miss having people around who are truly interested in what i want/have to say.

i'm not that hard to understand, i'm not that complex. i'm actually pretty simple in my own way. :)

it's not hard to get to know me, or to understand me.

i'll just give it a little bit more time. and a LOAD more patience.

HAP Clubbing

i am finally in a mood sober and clear enough to write a blog post about my first ever clubbing experience, which took place last night/this morning, 13th/14th august 2009.

this first sentence makes me sound somewhat geek-ish and un-happening. nevertheless, it is all part of my attempt to describe the process of Clubbing in a most objective and informative way, without any sense of biasedness, or negativity against this rather Happening And Popular (which i shall refer to as HAP for convenience's sake) concept/activity.

to summarize it all, if not for my friends, i would have been utterly bored to my sorriest tears.

to give clubbing some credit, i found the music last night great. the mixing was near flawless and the DJ's knew how to choose the right tunes to go back-to-back with each other.

but honestly, i find it really too loud. i know this sounds lame and i know our generation's youngsters find blasting music, be it in the car, on headphones, or in clubs, fun and great and cool, but i can only agree with that to a certain extent. :P

see, blasting music in Saira's car, now THAT was fun! that was a good way to unwind, to chill with my gal pals.

but blasting music so damn freaking loud, that we have to shout directly into people's ears in order for them to hear what we're desperately trying to tell them, i think that's a bit much. :/

maybe this is a personal thing, because being a dancer and a music-lover, my hearing is very precious to me. every time i leave the club area to accompany a friend to the toilet, i can hear this ringing sound in my ears. and it scares me silly, because i don't want my hearing to be affected at all.

I DON'T WANT TO GO DEAF.

so yes, according to a sign outside Butter that says, "If it's too loud, you're too old!", i am indeed too damn frickin bone-breaking cancer-ridden old.

another thing i was uncomfortable with besides the eardrum-murdering music was the fact that just because i'm a dancer, people expect me to go wild and DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY WHOOHOO START THE CONGO LINE etc etc. :/ i am so so glad my fellow dancer pal Weijie could totally empathize with me on this, that not all dancers feel totally at home in clubs.

note:

1) my first time to a club--major culture shock.

2) inappropriate attire. in halter top with scarf and holding somewhat hard-to-carry pouch.

3) NO FRICKIN SPACE DAMMIT

Weijie did the smart thing and left super early, at around 1am. xD

yeah that's basically why i didn't enjoy myself as much as people say i should have. :/ i realised that i'm more a homey person. my idea of a fun night would be to spend the night somewhere cosy, like a friend's house, or a nice small eatery. not exactly a club with blaring coloured nights and deafening music and people crammed so close to one another that there's hardly any bloody space to move, dammit.

oh this might be sudden, but i also witnessed people making out for the first time. the only time i usually see this is on tv or in movies. this made me realise one very important thing:

i would GREATLY PREFER to make out somewhere no one else can see me. ESPECIALLY people that i know.

...i don't want to become a public spectacle. x(

(or a public nuisance for that matter)

so, all in all, not a very enjoyable night. :/ i guess my expectations were a little too high and blown up. oh well. it was an eye opening experience. and i'm also very thankful to anne, vivian, eesha, sarah, saira, marcus, shihao, ewen, andrew, thanu, and yuanloong for trying to make me feel less awkward. :) <3!

urgh. i hope i don't have to do that all over again any time soon. @_____@

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HAP Clubbing aside, i haven't been in the best of moods lately. still feeling the pinch of adjusting to a new environment full of people who don't know me very well and vice versa. i'm comforting myself with the thought of pending open classes and welcome tea at Blast! this coming week :D hopefully i'll meet people that i'll get to know on a deeper level so that i won't feel so lonely and alienated...

i love the freedom i'm having in uni, i love hall life, i love many of the new friends i've made, but it saddens me that i still feel a bit out of place. i know i'm being impatient, i know these "settling-in/fitting-in" things take about one semester. i should just patiently wait and not try too hard. yes i think sometimes i try too hard.

music will take my mind off this. so i shall play my piano in a bit.

dance will ease my troubled mind, so i will help Betty with her item next week.

and that, my friends, is that.

----------------

True friendship is one in which just sitting in comfortable silence feels like time well spent.

how long has it been since i've felt that...?

Rag flag drag.

things are finally falling nicely into place.

RAG ended with such a blast for our beloved Eusoff hall!
Best Float Design
Best Presentation
OSA Creativity Award
3 shields ohmygosh i'm so happy for our RAG!
after the late night practices, whole day rehearsals, tedious detailing of costumes, late minute gauze-sewing with wilfred just so that we can do this ONE stunt, finally every ounce of blood, sweat, tears, sprained toes & ankles all paid off. i am really really so happy... and tired. (seriously, 8pm to 3am pracs are more killer-tiring than they sound)

of course, everything comes at a price. because of our intensive RAG pracs (and my poor stamina and inability to maintain my high energy level for more than 48 hours at a time), i ended up missing most of Oweek. i think my OGL kind of hates me now. :/ what a bad first impression, huh. i guess RAG tired me out so much with pracs reaching to the 3-4am hours of the morning, so much so that i couldn't bring myself to wake up at 8plus to go for oweek at 9. sigh. i feel kinda bad since i promised both min and sali that i would go with them. :( so much for trying to be a good friend who keeps her promises.

i also possibly felt a little more like an alien at Oweek. 50% of my OG consisted of counsillors, mostly FRESHIE counsillors, who (since they already knew each other from Arts Camp) were more in a world of their own. there was also already an existing clique in my OG as 6-7 of the girls were from the same JC. so no one in particular is to blame. i guess my OG was kinda a little segregated from the start due the odd combination of people. individually, i think they're really nice people. nice to talk to, but pity i didn't stay long enough to get to know them properly. i feel somewhat irresponsible. like i abandoned them or something. (not like they'd notice my absence, especially since i only came for half a day, before rushing off to RAG prac)

but looking at things from another perspective, there's no way i could've abandoned RAG either. i volunteered and auditioned for RAG and really wanted to be part of that hall experience. i can't possibly let down my other dancers just because i wanted to have fun at Oweek. it's another issue of responsibility towards my hall friends too...

...and i guess in the end, missing Oweek was somewhat worth it. :) *satisfied smile*

ANYWAY i guess i'll simply blame all this mess on me not being a very orientation person. :/

so yes. most of my friends are HC ppl, SC ppl, and Eusoff ppl. thankfully a lot of Eusoff people are in Arts too. i'm trying to make myself feel better about Oweek by telling myself that it's not possible for Oweek to enable me to get to know even half of Arts. since we are such a huge faculty.
i like my faculty a lot though. i think we're very crazy. :) i feel very quiet next to them.

i somehow feel more at home in the hall, though sometimes i do end up emo-ing and thinking too much. this last week before RAG was especially emotionally trying for me. i ended up missing victoria's performance because of our last minute costume detailing to do, and last minute full dress rehearsals, and though i can't bring myself to say it was worth it (because vic's performance really meant a lot to me), i really hope vic will be able to forgive me...
i was thinking a lot. about how i needed time to fit into hall life, to get used to hall culture, and it kinda depressed me that i was missing so much (Oweek esp) thanks to RAG, and it frustrated me that i was the only freshie fish dancer. (the other freshies were either actors or water people dancers) i was the only junior amongst the seniors and that made me feel so small and alien and out of place sometimes.

on thursday, i just broke down. in front of bert, jingfang, prema, sai, darylyn, jiakai and some other people. SO PAISEH I TELL YOU.

but i really thank God that they were there for me. i really felt so much better after pouring everything out. after talking about how i felt about everything.

i find that sometimes i keep things to myself a bit too much. i try to tell myself that they aren't important and aren't worth burdening someone's ears with, so i don't tell anyone and let them accumulate till they overwhelm me. (way to go, nic) i guess i just missed being around my best friends a lot. i wasn't used to hanging around people who don't know me as well as the usual gang, and that made me feel lonely.

thankfully, that day, bert and i sat in E block laundry room and talked for a long time. we talked about our fac, our lives at home, our families, and i realised how much in common i had with her. it's strange because i never really got the chance to get to know her properly when we were still in HC. man, i am so thankful that bert and i are together in the same hall.

i guess i just need time to get to know more people, to let more people get to know me, and to get used to life here. i'm sure it'll all happen naturally, and i don't have to worry too much about it. :) just gotta trust God and move on.

on a side note, i am getting a little jittery about Blast! auditions. i really really want in, but i'm just afraid i can't make it past the auditions. oh well. just gotta ZHAM. sali, eeshah, jiayi and weiting are probably going with me, so thankfully i have people i know going with me so i won't be alone! :D

to be honest, i'm pretty surprised that Sali is so serious about Blast!. not that i'm unhappy or anything, don't get me wrong (i'm actually quite happy). i'm just surprised. because Blast! is really serious about commitment. and their practices can get really intense and stuff. i'm glad Sali is really interested, because she really bothers to learn about Hip Hop culture, and really knows quite a lot more than some Hip Hoppers out there, but i'm just wondering if she might find it difficult to balance too many ccas&studies, resulting in her dropping out, just like how she dropped out of MAD after passing the auditions. :/

in any case, i'm glad she's auditioning with me and that i won't be alone. :) i'll just let her sort out the rest, since she seems to be so serious about it.

also, i can't wait for Eusoff Dance Production auditions. i want to audition to be a choreographer! i think it's going to be so awesome. really really excited about starting school and starting on hall activities (besides RAG)!!!

all in all, a fruitful, exhausting week. i'm all geared up for the next :D

the days have been ending around 3-4am every day for me. one day this week, i slept only at around 9am in the morning. today was particularly exhausting. i promise you, i have never been so tired in my entire pathetic life. x____x

i honestly KO-ed a few times today whilst selling flags.

on the topic of selling flags. hmm. :/

deb's twitter explains it perfectly. xD

basically, selling flags allows you to interact with many many different kinds of people. and since i like interacting with people, it would have been a really fun and exhilarating experience if i hadn't been feeling like a stonefish. =___=

today i interacted with the people from the heartlands--and collected a lot of money from them too!

compared to place like Orchard, Dhoby Ghaut and Bugis where people are considerably more apathetic and prone to ignoring flaggers, the people of Pasir Ris are rather generous. i got so many $2 notes, and even 1 $10 note! :O

but, of course, i got a lot of coins as well. which directly resulted in the super duper sore arm muscles of mine now. they're so sore i almost can't feel them anymore. they're like...detached...jelly.

holding that increasingly heavy metal can (full of MORE metal) up to people's noses, smiling and trying to be as polite as possible even though your wrists and arms feel like breaking from the strain of carrying that damn thing for 2 hours straight without putting it down is no joke.

enough about my phail nua weak arms.

about the people.

well. many of them were very cautious. they asked lots of questions to discern the validity of our volunteerism. i.e. they interrogated us quite a bit to ensure that they weren't being cheated of their money. of course, many of them donated generously after the interrogation. $2 at least.

however, there were some who spent quite some time asking about 10-15 questions, and only dropped 30 to 50 cents into the tin can held out beseechingly to their faces. which was. kinda ironically funny in a way. xD

"I really want to make sure I know where my money is going. I don't want to get cheated, or end up donating to a fraud and get swindled and donate for nothing. I really need to know where my money is going, so I can be very sure that it's being put to good, honest use."

*drops 30 cents into the collection tin*

xD

and of course there are people who stare at me, stare at the collection tin, then look away. what i don't get is why these poor people can't even understand the simple meaning of the question, "Would you like to donate to charity?" I mean. how difficult is it to put 2 and 2 together, when you see a student wearing a tshirt emblazoned with the words NUS FLAG DAY 2009, holding a collection tin, giving out stickers to people who put this fascinating thing called MONEY into the tin?

haha. people are so amusing sometimes. xD

i'm tired but still waiting for my hair to dry. Arts Oweek is going to sentosa tomorrow, but i don't think i have the strength or energy to go and spend a full day there playing meng games. sorry Shaddup. (my OG name) sorry OGL Julian. :(

i can barely move my limbs without experiencing some sort of pain somewhere. :/

PHEW. finally. REST.

the past 2 weeks have been somewhat crazy. moving into Eusoff, getting used to Hall life (which is really exhilirating btw), getting used to Eusoff Night Life, surviving the 10pm to 2am pracs for RAG, and basically surviving every day despite my muscles screaming and crying for well-deserved rest.

i'm a little lazy to phrase everything that has happened in the past week or so, so here's a brief summary.
-moved into Eusoff since last Friday, and loving the life here. :D

-got a new Mac, my first personal laptop! also, i can't install RO or Dragonica on this until i get parallel. T__T

-successfully matriculated to Arts

-signed up for BLAST! auditions, joined the E-Gaming society and the Comics and Animation society in NUS. xD LOL.

yup. i also met a lot a lot of new friends in Hall. including fellow dancers, and lots of sports ppl. sometimes i feel a little out of place since i'm totally NOT a sportsperson, but i guess i'll get used to it. ;)

oh and here are the modules i've successfully bidded for!
Korean 1
Communications and New Media (intro)
Japanese Studies (intro)
Theatre Studies (intro)

i think i'm going to have a very exciting semester :D:D:D
i only have 1 module left to bid, and lots of points left, so i'm quite safe i think. ;)

next week is going to be rather exhausting and draining too, so i shall enjoy a well-deserved rest at home before going back for another exhausting week.

i still miss you guys a lot, though. although i do have a lot of nice new friends, but no one can replace my friends of old. i still think about our gang a lot, every day, every night, and i really hope i can see you all again soon.


okok sorry for emo mushy shit i'm going back to read KHR now