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Very un-inclined to do work. Why?
ABBA for blocks is not bad, zk must be miffed that he's once again ranked alongside me, which is a superb example of Shakespeare's favourite theme, Appearance Vs Reality! Someone, quick, scream at me to study! And to finish my xiaoxiao question by tonight, because whaddaheck, wei is just going to go through it with a (very) fine comb and I'll have to redo and will probably curse about it. Oops, image, image. I hate doing essays when they interrupt my study plans.
That's an improvement. I made out a study plan yesterday. I won't keep to it but at least I now know how much I have to panic!
Let's see, what else? Mm, SYF finals dress rehearsal was interesting. VJ had a terrible script, but was evidently very well-rehearsed. A lot of amateur tricks pulled, just to keep the script from sagging, (not that it worked very well.) Lead actress fought a losing battle with the script, but I guess as a TSD actress (or so I heard), she had to be of a certain...calibre. That she only came off as somewhat irritating must be an indication of her skill. The most impressive performance was from the actress playing her friend. Very very effective and natural, playing a crucial role in the subtle but powerful telephone sequence which was the best part of the play. Mr. Perry gave a silent thumbs-up to her. The rest of the casting was effective, because everyone pulled off their roles, but my guess is that they wouldn't survive in say, a Neil Simon or Ayckbourn or Shaffer play, because it was always clear how hard they were working to pull off their roles. I'm not trying to be bitchy but alas! It looks as if TSD has snagged the real actors and actresses in VJ, because I believe that true thespian quality looks completely effortless. (Of course, if it looked effortless, you wouldn't notice it, eh?) Anyway, the script by some Kenneth something or another was so bad, you could smell it a mile away. (Del tells me I should be more scathing and less polite. She'd demand that he stop writing forever. I just hope he gets way better before he tries another public performance.) It would be a typical S7 dramafeste script, except that in S7, you'd probably get better performances. (This year being an exception.) The only thing the entire performance had going for it was the amount of work that had gone into it, and the supporting actress (not the "Armani girls", whose accents and affected performances are the very kind I abhor.) I can barely believe VJ got a gold (and neither can del), but there you have it, effort over quality.
MI was ok, but the play never fully lived up to its comedic potential. Lead actress carried the play, but failed to show true lead actress potential. Performance-wise (for the whole cast), moments that could have been potential belly laughs induced nothing more than wide grins and the odd chuckle, and some blame must fall on the script, which has a weak ending.
And the best for last, ACJC! As Mr. Perry observed, "They pulled every theatrical trick in the book! The only thing they didn't have was a trapdoor...or their actors flying in from the wings!" As we have now all observed, Mr. Perry can't be bothered to pull such tricks, unlike Mrs. Creffield (sic). (Think smoke, incense, fire, red backdrop, red wash, lots of cheorography and their very own portable stages.) Nor is he terribly impressed with scripts and Concepts with a capital C. He said, "I don't think you could sit through another half hour of that." Ok, AC was definitely the best of the three, and it was very impressive, visually. The cast, in particular, put VJ to shame. However, if you believe that plays should (gasp) be entertaining, AC ran the risk of boring the audience into tears. Fortunately, its use of (surprise surprise) movement provided enough distraction, in particular, a shimmery, eery rape sequence giving everyone the goosebumps. The VJ Armani girls would do well to take a leaf out of the cast's books, because the accents were at least, consistent. One of the female priests had a particularly strong British accent, which raised a few eyebrows but the cast in overall, gave a very strong performance. Zarine was however, insulted when I compared her to the dancer who represented the bandit. Hey, she's skinny and quite agile, but apparently, she was an ex-MGS girl too. (Go figure.) The wife (ie Actress in Red) had such an Aura, and was so very effective, she was my favourite. The girls (except dawn who claimed she had other things to do, the terrible girl) don't really agree with me, so maybe I'm a little biased, but she exuded It. (I'm talking like an olde Hollywood publicity machine, so forgive me.) Overall, a very strong, showy performance, calculated for maximum impact and judges' marks.
As for our performance report? Having seen the judges' comments, I'm very relieved to report that it wasn't the acting that dragged us down to a silver, my friends! The cast was praised by all three judges, and Mr. Perry did say that we were better actresses than the original cast, and the script won Best Play 4 years ago--
therefore, the conclusion is that the judges this year expected what we were not prepared to give. If it takes a VJ-drama performance to nab a Gold, we'd rather not appear in something so obviously amateur. (NAFA must be blind to consider them polished.) If only we didn't have to do SYF, for the awards!
There. I blogged about SYF and I kept my promise--I wasn't as bitchy as I originally wanted to be. Now, if only I could remember all my Manifest lines, we needn't rehearse for Teachers' Day and Open House, as I'm sure we'll have to...
the rain last fell @ 07:46 p.m., Monday, August 2, 2004
If I don't get PSC Open, I thought I might be lucky to be taken up by MFA (because I recently learnt they give more than 1 scholarship a year), which in any case is a bit of a joke, because MFA has its pick of bright ones, so why would they want to "take me up" as if they have a lot of spaces?
But anyway, my point was--ZK tells me they have 3 spaces a year, if you're really lucky, and guess who guess who guess HOW MANY from humanz alone are gunning for it?!
ZK, Me, Sheryl, naz, fauziah and lynn.
Panic!
Half a snowball in hell!
Die die doom doom panic panic Chaucer argh!
the rain last fell @ 09:24 p.m., Thursday, July 29, 2004
Too busy to blog, but Odd Couple photos have been updated!
the rain last fell @ 08:35 p.m., Wednesday, July 28, 2004
I literally scraped an A for my LEP paper, which was funnily satisfying, because it confirms that I cannot spend only the day before panicking and cramming everything, even if it's relatively light. It was wrong, but I knew it when I did the paper, and I was proven right! Which sounds confusing, but if you think through it, I was just blabbering. :) Anyway, it's a disappointment because it's relative to what I could have gotten, ja? However, I'd still sacrifice that bit of pride, if I had to do it again, for a decent econs grade, for once. See, it just proves that the 4-subject system is an evil spiral of petty pride.
Ancient Boring Essays would be so much better if the font were bigger and the lecturer, smaller.
Ok, that was mean. Sssssshhhhh.
I think I'm going to China. Before I swung and started dithering this year, I was only 60% set on going to China last year. But I guess it's not just a matter of the what-I-wants, it's also a matter of what-I-need (and I'm not sure I can articulate even that.) However, it boils down to the fact that if I ever want to be effectively bilingual and "bicultural", I have to improve my Chinese. ("Bicultural" is so cumbersome a word, as soon as it's the latest government-promoted It phrase.) Where? China, obviously. Fat load of use going to America for Chinese Studies. My English is, dare I say, good enough, and there's always the possibility of optional modules (tong xuan ke) in the wai yu xi (Foreign Language faculty. Not sure what their euphemism is over there). I can do my Masters in the West, because there's a nice established tradition of that already. I can do a double degree. I have a higher chance of getting a non-teaching PSC scholarship. And Bei Da roughly follows an American-styled system of modules, which, crucially, has quite a good range. Cultural immersion and all that jazz. Adequate allowances and favourable exchange rates equating to more money for food (heh), books, paintings, calligraphy, CDs and jaunts!
It's not perfect. I still want to continue studying English, and Bei Da may be one of The universities in China, along with Fudan, but I doubt I can do anything even remotely like a minor in English there. Yeah, you can always read, but I need something like an ongoing Harold Bloom "How To Read and Why". And that isn't really...literature, is it? Ok, too deep waters here. Must save that to think about, another day. Anyway, besides that, prospects for amateur drama, though not as bleak, still remain murky. And, I do want to experience England and the US for myself, in those supposedly important, exhilarating formative uni years. I want to be excited by my uni choice! Now, I'm just being rational, and the benefits are very gratifying, but it's not making me dreamy about nice old cathedrals and lush plains. Which is, if you think about it, a good thing, because dreams never come true the way you want them to.
In short, it's just the usual East-West conflict lah, and I don't think it'll ever be resolved in me, nor do I actively hope it will. It's just being dragged out, kicking and screaming, because of uni and course choices.
But between the devil and the big blue sea by being as rational as I have ever been, along with information gleaned up to today, ceteris paribus, China is where I'm going.
Those are the most Ah Q words I have ever written in my life, and I'm not happy.
the rain last fell @ 05:27 p.m., Saturday, July 17, 2004
Why am I only in the PSC Asia Tertiary Tea Session? I took French for 4 years! Harrumph. Just because I take Chinese doesn't mean you can consign me to China (even though I'm 75% sure I'll go there first. Made up my mind today.) I'd like to have options, thank you.
Shall not be sniffy to people whom I eventually hope to wrangle a scholarship out of, to become gloriously educated (and/or inebriated, if you trust The Guardian's University Guide). Slap me! I'm terribly petty nowadays. Hope it's PMS, because I'm also headache-y, teary and having very mild break-out, which is about the only consolation.
Anyway! Had very good food today, which I must blog about, being regular little lao hao. Su lao shi finally treated me to tau huay, because I made a stab at parodying Snake-Catcher gu wen eons ago, which was embarassingly feeble. Nonetheless, tau huay earned is tau huay earned, and I had some fries, because school has decided to be draconian and deprive huixuan and I of our near-daily dose of grease (more her than me), by decreeing "Fried Foodstuffs on Tuesday and Thursday only!". Then, I had mei gui su in the LEP staffroom, this Shanghai snack courtesy of visiting great grand-seniors! mei gui su is like, a rose-flavoured non-crunchy powdery peanut candy, the kind that gets stuck between your teeth. I want to try mei gui lu, which is what jia baoyu ate ^_^. Anyway, it wasn't terribly strong on the rose flavour bit, but quite tasty. And there was jasmine tea jelly! Which tastes quite good after a su of any kind. I'm eyeing that mini-mooncake thingumbob I saw them eating too, but I think it's got green bean paste, so we shall see.
Cannot believe I devoted an entire paragraph to food. Must be PMS. I have chocolate cake for brekkie tomorrow, since it's my dad's birthday today. Good.
Ahah. Another discovery: Pasir Ris Library! It's smaller than MPL's 4 floors, but MPL is ridiculously arctic and the integral sections are puny. Pasir Ris Library has nice natural light and better seats, nice carpeting (heh), a nice Singapore section where I found my mentor's collected poems (Aaron Lee, A Visitation of Sunlight), a better choice of CDs, and a quite decent English section, considering Pasir Ris is very ulu-east. I shall try the cafe there the next time! Egads. More food. At this rate, I'll be one stuffed hamster in a month.
the rain last fell @ 10:15 p.m., Thursday, July 15, 2004
How can you even stand to study with pop music going thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thump in your ears? My dad is watching the charity show on channel 8, and 5566 is performing. It's terrible, it's just thump-thump-thump-*Scream 5566 wo men ai ni*-THUMP! in the background. You can't even hear their lyrics properly, which might be a good thing, because they're probably puerile. How how how can people stand to listen to such pap, such tasteless white noise while studying?
(To pre-empt any cheap attacks on my music taste by zk, I assert that I don't listen to any music while studying. :))
Oh no, they're gonna sing another song.
LEP exhibition is finally over! Quite a few exclaimed over the pretty cards, and kudos must be awarded to alvin, ailin-sempai, 'lex, yuzhe, xiya, anchyi, peishan, helen, sara and jun yan and tigerong and su lao shi for helping me make the deadline. I really really hated the exhibition at first because the cards stressed me out, and they didn't assume a, a fixed form until about a week before. I spent a lot of time on them, almost as much as I spent studying for blocks, and I resented that. But I was touched by how readily people helped, like alvin with the printing, yuzhe and xiya with the lun pan and cards (yuzhe practically made the lun pan for me), and people like peishan, helen and jun yan who saw me with this thick stack of cutting and just offered to help, even though they had their own stuff to do. And su lao shi even went over the instructions last-minute and re-wrote them to make them fit the title better. He didn't have to, and my project was the most last-minute of all. So I was unexpectedly touched by the whole lead-up to it. The Exhibition itself was only o-k, because student papers tended to descend into rather fawning, middle-ground, spot-it-a-mile-away conclusions. Then again, one should never expect dramatic revelations.
Damnit la, if Àî±Ì»ª hadn't written ÇàÉß, I'd have a stab at the Ѿ÷ß-Å®Ö÷ÈË-êÓÃÁ theme for hua yun. As it is, I don't think I can bang out a good Chinese story in 5 days because my entry last year took 2-3 weeks. Byebye cash prize :(
But you never know. I'd better go ransack my notebook to see if I can rework anything.
the rain last fell @ 09:47 p.m., Sunday, July 11, 2004
I'm so dead. I apparently have an overdue HC library book, and I don't even know whether I borrowed it! It's called "The Twentieth Century"--and I don't know if it's a lit or history book! It can't be a history book, because no history buff in class would have borrowed my easylink card to borrow a book like that so urgently (zk sneered at the mere thought of it). So my only hope is that it's somewhere in the Humanz staff room, or a junior who borrowed my card.
Stoned in the LEP room today, after realizing I couldn't go on doing the lun pan. No, not stoned, relaxed. Would have started reading Qing She (which reminds me of teng qianxi's Waterlights), but I think that'll do for post-exhibition. I can't wait to finish the project tomorrow and forget about it once and for all. LEP is starting weekly chinese tests after week 5 or 6, so beware! (Of what, I don't know.) Block tests were terrible. I scraped an A1 for GP (ok so maybe not scrapped) but I wrote a lopsided essay that upsets me a lot, and skated by on style. I don't want my case study to be included in econs! Bother, the first B you get ends up as a D or even worse. And LEP isn't out yet. Oh doom doom doom doom doom!
I feel like I should grovel at the feet of the various nice people who have helped me put the damn LEP project together. Never mind, I shall name you when the exhibition is over. And whichever wang ba dan who took my coloured paper and nuts and bolts outside LT5, I hope you get really bad diarrhoea! Or something. I need to learn some proper curses.
mu chuan--I was slow to warm up, but the verdict: I think they're very cool. They can't be that much older than us, right? And they sing at the Ark Cafe one (or two?) nights a week, and they know xinyao songs! Elfin Chick in Red was my favourite. She kept looking down when she wasn't singing, all melancholy-loike. Probably thinking about what to have for dinner, but still. She looks like she'd be a no-nonsense tough cookie though. I like cookies :)
I'd better start reading Sloman again. He's quite straightforward and clear, even if the syntax gets slightly wonky sometimes. I resolve to get an A for A level Econs! Gulp.
I also resolve to finish my S lit presentation and not do a pak, to research universities and decide by the end of july which country I want to apply to, to read more of my nice little Chaucer book (which is so user-friendly, it has neat little translations on the side), and to stop asking after peoples' mothers. :)
the rain last fell @ 09:09 p.m., Thursday, July 8, 2004
Why why why did my old downloads from (now non-functioning) Kazaa throw into my lap some shrill-voiced harpy, when Jean Louisa Kelly sounds so good on the Fantasticks movie soundtrack?
I should do many things like clear my desk and move my books. Oh and S lit presentation and S Lit reading, hmm? And finish the damn hong lou project and hope never to see it again argh!
Oh yeah, and try to make up my mind for the 1298062th time where to go.
the rain last fell @ 10:18 p.m., Saturday, July 3, 2004
The Fantasticks was fantastic! I wish I could watch it on stage, but the movie version was good. I'm now a fan of Channel i, because they showed the whole movie, uncut! United Artists cut about 4 songs from the 2000 release, including a lot of Try To Remember, which Jonathon Morris sang very well, if slightly stagily at the beginning. (Did they even show the film in Singapore? I must've been Sec 2 then, and I don't remember hearing anything about it. Hrm.) El Galio reminded me of RnG's Player, and the setting, of RnG. But not too much, thankfully. Oh oh, and Rape of the Sabine Women was mentioned too!
And on a related note, Mr. Perry was telling the cast of Rumours about being professional and carrying on with the show. He told us: he once directed a performance of The Fantasticks, in England, which has a rape scene (in the form of a ballet. Yeah, musicals.) in the show, of the (only) ingenue lead. The actress playing the role, was sexually assaulted the day before one of the performances. And she came in the next day, with bruises and a black eye, and she did the show.
Sobering, innit?
But, a good movie is a good way to end my last day of block tests! GP wasn't great, I missed points in my essay, LEP wasn't great, I missed a point (which I mugged for but didn't bother to link!!) in my cha guan question. Lit was, surprisingly manageable. Unless I missed the point completely.
But! I got B for Econs MCQ! Milestone, I swear. One painfully acquired from thumbing through Sloman (and causing pain to zk, who had to answer questions on just about every page in there). Yes zk, you will get your ice-cream. If only the weightage of the case study let me keep the darn grade. I didn't even know monetary from fiscal when I did that case study! The wonders of having 4 weeks to read sloman from chapter 14.
LEP paper was a relief to finish, and I kept staring at the clock while doing my last (novel) question. Who wants to dredge up things to write about tong zhen and shi gan when you're half an hour away from freedom? Not that I read qiao chang zhang before the test. Ahem. I sense looming peril to my LEP grade.
Teaching scholarship for Chinese not my cuppa tea. Nuh-uh.
the rain last fell @ 09:38 p.m., Saturday, July 3, 2004
More Michael Steyn!
"Standing at the book of the theatre with lyricist-turned-book-writer Dorothy Fields, Porter once overheard an excited matinée lady squeal with delight to her friend: "I don't know how these actors think of such clever things to say to each other!" Porter turned to Miss Fields and said, "And you -want- to write book?"--"book" here referring to the libretto, or "script" portions.
On everybody's favourite Dane, Hamlet
"Howard Dietz wrapped up Hamlet in one couplet
A ghost and a prince meet
And ev'ryone ends in mincemeat
Frank Loesser took a little longer
He bumped off his uncle
Then he mickey-finned his mother
And he drove his gal to suicide
Stabbed her big brother
'Cause he didn't want nobody else but himself should live
He was what you might call
Unco-operative"
"In Mitteleuropa, history is operetta and operetta is history: in The Merry Widow, Count Danilo's uniform was copied from that of the Count Prince of Montenegro, though for the most part, the show tends to highlight the quainter Balkan traditions rather than the more robust and enduring nationalist manifestations like genital severing."--We never learnt that in history class!
"In the forties, Moscow issued a directive to their British comrades that "the lower organs of the party must make even greater efforts to penetrate the backward parts of the proletariat." Claud Cockburn warned that this was likely to be received as a Max Miller joke, but Marxist theory being unfamiliar with the concept of a Max Miller joke, the Party went ahead anyway."
the rain last fell @ 09:04 p.m., Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Brushes with Surreality
So I'm reading my usual fare of books on musicals/movie musicals. And I come across a reference in Broadway Babies Say Goodnightto Adlai Stevenson, (his name was the one we subbed Ronald Reagan for), because he asked Berlin, I think, to write a song for his presidential campaign, which Berlin found weird because his song in Call Me Madam was I Like Ike, which was used in Stevenson's opponent's campaign! Anyway, that's the really trivial one. But then, I saw in The Melody Lingers On, an entry on *drumrolls* Vera Hruba Ralston!
"...Ice Capades Revue (1942) starring Vera Hruba Ralston, the Czech skater whom Republic president Herbert Yates married and spent years trying unsuccessfully to turn into a major film star."
Apparently, she picked the name "Ralston" (her real name being Vera Hruba) from the cereal too. O.o
And as if to make a cosmic point, huixuan, on holiday in penang, saw...
No, shan't blog about it till she tells eng siang and bernie. -beams-
the rain last fell @ 11:35 p.m., Saturday, June 19, 2004
(What I have been spending my time on, instead of SEA nationalism)Mark Steyn's Broadway Babies Say Goodnight--Musicals Then and Now! Read it about 2 years ago, but it's much nicer re-reading it now when I get all the references, instead of second-guessing my way through a maze of The Greats--I knew my Porter from my Gershwin but that was about it. And Steyn is waspishly funny.
Some nifty bits:
"That's the problem with stage technology: like Oedipus, its ambitions sows the seeds of its own destruction"--Heard that, Cameron Mackintosh?
On the difference between opera and musicals--"In the theatre, opera is the purest musical form. Which is to say that the music comes first, and you make allowances for everything else. Nothing wrong with that...Just as in 1920s musical comedy, if the -songs- are good enough, you're happy to make allowances. But to compare the last popular opera composer with his heir in English-language theatre, no one ever talks about 'a Richard Rodgers musical'; it's always 'Rodgers and Hart' or 'Rodgers and Hammerstein'; whereas no one refers to Tosca as 'that terrific opera by Puccini, Giacosa and Illica', except possibly the Giacosa and Illica families."
"A good musical is such a freak coalescence of different elements--book, lyrics, music, orchestrations, cheorography, design"--zk claimed it was the same thing as a semi-opera. On paper, yes, it looks the same. But a semi-opera song? (What does one call them? Arias?) does not "demand the contours of conversational speech", to which zk spat "hah. i knew it, you plebian! You're trying to bastardize music."
Oh well. At least we've got it straight that a semi-opera is not a musical. (Eww.)
A personal favourite--"As an alternative to the Kern-Sondheim view of history, how about this? Operetta--from the Golden Age (Strauss) to the Silver Age (Lehár) to the Rhinestone Cowboy (Lloyd Webber)"
The Rhinestone Cowboy getting his own back--"It (The Merry Widow) was the first musical that had merchandising," says Lloyd Webber. "Cameron Mackintosh has learned everything he knows from it."
On operetta lyrics--"Lerner was particularly scathing about lines like "Come where the leafy bower lies":"Not a lyric for a tenor with bridge work."
On musical lyrics--"Lyric-writing at its best is a miniature art, an exercise in compression. You can plough through all the Foreign Office assurances to the people of Hong Kong after the Chinese takeover or you can grab a Cole porter couplet which says it all in a thousandth of the space:
"If they ever put a bullet in your brain
I'll complain."
"If boy-meets-girl now seems a Broadway cliché, it still beats boy-Count-disguised-as-goatherd-meets-girl-Princess-disguised-as-scullery-maid."--on operetta Vs musicals
"To certain critics, the subject matter of P.G Wodehouse's novels implies some sort of endorsement of the class system, which is rather like deducing from Macbeth that Shakespeare liked palling around with regicidal maniacs."--Not much link here, just that Wodehouse was also one of the first great lyrists.
"The 1927 season, the most crowded in Broadway history, saw the first nights of 264 new plays and musicals. On 26 December alone, there were 11 openings, and to cover them New York editors were forced to co-opt boxing and football reporters as drama critics--not, as Alan Jay Lerner liked to gloat, that anyone noticed the difference."
On Hammerstein--"A man who looks for dramatic logic in 'The Darktown Strutters' Ball' is bound to find twenties musical comedy difficult."
The Americanization of Emily musical theatre--"It was Jerome Kern who, cautiously, accidentally even, Americanized the theatre song. He and Oscar Hammerstein were at one time planning a musicalization of Donn Byrne's Messer Marco Polo. 'Here is a story laid in China about an Italiana and told by an Irishman,' said Hammerstein. 'What kind of music are you going to write?'
Kern replied, 'It'll be good Jewish music."
By then, good Jewish music was good American music.
There, and I've only gotten through 3 chapters!
the rain last fell @ 08:53 p.m., Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Xu Chun Mei, aka "Gao Gui Mei Ren" is in Singapore?! Singaporeans, have you no taste, no sense, no shame, no sense of horror? Or should that be, Singaporean concert organizers, have you no taste, no sense, no...oh, you know what I mean. I mean, first you invited hsu mei feng, and to drive the next (and hopefully) final nail into your reputation's coffin, this..this..AUCK!.
William Hung Syndrome. That's what it is.
Because I don't know what's good for me (bu zhi hao dai), and I'm going to fail econs anyway, and since I display my petty emotions and highs and lows in public for no reason other than sheer joie de self-exhibitionism, I have a List! (It's just a Little List! And I am the Model of a Very...oh never mind. Stop it, mel, stop it!)
What Will Make Me Happy:
1. Marine Parade Library stocking new Terry Pratchett novels. I finished the ones in there last year :(
2. Patricia Kaas' Mademoiselle Chante, and whichever CDs that have her La Vie En Rose and L'hymne à L'amour duet with Johnny Halliday. Panders to the psuedo-francophile within. Drat, I think I lost my lyric sheet with the chinese translations though. (Look, it wasn't mine to begin with, and it was printed in Taiwan.)
3. Singing like Kaas :)
4. A new agent to bring Chalet School books and sequels into Singapore. And NLB to stock them, because paying S$40-50 for them is not worth it. Yet.
5. Hong Lou Meng pictorial books by ping fan and chen pei fen. Coo.
6. Finishing my studying and not embarassing myself during block tests.
7. Production video. Now. And looking slim innit. (Next to zarine, fat hope!)
8. Musical OCRs. Or Esplanade Library moving closer to me.
9. A massage.
10. Ballet lessons! The only form of exercise I've ever liked. Once I start earning money, I'll take up ballet again, even if it is adult ballet.
The absence of chocolate from the list is because my mother brought some nice ones home today, in an unclassy plastic container. Plus, ruimin gave me mrs fields cookies. Add that to being very well-fed at my grandma's house and block tests ain't the only fing I'm worried about, if you gets my drift. Or can fat people drift?
Panic!
I can't effortlessly retrive chunks of quotes and texts for lit anymore, ohnoohnoohno, this is because I'm now doing 6 and not 2 texts anymore, right? Ohnoohno, panic! This is so embarassing! And it's only 1 text for block tests! I think Stoppard is terribly clever in a bright, brittle way, and his flair for wordplay teeters between corn and brilliance, which can be applied to Neil wunderkind Simon too.-->That's not gonna help me!
Argh, people, please yell at me to study! I wasted yesterday and today, and I need to do NID and Vietnamese nationalism! As yiling said, threats to STUDY or DIE via SMS or MSN would be very welcome. :(
the rain last fell @ 10:15 p.m., Thursday, June 10, 2004
I have been such a good girl, reading (urgh) Sloman so religiously, and pestering zk with economics-idiot questions, that I think a little cathartic blogging would be very good. Or gat.
It's definitely healthier than cathartic eating of chocolates.
Zk is currently right at this moment trying to push Purcell's semi-operas at me, claiming I'd like them because they're musical predecessors. As in Musicals. As in Musical Theatre. As in "I'm talking about musical comedy! The two most glorious words in the English language!" musicals.
I must catch 42nd Street one day. On the stage and not little snippets from the Tony Awards. And we get a touring production of Mama Mia?! Catchy yes, but not bonda fide musical. I want Porter, Rodgers, Berlin and Kern, not...ABBA. Should I watch it with chengwei? Or save up and buy a coupla OCRs? (No, not of Mama Mia, dopes.)
Decisions, decisions. Shopping with Librans is not easy. I know I'm a terribly dithery shopper. Frequantly bored, at that. No wonder sempai didn't expect to go shopping at the (much-reduced) A-squared Annual Adventure!
Not much of an adventure la, but alliteration is always addictive. (Sorry, gotta somehow work off my guilt for not really pia-ing for the CAP publication selection.) Jas jie and I are just a hare-brained duo, but I think adding audrey to the mix is just dangerous. Especially for sempai's sanity. But it was still very fun nonetheless! It never fails to amaze me, how Jasmine and I whine about the same things. And there's even a slight familial resemblance! -Jasmine's friend, after watching the Odd Couple, wondered if we were cousins.
Harry Potter 3 was...ok. The opening music was a familiar hook, but it just wasn't as magical as the past 2. Gads, am I really a fan of "big bland" chris columbus blockbusters? Or maybe it was because the movie catered to people who'd already read the book, so there wasn't much build-up. It was like picking the important bits and dramatizing them. Not that it wasn't effective; the scare just before Trelawney made her prediction was old hat but very good old hat. Rupert Grint exploited his comic opportunities, is it just me or does Radcliffe have an amazing cleft chin that makes him look almost Heathcliff-esquely broody, but Emma Watson is my favourite. Yes, I am unashamedly biased, because she has gorgeous, mobile features. No wait, that sounds like her nose scampers away periodically. Oh, and it helps that she got what I found the funniest moment in the movie, tying with Ron's nightmare--"Does my hair really look like that from the back?"
Post-HP3, we found out that Jas hadn't read the book and was clueless after the Time-Turner appeared. Classic.
Was terribly stoned after baked rice, ice cream and cheese cake. Pleasant blur of afternoon spent trawling Orchard (well to me, it's considered trawling). But drat that Audrey, for dumping us for Bangkok!
Haven't gone out this week, been studying Sloman (cue universal groan) and history. Besides Reagan's death, which prompted kai to sms me "Condolences on the death of your sex icon!", (get this straight, that was florence's sex icon), nothing exciting has happened.
So...UK? US? Or China?
the rain last fell @ 08:54 p.m., Thursday, June 10, 2004
NOOOOOOO!!!
I should have gone for the Pansing warehouse sale on the last day! Bernie found jeffrey eugenide's Middlesex! At most, it would have been selling for 8 dollars! (Unless...mo fei...it was under the 3 for 10 dollars category?! Argh!) Damn, damn, damn, damn!
There. However, I snuffled out Lost In A Good Book and The Eyre Affair, and I'm a big fan of jasper fforde. He's very funny; Pratchett-esque. (Kaisiang, he's funny. Honestly. Read the whole novel, will you?), 2 Ian McEwans, Amsterdam and Atonement, one Umberto Ecco, Baudolino (so pretty cover!), The Corrections by Jonathon Franzen, one The Book of Courtesans, because it had Colette in it (don't even ask), all for around 3 dollars each! And, my own steal--The Crimson Petal and the White for 8 dollars! Kudos to Kaisiang who helped me ferret more than half of those out. The experience was relatively more comfy than MPH warehouse sale, but I'm lose steam way too early. :( Never mind, I'm quite happy with what I bought! (And what's the deal about Flaubert's Parrot? Bernie and Kai seem to covet it...)
Righto. Back to the dreary beat.
the rain last fell @ 07:59 p.m., Thursday, June 3, 2004
"It's over, just like that."
Long time no see, folks. Odd Couple was a roaring success, (and took away the pang for getting silver for Manifest and being beaten by XJC with a terrible script, youknowwhoImean, darlings). My house is looking very colourful with the flowers, thank you all so much, and thankew sempai for the Godiva chocolates! I'll put up the OC photos when I've assembled them (because my camera is out of whack).
So! No more frantic cussing costume changes, shuffling in terror from the pitchblack stage, praying that the stage crew would switch on their torchlights, afraid to swear too loudly damnitlightlightlightwhere'smywardrobe. No more clumping around onstage in ducttaped heels, or waiting in the dark murmuring "Hello vera, two lines, hello girls, two lines, I'm sorry I'm late". The siren going off during the bloody first show! Dress rehearsals that wilted and got screwed up. Lights and Sound and a very irate Mr Perry. Huddling in the gigantic camel brown coat. Pamela's cool hands doing my eyes and hair. Looking freaky after every show because the eyeliner would get smudged under my eyes. Anchyi's lily, which smelt delicious. Worrying whether the front door would stay shut, whether the bathroom door would open. Crying lousily and burps which refused to materialize onstage! The spaghetti sauce on the first night, and the Dr. Pepper on the second! Nearly forgetting which side-button worked the vacuum cleaner on the first night. Huixuan chugging Mountain Dew. Ramming my thigh into the G-clamp. Meeting Mrs Perry who'd played Florence to Mr Perry's Manolo! (Argh!) Forcing myself to not look too closely at the audience and to focus on the actors. Trivial Pursuit. Relief, sweet relief at the laughter and suddenly knowing what to do. Interestingly, I got at least 3 comments on my height and the height disparity between 1. zarine, anne and I when they had to support me on their shoulders, huixuan and I ,and the other girls and I. A physical casting coup de grace of Mr Perry, I call it, especially when mirrored by the hilarious eng siang-bernie duo. I'm really surprised, because people also thought that Olive was unreasonably bitchy! Hey, I think Florence is irritating too. Oh well, must've been them endearing moose calls ;).
Besides being told I look like a teacher (huixuan has some weird friends, I tell ya), and that I looked older than huixuan (damnit!) and seeing an RJ girl in the middle front row, the one nearest stage left, sleeping...!Well! Good shows, very good shows, I love everyone. However sloppily sappy that sounds. I'm more stoned than anything else, PPB's not as terrible as last year's, but I still miss it. I think I've matured since and during last year's and this year's production, both emotionally and technically. Baby steps. Baby steps.
And tomorrow, we tear it all down.
the rain last fell @ 09:02 p.m., Sunday, May 30, 2004
BOMP DJL!
And that's the last time I'll ever have to remember that! SYF is over, no more Manifest! Perry's doing it for Open House, but I doubt he'll resurrect it for a public performance before that (though yuzhe and anchyi keep urging me to press for that :P). We had the snappiest run we ever did, this morning, but The Real Thing was a bit slower. We got the arrangement for July totally out of whack, but no harm done. All the sound cues were spot on! But thanks to no prior warning or 5 minute set up time (Don't even get me started on bloody organizers) I nearly got the Phone Call marking wrong. Luckily, joel was smart enough to put in a spotlight to let me gauge, and in desperation I banged the chair into place during my last monologue. -pats self on back- Rare stroke of genius came at just the right moment!
Now if only that'd happen during an econs essay.
To digress, if and when Mr Barnard writes a guide to philosophy (and other big words), he might jolly well dedicate it to me, if it's in Melissa-language. Good! I beam at all and sundry.
Manifest rehearsals were...cosier, than Odd Couple. 5 (often hungry) girls and a too-tolerant teacher. It's the little things I'll miss, like, I dunno, all of us munching on fries and sandwiches and Haribou, and dawn eating her rabbit food sandwiches. Yowling about how psychotic Obsession really was. Bitching! Being bored about zarine-ruimin backstage exploits :) If we'd just filmed the rehearsals, we could send it in for film SYF under..I dunno, a film version of Manifest, or something. Or an extending version of Bitching.
Ah, why didn't the schools today send supporters? Most funny, audiences are great for plays! We were the only one with a full row!
Hrmph, AC wants to win Best Play for the third time running. Bah. I'll settle for a..Gold. -crosses fingers- I can't believe I'm getting sucked into this disgusting web of markers of success. I don't care, I don't care, I don't care.
Haiyah. I have Carol Ann Duffy to read but I still have to do LEP project. If only I could pull out altogether.
the rain last fell @ 09:50 p.m., Wednesday, May 12, 2004
xuan: You look like a cute little bunny!
trying-to-act-drunk-ruimin:...?
an exasperated mr perry: Alright, if that's your motivation, you're a cute little bunny who's had too much to drinky-winky!
Manifest rehearsal was better today, more focused. Whew.
the rain last fell @ 09:16 p.m., Monday, May 3, 2004
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the rain last fell @ 09:57 p.m., Saturday, May 1, 2004
"Will you be my sugar mummy?"
--charmpeck, very winningly to sheryl and I today :)
the rain last fell @ 11:54 p.m., Friday, April 30, 2004
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...almost like a chinese Duffy. Out of the 24 shi cis, this is the first line so far that's struck me as beautiful. The hao fang ci leave me cold, and I wasn't terribly taken by the liu yong and li qing zhao wan yue ci in our selection. But -this- line, I have been doodling over and over again in my notes.
the rain last fell @ 10:21 p.m., Thursday, April 29, 2004
To a certain BITCH of XXXX with scary pancake make-up, who's so morally superior and hoity-toity she gets BITCHY to innocent scholarship applicants when she hears/see the word BITCH in certain SYF scripts:
The script was written to reflect people the likes of you, BITCH.
(You wouldn't understand that, unless you were a Manifest girl.)
the rain last fell @ 08:31 p.m., Monday, April 26, 2004
I wonder how the juniors are? I feel removed from the hustle bustle of EDS now. So distant. Once, I was them, with becky. Now, I just look on, sometimes trying to help, encouraging, listening, the same old stories of splits and grievances, cliques and politics, politics, politics. Baby junior politics.
But more often than not, I just look blankly on. Because I am removed from it now, and I like numbly following and not having to do very much, but what my CCA should be for, anyway.
Huishan's in hwach, but I didn't even know she was running for council. Zhiwen's in body language, must try to go for that. I know deb's performing in vj's dance and drama night, but I can't go. I know wenling's running for house capt, or rather, she ran...? How did -that- turn out? Meiwei's blog is like her, doesn't tell me very much but quite pretty pretty. I don't even speak to qian anymore! How is jia coping with council? And my the sec 4s. How is clarissa's social studies, how is tian dealing with the juniors, where are yvonne and melody going, and on and on and on and on and on.
And seniors. Where are you now, lydia? And vic? And Jas jie? (Typical, typical disappearing act, though) And Audrey, where are you?
I still want to watch Harry Potter on the very first day of its opening, but I think that's not going to come true now. I think.
the rain last fell @ 07:01 p.m., Saturday, April 24, 2004
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In case you're wondering, it's fann wong I'm a fan of, not peter ho. Forgettable pop fluff, but one of the few songs I can and will sing with gusto. Kind of like Tie A Yellow Ribbon (Round The Old Oak Tree), which I heard mr miles and perry and white singing!
the rain last fell @ 10:11 p.m., Friday, April 23, 2004
Thankie Vivvy :) I think things are working out now, thank God. -crosses fingers- I hope this quiet on the western front will last.
Production updates! We've run the various sections of Act 1 at least twice, so erm, we should be on track. It is very very funny, and more physical than Rumours, though I think it takes some of the fun away since the seniors have apparently seen the female Odd Couple before, with perry acting as one of the spanish brothers, no less! Anyway, line learning is terrible (we haven't even finished learning our Manifest lines yet, and SYF being only 2 weeks away!) and no rehearsal is complete with someone, anyone yelling "MR PERRY, YOU HATE ME!" :) A slightly less stoic cast than last year, but very very funny, nonetheless.
Now, if only someone would please get rid of my LEP project responsiblities, I will love you forever. It is a deadweight.
the rain last fell @ 08:51 p.m., Friday, April 23, 2004
Anchyi darling, your tags leave us in danger of never finding nice sweet boys who love us for who we are.
But waddaheck. I love you too :)
After (stolen) Odd Couple rehearsal today, I realized that I.am.Florence. *loud anguished sigh* (See post below, ending of first para. I swear that was because I've been trying to memorize my lines.) But even so, I am still so Florence. This is bad. :( But at least huixuan agrees that the spanish brothers -are- cute and have funny lines! So, there.
Off to download meese calling.
the rain last fell @ 08:00 p.m., Wednesday, April 21, 2004
I cried in the LEP staff room on Monday. My first block was free, and maybe God knew that I needed someone to talk to. So the free-block jetsam in the LEP room were shooed out, because the Chinese department wanted to hold a meeting. So terence and anchyi moved my stuff there for me, and I went there. I tried to write my letter to my dad, because whenever it comes to things like production, beyond the first two sentences, things just break down, he starts barking, and I tense up in the car, in the room, trying not to not to lash back at him. But I still think un-Christian thoughts about him. So, I wrote my letter to him. I need him to not flare up about Sunday rehearsals and how stupid I am for choosing drama for doing things not worth it lah for being stupid stupid stupid to waste my time when others don't. Please God, take away my anger. Please God, let him understand. Let me have a happy production, please.
I cried, because I couldn't help thinking that they weren't coming for production. They never do. And when I asked my mom, she said, aiyah, shhh, let me watch my tv la.
And sometimes I ask God, why? Why can't I have parents like, like vivienne? Why do I have to deal with all this?
Then I realized that I'm being covetous. I covet a different family. So I try, I do. I try to love them and honour them, but every day, every damn five minutes, it just becomes so hard, you know? "I just get so angry, you know."
Oh God, cleanse my sins, of anger, of covetousness, of chattering and talking nonsense and gossiping and bitching, of not wanting to honour my parents, of being -mefirstmefirst-. Burn it off my stubborn heart, let me submit truly to you. Thank you for planning things for me, for my good and for letting the right people be there at the right time. I submit to you, fully. I re-dedicate my actions, my studies, and my performances to you. Help me Lord, please.
I feel so terribly Donne-ish. But I feel so light and clean. I know I'll fall, every single day and so many times every day. And I will pray, every day. Maybe it seems terribly simple and childish to other people, but in front of God, in front of your Creator, we are only children. I know that in the very very longrun, production doesn't mean much, compared to what others do. But I'm still God's child and He will take care of me, making me part of his plans.
And thank you God, for terence, sweet anchyi, xiya baobei, yuzhe dear, justin, cheryl and all the LEPers.
the rain last fell @ 09:40 p.m., Tuesday, April 20, 2004
"The golden rule for actresses, girls, is that we never have anything in our mouth when speaking! Especially not Harry-bow! (haribou sweets)"
--Mr Perry in a very hoity-toity accent during rehearsal
Ahh, haribu/haribou sweets. What would our cast be, without our daily staple :)
I need to learn how to burp. I think we can get the bawling down, and the honking should be ok. And I'm actually quite Florence, it's...so sad. I found great satisfaction in tidying the uni and scholarship brochures on the coffeetable in tutors' room today! All you Hwach humanz people, put the prospectii (?) back where you took them!
the rain last fell @ 08:52 p.m., Thursday, April 15, 2004
Hello darlings, I'm sick as a puppy. Thanks to my wonderful, efficient and reasonably-priced neighbourhood doctor, however, I think I shall stumble to school tomorrow and attempt to pay attention during Econs.
Ah, production. In case you haven't heard, Mr Perry's changed the play to the female Odd Couple, due to actors not being able to commit. Talk about another uproar. One feng bo goes down and another rises. Although I'm playing one of the leads, literally one half of the odd couple lah, (Flo, the obsessive-compulsive neat freak. Reminds me of my aunt, really), I feel so strangely zoned-out. Nervous, but very zoned-out. All the anticipatory euphoria when he was still making up his mind has just dissipated, because, I guess, I'm seeing how others feel about it, now. It's not so mememememe, now. (But I'm still quite self-fixated lah, don't worry ;))
What can I say, then? That doesn't sound flippant, clichéd, justforthesakeofit? You've got another year? You've got SYF? He might do Comic Potential next year? You never know?
Nah. Maybe nothing is the best way. I should just learn to keep my mouth shut.
Medication kicking in. Woozy.
the rain last fell @ 12:44 p.m., Wednesday, April 14, 2004
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