Friday, August 10, 2007



[Amphitheatre]
Me - 'We'll just use this half (of the stage)'
Darrell - 'Then where's backstage.'
Me - 'The other half of course. It's the back of the stage, so of course backstage lah!'
Zhi Yuan - 'Then where do I stand?'
Me - 'In the centre, in the middle of the cross-hair I mean X. X marks the spot.'

Rote-Learning should burn and die.

That sentence has basically summarized my feelings towards our education system, and I shall not more elaborate. I have other things to reflect about.

But first:

It's not often that you get to pick your subject. Well, yes, granted you do, but how many pick one of the more 'rare' subjects? Sometimes, I wonder if taking Literature was the right choice. It's not a subject that can be memorized, unlike Biology, where if you memorize, you score. Literature's unpredictable, and it's way harder. It's not just cramming information into your head, it's actually putting that information to use. It's something that has, embarrassingly, become a chore - Thinking.

Yet today, of all days, made me realize just how right Literature is for me. It's been a Literature day, you could say. Heyhey.

Walked back through the waiting gates of Victoria School, 2 Siglap Link at 8+ after my parents graciously acquiesced to drop me off. Opened up the ELDDS room, choking slightly at the musty, but familiar and warm smell. Stoned for a short while, then played Dota until Daniel called me and told me he'd be late. Darrell arrived just after, and we did a bit of the script. Zhi Yuan came, and then Daniel. Made Zhi Yuan run to the CO room to get my pencil box and the black gown. He came back without the gown, and I sent him back, then called Alphonsus. As I clicked off the phone, it occured to me how film-noir that was. If we were in black and white, and had this toughguy accent, it'd be perfect.

Darrell is damn funny I tell you. His Foxiness is really uncanny, and right-on-the-dot. And his lines as Lysander are just precious. He has, undoubtedly, the absolute most hilarious line in the entire play, and he manages to deliver it with such great aplomb.

Not to mention our various references to real-life people. *Snickers*

That's so repetitive
I know.

Heh heh =)

I'm worried about Daniel and Zhi Yuan though. Mostly Daniel, because while he can definitely memorize the script, I'm doubting his deliverance of it. It seems more like a reading for him, but it's a dramatization.

Sheepy and Iceman came down at around 12ish after completing their homework. Iceman had to go to Tampines Mall to watch a movie so he declined lunch. Yang En agreed though, and stayed on for 45 minutes to watch us rehearse =)

This is about the only time you're going to see this, so you better take screenshots or whatever.

Yangy roxxorz my soxxorz!!!!!!!!! xD

Wei Liang just reminded me on MSN that WongLiangSeng's vibrato is really spine-chillingly fantastic.

Ran through the play twice, and it's still not quite satisfactory. I'm hoping Raphael gives us Monday's lesson for play rehearsal as well, if not we'd have to use Tuesday, and frankly I'm not too keen on that. Tuesday should be used for touch-ups, and we will use tuesday, regardless. But I still rather have Monday to really practice, and Tuesday to just correct minor flaws like movement.

I'm worried though because our play is really based on movement and speech. While that might sound mind-numbingly obvious to some, it's easier said than done. Too often, a person can do one, or the other (or neither) but seldom able to do both. Without the proper deliverance ( posture, movement and tone constituting deliverance ), our play will most certainly lose much of its 'splendour' and hilarity.

But you know what? Here, a preemptive toast for our preempted success. If I can't have confidence in this, then shame on me.

Lunching with Yang En was...weird. I think, we began thinking it'd be just another happy conversational lunch. But it was more silent, more subdued, and definitely not very happy. It's not that we argued, but the topics themselves were more sombre.

It's taken me far too long to realize that people are really scared of thinking. Why think? When the media tells you, when the newspapers tell you everything to know and want to know.

Feel this way about this incident. Feel that way about that incident.

Not only do they tell us what happened, but also what to feel about what happened. If it were presented in a purely objective ( impossibility, but let us for a second hypothesize ); if it were purely informative, how many of us would actually know what to feel. Often, it is the language, the tone, the manner in which the author chooses to write that really influences. It would not be untrue for me to say that right now, my post is affecting you. To what extent, I can't say, but it definitely affects you.

Maybe Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451 ( an excellent book and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who wants to enjoy an intellectual book filled with fact-inspired fiction and inspiring contemplations )has influenced me far more than I've actually realized. But Farenheit 451 ( the temperature at which book pages begin to burn ) has opened my eyes and mind to the world out there. And really, the world not that.

I'm beginning to dislike technology. It is not that I advocate a return to a non-technological age, because that'd be impossible, short of a global nuclear holocaust. But rather, I see an over-reliance on technology.

Take my life for example. Was it not a mere 5 years ago that my cousins and uncles used to meet up. And when we meet up, we didn't carry laptops or handheld games or the latest goods and what not, we simply carried words and ideas. And we sat down and talked and teased and bitched. Yes, it might not have been so 'enjoyable' as 16straighthoursofComputerGames but hell you know something, it was alive. Because in our conversations, there was actually life. It wasn't just stupid chibis bonking stuff with stuff, it wasn't Elves, Dark Knights and Dark Wizards blasting stuff, but it was a real life. It was people talking, perhaps not exchanging anything revolutionary. It was the everydailities of their own lives, normal incidents that wouldn't change the world. But at the very least, there was some soul in those words. MSN, SMS, Emails yes you can express feelings through them. But what better way than through actual spoken-and-heard speech?

Now that computer games have been so damn rampant in this world of ours, it is the unequivocal thought of most youngsters to play play play play play games games games games games games and more playing of more games. Doesn't anyone else feel empty just playing games all day long? How fun can it be, and how long, living a virtual life?

A walk in the park
A quiet afternoon with a book
Drinking a cup of hot milo then sleeping on a rainy day.

To me, these hold far greater entertainment values than computer games. To play them occasionally is alright. But to have your life revolve around when you and your friends can next play that game of DotA is just bloody stupid to me.

And now, to my newly-discovered annoyance, restaurants have come up with this new system of express ordering. For those of you who don't know, this system basically has the patrons write down their orders on paper, then pass it to the chef/counter, have their orders processed and then served. It is efficient, no doubt.

But hell, if I can't even talk to the person who is going to be serving me my food, then I don't want it to be that efficient.

Life moves too fast, and I'm going to slow down, step on the brakes a little. Everyone can shoot me by, and I'll be poddling along behind taking my time to enjoy a real life. Something that involves real people, and technology. In that order.

So let me now retire to bed, and tomorrow's outing with Alphonsus, Yang En and Vincent shall be an enjoyable and fulfilling one. And in it, let there be something for me to think about.

For at the end of the day, if there's nothing to think about, that day is wasted.