well, just got back from band camp, and here are some words to describe it:

Crazy
Fun
Motivational
Tiring
did i mention fun?

anyway, we started out with standard band stuff eg. sectionals, concert, practise with juniors etc. then we went on to not-so-standard stuff like: lunch, dinner, station games, sleeping, watching movies. i shall elaborate soon.

sectionals are pretty standard, with us playing assigned pieces among seniors (me), and then sparing some time to teach the junior sec 1s (ashley and samuel (we stole him from the trumpets)) their progress has been so-so, ashlee has learnt how to play a song, albeit simple, and samuel is still learning everything from scratch. and i have to teach him. wheee... anyway, when we go in for concert, the sec 1s go out for drills. they absolutely love doing drills.

concert is the typical tuning then mr. oura comes in to conduct affair. as usual, we euphos get lots of rest while the other sections eg. horns get screwed by oura's sarcastic comments. the new songs are quite peaceful and nice; this is true as the St. Florian Choral nearly put me to sleep. especially at the first part, where i have about 24 bars of rest. *snore*

meals were all provided for by aunty azzah, quite nice actually.

station games were largely random and sort of fun, but you realise after playing each one that there is some sort of lesson to learn from each one. for example, the chairs-and-rubber-bands game was about teamwork, and it would not be possible to win with soloing the entire thing. other games like the blowing-ping-pong-ball-around game showed the importance of having a good breath whenever doing something. or at least, during band.

then came the motivational speech. the sec 4 seniors took their turns to tell us about why we should be extra hardworking this year, especially our batch, since this year we're taking over and next year is SYF again. thinking back, they do have a point.

showering and sleep was long awaited, though as murphy's law dictates, something will go wrong. and something did. i'll tell you what.

first, after searching a while with Shang Shuen in the Raja Block for a empty shower cubicle in the toilet, we finally found two, i went in one, locked the door, drenched myself with water, and to my horror,

realised i left my towel back in the room.

poooooooooof.

fortunately, the pe shirt that i changed out of was pretty absorbent (compared to the dry fit crap the sec 1s are wearing), and i managed to dry myself to a large extent. i was lucky not to catch a cold.

next, we went back together. we parted ways, and i went back to managing my room mates. i tried to play card games with them, but as luck would have it, none/not enough of them could play taiti/bridge/hearts etc. (shock! horror!) anyway, card games are not allowed as usual, so i gave up trying to persuade them to learn, and we ended up playing other stuff like Truth or Dare (i got truthed.) until it was time to sleep.

oh yes, sleep.

i decided from previous experience that a sleeping bag would be unnecessary, and that tables would be rather comfortable. i was right, and wrong. tables are rather ok to sleep on (i also used my dry towel as a makeshift blanket/pillow) but not if there is a 24 deg. air-con blowing constantly at you, plus the fans are turned on to full. the first 3 hours were ok for me, but halfway through the night, i was frozen awake. really. for the rest of the night until about 4am, i was pacing around the room trying to tire myself out, while my room mates were all curled up inside their sleeping bags zzz-ing away. just then, i had a brainwave.

sometimes during REALLY BORING sectional days where all you did was play the same song for 4 hours, it would be common to see me head slumped over my music stand. why? rest , of ocurse. so i learned from experience, and placed my head in that position, towel over head and arms to prevent frostbite. and then, just after a few minutes,

bliss...

until 7.00am, where our friendly band major Gerald popped in to extricate me from Dreamland. oh well...

the rest of day was quite normal, until they decided to watch some dumb movie about a boy who wants to dance ballet. oh please, how predictable.

broke camp at 3.30 plus, and went for extremely early dinner at around 4.30pm at McDonalds, and then had dessert at Swensens. just then, it started to rain again. before this, if not for austin's mother fetching us to j8, i guess we would be much wetter. thnx austin's mum.

after all that had to rush over to cousin's house for some stuff. nearly missed the stop on 156. woke up just in time to press the bell. phew.

sry if my writing seems abit uncoherent, since i'm writing this at about 2.30am. can't write any more, if not my eyeballs will fall out due to tire.

Till next post...