It's always like this - all the tough work first, then the actual thing just breezes us through like nobody's business. This performance is the last of us Secondary 4s under the name of Anglican High School Guitar Ensemble, which is kinda significant to us. Call it a farewell gift to the school - we helped our school raise some funds for the new indoor stadium.
Anyways, I reached school at 8-plus. It was such a bore at first, with only the few of us waiting for the rest of the Secondary 4 group. The usual stuff - get your stuff ready to go to Victoria Junior College to last yourselves one whole day until dismissal at 10pm.
Crapping around and talking nonsense among the juniors was common, and it always happens whenever there's events that we participate. This bus trip from Anglican High to Victoria Junior College was no exception. I guess by the time we reached VJC everyone had a common topic to talk about - we were put inside Lecture Theatre 4, and boy, the entrance stank like rotten cheese left there for years!
There we stayed, there we crapped, until the dry run session. Sean and Jiayu was performing a guitar solo and dance duet - something that probably those Renaissance art enthusiasts would consider "class". Meanwhile the rest of us Sec 4s were preparing for Lovers' Theme and El Vito, as well as Walk in the Woods by the whole ensemble as one. After the dry run, lunchtime was what all of us were waiting for.
Due to Wei Jie's stature, he was nicknamed Marcus Khoo, after one of the teachers in Anglican High, who is both fat and knows how to play guitar. He soon became the centre of our attention, being made fun of by us during lunchtime and throughout the rest of the waiting period before the performance, though of course, there were no hard feelings at the end of the day.
Thanks to the air con valve blowing directly down from one end of the elevated lecture theatre to the bottom end, I managed to turn my hair into a semi-permanent mess with the help of some hair wax to bring my fringe up. Finally, after years of hair length control by the school, I can finally whip up a presentable hairdo while still leaving my hair long and heaped at the top! At least now, the school authorities have less power over what we do to our hair, as long as we give them what they wish for.
Despite rehearsals and dry runs, and endless practices, we still messed up at some point in our limelight. Lovers' Theme was alright, and the beginning of El Vito was okay too, but at the transition part of the song to the second half, some of us were playing too fast and the rest, too slow to catch up. Luckily for us, there was another pause within the music score, so we managed to come back as one again at the ending, and with a "Ooh!" and multiple hand-poses we caught the audiences' attention and received roaring applause, despite the fact that most of the top-deck seats are empty and that most of the audience are at the bottom deck.
After the performance, I got my bird whistle from the backstage, saw Sean, and gave him well-wishes before his duet, then went back to the stinkin' Lecture Theatre 4 to start boring myself until the interval was up. Meanwhile I was telling about Jacob and Benedict of our screw-up on stage and they were like, "Whalau, you guys suck lah. Look at us, we only Sec 3 nia, can perform much better than you guys leh. Summore, we Lambada people go first leh."
Well, okay... Wait till one day you screw up, and tell that to your juniors. Most likely you guys'd probably get a similar answer.
After the whole performance, we went back to the Lecture Theatre 4, only to find more of our seniors coming back as alumni members of Anglican High! People like Song Han, Wan Ling, Xin Lin, Xinyi, Si Hui, etc etc... Heartwarming sight, to have people who were once part of us coming back for moral support and chatting about life after Anglican High graduation. Thanks, guys!
Of course, good stuff always has to end at some point in time, and so we parted ways at Victoria JC. Some of us went back home by public transport, while some of us came back to Anglican High in order not to waste the money paid for 2 chartered coaches to bring us back to school.
To keep things short, Harmony 2008 Concert was a blast!
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