We had the evaluation session on Open House 2006 yesterday. Many people had came forward to praise the committee for a job well-done organizing such an awesome Open House. Teachers were impressed. Students were equally delighted to receive a substantial goodie bag, to see hundreds of manually-blown red, white and gold balloons being hung up in the air above Central Plaza, and to witness the vibrancy of college life in Hwa Chong.
I feel proud. I am glad by the turnout rate and the success of the event. Yet despite this, when Tai Boon told me that he will choose RJC instead, none of the exhilaration derived from the success of the event is overwhelming enough to nullify the disappointment of not being able to appeal to my junior to join my school.
It feels like you want to share something that you think is worth sharing to someone whom you think deserves the sharing, but this person whom you want to share that “thing” with (kindly) rejects your offer.
He told me that even though there’s nothing special in RJC’s Open House goodie bag, he received “first-class treatment” there despite wearing the uniform of their rival school.
I feel bad about not being able to provide “first-class treatment” to him. But instructions from teachers were that all Chinese High boys are not allowed to get a goodie bag. And our tour guides were told to put Chinese High boys and Nanyang girls on the bottom of the priority list when it comes to attending the students’ needs.
Perhaps it’s this discrimination and underestimation of these students reactions that has caused us to subconsciously offend this group of students.
We forgot that they STILL have a choice.
Of course, RJC is a fantastic school and since he wants to pursue his dream in Theatre Studies as well as joining the Humanities Programme, my brain tells me that he should choose RJC over Hwa Chong, since we do not offer Theatre Studies as a subject.
But my heart wants him to stay.
Haha.. before all of you starts questioning our relationship, we are no more than just friends, a senior-junior type of friendship.
I don’t know if others will feel the same way as me, but to me I would hope that my juniors can so-called “follow my footsteps”…… then I can share all my experiences with him.
I just made myself sounded aged and possessive. Oh well.
Anyways, he made up his mind already. I feel happy for him, yet at the same time, I feel a tinge of disappointment.
It’s like, “Sigh, I didn’t manage to persuade a junior to ‘follow my footsteps’.”
Back to Open House per se, I really had fun.
It was fun interacting with people, it was fun giving lost sheep directions to navigate themselves around the school, albeit the College campus is probably the smallest in Singapore, and it was certainly fun to dance our mass dances in front of all the students.
There was a hiccup though. A problematic middle-aged man who is a typical kiasu Singaporean came to our Open House and grabbed three goodie bags at one go before rushing to grab more freebies (be it just brochures or those random gifts which has practically zero monetary value and only serves a purpose of advertising the particular CCA group). He demanded for a tour guide and seeing that he’s a potential trouble-maker, and being an overall in-charge for tour guides, I went up and attempted to bring him around.
But to my horror, this sparkled off my series of nightmares. He began to question about my past.
“What’s your primary school?”
“What’s your CCA in primary school?”
“What’s your secondary school?”
“What’s your CCA in secondary school?”
“What’s your CCA now?”
“Where do you live?”
“How old are old”
All these deep probing into my personal affairs took place concurrently with his overly-friendly gestures like smacking my arm and a horny smile.
I left him at the Central Plaza and asked him to watch the performance being put up by our school’s military band and I fled as fast as my little legs could carry me.
What the fuck. I could have easily sued him for sexual harassment.
Ignoring this hiccup and my inability to attract Tai Boon over, I still had a memorable day nevertheless.
Oh, for your information, I didn’t ingest any food at all from 6AM to 6PM that day.
Yeah, it was fun and I tried hard enough. The results is encouraging, but I still think I could have done better somehow.
Death Age: 82