The past 48 hours and the next

I think some of my classmates expect a daily post from me, so i apologize to the ppl who dropped by yesterday and expected a post. Yesterday I had no time to post anything at all. So I am going to make up by posting now.

Yesterday was hectic. Woke up around 8 to eat breakfast then meet my PW groupmates William and JunKang for PW discussion. Following the rude email from Mrs ******* the previous day, we decided to meet up urgently to discuss our following steps. We discussed and then decided to confront Mrs ******* to talk about our PW project. But when we went to the staff room, Mrs ******* was not there. So we decided to consulted a teacher that was a stranger to us since we had no choice. We consulted Miss Huo.

It turns out that Miss Huo was a great help to our project. She watched Freedom Writers before, so she undestand our project fully and raises great suggestions and points out weaknesses in our project. She helped us to tackle the problems too. She is much better help than our current PW teacher, and is almost comparable to Miss Ong. Coincidentally, she has contacts to help us in our project. I feel so fortunate to have sought help from Miss Huo. Thank you, Miss Huo.

After the PW meeting, it was lunchtime. Me, Jk and William discussed abit more then me and William went to have lunch at Coro. I headed back to school for more dreadful Change concert rehearsals. We rehearsed till about 10pm then me, Jia han and Shen hong went to Serene to talk cock and relax. When I returned to the boarding school, it was nearly 12. Bathe then sleep.

I woke up late for Change rehearsal this morning. We were supposed to reach there by 8am, but I reached there at 8.45 am. I was glad to have found everyone back and rehearsing. Karlton, Pao Pao, Hui Hua and Si quan came back from their respective camps. We danced much better today probably because everyone is here. Actually, it does not sound logical, but its true. When all the dancers are present, we tend to dance better because we would have more energy.

Anyway, we made our way to SBG (Singapore Botanical Gardens) to rehearse at the stage there. I think the rehearsal today is the most fun and productive. The rehearsal went along quite smoothly. Us dancers have alot of time to slack throughout the rehearsal, so i decided to practise my baby-freeze. Finally, I managed to do the baby-freeze! Though its like the most basic freeze, but I feel damn happy to be able to do it. Me and the MAD dancers left around 6.30 and we had dinner.

After dinner, they proceed to Esplanade while I come back to the boarding school. As I'm typing this, they are probably practising at the Esplanade. I am damn freaking shagged already.

So tomorrow is the concert day itself. I dont know how the turnout will be. Hopefully its a substantial amount. I feel excited for the concert but I also feel kinda sad. Tomorrow is the last day I would be working together with the MAD Bboys. They are a fun and unpredictable bunch, and slowly, I feel attached to them. They treat me like I'm already in MAD while I'm not. Especially Glenn. Check out the closing credits he made for tommorow's concert:

"......Thanks to the dancers from MAD: Si Quan, Hui Hua, Karlton, Jia Han, Wilfred, Pao Pao,Chuan Khim and Sheng Hong......."

Once again, I feel honoured to have met them. Actually, tomorrow there will be a number of MAD ppl that will be coming for the concert (part of the reason being they wanna watch Glenn acting as the emcee), I wonder how will they react when they here my name in the list of MAD and then they realize i'm not. Oh well, anyway....

Tomorrow is actually my first Hip Hop 2 lesson at Oschool, but I wont be attending because of Change. Sian. i really want to go. We must reach SBG by 7 plus tomorrow morning. crazy la. I suffer from fatigue. I think i go and bathe now then maybe jus sleep all the way.

Wasted

I feel that my whole day is wasted because of Change practise. Seriously. When I got there around 1pm, I find that I am the only male dancer that turned up. No wonder Sheng Hong said that he doesn't have practise today in his blog. I practise for like around 1 hour, then do some self practise of shimmy and indian steps (no, it's not a indian dance step. it's a bboy move). Then the very effecient Change Admin (can you sense my sarcasm?) told me that I'm not really needed today. Wow. That's totally not wasting my afternoon.

I was worrying about the copious amount of work that i need to do for PW then suddenly you tell me i need not be present. Because of the efficiency (or ,rather, inefficiency) of the Change Admin, I have wasted my afternoon when it couldbe spent doing my PW. Haiz.

Next year, I don't think I want to get involved in Change or anything Ge Fang organizes.

I think I shall have dinner then start researching for my PW, though I don't really see the point of doing research. In the end, I know we will stick to our current proposal anyway. The teacher want us to change our proposal, the more I feel like sticking to it. Call it plain stubbornness, but I am hard-headed about my group's plans.

Mood: Angry & Frustrated

Imagine waking up to a...............

freaking letter that tells you to redo your project. I emailed a certain PW teacher-in-charge in my school about my PW project. Me and my groupmates have spent many hours on our GPP and we are happy with what we came up with. Our topic is the journey of the Freedom Writers (for those who are oblivious to the term "Freedom Writers", pls go and Google or smth) and our proposal is to get the teacher to come down and give a talk to the juvenile delinquents in Singapore. In addition, we will conduct a reflective essay workshop with her and get the juvenile delinquents to write an essay on their life, then compile the essays into a book. The book will be handed out to youths to prevent youths from living a life of crime.

I bet you guys think my group's proposal is crazy right? Well, actually, I think it's crazy too, but it's do-able. My group have already finalized the GPP, wrote a letter to Erin Gruwell (the teacher of the Freedom Writers). We are already preparing to contact the Freedom Writers till we learned that we need to go through a series of procedure. The first in the list is to get the approval to the school and our PW teacher. Since Miss Ong left us (gosh I miss her lessons), we have Mr Chiong to teach us. Since he is overseas now, I decided to send the letter and GPP to Mrs ******* for approval.

Check out the email excerpt we got from her:

"Dear Wilfred,
1. PLEASE DO NOT WRITE TO MS GRUWELL.

2. You are not authorised to carry out this project, and you definitely do not have the funding for this, nor the necessary access to the proposed teenage journey takers. If you write to Ms Gruwell you will be misleading her.

3. You need to focus your research on the needs of the propsed journey takers.
The current stage of your PW should focus on the following:
> -- Do some reading on the causes of juvenile delinquency in Singapore and in other urban environments.
> -- Try to find speeches made by social workers, counsellors and therapists about the causes of delinquency and the needs of delinquents.
> -- Check the websites of organisations that deal with delinquents in Singapore.
> -- Find out what programmes are currently offered for delinquents in Singapore. Also, what programmes are available for delinquents as well as programmes like wilderness bootcamps etc for misbehaving teenagers (there are some such programmes in Australia, for example).
> -- Then tailor a programme to suit your target group in Singapore that goes beyond the current programmes in singapore. This should be an ADAPTATION of programmes not available in Singapore at present, as well as aspects of Grunwell's journey. This will be your planned journey.
> -- In order to find out if your planned journey will work, show or talk about your PROPOSAL (NOT the whole GPP) with therapists, youth counsellors and administrators at institutions for teenage delinquents here in Singapore.

4. Trying to contact Ms Grunwell is IRRELEVANT to the project.

5. My advice to you now:- Put aside your GPP for now and focus on getting all the above information together."

Check out point number 3.
Isn't that almost equivalent to saying "redo your research". If she said that, it would have saved me the agony of reading the email. You don't think that we have done our research and looked through the alternatives???!!! The only thing that Singapore is doing for the juvenile delinquents is putting them in jail and give them counselling. If the teacher doesn't think so, she should try doing some research too. My group is giving the delinquents a chance to change themselves and here a teacher come along and say "no"! Outrageous!

Check out number 4 too.
"Irrelevant"? Hello...... Ms. Erin Gruwell is the key person to our project!! I can't believe a teacher in our school would say contacting the most important person to our project irrelevant??!! WTF!! JunKang sms-ed me and said that she probably want us to tone down our project. The point here is that we WANT to carry out with such a large scale project, unlike some other groups who just wanna scrape through and barely get an A. We want to do the best project HC has ever seen.

But I couldn't argue with point no. 2 though. My group need to secure the sponsorship first before asking her to come. And we also need to contact the Boy's Home/ Girl's Home/ Boy's Hostel first. At least she's right about that point.

How I wish Miss Ong was still around to give us guidance. Our idea is crazy but she encouraged us to go on with it. I spoke to her on Saturday during the class outing. At least she didnt give my group the *raised eyebrow* look and ask us to redo our proposal. We need more teachers like Miss Ong and Miss Erin Gruwell. Like seriously. They sacrificed their time and pride to reach out to students and give them the best guidance. Even though Miss Ong has left the school, she still helped us out in our project.

To add on to the shitty morning, I still have Change reheasal to go to in the afternoon. I dont see the point in having the reheasal when half the dancers cannot make it. Karlton, Pao Pao have Fac Comm Camp. Si Quan and Hui Hua have BSP camp. I bet the others have things on too. Today's just not my day. But now I must worry bout my PW.

Nvm. Mrs *******, we will improve our letter and get the necessary funds for our project. Next week, prepare for our improved proposal! We are not going to give up or tone down our project! And we will freaking contact her! If we cannot contact her in the name of the school, we will contact her with our names. There's no offence in doing that. We'll be back!

Life is dance, dance is life

Wow. I wanted to start blogging a long time ago but always never had the time to do it. Finally started blogging. There are tons of things that I wanna blog about. I think it's important to keep my memories alive so that they are not forgotten.

I wanted to start a blog because life in JC is so fast-paced and packed that I want to keep track of it. Currently, I am involved in Change concert. (I can jus imagine Si quan and other MAD members yelling f*** at the mentioning of Change concert) There's rehearsal like almost everyday and thank god there's no rehearsal today and tomorrow. I am feeling damn shagged already from PW and schoolwork.

Alot of people asked me whether I'm in MAD or not. Well, I'm not. I failed the Hip-Hop auditions. Both of them. I jus can't freestyle when I'm nervous. Anyway, when I tell people "no", they would usually give me a quizzical look, like only MAD ppl can dance or something. Actually, there are many dancers out there that does not belong to a club or group. I go to O School to learn dance and I feel fortunate to learn there. I have this damn zai instructor named Daniel and he is damn good at teaching. He's damn funny too.

Anyway, I feel fortunate and honored to be dancing for Change concert. Mutton called me last Monday and ask me to dance for them. It turns out they have shortage of male dancers. The reason I feel fortunate to be dancing for Change is (no,not because i get to meet a gay singer) because I can dance with the other J1 MAD ppl. There are 8 male dancers and I'm the only one that's not in MAD. The others are Hip-Hoppers/BBoys. Karlton, Hui Hua, Siquan, Jia han, Sheng Hong, Chuan Khim, and Pao Pao. I feel damn honored to be dancing with them. Oh ya, I got to meet Glenn and Wilson (J2 BBoys) too. Another reason I feel honored is that they kinda count me as their "brother". I feel honored and ,at the same time, awkward bcoz I'm not in MAD.

But it saddens me that we are only working togeteher till this Sat. I learned alot from these guys. Like I learned shimmy, salsa, cc & other bboy moves from them. After this Sat, they will be working on Inspire'08 and we will part ways again. How i wish I can perform at Inspire with them. Ah well, I guess i have to look forward to OSchool Recital (the annual OSchool Concert) at the end of year. I am confident I will do well for the Hip Hop 2 and Hip Hop 3 course, and pass the auditions for the OSchool Recital (annual Oschool concert) at the end of year.

Anyway, I think alot of people that reads this doesn't know what is OSchool. OSchool is a dance studio near City Hall. Thay are consdered the best dance school in Singapore and they have the best instructors there. i feel proud to be an OSchooler. Now, I am bringing my friends there to learn dance like my classmate Wang Yi. He's not bad, considering last week Hip Hop 1 lesson was one of the hardest and he catched up swiftly.

Well, it's getting late. I think I should practise my shimmy and salsa. Shall post more tomorrow.

P.S. Jus received sms from Mutton. Got Change Rehearsal tomorrow! WTF! sian