ALOUD!
Saturday, August 30, 2008 @ 9:03 pm.
What happened when I went for ALOUD!:
(Poon and Joey are both my sister's friends so you may not know them)
Around 5: Got to school with sister, waited for Poon to walk up the hill
5: Sister and Poon started doing posters, I fooled around because I had finished mine
5 45: Ate dinner
Around 6: Joey's arrival. Went to find Aud and Carolyn in the queue
Around 6 30: Got into the auditorium and sat down.
A few minutes later: Got up and moved because the people reserving seats were caught by the ushers, while in a row behind I saw many many empty seats with bags on them. Suspicious.
FROM HERE ON SPECIFIC TIMES WILL NOT BE MENTIONED
While waiting for it to start: Talked about people's hair, chocolate, engaged in a more civilised form of gossiping (gasp!), occasionally raised the Ice Waters sign wondering how high we should raise it later as to not hazard the people behind/intentionally hazard them, so on.
Primary Performance: Took notes on my phone, predicted who would win, occasionally made comments to Carolyn, need to use the toilet increased. Near the end Carolyn and I had to look at the programme to see how many performances there were left, to see if we could endure anymore.
Intermission:
1. Ran to the toilet upstairs near the lockers, because the others were crowded anyway
2. Turned on the lights
3. Went in
4. Lights went off. I eep-ed.
5. Went out to see a security guard walking away. No wonder.
6. Pondered whether I should use that toilet anyway or go downstairs
7. Turned lights on and went in to relieve myself
8. Two girls came in.
9. I went out. Wondered if they were going to turn off the lights or not care because the lights were on when they went in.
10. Went back to the place outside the Auditorium to discover that somehow Ice Waters had convinced Jean to wear a tie (non-sparkly). Wished them luck
11. Bought a plate of nachos and cheese, bought a flower for Jean from a very ecstatic flower seller
12. Met a few people
13. Went back in.
Secondary Performances: Took notes on the phone, predicted the first- second- and third- placers with Carolyn.
During Ice Waters Performance: We went and sat on the steps near Zenn and Lau and waved the sign happily. Halfway through the song we went and stood near the stage (at which point I noticed that my flower stem had bent and there was a wet spot on it; the xylem had apparently broken). After the song we all went and jumped on Jean and then went down.
Prize Giving: First place winners for both soloist categories were pretty obvious (Nathania Ong (?) for Primary, Rachel Lim for Secondary). The predictions of Carolyn and I were quite correct, second-place winner for Secondary was off though (Carmen Ko instead of Lu Jia Ling), third-place was correct (Lydia Cheam), first place was obviously right.
I expected the "tie" mentioned by judges to be Juliet and Ice Waters, but it turned out to be Grace and Esther and Ice Waters, and Ice Waters won! So we all jumped up and screamed and jumped and waved the sign. After this point I noticed my mother's smses.
After the performance we all went up to the stage. Gave sign to Stephanie. Hung around. Finally I noticed sister was gone so I took my leave.
The end!
I thought Grace and Esther were somewhat better in the semi-finals. Keyboards were too loud today, and something was missing. Juliet was a little corny at the beginning. I don't know why they didn't at least get the tie, though. Maybe it was the overall pitch. Or general feeling. Or the singers. Or something.
And yeah, the "cleaner" ending for Ice Waters seemed to help. Uh-huh.