Less than three.
Thursday, April 15, 2010 @ 10:21 pm.
CIP at Fei Yue today!
Had a long debate (largely with myself, but enough about that!) on whether I should have brought my guitar today, but in the end decided not to because, technically, it wasn't needed.
I was wrong.
CIP was, in a few respects, an epic fail. But it was an AWESOME epic fail.
Okay, the only reason why it was an epic fail was because we just didn't have enough in our schedule for two and a half hours. But I'd like to call it an epic fail because, for some reason, I always use it in a positive manner.
Started off well enough, with everyone nervous and sticking in clumps on the wall at first, and dispersing very slowly into the crowd. Language barriers were a problem; Vi Chien was the only one who could speak Malay. But in the end we were all reasonably diffused throughout the crowd (although a little quiet) while the itinerary started.
Felicia is quite the MC :) Absolutely AWESOME. Incredibly charismatic. And energetic. Mrs Ng was quipping about how we all knew who to look for to be an emcee at our weddings xD But seriously, even after we ran out of things to do and were brainstorming behind the folded-up table tennis tables she bought so much time for us even with absolutely no material prepared.
Shannon and Tabitha also put in major overtime; they had originally planned for three songs, and brought the minus-one tracks to suit, and then realised that there was no more time. So they kept singing. Acapella. Missed the guitar at about this point. They got people to sing. And dance.
We ran out of pretty much every utensil within fifteen minutes or so, but were left with half the watermelon and one and a half cakes. We were reusing and washing plastic forks (tinged pink with watermelon) and cups. We couldn't reuse the plates because they were paper and soaked up all the watermelon.
And yeah, dancing! Especially after tea. Alison, Stef and Glenda were "backstage" (read: behind the ping-pong tables) trying to figure out a simplified version of the already simplified dance for them ^^
I think we had fifteen minutes - twenty minutes of pass the parcel... or rather pass the mini-football. Again, major kudos to the emcees for buying so much time!
After this, we really didn't have anything on our itinerary any more; we were literally squeezing our materials to dry bone. The emcees/singers were putting on the other tracks on the CDs they had brought, and singing "不会唱...！ 不会唱...!" because they didn't prepare at all 8D So awesome! Deserves applause, man...
During this time Audrey (the proposer apparently) and co. decided to demonstrate the Macarena.
Yes, the Macarena.
To great success. The guests really liked it. Even after we had done it, what, ten times? (to buy time of course), I spotted three ladies sitting in rather unfortunate seats (meaning restricted view; I was standing near them doing the dance too with anyone who happened to be there just so that they could see it xD) discussing the dance steps between them (meaning "is it this before this?" and all that). Couldn't help but point it out to Audrey and co. "backstage".
Oh yeah, Mrs Ng also came up and started doing karaoke very enthusiastically 8D
Anyway, after the rest of us had come up with another action plan to stage a game of Charades and were going to present it, we discovered that the programme had been ended a little prematurely, so we didn't do it :]
So, lessons learned today (ah, we really should have a debrief session xD):
1. Bring more utensils.
2. Make sure that the planned items actually take up two and a half hours.
3. Actually be involved. (I have to admit I don't think I said more than six words to anyone today... but that didn't stop me from trying, trying meaning dancing idiotically beside guests and trying to get them to stand. Without saying more than three words at a time. And clearing plates.) It's less awkward than standing around.
4. BRING GUITAR.