Crescent Dance SYF 2007

(Wrote this thing for an informal ten-minute descriptive writing exercise sometime this year, happened to come across the file today, thought I might as well put it up.)

Pitch black. The emcee announces the name of our school, our anthem of pride, a legion of beautiful and courteous young women, the mark of dignity and grace. We rush out to the stage, small nimble feet, each girl carrying a white box with bold red flames painted on two sides. We don't need the stage lights or markings on the floor to know where to stand – we have rehearsed this a million times, etched it on the back of our minds. Our bodies know the number of strides to make, the number of seconds it would take. We run, smooth and graceful as swans, our red skirts trailing behind us. Gather in formation, groups of four across the dark stage. I can’t see my little circle of four, but I know where they are. We stack our boxes without making a sound. Lie down, curled around the boxes in a loose fetal position, my head on someone’s thighs, someone else’s head on mine. Anticipate.

It’s actually quite a comfortable position. We’ve done it several times during nap breaks at dance camps, our thighs serving as one another’s pillows. It’s always a curious sight, girls giggling as they sleep in circles. You all have to lie down at the same time, or someone’s head will end up without a pillow. It makes for a cute picture; it speaks of family.

Silence now, and a deep breath. It is still dark. My makeup is heavy on my untrained, fourteen-year-old skin. The floor is cold; my spine trembles. I cannot help but grin for the world: it has begun. The music comes on, a slow drumming beat, the tinkling of metal beads. It makes one think of the rainforest, of dewy green leaves and magical lights. A girl begins to sing, and the spotlight comes on. I am facing the back of the stage, but there, curled on the floor, I know that the lead dancer is beginning to rise. Her hands are cupped as if in anticipation of fire, and she is swaying dramatically according to the beat and the eerie song. I lie there, soaking in the energy of the music. My time is now.

(Ngh, was contemplating not putting the video here because the quality's so bad, but haaayyy gold with honours HAHA. My heart still races just watching it, remembering all the practices in the school hall, watching the amazing seniors practice the really difficult and tiring and beautiful sections again and again.)

School Pride

There it comes again with its occasional tide of gratitude: I feel so tremendously fortunate to have been a part of such fantastic schools, fantastic not because of their reputation but because of their culture. I know lots of schools that focus simply on blind memorising and drilling. I have friends who've always been in schools where they were bullied, felt out of place, or didn't feel like they could learn. I know of secondary schools where teachers refused to give extra lessons, where the quality of teachers was also incredibly low; where teachers didn't believe in their students; where girls offered finger f**ks and sold condoms; environments where self-harm was a thing, and lots of places where your relationship count mattered...

I feel so grateful for Jurong West Primary, Crescent Girls', ACJC and Yale-NUS, where both the teachers and the students always strove (and strive) to create a loving, nurturing environment, where my character and leadership development was shaped and refined; and, most of all, for the spirit of love that permeated each of those schools.


In JWPS, I was the only girl in my class who spoke English at home, and so my Chinese grade was the worst in the class. Our class would sit together at recess, and I remember once when I was walking up to the line of tables I saw my classmates speaking to one another in Chinese, but once I was there with them they automatically switched to English, even though they weren't speaking to me. At the age of eleven, such consideration.

And the teachers - Mdm Beena, who really treated us like young adults and went out of her way to talk about taboo things that were actually useful - things concerning pre-marital sex and relationships. Mdm Phua, whose house we still continue to visit during CNY, almost a decade on. Mrs May Foo, the one who called me her "little angel" because I helped her with marking during recess time. She recognised me at Starbucks too, 6 years later.


Crescent years, the years of puberty and hormones and all the girl drama. Despite what you can't help, I will always remember the days of lying on the ground with our shoes out and our skirts all over the place and our shorts exposed and just not caring. And crazy girls hiding in the toilet to scream their fangirl love over some TA guy as he walked by. I went back to Crescent to visit a couple years back, and as I sat on the seesaw two girls passed by, one crying and the other with her arm round her. And it reminded me of the days after my breakup in Sec 4, how Annie and Mingxuan skipped recess on separate occasions just to counsel me; I wasn't even particularly sad on those days, and I wasn't even close to them, but they just decided to show some care. Just so much love and selflessness and openness, and I can never repay it. In Crescent there was a reassurance in all the turbulence: my heart sings when you sing and cries when you cry. In Crescent, the teenage rebellious spirit translates into such unity and love, displayed in the crazy national day song-singing and the way we scream for our school.

The teachers in Crescent, too, were so focused, nurturing and dedicated. Through Mr Lee (hehehe), Ms Ho Liyi and Mrs Rupa in particular, I learnt that when a teacher is passionate about a subject, it rubs off on you, too. Mrs Rupa was the one who helped me discover a passion for writing. The first essay I wrote after my first breakup was the first time I realised that you could inject your true emotions into writing, that magical touch. She noticed my attempt to write from my heart, and praised it so publicly: not only did she make me read it out to the class, she also said that when she was reading it to one of the triple-science classes, she was "holding back tears". I really don't think it's that good at all, but that was my first attempt at creative writing, and I will remember her words forever.


And hohoho ACJC

Too many lovely pictures to choose from - from the fantastic Telunas resort retreat to the days we went absolutely insane in the Council room laughing at anything and everything, to our vuvuzela wars, to the amazing Orientation madness. What I love about the 35th Students' Council is our ability to find fun even in the most stressful of times. Cleaning out the mud pit after an exhausting day of Orientation? Throw our president in! I remember once during June Camp, in the midst of all the stress, a few of us sat on the couches and just broke into uncontrollable laughter for the longest time, just out of nowhere.

Thank you, ACJC, for really nurturing and developing me, and for adding on to what Crescent taught me about school pride. I came to ACJC with the goal of being super-involved in everything, and taking the initiative to make friends. OG Rep, Class Rep, Council and then the Exco, five CCAs - I succeeded in my goal, and the school let me. The school embraced my enthusiasm, despite my lack of prior experience, and I learnt along the way. I made all these stupid mistakes in Council, but Mr Fong was always patient and nurturing, never scolding me, never harping on the past but asking "So what can we do about it now?". I started with "nothing to offer but a heart so full and these empty hands", and ACJC injected my empty vessel with gushes and gushes of colour.

 

Being in charge of producing the school's first planner was one of the things I was most grateful for. It involved me sitting at the computer the entire holiday, but when I saw juniors holding the book, or when I saw ACJC stickers on the desks, I felt so proud. And now when I go back to ACJC and look at the painted bleachers, I think about that last-minute, hastily-submitted proposal by Annabelle and me, and I feel so proud, so glad. Oh and sports updates - sports updates :3 So my juniors say I "bounced" on stage a lot (probably because I was tiptoeing at the podium), and they couldn't really see my face anyway, but the weekly "GOOOOOD MORNING ACJC!!!!" was just...so fantastic to be able to do, given my crazy enthusiasm. The year after, my PR Head junior told me that when Sports Updates resumed, people came early just to make sure they would catch it. People didn't want to be late on Sports Updates days. It made me so glad to be able to contribute to the AC spirit.
(No pictures of CCA Updates because it's basically just a podium and maybe a forehead)

ORIENTATION 2011 (credits: Lianne's Orientation 2011 albums) 

So yes, ACJC was pretty much the best two years of my life...until Yale-NUS came along. I won't elaborate on this because I keep talking about Yale-NUS's awesomeness already, but I must say that I wouldn't trade my Yale and Greece trips for the world. There's just something about travelling to the other side of the world with 155 classmates with such talent and such personality and such love, and while the Yale trip was all about the community spirit, I learnt so incredibly much in Greece. Being taken to all these majestic ruins, learning about the stories of these buildings, recognising the stark, in-your-face dichotomy between the past and present, and what they still hold on to.

Also, I don't realise it often, but Yale-NUS has shaped my thought so profoundly. Philosophy class, in particular, has opened my mind to so much, and I start questioning things in different ways, looking at things in such new light. Right now, I have kind of concluded that there's nothing we can be absolutely certain about; all we can do is live in our culture and our time, and accept it as that. But that makes you see things very differently, and when people ask questions about God and goodness and whatever, I feel very fortunate to be able to think about these things and come to resolutions, or reconciliations at least. And it's so important to think about these things; to think about why we are who we are, and why we stick to certain beliefs, or why we choose to do certain things. Questioning the things we hold on to, so that when we come back to them, we come back on much sturdier ground.


Anyway, I feel so fortunate to be able to say that a particular school was the best time of my life, until the next one came along. Not a lot of people have had the opportunity to be in such nurturing schools, places where both the students and teachers genuinely love you and want to build you up.

Happy Founder's Day! A few of us at Yale-NUS kicked it off by screaming the ACS Anthem out the window at at midnight, and we'll be Wearing Our ACS on Monday. But more than my AC pride, I carry with me the immense pride and love for all the schools I've been fortunate enough to be a part of. Thank you for making me the person I am today.

Crescent, the O's, and pride

At around this date last year, I was teaching at my alma mater with Geri and Rachel Louis, calculating Sec 4s' 'O' Level scores and completing that Powerpoint presentation to be shown in the hall before the release of results, to make sure everything was right. It wasn't that significant to us because we didn't know many of the students from that batch, but it was still fun to know that we were looking at these girls' results while they were probably freaking out in panic somewhere.

Didn't go back this year, but I sure miss that nerve-wrecking, nail-biting excitement. Every year, the news stations come down, and we know we're tops again. (Together with St. Nick's. I have nothing against St. Nick's. The friends I have from there are absolutely amazing.)

Every year, they talk about our average score of 9-point-something and how we're a Band 1 school yet again, and every year we cheer and laugh and for a moment, we forget our own nervousness, and just bask in our pride for the school.

I guess I'll miss that, whether it's for the O's or A's. Sitting in the hall hearing your friends' names being called on stage and just feeling so proud of them. That crazy excitement. Insane tension. Just a tsunami of all the emotions in the world in one auditorium.

This year, the Straits Times posted three pictures of Crescentians crying upon the release of their results, with the caption " Disappointment and tears flowed with the release of 'O' Level results at Crescent Girls Secondary". (Yeah, for the record, it's Crescent Girls' School!) It sparked a huge rage among Crescentians, present and past, and they started ranting on Twitter, Facebook etc, because people felt it was an invasion of the privacy of those whose crying photos were posted without their permission, and it portrayed us in a pretty negative light. I mean, one happy photo and one sad photo, fine. But three sad photos? And apparently the other schools' photos had everyone smiling and all.

So anyway, it sparked an outrage on social media, and apparently someone emailed a teacher, who called the Straits Times, who took the photos down and replaced them with happy ones (The happy ones are so nice; why didn't they use them in the first place?), and corrected the name of our school.

In response, people who weren't from Crescent tweeted things like "Looks like the girls from @CrescentSoFly showcased the power of social media & made @STcom change their photos. Not bad. #OLevelResults" and "I'm not from @CrescentSoFly but I find it cool that those girls were so united and civilised even when fighting for themselves. #Impressed".

Yup. I didn't get to witness all this first-hand because yesterday was an insanely hectic day at the office. Left the workplace at 11pm. Credits to this junior who blogged about the entire thing!

But yeah. I'm just really proud of this school, and so glad to be able to call it my own. I'm proud of the unity and how we all stick up for one another. How the school has brought us up, how we sit like guys and change in class, how we team up. I remember when I was in Sec 4, the Council tried to introduce a new cheer to replace our old one ('Give me a C!'). My class and those around me decided that it was a stupid idea, and refused to cheer to show our disapproval. We never heard the new cheer again, and the C-R-E-S-C-E-N-T cheer stayed.

I'm proud of how the school brings us up to be gracious, yet persistent, and never to settle for anything less than the best of ourselves. I'm proud of the culture of love and selflessness. I've had friends who gave up their lunch breaks just to be with me when I was down, even if I wasn't close to them. I'm proud of our integrity, and the nurturing love. Secondary school is a time where we all fall, but we knew we were all falling together, and so we shared that understanding and helped one another get through our own tough times. I'm proud of my Crescentian friends, who have gone on to pursue bright paths, but who have all remained big-hearted, gracious and sincere.

Of superficiality, conformity and weirdness

Someone once commented that people from single-gender schools are full of superficiality - I beg to differ. I did seem to see a lot of it in one of the better classes, I guess, where the people were used to that kind of pressure - the disgusting atmosphere I feel I'm in now. Where you're always watching your back and afraid of bitching, feeling like you have to give in to peer pressure, feeling like you can't be who you would like to be because you'll be talked about and deemed "weird" and thus become friendless. I hate it and that's also why I was quite glad I didn't decide to opt into that class.

Anyway, I know it's not a single-gender thing. Sorry, person-who-said-this, but Crescent Girls' School was the best experience ever even though it was a considerable lot of shit for me. It was shitty a lot but the one thing I loved about it was the warmth and genuineness of the girls there. Complete strangers could laugh insanely and joke about common topics (usually the teachers). Everyone was friendly and mostly innocent - if one person didn't like another, we'd usually tell that person, trash it out. It was good. And there were people we could really count on. There were people whom you knew would be there to do anything they could to make you feel better (like sit with you for an hour, or skip lunch / sacrifice fifteen minutes of having fun with her friends to share her feelings with you even though she isn't close to you, or send you "virtual cookies and a hug") and you knew they meant everything they said and that they genuinely cared.

Or maybe 4S2A'09 just rocks. (:

But yeah, I don't think it's a single-gender school thing because a lot of us feel the most attached to our single-gender secondary schools. It's because when there isn't anyone of the opposite gender around, you feel free to do what you want to do without having to care at all about anything or anyone. Things like screaming your head off to support your friends, changing openly, singing like a maniac at the top of your voice, and this:

I've also got a lot of other pictures of fellow Crescentians sitting in unglam, uncompromising positions and looking very lesbian with each other (unconsciously). Oh, the days where we could sit like ah bengs and not give a care.

I think superficiality isn't a single-gender school thing but an elite thing. I don't know why but most of the people I perceive to be elites (or see themselves as elites) tend to complicate things a lot, and they're mostly the ones who live in that bubble of gossip and backstabbing and wariness, that choking pressure. I mean, "She told me they can sit in the library for four hours and bitch about her the whole time, because she's one who likes to bitch about others as well"?!?!?! Come on, why complicate things?

You could choose to view everything simply and have a positive and understanding view about everybody, like me.

"Weird" is the reason kids get beaten up at playgrounds in America. I never heard anyone use the word "weird" on anyone until I came to ACJC. And now I suddenly hear it all the time. "Who wants to hang out with him, he's so weird"

Weirdly enough, it's these people I feel compelled to hang out with, even if they wouldn't make the perfect friends and, yes, may seem queer at times. I'm not saying Cuixiao's weird but I know she would be seen as the epitome of weird people had she come to AC, and I know a lot of people wouldn't hang out / be anywhere near her. But she was my best friend in Crescent and she's still a great friend.

It's a harsh world out here.

Crescent

I'm here at the nice place behind the canteen, with the seesaws and table soccer and the random exercise bicycle that I highly suspect still doesn't work. There's the sound of piano-playing coming from the mini forum and the screaming of girls in their dri-fit tees in the field. I see juniors with Tablet PCs and a pang of nostalgia hits me - oh, how I miss my cracked, creaky, old tablet. I hear the PE whistle - more screaming and laughing.

Ooh, cute SJI boy looks back at me - he's probably here for the music elective programme. I see a Councillor sitting at a table a distance away, sitting unglamly like an ah beng. I want to laugh. "Girls, please sit properly when you're doing your O Levels in the hall... we don't want to hear any complaints from the male external examiners."

I hear noisy cranes and machines in the background - they're building the useless indoor sports hall. I see a girl with teary eyes being guided to the fitness corner by a friend. Ah, the beauty of innocent, true friendship in secondary school.

What's missing is the sound of all the Band members practicing their own parts in various parts of the school (resulting in a somewhat melodious mess that follows one everywhere in the compound).

Screaming and running and unglamness and blouses of a gross shade of yellow. I don't feel at home, though. I'm alone here and there's no Dance practice for me to crash. I feel lonely in my wonderful alma mater; there's nobody to take in all these sights and sounds with me right now. I'm thinking of Yingyan. Joan. Jenna. My wonderful dance Laoshi whom all of us miss terribly.

I look at the girls in the field and wonder if they'll feel the rush of love and nostalgia all of us experience when we come back after we've graduated. I wonder how many of them are still despising the fact that there are no guys here - do they realise how wonderful and precious the memories of being in a girls' school will be in time to come?

What do I miss most about Crescent? Having our very own classroom, the place we have all our lessons and where we can do whatever we want freely (just don't tell the teachers) - change our clothes openly, sleep in the weirdest, most contorted positions on the floor, scream and laugh and sing and run around (Remember Cuixiao's old Chinese songs?), blast music, have random H2H chats with pals, lie on tables, do all the stupiest things ever -

Your classroom's a place you develop a relationship with, your own personal space in the one place where you spend 7-12 hours every schoolday for four years . Not having a classroom thanks to the homeroom system in JC makes me feel homeless in this "second home".

The Original School Song

Oh how I love this version, it's so beautiful and so... beautiful. The band plays it with so much pride. I love it. Please don't tell me they recorded a whole new not-as-nice version (thank you Band and Choir for the effort though) just because they wanted it in a lower key. We're a Future School and we students know that Audacity can be used to change the pitch with the click of a stupid button.

THE ORIGINAL SCHOOL SONG HERE!

We've officially graduated but we'll never say Farewell

Took 161 pictures today. Album's HERE! I uploaded so many photos via SIMPLE UPLOADER = 5 AT A TIME thanks to screwed bulk uploader. Treasure the photos. Shyan'd better not untag herself from my photos. Will post the link up when the album's done.

I leave my school with too many regrets - there are so many things I have yet to do, so many people I wish I had made friends with or gotten closer to.

I owe all my regrets to my fear of ridicule, to my shyness, to the "what-if"s that take over my mind. I hate that.

A word of advice to anyone: If you want to do something, just do it. Even if you've got your reputation to lose, at least you tried. I hate having regrets.

The first picture Shyan doesn't look unglam in and actually looks almost as pretty as she really is in my pictures. She was the one holding the camera; that explains it. And I look bad ):

Janeen pasted that sticker on my nose.

Janeen: Come, let me measure your eyes! ....0.2cm.

Glenda: OI!

Janeen: Okay okay 1cm!

Because we didn't have Chem today, Teryne, Azalea and I spent an hour camwhoring around the school.

The Arts Conservatory is beautiful in the morning when the sunlight filters in.

And we discovered a PIANO ROOM!!!! Great, on the official last day of Crescent life we realise there's a room we never knew about. I love the room. It reminds me of Japanese gangster student shows, where there are all those super cute guys with tucked out shirts and ruffled hair.

Teryne: Of all the flags, they had to put US and Vietnam together! ?!?!

Glenda and Cuixiao will forever remain the legends of 4S2A. And Bella but I don't have pictures of her today.

Cuixiao: "亲爱的...." HAHAHAHAHA

Ah, farewell assembly was.... unmoving. Even Kelly didn't come close to shedding a tear. Our video rocked though (and 4S2b's). They didn't have the candlelight ceremony this year because, according to Ms Ang, they wanted to "save wax" and "save the Earth". I can't really argue, I guess, because I do want to save the Earth too.

Class party was okay. People liked the brownies my mother made (from a mix HAHA)!

= proof. Wanmin: OOOH!

Jenna, Janey (I think), Teryne and I danced to Let It Rock HOHO LOVE OUR MASS DANCE FOREVER. Eh I thought Ms Ang said there'd be a Best Mass Dance? What happened to that? ):

Jollin and I MUST go to Kbox and sing JJ and SHE songs together someday. Just the two of us singing our hearts out. Must. And take neoprints also.

Love you Jollin (:

I can't believe we didn't take a class photo.

HEEHEE
I had to make my mark before leaving. It'll go away soon but I don't care.

I made sure it could still be seen subtly (: