musings on the first week of school, in whatever order catches my fancy...
watched funka 2009 prelims yesterday. the host was like KER-RAP, and the incessant "woohoo we're giving away tickets for city alive 2009! whee whee whee!" got on all our nerves so incessantly that it was all i could do not to throw my shoes at him (hur hur hur. nah, he wasn't as incoherent as bush, but ehhhh for the record it's "premiseS" not "premise"). but the groups...!!!!
worth being late for reunion dinner for (although technically i wans't, i just waited around outside for my siblings and mum to arrive. HA. i reached like half an hour earlier than them despite coming down from clementi. clementi-bedok faster than tanah-merah-to-bedok? yeah, where my siblings are concerned.
i think hamzah's pink dollar group was see-rye-ously HAWT HAWT HAWT. yesterday was the first time in my entire life that i finally understood why my sister finds gay guys such a turn on. i mean like WOAH. when that girl (carrie?) in take the lead said that morgan's dancing was "like sex on hardwood" she obviously meant it to apply HERE. they HIT everything that they had to hit and diva-ed everything they were meant to. and they weren't afraid to laugh at themselves either-- i ADORE people who can take the whole homosexuality thing with a huge pinch of salt even where it's themselves they're so liberally salting (as opposed to, say, certain straw-sucking-commentators in parliament). wahahaha the -riding- omg.
seriously one of the best groups that day. the others were impressive too-- i liked raz's group (i think it was the seven-sins one-- really lots of energy) and of course the dismas-qitang-zhiwen one haha. SO CUTE!! omg haha. people said the popping group was good, but i've never been much of a pop-fanatic so although i could see that it was technically difficult and advanced, the act didn't really intrigue me or anything.
fashion, and all that jazz
on wednesday realising that i had like one miserable lousy lecture before dance and an impending eye infection (you can feel the damn itch starting) i decided for the sake of efficiency to just go in more or less my dance outfit. later that day, one of my friends (A-- haha, as much as i hate using initials and acronyms and whatever) ran into me and asked what was with the bball shorts-- if i was playing bball or it was just for fun or something. apparently someone'd made a comment-- disparaging, of course, what did you expect?-- about my sartorial sense, or lack thereof.
i am damn grateful to A for sticking up for me, although she really didn't need to. and concomitantly damn pissed off-- or maybe just roll-eyed impatient-- at how superficial we can be (i nearly wrote law school, but remembering what xf or jia ni said abt how ning's faculty has the same sartorial stigma it's probably more widespread than i think).
seriously, get over the damn fashion already. does wearing a pair of guess heels and holding a miu miu clutch make me a better person? if the person next to me has on louboutins instead of guess, does that rank her better than me? pretty much all my life i've been so incredibly hung up on fashion-- some of my clearest memories of primary 5 and 6 are what outfits i wore. do you know how pathetic that is? no? how about how ridiculous it is to almost miss the 21st birthday party of your favourite cousin because you declare, practically in tears of pique and rage, that you have "nothing to wear", or to have friends wait for you, the perpetually late one, because you change an average of seven times before venturing out of the house?
ha. that last one i'm sure any of you who have known me long enough can DEFINITELY attest to (and unfortunately haha it still persists and has spread-- xf!).
there are wayy more important things in life. they say clothes maketh the man-- well sure, if you want to be that kind of man. i am FEMALE, and PROUD to say that i refuse to let fashion DEFINE me. precisely one of the reasons i never wanted to pin myself down to a particular genre of clothing-- punk, goth, prep, flowery-country-girl-- because how different is "obsessing over cltohes" different from "eating and sleeping" as hobbies (which, as i have said before, i absolutely detest)?
i accept the argument that one has to look presentable, but eh it's school, not prom night or an interview. and it's not like i'm forcing you into a pair of spanx or something right, or even asking you to wear reversible fbts. plus i'm sure (too) many people force-fed the alternative contents of my wardrobe may be quite inclined to agree that fbts and a tee are wayyy preferable to some of the skankier items i've got. eurgh.
come on people, loosen up. wear what you like, ape what you want, admire and all that, but don't act like a dress-down day is apocalyptic in a world where us's in a freezing cold snap, australia is plagued by out of control forest fires and india's got flood damage. talk about outta whack. fashion's all very well on its own, but frankly we'd probably all be a lot happier if we all ran around naked or in tents.
i'd vote for the tents.
inspiration
long enough spent on inconsequentials. wednesday after alvan's item prac we went off just in time to fail to catch weina and karen's funka prac and headed for home instead. joo teng and i took bus 10 for a ways, till harbourfront, and we had a pretty edifying talk. he'll be teaching fulltime dance for a while and-- i don't know, i guess sometimes you realise that merely having "passion" isn'tenough. there's responsibility, and sheer doggedness, and maybe that can take you where passion doesn't. because passion may be satisfied, but a compelling sense of duty takes you to the brink and beyond and then some. i think he made a very incisive- as in cogent, and sharp, and also cutting-- comment: too many people in blast are complacent. that is one short nose-tilt away from stuck-up, and frankly it's true-- we've always felt ourselves to be superior to, ah, certain other groups that i shall refrain from naming.
but it is this same complacency-- this same satisfaction with where we are, how much we've ahcieved, how perfectly excellent we're dancing- that will be the death of us all. we're not that good. at all. and being happy little clams-- dancing utterly within our comfort zones-- is like cycling breezily along with a wicker basket and a straw hat along a winding countryside path with very pretty scenery while everyone else is zooming past on a high speed expressway. sure it's pretty-- for now. wait till you bite and choke on their dust.
seeing how hard and how much groups like d'hoppers are practising scares me. btu at the same time-- coupled with joo teng's words-- i can only hope it's going to spur me on as well. :)
short-takes:
i want a new era cap. :( for those days when my hair sticks up at a ninety-degree angle to my forehead.
on a random note-- to everyone typing "seeking for" and "craving for"-- i think the for is superfluous. you look for, but you seek. you hunger for, but you crave. yes?
i have no clue what is going on in equity.
i am pissed. the tee i ordered as a belated bday present apparently didn't get ordered because the spree-er wasn't sure of the cutting. ARGH. freak. :(:(:(:(:(
GUYS ARE LOUSY DRIVERS. ok, some guys. but seriously the people who make me curse under (and not so under) my breath on the roads are almost infallibly MALE DRIVERS. what's with cruising along at 40km/h along the expressway to the clementi turn-off during rush hour? when there are NO cars in front of you?! so that i have to drive on the freaking road shoulder just to get past your sorry ass??
blehhhhh. shall pay attention in equity now.