Leave

Those Boring News will be on a hiatus for as short as possible, because That Boring Reporter is busy with other aspects of her life and to make things worse, That Boring News Anchor can't be bothered at all.

OK LA.

I'll be extremely busy for the next few weeks, I'll still try to dig time out to update and write my diary. Hopefully I'll have photos around to post too.

01082006 - Matriculation Day! I still need to shop for stuff that I..well, need
02082006 - Checking-in to Sheares Hall in the morning, and maybe going ROM for Yi Xin's - no she's not getting engaged - friend's engagement. Accompanying Yi Xin there..I'm not blaming her, but I rather stay in my room or go pack and settle down or go check out stuff
03082006 to 12082006 - Science Orientation Week. And I'll be dropping by the hall orientation too
05082006 - Sound check for national day concert at Jurong, Mus'Art's performing. Don't think I can go, will be in orientation
06082006 - Mus'Art's performance
09082006 - National Day. I can't make up my mind if I want to go for NDP. I need to rest, but I don't want to miss out the action, and I hate to go for NDP without my mum who had been complaining that she'll be missing out this year's
13082006 - Beautiful Sunday (Mus'Art's performance at the Esplanade)
14082006 - Lectures will start

So it's about 2 weeks plus that I'll be totally occupied, plus there may be some freshmen stuff to do, like joining NUS Wind Symphony and the kind. In addition, I want to concentrate on my studies.

Argh. I'm still so busy. I need a week of slacking days!

Get well soon!

Hui Ying had to undergo a minor operation last Thursday and been discharged on Saturday and glad to hear that she's recovering fine!

That made my day already.

School is starting soon

Sigh...I'm not looking forward to school at all..perhaps it has been quite long since I last stepped into school to study..and I have a lot of things to prepare for! And I'm extremely lazy...

I'm moving into Sheares Hall on Wednesday morning...I feel so odd all of a sudden. The house will be much quieter, many times I guess my dad will be having dinner at home alone. My mum will wake up to an empty house, my brother will be having his own life too. I'll be coming back during the weekends or whenever I can, but for the next weekends I'm not sure if I can make it. Hopefully I can.

I hate to leave my family and my life in the East.

So many things to do that I haven't listed out...things to buy, things to move and the like. I don't have a lot of time left.

Suddenly I feel so down.

A birthday

Happy 15th birthday Chiaw Hong!

MJC 2nd College Day

I went back to get my Colours award since we got Gold for SYF 2005.

I saw Jorcelyn (affectionately known as zhu-si-lin back in my JC days) and she told me she reached school early in the morning for a rehearsal. I was like 'Huh??!' So it was that she's the Sportswoman of the Year la!!! Wah, they don't even have some kind of Female Musician of the Year or anything like that, I'd stand a chance =P Kidding. And back to Jorcelyn. She's the Sportswoman of the Year! Of OUR year!! So cool la! Then she was the last few to go up to the stage and she stood there while Mr Colin Cheong, her ex-rifle-teacher-in-charge, read out her citation. So good!!! And her trophy is tampered glass lo. As in real glass. Those kiang-kiang noises and not those dull thud of plastic when you knock it. But the engraving of her name was wrong. Her name was engraved as 'Jocelyn' without the 'R'.

Zhu-si-lin being interviewed
Ju Ling and I

We had to wait in LT4 for a rehearsal at noon. In the end it turned out to be a briefing which started at 1pm and lasted for ten minutes or so. Waste my money, I took a cab there because I thought I was late. I could've reached at 1230 had I taken a bus instead.

Me, Pei Ling

The guest-of-honour, Mr Tan Teck Meng, was a funny guy. When he was addressing us, he was talking in a very amusing way and cracked some jokes. Haha.

Here's the Chairman of the College Advisory Committee, Mr Tan Teck Meng
Jorcelyn on stage!

And in the programme, my name was typed wrongly la! They typed it as Lim Wan Ching Edna. I seriously don't know how they saw Erina to Edna or whose handwriting was terrible. But on the register my name was correct. And I worry what if the certificate printed my name wrongly?

Well at least Edna didn't appear in the engraving of the coin and cert. Erina was there, but...



WHO THE HELL IS LIM WAI CHING ERINA? wth. It's the band's records la, not the first time I saw Lim Wai Ching there already. But I'm still pissed okay.

For the whole day my name came out in different versions. My name was Lim Wan Ching Erina (which is absolutely correct) when they sent me the letter to inform me of the College Day, Lim Wan Ching Edna in the College Day programme, and Lim Wai Ching Erina in the cert and coin which must be correct. So in the end I returned the coin and certificate and need to collect it someday later. What a waste of my time! I won't be able to get them in time to come since I'll be in the west during the weekdays.

It's a waste of my whole day la! Didn't sleep much because I reached home late and slept for about 4 hours? In the end I returned home with the empty coin holder.

Ever had so many errors to your name in a day? wth.

Anyway, we had a reception in the canteen which was Elsie's Kitchen buffet. I quite like this company's buffet, they somehow never disappoints. I went around and looked for my teachers, I talked to Ms Michelle Wong (my previous civics tutor-cum-econs tutor), Mrs Low (my maths tutor!), and Ms Choo (my chem teacher). And I took a picture with Ms Choo and Jorcelyn.

Ms Choo slimmed down a lot, comparable to Jorcelyn already

Ju Ling's chalet

I was invited! Thank you darling.

I had to rush from work to the recital, then from the recital to Ju Ling's chalet-cum-BBQ. By the time I reach her chalet it was like 10pm plus already. The way there to Costa Sands is so scary! My phone jammed on the way there so I couldn't call anyone and ask them to pick me up T_T

It was damm fun la. Hahaha. The crazy Geraldine and Benny doing some cookie advertisements while dubbing each other, i.e. Geraldine sounded like a guy and Benny sounded gay.

I felt quite bad that even though Ju Ling should be the princess and we should be doing the clearing, it's always her who was cleaning and I didn't know how to help. AiYa.

When Ju Ling's Temasek friend arrived it was cutting cake time. Pei Ling got her this Banana Chocolate Fudge cake. It was a tasty cake, just that it's too chocolate-y for my liking. And along the way here..the cake almost collapsed. Well, the layers slid against each other so if you look at the cake it is slanted to a corner of the box.

Blowing out the candles
The birthday girl

There were real cut bananas in the cake! Which is not bad. It's from choc.a.bloc. I don't know the shop, but it's in Bedok North blk 86. Just around the Bedok 85 market I assume. If you love chocolate cakes, it's the place to be.

I got bored at some point sometimes and I went around entertaining myselves. I was sitting on the bed with Geraldine, Wee Kiat, Joel, Zheng Hong and Fabian. Chatted with Fabian about Aichi Meiden and it was so nice, like going back and enjoying the days with the Japanese.

We were playing around with the camera and video recorder which was quite funny...if they ever put it on youtube I'll post it here.

Signed 31072006, 1444hrs

Tuba and Friends

Mr Louis Yeo's farewell recital at YMS. Sort of a fund-raising stint too.

He was playing pieces accompanied by the piano, and after that accompanied by Aaron, who played a duet with Mr Yeo.

The last song they played (I don't know the title) about friendship was really really nice!

I didn't take and photos though.

Mr & Mrs Chua were there too, and when Mrs Chua saw me she suaned me, saying that I shouted across the hall at VCH (I shouted Shota's name that time, if you read the post on 25072006). She said something like '我不认识你！' Haha whatever~

Mr Yeo will be flying off to the US to further his studies in August. Sighhhh. So envious yet another farewell. But he'll be back in about two years' time.

Signed 31072006, 1418hrs

Tried shopping

But failed. Asked Yi Xin to go around shopping with me at Marina Square and in the end she was the one with shopping bags, not me.

After scouring the whole Marina Square we went back to Xin Wang for the yuan yang. And more.

And this time the yuan yang wasn't as tasty to me as the first time I tried it. Haha.

Dumplings

French toast. I don't like the honey part. It's not maple syrup and it's a bit too sweet
That's Yi Xin's jam and peanut butter toast

So in the end I spent my money on food today instead of shopping. Sigh. I need more clothes to pass my days.

Signed 31072006, 1407hrs

First Mail ☆

Tomoko emailed me!!!

I'm soooooooooooooo darn happy la!!!!

Soooo happy!!!

The subject of the mail is "First Mail ☆"~

Haha Tomoko is soooo cute! Got the ☆ there some more~

But she emailed from her cellphone...so it seems that there'll be trouble if I was to email her photos. Never mind, she's got a computer with Internet anyway, hopefully can send to there. However I just heard that her computer is down. Oh no.

I also want to develop photos and send it over to Japan!! I'm soooo looking forward to all these la!!!

I miss them!!

Hopefully I can get their addresses asap!

Signed 31072006, 0200hrs

A birthday

Happy 19th birthday Ju Ling!!

And they had to leave

It was time for them to go home, back to Nagoya, Japan.

It was a very very hard moment for me. I hate this parting. There'll be a gap in me that will take me sooo long to fill. Band life became so much more happening and fulfilled in these six days.

I can't speak Japanese except for the basic arigato, konichiwa, and iichi, ni, san that we would say while taking photos. They can speak and understand English but they're not so good at it. There were many times that we had difficulty understanding each other, but music bonded us ever so closely to each other. Music knows no boundaries, so there were no barriers between us. I thank the guy up there for the existence of English, and of course most importantly, music. I thank this guy again for leading me to join the Band, if not I would not be satisfied with my life at all.

At MJC
I went back for the farewell practice (which in the end wasn't a practice at all). Waited quite a while for them because they went to JB in the morning and we had to finish up the board we were supposed to do for them.


We helped the Japs pack their instruments back into the cardboard boxes and taped them up. I managed to help a bit more la, they're slightly less reluctant.

After which we all settled back into the band room and were separated, each school on one side of the room. And I didn't know what happened in between, I went to meet my Hai Sing junior to pass her a score.

I returned to the room to see some kind of kill-time interaction going on. Mr Wong sat in the middle, and as he could speak a bit of Japanese, he was the mediator. An MJCSB member then selected someone from Meiden whom they may be fond of whatsoever, and shook hands with him or her in the gap in the middle.

Felix sabotaged me, he told Mr Wong that I chose Mr Ito. Please la, I didn't even say anything much about Mr Ito. Felix's explanation was that I took a picture with Mr Ito the previous night. So what? I was very furious but shrugged it off la. Angry because it's a conductor that we're talking about and it isn't a fact at all. I grew so red that everyone was laughing at me. Irritating. AiYa, Felix got to shake hands with Tomoko ma, so of course he'll be damn high. Hmmph.

There were no initiatives from Meiden's side, it's always us sending people up. Yan Qing shook hands with the cameraman (ironically), the Meiden students who came forward most of the time are Toru (the stringbassist), Tomoko (the very kawaii tubist), the Jap drum guy, and Fukuda (the baritone saxophonist). Jennifer shook hands with Shinya, she thinks he's pretty! Haha. And I agree!

Killing time with the match-making thing
Watching a slideshow of the photos taken during the week that they were here
Their captain giving a speech

If you notice, hanging from the projector is a bunch of blue stuff. Well, don't underestimate that! The Japanese made that for as, it comprises of 1000 over paper cranes sewn together to form that large ornament. So nice right? So touched.

Then there were all the speeches again. Mr Ito and Mr Kajiyama taught us this cheer that the Japanese do when a very good event happened. You have to clap and yell a bit...it goes like ta-ta-ta rest ta-ta-ta rest ta-ta-ta rest ta and you shout 'AH!" or something like that. So it is clapclapclap, clapclapclap, clapclapclap, clap-AH-clapclapclap, clapclapclap, clapclapclap, clap-AH- - - and you repeat for I don't know how many times and you applaud at the end. Easy to catch the rhythm all that la. And we did it together =)

Clap along

And we had some spare time which turns out to be time for what is termed as 'cam-whoring'. Took as many photos as we could.

The tuba section! Can someone tell Samuel not to sneak at the back anymore? He seems to be like this for every photo
Shota and I with the board
Shinya and I
Felix and Shinya

I'm envious that Shinya was stiff when he took the photo with me yet so relaxed while taking with Felix. Never mind, they're a conservative lot I guess.

With the cute Tomoko!
Ah, that look of bliss on Felix's face

In fact I think that was a nice picture. Don't float, Felix. Though I know you floating in air will be a tad too hard a task to accomplish. =P

Kidding la! Orh la orh la ah gu gu gu.

Kimberly and Shota
Kimberly and Tomoko
Kimberly and Shinya
Candice and Shinya
Candice and Shota
This is the Japanese drum percussionist with Kim
Shota looked so obliged and I was smiling spastically
Felix and Shota

The Japanese had to go to the Night Safari after this, before proceeding to the airport back to Nagoya. Even though the fact that I'm going to send them off later and I'm going to see them in a matter of hours, I still cannot help it la. We gathered at the assembly plaza and took a group shot of both schools. At that point I saw some Jap girls crying and I thought I felt my heart jolt or something.

After the shot as we followed them out to the bus-stop for them to get onto their busses, something came over me and I cried! I don't remember what happened and then Kim they all saw me and were sort of consoling. Then Tomoko turned around and saw me crying she was like 'Ohhhh!' And hugged me. Even as I type now I can feel the ache on my cheeks. It was such a nice gesture that money can't buy. And I cried even more. Haha. Shota and Shinya were on the bus already. Shortly after Kim, Candice and Sabrina (from euphonium) were crying and they blamed me for infecting them. Sorry la. Just don't look at me. And the Jap cameraman was poking his videocamera (those studio recording kind) at me and I hid behind Kai Yan. I could make faces in front of the lens, but not to let the Japanese see me cry.

When they left I went to throw the wet tissues away when Mr Wong called me. I turned and he said '哭到这样 (cried to this extent)!' I whined a bit and said I can't help it. And I saw that his eyes were red! I was like, 'Mr Wong, your eyes are red!' And dunno Felix or Kai Yan or Hong Wei asked if he was crying, he didn't reply and went up the stairs. Awww...first time that I knew Mr Wong is like that!

Since I had time to spare I went home for dinner. On the way back I was practically on the verge of tears la...so stupid! Haha. Can't stop myself from feeling that way.

~~~

At Changi Airport
I went to find Felix and Hong Wei at the Terminal 2, to find them huddled at the computer unit and typing 'Tomoko Ono' at Google. Irritating. Haha. Samuel didn't come, I don't know why.

When the Japanese arrived at the airport, instinctively Meridians went to help.

Queuing up to load their luggages

Felix is and was so irritating! He went to the weighing machine (meant for luggages) and weighed himself there, with the digital metre showing us his weight! Haha I won't reveal his weight here la.

Sabrina asked me if I were to cry again, I said with a loud 'No!' and added 'I'll try not to cry.'

And when they were more or less done with their luggages, cam-whores (read：照相妓) reappeared .

Kai Yan and Tomoko
Tuba and stringbass sections
Shinya, Kimberly, Shota, Felix, Candice, Ms Sia, me, Kai Yan
Me, Toru - it's like the last few minutes that they're in Singapore that I went to take a photo with him
Jie Ying and Toru
Kai Yan and Toru
Kai Yan and Shota
Cliff reading a message in Japanese for his fellow Japanese section mates
With the stringbass girls. I still don't know who is who
The section! Shota had the Chip (and/or Dale) handphone holder on his head!
Shinya and Kai Yan taking a stiff photo. But at least they smiled!
I LOVE THIS PHOTO! Hahaa it's a very well taken photo!

Shota was at first quite stiff because he was holding on to lots of stuff, then I asked Kim to help him hold so he could be more comfortable and that was what he did!!! I didn't expect this, but...wa! I am and was elated! And dunno who around us were like 'Oh Erina, so this is what you want huh?' wth. Haha.

I like the way the Japanese pronounce my name, they can catch it quite easily because they got names like Eriko and Whatever-na etc, so their way of saying Erina is very very nice and smooth and natural! Singaporeans always take a while to get used to my name.

This is Mr Ito in the MJ PE tee that Mr Wong presented to him and Mr Kajiyama

When Mr Wong gave Mr Ito the PE shirt, the latter immediately took off his jacket and wore the tee over his top. So sporting la! And he wore back the jacket with the MJ tee in there. I heard that when they left he was still wearing the shirt! So nice~ Mr Kajiyama changed into the PE tee shortly afterwards, he was busy.

Trombone and stringbass sections. Ryan was giving a stern face
I don't know his name. Either this or that. Haha. He's a euphonium player and he's a joker. But very adorable
The euphonium girl
He's a flautist. He trims his eyebrows, even though there aren't much left
This is the more serious euphonium player

After that their teacher-in-charge was shouting some instructions in Nihon-go, and Shota said 'Oh...we have to go.'

Mr Kajiyama then gathered us up and talked to us as a whole, he was thanking us etc, until he said something like, 'We treat you like real brothers and sisters,' That was when I couldn't control and broke down again. (And the cameraman poked at me, again) And so, chain-reaction undefeated, Kim, Candice and Sabrina wept too.

And they really really had to go into the customs already...we walked them all the way there, forming a passageway with us on two sides for the Japanese to pass through to the doors...I was already crying like whatsoever la..and Shota and Shinya waved bye and Shota looked at me and gestured not to cry (goodness I can feel like I'm going to cry now). 好不舍得...Then Tomoko came and she came and held my hands and said something like 'Erina! You are like a real sister to me.' And I cried some more! It sorts of aches to finally know how she thought of you. And there they went.

When they left, Ms Sia was shooing them home and she saw me. '哎哟! 哭到这样!!' and I ran away from her, away from the suaning haha.

But this isn't the end! Plans are ongoing for MJ to go to Nagoya soon. I hope to go ASAP 'cos I wanna see the Japs again, but I hope to prolong it so that I can have time to save up more and if possible go for Japanese language lessons! (I don't know how I'm going to cope, but surely hope I can make it!)

I love you all so much!

Signed 31072006, 0136hrs