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Good morning Ichigo!!!

Hey there my avid readers! I school has finally been declared open! Whatever happened for the last two and a half years does not matter! It's what ahead that counts! And by the way, chemistry test is tomorrow! Good by- I mean, good luck!

It really did take a while for the school to be finally declared open. Seriously, to the not so average student in this school, it seems that it's been half our future in here gone already (for my year at least), and they finally declare the school open after so long. It seems so... long. (I seem to be gaining Mr Lee's abilities.)

Mr Lee: Long division is long.

Well said Mr Lee! I would also like to take this opportunity to thank him for his teaching skills, as well as my mom... sister... dad...

I would like to begin reviewing the school's opening ceremony performance. Out of a score of 100, it gets...

65

Sorry, folks. This is all you get. I know... I know.. all the hard work you put in right? Let me finish. Let me start even. Alright... Here's the truth. It was too ordinary. In fact, if it was still ordinary, it would have been fine. However, I can't help but feel that the whole standard for the performance dropped a notch as compared the previous speech day and student investiture, not the mention arts fest performances. In those events there was always something new... A play, a lucky draw with the third prize being a heavenly massage from our dear Mr Kevin Koh... Whatever happened to that?

The eight thousand dollar pyrotechnics did little but suffocate and blind the audience, not to mention I can't hear my mom anymore, although that my not be such a bad thing. Sure, they were new, but nothing special. In fact, the only reason the pet rocket launching went fine was because of a timely save by Gary, and in fact, from what Gan tells me, they actually joked about an excuse to use if the rope didn't burn and Gary was able to recall that excuse and use it in time. Really! On national tv? A bit humiliating, ne?

And about the performances themselves... This could take a while. For the performances themselves and alone, I give them a score of...

55

I'm being nice here. Really. The dances and orchestras saved the whole thing. But barely enough to make it acceptable, when compared with the performances at previous events. Here's the cut:

The acting was corny.
The whole script was shaky.
It failed to capture attention
And where did Boombox come into the whole matter? That actually made me scream out Sh*t. I apologise for that... Were they runnning out of performances? Why did the Boombox guy suddenly come in? It looked like filler to me.

I must commend the dancers and orchestras... They saved everyone. They always do. But the choir was rather shaky, but not as bad as the acting, in that it lacked voice projection. I could barely hear most of the guys, and I was sitting at the third row from the front. So it's a possibility that the minsters were wondering when the next performance was going to start. AND they were singing the same song. So they get an acceptable score.

But if the dancing and music were fine, why the low score? The acting. But how can one performance pull down the score so much? Because it wasn't one performance. It was the glue which stuck the whole thing together. And since the acting kept popping up again and again, it's incredibly hard to forget the corny and unrealistic acting that comes in REGULAR intervals. Everytime, deep down inside, you commend an orchestra or so for a wonderful performance, there shows up the golden kernel goodness and it spoils everything.

I've said it, so there. Sue me. Wait, no! Don't sue me!

Oh, and allow me to reveal some information (inside information) on the school mascot. The task of designing the mascot was given to the Art Club, which I am a senior member of. It was like this:

We had to
1. Make an introductory video for the mascot
2. Design the mascot in the first place

and the medium we orignally used was claymation. It composes of frame by frame animation made by taking photos of clay figuirines while varying the position and poses of the figuirines only so slightly after every shot. Well, why they chose this troublesome medium, I can't understand. Probably for its uniqueness and home made feel or something, but anyway, onward.

The original storyboard I didn't quite adore at first, but compared to the video we actually showed at the ceremony, which was in FLASH, which has nothing to do with clay, for those noobs out there, the original storyboard is a blockbuster.

I'll get the video on the site soon... but it was supposed to be a sepia video of some little miscellanous clay penguins that we made all rolling up into one ball (it was kinda cute), then the mascot being moulded from that ball.

We were three quarters done through that bullcrap when we were told to change the video. First half of the video was scrapped by the administration, and then all of the claymation was scrapped and replaced with an under- one minute flash video.

Did I mention that Yu Han (he's a genius, both aesthetically and academically. And the aesthetic part, try not to think sick) and Elston (Chicken Little! owns all!) slaved their rears away in a hot stuffy room taking countless photos? And working overtime? And all my precious editing in Photoshop on a lousy Mac with erratic mouse sensitivity went to complete waste? And that Yu Han had to redo an entirely new video, with Flash only? Yeah. I think I just mentioned it.

And we never really got to design the mascot anyway cause the Student Council decided it all for us.

I'll try an upload the original videos for the mascot soon. Just got to get Art Club this Friday. Yeah.