14 posts tagged “djr1”
Everybody loves the underdog.
Well, I think so, and if not, well, because it's me - you better damn well do.
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I got a phone call on Thursday from Ben, senior Course Representative for Journalism (as well as my boss in the Student Welfare Committee's Welfare and Facilities Department), telling me that he was going to nominate me for the School Rep elections that would commence next Thursday. I thought, hey, sure, okay. As I was not around at the time - a supersession with Jaziel and Josiah and Shafiq in wonderful rounds of Call of Duty 2 and, um, Quake III...
WE WON EVERY SINGLE CTF MATCH. Jaziel and me were leading our teams, where we played rounds of Carentan and Matmata and Stalingrad, yet victory was ours each time. Also, I was top player in everything except Stalingrad. In the Deathmatch games I was always near the top - not always the winner - but that's fine. The CTF games were amazing. In Carentan we had seven on the Allies and three on Axis, so I switched to Axis, even though Allies were winning. We still won. Whoo.
And yeah. So I got back and lugged a bunch of notes to the Journalism lecture. Came in about fifteen minutes late. Like five key people weren't there: Visha, Julia, Tabby and Sarah seemed to have come down with an illness of some sort. Fever, I hear. Visha had it bad.
At around three me and Rui Ern were called down from class to meet Ben and his set of friends to get me formally nominated. He gave me a short speech - the fascinating speed of his words made the brief length insignificant - about how nobody outside Public Relations (PR - the biggest course in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities) has ever won the Rep elections. Yeah. Went upstairs, had three signatures for the full proper form, ta-da! I think I shall have Rui Ern as my running mate.
Tabby was on my side as my Campaign Publicity Manager (a position she has come up by herself). So yeah. I think this should be a fun ride. We'll be campaigning by the start of the week. Vote for me!
...Too many photos from my Streetcar performance. Here is the first selection, to make you want to see the rest. Aye?
Our staging of A Streetcar Named Desire was on Tuesday, for, and I quote, "One Night Only". Actually it was one evening. Afternoon. Whatever. It went really well. We got a 90% grade for it (combined with the presentation score). Okay, actually, 27/30, but that's 90% to me.
It is truly a miracle that Amirul B Ruslan looks this good at half an hour past midnight, having practiced since ten.
Table-reads at 2PM. The magical fingers of Julia coupled with whatever adhesives Eason uses on his hair has resulted in his extremely different look.
Triangles, dammit.
Each and every of my actors preferred their table reads over their actual rehearsals. I think it's because they get to sit down. In any case, the rehearsals are funnier. I ad-lib a lot and generally make several fools of myself, and drag everybody down by forcing them to stay awake til two. No wonder they enjoy table reads. Interruptions often dot the process, with somebody asking "So where's stage left? And why am I exiting there if my house is stage right?" Also, it's always funny the first time when you read the script and there's an offbeat comment on my part regarding the play. In our scene three script I have an existential crisis where my personality splits into two halves: Courier New and Times New Roman. Courier wins, but Times New Roman is the dominant.
I swear, that thing is smiling at me.
Valentina, whose birthday is - can you guess it? - that's right, Valentine's! (A day before mine), guest-starred for our performance as Colored Woman. We hope to maximize her skills in our next staging, which would be that of Kuo Pan Kun's The Spirits Play... though that play has a maximum of five characters.
I have no idea who took this photo, when it was taken, or why I was so unhappy.
On an unrelated note, Julia takes photos with bricks and triangles.
Julia, as a MAN, served for the Amirul B Ruslan Theatre Repertoire (a name I do not hear others utter), with wonderful wonderful skill. I think she may have even upstaged the two lead actors/resses. A bun for her. Two, in fact. You may donate her buns to celebrate her wonderful performance at this address:
The Julia Hoo Bun Donation,
c/o Amirul B Ruslan,
The Center of the Universe,
Somewhere Near The Sun "Sol"
Josiah's table reads are not as exciting as the constant ad-libs or jokes about the Napoleonic code that I do, but in that same sense he's damned more professional than I am. His performance as Steve Hubbell was also good. Nothing to complain about, despite his modesty.
What happens when you force people to practice at minutes past midnight? They hate you. Okay, maybe not, (seeing they still talk to me and all). They play with their phone and act like they're asleep. Here is Tabby, in her oft-unseen pair of glasses, during a table-read on Saturday night. Or Sunday morning.
The cunningly-eyed members of the floor will notice that the word Streetcar in our script, this one of Scene Three, has been replaced by another word, blocked off by my cunningly positioned thumb.
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And now to the actual performance photos. This one's for you.
Wow, everybody's smiling except me. I'm such a dour fellow. So, here's the cast/actor list. From left.
Julia Hoo - Harold "Mitch" Mitchell
Tabitha Rani - Blanche duBois
Valentina Tay - Colored Woman
Sarah Yeoh - Eunice Hubbell
Vishalene Sivaraman (who insisted I place her full name on the poster, no less) - Stella Kowalski
AMIRUL B RUSLAN! - Stanley "I'm Marlon Brando" Kowalski
Josiah Ching - Steve Hubbell.
It was real nice. Our acting time must have only spanned about thirty minutes or so though. Even that's more than it should normally.
The poker scene in Scene Three. Josiah doesn't know how to play poker, and my poker appears to be extremely rusty. This I know from trying to play on Facebook. It looks pretty authentic, though. I mean my Stanley performance.
Damn table lamp, block my face, do you? Blanche - "Here I am, all freshly bathed and scented, feeling like a brand new person!" Stanley - "Uh-huh. That's good." Right around now Tabby was supposed to change into a white dress, offstage, but some funny accidents occurred. For one, I was supposed to tie a ribbon around the back of her dress. My ribbon was woefully weak. Secondly, she forgot her shoes, so she appeared on stage with a white dress and no shoes. In the middle of the scene, just before the shouting about papers happened, Tabby rushed off to get her shoes. She made it seem natural, though, but you could see me smiling. Out of character!
Said white dress and shoes on Tabby. Here Stanley generally makes a jerk of himself, the half-drunk lad that he is.
Visha did a rather swell job as Stanley's wife Stella (Blanche's sister for the un-Streetcar'd), despite me shouting at her daily over her extremely late hours, and the fact that I think she only put in about four hours worth of practice. She is credited in our A3 posters as "Always Coming In Late For Practice". I don't actually blame her, and she knows there is mutual respect. At least I hope it's mutual.
Blanche - "You do have a maid, don't you?" Stella - "No, with only two rooms it's--" Blanche - "TWO ROOMS?"
Like Tabby's room is that nice, either. Talk smack about my house, do you?
(Um, haha, lol, ignore that!)
Stanley - "In the state of Louisiana we have what is known as the Napoleonic code, according to which what belongs to the husband belongs to the wife, and vice versa," This is an injoke with us, because during practices I used to use a super-staccato voice, pronouncing it instead as "NA PO LEON IC CODE." If that somehow makes sense to you. Also, I kept fudging the damn lines, saying "In the state of Napoleonic code, we have Louisiana". Which kinda makes sense, but is definitely not in the script.
Stella, Stella, Stella for star! She's having a baby, she is.
Blanche - "What I mean to say is that I'd like to be left alone." Eunice - "Aw, I'll just make myself scarce then." What a rude (formerly) rich Mississipi miss. They did well, they did. Even if Eunice looked nearly exactly like Blanche. The costumes, I mean.
Later - when it was done. Tabby poses with a poster of herself. It's not particularly good, the poster I mean, but that's because I only had five minutes with Photoshop and no photos of the characters. Also, my nice fancy fonts refused to run on Sarah's computer, sticking me to Times New Roman all day.
Yeah, whatever, Tabby may have her own poster, but I've got mine too. A-HA! Notice that for some unknown unknowable reason, in this photo, faux-Amirul is a lot shorter than faux-Tabby. Scarily enough, though, Tabby could easily walk around with that poster and I might believe her. Just like the time she wore the Clark Kent mask.
That Tabby is scary, she is.
SCENE.
There's so many photos, I worry I might not even want to have them on Big-O-Vision. But then again... I can never resist the temptation of Big-O-Vision...
PART TWO LATER
No reference to a 20 minute Rilo Kiley song, but okay - here gos.
It's 4:48 in a terribly boring BM class, though it was worse earlier during Mass Media Law. I'll die. A tragicomic mix of emotions. I need to write, I need to, but I can't find the motivation;
I'm sorry.
I'm a barrel of piss at this moment. Not in it. I wrote a play today which I rather enjoyed, and it was entitled, "A Question of Two-Car Pileups", inspired by the rather mind-stimulating Journalism I class. No sarcasm.
A Question, as I'll refer it as, is about a handsome young writer (who? Who?) and his tragic decision between his love for cheesecake or his hate for mushroom soup. Awe-inspiring, especially because it was a musical. There are two songs, the first being "Oh! An Accident! What Should I Do?", et al.
Furthermore I have declared supreme omnipotence over my group assignment for Intro To Drama (where we are doing Streetcar Named Desire), and yeah. Amirul performs! He is rusty.
...Like pills, I pop M&Ms madly for my cure. Like the way I said to Samantha, "I am for Ms".
Amirul B Ruslan here! Here are phots! Photos of people. A story or two before we go into Big-O-Vision...
I wrote 1,545 words for The Book That Must Not Be Named Or Else There Shall Be Hell To Pay. For forty minutes of the Muse's flow. Fine by me, Muses. I need triple that amount. I'm happy. I've reached the First Gate. I don't know what other writers say, but for me, the day you cross 10,000 words, you know either to keep and stay loyal forever to your text, or can it completely.
Still sick. One week! One week! Journalism I is fun, scary-ish, and a chat with a delightful senior has revealed much. Visha the course rep has stories from my Warehouse of Knowledge.
BM Lanjutan now. Our lecturer, whose histrionics offered humor of grand amounts last year, demands coursework in unorthodox means. There be acting/poetry/oratory here. But in Malay! Shudders.
(Tabby: thanks for the photos, but I hate your laptop's keyboard)
So, Big-O-Vision beckons!
Amirul and Tabby, though the fact is Tabby is on the left and Amirul is on the right. We jump. Both of us are off the ground, but it would appear my liftoff is not as perfect.
Julia and me. The hostel is the confines for these photo. Believe it or not but this is the work of my phone. MY phone can produce this much of a gem? Splendid. Oh, wait. The title says "tabs pixs". So it's not from my phone. Not splendid!
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Pause to Big-O-Vision:
I have new glasses.
And we return to Big-O-Vision
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Julia and Tabby. You may ask why it's only them who get so highlighted among my friends. Easy. They're the only ones who seem to think being in EVERY photo in my phone memory card is their divine right. So there. Julia takes wonderful photos. Amazingness. A photographer she is.
Tabby's phone documents the crouching Julia within its natural habitat of bricks and concrete.
Tabby leaves questionable stains on my neck. Worry not: they are wholly in pen ink. Or not. I leave you to your own conclusion. She likes these so much she photographs it.
Wind, the people of DJR1, and a phone camera photograph from the top of the fourth floor. From left: Sheela the girl at the edge of the grop, (somebody's arm, I think Valentina?), Visha the course rep, Tabby the gazelle, and Amirul the guy who wears Kelantan jersey.
Big-O-Visions!
Show us your favorite photo of yourself
That's right, polygons. It's not a triangle, square or pentagon. We're not even sure what it has taken shape, so the descriptor "polygon" will have to suffice.
I have been sick all week, with it reaching its crux point on Wednesday and Thursday. My legions of fans have been worried sick, sometimes even sicker than I was, which rather made me quite happy. I received a total of two text messages wishing I was well! I know, I'm so popular.
In the calendar of the Pantheon, this is the Week of teh Love. All good followers of the Pantheon (and non-followers, as well) must declare their love to at least one person. It all suddenly started when Rui Ern came up to me during the Mass Comm lecture on Tuesday and declared her undying affections. I had already expected this, so my response held none of the surprise lesser mortals would have kept. But since it is teh Love week (yes, teh Language happens to work in many inverse ways), I had to spread love around, happy-happy!
Of course, when Rui Ern declared her love for me, it left a few people rather depressed, such as Julia, whose response was, "But Rui Ern... what about me?" Poor Julia.
[By now one can imagine the effect of several doses of medicine running wildly in my head. I have no natural resistance to these feelings of euphoria that tablets of paracetamol induce]
I walked across the large lecture hall, of which I believe the human capacity totals nearly 300 people, and I told Stephanie how I truly felt about her. The reaction was most enthralling. Here, I will regale my misadventures.
ME: (*walking over*) Hello, Stephanie. I have something you need to know.
HER: Yes?
ME: I am hopelessly and madly in love with you.
HER: Yes, I kn--- what?!
ME: (*walking away, depressed over the less-than-enthusiastic reaction*)
Okay, there was no real depression - I was actually laughing. When I discussed this with Shafiq later in the holy chambers known as 404, he simply said, "You tend to declare your love quite a lot, don't you?" I was naturally indigni - whatever you spelled it.
Later, the next day, this byzantine love polygon (it's not really a polygon if it doesn't close up at the end, right?) expanded when Visha, in her most oblique ways possible, explained to all that she was actually in love with me, thus leaving everybody with a major dilemma. Why, yeah. New traditions run strangely.
Aren't we all so glad week of teh Love is soon coming to an end?
Today, under the curious influence of the medicinal products I must ingest to restore maximum health points, I also declared my love, but in a hinty-hinty subtley way that is completely serious, unlike the unfortunate tale of Stephanie. So... um, don't go to Friendster? Because, well. Less than three weeks to go!
I love Windows Vista, it's so shiny.
I don't like Genuine Microsoft Software, it's not shiny at all. Thanks for treating people like they're all piracy suspects, Microsoft. But I can only assume it happens to most everybody.
I'm trying to fix Julia's wonderful wonderful HP laptop, a HP Pavilion dv6000. The word's not really "fixing". Her laptop now refuses to work because apparently her product key is ZOMG DEAD DEAD DEDDDDDDDDD. Yeah, you know how genuine software likes to treat you. GAH! It's a long wait, and I have a cold. By walking in the hot sun. You'd think it's called a "hot", or a "warm", not a "cold". But that's all pedantry.
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Did you know what the date was yesterday? I forgot to tell enough people. OK, I told Shafiq, but he doesn't really care. I also told Samantha, I think, but the phone call on my phone was sometimes so retarteded that she probably heard me say something else. It's the Third Year Anniversary. No, I didn't tell her. Eh? Yeah.
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I had a really bad, bad, bad day. So far. I've got a cold, I've walked myself sick, I'm trying to fix an almost-impossible-to-fix laptop, I've got stuff to do 'til 8 (ELS junior exco meet I believe), yeah. BAD DAY.
Will post why, in a bit.
ACT ONE, SCENE ONE
One man (man/boy/lad/guy/whatever) is giving a monologue to the screen. He is standing, shifting his weight from foot to foot every so often. This character is AMIRUL.
AMIRUL
Hey. I want to tell you about something, and I hope I can type as fast and as long as I'd like to think, because if I can't, that would suck, and besides, I fall short lots of times.
He paces around. The camera follows him. A cough is heard offscreen.
OFFSCREEN VOICE
(*Cough*)
AMIRUL
So today... today I've been attending meetings... hell, I just got back from one. There was a meeting for all the Course Representatives in the entire SSSH --
(*Subtitles appear onscreen, saying "SSSH: School of Social Sciences And Humanities"*)
Yeah, yeah, you know what that means. So I'm there because I'm Visha's assistant, right? We're supposed to be there. I've never really met any of the others, either. There're a lot of courses, eh, from like Journalism (JOURNALISM!) to like Broadcast Communication and Fashion Design. Lots, as I said.
He stops pacing around. The camera zooms a small increment.
It was long, two hours long. But no doubt enlightening. More work has to be done, that kind of stuff. When it was done, like, 11.30am, we were both almost half an hour late for our class - we had our IT practical - but we were quite lucky, eh. I myself, I'm quite lucky. I had to skip Swimming to attend the meet. Luckily for me I can always go and take it again any other day of the week.
AMIRUL pauses, and smiles once.
Oh! Yeah, lucky for me I was late for IT practical instead of something else (say, E-Commerce tutorials, God forbid, no). They were only learning how to make subdocuments in Microsoft Word, how to make Tables of Content. Hell if I don't know how to, because I do, and if I don't I've got the Office '07 to try this on. But hey, that's all boring stuff, you know? We had a significantly more important class next. Mass Comm., you know. A two hour lecture. A short detour to the SSH office beforehand to ask about the SPM verification things - you don't need to know, it's boring - and off we went to DK ABD. It's the lecture hall with the plastic chairs. Those plastic chairs aren't as nice as the cushioned seats in ABF, but they sure as heck beat the Bronze Age benches in DK X and Y, like.
Then we were working on the Hubungan Etnik assignment. Finishing it up, really. We've got to compile it tomorrow. 's gonna give us some time to work, okay. Then there's... ooh!... the English Language Society first meeting for the junior exco. Now that's a long meeting. Four to six-thirty. That long. And like in any newly established democracy, it kinda got chaotic at times. That's just with, what, sixteen newly minted potential executive committee members. Add that to the voice of, what, ten senior committee members. Add that to the overruling voice of the four advisors. I'm surprised I can even run Journalism (JOURNALISM!) at all. Sorry, run it with Visha. She does the running. I do the following and keeping up, and the occasional escort job, as well as replacement duties.
Yeah, so I'm here. I've checked my blog and my mail (I used to ignore my Gmail for long stretches of time, but now I don't, yeah) and the usual blogs (ha! I can't tell you their names now can I... okay: Jim, Roslyn, etc etc etc). I think I'll go off and live in the streets of warmth, because this bit here is... so COLD! It's cold, really. Today I was wearing three layers of shirts to counteract the cold. You know what happened then?
OFFSCREEN VOICE
What?
AMIRUL
I took one off.
OFFSCREEN VOICE
Eh, so?
AMIRUL
I'm just telling you,
OFFSCREEN VOICE
Oh... okay.
AMIRUL
Should I continue?
OFFSCREEN VOICE
Go on.
AMIRUL
Are we running out of time?
OFFSCREEN VOICE
You're talking to a nonexistent entity whose sphere of influence doesn't even consider time. There is no concept of time. Time is a swearword here, because it does not exist. Not only does it not exist, it forbids itself from existing. It forbids itself from forbidding itself from existing, because to forbid itself from existing is to actually exist, and that's forbidden. And... No, we're not running out of time.
AMIRUL
Cool.
So, yeah, now I'm here. I'm yearning for food. I want a burger. No! I had a burger already. No! I've had burgers these few weeks. So I'll have rice! No. No. I'll have to wait a long time. Ah well... I'll have both, I guess. Laters. Dinner awaits!
OFFSCREEN VOICE
But we're not running out of time.
AMIRUL
Yeah, I know.
AMIRUL turns and begins to walk away, footsteps resonating all across the empty room.
OFFSCREEN VOICE
That guy should really learn the proper way of being interviewed.
SCENE.
From left: Me. From right: Me.
And thus, through the marvel that is camera-phones, and Julia's wonderful laptop, you see the first photos of the life TARC makes of us. At least Week 4, I mean.