12 posts tagged “school”
Another year has come and gone, and around the time February decides to take a twelve-month long vacation, the SEA Forensics tournament at ISKL happenth. Thirty years in now, this edition of the much-revered annual speech/debate/acting competition sees a great number of changes.
A lot of clashing of opinions were placed on the fact that it seemed that the ISKL Forensics admins were trying to sneakily shift Forensics into a "Speech/Debate/Acting" tournament with a generic name ("The SEA Tournament"), and this was a focal point of dislike for many longtime people, who thought this was some sort of Conspiracy Of Change. Me, I didn't worry too much, but I did like the name Forensics, you know? It gives a sort of class to it, since in Malaysia we don't have anything of that type.
Big-O-Vision for the Tournament.
The honored Jim Kem, him of photography and extended-family, joined us after some months of begging. It's awesome having him over. It kinda makes the Sri Inai entourage a bit bigger, y'know? Beloved English teacher Cik Roges was coach this time, and for the most part, our scripts were much better than last year or even those years before.
As I did in 2007, I was judging again, though I didn't have the bonus of being super-young like I was last year - "I wuz only sixteen last yeah, dincha know?". Judged about six times this time around - twice Solo Acting, Oral Interpretation, Extemporaneous Speaking, Original Oratory mostly.
With the help of judge coordinator and wholly-nice-guy Michael O'Brien as well as some careful prodding on my part, I was also able to judge finals. C'est dream come true. Did the OI finals. More about that as I get into the story.
Roslyn and Aween preparing in the early-mornings of SEA. This pair-up was probably the best they've both had. Their piece this year was very damned good: a shame they didn't get too far. They deserved Semifinals, at least, and seeing the rather depressing quality of certain semifinalists, I'm surprised no judge actually gave Roslyn a chance.
Some manner of congregating in the middle of the ISKL chamber.
We had Jim take most of the photos, and as a result, he's hardly in any of them. However: here's a shot of his feet by Danielle.
But then again, she also took this photo.
And this one, too.
It's safe to say she likes shoes.
This was the OI preliminary round, where Danny and Jim came over to watch me judge. Some quality there, but nothing outstanding, y'know? At least I didn't have screamers. Some rooms were so full of screaming. I was judging in room 307, and in room 306 I could hear bloodcurdling screams.
I actually like this photo very much. It looks like I'm doing work. Photo credit: Danielle.
I really, really liked Aween + Roslyn's performance this year. It's their best ever. This was the first day, and they got a 1/3 to reward their efforts. Even though that's Roslyn's best ever score, she still spent most of her time whining about how mean the judge who gave her a 3 was. I agree. Her adjudication sheet was completely empty except for the number "3", and the sentence "Good choice of script." As a two-term judge (alleged "one of the more experienced ones", too) I've always had a strong belief that judges should give as much information to the contestants as much possible.
I came up with a continuation of my 2007 judging system, which involved copious amounts of non-mathematics, giant ticks to reveal bits I liked, and tiny minus signs on parts I thought could do some work. Hopefully the contestants I judged would see my comments as constructive criticism. Also, I implemented my Big Word Verdict: a single giant word at the bottom left corner to summarize what I thought of their performance.
My personal favorite Big Word was what I gave for this KTJ girl who did a Roald Dahl poem in the finals:
MALICIOUS!
Also, at some point or another, under some strange influence I gave the big word to someone doing a speech with:
SLOVENIA!
Nope, I can't remember why, but I distinctly recall mentioning that the skiing is nice there.
My last judging session on the first day was Solo Acting, and my last performance there was by Hong Kong International School's Roahan Kapoor, who performed a rather-very-controversial piece from Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues.
The magic of YouTube means I can share it with you. In all honesty, I marked it down, and maybe you'll get why. In any case, he added me on Facebook, so we must be cool, ey? IT BETTER BE. Video here. See the guy in black sitting in front of the camera on the left side of the frame? That's me.
I can't thank the person who recorded this enough.
Ashley and Danielle hard at practice. Now: happy part. Ashley and Danielle, Sri Inai's first semifinalists since Amirul B Ruslan, made it to the final this year! Their piece, Anything For You by Kathy Celesia is generally remembered as "that lesbian one". It was really, extremely awesome, and I'm not just saying it out of bias. Very awesome, though their finals performance was not as stellar as their second preliminary round.
OK, they're not really kissing, but Jim planned this shot so it would take this exact angle. Photo credit: Jim.
Among my personal favorite portraits now: Jim brought sunglasses he said was his "Morpheus" ones (which I think you'll agree is quite similar), and I was wearing them all day. I wasn't the only one, too. Ashley did as well, but where I looked like Morpheus, she looked like an out-of-place poet.
Also: if you read this blog, you've probably heard the name Samantha being bandied about many times, both as a person as well as the legendary blog-commenter "mysterioussphinx". After about a year of knowing her, I've finally had the chance to meet her. It was fairly good, too.
The long-awaited picture. I don't like me in this photo one bit, honestly. The shirt - I dinnae like the shirt.
Whilst my boasts of being a "coach" had been dismissed quickly by her (my input for her SEA Forensics career involved harassing her into auditioning and contesting, as well as throwing piles of books at her - Only Revolutions and The Whalestoe Letters being a few of them -, oh! And rewriting her speech, only to have her discard it and keep her original)
To be honest, Samantha: I liked my version better.
Even if yours did win Bronze for OO.
To complete the trifecta, here's a voyeury shot of me and her sitting together at the Original Oratory and Duet Acting finals. It was our first full chance to have a long chat ever, even if it involved tedious amounts of You Are A Man And Thus You Victimize Me feminist slants. See, there was somebody giving a Men = Victimizers speech. My personal favorite OO piece, Samantha's aside, was the Facebook speech by HKIS student Isabella Litke.
The finals itself: Ashley/Danny's performance wasn't as good - personally, to me - because they fumbled a few lines, and drastically shortening it, probably out of nervousness, but still among the best I've ever seen. A common quote on their adjudication sheets would be "Best chemistry I've ever seen in this tournament", and I agree.
The awards ceremony came. Ashley/Danny, the only reason we stuck around for the finals, didn't win a medal, but did get a nice-shiny "2" score from one of the five judges. As mentioned previously, Samantha won Bronze for her speech, and her school Kolej Tuanku Ja'afar went on to win huge amounts of medals.
With the 2004+ Sri Inai Forensics bunch (Roslyn, Zayaana, me, Aween, Ashley, Danielle) now ineligible for future years as performers, I've actually suggested to coach Cik Roges to stop sending a Sri Inai team, so we could quit while we're ahead.
If I can do any guessing, it's going to be a long, long, long way to go before we see a Forensics team as close and Forensics-worshipping as our team. It's the end of a generation.
But at least I'll get the chance to watch from the sidelines as a judge.
Sri Inai's team is as such:
- Danielle and Ashley in one pairing for Duet
- Roslyn and Aween in another pairing for Duet.
- Sofia S doing, what, Solo, I think?
- (I don't know anything about second-events that these people will take)
(Pointless Anecdote: Sofia S shouldn't be Sofia S anymore, because for the last two years there have been no Sofias, not since Sofia A graduated in the same year I did)
Roslyn's been talking a lot about the piece she'll be doing: unlike previous seasons, she does not wait until two days before the tournament to select her piece.
I've seen what Roslyn wants to do - it's good, potentially great, even - but Roslyn is notoriously unreceptive to early criticism. The piece is okay, but there are bits that don't hold up to any use. The entire second minute of the performance is essentially unnecessary. I've recommended she trim it, but she seems to have a better idea of what she wants to do with it. However, I'm a notoriously insistent person, and I'm sure she will incorporate one or twelve of my changes sometime soon.
I'm excited for the Danielle/Ashley combo, but anybody should really. They got into Semis last year - a logical impossibility given that we're Sri Inai - and I'm fairly certain that with a sufficient piece they could make it in again.
At last, I've finally gotten hold of the proper Forensics schedule, and it's 21st until 23rd. Luckily for me that's just the day after I come back from my solo Kuching trip. So from the 16th til the 23rd looks like I'll be superbusy. 16-20 February: Kuching. 21-23 February: SEA Forensics 2008.
I love being busy.
It completely makes up for this sitting-at-eleven-AM-in-your-pants business that I'm so capable of doing.
I think the perfect quote to sum up Late 2006 (anything after SPM - which I consider part of 2007) and All Of 2007 (which I consider part of 2007, because, well, it just is) was one I said to my English Literature teacher when I called her around November-ish.
She asked me how I was doing.
I told her, "I'm excelling. Doing great. Not academically, of course, but everything outside that."
And she agreed, said something about it being a perfect example of me. Something like that, really.
----
Now, my English Lit. teacher, Ms. Leela, (apologies over this ridiculous comma-flatulence), was a major inspiration during the doldrums of the Medieval Late-High School Period. Some may have been enjoying a Renaissance around them, but here where I was living and studying in Sri Inai, a feudal state ruled.
My prodigal English skills have always been the fascination of teachers ever since the day I enrolled in kindergarten, and when I moved to Sri Inai in bonny old 2003 I expected it to stay the same way. It didn't. My English teacher there was a dinosaur named Mr. Durai: he embodied everything old-fashioned, and had no space for the studies-abandoning freewheeling spark of creativity I was bringing into class.
He'd been teaching English a majorly long time. Fifty years, give or take a decade? And suddenly comes this upstart professor's kid who thinks his English is enough to secure him more arrogance than could fit in a bucket. True. I became more than a tad elitist, treating some with sneers and dumping others into a class I called The Unimportant People. Mr. Durai never liked me. Never thought highly of my obvious aptitude in English, either.
Shafiq, long-time collaborator (est. 2003) and current roommate and occasional creepy-joke-maker, was the exact opposite though similar at core. He brimmed with ideas. An asocial being, he kept to a select company of very few people. Shafiq had good ideas and was good at expressing them too. But he lacked my ridiculous extreme obsession to grand style, to a philosophy I had refined which said If you want to act all smart, be smart but do it only with high amounts of finesse. Durai liked Shafiq better. Shafiq was humble, quiet, knew when to speak and when not to. I was the opposite. I AM the opposite. Abrasive, caustic and wielding the knives of emotion.
Two years passed and my burgeoning talents were kept in deep freeze. Didn't win favour in class, even if I was still best student in English by a long shot. It was only in Form Four, when I persuaded En. Wan Ali - the school's long-serving principal -, to let me study English Literature was when I continued the march upwards.
Ms. Leela taught elsewhere - I believe it was Catholic High School. She had a class of practically three people, but she taught anyway. I loved and hated English Lit classes, to be honest. Loved the subject, the works we studied, loved the small class that was almost completely Amirul-centric. Hated the times for class. Ms. Leela had to come after school hours, often on weekends too, and nothing hits badly on me than having to have to stay back two hours for The Importance of Bloody Being Earnest. Don't take me wrong, I thought it was going to be boring, but I love that play now. That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Amirul and Stage Plays.
As Ms. Leela taught me English Lit., Mr. Durai decided to retire. Parents' Day came, though, before he retired in 2006; and he took the opportunity to talk about my many, many character flaws and negative personal traits to my parents. Parents weren't convinced - these words were nothing new.
Next I had two teachers, both only for short times. Pn. Corinne came along and taught for only about four months. She adored me, (or that's the idea I seem to get). Knew I could do English well, knew I had a magical touch with words, knew that I was brilliant with some oddball eccentric flair. She left later, though. The next English teacher, can't remember her name, taught when I was in the backend of Form Five. Can't remember nothing.
So, there. Sorry about the incongruous nature of the post, really. I can't get no relief.
Nil Irma Isaura:
A Small Tribute (Or, As Small As I Could Possibly Make).
For months now I have dawdled my mind upon a former classmate who left along with me at the end of 2006's SPM examinations. Nil Irma Isaura, who we last saw in the post I made of Sri Inai's pseudo-Prom, is the subject of today's "Character Profiles: Former Cast Members Ep.1" post.
So I've been trying to contact her in quite a few months. These attempts fail, because for some reason the number I have of her isn't quite right. Today, though, I realized that Shafiq probably had her most-accurate number (I had her 014 contact because... she lost her phone or something? I can't explicitly recall. These were days olden). The problem was, Shafiq's phone had no battery. When he got back home from 404 tonight he messaged me the number, which I duly tried immediately. I got a reply within the minute. Gratifying to know. The Nine bless her.
So, it seems, she's going to be heading for Egypt. Sounds fun. Among my favorite classmates of all time (rivalling even luminaries like Shad and Shafiq, or even those before!) I remember some fun times shared from between Form 2 all the way to Form 5. From playing Truth-Or-Dare to hiding her away for forty minutes from Add Maths class - hey! She was the one who skipped class, not me! I just happened to be in the room -, Nil (though peculiarly called "Irma" by most people, including herself at times) has the kind of magnetic personality and charm seen so rarely in a lifetime. Few people I can name are as likeable as she is.
Let's not even forget her acting and singing skills. Surely gifted, she did try out for Sri Inai's Forensics team in 2004 for Oral Interpretation, but the school found out the hard way that only four people can be registered for a category at once. Had she been named in the team, God knows how far we might have all gone. Her performance as Hodel, my sister-in-law in last year's Fiddler On The Roof also brings to mind some excellent memories. Her singing lit many a face in a smile. I recall singing with her at Genting Highlands' Indoor Theme Park after midnight waiting for the others to get the tickets to the movie we were all going to watch - which, I can still recall clearly, was that Kate Beckinsale vehicle Underworld - Evolution.
Equally memorable because of her (slightly mad, I reckoned) ambition to be a dentist, Nil is now studying O Levels for a path leading to a potential medical career. I remember helping her out with English homework and assignments. Towards the end of our last year she had a bunch of favorite new English words. One of them was "dingy". She even wrote it on the shirt I asked everybody to write on, on the last ever day of school.
Lest this become a flashy love letter, I'll just end this short tribute to a wondrous friend with my best wishes of luck in her current studies and whatever future endeavors life brings. We'll meet again no doubt.
----
Who would you like to see featured in an Amirul B Ruslan "Character Profile"? YOU have the power to choose. Send your nominations to amirul.ruslan@gmail.com.
[Rhyming titles continue today! Whee!]
Last night (by that I mean Thursday, this is now early Friday morning) was the Sri Inai concert. Now this is a big thing each year, because the concert is actually a play. This year separates from other years. They're doing a super-synopsized-medley of 30 years worth of school plays. They did, sorry. Present tense, past tense. GAH.
So, long story short, good cool stuff, some minor technical hiccups with the microphones and sound systems at a very crucial moment, but all good stuff anyway. I know you come here just for the photos anyway, so here they all are. I'm at home now, not 404, so I'll be able to post photos. You want the photos? So take them. Go on.
This is predictable chaos. People sitting around, people shouting, people ushering other people, people practising their expressions, people being dragged backstage. Predictable chaos!
Seroja! Lykwhoa! I'm saying lykwhoa to replace ZOMG, as "annoying phrase of the week". ZOMG replaced FTW several weeks back, when I learned that FTW meant "for the win", not what I originally thought it was.
Nissa and Roslyn. Posing. Posing is the national sport in the lands of Sri Inai. Even I have much experience doing it. Go on and shove a camera in my face. What will I do? Something like this:
Short hair! The emptiness in the eyes surely signify something long lost. Perhaps sleep. Perhaps some dumbed and deadened experiences. We can only guess. Also, as posing is a national sport, here are the league champions:
League champions, indeed. We pose for pictures more than we actually talk. Ahahaha. Srsly!!one! More:
You don't become league champs without some shiny skills. Some people try and try, but never win. Back to the concert - Ju Sen got all the coolest costumes. So many. Here are some highlights.
Ju Sen does the Phantom of the Opera. Roslyn was in this dance as one of the opera-goers for the Masquerade short dance bit.
HE GETS TO BE A PIRATE AND A DEFORMED MURDERER IN THE COURSE OF THREE HOURS. Great work that man. Also, I do believe, he gets a suit and a baju melayu too. How wonderful. When I was Motel for Fiddler on the Roof (read: last year; read: long past memories) all I got was four suits that were one size too small, and a top hat. Sucks to main cast.
The very least I can expect from Roslyn is that she occasionally allows a photo of her to be kept. She usually looks, curses and deletes in about three seconds. That should be a phrase - lookcursedelete. Are you are lookcursedeleter? I know I'm not.
OK - let's be honest here. I'm not posting many photos of people onstage, because the lighting is far too red and frankly, really crappy. I upped the res to 5MP even though I normally don't like to, and the lights directly behind me pumping more deadly particles of red and yellow light did their completely helpful role in hindering my dazzling photography. Sure, Photoshop can fix that. That's not a bad idea. I do have the l33t Shafiq to work that for me.
Let's skip excuses and get more photos.
Zayaana and Naqiuddin did some singing, but there was an unfortunate technical hiccup. Excellently they were able to muster on, despite difficulties.
The end. Credits. On the left is the dancing couple of Roslyn and Aizat. To the right is Nazman and Ashley. Surprisingly I didn't see Ashley much today except while onstage. She did get a "Hi, Mimi!" in. She and perhaps Zayaana might be the only people who call me Mimi. I don't actually mind - some people use worse, less likeable names (Roslyn) - but still.
The end credits. Let's see if you can name and spot them all.
So there. I know I'm really bad at writing end paragraphs to things, but hey. It's 6:18AM and I've been up all night. Couldn't sleep; scary YouTube videos can do that to a person. Teresa Fidalgo did it.
When I'm not playing DEFCON I find other forms of entertainment to salve my always-burning quest to subjugate seven billion people into my iron grip. This time, we were playing the classic boardgame Risk. Interestingly, co-conspirator in this new plot was not Shafiq, but Roslyn.
Risk!
I've never played it before, though I've wanted to. It just so happened that friend-of-all Aween had the game but didn't know how to play it, and so she commissioned me to learn and teach her. I willingly flew into this mission. Nothing makes me happier than playing new stuff. I had an initial fear that nobody would want to play it due to the obvious complexities of the game (yes, while this is no n3rdy Warhammer or D&D Miniatures, it's still way off from the two-dice-and-be-done likes of Monopoly). Nah, it wasn't that complex after all. Pretty simple, even. All I had to do was learn it, but obviously, before I could learn I had to actually get the game from her.
So I lugged my lazy unworking arse over to school, cleverly disguising my journey of about 2.5km from home to school into a "run" where I would seemingly try to push my athletic limits to the test. Having done the walk before in about forty minutes, I aimed to arrive this time in less than that. I ran, mostly and it took me just a little less than half an hour.
I didn't eat lunch before arriving so I did want to grab a bite later, perhaps in the presence of some schoolgoer. At my last visit to school (Monday; I had to pick up my leaving certificate from school) I had a Big Mac with Ashley, Martina and Harveen. On Monday I had the luxury of being sent by means of an automobile. Today there was no such thing. So when I arrived I was incredibly hungry, and a little tired. Not too long after, my first candidates to join me for lunch appeared - Harveen and Danielle. But many different events conspired against me, such as rain and the arrival of my candidates' parents, and I was forced to partake in food later and at a different place. Indeed, the rain was crazy heavy.
You probably can't see it but in that shot with all the chairs it was really raining heavily.
Roslyn and Ashley and Aween and all were Prefects now, so Thursdays mean the weekly Sri Inai prefect meetings. Gosh, I had some great interesting times there. I wish I could have gotten more sleep. Unfortunately, it was mostly politics and faux-"duty" for me. Once I did get in a wonderful sketch of somebody's name. That was about it.
So, the rain really got bad and everybody went home. Also, from somebody at school I had heard Bryan came to school just hours/minutes/moments before I did. I would have been glad to have met him but alas he left much earlier due to some obvious errands on his part.
LATER, AT HOME
Roslyn pwned me at Risk. I'm not really going to say how pwned I was. I'm just going to examplify by showing you this horrible, horrible photo of the new Queen of Earth:
Now, if anybody cares at all, that gleeful expression obviously signifies great happiness at having mercilessly crushed and cornered an opponent, and the triangular hand gesture signifies her status as a confirmed Evil Genius. She's playing White. I'm playing Red, and I've just been pushed back to one tiny little quarter of North America. Also, towards the end she got bored of crushing armies, so what she did was take some rather good photos.
...No.
There's great news and truly abysmal news, packed in one tiny slip of misery. If you're Emily, Jim or Shafiq you'll already know this and you may skip this.
I'm not going to say anything - nope, try this concept.
I'll take a photo of my SPM slip today, and I'll take a photo of a sad face. Hopefully you will be able to string both these apparently unconnected photos easily. But since the slip is downstairs, I'll take it tomorrow.
SPM exam results coming out tomorrow - the big decider in whether I have a future or whether I'm going to spend my life with all the sense of a never-was.
Um, whatever. 2:58AM and I don't feel so good. Please make me feel better.
5As would be awesome, but that's my fantasy situation. I think it might be worse. Well, you'll know tomorrow.
Malaysia needs five of our best youngish debaters! And Amirul B Ruslan, whose sole claim to fame was, in his words, "One time, I was the Vox QOTD!" might just be one of them.
I'm one of what I presume to be 40 people, shortlisted by Malaysia's favorite newspaper (or at least mine), The Star, to be members of this uber-l33t team of groomed and sponsored nation-representing debaters. Auditions are on Saturday. I, along with nineteen other people, are part of Group A, and to pass auditions we need to debate this.
"The House disapproves of cloning."
Whoo! I was kinda expecting I'd get the Third World Debt topic, but luck shines on me and I'm hoping I do well enough. Heck, if my extensive experience (ahahahahahaha!) can't cut it, surely the rest deserve to represent the country. Hey, I love cloning. Great success!
I'm hoping I get drawn favorable odds, though, with some people who think the word "research" means going up to Wikipedia and copying-and-pasting, particularly regular mentions of Dolly the sheep. But probably it'll more likely be the creme-de-la-creme of Malaysian students. And who am I? I was, like, Sri Inai's champion. The champion of all 60 people in the entire senior school. Surely?
Who Am I? I'm not a great debater - not by my standards, the way I'm a superspectacular speaker - but I'm good enough to warrant some note. I put together teams and I disbanded them. Four years of debating: 2003-2006. Seven debates (though it should be eight). Two Best Speaker awards: 2004, 2006.
Oh, and SEA Forensics judge. 2007.
I'm not the best, but hell if I let somebody best me. Who am I? I'm Amirul B Ruslan.
For the first time January 3 smiles down on us and I will not be under her benevolent sunlight. School, people! It's starting tomorrow, and I usually love the first day. I hate it a lot too, but the start's an important thing. Roslyn starts Form 4 next year and my youngest sister Seroja starts Standard 3. Roslyn's excited - it's 1:16AM and she's probably still not asleep. From what I hear there's gonna be a new girl in her class, supposedly very pretty. Hmmm. I'm interestedly hearing this story out. Given my extensive connections with members of this class I'm sure I'll get my chance to meet this supposedlyverypretty person.
Also I'm very serious about my desire to be made Sri Inai KL's Forensics coach. My sole qualification is this - I reached the semi-finals last year. Nobody in a long time (at least four years, then) has reached semis and I was the first. I thought I deserved it too. My third year in Forensics, then, and while it wasn't my best the fact remains that I'm one of the greater pantheon of semi-finalists. I'm serious. I want to be our school's coach. The one weakness of our school over the last few years is a badly made selection of pieces for performance. I'd like to fix that. With my (ahem...) diverse knowledge in the event surely my help in choosing a piece could go far.