ACJC Open House
After getting word about it only recently and with long standing tradition, and nicely an off day for me, I paid a visit to the ACJC open house today. Perhaps I could say that open houses are probably the most glossed over, most wayang time on any junior college's calendar. Therein teachers, students and parents make the move to enforce the propaganda matrix onto unsuspecting secondary 4/5 students.
Then again, such nonsense doesn't go very far when I've spent the two of my years in the most nonsensical college in the country. 10 years of "all-boy ac education" was simply fantastic. And indeed, like in the words of a wise senior, "Girls are the moderating factor..." Think about it. After the introduction of girls into a theoretically all-boy environment, the guys tend to take note of their words of speech, their conduct, more effort goes into grooming and showing our feathers.
Oh well, time for the proverbial trumpet to sound, from all perspectives, that is. I didn't spend much time at the open house, at the most, about slightly more than 2 hours or so. Nevertheless, this year it was notably less crowded than in previous years. Perhaps indeed the rain and gloomy weather than actually held up proved to be a dampener for potentials to cancel their trip down.
Overall, I drove down to ACJC, first time driving down to "school" and actually being able to park really nicely - make one U-turn at the school gate and the car swings smoothly into a car park lot! Without further adue, I brisked walked into AC only to see this huge group of people gathering around the concourse. With loud booming music in the background as well as a thick swathe of people to cut through, I finally understood why...
The ACJC Cheerleading team was putting up a performance. In previous years as far as I know, there has been no such thing as a cheerleading team. Perhaps "L-E-double-N" didn't approve of it after various suggestions (after all, girls in bikinis were not allowed in the sports complex - but that's a different socio-political-religious issue altogether). Maybe the root tradition of Neo-Conservatism reared its head of consevatism in this case due to pressure from "external forces". Likewise, we can only speculate on any theoretical explainations...
It was quite difficult to shoot the cheerleaders. More or less the event was conducted indoors, although there was outdoor lighting, it was of the unhelpful strong backlight variety that would usually confuse most camera metering sensors to overexposing for the unwanted background and underexposing for the wanted foreground. Thus I did what I could to capture the snap shots of the few key moments during the cheerleading routine. It wasn't easy, but the nikkor saved the day.
It is really in such situations that high end dSLR cameras (like the EOS 1D Mark II), with their ultra high sensitivity, low noise sensors and razor-sharp big-mama prime lenses are ever built and created for. As I was jostling with the crowd most of the time, it was rather difficult to get a good vantage point, much less a good shot.
Ended up that I met up with Brother there. As usual, in normal AC tradition, I guess most AC people will more or less make it a point to come down on such college "big days" to support as well as to meet old friends and update not-so-close friends from the batch on the latest happenings in their NS lives or else university semester statuses.
In a strange conclusion to the whole event. After everyone had dispered. A bentley drove through the concourse. Perhaps once again reinforcing the myth that ACS is a rich man's son school. Brother said that it would be more or less "one-quarter true". But the Bentley was very nice. I almost mistook it for a double-R initially until I saw the logo of the care and its slightly less massive profile (Roll-Royces seat people very high up in grand opulence). Someone else from my batch commented, "Wow, now I wonder who the owner's daughter is..."
Following this was a brief walk through the school hall, where the various CCA groups had their their promotional booths as well as all sorts of paraphernalia set up to suppor their cause. Some of the booths were really high tech - they had apple iMacs to support their presentation (heard that AC has recently accuired an apple computer lab). The photographic society's booth, however, was really pathetic. They had like 5 bored people seated around one desk and with 2 cheapo canon film cameras placed on top of the desk. Oh my goodness. That's quite sad from my time where at least Nikon manual-SLRs were still around and in use.
Much had changed - I no longer really recognise any of the Christian Fellowship people save one. Familiar faces now dwindled down to the few jokers from my batch who were free enough to come down to school. Even the general atmosphere of the place shifted greatly. For a while I looked at all the opportunities that was around me in ACJC and that I didn't really bother much about them. Time has really passed me by, things have really changed. I wonder why I didn't take up athletics, or badminton, or soccer, or rugby, or swimming, or joined drama. Maybe it is really through, that we can never see beyond the choices we don't understand until that time has completely passed us by...
After this, I walked over to the sport complex, watching all the "activities" take place. There was two teams playing soccer; the tennis courts were stocked full with the tennis team training; table-tennis training was in full swing at the sunken gallery and there was a whole load of noise from the swimming pool. The gym, however, where I spent a very good cheerful part of my after-school JC life in air-condidtioned comfort, was completely deserted. Quite sad that my CCA had to close down one year after I graduated. When I look back, I realised that no other CCA offfered you an air-conditioned environment to relax and work out and full of extremely nice people in a notably politically-backstabbing school.
Later on was a walk through the legendary Void Deck, ala the OLD CANTEEN of ACJC. It the ultimate place in school. The New Canteen, is hot, has horridly un-tesselatable tables and big bulky chairs that are more suited for sumo wrestlers than students in canteen during lunch break or recess. The "famed" western stall is still around (remember the boycott started up by someone in the Arts Faculty?). The chicken rice stall is still doing relatively well too... Although I'm not really sure about the other vendors. ACJC canteen stalls still have the weirdest names in the country.
After deciding not to grab a bite. I headed up back to the viewing gallery where the choir, string ensemble as well as the harp esemble were around to give performances to the various tour groups that made a journey through the place. I pity the choir, having to sing the same few songs over and over again for a whole entire day. Almost feels like being in a circus... The string esemble was as usual - good stuff and the harp ensemble was a refreshingly new addition to the "western-music-line-up". One thing's for sure is that the choir really blew me away with their performances. They are truly a SYF Gold standard choir for a reason. And the reason is that they just sing extravagantly well.
All this while, I had a sort of a brainwave when it came to photography. As long as I've tried, I almost always forget the essentials of photography - which is to express emotions. All the previous shots up there were of the ugly-attempting-to-be-arty-farty kind. They are just weak, pathetic coverage/reportage snapshots from the same bland points of view and are pretty much emotionless. I wanted to express how the choir impressed me with their performance in a picture. So after some thought, I remembered a little nifty zoom technique and managed to cook up this. Of course, with plenty of imperfections to perfect as times goes by.
Basically after the choir performance, I had to rush off for other things on my saturday agenda. At the same time, not before I passed through the lobby and the Grand Staircase and saw the dance society put on another performance in the lobby area. As usual, difficult photogaphy conditions, strong and harsh backlighting as well as fast action-oriented photography. Another stretch for my camera. I really need to upgrade da Canon.
Nothing much, an expressionless, cheesy shot. I know while this post isn't so fantastic in photographic quality, and that the writing style differs from the usual that I do, the thing is that - its very hard to recollect the entire open house as everywhere I walk in school, everything I see just keeps stirring up and kick up more thoughts like a chalk suspension in water. My mind is rather clouded now as it goes through the deluge of nostalgia, knowledge, thoughtful thoughts, philosophy as well as photographic learning opportunities from today. I'm sure this post doesn't do the AC Open House justice. Then again, I felt that my brief time spent there just wasn't enough to soak into the mood once again or to experience what I had experienced almost daily for 2 years.
They say that if you go to ACS for any one day of your school life and if you did not laugh even once in class. It could only mean two things 1)You skipped school (which would mean laughing gleefully once past the schoolgate. 2)There was something very wrong on that day itself. I find that logic to be really true. For sure I laughed during every single CL-B class. For sure every F-maths lecture was a joke and physic lecture was be a stoning session that'd have us all laughing after compiling a dictionary of "Daniel Khor's Vocabulary". Then again, it was just great. Like I said. If the shot expresses what I saw today. Then I would have missed out on alot mor details. Like the action:
While I really do feel that so much has changed since I left school. I'm still proud that I managed to complete my 12 years in ACS. And even though my AC identity has more or less reached a sunken plateau since I entered NS (it peaks were when cheering against RJC in rugby or any other sport), I accept the fact that I have to move on with life and that in AC, it has to change with the times.
Yet I have to say that some things never change. And other cannot and never will be changed. That is the heart of The Red, The Blue and The Gold. The ACSian Spirit. Something that only a good number of True-Blue ACSians will understand. Almost like a mystery to its own that builds this great sense of strong loyalty and attachment to my alma-mater. Indeed, ACS has done me a great service by preparing my mind and my spirit for the challenges in life ahead. That no matter what life may throw at me. I know always for sure that THE BEST IS YET TO BE!
After getting word about it only recently and with long standing tradition, and nicely an off day for me, I paid a visit to the ACJC open house today. Perhaps I could say that open houses are probably the most glossed over, most wayang time on any junior college's calendar. Therein teachers, students and parents make the move to enforce the propaganda matrix onto unsuspecting secondary 4/5 students.
Then again, such nonsense doesn't go very far when I've spent the two of my years in the most nonsensical college in the country. 10 years of "all-boy ac education" was simply fantastic. And indeed, like in the words of a wise senior, "Girls are the moderating factor..." Think about it. After the introduction of girls into a theoretically all-boy environment, the guys tend to take note of their words of speech, their conduct, more effort goes into grooming and showing our feathers.
Oh well, time for the proverbial trumpet to sound, from all perspectives, that is. I didn't spend much time at the open house, at the most, about slightly more than 2 hours or so. Nevertheless, this year it was notably less crowded than in previous years. Perhaps indeed the rain and gloomy weather than actually held up proved to be a dampener for potentials to cancel their trip down.
Overall, I drove down to ACJC, first time driving down to "school" and actually being able to park really nicely - make one U-turn at the school gate and the car swings smoothly into a car park lot! Without further adue, I brisked walked into AC only to see this huge group of people gathering around the concourse. With loud booming music in the background as well as a thick swathe of people to cut through, I finally understood why...
The ACJC Cheerleading team was putting up a performance. In previous years as far as I know, there has been no such thing as a cheerleading team. Perhaps "L-E-double-N" didn't approve of it after various suggestions (after all, girls in bikinis were not allowed in the sports complex - but that's a different socio-political-religious issue altogether). Maybe the root tradition of Neo-Conservatism reared its head of consevatism in this case due to pressure from "external forces". Likewise, we can only speculate on any theoretical explainations...
It was quite difficult to shoot the cheerleaders. More or less the event was conducted indoors, although there was outdoor lighting, it was of the unhelpful strong backlight variety that would usually confuse most camera metering sensors to overexposing for the unwanted background and underexposing for the wanted foreground. Thus I did what I could to capture the snap shots of the few key moments during the cheerleading routine. It wasn't easy, but the nikkor saved the day.
It is really in such situations that high end dSLR cameras (like the EOS 1D Mark II), with their ultra high sensitivity, low noise sensors and razor-sharp big-mama prime lenses are ever built and created for. As I was jostling with the crowd most of the time, it was rather difficult to get a good vantage point, much less a good shot.
Ended up that I met up with Brother there. As usual, in normal AC tradition, I guess most AC people will more or less make it a point to come down on such college "big days" to support as well as to meet old friends and update not-so-close friends from the batch on the latest happenings in their NS lives or else university semester statuses.
In a strange conclusion to the whole event. After everyone had dispered. A bentley drove through the concourse. Perhaps once again reinforcing the myth that ACS is a rich man's son school. Brother said that it would be more or less "one-quarter true". But the Bentley was very nice. I almost mistook it for a double-R initially until I saw the logo of the care and its slightly less massive profile (Roll-Royces seat people very high up in grand opulence). Someone else from my batch commented, "Wow, now I wonder who the owner's daughter is..."
Following this was a brief walk through the school hall, where the various CCA groups had their their promotional booths as well as all sorts of paraphernalia set up to suppor their cause. Some of the booths were really high tech - they had apple iMacs to support their presentation (heard that AC has recently accuired an apple computer lab). The photographic society's booth, however, was really pathetic. They had like 5 bored people seated around one desk and with 2 cheapo canon film cameras placed on top of the desk. Oh my goodness. That's quite sad from my time where at least Nikon manual-SLRs were still around and in use.
Much had changed - I no longer really recognise any of the Christian Fellowship people save one. Familiar faces now dwindled down to the few jokers from my batch who were free enough to come down to school. Even the general atmosphere of the place shifted greatly. For a while I looked at all the opportunities that was around me in ACJC and that I didn't really bother much about them. Time has really passed me by, things have really changed. I wonder why I didn't take up athletics, or badminton, or soccer, or rugby, or swimming, or joined drama. Maybe it is really through, that we can never see beyond the choices we don't understand until that time has completely passed us by...
After this, I walked over to the sport complex, watching all the "activities" take place. There was two teams playing soccer; the tennis courts were stocked full with the tennis team training; table-tennis training was in full swing at the sunken gallery and there was a whole load of noise from the swimming pool. The gym, however, where I spent a very good cheerful part of my after-school JC life in air-condidtioned comfort, was completely deserted. Quite sad that my CCA had to close down one year after I graduated. When I look back, I realised that no other CCA offfered you an air-conditioned environment to relax and work out and full of extremely nice people in a notably politically-backstabbing school.
Later on was a walk through the legendary Void Deck, ala the OLD CANTEEN of ACJC. It the ultimate place in school. The New Canteen, is hot, has horridly un-tesselatable tables and big bulky chairs that are more suited for sumo wrestlers than students in canteen during lunch break or recess. The "famed" western stall is still around (remember the boycott started up by someone in the Arts Faculty?). The chicken rice stall is still doing relatively well too... Although I'm not really sure about the other vendors. ACJC canteen stalls still have the weirdest names in the country.
After deciding not to grab a bite. I headed up back to the viewing gallery where the choir, string ensemble as well as the harp esemble were around to give performances to the various tour groups that made a journey through the place. I pity the choir, having to sing the same few songs over and over again for a whole entire day. Almost feels like being in a circus... The string esemble was as usual - good stuff and the harp ensemble was a refreshingly new addition to the "western-music-line-up". One thing's for sure is that the choir really blew me away with their performances. They are truly a SYF Gold standard choir for a reason. And the reason is that they just sing extravagantly well.
All this while, I had a sort of a brainwave when it came to photography. As long as I've tried, I almost always forget the essentials of photography - which is to express emotions. All the previous shots up there were of the ugly-attempting-to-be-arty-farty kind. They are just weak, pathetic coverage/reportage snapshots from the same bland points of view and are pretty much emotionless. I wanted to express how the choir impressed me with their performance in a picture. So after some thought, I remembered a little nifty zoom technique and managed to cook up this. Of course, with plenty of imperfections to perfect as times goes by.
Basically after the choir performance, I had to rush off for other things on my saturday agenda. At the same time, not before I passed through the lobby and the Grand Staircase and saw the dance society put on another performance in the lobby area. As usual, difficult photogaphy conditions, strong and harsh backlighting as well as fast action-oriented photography. Another stretch for my camera. I really need to upgrade da Canon.
Nothing much, an expressionless, cheesy shot. I know while this post isn't so fantastic in photographic quality, and that the writing style differs from the usual that I do, the thing is that - its very hard to recollect the entire open house as everywhere I walk in school, everything I see just keeps stirring up and kick up more thoughts like a chalk suspension in water. My mind is rather clouded now as it goes through the deluge of nostalgia, knowledge, thoughtful thoughts, philosophy as well as photographic learning opportunities from today. I'm sure this post doesn't do the AC Open House justice. Then again, I felt that my brief time spent there just wasn't enough to soak into the mood once again or to experience what I had experienced almost daily for 2 years.
They say that if you go to ACS for any one day of your school life and if you did not laugh even once in class. It could only mean two things 1)You skipped school (which would mean laughing gleefully once past the schoolgate. 2)There was something very wrong on that day itself. I find that logic to be really true. For sure I laughed during every single CL-B class. For sure every F-maths lecture was a joke and physic lecture was be a stoning session that'd have us all laughing after compiling a dictionary of "Daniel Khor's Vocabulary". Then again, it was just great. Like I said. If the shot expresses what I saw today. Then I would have missed out on alot mor details. Like the action:
While I really do feel that so much has changed since I left school. I'm still proud that I managed to complete my 12 years in ACS. And even though my AC identity has more or less reached a sunken plateau since I entered NS (it peaks were when cheering against RJC in rugby or any other sport), I accept the fact that I have to move on with life and that in AC, it has to change with the times.
Yet I have to say that some things never change. And other cannot and never will be changed. That is the heart of The Red, The Blue and The Gold. The ACSian Spirit. Something that only a good number of True-Blue ACSians will understand. Almost like a mystery to its own that builds this great sense of strong loyalty and attachment to my alma-mater. Indeed, ACS has done me a great service by preparing my mind and my spirit for the challenges in life ahead. That no matter what life may throw at me. I know always for sure that THE BEST IS YET TO BE!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home