I couldn't find any appropriate title for this entry other than Aaaaaaaa because seriously, I've been dying to blog. I haven't written on my journal for one whole week, and I'm beginning to forget the feelings and event I want to write about, but things were crazy earlier this week.
Theatre is over (it ended with a bang bang boom) and some controversy, and on the next day we received some good news, but even now, as I'm typing this, I am still not feeling the liberation I expected to feel, for I have about three to four more assignments to complete. After this following week ends, I think only then I will be free for real, but then I have finals to study for, because damn it, my first paper will start three days after Christmas. This is going to be sooooo fun, baby.
But again, I am glad that theatre has ended, because that thing really gobbled up my whole life. But then again, it was a friendly monster. Gobbled up all my energy and time, but in turn it gave me a lot of weird feelings that I have never felt about this uni and the people in it. As much as I felt like snapping in front of people, I developed this weird feeling of sappiness and unconditional love towards many of my teammates, and I'm beginning to love my tutor, and honestly, this one whole month of practice and preparation had changed me in ways I had never expected.
I went to college on every single weekday, and returned home at night, even on days when I had classes. And now, my body is so used to the early hours of waking up and total hours of staying awake, so I find myself waking up early on weekends and not needing to take any naps anymore. Dios mio, am I turning into a real adult, for real?
This is a picture from our last practice session on the night before the real day. We left practice at 9pm that night. It was our final full rehearsal. This was at one of the bigger classrooms that we call as one of the 'halls'. In most of the scenes, we dimmed the lights. One particular scene was intentionally practised in the dark though, with only torchlights from one or two phones.
It was the second last scene. Involved sounds of gunshots. In the dark. I was busy writing down stuffs on my script sheet, planning on people who would carry the props in and out on the next day. More than half of the team was involved in the scene. Little did I know that that night, they heard a sound of a mysterious giggle. And I was the only one who didn't realise a single thing. They only told me the next day. See, honey, what a interesting experience this whole theatre practice session had given me.
The week before that, we went for a trailer shooting at various locations. Here's a photo of my teammates having a (fake) brawl at a basement car park of a nearby mall/office building (also where my favourite library is located). The car park was rather empty because it was the bottom-most level. And it was nearly 5pm or something, and I remember being a bit impatient to go home because boy, it was a tiring day. I think the guys really liked this part though. They had fun planning the fight choreography and attempted many takes to make it perfect. It was rather funny too, entering the lift, all 11 of us, with toy guns and masks and most of the guys were dressed in black.
Here's my teammate looking professional and shooting without a tripod. Again, this was for the trailer. On the real day of the theatre performance, this was one of the scenes that the audience liked the most, judging from their gasps and awhhhhs.
Before leaving this place, we attempted a lot of jumpshots but all of them failed because it was very hard to get 11 people to jump at the same time.
Here's one of our props━a car door. The guys did great job making it and spray-painting it. On the real day, one of the guys brought a real steering wheel for it.
When I wrote the script one month ago, I didn't think of how we were going to do a car scene. I didn't think much about how troublesome it would actually be to put certain scenes that required certain props to be built. I think our car door wasn't bad at all. But our door was so bad that it actually couldn't stand on its own on the real day of the performance.
Thankfully, my teammates are cool people, and instead of being sad about it and being jealous of the other group who undoubtedly had wayyy better props, we joked a lot about our door and associated it with one popular Malay saying that goes, "Hidup segan, mati tak mahu."
This was my bus ride home after the theatre performance. Now imagine me, dressed a little too nicely, on a public bus, with my fringe a bit curled, carrying a ukulele, an eco bag (containing a beach ball, a sweater, a table cloth) and a bag (containing shirts and another hoodie and a frigging telephone━yep, a frigging traditional home telephone we needed as one of the props). Thankfully, it was a 5.30pm ride (I don't think it's regularly available, since I always see 5pm rides and 6pm rides━but I could be wrong). Andddd most important of all, the ride wasn't full! I had two seats all for myself and my stuff, and although I don't like air-cond buses, this one wasn't bad at all!
...except for the fact that I reached home after sunset, and right after that I straight away had to follow my family out for dinner because we had my grandparents and uncle coming over, and I returned home at 11pm that night, and by midnight I was dead. I had never felt that tired in a long long time.
But despite the tiredness this whole theatre thing had brought to me, I kinda love one thing about it━that it gave me the excuse to come to college on Mondays and Tuesdays, the two weekdays when I don't have classes at all this semester. Now don't get me wrong, I don't really love coming to college. But I love one thing, and you can guess it pretty easily. Bus rides! 8am bus rides!
But I notice that towards the end of the year, the traffic shifts its peak hour a bit later in the morning as compared to in the earlier period of the year. To catch the 8am bus, I'd normally walk to the bus stop at 7.40am just in case the bus comes early. But boy, that's just the same time the traffic crawls at an excruciatingly slow speed, and yes, people stare. You feel as if you're some kind of item of display as you sit there motionless at the bus stop. I've grown used to it, but I find it scary that as I sit there for two consecutive days, same timing, same cars are going to pass by, and they'll be able to see me and recognise my face.
But again, 8am bus rides are damn nice. Because they're never full.
Except for that particular Monday, that Monday earlier this week. It was a crazy ride! Two and a half hours to reach town! Madness! And I was sitting at the backmost seat, so I had the chance to snap a pic of the traffic behind, so baby, look at that! Until now I am still puzzled about what exactly happened that morning. How could the jam be that bad? Was there an accident? I'm sure I didn't see any.
Such an unfamiliar seat on a very familiar bus. And at that moment, I knew the school holidays were part of the blame. My favourite bus ride was packed. My favourite bus ride that is normally empty was packed like never before! Blame the school holidays!
But then again, I still love STC buses even when they're full. Because the aisles are wide. You don't really feel like you're trapped and squished on. And you don't feel like you have your personal space invaded.
And some days, I get rides like this one in the picture above. Not some days, in fact. Most of the days. It's like a limo and you're a VIP, so I really don't deserve to complain about anything. Besides, it's rather nice to be in a sea of strangers on a bus.
My Friday ride home was also quite packed. And it was the exact same bus on that Monday morning. Come to think of it, it's a rather nice way to start a week and end it. The Monday morning ride was rather uneventful, but the Friday evening one was better because I tried to help the lady behind me shut the window, but the window was stuck, but I insisted that I should keep on trying, because it was me who opened the window earlier on when nobody else was on the bus, and then a man helped us to shut it.
And that man was the man who gave me his Borneo Post months ago, who also told me to be careful some weeks ago, and there we were, meeting again. I'm not sure whether he remembers me, but boy, I remember him. Rest assured though that I know this man is harmless. I sometimes can't believe that my mum doesn't trust me on these kind of things, these people-reading kind of stuff, and I know she's just trying to make me a bit more careful around strangers, but really, I think I have a higher risk of being knocked down by a car while crossing the road than actually being harmed by a stranger on a bus.
I'm lazy to elaborate, but while we're at it, let me just say that last Friday I was almost hit by a car while crossing the road after exiting the library. Of course I don't tell people about this, because they're going to give me a full lecture on how to cross a road. But I swear at that moment my mind was in full auto pilot and I actually didn't even use my brain much when I was walking. Probably because I've been taking that same route every day. Or maybe I was tired. I don't know. What's important is that a) I took a step backwards, that kinda saved my life, and b) I didn't die, so hurray!
And that's one valid argument I will use if you tell me to be careful around strangers. You should better just tell me to be careful around moving cars. At least I can read people. I can't read cars.
Other than that, life's been boring, if according to the standards of people who are living a more exciting life.
I went to the second hand booksale for three times, and I honestly still feel like going, but I've spent all that I saved, so right now I think it's wiser to forget about it.
Christmas decorations are coming out, and as usual, The Spring is my most favourite mall when it comes to decorations of festive seasons. Just look at that reindeer playing a violin! Look at that!
And while we're at it, hah, I haven't been playing my violin since ages. I thought of reselling it, but it scares me what if one day I just wake up and suddenly feel like playing it again, just like what happened to my ukulele. So yeah, it's there, it's still there.
And I joined this college marathon and had fun observing some elderly people tai-chi-ing before that. And I didn't win any medals because I chose friendship and togetherness rather than winning, and honestly, I don't really give a shit about medals these days.
New bus stop at Jalan Masjid is fully done, by the way. I think it's a but wheelchair-friendly. Other than that, I don't see much difference, but its "bus stop" sign is rather cute. Like duhhh of course it's a bus stop, honey.
One random picture one evening after my theatre practise (or was it after class? Eh, I don't remember).The guy in red misunderstood my actions I think. After I shot this picture, he stared at me and smiled weirdly, probably thinking I was secretly snapping his photo. I was actually just trying to capture how Jalan Masjid-Saujana looked like on a typical evening. But oh well.
That's about it.
I'm dying to write some better entries about this whole year and all those sappy year-end shit we all want to post, but the time is ticking and I need to chase on sleep and assignments and I really haven't started studying for finals, to be honest. In fact, I don't feel like I've leant anything this semester. Last Thursday (the day after theatre) I was caught sleeping in my morning class and I wasn't ashamed at all about it, so right now I'm questioning myself, yo bro, what kind of student haz you become? And to be honest, I didn't really fall asleep, if you get what I mean. I chose to sleep.
And seriously, I'm dying to get all these assignments done so I can feel a little bit of liberation. And right now I'm visualising myself still boarding a public bus to college on Christmas eve (weird thought...) and going to the library to study just one or two days after Christmas (another weird thought...) but honestly, that's really what's going to happen, baby.
Hopefully this is not my last blog post of the year!
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