We lost. Hwa Chong won...
Well... I think we generally did well... but luck wasn't on our side... the judges preferred more grand kinda music... and we were overpowered, the RJCO being 57 in size and the rest, 80... our music just wasn't loud enough for the impact.... the general comments were that our music is delicate, but just too small an orchestra. Congrats to Hwa Chong.
Been recalling alot of the past one and a half years... from knowing nothing about CO to being part of this fantastic orchestra of RJ.
We were made up of mostly beginners, there are very good players in the orchestra, Dianna (flute), Louisa (YangQin), Jiamin and ZhiJing (erhu), Melissa (Zhongruan)... etc... but honestly, many of us were beginners, out of the 7 zhongruan players, (myself included), 6 of us are new... only Melissa has some CO background in secondary school. Last year, although I'll not want to say this, but we were CRAP. When Zhou laoshi (our conductor) came at the end of December last year... he told us he was... erm... shock. The only thing he thought of was, "ze me ban? - What to do???" Then, there started the endless no. of practices, every saturaday from 8 to 4, every tuesday from 7 to 9 PM... the endless holidays we've forwent... we trained up an orchestra from ground zero. Improvement was tremendous, and in the meantime... some kinda of bond began forming between the members ourselves and with the conductor...
I remembered the no. of times he started talking about the good old times... about how he went drinking sake with our another CO teacher(Yang laoshi) in Japan and how Yang laoshi, a really small sized man, ended up wearing Zhou laoshi's oversized shoe back to the hotel... how he will always say that unlike other conductors, he seldom speak alot to the students and yet spend half an hour talking about some funny jokes... how he called everyone a nickname... "mei nu (pretty gal) - a guy in fact" "gao de - the tall one", "fei de - the fat one"... the no. of times he go over engrossed in the music he forgot about the time and had me ended up being scolded by my dad who waited for me for over an hour... those are memories I'll never want to forget...
Yesterday, we were given special permission to go to school late... reached school at 11am and everyone was busy tuning and practicing... Zhou laoshi came at 1.30pm and we practiced for a couple of time... we were in one of our best states. Reached Singapore Concert Hall at 5.45pm, all geared up to make the best performance ever and hopefully bring the champion trophy back to make a pair with Band's. 7.30pm, ready to go in... Huihui and I began singing our performance song to calm ourselves down... around 7.50pm... the battle began... "summer's night" was good... the tempo was maintained and it was a refreshing piece... the came "The Harvest (watever)"... it was one of the best we've ever played... we finished playing... there was silence from the audience... followed by loud applase of shock and pleasent suprise. No one expected a small orchestra that cannot even fill up half of the stage to play at that volume... it was good. Of course... throughout, my leg was trembling like hell... there's this portion of the music mu pluck couldn't find my strings and didn't play a single sound... but well... I was told it wasn't gonna affect...
came out of the hall... christine was sobbing.... her pipa string broke during the second song... but honestly, no one heard it... we were still hopeful as it was one of our best performance... eventhough we know we were probably much softer then the others.... it is something that we can do nothing about...
determined to get into the hall to listen to the announcement of the results, we had some pple with tickets (we kept 20 ourselves and 20 was given to the performers), we had pple going in first and then recycled the tickets to those outside (ok... that's not right... but who asked them to have such screwed up organisation?) we managed to get all the orchestra in... we sat in two rows behind the judges.... price giving began... first to the GOLD orchestras... we cheered like mad, then to those who performed last night in the finals, we cheered like mad to. " and finally, the 1st award goes to... Hwa Chong Junior college" forced applause were squeezed out... then silence dawned upon the two rows of blue and white. For a long while, no one spoke anything... Meli began to ask pple to say something... but no one was in the mood... HC's cheering pricked harshly on everyone's ears... soon, the most of the pple in the hall cleared out but the two rows remained... silent as ever... beside me, Huihui was crying and unconvincingly, I tried to comfort her... my heart felt as though it was twisted and crashed into a ball in my body... ShiHui (the president) came and tried to comfort everyone... putting up a smile. Finally, everyone stood up and walked out of the hall toward the tunning room where we placed our instruments... as we walked down the stairs... sounds of the school song begain ranging through the corridoor... "with one voice make us pray, Auspicium Melioris Aevi, with God to guide the way". Everyone was singing the school song at the top of our voices no bothering about the attention we were attracting... back to the tunning room, the piano was played again and the school song was sang again... followed by the spirit cheer... Anderson JC was there too... we finished and they gave us a huge cheer.... which we returned too with a BIG one for them... everything's over...
Zhou laoshi tried to cheer us up... the teachers too... some of the audiences... we knew we were good... there's no regrats over that... the judges just dun seem to think that a small orchestra of 57 should win... there's nothing we can say... and congratulations to Hwa Chong.
The 1st was definately the aim of everyone last night... but I think we've done a great job already... from silver the last SYF to a Gold and Finalist this year... with a large no. of us learning everything from ground zero just last year June... we've came a long way as an orchestra and written down a page for ourselves in RJCO's history. I'm so proud to be a part of such a great , united and friendly, orchestra, so proud to be part of the group fighting to keep our colours of green, black and white flying.
I've honestly, identified myself more as a st. nicks girl than a rafflesian... but last night... I was proud to be with such a great bunch of people... part of the colours of green, black and white. Of course... st. nicks will always be THAT special second home to me... she is just so special that NOTHING; NO ONE can ever replace her position in my heart... but for once in these two years... I am finally truly proud to call myself a Rafflesian too.

P/S: CONGRATS TO ST. NICKS FOR BEING THE DOUBLE CHAMPS THIS YEAR, YOU ROCK!!! (^-^)