two stories: part one
i was told once that i write good recounts. they cover almost minute-by-minute aspect of the events that occurred. it’s as though you were there, peeking into the situation as my words tumbled off into your brain. you would be able to imagine the events in your head, acting out as you absorbed the words that described the event oh so vividly, minute by minute, second by second.
no. maybe not. it is inappropriate for me to set such high standards since i may end up falling short of them and whoever is reading this might be very disappointed. i guess it is very subjective. the following is written without much editing - they just came out of the brain.
1.
this began on november 28th. it actually began a few months before, but i think it really began on november 28th. i know this because i went back to check on my skype records, and this was the day that we began discussing about our council and which year 4 we were going to chope. honestly, i didn’t care at all then. my co-chair, CY, threw out several names. i was probably busy eating my 大娘水饺. some of the names were not very appealing. CY rejected some of them, because she felt she would be working with them too often. so we decided that we would request to work with D. i didn’t know what to feel about this, because although i knew who D was, i hadn’t worked with him. so i said yes and CY put in the request.
between then and dec 11th, the manpower allocation was finalised and we were allocated D, which was not a big surprise. we talked on skype on dec 11th and discussed about council topics. i just bought dinner from yoshinoya at the mastercard center @ wukesong, and i was eating rice as we discussed. the tv was set to the CCTV crime and law channel, and they were showing a program about this boy who stumbled his way into a car and locked himself in, eventually suffocating to death. the car owner was then blamed for not locking the car, and thus the moral dilemma of who was to blame in this situation. i remember discussing with frank and junheng about it. the more i ate the worse i felt. i was already feeling a bit dizzy during the walk home. days before that, both of my roommates had already fallen sick and recovered. it seemed logical that i was next. i sat on the bed, typing and eating, until i felt i could not take it anymore. i typed that i was very sorry and said i had to go to sleep.
after that we didn’t talk much. we had decided to choose one topic among a few we had shortlisted. back then it was called the ASEAN Science and Technology Council, and it had not yet been renamed.
months passed without much happening and there came one wednesday when we were informed that some councils would be expanded to include more countries. they would also be correspondingly “upgraded” to international councils. we put in a request to be “upgraded” as we felt that science and technology issues were very limited if confined to the ASEAN region, and that given a global context, we would be able to set topics that were of better quality and thus appear more exciting. we settled on the issue of hydropolitics and water security, and we were renamed the United Nations Environment Programme, on our request. these were very geog topics.
the drafting of study guides was not very exciting. the process dragged for a very long time but eventually it was done. then, we were given a lengthy break of about a month and a half, until the preparations began close to the actual date. rehearsals began and i attended almost all of them. D and I were the faces of UNEP most of the time because CY had other commitments. i didn’t want it to be like that, but there was no choice as i was the only other Y6 from the council, and that meant that i had to take the lead. many communications and messages came through me or through D. CY also helped out a lot, especially when the actual day neared. i remember being very excited about june 3rd, which was the day of full dress rehearsal. although i was late, i was very excited about it. we set up the council room, LC3 and 4. when we surveyed the area, with all the lights off, CY and I thought that one room was enough. so we decided to use LC4 instead, since the power sockets in LC3 were mostly not functioning. it was also nearer to the toilets. we arranged the tables, neatly and according to colour code (first grey, then maroon, then turquoise, and so on). we placed the placards nicely on each table, and in between breaks i watched Grey’s Anatomy. then i was called up to the PAC, and we ran through the closing ceremony, where to sit in the PAC, and the flags ceremony. there was lunch, which was catered, and we stood around the ticket counter outside the PAC and ate and chatted. later on in the day, darren was moving in and out of the PAC. one of the times he was moving a giant blue board into the lift and one of the external florist contractors was helping him. he also carried canteen tables all by himself. i felt a lot of respect for him because he was doing all this work in silence.
eventually, day 1 came. it was a very surreal experience. imagining the past 7 months of work and interaction with people from ISAC made me feel a little woozy. people were actually going to come to our school, sit in our PAC, listen and ask SR Nathan questions. they were going to gather in LC 4, with its formidably cold air conditioning and poor lighting, and talk about an issue which we decided months ago on skype. it was a funny feeling. i wore a white shirt and a dark striped tie. i felt confident in formal attire. it made me feel excited. i also felt very warm. we had a wonderful lunch. the food was extremely good. i was full of praises for it, and for day 2’s lunch as well. day 3’s lunch was not as good. but the food was excellent. it was a strange feeling, standing and walking among a bunch of people in formal attire. i had to get used to it all over again.
council session was alright. we seemed to be getting nowhere, and the people were not very sure of the procedures and certain ways of how the UN worked. but that was alright. we clarified these things. most of them were doing this for their first time. heck, i was chairing for the first time. there was a conscious attempt to not screw up and look bad. some people began to appear as possible awardees. after the day ended we gathered in the humanities room, and we had a long debrief. we talked about many things, some things only among the Y6s and others with the Y5s present as well. there was a lot of talking. i felt very tired. after that i went to have dinner at macs with clara, chrystal, darren and wang lu. it was a weird feeling. i had minimal interaction with clara and chrystal outside of isac and ell respectively. it was interesting to hear chrystal talk about things that were non-isac and non-ell. darren was very funny and he said a lot of jokes, especially one about people in the gym.
day 2 was much better after you got used to what was happening, and the notepassing. there was also crisis session, which offered a new way of things. the delegates were very excited at the crisis and many of them performed well. it was interesting to see “water experts”, “american special envoys” and “OPEC people” come forward to talk about this crisis. i was very angry at one of our people.
when we reverted back to council session, we could see a couple of draft resolutions being worked on. upon vetting them, we felt that each draft had its own strengths and weaknesses. however due to logistical issues, the delegates couldn’t work out their differences overnight. some people were from overseas and they had sightseeing programmes, such as visiting the night safari. CY offered advice to one of the delegates, C, and provided him with tips on how to work with people in MUNs. C called himself “stubborn”. it was the subject of much laughs between D, CY and me later on. we had our daily debrief. CY, D and I took a group picture before CY had to leave for her competition prep. i gave many good comments about D and how he had a lot of potential, because i felt that he did. he was a remarkable deputy chair. there were delicious chocolates being given out. i ate a lot of them - it had to be at least 10. they were mini chocolates. they were kinder buenos.
it seemed very difficult to believe that day 3 was here already. CY was not around on the third day, and D and I had to manage without her. D later on spoke good things about me and how I handled a messy situation very well. i felt otherwise, but i was very happy and grateful at his remarks. we had very limited time to pass a resolution and debate had to be ended quickly. there were some opposing votes, but that is expected in any council. they managed to pool their ideas together to form a decent resolution, and that was commendable. some of them worked through lunch to correct their formatting. joanelle was pressing us for it and we were one of the latest ones. she said that my thumbdrive matched my phone case. after that, i took my lunch and made the decision on the award winners. D had to leave early because he was going to the rehearsals for the closing dinner, which he would be emceeing after the closing ceremony. i took pieces of notepaper and wrote out the few shortlisted countries and looked at them for a very long time. i tried to be as fair as possible, and looked at where each of them had done good or not as good. i put a tick beside each of their good points, and a cross beside their shortcomings. it was a very difficult decision. wang lu witnessed this and i asked him many times for advice. he was a very good friend during this short 1 hour. eventually, i walked up to the PAC, listened to the plenary session, and fell asleep. when i woke up, i walked down to the humanities room, where i originally was, and continued thinking.
when amadora asked me for the names and said it was getting late, i wrote the final list on a piece of notepaper and i took a photo of it before passing it to amadora. i sent the photo to the others, D and CY. then i went up to attend the closing ceremony with wang lu. D and I gave short speeches, and i gave out the awards to those who won. it seemed, and it was, a very tough decision to make. on hindsight, perhaps this guy would have been better than the other, or this girl should have deserved a higher recognition instead. but by the time the names were in, what you gotta do? before that i received a text saying that one delegate’s name was spelled wrongly and i had to inform her. i thought her name was spelled wrongly on the certificate. it turns out her name was spelled wrongly, but it was corrected using wite-out. i also saw vivianne and wished her all the best for her performance.
it was perhaps my first and last time giving out prizes on the stage of the PAC. it was a heart-pumping experience. it felt, again, very surreal. i didn’t know what i had done to be part of this. various things had to fall into place - CY had to be unable to make it, i had to be part of EB, i had to be part of isac, etc etc. all the things that ultimately pointed me into this day, this hour, this minute, this moment of me standing on the PAC stage and shaking the hand of P. Sudhakar or C. Chen or Y.S. Yeap or someone else. it was a glorious moment. i felt genuinely happy for these people. they earned it. they stepped out of their comfort zone, they talked about things which perhaps they had absolutely no interest about and made themselves sound like they were. some of them were doing this for their first time.
we won best resolution. it was a very weird and awkward time for D and me. i thought we would never win it. us winning best resolution seemed unlikely to happen in all the different dimensions. but we won. it was funny. they invited a guest up on stage to announce the winner. he walked very slowly. and someone said he asked someone who the winner was supposed to be, when he was the person that decided it. but we won. D and I were over the moon. we stood up and clapped very loudly. we kept clapping until the representative went up the stage to collect the hamper. i witnessed chrystal and darren wrap the hamper just a few days before. chrystal was complaining about how one of the foodstuffs was preventing the hamper from balancing properly. it looked lopsided. but nobody cared. D and I remained standing throughout, until the representative walked off the stage. then we sat down. we were both surprised. it seemed very unlikely. but we won.
the chairs and I did the flags ceremony. it went as we practised. people came up, and they took pictures. some of them lifted the flags up and the flags touched the ground. this was generally frowned upon in a UG. but nobody seemed to bother. when a couple of people and i brought the flags down to the humanities room, some flag apples dropped on the floor. this was also terribly frowned upon and would be reciprocated by heavy punishments from the upper ranks of the UG. but nobody seemed to care either. after the closing ceremony ended, there were many chairs to be pushed and carried to and fro. i helped out with that. after that i went back to the humanities room, and found darren folding flags. darren is the unsung hero of all this. without him and his logistics team, nothing would have happened smoothly. people would have no bread or water in the morning. the food would suck. so i folded flags with him. then clara joined in. and we folded and folded. then we went to change into our traditional wear.
we walked to the hall together. i was holding this cap that belonged to darren. it generated much dialogue between me and other people. some commented that it represented a fusion between eastern and western cultures. i lamented. i should have worn black jeans instead of blue.
we practised our entrance. we were to walk in from the left of the stage, from the audience’s perspective. the OC would walk in from the right, and the secretariat from the middle. i was sabo-ed to enter first. it was a very nervous experience. we were each given a bottle of sparkling juice. the chairs had to pop the juice and pour it for the delegates. there were too many delegates and too little juice. i poured too much for the first few people. the rest had to make do with punch. i kept the bottle and i constantly refilled it with fruit punch, pretending it was wine. it was a funny thing for a while.
the activities went on and D and I had dinner with our delegates. we made small talk, until D had to leave for his emceeing duties. there were superlatives and chocolates were being given out. i wandered around the hall and i met clara and darren, who were talking while staring into the dark ISH. they talked about many things, like ghost stories. i kept quiet most of the time. this guy called nikhil was prancing around the back of the hall. it looked like he was looking for someone. clara recognised him and they talked.
there was a dance segment. the first song was terrible. most of the people agreed that it was a weird first song. i walked up to the control room, and chatted with HW. he mentioned that the playlist was given by the organising people and not his own. we talked for a while. then a bunch of people came upstairs. it was joelle and her delegates. one delegate said that the music was horrible and then she had to “help” HW. she went onto youtube and searched for club can’t handle me, which is a very old song. but it managed to get the people excited for a while. she left HW with a bunch of youtube videos and asked him to play them one by one.
eventually, everything ended. we began to pack up. i folded the orange, green, red and blue banners. i also cut the string of CDs and it shocked some people. i was very apologetic. i should have warned them that i was going to cut the string and that it would snap. it was lucky that no one was injured. we collated all the logistics and we moved them to the humanities room.
there was a mad rush to pack up the logistics, and we sat down for the final debrief. it had been a tiring three days. our teacher spoke about how each of us had grown in a particular way. i thought about how i had grown. i didn’t really grow. neither did i learn anything big.
then people began to leave. when clara was talking, there were about 80% of the people still around. others had left during and after our teacher spoke. then joanelle started talking, and by then 40% of the people were left. when Chrystal started talking, there were only 5 of us listening. it was quite funny.
that’s it.
a lot of things happened over three days. i met a lot of people. i worked with a lot of people. one of the things i forgot to mention was how this event reminded me of JNCO. i don’t recall there being an ops room for JNCO, but they felt similar to me. we were the planners, and we knew what was going on at each and every point in time, including the crisis session. we were in charge. there were teachers (and officers), but we were in charge. we knew our stuff. we handled things. both were good experiences. i enjoyed it very much.
it is amazing that so many things can happen over a span of three days. others had begun setting out the course, timeline and overall details for this event almost 10 months ago.
in between these 10 months a lot of things happened. hmca was also one of those things. im grateful to have been a part of it. there were some funny moments and laughs. hmca pushed me closer to the people of isac. originally i was rather distant and didn’t attend many sessions. but it changed after hmca. and that was a good thing.
those of us like CY, D and I did rather little as compared to many others. before anything else, i must thank CY and D. because they are such wonderful people. they are smart and intellectual. they are a pleasure to work with. i enjoyed the 1am-3am talks, more of them with CY, about anything under the sun and about my stories and my ice cream with children on dark nights under a big tree. CY provides so much intellectual content to our council. D is very helpful and goes way beyond his assigned duties. we were very glad to let him chair a few short segments of our council session and he was confident and concise. CY and D are both amazing individuals. i would not have given up working with them for anyone else. 10 months ago i was unsettled as i didn’t know how this would all turn out. but they have been extremely great.
as i mentioned, those who were in the organising committee like darren and many others put in a lot of time and sweat into this. it is amazing to see the combined efforts of around forty to fifty people make an event like this happen and make it a success. it is a heartening and heartwarming feeling. over the 8 months beginning november 28th and ending june 6th, i got to know a lot of people better. most importantly, people like CY and D kept me going. even though i keep saying i don’t care about anything, i didn’t throw my hands up and quit. despite the minimal challenges, it was still an interesting and arduous journey. to add on to them, these few months were supplemented by the weekly isac sessions, which made me interact with both year 5s and 6s during things like the general knowledge quizzes, which i enjoyed very very very much. the enthusiasm of many of the others also inspired me to put in more effort into this event, starting with turning up for them. 15 months ago when i joined this cca, everything seemed so different. i never knew that this would be where i ended up. it’s not a fantastic experience. don’t get me wrong. but it was thoroughly fun. the banter, laughs and jokes were extremely enjoyable. one of the things that i always believe in is this: before i start to participate in anything, i will have this mental image of what is happening, down to the room size, lighting and equipment. but most of the time it is never what i think of it to be. life always surprises you.