Thursday, June 30, 2005
tonight was a night of reminiscing with queen. suddenly we talked about mr hong. talked about refat. talked about jubilance. talked about us. i was digging thru my old photos and i chanced upon one that i took with effie a year ago. it was taken on the 27th of june. that was the day that bukit merah band had its first public performance. our macritchie performance.

so many people gave positive comments (: wahh. that gave us confidence man. i still remembered sherilyn's dad asking refat what we were aiming for in the syf. whether silver or gold. wahh pro or not? of course pro la. refat was all smiles and joe was telling me how proud he was of us.

during that time. got a lot of hate here hate there. as quoted by queena. lol. a lot of cliques nia. the sec ones were naturally abandoned. LOL. poor things. i tell u ahh the number of times i wanted to whack queena or tell her off for not being able to count. so damn pissed. den she had a gang with the sistaz. lol. those were the days. and i always thought wency was like really proud lor.

and then came school opening ceremony or whatsits la. 27 august. kelvin's bday. wahh tt was the time when i felt really proud to belong in the band. the tone of august was so sweet. so together. so bm. i can tell refat was really damn proud of it man. but unfortunately the performance didnt go so well. cause we had too long a break or sth.

the band started gelling together (: the lit students were coming together. i remembered how excited we were abt the concert. and then for some reason they cancelled it. wahh so much tears. curses. swear words of every imaginable languange and dialect. anger. frustration. this brought us much closer. planned for petition everything. queena was damn serious at that time.

den confirmed that concert cancel liao. we called refat during lit. and queena talked to him.

'hello refat? eh wah lao u still sleeping ah? so lazy la you!'

or sth like that. hahahaha. that was damn funnnny!

den nervous anticipation. the meeting with satwant principal and ghani and everyone else. we got it! but not in dec as planned. in jan. upset again. but refat pacified us nice nice (:

o level break. juniors were coming up. peck si was doing well. the trumpeters were good. the clarinets didnt need much help. mei xian had the sweetest tone ever. maybe still not comparable to tanglin's jasmine. but wow. good tone for sec one. she always made it a point to figure out the rhythm for herself before refat could teach her. and she always stared at refat. LOL. so funnnnny also.

came back. preparing for concert. august tone gone. no tone at all. noisy noisy noisy. refat always scold like mad. so many runs. he scolded us. walked out on us. tore a page off the conductor's score. threw the baton. but still we stuck together and played on. despite many grumblings and cursing and swearing and the occasional flash of the middle finger from the drummer. LOL. everyone was morally defeated. where did our tone go? where did our stamina go? where was the august band?

attended band exchange at fuhua. i remembered queena and huey min were nt happy that they went to group c or sth. somehow me azman hao and wency managed to gel together more through this. the presentation was bad. we only prepared for three days. i knew we left fuhua with a bad impression.

did illegal stuff like sneaking off to tanglin for combined band prac (: then we kena tio from ms ehh what was her name. ah yeah. ms ang. the leaders always told me abt her ultra bad breath and how they had to stand a few feet apart to avoid her holy water and her breath. tskkk. we braved a lot of things together.

intense training for concert. almost everyday band. fall in. did runs. everyone started to become more and more demoralised. wency blogged abt her worries. she started jogging on her own to build up her stamina. queena blogged too. everyone blogged. lol. it was the trend then. guest players started coming in. unity's fhornist started coming down. prac was tougher and tougher.

love blossomed. but nth happened. lol. azman and huda (: syuadah the walking human dustbin. mubz the cutieeeee (:

at that time. a lot of the seniors had prank calls. it was funny at first but after a while it got scarier and scarier. it was the same person always. and different seniors had different experiences. me and hao actually suspected the juniors. because we were constantly at war with them. tskk. but we found the culprit in the end.

ppl started showing attitude. attendance went down. refat's constant question of 'do u all really want this concert or not?' i remembered queena was once so attitude she took her time to bring her instrument up. huey min was always working. refat didnt help much. pracs went for bad to worse. but one good prac lifted everyone's spirits (: it went better and better.

snakes were made. props were done. banner was done. gifts were bought. refat's jersey was framed. but the songs werent ready. and refat constant complain that our efforts werent much use pissed us off real bad. especially the banner. when the gang spent the whole day on it. but he got over it.

practiced the perc ensem last last last minute. everything was so rushed. but the best rehearsal ever was on thursday. the day before our concert. no glitch. no mistake. crescendoed and accented at the right places. and that was the very very first time that refat laughed. laughed at our band. hao and azman did the snakes (: first time the band saw refat laughed. the perc ensem was excellent. i remembered clarence left early cause of piano prac. the pom poms were funny. and when we finished. everyone shouted 'yeah!' in unison. no clarence. no outsiders.

that was the real bm band spirit. that was the spirit that burned in us while refat was arnd.

and everyone was happily bonded forever after (:

concert night was great. lol. shall not go into it here. i blogged abt it before. eons ago (:

miss the fun and laughter peace and joy during pracs. missed the day when wency msged us and told us that for every min we were late we owe them one round. missed the runnings and the combined sectionals. missed that one time when refat told sherman to do sth abt his hair cause it looked like a mop. WAH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. so funnnnny la please.

let the spirit of bm band burn in us (: for that span of nine months when things went well for us. when we had a future. when we were gg somewhere (:

peace.

riahh ranted at 11:19:00 PM