Backstage, backfire...

Today was presentation day. At last, I could get over the intense feeling of having to present infront of the school my animations. But it didn't really turn out as expected, though. Here's the reason why;

Well, remember when I wrote last night that I was going to edit some timings since Mr. Bongard deleted a particular phrase which had animation in it and thus made the rest of the animation distorted by a second? Well apparently, if I tried to send the improved version of the slides to the announcements' comuter at that time in the morning, it might make the person-in-charge annoyed since announcements should be sent to him by Friday and so I didn't want to take my chances.

After Fall-In and Morning Duty, I went Backstage of the New Auditorium and met up with Ben Sim. Ben's suppose to say the speech, while I just played the animation. Something like he does the talk while I do the walk. So while waiting for our turn to be on stage (since, afterall, it was still Chapel and the Pastor was still preaching,) Ben and I had to wait at Backstage Left in one of the most quietest momments I've ever gone through. Everyone present Backstage uttered not a sound and the only sounds heard were the voice of the Pastor and the trinkling of water in the air-conditioning pipes. And my footsteps. It felt so much like those World War II scenes when the soldiers are ducked in their trenches quietly waiting for the command to open fire at the risk of their deaths, just that there was no death to expect except probably to mess up infront of the school and senior admin when on stage later.

A very interesting experience, I must say, and I'm very thankful that God blessed me with such a great opportunity! For most of the duration I waited within, I was playing around in the props room by doing many things like dancing with the National Flag (That's something even more rare than dancing with the School Flag!) and making shadows using the glow of the Power Supply Switches (Yup, with enough ttemptation, I could have shut down the whole Audi and get myself into deep trouble...)! Henry also came in and quietly chatted with Ben over some stuff while killing off time.

But once the Pastor was finished with his sermon, we all bowed our heads in prayer along with him before he made his exit. We then wished the Guitarists good luck before they went on stage to play for the final hymms to end off Chapel. Earlier on, they sheepishly told us that they never really practiced, but I guess they made it well with the songs after all. I joined the Pastor as we both raised our hands while singing the praises to God. Something else you don't ussually hear. (None of the students want to raise their hands during worship in Chapel like what usually happes in a typical Church.)

Then after the Benidiction was the Announcements. Now for Chapel, announcements are ussually divided into two main groups: Written Announcements (Which I never really realised were simply flash cards with paragraphs on them for the announcers to read out.) and Practical Announcements (Which my PowerPoint presentation fell under). While the people involved in Practical Announcements were waiting for our que, we were chatting among each other in an interesting manner, in the sense that a conversation can go like;

"Hey, what are you?"
"Oh, I'm Food For Thought. Who are you?"
"I'm Performing Arts. Nice to meet you!"
"Same to you too! Say, what's happening with Performing Arts anyway?"
"Oh, we're going to start a performance soon, and later I'd be sharing on the details."
"Good for you!"
"And what about you? Wasn't Food For Thought over a week ago?"
"Yeah, that's why I'd be showing a PowerPoint Presentation on the results and what we've finally collected."
"Good luck on your presentation!"
"Same to you, too! Erm, I think it's your turn to go. You're on!"
"Wow, okay. Here goes..."

Then I'd watch as the presenters put on a slighty more serious face and tone before speaking into the mike and demonstrating the images on the screen. It was an interesting transition, and I'm thankful God allowed me to see this side of Backstage! But one by one, the people started to leave, and in a matter of minutes, it was our turn to present. Praying to God that things would turn out fine, I prepared myself for the command to walk on stage. The teacher-in-charge of the stage set-up was comfirming with us details like, "Is there any sound files required?" or, "Which come first - Speech or PowerPoint?", then talked to the Set Managers at the top of the Balcony level using a small walkie-talkie, telling them respectively what conditions to adjust the stage to for our presentation.

"Full dark stage. Over.", "Increase volume by a little. Over.", "Lower the screen a bit more. Over." and stuff like that. And true enough, the commands were forfilled within a second from it being mentioned, like the lights were killed instantly when he asked for it, and the volume noticably increased during the present speaker's presentation! It was nice to watch, but once the stage was set, and the presenter before us was finished, we had to move forward and start the show.

The reason why I had to come on to stage just to play the presentation instead of him just doing it himself was because since the music in the slides was activated by the first slide itself, the first slide can't move on to the next slide automatically until the music finishes playing, unless someone clicks on to the next slide and thus continuing the the chain which can then be automatic. And since I knew the best timing to click the slide, I had to help Be click for him.

So I followed the drill - While Ben talks over the mike and states a couple of sentences on who we were, I quickly went to the computer and open the presentation for playing the momment he was done. But when I opened the Presentation, it reveiled the slide with the picture of me holding the tin cans with Alex. Shocked, I quickly jumped the slides to the first slide before starting it all on Ben's mark.

So once I played the first slide, I looked at my watch for a while before resting my finger on top of the Spacebar. In order to make sure the rest of the slides go in accordance to the music, I had to make sure I pressed the Spacebar once the last note of the first instrumental stanza was played. So I observed the music carefully, making sure I didn't miss the note for nothing. (The music was The Rock, by the way, and courtesy of Tim. I wanted to thank him for the song once I got back to class from Chapel, but I'll explain his response later on...)

*dung*, the note started playing. It was held for a second or so, and I was to transit to the next slide once the note was finished. So imagine the scene in slow-mo. My finger was hovering above the Spacebar, ready on the count of the ending note. I waited. And waited. And waited. Okay, the note wasn't that long, but you get the (intense) point. Once the note was lifted again, I knew my que and quickly pushed the Spacebar down, automatically starting the next slide and thus continueing the remaining automated portion of the whole slide.

Quarterly relieved (If there's such a word), I looked back and forth from the large stage screen to the computer screen itself, checking if anything went wrong. Apparently, this computer was comparatively old to my Tablet or even my house computer, and thus the many fonts I used were reduced to just Arial. But what almost turned me pale was the slide of the changing of the number '5000' to '6242', which was distorted in the sense that since there were two slides with the number '5000', and that one slide had it's digits in separate text boxes, the '5000' somehow separated itself in great obviousness in the middle of the scene, thus making me panick if this would affect the transition from '5000' to '6242'.

But praise the Lord abundantly that the transition wasn't affected, and the numbers rooled off the screen the way like they were suppose to. Once all the remaining automated slides were played, which were there to demonstrate where all the project's money's going (Africa), I was on stand-by to play the slides that involved the Acknowledgements.

The Acknowledgements starts off with a paragragh per person wanted to be acknowledged. Now for those who didn't know, the Acknowledgements was suppose to end with the slide with the most animation in it. You see, the paragraphs were suppose to compile in a slide until all acknolwedgements except the one of the students were within the area. Now that special slide was suppose to fade out all the paragraphs EXCEPT a numbers of letters, which would re-shuffle themselves out of nowhere to turn into the sentence 'Most importantly, YOU for making the DIFFERENCE and allowing this project to be such a success.'

It took me three hours just to do that one final slide, and it was as precious as ever. And even though Mr. Bongard deleted a paragraph worth of letters before the actual presentation (because the paragraph was going to thank him and Mrs. Linda Goon, and as usual they felt rather humble...), the slide still worked out somehow when it was examined before being registered into the announcements. But then on the actual thing itself, the slide occupied so many bytes itself that by the time Ben and I reached the last paragraph, the computer suddenly shut down infront of the entire school and later restarted itself.

When the screen suddenly turned into a flow of digital texts, I got schocked and jerked back noticably, then went back to the computer to find that there was nothing I could do about it except end the show. Ben said the last lines, "Most importantly, YOU for making the DIFFERENCE and allowing this project to be such a success! Thank you and God bless!" before we made our exit and left. I guess it could be dissapointing in a way, but the fact that the school hasn't seen this effect before means that I can still reserve this for another presentation in the future! Yay! Just like wine, some ideas just get better and better when kept longer and longer!So I'll just wait for the next opportunity to come, just wait and see!

For the end of the (school) day, we had briefing on the up-coming Common Test Papers, which my class proved me proud when even though the entire Year 2 leel was scolded by 'a member of the Senior Administration' for making unnessasary noise during the briefing, I know very well my class wasn't involved in the noise at all. Such an honour to be in a good class, indeed! And by the way, from 4th to 12th April this blog will experience Temporary Shut-Down so I could concentrate more on the exams. Pray for me!

After the briefing, which also meant after school, JKit asked if I could have lunch(eon meat) with the ussuals again, of which I agreed again. Today, I felt that I've taken one too many baos already and that in this rate, I'd turn into a bao myself. So I decided to try something new again: Fried Kway Teow! I love hawker Fried Kway Teow by the packets and ussually eat the Singaporean delicacy on special occasions. So since today was my presentation day, I thought I might as well give the canteen version of Fried Kway Teow a shot.

Sold in disposable plastic containers, I brought my food to the table the others agreed to sit at before making a detour to the Co-op shop to purchase a pen and a blue file. Once I returned, I sat along with the guys and ate my Kway Teow. To my horror, the top of the dish had a thin layer of pepper, and my tastebuds react faster and greater to the 'burning' feeling pepper can make, let alone a chilli. But thank the Lord the pepper was mild and I didn't respond to it the way I'd usually do. And how'd I usually respond to something really spicy?

Well, I'd imitate Bruce Lee.
("Wah-tar!")

So good thing it wasn't that bad, and once I ate off the top layer I could dig my chopsticks into some spicy-free stuff! Yay! After a nice meal and conversation with the guys (Man, I don't know what I've done to have this priveledge - God be the glory...), I walked with them to the bus stop to go home. Wanting to test my new MP3 Player (Something else to thank the Lord for!), I decided to take it out and play a few tracks onboard the bus. And I just want to say, God bless the man who invented this thingy! It was so ironicly hilarious throughout the period of time I tested the gadget!

And in what way was it hilarious? Well, let's just say that when I placed it on shuffle, it kept on playing music suitable to whatever was going on around me. For examples:

-When I placed my earphones on, the first song played was Hard on Port, and indeed the bus I was on started to make a sharp left on Clementi.

-When I explained to Kirby that I had to alight at the MRT Station to top up my ez-link card and that I only had enough coins to survive me a final trip, the track played was One Last Shot.

-When I watched Tim enter the station, it then played Thank You For The Music.

-When I finally topped-up my card, it played Hallelujah to the King of Kings.

-When I reached the stop at Clementi which I had to alight to change bus and found Kirby still waiting for me, it played Even Now.

-When we were onboard a 75, we ended up standing at the handicaped area since the back seats were taken up, so it played Let's Hang On.

-When we reached Kirby's stop, it played Looks Like We Made It.

-When I reached the side gate of the condominium I stay in, I suddenly felt 'urgent', thus the track To The Pirates' Cave.

-While waiting for the lift at the bottom of my block, it played Don't Quit on Me.

-On the way up, Take The Shot.

(And here's the funniest part!)

-Once I arrived at home, I quickly went to my room to place my bags and wallet (which got tangled with one of the bag straps) down so I could quickly go to the toilet. So once I 'fired' into the bowl, which for some reason had an ant floating around in it, it started playing Under Attack.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAsquidwardHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

Oh, there are just those momments when technology can bring you the giggles, hmm hmm. That's about it today, so to the many students out there who're going to take an exam sooner or later like me, may the God Almighty be with you!

Psalms 91:7!!! God bless!!!

(P.S. I found these while revising on P Sci/History, and I somehow feel honoured yet shocked:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_of_Portugal, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu_Sheng, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rae_%28motorsport%29, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rae_%28explorer%29)