Saturday, 25 July 2009
The Return
Finally, a real post. Not some quiz/tag/music lyrics pseudo-post. It has certainly been a long time since I wrote and I think I am pretty satisfied with how it all came about. The length may be slightly more than what I usually post up but think of it as my compensation (or not) for the long wait. Also, I tried a different format to the post due to it's length.
Note 1 : Sorry for the lousy title. By the time I finished this, I was quite tapped out of creative juices... I might edit it if inspiration strikes.
Note 2 : One might want to skip past 2.1.5 for it is just a personal recollection with no significance and minimal disruption to the overall account.
1.1 Prelude
Initially, I planned on working through and detailing my 3 days of volunteer work at my university’s recent Orientation Week in 3 separate posts. However, as I felt I did not have adequate material to cover 3 posts, I condensed it to a single post. Deciding that, I drafted the post and eventually never got it up to a satisfactory level worthy of seeing it in digital print. Now, I have decided to give it another go, after a week of classes, in hopes that the time delay has given me a better perspective to pen, or rather type, the experience (besides covering my ass of procrastination). After almost 24 hours of toiling in front of the laptop, I present my orientation week volunteering experience.
Orientation Week (or commonly abbreviate to O-week) has been a long standing tradition among tertiary level education institutes. The official purpose of it has always been to initiate freshmen into a new chapter of their lifes. However, due to the plethora amount of variations committed upon the process, it has come to be an experience eagerly awaited, anxiously dreaded or even apathetically dismissed by the ‘newcomers’ from (tall) tales or recollections from those who went (as in experienced, not died) before them. For me, it was an experience I failed to experience firsthand (twice now) ever since my inception into tertiary studies.
I guess it was my way of compensating for the above mentioned fact (consciously or subconsciously) that I had always tried to be, and enjoyed being, involved in the orientations of others instead. Even in a new, foreign country, that did not seem change. I decided to take up volunteering work for the first three (and main) days of O-week for the second semester of 2009. To be frank, I immediately second guessed my decision when I confirmed my participation. I almost pulled out (via my abundant resource of excuses) but my conscience (or subconscious) and a little nudge from someone made me go through with it.
1.2 Before the Beginning
In the first (and only) volunteer meeting, it was discussed that the incoming batch of freshmen be separated into groups by their courses and be led by a volunteer during the first day of orientation. Due to my short time in uni, I was however deemed still lacking in experience to lead a group. So, I was just assigned to the normal volunteering activities which basically involved either manning an information booth or handling food. Seeing as I was prone to my (many and random) klutz moments and had a complete lack of interest in handing edible material to unappreciative people, I decided to manage the info booth for all three days.
1.3 A Brief Description
My first day started off not rather unlike the first day of many events. Kinks were to be ironed out and details to be settled, but the dust settled relatively quick and I got about passing out free (non-breakable) stuff. I even swiped some stuff (namely, the different coloured wristbands) for my own gain (seeing as I was not getting paid). Interesting to note though, “Student Ambassadors” who do basically the same thing as I do, besides the campus tours, get paid for, basically, the same job (which inspired me to apply for it next year, though the interview dates and, my fear of interview [failures up until now] and presentations [on a topic which seems vague and one I differ from the simple-minded majority] all posed some major roadblocks…).
The people taking care of the booth with me were all pretty cool [unlike my classmates, giving a bad name to nerds...] and many hours did I spend in idle chitchat (more listening on my behalf) with them. At least it was a better way to spend the time than standing in front of the booth staring at the empty walkway (as it did get quiet quite often after the first half of the first day). In a way, I guess it was lucky that there was at least one big personality or an overly open person at all the different shifts (as I decided to take every shift for the three days although I was only meant to do the morning ones) so there was never really a lull, with or without the new students (and they weren’t exactly chatty people anyways). Basically, that is how my three days of volunteer work went by.
2.1 Detailing detour day 1 - Aestheticism
As one might have noticed, I have given, what I would consider, a very simple overview of the ongoings for those three days. What I have (intentionally) left out were the more eventful happenings or highlights of the experience because I felt it was best for the readers to get a general idea of those three days first (and also to serve as a reward for reading through all that crap I wrote, however it turned out that I wrote more stuff after this paragraph than before).
Although the first day was full of hustles and bustles, in terms of memorable moments, I could only recall a few. The meeting with one gorgeous Parisian transfer student taking an engineering course and the two people dressed up as Mr. and Mrs. Lamington (first occupants of the Old Government House which is enclosed in the campus grounds) which is probably as close as it gets to cosplaying here, me thinks. [No, they weren't dressed up as the edible kind of Lamington...]
2.2 Detailing detour day 2 - The Drunk and the Reward
The second day started off with a bang. The info booth was visited by one (presumably) drunk rude lunatic (because drunk polite lunatics are so passé) who proceeding to vomit vulgarity and (very rudely) tried to intimidate everyone while threatening to rob us of the free stuff we were handing out... I think my morning cup of coffee would have served him more useful than it did me (or anyone else who had coffee that morning). I was also notified by Sarah (one of the organizers for this O week) that they liked my performance during this few days and was subsequently invited (along with a few other volunteers) to the river cruise taking place that evening for the study abroad and exchange students, F.O.C. (The normal participants would have to fork out $35 for essentially the cruise and lousy dry burgers…You (volunteers included) even had to pay for your own drinks… What a rip-off…)
2.2.5 (ASIDE) Prior to boarding, dishearten
Come evening, and I spotted him almost immediately. And by him, I will presume my readers have the deductive skills to fathom the situation. It was not love, it was not lust that I felt, it had as little romantic association (to my knowledge) as possible, the feeling I had for this stranger. (Although there would be nothing wrong even if it did anyways, to me at least.) If I were to guess, it felt like a strange mix of attraction to aesthetics and some sort of intrigue and admiration for French. I caught his name, Sebastian and I also caught a proper glance at the figure who piqued my interest for the past two days. Oddly enough, reminiscence of past experience (of which I chose not to, and probably never will, reveal) struck me fast enough.
His look, and mannerism, as I happen to notice later on, only served as a reminder for the absurd past I wanted to bury. It was then that I came up with a hypothesis that the attraction I had felt might have been intensified with the mixtures of feelings past. Feelings I no longer had the heart to entertain. As I reached this point in my thoughts, I decided it was no longer healthy nor productive to continue on with harbouring them. I knew I could be his friend but only to my own putrefaction, as it was previously. Frivolous associations of my mind, thoughts and feelings with this person, someone I had not even spent longer than a few minutes together with, I erased almost instantaneously.
2.3 Onwards to the Cruise, Downwards with Enjoyment
Had the night continue on with just that quiet clarity of my decisive mind, I would not mind. I thought, upon forming my final judgement of Sebastian, that I might just go back (Yes, all this thinking was before even leaving the designated meeting point and heading to the ship.) but due to my sense of common courtesy (as it is definitely bad manners to go back on your RSVP), and subsequently, bad judgement, I stayed on.
The air was filled with multitudes of languages. French, Dutch, German, Chinese, Vietnamese and English (duh) cramped into one’s ears. Upon saying this, readers should note that the potpourri of languages was only possible when the people grouped into their respective nationalities. There was little to no mingling happening outside their nationality circle. I was stuck (along with some other poor single souls; single being used in a numeric sense, not an indication of relationship status) out of the loops. Luckily for me, I (eventually) found the few other volunteers that turned up and my social circle for the night began to form.
For a river cruise, the main focus (to me) was the view. The problem with that is it was done in the pitch black cover of night and the riverside had little, if not non-existent, lighting. The only sceneries distinguishable (without the need to strain one’s eyes) were the bland skyscrapers, few bridges and the casino, which definitely went overtly gay with their lighting. What sounded to be a scenic journey, turned to be a club outing that could have been done at any old club. It was definitely not my cup of tea.
2.4 Definitely a low point
After the downing of the lousy food, my little group was enjoying the (at least what’s visible) view before being coerced onto the dance floor by the organizers of the cruise (they knew we were the volunteers and not students) to, supposedly, get the people dancing. It was awkward, I felt ridiculous, embarrassed and completely like a fish out of water. I wished at that moment in time I had joined one of the dance classes while I was back in college… I felt completely disjointed and my limbs seem to have gained an unnatural rigidity that made every movement harder and more awkward (to me). It took approximately an hour of self-humiliation before there were even a few who probably took pity on the redundants and decided to step down to the dancefloor. I thought the situation was finally almost over and I would be able to slip away (like one of the other volunteers) as soon as there seemed to be a decent amount of people there without feeling guilty about bolting. I was clearly mistaken.
No sooner than more people joined the dancefloor was I getting hit on (Yes, getting hit on, not hitting on) by one short American girl (from one of those obscure states that no one really remembers like North Carolina and Colorado [ I had to google them out to include into my article]) AND her two friends who were blatantly trying to hook us up into a sexy dance. Now, you may call me prudent, you may call me a prick but I was in no way enjoying the (slightly drunken) attention and by attention, I mean being forced against my will to engage with (for lack of better words) her time and time again. Yes, I did try to slip away a few times only to encounter her again and at least one of her friends… Finally, I managed to lose her after she went to grab a[nother] drink. I swiftly departed from the dancefloor (finally) and went to the side of the ship to enjoy, at least, air, be it polluted with nicotine.
[Afterthought : The prospect of being hit on is certainly a boost for one’s ego (although I felt more disgusted than proud), but the quality of the person/people hitting on you really puts you in perspective of where you stand on the attractiveness scale…]
2.5 At least there's only up after hitting rock bottom
And there I stood until the dancefloor was fairly crowded and I went around the ship and spotted the volunteer who slipped away earlier than me. She was talking to a few of the organizers and I joined in.As it turns out, the person she was talking to at that moment was a Malaysian and I spend the rest of the cruise (30 minutes or so) talking with her. At least she was an agreeable personality. As the ship had finally hit the docks, we decided to excuse ourselves from the deafening music and get on our ways back home (it was approximately 10:30 at that time). It seemed pointless to delude ourselves to attend the after-party seeing as they were just going to be doing the same thing again.
2.6 "MonkeyJ: Truly Asia!"
On our way to the bus station and separation, one of her colleagues noted that I actually sounded like an Singaporean before I mentioned that I am from its neighbouring country. Furthermore, she later noted that I actually looked like a half-Thai (as she was one herself) as well. My response to that interesting trivia (to me anyways) was to combine it with another tidbit that quite a many people have alluded to me that I could also be mistaken as an Indonesian thus elevating myself to “MonkeyJ Truly Asia” as I could seamlessly (sans some of the languages) blend into Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, China (I’m Chinese, duh…), Japan and Korea (the last two fools mainly the untrained eyes). Granted that is not the whole of Asia, nor is it even the whole of Southeast Asia, but I felt the capability of assuming that many nationalities is good enough, and on that note, my second day of volunteering came to an end.
3.1 The End is really near
The third day was in comparison, extremely dull and I could not even think of anything interesting to put down in words as what we (the volunteers and Student Ambassadors) did was just talk amongst ourselves. It was a fun time, but nothing memorable.
With that, my three days of volunteer work for Orientation Week, Semester2, 2009 is done and currently, fully (to my remembrance) accounted for. I hoped someone manages to suffer through and finish the 2000 over words I wrote. Kudos!
Note 1 : Sorry for the lousy title. By the time I finished this, I was quite tapped out of creative juices... I might edit it if inspiration strikes.
Note 2 : One might want to skip past 2.1.5 for it is just a personal recollection with no significance and minimal disruption to the overall account.
Orientation Week Experience
1.1 Prelude
Initially, I planned on working through and detailing my 3 days of volunteer work at my university’s recent Orientation Week in 3 separate posts. However, as I felt I did not have adequate material to cover 3 posts, I condensed it to a single post. Deciding that, I drafted the post and eventually never got it up to a satisfactory level worthy of seeing it in digital print. Now, I have decided to give it another go, after a week of classes, in hopes that the time delay has given me a better perspective to pen, or rather type, the experience (besides covering my ass of procrastination). After almost 24 hours of toiling in front of the laptop, I present my orientation week volunteering experience.
Orientation Week (or commonly abbreviate to O-week) has been a long standing tradition among tertiary level education institutes. The official purpose of it has always been to initiate freshmen into a new chapter of their lifes. However, due to the plethora amount of variations committed upon the process, it has come to be an experience eagerly awaited, anxiously dreaded or even apathetically dismissed by the ‘newcomers’ from (tall) tales or recollections from those who went (as in experienced, not died) before them. For me, it was an experience I failed to experience firsthand (twice now) ever since my inception into tertiary studies.
I guess it was my way of compensating for the above mentioned fact (consciously or subconsciously) that I had always tried to be, and enjoyed being, involved in the orientations of others instead. Even in a new, foreign country, that did not seem change. I decided to take up volunteering work for the first three (and main) days of O-week for the second semester of 2009. To be frank, I immediately second guessed my decision when I confirmed my participation. I almost pulled out (via my abundant resource of excuses) but my conscience (or subconscious) and a little nudge from someone made me go through with it.
1.2 Before the Beginning
In the first (and only) volunteer meeting, it was discussed that the incoming batch of freshmen be separated into groups by their courses and be led by a volunteer during the first day of orientation. Due to my short time in uni, I was however deemed still lacking in experience to lead a group. So, I was just assigned to the normal volunteering activities which basically involved either manning an information booth or handling food. Seeing as I was prone to my (many and random) klutz moments and had a complete lack of interest in handing edible material to unappreciative people, I decided to manage the info booth for all three days.
1.3 A Brief Description
My first day started off not rather unlike the first day of many events. Kinks were to be ironed out and details to be settled, but the dust settled relatively quick and I got about passing out free (non-breakable) stuff. I even swiped some stuff (namely, the different coloured wristbands) for my own gain (seeing as I was not getting paid). Interesting to note though, “Student Ambassadors” who do basically the same thing as I do, besides the campus tours, get paid for, basically, the same job (which inspired me to apply for it next year, though the interview dates and, my fear of interview [failures up until now] and presentations [on a topic which seems vague and one I differ from the simple-minded majority] all posed some major roadblocks…).
The people taking care of the booth with me were all pretty cool [unlike my classmates, giving a bad name to nerds...] and many hours did I spend in idle chitchat (more listening on my behalf) with them. At least it was a better way to spend the time than standing in front of the booth staring at the empty walkway (as it did get quiet quite often after the first half of the first day). In a way, I guess it was lucky that there was at least one big personality or an overly open person at all the different shifts (as I decided to take every shift for the three days although I was only meant to do the morning ones) so there was never really a lull, with or without the new students (and they weren’t exactly chatty people anyways). Basically, that is how my three days of volunteer work went by.
2.1 Detailing detour day 1 - Aestheticism
As one might have noticed, I have given, what I would consider, a very simple overview of the ongoings for those three days. What I have (intentionally) left out were the more eventful happenings or highlights of the experience because I felt it was best for the readers to get a general idea of those three days first (and also to serve as a reward for reading through all that crap I wrote, however it turned out that I wrote more stuff after this paragraph than before).
Although the first day was full of hustles and bustles, in terms of memorable moments, I could only recall a few. The meeting with one gorgeous Parisian transfer student taking an engineering course and the two people dressed up as Mr. and Mrs. Lamington (first occupants of the Old Government House which is enclosed in the campus grounds) which is probably as close as it gets to cosplaying here, me thinks. [No, they weren't dressed up as the edible kind of Lamington...]
2.2 Detailing detour day 2 - The Drunk and the Reward
The second day started off with a bang. The info booth was visited by one (presumably) drunk rude lunatic (because drunk polite lunatics are so passé) who proceeding to vomit vulgarity and (very rudely) tried to intimidate everyone while threatening to rob us of the free stuff we were handing out... I think my morning cup of coffee would have served him more useful than it did me (or anyone else who had coffee that morning). I was also notified by Sarah (one of the organizers for this O week) that they liked my performance during this few days and was subsequently invited (along with a few other volunteers) to the river cruise taking place that evening for the study abroad and exchange students, F.O.C. (The normal participants would have to fork out $35 for essentially the cruise and lousy dry burgers…You (volunteers included) even had to pay for your own drinks… What a rip-off…)
2.2.5 (ASIDE) Prior to boarding, dishearten
Come evening, and I spotted him almost immediately. And by him, I will presume my readers have the deductive skills to fathom the situation. It was not love, it was not lust that I felt, it had as little romantic association (to my knowledge) as possible, the feeling I had for this stranger. (Although there would be nothing wrong even if it did anyways, to me at least.) If I were to guess, it felt like a strange mix of attraction to aesthetics and some sort of intrigue and admiration for French. I caught his name, Sebastian and I also caught a proper glance at the figure who piqued my interest for the past two days. Oddly enough, reminiscence of past experience (of which I chose not to, and probably never will, reveal) struck me fast enough.
His look, and mannerism, as I happen to notice later on, only served as a reminder for the absurd past I wanted to bury. It was then that I came up with a hypothesis that the attraction I had felt might have been intensified with the mixtures of feelings past. Feelings I no longer had the heart to entertain. As I reached this point in my thoughts, I decided it was no longer healthy nor productive to continue on with harbouring them. I knew I could be his friend but only to my own putrefaction, as it was previously. Frivolous associations of my mind, thoughts and feelings with this person, someone I had not even spent longer than a few minutes together with, I erased almost instantaneously.
2.3 Onwards to the Cruise, Downwards with Enjoyment
Had the night continue on with just that quiet clarity of my decisive mind, I would not mind. I thought, upon forming my final judgement of Sebastian, that I might just go back (Yes, all this thinking was before even leaving the designated meeting point and heading to the ship.) but due to my sense of common courtesy (as it is definitely bad manners to go back on your RSVP), and subsequently, bad judgement, I stayed on.
The air was filled with multitudes of languages. French, Dutch, German, Chinese, Vietnamese and English (duh) cramped into one’s ears. Upon saying this, readers should note that the potpourri of languages was only possible when the people grouped into their respective nationalities. There was little to no mingling happening outside their nationality circle. I was stuck (along with some other poor single souls; single being used in a numeric sense, not an indication of relationship status) out of the loops. Luckily for me, I (eventually) found the few other volunteers that turned up and my social circle for the night began to form.
For a river cruise, the main focus (to me) was the view. The problem with that is it was done in the pitch black cover of night and the riverside had little, if not non-existent, lighting. The only sceneries distinguishable (without the need to strain one’s eyes) were the bland skyscrapers, few bridges and the casino, which definitely went overtly gay with their lighting. What sounded to be a scenic journey, turned to be a club outing that could have been done at any old club. It was definitely not my cup of tea.
2.4 Definitely a low point
After the downing of the lousy food, my little group was enjoying the (at least what’s visible) view before being coerced onto the dance floor by the organizers of the cruise (they knew we were the volunteers and not students) to, supposedly, get the people dancing. It was awkward, I felt ridiculous, embarrassed and completely like a fish out of water. I wished at that moment in time I had joined one of the dance classes while I was back in college… I felt completely disjointed and my limbs seem to have gained an unnatural rigidity that made every movement harder and more awkward (to me). It took approximately an hour of self-humiliation before there were even a few who probably took pity on the redundants and decided to step down to the dancefloor. I thought the situation was finally almost over and I would be able to slip away (like one of the other volunteers) as soon as there seemed to be a decent amount of people there without feeling guilty about bolting. I was clearly mistaken.
No sooner than more people joined the dancefloor was I getting hit on (Yes, getting hit on, not hitting on) by one short American girl (from one of those obscure states that no one really remembers like North Carolina and Colorado [ I had to google them out to include into my article]) AND her two friends who were blatantly trying to hook us up into a sexy dance. Now, you may call me prudent, you may call me a prick but I was in no way enjoying the (slightly drunken) attention and by attention, I mean being forced against my will to engage with (for lack of better words) her time and time again. Yes, I did try to slip away a few times only to encounter her again and at least one of her friends… Finally, I managed to lose her after she went to grab a[nother] drink. I swiftly departed from the dancefloor (finally) and went to the side of the ship to enjoy, at least, air, be it polluted with nicotine.
[Afterthought : The prospect of being hit on is certainly a boost for one’s ego (although I felt more disgusted than proud), but the quality of the person/people hitting on you really puts you in perspective of where you stand on the attractiveness scale…]
2.5 At least there's only up after hitting rock bottom
And there I stood until the dancefloor was fairly crowded and I went around the ship and spotted the volunteer who slipped away earlier than me. She was talking to a few of the organizers and I joined in.As it turns out, the person she was talking to at that moment was a Malaysian and I spend the rest of the cruise (30 minutes or so) talking with her. At least she was an agreeable personality. As the ship had finally hit the docks, we decided to excuse ourselves from the deafening music and get on our ways back home (it was approximately 10:30 at that time). It seemed pointless to delude ourselves to attend the after-party seeing as they were just going to be doing the same thing again.
2.6 "MonkeyJ: Truly Asia!"
On our way to the bus station and separation, one of her colleagues noted that I actually sounded like an Singaporean before I mentioned that I am from its neighbouring country. Furthermore, she later noted that I actually looked like a half-Thai (as she was one herself) as well. My response to that interesting trivia (to me anyways) was to combine it with another tidbit that quite a many people have alluded to me that I could also be mistaken as an Indonesian thus elevating myself to “MonkeyJ Truly Asia” as I could seamlessly (sans some of the languages) blend into Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, China (I’m Chinese, duh…), Japan and Korea (the last two fools mainly the untrained eyes). Granted that is not the whole of Asia, nor is it even the whole of Southeast Asia, but I felt the capability of assuming that many nationalities is good enough, and on that note, my second day of volunteering came to an end.
3.1 The End is really near
The third day was in comparison, extremely dull and I could not even think of anything interesting to put down in words as what we (the volunteers and Student Ambassadors) did was just talk amongst ourselves. It was a fun time, but nothing memorable.
With that, my three days of volunteer work for Orientation Week, Semester2, 2009 is done and currently, fully (to my remembrance) accounted for. I hoped someone manages to suffer through and finish the 2000 over words I wrote. Kudos!
The END.
Monkey J
11:33
0 commented
11:33
0 commented