Singapore Arts Festival 2011

And so the work started.

The day announced to public was later. The whole Arts Festival Village started operation on 11 May. But the place was only opened to public on 13 May. The first 2 days were opened for the Media and the President. Nevertheless, we were still needed to be there to make the village running.

Everything still seemed like a mess on the first day, as we had to bring a lot of things from the office to the village. Time was needed to adapt to the system. Fortunately, the bunch of NYP students was a great help. Because the students were still schooling, and some of them had to actually came down immediately once the school ends, so the group of them had to change after 2-3 days. The first 2 groups of students actually helped to make things run smoothly. I also found quite easy to get along with them. Because of their youth and energy, I feel so old with them...

However, the subsequent groups of students were not as hardworking as the first few batches. Some actually created some problems for us...

The Village Setting
The layout of the village was a total failure. There were Main Stage, Secondary Stage, Tuckshop, Information Booth, Gift Shop and Kids Art Village. The Kids Village was only opened on the mornings and afternoons (ie. 10am-5pm), while the whole village only operated from 5pm onwards. Hence, the only programme available were only either Main Stage or Secondary Stage. Frankly, the whole village was very small. BUT that village was just a part of the whole Arts Festival. There were more in Esplanade, SOTA, the Arts House, etc.

The Main Stage was constructed in a way that the Main Entrance was not located in a OBVIOUS position; Our IDA Booth 1 was just located beside the Backstage Entrance; The Information Booth was designed to look NOT LIKE an Information Counter. Thus, many people just came to our booth thinking that it was a Information Booth, many people just tried to enter from the Backstage, thinking that it was the Main Entrance... So our job became more like stopping people to go to the stage through Backstage...

Luckily, on some days. there was a nice lady, Cathy. She was the most hardworking and kind volunteer down there. Other than the group of NYP students that I supervised, there were more volunteers that were under the NAC (National Arts Council) to help distribute the Arts Village Brochures. Most of them were from ITE, so they were more like having fun than doing their job. Cathy was different, she did most of the job when she was on duty. She really helped all those visitors and helped us directed them away from backstage. I also found easy to chat with her, and we became friends from that onwards too.

WTF is IDA doing down Here?!
I think that our Booths were more catered to kids. IDA claimed to promote the use of Mobile Apps to the public. Of course, most teens and middle-aged would know how to use them. Therefore, they are probably targeting on kids and elderly. Then again, it is hard for elderly to keep up with the technologies. I have seen some who are willing to make the effort to learn from our booths. Still, there are not many. Hence, it is more for kids.

As expected, in the first few days, we already have people asking why IDA is doing here?! Mobile Apps isn't Arts at all! Well, I could not make my rebuttal since I agree with that too. But that defeats the purpose of us being there. Indeed, customers are always right. But we should not let them criticised what we are doing there. We must make our point even we don't even have any!

However, since we were also giving out free gifts and prizes, some people just played for them.

Problematic People
You will never get away with weird people if you are staying there throughout the whole period. After my "training in NS", I have used to seeing weird people.

One day, after a few days of live performances and music, the Main Stage was playing a short film and it was free admittance. There was a lady who came and asked what's going on in the Main Stage. I explained to her but she became furious.

"Why playing short films? I thought Arts Festival should be playing live performances!"
"We have different programmes every day. Today we are having short films."
"Why short films? I thought Singapore has Singapore Film Festival what! Short film is not ART you know!"
"Hmm... Actually, short film is also part of the arts."
"NO! They should have other performances!!!"

Then, I was very pissed. So I told her nicely to get more information from the Info Booth. I know the lady was not pleased with my last sentence. I seriously don't really care. So the lady went off. BUT, I saw her went up to watch the film...

The other one was an Ang Moh. I saw him loitering around our booth, but obviously was not interested by the look on his face. I have one student who approached him and explained our booths. But he suddenly exclaimed to all of us...

"So I assume you all are killing the grasses as well? Killing the natural environment? You all should be ashamed of yourself!" (At the same time, one of the student coughed.)
"And YOU! OH MY GOD! ARE YOU TRYING TO SPREAD THE VIRUS?! This is ridiculous!"
And that, he went off, but came back shortly after that and said...
"I came back just to say I'm off, but I'll be back!"
And so, he really went off but never came back again...

The Reflection

Supervising a bunch of students was not an easy task. Especially when you have to treat them like adult. Well, some of them are already adults since they are older than me. But there are some playful ones. I know it is normal for them to misbehave, and they always misbehave at the wrong time. I tried to make my stand very clear at first. But when they continued to commit the same mistake, I just closed my eyes and tried to ignore it. Am I doing the correct thing?

I did not want them to feel very strict while doing this work, I wanted them to enjoy too. My soft side always comes out when I feel like scolding them... I did not care if those students will hate me. But they must really know when to behave. In the end, I still did not do it.

Well, I did it once. I reported 3 kids to their course managers, or their lecturers. They did get a scolding from them. So when they came back to report work for the second day, I could see 2 of them gave me a cold look. I seriously don't care. They can hate me for life eternally. However, they still broke some small rules. And I chose not to scold them anymore...

For those who are really diligent,  Dorcas and I made friends with them. We even chatted a lot and had some fun together by spamming lots of lame jokes and teasing each other. Yes, this is what friends do when they hang out, but the vibe I getting was different. Most probably, most of them are younger than me and I could feel more energy from them. It was a weird feeling. You could feel you feel younger with them. But once you think that way, you are telling yourself old indirectly... Wow. My brain always has this disarray of thoughts floating in an unorganised fashion...

End of the Festival
The whole month ended so fast. It ended on a Sunday, 5 June 2011. But I have to go back to the office to get my cheque. So I purposely took a trip back to the Esplanade Park to see how the dismantling work. Although the whole Festival Village was a failure, it still holds some short fond memories of us.

It was another holiday and another memory. Just like my time when I was in RT. None of us actually meet each other since the last RT session. Not even on some random day on a random street or a random mall. When does fate will make us cross path again?