Aoyama Gakuin University Exchange Session

A treacherous 2 weeks has finally ended! But still not the last to experience in this semester.

It's been like 3 weeks since this event (as stated in the title above) has passed. It was a compulsory event for all Japanese 3 students to attend. Students are also required to research some Japanese cultures and ask the Japanese students questions so that the exchange session would not be so awkward when there is nothing much to talk about.

Out of so many cute Japanese girls among the Japanese students, I was assigned to a guy... And most guys in the group could speak English VERY WELL. But the one assigned to my group was not very good. So we had a lot of difficulties communicating and always ended up in an awkward silence situation. And my Japanese is definitely not good enough to communicate smoothly. Sigh. Oh well.

After dinner, we could choose to bring them around Singapore. Only me and some other few people volunteered to bring them to Clarke Quay since they wanted a place to drink. And I thought I can take this opportunity to train my communication skills in Japanese and to know more other Japanese. But it was not as I expected. I was dumb most of the times and I left shortly after allowing them to settle down in a bar...

Buy 3 Movie Tickets and Get 1 Free!

This was one comical mistake I have committed.

Russell, Zhen Ming, Alvin and I went to watch Gantz the Movie before. That time, we called Shaun to watch, but he already had appointment at that time. So this time, we called Shaun to watch Gantz 2, but of course he have to watch Gantz 1 himself. However, Alvin went to NOC, so he cannot watch together with us.

I thought it was another not popular movie (Like how I expected Horrible Bosses would be previously), so I did not book online early. However, I was wrong again and again. The seats were filling up fast in the afternoon. So anxiously, I booked tickets online and I did not even realised I booked 3 tickets.

I realised that until when we entered the entrance, but I did not tell the others, and so they would enter as normal. They did. And luckily because of the one-for-all ticket bought online, the ticket person did not suspect a single thing, and we all entered the cinema!!! When everyone seated and waiting for movie to start, I told them about it. And Shaun, who was sitting on the "extra seat" was quite terrified. Luckily, no one bought that seat and we watched the whole movie with ease.

Phew. That was close. So everyone ended up paying even more cheaper!

National Day Parade 2011

I always tell myself that I will update regularly, but it really seemed impossible with all the homework now.

The event that I wanted to update is National Day Parade 2011 @ Marina Floating Platform. Don't get the idea that I'm very lucky. My luck was ran out after getting back my lost IC. Haha. Anyway, the tickets were given by my aunt, who is the real lucky one. My mum and I went together to watch for the second time. The first time was back when my brother was marching for the parade on 2007. It was still at Kallang Outdoor Stadium. So, it was my first time watching at the Floating Platform.

I preferred the queuing in system now, as they have a better system to control the flow of people. My mum and I could get to our seats in around 15-20 mins. However, our seats were at the side, and I already knew the stage setup, so we were going to see almost nothing when the musical segment started.

PS: Sorry, no photos as I lazy to extract them out from the SD card...

The parade started rather differently. Because in the past, it was always the marching contingent first before the other performances. This time, they started with a mini introduction and a tacky show on how Singapore Defense Forces deal with all the possible land, sea and air threats. The content was like... Bleah... But because of the location of the stage, they could make use of the sea element in the performance as well, and also the use of chinook, helicopter, and some jet planes, which I thought was ok. However, another problem came, the sea performance was all on the right side of the stage! And I could only catch a bit on the left...

Then, the marching contingent came in. The contingent marched off in another special way. The teenage cadets marched and climbed up towards the audience seats and disappeared into the stairway on the top. That was totally unexpected. But I quite like it.

Then it was all the usual stuff about the Red Lions, the flag flying past the parade location, etc. Finally, the performance segment. This year, the designer specially made it into a musical story theme, in which there would be main characters to depict the past, the present and the future of Singapore. The idea was very original, but I heard the camera focused too much on the main characters, and they just went on singing "In my Heartbeat..." again, again and again... Furthermore, as I expected, they were quite a few performances on the stage setup, which I totally could not see a single thing from my angle.So the performance still failed in some sense.

Well, it was more exaggerating when I looked across the Marina Bay Sands direction. The outside of MBS was totally packed with damn lots of people! I even heard the hotel even sold tickets for people to enter the roof to view the performance and most importantly, the Fireworks. Yup, the fireworks. Still beautiful as ever, but it would not as magnificent as China Fireworks @ Beijing Olympics. The fireworks was the only annual event in the NDP that people appreciate to see how their taxes are spent.

Overall, it was still alright. But the stage director must seriously consider the problem of whether the audience could see the whole performance live.