To Wine, Women and Glory

Finally got time to write stuff after recovering from 2 back to back events. First was on Friday, when we had a performance at Mrs D' Cruz's mother-in-law's birthday party. Chester, Eugene, Bertrand and myself had to come up with some songs and play them. So, we attempted to get to the site, somewhere in the Orchid Gardens, using only Mrs D' Cruz's car. As a result, the 4 of us were squeezed into the back, along with a keyboard, bass clar and various other instruments. To pass the time, Eugene decided to tell some lame jokes.

Once there, we had about an hour to practice, and the results were, well, bad. The Mountain is Out is not a very easy piece, especially with so little time. We also practiced a little of our other songs. However, due to unforseen events, the first part of the performance was an almighty screwup.

When we went up to perform, we were told of a slight change in the order of pieces, that we would play the birthday song first. Naturally, not having prepared for this, Eugene conducted a last minute swap with Bertrand. Without tuning his guitar. Thus, the whole song was screwed up. Our second song, The Mountain is Out, was even more screwed up.

To try and get over our disappointment, we decided to have a few.. drinks. Thanks to that, Chester and Bertrand got a little tipsy. The results were fun to watch. My solo following that was alright, as were the rest of the songs.

After that, we decided to have a few drinks together. This turned into a full-blown toasting session, with us toasting to various random things from the number 37 to planes to rose petals smeared with peanut butter. Mrs D' Cruz joined us with some white wine too. We had around 10 rounds of drinks, in which Chester coined our motto, "To Wine, Women and Glory!" The whole thing basically finished with our stomachs bursting under the weight of the punch.

Of course, the low point of the evening was when Eugene lost his bag. Thankfully, we found it after half an hour of desperate searching. Then, we had a long ride home.



The next day was the band exchange with RGS. We started off at RGS with standard warmups, then breaking into sections. Our lower Woodwind section was quite a mixed bunch, around 3 baris, 4 bass clars, 4 bassoons and 2 alto clars. I realise, however, that ACS people don't seem to know how to conduct, after watching one of them take the section. Combined concert was fun too, getting the chance to play with different people for a change.

After getting back to school, once again things went wrong. Eugene lost his wallet. Most of our batch stayed with him though, and went with him to make a police report. While he was doing that, the rest of us did various things in the playground outside, including re-enacting the toasting of the night before and having balance contests. Then, we went for dinner.

Basically, these 2 days were quite eventful, and fun. Wish I had the chance to attend more of these kind of things. Maybe I will..