Steamed.

Following what happened today, I, as well as some of my batchmates, have become very distressed. I shall start ranting from here on, so please do not read on if you don't like this sort of thing.

Now, last Saturday, myself, Paul and Shuotian, among a few others, fixed up the RJCSB A Tempo XVIII ticket sales booth. We came up with the idea of doing a world map, with our repertoire written on it near the respective countries. So we had to skip sectionals to go over to J8 to buy materials, and since a real map was too expensive, we searched throughout Bishan library for a book with a world map. After coming back to school, we went to make the world map, and set up the booth.

Today, some of the J2s deemed our booth "unsatisfactory". They thus decided to tear it down, and rebuild it. As Paul, Shuotian and I were about to go for lunch with Bernard and Shu Yi, we were kidnapped by them, scolded for slacking around and screwing up the booth, and then asked to help remake it. The current remake stands now in the canteen.

As you can imagine, I am none too happy about this. Firstly, we invested large amounts of time and effort, and some money as well, in getting this done. We searched Bishan Library over looking for a big enough world map, and hunted for the various materials. We then painstakingly spent time drawing the world map and designing the booth. Yi Ding had drawn out the continents and landmasses very carefully, spending a lot of time on this. Wen Chong was also assembling the blue background, which was not an easy task. In the meantime, the rest of us were busy putting up the black backing for the board, and deciding what to write. After the map was done, we put up the blue background, then carefully cut out and glued all the continents on, which was not easy since some pieces went missing and had to be redone. Much care was also taken in cutting out the continents, ensuring that they were cut as close as possible to the shape. Shuotian was spending time designing a nice banner, along with Paul. Joan and myself were doing up the concert's details, myself drafting out the design while Joan went over them nicely in silver pen. Following which, Shuotian, Wen Chong and Yiding had to leave. The rest of us finished up the banner, and did up the map nicely.

So, as you can see, being called slackers did not hold too well for me. Firstly, there were some J2s hanging around watching us do our work at various times. If they felt that the booth was unsatisfactory, then why did they not tell us when we were building the booth, not after? Secondly, the fact that the booth was unceremoniously torn down, without even telling us, was really unfair, especially given the hard work we had put in. Finally, after a long and stressful day involving a very nerve-wracking piano exam, I was looking forward to some rest at lunch with my friends. Instead, I, as well as Paul and Shuotian, had to endure scoldings by the J2s for doing a bad job with the booth, then asked to help out, eventually doing little except standing there, as the J2s were doing most of the work. I gather Shu Yi and Bernard were not happy as well, especially as Bernard was not happy in the first place that I wanted to wait for Shuotian before going to eat. The finished booth, was in my opinion, not an improvement over the old one.

I mean, we made sacrifices and put in hard work on that. Shuotian had his badminton training, and though he wanted to rest after a tiring practice, he stayed as long as possible before leaving. Paul had to skip church to ensure that the board was up. In the process of doing the banner, he spilled lots of green flourescent paint over his uniform, which no doubt made it a lot more difficult to wash. I had to rush off immediately after the board was finished to go out, which meant that my dinner was postponed to 11pm. I'm sure everyone else must have wanted to go home after a long day as well.

The fact that we put in a lot of effort, only to have the work that we spent so much time and effort on torn down just because some people found it ugly, is seriously enraging. I shall not say any more, except that I am very steamed about this whole matter. I think I can say the same for Shuotian, Paul, Joan, Yiding, Wen Chong, Ling Zhang and anyone else who helped out with the original booth.