"Orientation" 2010 - Part 1

This is a story of three meaningless days.

Things REALLY have changed since our current principal took over. Things was going on perfectly fine and well have become nothing but a utopic dream. 惹是生非 would be a good description.

Installation of the backgate turnstile caused massive traffic jams and without any improvement in school security. Changing the lesson periods to 45 minutes, realising it does not work (and never will) then changing it back again. Now orientation, what's with all these house meetings overwriting the pleasantness of orientation.

I was wondering: Does the school have nothing better to do than to fill up our "empty" lives with house meetings? I found out the purpose of all these in due course, not being surprised that it would be for a bad cause.

***

School started with the usual assembly, principal address and disciplinary briefing. We got this new disciplinary master, who seemed quite alright at first. However, appearances might not be deceiving, and I started to dislike him and his fat figure the more he talked and saw him.

After playing basketball, we went up to the auditorium for more briefings, and then proceeded to class. Now is the time to talk about notice boards.

School, over the years, seemed to be more and more like competition. Everything is about that. Inter-school Olympiads, best decorated class award and et cetera. The same goes for our notice board.

Others want it to be visually appealing, colourful, not plain. Thus they use a board's worth of black paper to cover up the beigh notice board. Then, they cut out each letter in different colours and pasted them individually onto the board forming a nonsensical word which serves no other purpose but to make our notice board look more colourful.

A notice board is for notices. It is not a painting. Why shouldn't it be good as long as it serves it's purpose.

I asked: "Why are you even bothering to paste all these black paper onto the board. It is such a waste of resources."

"You mean you just want a brown board like that?" she asked in a ridiculous sort of manner.

"Yea why not?"

My point is, a notice board is a notice board and as long as the important notices are up there, it is good enough. If you want a black board why don't you just go paint it black.

Of course, no one will listen to the insane thoughts of me.

***

Lunch was catered that day, unfortunately, only THAT day, unlike in the previous years when each meal, including snacks were catered. Later, we had our first house meeting. What they wanted us to do was scream horribly composed cheers and whoever the composer was should never admit it. I can't believe I am saying this, but the F-I-B-O Cheer made the most sense. Then we were forced to play a sentence making game with letters from people born in the same month. That murdered quite a lot of our time.

Then we went to the hall to learn the mass dance.

For one thing, the new song was horrible, as agreed by many other people. The dance for "We could be together" by Debbie Gibson in year one was at the least considered music. I have to admit that that person who choreographed the dance and chose the music had good taste.

Everything was deteriorating.

And if anyone has an objection against this post, be prepared for worse in day 2.