Ripples and Sunshine: Vday 2006

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Is it just me, or are blogspot sites loading extra slowly recently? Gah. Tagboard's wonky also... But do leave a ripple as an alternative, k =)

That said...

Happy Valentine's Day People! =)

Having no significant other this Valentine's day (as my little brother had taken care to remind me consistently at the dinner table when everyone else is around) doesn't quite mean that it cannot be enjoyable, still. After the initial cringing at the paper hearts fluttering on the AS1 ceiling, and the pink balloons lining the corridor, and people get a little more touchy-feely than usual (ouch!), and wondering wistfully where that one elusive person is, you learn to deal with it, and then everything settles quite nicely.

It's quite a warm fuzzy thing really, if you ignore the lovey-dovey bits and the commercialised hype, though I must admit that I've been quite pampered by dear friends who would stay up the night before to fold tissue roses and paper tulips and sew felt hearts and package sweets and write sweet postcards, and for whom I'll spend the pre-Vday night scribbling stuff to transfer into tiny wallet-sized cards... J2 year was one of the most memorable, I think, when SC had quite a flurry of stuff going around (yah Eme, I remember Clara's foam alphabet thingie too!) Handmade and handwritten stuff weaves a lot more meaning into mere gifts, somehow... though eventually what really matters is the thought that you're just glad to have these bunch of people in your life =)

The other feel-good factor probably comes from the fact that everyone's in too playful a mood to get down to proper lessons and mugging-mode without feeling just a little more festive with flower stalks, balloons and stuff toys atop their desks, and attempts to coax teachers out of intensive grilling with chocolates and sweets (not that it works, lar) but lessons don't get quite so dreary.

Last year's Vday was spent at Munchie's with Reso on our first official gig ever...

The beginnings of our bantering-- Judging by the arrangement onstage, with Amanda and SueAnn offstage corner, it should be the pre-Boardwalk talk... Cheryl has the "I'm asking Derek a difficult question" look on her face... and Derek doesn't look too happy =P We haven't changed that much for in-between-songs dynamics, have we? *grins*

This year's Vday was spent a cappella-ing with Reso, too! This time around we were down for two sets of performances at the Central Forum for the launch of *switches to radio friendly tone* RadioPulze, NUS's very own radio station!

(Took lots and lots of piiiictures! *bounces in delight* And some group photos are very pretty! Many thanks to Davina and Shuying for the pretty shots~)

Pre-performance pic!~ Haiyoh, one year later, and Derek (still) doesn't look very happy...

It was quite an experience, singing at the forum... Learnt first-hand bits of stuff that hadn't been quite so obvious to me before this. Like why levelling out volume for all mikes, and asking our sound engineer politely to never never change the settings, was majorly important. I shouldn't whinge about all the technical soundboard going-ons that made the huge difference between a disturbingly icky first set and the untouched and (hence) much-more-decent second set, but it was quite a stark realisation of how much difference little alterations make. And how much warmer an a cappella soloist sounds when his/her background comes out clearly.

I like our second set =) A lot, partly because of song selection, partly because the mike settings were level and unaltered through that set, partly because we got a bit more high *grins* Bring Me To Life is exhilarating when we get into the mood =P

More pictures!