Was helping out at my jie's concert last night; we (myself, kor, and two of jie's other friends, Kenny and Ashra) were supposed to be paid $5 an hour for it- ushering work, that is- but it didn't really feel like work since the UCC ushers did most of the ushering, haha. All the four of us did was ticketing and give out programmes. Ivan and I were the ones giving out programmes, haha.

So Ivan and I spent all our time (in between surges of crowds) talking about random nonsense, poking fun at some of the people that we saw and badmouthing/jinxing some which annoyed us.

One such person who was the object of our pointless discussion was, in Ivan's own words, a "very outstanding" young lady. Ahem. People who know my kor well enough will understand that statement very quickly. :P While we were standing around waiting for the theatre doors to open, Ivan pointed her out to me, and well, the way she was standing, with the pamphlet that she was reading, she wasn't really.. um. Visible, shall we say; so I couldn't... er, see.. her.. very well. :P

So later, when she *did* walk past us to get into the theatre, I "took notice" and when I looked up, Ivan was giving me his "see what I mean??" look, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

Then at about 7.20 pm, while we were waiting for stragglers, there was a lull in the traffic after the UCC ushers had just let in the recent crowd of latecomers. At that time, the only people out in the foyer were the ushers, the few staff on duty at Dome Cafe, and three people seated on one of the benches, eating McDonalds.

Ivan and I were talking and making our usual care-less, off-handed jibes at one another, and when he made one particularly twisted statement, I moved to smack him with the programmes that I was holding, but it was the kind of thing where I raised my hand, followed through with the motion, but stopped just short of actually hitting him.

I'd actually done that quite a few times over the course of the evening, along with a few times when I *did* actually smack him. :P Anyway, at that point in time, I happened to look up, and I saw the three people over at the bench break out in quiet laughter while looking over at the two of us.

That pissed me off. I told Ivan so, and he made some non-committal comment, but later, when they'd polished off their McDonalds and proceeded into the theatre, then we laid right into them with our little bitchfest. :D :P

Me: Laugh at us some more; I refuse to give any of you a programme! (which was true; Ivan handed them their programmes)
Ivan: You make it sound like their receiving a programme is a life-and-death situation.
Me: Well, why not. *silly grin* Without it, they'll be completely lost! They won't know what the titles of the pieces are!
Ivan: Yeah, I suppose if they didn't know the titles, they'd probably drive themselves crazy trying to find out, and then they'd resort to downloading.
Me: Yeah, and then they'd get caught, and when they're caught, the stupid sodding buggers will already have about 2000 odd other songs in their collection so they'll all be jailed for 10 years or something--
Ivan: (cutting me off) Gerri, don't jinx me.

Ivan has A LOT of songs in his collection, you see. And even saying that he has A LOT is an understatement. And also, the two of us have discovered that we both possess a similar "talent" for jinxing. Not actual voodoo or anything, mind you; it's just that many of the bad things which we anticipate will happen, will, uncannily enough, actually happen.

We missed the first half of the concert; the part before the intermission, and sadly, we missed "The Seventh Night of July", which was the last song before the intermission.

After the intermission though, we went in, and we caught the brass quintet and percussion ensemble bits; the brass quintet's "Amazing Grace" was nice, but I prefer "Amazing Grace" to sound more slow and weepy, and less like the jazzy version that they were playing. Percussion ensemble's "Instant Carmen" was also lovely; Rachel's snare drum roll was amazing-- one of these days I'm gonna have to figure out exactly how percussion players do it. :P

Then the rest of the band came back, and I particularly liked the first movement of the "English Folk Song Suite"; had a very fast Irish feel to it, with a lot of clarinet and flute and other upper winds voices dominating. I love traditional Irish and Scottish dance music; it's the kind that makes you want to get up and dance a merry little jig along, haha.

After that, we helped move some of the band instruments back to their practice room (timpanis! I haven't helped move timpanis for ages!), then waited for Rachel a bit, then she treated us to supper; Fong Seng prata. I know I said I was boycotting the prata at Fong Seng coz it's ridiculously overpriced, but Rachel's friend, Nicole, studies overseas and she was back in town for her concert, so she wanted to try the prata, so that's what we did.

Jie gave most of us a life home after that; only Ivan still had to take public transport-- best she could do was drop him at Clementi since he lives all the way in Tampines.

When she dropped me off near my place, she mentioned that she'd write the cheque for me, and then I suddenly remembered that everything that I'd been doing tonight was supposed to be for work! Funny thing is, it didn't feel like work at all! Haha...!


Now for today's archery training: 150 arrows; my upper arm and back muscles are terribly sore. It's going to be even worse tomorrow, I tell you.

My later ends were much better than the first few; however, if this continues, then it means I'll need a long time to warm up before shooting. Not good. Maybe if I train more, the amount of "warm up" I need will lessen.

There was one end in particular where I kinda shocked myself, haha. It was only after I'd shot the fourth arrow of that end that I realised that all my arrows had formed one lovely clump of orange and white (my fletches are orange and white) in the middle of the board. And I realised then that every arrow that had landed in the board, you could hear a metallic sound, the sound of metal hitting metal, which means that the arrows were hitting against each other when they landed in the board.

My fifth arrow went off, but my sixth and last arrow hit with a metallic sound again. When we went to retrieve our arrows, the five that had landed all grouped together all had varying angles of entry, and I thought that was bad, until Nicholas pointed out that if the arrows were aiming to land in the same spot, obviously a preceding arrow would be crowded out of that spot by an arrow that was already there, so it'd settle into the spot above it, and probably at a weird angle, due to the "deflection".

Returned to the Archery Lounge after my shooting to find them playing bridge... oh, I forgot to mention that some of the guys finally taught me how to play bridge on Friday! Haha... I finally know how to play; it's quite simple, but requires a lot of brain work and memory work, and I don't have much in the way of either. :P But it was fun though. :D

Anyway, bridge seems to be gaining popularity amongst the archery people; I hope the Lounge doesn't turn into another "Arts Club Room" where the only thing anyone does in their free time besides sleep is play bridge or mahjong. At least in the Lounge, people actually read or do something productive or destressing on their lappies in their free time.

But, as I was saying before I digressed (again), bridge. That there is a complete (and new) pack of cards in the Lounge is, in itself, a rare occurrence.

See, the seniors are in the habit of playing poker with any playing cards that we have, and they usually play it at the range itself. When I say "playing poker at the range" I don't mean that they sit down to one side of the shooting line and play poker; I mean that they tack up the cards on the board, stand at the shooting line, and shoot the cards.

So yes, you can see why each deck would have a few cards missing.

The cards either become too full of holes to be actually usable anymore, or they drop off the board and go missing, or.. whatever else. Sometimes, when they're too lazy to take down the cards, they even leave it there for us to practice no-target shooting. Which just results in further damage to the cards, and eventually, their disposal. :D

Well, have to go pack now. Going to be staying overnight at Singapore Expo tomorrow to help them prepare for the record-breaking thing on the 22nd. Ivan and Denise are coming too, so YAY!! I have people that I can talk crap with! Hahaha...

I'm probably going to blabber their ears off when it gets really late at night, and then kor will probably start smacking me on the head with whatever's on hand, but hell. Oh, I hope they're both staying over. And I hope kor brings his lappie. Then we can play stuff on it; music or maybe whatever games he has. But shockingly enough, Singapore Expo doesn't have wireless connectivity. :( Which is odd, since you'd figure that a supposedly "world-class" exhibition venue should have wireless connectivity. *shrugs* Oh well.

Listening to Yanni's "In the Morning Light" and "Nightingale" right now; the latter is lovely-- features a Chinese flute and manages to strike this very delicate balance between sounding Eastern and Western at the same time. Maybe I'll change my blog music soon and let you all hear it. :D

Toodles, oh, and do drop by the Singapore Expo on the 22nd if you have the time... just to see the all-important event take place, if nothing else! :D