Woohoo!! The whole Guinness World Record-breaking event is over and done with, so here goes: the events of the 21st, 22nd and 23rd December 2004, as experienced and brought to you by yours truly. :D


21st December 2004

Arrived at Expo at about noon; went to Hall 2A where they were setting up everything, and our work was more or less divided into two kinds of things.

There were the people who were cleaning the sand off the candles in one corner, and there were a few people who were sticking mounting tape on marked out "lanes" to hold the candles later.

The "lanes" were these long, wide, black strips of tape that they'd stuck on the ground in a pattern of eight concentric circles and divided into three sectors. Engineers had been there the night before or so, and they'd already calculated and stipulated how many candles/squares of mounting tape should go in each lane. The candles were supposed to be arranged in three rows on each "lane", following the curvature of the strips of tape, of course.

So the difficulty here is that, it's already been clearly stated that the little squares of mounting tape have to be spaced approximately three fingers apart, and the number of candles in each row has also been set.

Which means that, if while you're approaching the end of the lane, and you find that, oh sweet lord in heaven, there's FAR too much space left for just three candles, OR too LITTLE space left for another twenty candles, well, you're just going to have to go back and remove and re-space out the pieces of mounting tape all over again. And if cutting the mounting tape isn't difficult enough most of the time, removing it is. It's really sticky.

We had a break for lunch, during which I found out that Ivan hadn't slept at all last night, and had instead been up doing inane things on the net. -_- As a result, he was, apparently, falling asleep while cutting and sticking the mounting tape before lunch. I don't think he'll ever learn. :P

After lunch, we finished sticking all that mounting tape; 10,000 candles means 10,000 little squares of mounting tape. Ivan and I were working on Lane 7 together, and anyone who knows the two of us or have seen the two of us around each other, will know that some silliness was bound to ensue.

How right you are. :D :P

To help ourselves keep track of the number of tape that we'd stuck, every ten pieces of tape or so, we'd used markers to number one of the pieces of tape. Ivan and I went one step further; we marked the pieces of tape at intervals of ten, and then, we (mostly he) would draw something silly on the black "lane" with the chalk that Pei Pei brought after lunch.

He started with a simple piece of a small tortoise at the number ten mark, then it started to get more elaborate from there, with me adding little stick figures and extra wordings and subtitles to some of them. There was a sauropod wading through water with a a stick figure riding on its back, and I added a wakeboard to the little stick figure that was clinging onto its tail. Next was a giant cockroach, next to which I wrote "Prehistoric ka-zhua". Next was a graphical representation of the life cycle of a butterfly, followed by a picture of Godzilla and King Kong combining forces and destroying some unnamed city.

In the middle of the lane, around piece-of-tape-number-190, I wrote "Lane 7 Art brought to you by Ivan (and Gerri)", and then the drawing picked up again. I drew a most adorable cartoon-ish spider, and Ivan followed that with a drawing of PacMan on the verge of eating a "ghost"; then there was my drawing of a crab, followed by Ivan's drawing of the twelve individual animals of the Chinese zodiac.

In short, Lane 7 turned out to be quite the zoo (and source of amusement to all present). :P

With what little manpower we had, I was actually quite surprised that we managed to finish sticking all that tape before dinner (which was at around 7). After that, it was time to stick the candles on, and around 11 pm, I got slightly hysterical.

I was tired, it was late (and so it was just about time for my usual late-night silliness) and I'd had two cans of Coke in the last 8 hours. I was jabbling away to myself merrily while sticking candles to the tape, working with Ivan and Denise, and pretty soon, I was giggling at almost anything, and finally, when someone (I can't remember who it was) who was working on the lane in front of ours stood up and accidentally knocked over a candle, I let out a panicky, semi-anguished "ARGH!!", after which I dissolved into giggles at my own overreaction.

Ivan promptly grabbed hold of me and told me to "get a grip". :P

After which I only giggled some more and went on sticking candles. Even thinking about it right now is setting me off. Heehee. :D :P

Anyway, Ivan left a little after 11 pm (so sad...) and we only finished sticking all the candles at around 4 am, after which we took turns to bathe with the one shower available (it was quite a homely bathroom, though) and then we all fell asleep.

22nd December 2004

I woke up at 6.15 am and wandered outside, where it was still rather dark and really windy (read: chilly); watched the sky get light, and then wandered back indoors; fell asleep again, and only woke up at about 9, whereupon we did a brief check on the candles, and then the few of us who were awake decided to go see if we could get anything in the way of breakfast. Some of the girls (Denise, Diana, June and Si Ning, I think) had gone to Diana's house to wash up, so other than Steven, the only ones who were awake were Beng Chong, Swee Giang, Chee Khiong (from NTU, but I think one of the Arts Club people had asked him down to help) and me.

We strolled down to the food court, and then strolled back when Diana called to tell Swee Giang that she was bringing breakfast, and when we were nearing Hall 2A, I heard VERY familiar music blasting out into the corridor.

Fantasy Project's "Crazy Baby".

Someone had actually put one of Ivan's techno CDs into the console and was actually playing it. I couldn't believe it, and when I entered the hall, I found Chong Han and Xuzi fiddling away with the console. Alvin made a call to Ivan ten minutes later when I told some of them that Ivan had still been asleep when I gave him a wake-up call at 10.30, and then I asked him to pass me the phone.

At that time, "Rave Heaven" was playing.

Me: Kor, can you hear what's in the background??
Ivan: No.

Well, I was out in the corridor at the time, but the music was pretty loud and I was surprised that he couldn't hear it. Anyway, I walked further into the hall, and just as I did so, the "main" part of the song came on, the part with all the electronic beats.

Me: Can you hear that now?? *grinning away madly*
Ivan: *short pause* Hey. That's my CD!
Me: *Laughs* Yeah, someone actually played your techno!!

Someone then came to brief us on the days proceedings, after which I fell asleep again, being rather bored. Only woke up at about 11.30, and wandered outside again, where a group of us were sitting and chatting idly. Ivan was there, and Si Ning remarked (rather pointedly) that it was very coincidental that I woke up when he arrived. "Telepathy", Diana supplied.

*Rolls eyes* Whatever.

Just remembered that I shouldn't say "whatever" so much. Hanging around Ivan is shrinking my vocabulary, ironically enough, considering that he's an English Language major. I suppose he's not anymore, though; he did say that he'd be switching majors.

Had a dry run of the ceremony, during which we all kept making fun of the phrase "dry run" and after it, Hock asked if we were going to have a "wet run", hahaha...

Ivan brought his camera; entertained myself with it for a while after our "dry run", looking through the pictures that were stored in there. It's scary how alike he and his sister look. I mean, I know siblings are supposed to look alike, but I figured that as the two of them are of different sexes, there should be... less similarity? But no, there isn't. Seriously, I think that if Ivan left his hair really long and removed his glasses, he'd look almost exactly like his sister; if not, then just a rather ugly girl. :P

Otherwise, the two of us spent a good deal of the unimportant moments of the briefing making jibes at Ivan's job as a banquet waiter. :P Well, he was the one who kept telling me that everything was reminding him of work; from the way the reception for the media and volunteers and performers was set up, to the way that we had to walk in in an orderly file and light the candles.

Then, when Steven mentioned that we might need to show the VIPs to their places to start lighting the outermost lane of candles by saying "'Excuse me sir, this way, please' or something like that", that just set me off. :P

Me: (pointedly to Ivan) "Sir, this way", "Sir, would you like a drink?", "Sir, would you like me to change your plate?"
Ivan: Shut up, lah...

Heehee.

Things went pretty fast after that; lunch, followed by yet another short briefing for us, then about 10 of us sat down behind the raised platforms for the audience's seats and we all played Indian poker for a bit as the other performers for the event were briefed on their parts.

When things finally got started, we all milled around for a bit, watching the performances, and cringing at some of them; imagine things like a little five-year-old girl singing "It's A Small World" in her high-pitched, little-girl voice. *hair stands*

And then there were those same little girls doing (supposedly) provocative dances to things like Tom Jones' "She's A Lady". Ivan and I agreed that it was something akin to exploitation of children.

It's quite bizarre and unsettling to see mothers dolling their five-year-old daughters up to look like porcelain dolls, caking them in make-up and dressing them in costumes that reveal more than they cover, and then making them dance to music that they most probably don't even understand; especially when the dance contains elements of things that they probably shouldn't understand for another ten years or so.

Anyway, the emcee finally got around to us, talking about how we'd been selling the candles for the past three weeks and arranging the candles and such, and how the whole thing wouldn't be possible without us (you're very welcome, by the way, haha); we all did a loud whooping cheer, then quickly became more sedate as we filed out and went to our positions.

Then, when we were lighting the candles, we found out that there was a problem. The wicks of most of the candles were much too short! So we had to spend quite some time (and flame and lighter fluid) on each candles, melting away some of the wax near the tip to get a longer wick to light. The lighter fluid in my lighter ran out shockingly fast; I'd only finished lighting one row in my lane when I looked at the level of lighter fluid and found that it was almost completely depleted!

We started lighting using the already lit candles, and when it was becoming clear that we were gonna take longer than expected (the performances that were meant to distract the audience's attention from us seemed to be over way too soon), it was admirable how the emcee improvised and changed the routine, asking the audience and the VIPs to come down and help us light the candles, and according to Steven, people in the audience actually did come down and help. :)

When the candles were finally done, we all gathered together and cheered and screamed our lungs out, and sang along to Michael Jackson's "Heal The World", which they were playing over the speakers; then, when we were assured that the Record was safely down, there ensued a mad rush to start blowing out the candles.

Everyone started making wishes and blowing out the candles, things like "Good CAP score!", "CAP 5.0!", and from Yuimin: "TEN sugar daddies!!"

In answer, Tim blew out a candle and shouted, "Sugar MUMMY!" :D :D

Then Steven wondered out loud if perhaps the last candle would be especially effective in granting wishes...

The whole lot of them then scrambled over to the last little candle, and there were a lot of whining noises from those who didn't get it, but then I noticed that Ivan and Steven were both insisting that they'd each got it first. :P

We didn't do much in the way of clean-up; the cleaning staff at Expo took care of that. All we did was kick over those candles which were less than half-burnt-down, and then pack them in boxes for the organisers to give to the less-fortunate, poor families in less-developed countries.

It never ceases to amaze me that destroying something will always be so much easier than putting it together in the beginning. Logically, that makes sense, since you're just knocking over everything that you've built, but I just keep thinking that.. there must be some way to.. explain why it's so, you know what I mean?

So, anyway, we left pretty soon after that, Steven, Si Ning, Alvin, Ivan and myself were the last to leave, and when we left, the Expo staff were almost done clearing up all the candles; what they did was they ripped the black tape for the "lanes" right off the floor, taking the candles and mounting tape and most of the dripped wax with it. Very efficient, they were. And also quite sad to note that while we'd spent more than 12 hours setting up the whole thing, it was gone in under an hour.

Oh well.

Got home that night and saw a 5-minute segment on our record-breaking attempt on the Channel 5 news at 9.30; sadly, no mention of NUS or the Arts and Social Sciences Club anywhere; I saw myself, I think-- my back was towards the camera at the time. Ivan said that the Channel I news had nothing, and neither did the Channel 8 news.

23rd December 2001

Ivan sent me a message at 8.41 am, which ran along the lines of: "WTF??!! Have you seen today's Straits Times yet? One picture taken from far away and about 5 or 6 lines of comment, and NO MENTION OF ARTS CLUB AT ALL!! WTF?!?"

Yes. You get the idea. :P

But really, upon looking at the picture, I found it wasn't so bad.. aside from the issue of zilch mention of Arts Club. The picture itself was quite nice; if you look closely enough, you can even make out exactly who's who.

Borrowed four DVDs from the Video Ezy rental store; "Troy" (yay!), "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King", "Black Hawk Down" again (coz I miss it :P), and borrowed one of those boring, plot-less, dance and R&B and hip-hop movies for my sister.

Met Olinda Cho at the Cold Storage Gourmet just across the street from the Video Ezy as well; my youngest sister and I were just coming out of the aisle for crisps and tidbits and such when came by, pushing her trolley; she stopped to let us go first, and I think I recognised the outfit that she was wearing as something that she'd worn on Singapore Idol before. Black jacket and track pants with her black visor cap pulled to one side.

My aunties and my cousin arrived at about 9 pm; things got slightly amusing for me then. See, on my mother's side, I only have two first cousins, and they're both guys; they're brothers, and they're five and four years older than me-- the one visiting right now is the older one.

Thing is, I've been brought up to address them as "kor", but given how I've been calling Ivan "kor" for the past one-and-a-half months... well, this is just causing me no small amount of amusement, I assure you that. :D :D

Sigh... Christmas prezzies.. need to finish my Christmas shopping soon. Good thing I'm not getting presents for many people; one of the many pluses of maintaining a small but close circle of friends! :D Oh, and I almost forgot Christmas cards!!

*Smacks forehead and rushes off to find cards*