Coin counting for Flag today.

Was feeling oddly nostalgic.

I wonder if I'm one of the few people who's been involved in Flag this many times; as it is, I was one of the more "experienced" coin counters in the room today. Some people like Eileen and Reuben were doing it for a second time after last year, and maybe the NUSSU people were doing it for a second time too, but I might've been the only one in the room doing it for a third time.

What's more, there were people in the NUSSU Flag comm whom I'd seen in the last two years, but I didn't see any of them around the function rooms today, where we were counting.

And it did strike me yesterday morning, when I arrived in school at 7 am to help Meiling and Xinyu distribute the Flag logistics, that this is the last year I will do any administrative work associated with Flag. This is the last time I will wake up at an ungodly hour to send people out to collect money from the general public; this is the last time I will get stressed out over labels, stickers, T-shirts and NUSSU's crazy directives; this is the last time I will get frustrated over freshies not giving a damn about Flag and just going off to sing karaoke with their OGs and bringing back nearly empty cans in the evening; this is the last time I will sit down with fellow Flag comm/admin people and bitch about said freshies' laziness, other faculties, NUSSU, and many many other things, passing the time till the collection cans are returned to us safe and sound.

And every year around this time, I find myself wondering the same thing: why have I so actively participated in the two most under-valued orientation projects for almost every year that I've been in NUS?

People argue that it's useless, people tell me that I'm stupid, people say it's a waste of time. Almost everyone else whom I see in these projects for a second or third year running gets this kinda feedback from the people who know of their participation. And every year, I do wonder, why is it that despite what these people say, there're always about 20 who come back to slog for virtually nothing at all?

I certainly hope that we're not "stupid" and "wasting our time" as everyone has said. Rather, I think that aside from the feeling that we do this (take part in Rag and Flag) for the friends who are in it with us, it might be because we are among the strange minority of the faculty which has an unusually strong sense of faculty pride.

That feeling of satisfaction as the faculty's float rolls into the performance area; that feeling when the cans are collected back at the end of Flag Day and every faculty does its best to convey to every other faculty present during the collection time that its tins are so full of coins that they need four people to carry a box of twenty tins; that feeling when it's over and you want to come back next year and make it even better.

This year I'd like to feel proud, for one last time. :)