program booklet done by nzj

the cover page of the booklet:

(东方红~~~)

a short profile of each dancer:

quoting from nzj in his blog: 我们真的有那么大牌吗…

just in case if any of you cant read my profile:

Currently a physical education teacher, T_ _ Y_ _ _ Y_ _ has been practising wushu since the age of 13. His first contact with dance was in 2006 during the NUS RAG DAY where he participated in an item choreographed by Fen. With his strong background in wushu, he was quickly recruited by Fen as a dancer on other occasions. Upon graduation in 2007 with a degree in Chemistry from the Science Faculty, (yours truely) was amalgamated into the NUS Chinese Dance by Fen where he received formal training in Chinese Dance. He has since been an active alumni member and has been involved in all their major performances.

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very well written rite? actually i wrote a very simple draft at first, and then fen improved it a bit, and later on my mummy improved it further with her powerful english, and ta da! that's the finalised profile of myself that went into the program booklet. haha.

i am still doing my 1500 word essay on motivation, and i am a great procrastinator.

CAN SOMEONE MOTIVATE ME PLS!!!

mauritius day 2 - 7th sept 2009, monday

when we go for breakfast every morning, the first place we will head to is not our breakfast table, but is this "station", where the chefs will make hot piping eggs and crepes!

for the eggs you can request for omelette, mirror egg or scrambled egg. the omelette will have 4 different ingredients: ham, mushrooms, onions and cheese. you can either choose all 4 or any 4 to be inside your omelette. as for the crepes you can choose different flavours such as chocolate, honey, sugar and coconut! most of us think that the sugar crepe is the best, and it goes very well with sliced bananas! yummy!

eating eggs every morning is quite 腻 for me, so i will eat that on alternate days. however i seriously dun mind eating the sugar crepes every morning. hahahaha. and while having our breakfast, the resident red bird paid our table a visit again. :)

she looks lovely isnt it?

after breakfast we found a place in the hotel to do our rehearsal. yesterday we only performed 5 items, which is 极, winter, yi zu, wangda's solo and my homeland. today we will also whack these 5 items, with an addition of 4 more items, which are beyond, invisibility, tides of times and zengyan's solo. so for the rehearsal this morning we did beyond and invisibility. because i am not doing this 2 items, so i can slack and see them practise. hahahahaha.

so during the rehearsal, i noticed ah liang's face is super sleepy and sian. so i shouted to him: wah lao ah liang, 给多一点 EFFORT leh!!! then the rest of the pple were all laughing. so from this point onwards, whenever i see ah liang's sian face throughout the whole trip, i will shout EFFORT in his face, and then dunno why i also added the word ENERGY. so the EFFORT & ENERGY will always come out from my mouth whenever anybody looks lethargic. and this two words became the official trip slogan. hahahahahahahaha.

after the rehearsal we had our lunch! because i was slacking throughout the rehearsal, i had the honour to select the dishes together with ah noo. ah noo is the project coordinator for the 60th anniversary celebrations (think i mentioned it before), and he is really one cool guy who took good care of us, ensuring that our welfare and needs are being met. he is just like our father throughout the whole trip. and he is super musically talented, can play the flute, the drums, and the guitar! damn steady lah. oh yah and he speaks good mandarin. quite a few of the uncle mauritians speak good mandarin and he is one of them. so to xue hong and foo shin, must improve your mandarin ok!!!

so the dishes that ah noo and i chose are 山东鸡，咖喱鱼，fish cooked in bean paste sauce, brocolli, and a plate of vegetarian pasta for zhimin.

final verdict of the food??!! one word. 咸. HAHAHA. oh yah let me introduce the mauritius salsa and garlic ginger sauce, which although looks like vomit but the taste is extremely nice and spices up the tongue to the max. goes very well with every single dish!

after lunch we went to the supermarket AGAIN... i also forgot the reason why we went there again, but nvm, cos the focus is actually not on the supermarket, is actually on reliving our childhood memories. we played bumper car!!! hahahaha. introducing the 6 pairs of contestants, ready to bump the hell out of one another, inflicting bruises and orh chehs on one another.

all of us really enjoyed ourselves, especially for me. i keep screaming wildly and waving my hands frantically like no one's business. hahahaha.

evening comes and we start to get ready for our second performance at CCC. our dinner is fried rice and fried noodles again, but is from a different food vendor. look at the portions that they gave!!! so big!!!

as promised, here are the photos of our costumes. i seriously love wearing the 极 costume and although is a bit BHB, but i think i look good in it! hahahahaha.

and i must introduce this guy, called wang da, who dance super well and has damn flexible limbs. just watching him dance is a pleasure to the eyes, and to be able to dance on the same stage as him is indeed a great honour.

ok that's it for day 2. :)

mauritius day 1 - 6th sept 2009, sunday

had our breakfast at the hotel restaurant. the breakfast that they serve is buffet style, but limited choices. they have cakes, crossiants, toasted bread with jam or butter, assorted pastries, cornflakes, fruits (bananas, oranges and pineapples), omelettes and crepes. drinks will be coffee, tea, hot chocolate and fruit punch.

because the restaurant is very open concept, the birds like to fly in and we realised that the birds are super big and fat as compared to the birds in sg. at first we were all wondering wat is the reason and later on we knew why. the pple like to feed the birds and once they cleared the table the birds will come to table and nibble on the remaining food. a bit disgusting and unhygienic.

and there is this super pretty resident red bird. the bird is pretty used to tourists taking photos because it will just stand there for many seconds to wait for us to take out our cameras and focusing on it. hahaha.

after finishing my breakfast i went to walk around the hotel to explore wat they have.

before we leave our hotel to head to the performance venue, we had our daily dosage of vitamin c pill, courtesy of the super nice michael.

our first stop was at the supermarket to purchase groceries. most of us bought tidbits, coffee, milk, mineral water and sun block lotion. one thing i noticed about the cashiers at the supermarket. they sit down at their counters. why is this so? because the customers have to take out the items themselves from their baskets or trolleys. and the customers also have to put their scanned items themselves into the plastic bags. i think this is a very good system that ntuc should use. maybe singaporeans will wake up their idea and stop buying things in bulk and stare coldly at the ntuc cashiers when the poor aunties have to scan each item and put in the plastic bag.

we reached the Chinese Cultural Centre, which is also the performance venue at around 11 am. the CCC is very grand, and they have very nice dressing rooms and clean toilets.

we started to rehearse our items on the stage, and while waiting for our turn to rehearse, we took photos.

our lunch was quite demoralising. we ate bread with chicken bits and lettuce, together with home-made cakes. zhimin got vegetarian pizza from pizza hut lor! wassup man. i ate like ten pieces of bread and a few pieces of cakes cos i was super hungry.

but thank goodness the dinner was fantastic! we had 3 choices: fried rice, fried noodles and fried bee hoon. i chose fried rice. the sauce that they provide is a mixture of ginger and garlic, and it is super nice! you definitely cant get that in singapore. if there is one thing i will miss in mauritius, it will definitely be the yellow color ginger garlic sauce.

the performance was very well-received. i was like going to cry because i danced 极 on stage, after learning the dance in just one week. i guess no one knew how much effort i put in to learn the item. i keep looking at the video clip over and over again for the past week and try my very best in memorising the steps. although during the actual performance i am still remembering my movements and secretly glancing at the rest, but i am still thankful that i managed to scrape through and most importantly i completed the "nike" move!!! yes lah!!!

all rite that's about all for day 1. we will be performing again at the same venue on day 2, so i will upload more pics of everyone in their costumes. :)

mizuno wave run 2009

i think i must be crazy to go for the 16 km run after one week of holidaying and eating good food in mauritius. the run started at 730 am at nanyang poly. met up with leow first at the entrance because he helped me to collect my mizuno singlet and number tag while i was away at mauritius. met up with kc at the start point.

although 16 km is 5 km lesser than army half marathon, the route is quite shag because have alot of up slope. for the first 8 km of the run i actually bothered to run up the slope but at the second half of the run i chose to walk. suffered cramps during the last few km (wat's new) but i stopped for a while to stretch, and after stretching i walk for a short distance before jogging again.

so my timing is 1 hour 46 min 54 seconds! judging from this timing i think its seriously quite hard to hit less than 2 hours for 21 km. :(

anyway i am still very happy for completing the 16 km! because i nv train at all, and ever since the army half marathon, i only ran once, which is 4.3 km at bedok reservoir. thank goodness i managed to survive. haha.

dun you think my the number of my race tag is very nice and auspicious? hahaha.

ok i am pretty shag. i shall eat my lunch and take a nap and once i wake up i will finish my long overdue assignments. sian.

mauritius day 0 - 5th sept 2009, saturday

had a very thrilling experience before boarding the flight to mauritius.

because you see, the flight is at 225 pm. and then we still have to dance at nus at 11 am. and then 11 am we were informed last minute that there is a change of venue, so we only started dancing at 1120, and finally we finished our dance item at 1145, and i chiong to the carpark and drive the car home.

reach home at 1205, and rushed up to my house, bathed, and did some last min packing. left the house at 1230, took a cab, and reached the airport at 1245. hahaha super happening, ma chiam 赶七月歌台.

darling was already at the airport to send me off, and after i checked-in my luggage, both of us went to the food court to have our lunch. one chicken rice set cost 8 bucks and the duck rice set cost 9 bucks. so expensive and yet dun taste that fantastic. i am seriously not going there to eat anymore.

said bye bye to darling and all of us went inside the transit area. fen collected all our passports because he wanted to buy wine and cigarettes back. there's altogether 12 singaporean passports, so you can imagine how much wine and cigarettes he bought.

the plane ride took 7 hours. thank goodness there is in-flight entertainment system. the movies they offer is not as many as SIA, but is good enough already. i watched two hong kong movies on the plane. the rest of the time is used to sleep and to walk around the plane talking cock with the pple.

we finally reached mauritius. i forgot wat is the exact time that we reached, and i only noe that all of us are tired and hungry. anyway mauritius is 4 hours behind sg time! ah noo, the project coordinator for the mauritius chinese community 60th anniversary celebrations was at the airport waiting for us. as soon as we stepped out of the airport, fen's sister yunevee was also waiting for us with our mini-bus.

yunevee passed to us the mauritius chinese newspapers. and we were in the biggest surprise of the lifetime. our faces appeared inside the newspaper!!! its not like at the far right corner one tiny space. but its one full page! wonder how much will that cost! and we are being addressed as SINGAPORE DELEGATES. how cool is that.

we were greeted again with the next surprise. yunevee gave each of us a personalised goodie bag!

so we have a post card, a mauritius map, a packet of banana chips, mauritius local cakes which is known as napolitan, and a gift packet, which contains a key chain and a magnet.

all of us were really touched by the efforts. :'(

our first meal at mauritius is bee hoon soup at a chinese restaurant! the bee hoon soup looked ordinary, but once we tasted it... OMG ITS DELICIOUS! thrilled our taste buds and warmed our stomachs. :)

(zhimin's vegetarian bee hoon)

after the nice dinner we went to our hotel. the name of our hotel is casa florida. its a two-storeyed bungalow, with one toilet, one living room, one kitchen, and two bed rooms. sounds good rite? but its quite small, something like the costa sands chalets at east coast park or pasir ris.

ok that's all for day 0. we slept at about 12 plus midnight mauritian time, which is 4 plus am sg time! crazy man.

back from mauritius~

yoz i am back! its been a really fun trip and i enjoyed myself alot.

ok before i start blogging on the trip details, let me introduce to everyone the 14 proud delegates representing nuscd in going to mauritius to perform.

starting from the extreme left guy in red jacket, wearing specs, in a clockwise manner:

ah liang - feels that every single activity of the whole trip is 浪费时间, except for eating, dancing, sleeping and sun-tanning with me by the pool

mike - super considerate guy who stays in the same hotel room as me (together with nzj, jiepei and yeelilan), so considerate to the extent that he is willing to be the last person to bathe, and every night he will just use a wet towel and rub his body, go and sleep, next morning wake up early to bathe. *respect*

wangda - super flexible guy with limbs made of rubber. you will noe wat i mean when you see more of his pics.

weijie - not from nuscd, but he is our emcee! did a really good job, and mixed well with everyone despite knowing the majority of the pple the first time.

yours truely - focus very much on EFFORT and ENERGY throughout the whole trip. hahahaha.

nzj - mr meticulous perfectionist. fen's right hand man in coordinating all the admin work of the trip.

wilson - xiaoyun's bf. not from nuscd. wanted to surprise xiaoyun by appearing on the flight on the actual day but the surprise plan backfired a few days before.

fen - the MAN in charge of the whole mauritius trip. the MAN responsible in bringing all of us to mauritius. and yes he is mauritian.

hz - the cute little girl who dun mind uglifying herself to make pple happy and entertained.

xiaoyun - very blur girl who only backfired the surprise plan a few days before 5th sept. not-so-blur girls would have backfired the surprise plan a few weeks ago.

jiepei - my mummy in nuscd. very good in PR skills, and noes how to shoot pple in the nicest and most diplomatic manner. this is an art which i can nv be good at.

yeelian - the tallest girl among the female dancers. even taller than most of the male dancers. despite having such long legs, she said that she always run the slowest in 2.4 km among the rest of the girls, but she can dance non-stop for 5 to 6 hours.

zengyan - 冰山美人 from china. so gentle that when she scolds a person to go and die in her china dialect, the person will die willingly for her.

and finally,

zhimin - the vegetarian of the group and very well taken care of when it comes to meals. sometimes her vegetarian meals are more tasty than our meaty meals.

ok stay tuned for more posts about the trip! :)

missing my darling...

with lots of love from mauritius:

darling, hope you like the postcard! :)

friday post

so finally i am flying off to mauritius tomorrow afternoon.

but first let me update wat happened today. today there was a volleyball competition. we were the champions last year, and were the favourites to win the championship. but this year there is a freshie who is a S-A-F-S-A spiker. he is really damn zai in spiking. he jumps damn high, spike damn hard, the ball travels so fast that you cant even see the ball. let's say if zhenhong is god, that guy is god + immortal. ok i also dunno wat i am talking about, maybe i am too tired.

we lost to that guy's team, and we were very disappointed. tears nearly welled up in my eyes but i controlled. witty told me that she nearly cried too. i took a glance at KC and can see some redness in his eyes. or maybe my eyes playing tricks on me. but all of just are too disappointed that we lost. we lost to a team which have only two players that can really play volleyball. but the most disappointing is that we lost to ourselves, like wat zhenhong said.

anyway the competition is over. and i must say i really enjoy myself playing vball with my classmates, and improving my game tremendously. i seriously hope we still can play with one another often, even after we graduate to become full-fledged teachers. :)

now is already one am and i am really tired. but i think i am too excited to sleep. right now i wanna say that i love darling very much, and i will definitely miss her alot when i am at mauritius.

so darling, i present to you, surprise no. 3:

(go to my blog on monday for surprise no. 4)

bye everyone! bye darling! take care of yourself!

monday post

the 3 items that i will be dancing at mauritius are:

1) winter solstice 冬天来了

but this time my partner is not chio outdoor enthusiast. my new partner is zengyan, who is just as flexible as chio outdoor enthusiast, can do all those crazy leg work, kick here kick there like no one's business.

2) 我的家园

the immortalised dance steps. i danced this item 2 years ago at dance reflections 07, danced it again for buddha tooth temple for a vesak day event, and finally during dance reflections 08 concert. i thought DR08 will be my last time dancing this item, but who noes i am dancing it yet again. and some of the dancers performed this item 16 times when they were in korea. so everytime when we are practising this item, and it comes to the 大四排, everyone will just dance and laugh loudly at the same time. i think only the nuscd dancers can understand our feelings. hahahahaha.

3) 极

this item was choreo-ed by zhou laoshi, and is choreo-ed based on the essence of taichi. so because of my wushu background, fen and nzj strongly recommends me to do this item. but to learn this new item in less than one week is definitely stressing me out!!! *pulling my hair*

all rite i am going to sleep now. feeling a bit drowsy because i had taken the flu medicine given to me by darling. hope that i can recover fully tmr.

sunday post

due to the last min approval of the mauritius trip, everything suddenly becomes so rush and so packed.

i have dance practises yesterday, today, tuesday and thursday. saturday we are flying off! btw i am dancing in 3 items. 2 items i danced before already, so its still ok. but i am learning one new item, and i only got less than one week to learn finish that item, so its pretty stressful. :(

in addition, i also have practises for the sept performance on wed and friday. so besides monday, i will be dancing everyday for the whole of next week!

ok, wish me luck, hope i will survive for the next two weeks. although now i am having sore throat and flu. :(

for darling

going to mauritius!

this is a bit random and unexpected, but i am going to mauritius to perform! will be going from 5th sept to 12th sept!

actually i sent in my leave application on 30th july to the institute. but one week later the institute told me that my leave was not approved. so i sian ji bua already, and decided not to do anything abt it. and then another week later, fen ask me whether can appeal. so i appealed on 20th august. and i waited waited until yesterday, still got no news, so i thought my appeal has failed.

AND THEN!!! this afternoon at around two pm when i was taking my nap the institute called me saying my appeal has been approved. but only institute approve, still have to wait for the ministry to approve. i already quite sian ji bua, cos if institute take 7 days to approve, if the ministry also take 7 days to approve, then its already a bit too late. so i told the lady from the institute that i decided not to go, then the lady scolded me that she did so much shit for me and yet i still give up at this point of time, and tell me to call another lady from the ministry to rush the final approval.

so i called the lady from the ministry and told her my concerns. she is super nice and she asked me lots of questions so that she can get more details. she even asked xue hong to call her. and so, at 4 pm, she called me, and told me that my application has been APPROVED!!! wow i cant believe it man.

birthdays!

i happen to know 3 pple who share the same birthday on 27th august.

one of them is yiehui, whom i first get to noe her in nus wushu, and later on she played a part in pulling me into kevii, and the rest is history. my life has changed alot ever since i went into kevii. at kevii i learnt how to play takraw, play handball, started dancing, befriended a bunch of awesome pple, coming across bloody bastards and bitches which make me realise that the world must always strike a balance because its impossible to have only good pple to exist in this world, and most importantly, i met darling. :) anyway yiehui is now a doctor, so next time if i wanna chao geng i can go get MC from her. hahahahaha.

the second one is james, my pe classmate. he is many years older than most of us, because this is his mid-career switch. very very nice chap, always giving me advice on relationship and marriage matters.

so today we celebrated his birthday at the swimming pool.

and then he perform a diving stunt with jack, which i use my camera to take high-burst shots, another cool function which i just discovered!!! wah hahahaha.

the third person is none other than my dear father. without him, i wun be here at all. although he is the 沉默寡言 type, and seldom speaks to me, but from his actions i can tell that he loves me alot. *tears welling up in my eyes now*

so i decided to bring him to eat jap food, cos i noe he like to eat jap food, and he loved watching the japan food documentaries on channelnews asia. therefore i chose the most authentic jap restaurant that serves ala carte buffet, and that restaurant is none other than kuishinbo!!!

i must say the food is really awesome. if you have a chance to eat there, you must definitely go and whack the crab legs! they are so huge, so long, so fresh, and so sweet!!!

and they have all kinds of jap food. so you will definitely be spoilt for choice. they even have teppanyaki, and i think is the second most popular food after the crab legs. the chef at the teppanyaki station have numerous plates of orders and he bbq the meat non-stop, dun even get the chance to rest. feel so ke lian for him.

once in a while you can hear a very loud ringing of the bell. THIS SIGNALS THAT GOT SOME SPECIAL FOOD IS BEING SERVED. then you can see a wave of kiasu singaporeans rushing to the source of the bell to queue up to take the special food. the special food is prepared in limited quantities, so only the first 20 to 30 pple in the queue can get.

i was very lucky because our table was very near to the bell, so i am the 3rd person in the queue!!! hahahaha. at first i thought they will serve lobsters or scallops, but to my disappointment, it is...

but still ok lah. the prawns are big and juicy, and the cheese with codfish roe on top of the prawns taste damn heavenly!!!

they also have a wide range of desserts. got doriyaki (the one doraemon likes to eat), mochi, fruit tarts, cakes, and even got chocolate fondue!

price per pax is 35.90++ on mondays to thursdays. the whole bill cost me 207.50, so its about 42 dollars per pax. and my younger sis volunteered to contribute 100 bucks. hoho.

more pics of my lovely family:

everyone is good looking, yes?

cut the cake when we reached home. my little sis bought a tiramisu cake from bakerzin. the cake tastes wonderful! the whole cake just melt in your mouth which will make you get addicted very easily and you will keep eating and eating.

my younger sis bought a levi's belt and polo tee for my father, while i bought a set of new balance sports apparel, cos i got 40 percent discount at new balance outlets. hahahahaha.