Yesterday was tiring. Yes, as Albert said on his blog, on the 7th of August, our months of preparation was finally going to be carried out. it was going to be a fun and tough day. Only the strong will survive. I was exaggerating. Everyone survived. We were a cohort of tough strong metal-made alumni. No worries.
We were tough. We gave our all.
It was in the morning. I got woken up in the morning. I remembered asking my maid the night before to wake me up the next day at 6.15am. I felt a nudge on my stiff shoulders and jumped. The nudge shocked me. Ouch! My neck hurted. I must have slept so uncomfortably that night my neck was in an uncomfortable position. Slowly, I pulled myself up from my bed. Although my neck hurt, I also had to fight to temptation to go back resting my head on the pillow. I will soon fall asleep. That is something I now cannot afford. 'Today is the day,' I thought to myself. With that thought in mind, I reluctantly folded my quilt and got onto my feet. The moment I got up, I stumbled on my steps to reach my table. Head rush, head rush. I had never gotten up onto my feet as fast after I woke up. So this head rush is not going to be something I would experience often. I was glad. My vision cleared awhile later. I went out into the kitchen and stared at the wall clock. I turned and asked my maid, "So what time did you wake me up?"
"6.5O."
I turned again to look at the clock. It said 5.5Oam. I turned once more to look at her, "6.5O ? It's 5.5O now." She glanced at the clock, examined the clock, and looked back to me, smiling. Oh nevermind. In this case, I did not have to rush like what I usually do. That was some help, seriously. I hopped to the kitchen. feeling quite happy. This might be the day I would not be late for school! When I went back to my room to change, I did it quite slowly, still happy. Everything was so slow, so quiet, so peaceful. But I had not enough determination to keep this going for the rest of my life. Sleep was too much for me to sacrifice. I styled my hair and admired it for awhile. Then I took it out and restyled it another way, admired it again for awhile, and took it down again. I did this multiple times my hands were sore. I ran the comb through my hair and finally did a simple pony tail. I had too much time. I skipped around my small room, feeling the tightness of my runoff-coloured black skinny jeans. We were supposed to wear blue jeans for the day's occasion, but the blue jeans I had was too tight, too uncomfortable. It also made my legs look shorter and fatter than they already are. I have shorter limbs than average people have. It was already a disadvantage to my height. It made me look rather big in size, at least to me.
Soon, I was tired of my small room. I decided it was time to go. I grabbed my bag and my pass, pulled on a pair of pink socks and hopped out. I threw my stuffs onto the sofa and skipped to the table. I drank my lio and skipped back to the sofa. I yanked out my pair of blue converse sneakers. Those sneakers had got dirty. Funny it did not bother me it being dirty when I was the one who paid majority of it. It cost $6O plus. My dad said I could have it if I came out with $5O, he would pay the rest, the minority. I dug $5O out of my ang paos and gave it to him. And there, the sneaker was mine.
I struggled to put my feet in. My feet was not big. It was the hard canvas of the sneaker which made it almost impossible to get my feet in there. But I always managed to stand up with the whole of my feet in the sneaker. I strolled to my primary school. I felt so big, and old in the school. Most of the pupils in there were rather small sized, as compared to me. I skipped to the OPs room, to find many alumni waiting outside. I guess we were too early, the room had not yet been opened for us. A great sense of satisfaction ran through me. Not punctual. Early. It made my mood higher.
The programmes strated. We gathered beside the primary sixes at the parade square to have the national anthem sung. We were the loudest, we had to be. We had to spread the enthusiasm to the pupils. That was our job, and it also helped if the pupils were enthusiastic. We would not feel that good if we were to organise an event where poeple attending it looked like zombies.
My team and I organised a game booth for basketball. I saw repeated players. They were so eager to get a prize. I was encouraging them to score, I forgot I sweat easily and forgot about controlling my voice. But, no matter how much I screamed for them, my partner did not seem to think it was too loud. She thought I was just talking to them, with her a few meters radius away. My voice is not that powerful afterall.
The time had come. All the pupils had gone home. Now comes in the guests for our 1Oth anniversary cum national day celebrations. Some of us had to run up and down the stairs, bringing guests to the hall and to the ArtStar respectively. We could not afford anyone to get lost in our school. We had to do headcounts. I was in charge of escorting guests to the hall. At first, only a few guests came. I gathered them in groups of single-digits up the hall, explaining to them the reason they were here, in our school. Then, as if I had been gone for very long, a crowd appeared at the InfoCounter. I had to be quick now. I held up my 'HALL' sign as I shouted the word on the sign. "Those going to the hall please follow me!" I screamed, hoping my voice could be heard among the chattering and high-pitched screams of toddlers. Fortunately, they heard my plead and emerged from the crowded room. I gathered, quite quickly, everyone going to the hall in groupd of more than 2O. It was difficult for me to escort them to the hall as as they walked, they did so at different paces, making them spread out so much. I could not see the end of the trail. I just had to quickly reach the hall, pass them to the usherettes, and quickly guide the scattered guests quickly to the hall so I could run back to the Infocounter to gather another batch of guests.
There were total of four people helping out in this escorting exercise. 2 for hall, another 2 for ArtStar. Parents were going to the hall, while VIPs were going to the ArtStar. I sweat alot that time. It was inevitable. I sweated easily remember? Just a walk to my secondary school drenches my uniform. Later on, another 2 from the usher team came down to help us, one for each destination. It did not help much as they only made two trips and went back up. After awhile, 2of the escorting team went back to the hall to be ushurettes, leaving only me and another girl. Thankfully, the number of people were lesser, compared to before, a few minutes after the event started. I was running up and down the stairs, along the now-very-familiar route. I had always thought I could not manage to remember the exact route to the hall. Then I knew, the worry was unecessary.
The worst was over, when I finally had my dinner at 7pm plus. The people now came in a little, in a very long time. The sky was dimming. Just a few hours to the end of the ceremony. I heaved a sigh of relief as I left the counter. I jogged back to the hall. I was an usherette rightfully. They needed people to escort guests to places and the usherettes were a very big number. As we were the oldest in the team, the usher team leaders sent us three secondary threes down together with one of the leaders. When I reached the hall, the hall was filled with total chaos. People people everywhere ! Children were running around. I went to the nearest usher leader and asked him what I should be doing that time. He told me to go to the canteen below and look for another leader. I did so. UI found him and told him my situation. He told me to rest here as I had been running around all day. I did so again, and fell asleep on one of the very little canteen benches.
It had been a very tough and tiring day indeed. But I had never regret taking part in this. All hail alumni!