Y Thursday, August 16, 2007
8:51 pm
I need to stop hitting the enter button after I type the title in. Blank post lol.As suggested in the title, today was the day I took my once-in-a-lifetime English oral. Wasn't too bad I suppose. Except I really hate the fact that people take one look at me and say
"Ai, Ian imba oral. Lucky you not before me."
"Huh? You nervous? Come on la."
Guys, look. I can really only speak English. I sound like a sick crow when I speak Chinese, except it's only twice as retarded. Besides, it's not like I'm that good. Y'all really give me too much credit. At best, I'm inconsistent in my performance. And for the actual run, I hit my low point.
Pretty disappointing, I have to admit. Reading was totally off, and the most heart-wrenching (lol exaggeration much?) component in the oral. I figured I didn't want to pee in the middle of the oral examination. (mysteriously, your bladder and kidneys work 3x faster while waiting in line) Big mistake. My mouth was totally dry and my lips were sticking to each other as I was reading.
Result? Slightly off-ish pronunciations. Plus I didn't dare to speak too loudly, for fear the stickiness would somehow be heard. I'd be lucky to push an 11/12.
Picture discussion. Ah how I hate this section. I saw what the other people came up with and I cringed more and more as they discussed about their picture conversation. Died a little inside when I heard Joel say "the picture was taken by a camera set on auto timer, as there is a man who couldn't pose in time." Damn, good one pope-boy. Literally out of the box.
Well, at least I covered all aspects and didn't have any prompting. 10/12 maybe?
Conversation. My favourite area. It's basically, imo, where you can REALLY impress the examiners. The more mature/pragmatic your views are, the better. It's fun if you manage to get them to widen their eyes and nod their heads. Of course I didn't manage that.
Today's topic was about "a time where you participated in a competition". Lucky for me, I have the SYFs to talk about. Plus I managed to bring out VSCO and VSCB's 'rivalry' and how the school favours the band more. (No Wrixon, keep that cleaver. Kun Yi, please stop staring at me like that. It's unsettling.) Then from there it was random bullcrap.
"So is it just about the winning? Is winning important? Or do you play music for different reasons?"
The response I gave was so full of rubbish I had to stop myself from bursting out loud. But it was the only thing I could come up with, and beggars can't be choosers. I'm no toastmaster guys. I'm overrated by y'all.
"Oh of course not. It's not just about winning. I feel performing a song is about sending a message, and it's very important to me. Every song has a different message. It's also about the actual act of performing. I get to be part of the music instead of just listening to it. But yes, like I said, we need to prove ourselves to the school, so winning's important too."
Oh God xD. Looking back, it's seriously funny stuff. What surprised me was that it flowed pretty darned quickly and naturally. Pathological liar? Hope not. Okay but you know, I didn't lie about the performing part. I miss performing on stage and regretted not joining in this year's SYF.
But yeah, I got cut short. Still had one or two points to elaborate on, but my examiners figured it was enough. "Okay. Very good." *Nods head* "You can go now."
Give me a 35 please ):