8:03 p.m. - 2004-09-04
Cheers And Tears
oh slagging Primus i am SO tired!! these past few days have just been so fragging hectic.
well the whole double standards for lunch thing lasted only for the final two days of the NJRC interviews and at least someone brought it down for us. the food's still crap though.
to tell the truth i actually enjoyed the interview rounds. it was kinda fun in a way, getting to meet the kids and take them for their interviews and back. lol.. some of the Primary kids even kept calling me 'Teacher'.. lol1! that was rather flattering, and correcting them would have taken too long, so i let them call me that. haha it was a nice personal morale boost. =)
Unfortunately, interviews came to an end yesterday. i swear i do have to keep my mouth shut sometimes, cos i went and spoke about t-shirt painting the day before. (our tees are plain grey y'see, so i went and painted an Autobot symbol on the sleeve of my tee). that set the others off and yesterday, everyone was there with fabric paint, busy painting tees. unfortunately i had to finish mine while on the train ride home cos i was given 4 extra teams to take for interview and didnt have the time to sit and paint. for the record, my completed tee has a 'Bot symbol on the right arm, a 'Con symbol on the left and a painted piccie of Pura in the middle.
and we had to stay overtime to finish cutting ribbon, writing stickers and sticking those stickers on the ribbon. the good thing was that i got a free pizza dinner! =)
today i had a wake-up call of 5am! BLEH! HATE EARLY MORNINGS!! i caught the first train and the sun wasnt even out yet.. well pretty much everyone was a walking zombie. and oh yeah, we met the rest of the team coordinators. mreh.. some of them are ok, but the others are just so.. and i know this sounds mean.. but they're just so stupid! it makes me wonder how long they'll last, cos really, looking after a bunch of extremely hyper-active kids is NOT an easy job.
i'm kinda surprised how seriously some schools take the whole NJRC thing. they even send in their own cheerleaders and supporters, and its so popular that there's a mini-competition held for the cheering squads. and they're LOUD! its not funny when 50-60 kids start screaming out cheers over and over again in addition to some guys whaling on drums and what not. so the noise level is like through the roof. try making yourself heard over all that racket.
i was a runner today, basically ferrying messages back and forth from playing field to booth area. and the morning session was total chaos. yelling at coords, screaming at kids.. tell me again, why do i sign up for these types of jobs?
after lunch was a bit calmer and just to get away from the full brunt of the cheerleading noise, i retreated to the booth area.. its quite impressive. some of the kids even set up their own businesses in their team booths, selling sweets and water or other little handmade things; or game stalls, all for a few cents. very sweet.
some of the teams i took for interviews remembered me =). that made them happy and they kept waving to me everytime i walked past. =D. one girls' team in particular got really friendly with me. i feel kinda bad for them cos you could tell they worked really hard and they'd done well in the competition so far, reaching 4th place, but due to some mess-up at the last mission, they dropped to 7th place. *shakes head* i really really hope they make it to the finals and i see them again. did my best to keep them positive and keep their spirits up.
and then there were teams that were driven to tears. one girls' team again. they had some points deducted or something and a couple of the girls were crying.. logically it would be overreacting since their team was ranked 56th and even the addition of those few points wouldnt have got them in the final. but still.. mreh.. some of the team coords werent doing anything to help, so i stepped in and gave them a few hugs and a bit of motivation. its not much but at least it'll make them feel a little better, cos if you look at it from their perspective.. well, sometimes even a little support is better than nothing.
mwahahahaha! the waffles and ice cream is baaack!! woohoo!!
