i am sick.

down with flu which sets me to instant paralysis.

my mind unable to think, body unable to move but surprisingly fingers still able to type.

haven't blogged for a really long time and i kinda miss it. i think somehow blogging sets me reflective and relaxing and i should really do it more often. Never mind if nobody reads cuz like a sprinkle of stardust that represents enlightenment, i realise that i should blog for myself. MORE, at least.

And by blogging for myself, i meant to say blogging for the good of myself.

Never mind if u don't catch it, cuz i didn't bother phrasing it properly. Whatever.

Roomie Ms Lin Mingli commented just now when she was still in the room that "It's rare to see you in the room at this hour"

Me: Yes indeed, it means something must have gone wrong somewhere.

Indeed, at 4pm, I should be well in my tuition kid's house, coaching him on Life Cycles, and Magnets and not dragging my feet to fling the germs infected tissue paper into the waste paper bin. (Why can't I put the bin right beside me? Then I won't need to drag my feet to flind every piece of tissue... That's because if the bin full of tissue is beside me, that means, i have germs hovering right beside me as well...) I am germ-conscious. Very. So, NO.

Well, at 5.32pm, I should be on the bus, going back to human infested Jurong Point... Hell, it's great to be away from the maddening crowd for a while. No one else in the room, Just the mumbling of the fan above me, my laptop, and my thoughts.

I am tired. VERY tired. So glad that my term in CAC is officially over, although due to schedule problems, I am unable to handover to my successor till this saturday.

I think it's great to relinquish the responsibility now. At this point in time, I would like to move on with my life, and bid goodbye to the club I was in. NTU Cultural Activities Club. For the first 2 years of my university life, I can say 50% of my time, attention and energy is devoted to the club and the activities I run. Theoretically speaking it should be 50%, cuz the other 50% should be spent studying and developing the academia in me. Add in other commitments while holding the 50% spent in CAC constant, you know I am not telling the truth.

The truth is... my social circle hovers around only CAC and I feel so sad that I haven't moved beyond. Well, it's my choice actually. Just like some people devote their attention to the hall, I devote mine to CAC. I kinda feel stretched enough in the club, and it's time to go beyond.

At this point, I would like to recap on my journey in CAC and how much I've learnt from it.

In June 2002, I received the orientation package of the various clubs in NTU and I was very attracted to the Cultural Activities Club and what they do in it. I saw exciting clubs such as "Modern Jazz, Jam Band, and Concert Engineers". I also saw projects like Talentime which I was very very tempted to join as organizer.

The recruitment of fresh blood into the committee came and I was very keen on running for the position of Special Projects Officer (Talentime) Reason being, I am very into music and at that time before entering university, i already dreamt of being a concert producer. Ha. Nobody knows that huh.

Due to stronger position and contention for the position, I dropped out of the race upon being offered another challenging position of Special Projects Officer (Cheerleading). CAC wanted to organise a cheerleading competition and was looking for a chairperson to start the first cheerleading competition. So I took up the challenge, went through a lot of turmoil for a first semester. It was a bad start, having a poor committee set-up, bad leadership skills, and lack of top management support. My learning curve was very steep, and I began to realise a lot of my shortcomings, as a leader, as a team player, and of course, as a student. I was not able to juggle everything well enough.

Although finally, we managed to pull off a good show by working with Singapore Sports Council, the event turn-out was excellent, I felt that I had failed, personally failed.

Then came the transition again, the old blood had to go, new blood come in. Most of us who wanted to stay on were quite keen on running for v-president position. I guess it was only natural that people climb higher as they gain more experience. Strangely, not me.

I was the only person not interested in a top-5 position, I felt that there was still a lot of wishes left unfulfilled, a lot of things that I wanted to do not done, I still wanted to do a lot of groundwork.

Indeed, then I became the first (again) Public Relations Officer of the club. Again, with no model to follow, no one to guide me.

The best part of it, everyone would agree is that I am the chairperson, or in the words that I like to put it, the producer of campus concerts in school. So, to many people, I get to shake hands with stars whenever they come for campus concerts in NTU and I get to see them up close and personal. I would say, position of envy- for many. True and not true. To be honest, of the many campus concerts that I've done- either produced or co-produced, like Alec Su You Peng- the first one; Chua Lee Lian; B.A.D & Jacky Zhu Fan Gang; Van Fan Yi Cheng & Melody; Mini & Gu-er; and most recently F.I.R, I have NEVER taken a personal photo with them. Group photos only. The hands I've shaked- Chua Lee Lian, and B.A.D and F.I.R only. Well ok, at least I shook their hands. Most of the time, I was either at the back-stage looking at their backs and butts, OR in front, handling crowd control.

I am not a concert watcher, I am a concert producer. There's a lot of pressure on me, to bring in more artistes, but not everytime negotiations pull through. There's a lot of people out there who are demanding and some of these record people treat us students as "TOOLS OF PUBLICITY" and certainly, I want to drive home a point that, hey look. Treat us with respect and professionalism. We are partners. We promote your artiste, you entertain our students. They don't understand that everytime we hold a concert, many of our students have to skip classes to distribute tickets, and prepare for the concert. we also have to pay a great deal of money. It would be good if we can have more R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Apart from campus concerts, I also initiated a ARTSpeak series, having recoginsed that there is a gap to be filled. Think ART is not only about enjoying the surface work, what about understanding what goes behind it? So the ARTSpeak series was initiated as a series of talks and workshops by people at the peak of the ARTS. They SPEAK about the arts. Quite a clever play of the words huh? Haha... You get a prize if you can tell me who thought of this. But anyway, I realised that someone got that faster than me. While visiting the newly renovated Jurong East library this July, i chanced upon this book titled "ARTSPEAK". Fine. Wow. makings of an editor/publisher/writer? Whatever. HAHA.

So far, we did a CAtherine Lim talk. A very good one- in the sense that it was intellectual simulating, and more than 80% of the audience rated it "Good" and above. Actually, the ARTSpeak series came from here, I was thinking of a way to package this talk, so I thought of using it to launch a series...

Then we had a vocal instructor come in under the belt of ARTSpeak, but I wasn't the organiser cuz it wasn't my contact.

early this month I brought in a DJ, Lim Leng Kee. A very small crowd because of the large venue. Wanted a small venue, intimate enough to contain 100 people but we had to settle for something larger. It was excellent, as she talked a great deal about radio, and her career path as a radio DJ.. Hell should have asked the Career Center of NTU to sponsor us. Hehe...

There's always more things we can do... Like bringing in Actors or Directors, or journalists... Well, that's for my successor to run the show... Think would be good if we can invite some people, like renowned stage actors/directors to share or promote their works. Bring in a piece of literary form into NTU? That would be good. How many of us appreciate that? From what I see, very little. NTU students are mostly pre-occupied with their studies, their sports or hall activities to get in touch with more literary and cultural stuff. The mainstream is always more welcoming, I would definitely agree... but there should always be somewhere we can start right? This is a university... we're supposed to be intellectually inclined.

Want to start on a new point on what constitutes a success of an event? Well, I've always asked myself this question... is it only considered a success when you have the house standing up during a concert (like in F.I.R's concert)? What about events that fail to draw crowd, but are strong in content- and good in management? Do we then only do events if we can tell that they are going to be popular, crowd-drawing and venue-bursting? Well... it goes back to the objectives of the event, I think. What do we hope to achieve by organising this event? What are the metrics of performance? Something tangible like crowd size, or something intangible like crowd satisfaction? Every type of event is different in nature. Like maybe we can have a sell-out event but a really lousy performance. Is that successful? I don't know... I don't study event management. I go by my guts, and the goals that I set to achieve. Finally, I have yet an answer for myself.

Now to the management of Emcees, another new challenge that I gave myself- managing emcees. A hell lot of NTU events lack emcees- and there is not such a resource centre in NTU. With the Emcee Club in place, clubs look to us for emcees. At the beginning, I promised the emcees quite a bit, such as portfolio shooting that never materialised because the sub-comm who was supposed to handle it, never could fix a time for everyone to take the photoshoot. It was partly my fault for not pushing through it and it dragged till now, it still hasn't materialised. Too ambitious, am I? It's true u can't put all your eggs in one basket. You need 2 baskets.

Which I didn't, and I myself had to carry all the eggs.... Well... juggling with PR duties as well as emcee liaising. It was a very irritating job cuz u always had to call Mr A and then Ms B then back to Mr A. Hell lot of energy zapped. And a lot of people can't see it. Nobody understands, appreciates, or recognises.

PR duties- I learnt a lot. Again, I picked up the pen and began writing press releases for the Festival of ARTS as well as the many projects that our club organises. It was not easy as I had to find the pieces of information, beg for them from the various chairpersons, and had to equip myself with information about the event so that when the press asks, I know how to answer. The lucky thing was, I only had to do media briefing for Cheerobics. It was like WOW> Cuz we had Lian He Zao Bao and Straits Times reporters there. And they asked difficult questions and thank goodness I was the chair before hand and I know all the facts and stuff. Phew. I learnt a great deal on media relations- what to say, what not to say, and most importantly HOW TO SAY. It is a very delicate issue. All I can say is, Thank God I learnt a lot.

There was a very low point in the committee that I felt that I didn't belong, it is partly due to me cuz I am always very busy, by some poor twist of fate, I couldn't go for those bonding sessions that they had. It was worst when I had the feeling that I wasn't taken seriously in the committee, despite my many contribution. maybe its the way i approach meetings- i don't like to be all serious, although recently i've been. And worst still, people make false judgements, put too high expectations and fail to recognise limitations. Especially during evaluation sessions. It didn't help when authority was over stepped, or whatever. Well, on the other hand, I won't say I am right all the time, and neither am I perfect. So fine. I accept all these and I correct people's judgements and expectations.

What I have taken away with me these 2 years, is a wealth of experience and knowledge- both of my area of interest, and more importantly, knowledge of myself. A better understanding of my shortcomings, hell, i can't see any of my strengths, damn. No wonder I am so depressed lately.

I must be perfect.

Yes. perfectly imperfect.

And here, I close a chapter of my life and move on!

Goodbye CAC.