Every Entry is a piece of Memory

I realised more and more assignments are coming up, so I gotta settle the easier ones like this reflection first. Now I still have 1 test, 1 report, 1 essay, 4 projects discussion, 1 letter and 1 presentation, all to be done within a week! I can sense the stress……

Anyway, I wrote this story to “link” the 2 victims of my “people-watch” assignment today.
The idea of linking them together wasn’t that difficult, because they have got quite extremely different character and opinions about image. This actually leads me to think that is image really important? Being an extrovert, I am actually not reserved to do what I want. That’s why I dare to speak or laugh loudly in public, even though my friends find that embarrasing. I always feel that we should all behave like who we are, so if you want to laugh out loud, just do it. Why bother to restrict yourself from laughing at a hilarious joke? Why bother to soften your volume when you need to say it loud enough to express your level of anger?

I still remmber that time i was queuing in the carpark of Mediacorp, with lots of other audiences to catch a show. Then when Colin said something shocking, I immediately let out a scream. And ALL the audiences queueing in front of us just turned and stared at me. At that moment I did feel embarrased, but I still couldn’t figure out what’s wrong with that! Then Colin started telling me that gotta maintain image. But … I screamed because I was really shocked. It’s not as if I am some crazy woman screaming down the street for no reason.

Okay. I am more or less finished with the reflection. But I am confused over who to write “the letter to the past” to. Lots of people started to float into my mind. So should I write to my grandpa who used to call me “bee”? Or should I choose the guy that sat beside me during Primary 6 and taught me lots of stuff? Should I write to this guy whom my mum used to babysit when he was still a kid? Or this primary school buddy of mine whom I never get to reveal the truth to?

I am tired after the photography outing, but I have decided to complete my work first as there’s another outing trip tomorrow! Anyway, since Ryan said that we can blog about stuff that did not happen in class, I shall mention a little about my trip today. We went to the Woodland area in order to see Johor. I was walking along the bay of the coast prominic, searching for interesting stuff to shoot, while Siew Eng they all were still walking slowly far behind me. Then I spotted this big creature lying on the bush! I thought it was a crocodile and tried calling the rest over. However, I couldn’t shout loud enough as I was afraid of scaring it away. So I decided to take a few snaps of it before it escaped. Then I waved to ask the rest over, and Nick said it was a monitor lizard. Wow! I have never seen such big monitor lizard man! I seriously thought I saw a crocodile right beside me..haha! Luckily I had taken 2 snaps of it, because it escaped before Nick could click his camera.Actually what surprised me most was NOT the big lizard, but my reaction towards it. Normally I will just scream and run when seeing such creature. But this time I just felt that I have a mission in hand - take some good pictures. I guess photography has made me bolder and more adventurous!

So how has storytelling changed me? Hmmm…no, not at all. My passion for writing still remains, no matter how bad my stories are. Haha! Oh I thought we would only watch films during intro to film, never expected it in storytelling as well. Although “The election” does not have any twist or complicated plot like films shown during intro to film, I kind of like it. The story is straight-forward and simple. It is not those suspense films, but rather, just one that clearly shows the cause-and-effect and downfall of character. I think the thing that attracted my interest wasn’t the downfall of Jim McAllister, but rather the character Tracy Flick. She reminded me of those primary 1 kids, always volunteering for everything and wanting to catch teachers’ attention. She also clearly showed how compeititive and selfish students nowadays can be. Simple but realisitc story!

As I love meaningful stories, I tend to write them down when I came across, and give them a title. Below is a story I heard from the radio last year:

An invaluable gift
A man who works overseas misses his wife with each passing day. He decides to send a parcel to China for her. He blows into the rubber heart to inflat it, and places into a box that is large enough. At the post office, the lady at the counter greets him and checks his parcel.
“Sir, the cost to post this is quite expensive because it is a large parcel. Why not you deflate this heart and so you can place it into a smaller box?” The lady suggests.
The man replies.
“The parcel I want to send to my wife is my breath, my breath of missing her. The heart and box are just the package of my gift. So how can I send her the package instead of the gift?”

*Presents are just packaging, no matter how expensive they are, just like the rubber heart and box. The real gift is sincerity, even if it is as invaluable as the breath. Being sincere is the priceless gift.*

I was actually lazy to do my reflection, but Colin’s EARLY posting always motivate me to do it, haha! We are going to be compeititive muggers! =D

This week’s storytelling started off with pretty easy stuff. Ryan chose some classmates to read out one of their 5 short stories and we were supposed to give both negative and postive comments. Through this, I realised everyone has got different opinions for the stories. For example, I find the ending of Sonia’s story too unlikely to happen. But some of them find it acceptable and interesting in fact. Then for some stories, I have difficulties thinking of positive comments. This is NOT because the story is bad, but just that it’s a normal story so i wasn’t that impressed. Instead, I realised each story has got its flaw in it, even if it’s a minor one. For example, although I find Dip’s story the most impressing, he made mistakes in his tenses. And like what Ryan commented, he had used to many “He feels”. In conclusion, I realised it’s easier to spot for flaws than strength, unless the story is really impressingly perfect. That’s why I say, it’s easy to write those 50 words stories, but it’s tough writing one that impresses.

At the second half of the lesson, we presented our slides about Aristotle. While the groups are presenting the slides, Ryan also flashed his slides and explained them after the group finished. I had great difficulty in catching up! In fact, when Ryan started to flash his slides, I did not even realised! I was too engrossed copying the slides of my classmates’ presentation. And because I am really slow at typing, I couldn’t copy both the presentation slides and Ryan’s slides in time. It was quite a hectic lecture, with all the copying of notessss. Furthermore, there were so many new vocabulary like “katharsis”, “mimesis”, “anagnorisis”, “perepeteia” and “hamartia”. I have never in my life seen these words before! Are they English words? Haha! Anyway, I didn’t really have time to absorp what I have learnt as I was busy catching up with the slides all the time. So some parts were kind of confusing for me. =( yea class started with “ABC” but ended with “!@£$%^&*”. Luckily after class we exchanged presentation slides with each other. But hopefully we will be buried under less notesss.

Our next assignment is to observe people! I love observing people! But it will be kind of awkward if the party notices that you have been looking at him/her. Haha!

WOO! Another week has passed and I am now reflecting on my second storytelling lesson. We started off choosing 1 of the 12 openers from our selected partner. Then we were supposed to continue the story using that chosen opener. I had a tough time choosing from Atiqah’s 12 openers! So I elimnated half the lists and were left with the following:

-She stands there staring at her feet and tugging at her shirt, unsure of what to say.
(I find this opener broad enough, so I can brainstorm more ideas. However, a broad topic will also mean I will need a longer time to choose an idea.)

-The setting is perfect: everyone is in their positions and Sheila’s looking deep into Ryan’s eyes, just waiting for that blissful moment she says the words “I do”.
-Everyone knows that Mark lights up every time Jayne makes an entrance; everyone knows that Mark is in love; and everyone knows that Mark is not aware of it.
-While she concludes that life isn’t quite like a movie-script ending, Michael steps into her life for the very first time and there her life begins like a written script for a chick flick.
(I like love stories, but I can’t write them well.)

-Slowly, Liliane walks towards the railings, climbs over and stares down at the street, 20 stories blow her.
(I love writing sad stories, remember?)

-Although it happens all the time, Leonard still gets taken by surprise.
(I find this opener interesting, but I had a hard time thinking what happens so frequently yet it surprises people.)

So my final decision was that suicide opener. Yesssss, sad story AGAIN! I did not have enough time to write a longer story because I spent too much time choosing an opener. So here is my story:

Slowly, Liliane walks towards the railings, climbs over and stares down at the street, 20 stories below her. She trembles, but she is really tired of having such a life. Scenes of her parents quarreling, her brother fighting, her coming ‘O’level examiniation timetable and her recent health report begin to appear in her mind. Her tears roll down her cheek and drip down the 20 stories drop by drop like pearls. Liliane always believes that she has got the most miserable life, but no one knows about it. Though she appears to be an extrovert in school, always waving to someone she knows every other minute, deep in her heart, it is filled with sadness. She has been trying all sort of ways to end her pathetic life, but they always failed. This time, Liliane is determined to succeed. She looks at her health report and gets depressed even more, when she sees the word “depression”. She then leans forward, and lets her body fly down the building, with the pieces from health report. When the police arrives to see Liliane lying in a pond of blood. Hundred metres away from her, it is a health report of someone by the name of “Liliana”.

The ending wasn’t really a sad story, but more of a “What the hell?! She died for nothing?” ending. Well, I just don’t want it to be too sad because some people hate those real sad stories. Anyway, after completing our stories, we spilt into groups and did some research about Aristotle. This reminded me of the “teach less, learn more” technique used by teachers when I was in secondary school. We would do research and present to the class. I think the good thing about this is less spoon-feeding. However, sometimes, some classmates might not really pay attention to your presentation because afterall we are not as strict as lecturers, so they might not really bother to listen.

During my first storytelling tutorial class, we started off playing some games. One of it was the “name plus action” game. We were required to think of a word, which shares the same first alphabet as our name. I played this game before in the Leadership Pow-Wow event, so I used back “Violent Vivian”, as it really describes me. Haha! However, Ryan made it more challenging by having to repeat the actions of the people before us. I was only the fourth person and yet when it was my turn, I couldn’t really remember the actions of the three people before me. I don’t know if I was too nervous, or just suffering from short-term memory. Anyway, I find these games a good way to start off class. First, it definitely helped Ryan in remembering our names. Then we also got a chance to have some fun before all the theories come crushing into our heads!

Ryan mentioned that different stories are taking place in our daily life, and one of his aim is to guide us to write stories using our life experiences. This sounded so familiar because I remembered during the JPSAE interview for FSV, Ryan was my interviewer. Then I told him that I want to be a scriptwriter and write stories using my interesting life experiences. Perhaps that’s why I got into FSV despite doing so badly for the interview, because we share the same aim. Haha! Indeed, I find life experiences the best inspiration when writing stories. This is because you actually went through it before, so you will know the feelings better and express it well. When writing compositions in Secondary school, I used to choose a topic that I somehow experience before, rather than having to crack my head to think of a realistic story. I realised that people normally find their life stories boring, but others will find them interesting. Just like when i used to blog about my daily life, I thought it might be so boring for my friends to read them everyday. However it turned out that they love reading it. They found it like “The diary of Anne Frank” or what, but of course not as interesting as hers. No matter “The diary of Anne Frank” or “The dairy of Vivian”, I just find it really helps, to write using experiences.

Then we learnt that all the stories we write must be in present tense, third person and active voice. Writing in third person is not much of a problem, because it is just thinking of it as someone else’s story and not yours. However, writing in present tense might cause some troubles for me. As I said, I like to write stories using my experiences. Since experiences are things that I had already went through, I will normally write them in past tense. So this time I will have to remind myself as i write, that I need present tense to make readers feel as if it is happening around them. Having to write in active voice will also mean that I will have to work hard on my WEAK vocabulary, since active voice involves all the actions. I think this might post another problem for me because I am much better at expressing feelings, rather actions. I understand that by expressing only the feeling, the readers might not be able to feel it completely, since they did not experience it. But with the help of verbs, readers can imagine themselves experiencing the scene, and therefore have a feel of what is it like.

Storytelling through a blog is also a new experience for me. I find it better to submit online work because my printer was declared DEAD last year. So with wordpress, I do not have to trouble my classmate to print my work for me. Also, we do not have to rush up to 7th floor after class to submit our work before 5pm (like written communication). I started off getting confused over the “page” and “post” thing, because ‘blogspot’ do not have such thing as “page”. But after browsing this user-friendly web, there isn’t much problems anymore. And one great thing about wordpress is, it saves your work automatically after 1 minute!!! This is such an advantage for me because my crazy laptop seems to hang every now and then. I still remember writing that whole paragraph for writ comm and all my effort went down the drain simply because my laptop went crazy! Haha, it won’t happen again, i guess.

Anyway, I am having a hard time thinking of the 12 openers. Although Aries is good at attracting attention, I am really bad at coming up with openers that attract attention! I still prefer to write stories, but I know I have to start off right by having a good opener. Talking about writing stories, I still can’t figure out why I prefer to write sad stories. Ryan wanted us to continue the story from “Dominic puts on his Hula Girl suit and walks into the temple”, and i wrote a SAD story again! I think partly because I feel that not much people would actually write a sad story, with such an opener about “Hula Girl suit”. Then as I wrote, I had difficulty ending the story. That’s when I realised I need to know the ending before I can even start continuing the story, if not I might go off track. I didn’t want a death scene, but it wouldn’t sound realistic either, if the girl suddenly recovers (too abrupt). So since I couldn’t think of a nice ending, I decided that at least I should add some meaningful stuff in this sad story. So I added some meaningful lines to make Alice have greater determination to live on. Generally, I think having a topic rather than an opener would be much easier. This is because with an opener, you are somehow restricted when writing your story, especially with such WEIRD opener. Where else for topic, it is broader and you will therefore have more ideas.