My stories!

I don’t think I will ever be able to forget week 6’s story telling lesson. It was the most emotional lesson I ever had in my life. I think it’s good to have such emotional lessons once in a while. Like Dominic said, it’s like a therapy and it’s good for you. Once in a while, you should let out your emotions and think about the past. I felt this was one of the best storytelling lessons. Even though, we did not learn stuff like Greek tragedies and the sequence of stories, I feel that I learnt more through this lesson than any other lesson. Today’s lesson was a lesson about life. We should remember our past and think about people who were part of our life in the past but who are not with us anymore. Today’s lesson made me think about many things. A Lesson which makes you think even after you leave the class is the best sort of lesson.

We were broken into groups and I had Wendy, Yixuan and Dominic in my group. I offered to read Yixuan’s letter to the rest of the group. Her letter was very emotional and Yixuan started crying uncontrollably when I was reading out the letter. Her letter brought back memories of my uncle who is now dead. But my story is not very similar to hers because I was not very close to my uncle. He adored me a lot and always cared about me. What really hurts me is the fact that I never really cared about him like the way he cared about him. He was a very loud person mainly because he is deaf and he always used to shout whenever he asked me a question. I used to be very scared of him as a kid. I was very young and I didn’t know what disease he had. He went to Brazil and when he came back he had some sort of virus. He became slightly blind and deaf. His kidney and liver were affected and his health slowly deteriorated. I didn’t visit him regularly, the only time I saw him was during some family gathering which happened very rarely. His disease became more serious and he was admitted to a hospital. What hurts me even till today is the fact that I only went to visit him once in the hospital although I knew he was dying. Till now, I feel guilty about what I did.

I wanted to write the letter to my uncle instead but I was afraid I would become too emotional. I was also afraid that I wont know what to write in the letter to him. I actually felt like crying when I was reading Yixuan’s letter. Firstly, it reminded me of my uncle, especially the part when she wrote about the part when she went to visit him in the hospital. Secondly, the atmosphere in class was just so sad. I could her Sonia crying from the opposite table and Yixuan was crying just beside me. What an emotional day it was! But I felt this was one of the best lessons I had throughout my school life because we got to express our emotions and feelings which we would never let out on a normal day. I always had a impression that Sonia is a very cheerful girl with no worries. Someone who leads a problem free life because she is always so cheerful and bubbly. She looks like someone who will always look on the bright side of life, I never thought that there must have been a incident which has affected her so badly. I have not read her letter yet but I know that it’s not a very happy one.

Mr. Ryan read out his story which was emotional too. Whenever I see a teacher I don’t really think about their life or what they do outside of school. Sometimes, we students, don’t even think that teachers have a life outside of school. We think that school is their life, that’s what I used to think. Mr. Ryan always came across to me as a person that who leads a very happy life. He’s always so cheerful and happy. I would have never thought that he would have such a tragic past. His letter was very moving and emotional. His letter also reminded me of my literature book, “King of the Castle”. Mr. Ryan said that his father used to give him alot of gifts to compensate for the love he failed to give. This is exactly what Edmund’s father would do in the book. He would give his son expensive gifts because he didn’t know how to show his love to him in other ways. Edmund ends up being cold and evil. He even kills a boy of his age at the end. Luckily, Mr.Ryan has not turned out that way! Or has he? Hahaha just kidding!

After today, I realized something very important. I realised that I should be grateful for what I have. Suddenly, I feel ashamed of my constant complains and nags about how bad and lousy my life is. To be honest, I have nothing much to complain about. I can never imagine going through what some of my classmates have through. Atiqah had written a letter to her ex-boyfriend who died of leukemia. If I was in her case, I don’t think I would have been able to get over it. I see my classmates in a different light after today. Some of them have gone through a lot in life and they have been so strong to move on.

Another thing I learnt today is that you should never judge someone. This had nothing to do with our lesson but I just realized it on my way back home. Whenever we judge someone, we should stop and think about their life. For example, Sonia, I would have never thought that she would have so much of pain in her life. We don’t know what the other person is going through in their life so we have no right to judge someone. Today’s lesson made me think and realize many things about life.

After the emotional letter sharing session, we had our lecture. The lecture was interesting because Mr. Ryan asked a very interesting and philosophical question which again made me think about my life. “Are memories true?” I don’t think most memories are true. Although there are bitter memories, wherever we hear the word “memories” we think of sweet memories, pleasant things which will bring tears to our eyes. Since we have this perception that memories are supposed to be pleasant, we see the incidents which happened through a rose tinted glass. Some how, even the negative incidents will have some positive memories to it. When mr. Ryan asked this question. I started wondering about my memories and if they were true. Come to think of it, I think most of them are not. As time moves on, we mature and maybe things which may have been bitter in the past don’t seem that bad when we grow older. When the memory sits in our mind for some time, we tend to forget some details or we could be unintentionally filtering out the negative stuff because of our perception that memories are supposed to be sweet.

This discussion reminded me of the movie, “Big Fish” by Tim Burton. One of my all time favourite movies. This movie is about a character who exaggerates every single detail in his life. He is not liar, he was just trying to make life seem more interesting. He would tell his exaggerated adventures to his son. I feel that is what we do with memories, we tend to exaggerate the good ones and forget about some of the bad ones.

I think my reflection so far has been very emotional and philosophical so let me move on with the normal stuff like school work and so on. This week has been really stressful! I don’t even want to think about the deadlines and the tests which are very near by. The highlight of this week has to be my studio production workshop because I did something very stupid. I had to do the vision mixer. Being a slow learner, it was very hard for me to understand everything about the vision mixer in a few minutes. I tried my best to understand when Wendy was explaining it to me but I just couldn’t get it inside my head. I ended up screwing up the whole programme. It was really embarrassing. I think my reflection has become too long, I better stop here because I can go on and on about how embarrassed I was during studio pro! Haha

Week 5 has been really stressful for me! My problem started with the photography assignment which was a disaster. I went to botanic gardens, orchard road and cityhalll and took many great photos, spending a lot of time thinking about which exposure mode to set and all. It was raining heavily on Saturday afternoon so I had to wait in botanic gardens for an hour. Finally after taking all my photos, I realized that everything was in auto focus!! I was dead! I really felt like crying when I realized that. It had to be in manual and not in auto focus. I felt so stupid and angry with myself that I had done such a silly mistake. I had just wasted my whole Saturday! To make it worst, I spent my whole Sunday worrying about Saturday. I wasted my Sunday by complaining to my sisters about how I had wasted my Saturday. It wasn’t a really great weekend for me. I took all the photos on Wednesday after school. That was another tiring day!

Story telling lesson was fun this week because we had the chance to watch a short French film and one scene from the movie Taxi driver. I liked the French film, “Brats” a lot. I feel the director had done a great job. The way he portrayed the main character. (I forgot the girl’s name) was terrific. The way he introduced her was very nice. The scene which shows her riding the bike with her flowing skirt was very graceful. The movie ends with a powerful dialogue which makes us wonder about the characters of the movie. One of the character says that he has now bitter memories of that girl. Mr. Ryan was then discussing with the class why the character had said that. It would have been understandable if he had said that he feels guilty when he sees her but he said he had bitter memories when he sees her. I think he feels that way because he gets reminded of all his mean pranks when he sees her. As humans, we always tend to blame other people even when its our fault. Only very few people, accept the fact that it is their fault. Maybe, he’s trying to forget all the mean things he has done to her so when he sees her, he gets reminded of them. This guilt becomes bitterness. Even I tend to do this sometimes. When you feel bad about something and you want to deny the fact that it is fault, you tend to blame it on the other person who is also involved. So, whenever you see that person, you will have a bitter feeling because you feel guilty. The ending of the movie was also touching. The main character was always shown as a girl who leads a peaceful and happy life who likes to ride her bicycle. At the end, they show her in a very sad way. She is not riding her bike anymore and she just walks straight without any expression on her face. I felt the ending left an impact. As audience of the film, we are able to feel for her.

We also saw a scene from Taxi driver which I didn’t enjoy very much. I don’t like films of that sort, those depressing and gloomy movies. I know that as a film student, I should watch all types of film and learn from them but I just don’t like them. The scene which shows him cleaning the blood from the backseat was just so gross! I felt the movie was dull but maybe it will become more interesting as it progresses.

We actually started the lesson by writing a short story with the people who we watched for our people watching assignment. I found it hard to come up with an interesting story which will suit the characters. I hated one character and really like another character. I wanted to come up with the story where both otf them will be sisters but Mr. Ryan said that the story has to be about how they meet. We were given a lot of time to work on our stories but I still couldn’t come up with something impressive. Here is my story:

Bobby and her mother are waiting in the crowded train, hoping to get a seat. Her mother begins to shiver due to the radio waves transmitted by the hand phones which the people were using near her. Bobby tells the other passengers on the train to switch off their hand phones since it was affecting her sick mother. Just when everything was fine, Hui Ling comes along. She sits just in front of Bobby and her mother and starts to curse and yell into her hand phone, at the same she curls her eye lashes with a eye lash curler. Bobby politely goes to her and asks her to switch off her hand phone. Much to Bobby’s chagrin, Hui Ling completely ignores her continues to yell into her hand phone.

Hui Ling is not even bothered by the fact that the radio waves were bothering the old and weak lady. After a while, she switches off her hand phone but she still refuses to give them a seat. She begins to apply lipstick and eyeliner just in front of them. Bobby, being a polite and well-mannered person doesn’t want to pick a fight and continues to stand with her sickly mother. Hui Ling looks at Bobby disgustingly and mutters something in Cantonese under her breath. Bobby’ patience was being tested. She goes forward and slaps Hui Ling.

I really like the ending of my story! Imagine how it will be if that really happens. I think i will be laughing non stop! That weird eye lash curling lady deserves it if she gets a slap because she should learn a lesson about manners. We listened to a few stories after that. Yixuan’s story was about a RI student and a student from a normal . I totally agree that RI students are proud! Sometimes they annoy you to the extent that you want to slap them. Once I went to the Swiss festival in the Swiss embassy for a prize giving ceremony for a writing competition. Even though we were representing our school, we were told not to wear our school uniform. But our proud RI boys wore their uniform with their blazers. They stood together as a group and did not mingle with the rest of us. As usual, they were the ones who won most of the awards. Some of them look at you with disgust, maybe they feel they are better than the rest. I don’t know what is wrong with some of them.

The assignment for the week is to write a letter to someone who you have not talked for a very long time but you shared a good relationship with in the past. When I first saw the assignment title, “Letters to the past” I thought we had to write a letter to someone who lived in the past. Maybe some historic figure like Elvis or someone. It would have been more fun if the assignment was like that. Anyway, I have finally decided to write a letter to my close friend in secondary school whom I have lost touch with. She has also become a different person now. I better get started on my assignment now!

I was actually looking forward to week 4’s storytelling lesson because we get to watch a movie! I loved the idea of going to school to watch a movie. It’s like one of my fantasies when I was in primary and secondary school. I always used to wonder how nice it would be if I go to school and watch a movie instead of having a boring math or science lesson. Well, finally my dream came true when I came to FSV. I thought that we will be watching some ancient Greek tragedy but we watched election. Luckily, it was not some real Greek tragedy movie because I have read some Greek tales when I was younger and they were really creepy! One of the freaky stories I read was about a royal family and after the king dies in the story, the prince, his son will marry the queen who his is own mother! I found the story to be really disgusting! I was expecting some kind of weird movie to be screened today but luckily it was just a normal Hollywood movie. Wait, not a really normal movie maybe a bit more normal than the Greek tragedy that I read.

I was hoping that we will watch the movie in the preview theatre but I heard some other class was having intro to film there. Anyway, let me continue with my reflection. I felt the movie election was weird and a bit disturbing as well. I liked the idea that they showed the dark side of life; the bitter truth that even mean people can become successful and famous. What I disliked about the movie was the way they showed everything in a disgusting manner. Film is a form of visual art and art is meant to be beautiful so I don’t understand filmmakers who show their film in such an “ugly” way. You can argue that not all art is beautiful and there are some really weird art and all but I personally believe that art is meant to be beautiful and if its not beautiful, its not art at all! The long armpit-washing scene was also unnecessary. Infact, even the love making scenes were so gross and badly taken. I don’t understand why someone would want to take a movie of so poor taste. However, there are few things, which I like about the movie. I think the director has done a good job in portraying the different shades of all the characters, without making them entirely a positive or negative character. Well, that is how it is in real life; no one is entirely good or entirely bad. Another impressive factor about the movie was the way they started the movie. I liked the opening dialogue of the movie, the one about destiny. Overall, the movie was actually nice but its not a feel good movie at all, you just feel weird after watching it. Personally, I don’t like to watch such movies and I don’t understand why someone would pay for a movie ticket and watch something, which leaves them feeling bad at the end. One character that I liked was Paul Metzler. Even though he is shown like a dumb person, he has morals and ethics, which Tracy Flick doesn’t have. His nice character can be seen in the scene when he votes for Tracy instead for himself in the election. He says that it feels wrong to be voting for yourself. I feel this is natural goodness. Some people are just born with this kind of thing, they just know what is wrong and right and they don’t have to be told.

The discussions after the movie were really bad because nobody answered Mr. Ryan’s questions. I never understood why but whenever a teacher asks questions in class and when nobody answers them, I feel like laughing. I find it to be so humorous. Well, I’m guilty too, I was also very quiet. I’m always afraid that I will say the wrong thing and everybody will laugh at me. I need to get over that unnecessary fear of mine! Someone was arguing that the part about Tracy Flick’s affair with the teacher was episodic, meaning it is not needed in the movie. I feel that it was vital in the movie because it showed Tracy Flick’s negative shades. If that affair was not included in the movie, we wont know what Tracy is really capable of. We would think that she is just an over achieving and hardworking student who will do anything to get what she wants. The affair kind of showed her disgusting side. Another interesting thing to note about the movie is that the protagonist of the story is not a totally positive character and is not the “hero” of the film. I felt what Jim McAllister did at the end was not wrong at all. I know that cheating is wrong and all but he did it for a good purpose. Paul Metzler was definelty a much better person than Tracy Flick and he deserved it more than her. Although, Tracy was the one who really won in the elections it was only because of Paul. If he had decided to vote for himself, he would have won. Another great thing about the movie were the cupcakes! They looked so dense, creamy and most importantly yummy! I felt so hungry when I watched that scene. I felt like grabbing one of them! Then we were discussing about how the movie follows Aristotle’s definition of a Greek tragedy. How can there be like a formula for movie making? I find that to be so dumb, that the climax has to come in the middle and resolution at the end. Filmmaking is not maths or science where we need to follow a certain formula. Its totally up to the director on how he wants to take it, he does not need to follow any rules or formulas!

We were not really given any big assignments for this week. Yay! We still had to continue with our people watching assignments. Another yay again! I really like the people watching assignment because I love to people watch! Now I have to include more information like giving them a name and an address. Actually, these are things, which I wonder about when I am intrigued by someone who I have observed. This is going to be really fun because I kind of thought about their name and where they would live when I was watching them. Ok, I better get started on my assignment!

I can’t believe its week 3 already! Time is really moving very fast. It just feels like yesterday when we had our first storytelling lesson. Lesson 3 was fun and I pretty much had a nice time in class. We stated the class by sharing one of our 50 word stories to the class and the others have to write a feedback of the story. Unfortunately, I did not choose one of my better ones. The story I read was called “Injustice”. I received mixed comments from my classmates. All of them said they did not find my story to have a proper conclusion and that it does not feel like a story. I actually agree with them because even when I was writing the story, I felt it wasn’t like a real story. It sounded like it is a part of story rather than a story itself. It wasn’t one of my best works because I found it very hard to write a whole story with a proper ending with only fifty words. Even when I was in Secondary school I was not able to write within a certain word limit, I tend to go over the word limit. Despite such difficulties I managed to come up with my 50 word stories, which are not very impressive.

Anyway, I found their comments to be useful because now I can change my story before they get graded! Sonia was the first one to read her story and I found her story to be very intriguing and dark even though the beginning was kind of clichéd. It was a kind of a murder mystery involving a nerd. Whenever someone hears a murder mystery about a nerd, we initially start to think that the nerd must have been the one who was murdered but in Sonia’s case it was the right opposite. The next story we heard was Colin’s story. I felt that the story was like a conversation than a story. It doesn’t grab the audience attention but the ending was kind of funny. Most of my classmates felt the same way too. The last story we heard was Pradip’s story, which was well written and interesting. I was hoping that Mr. Ryan would not ask me what doesn’t work in the story because I felt the story was good enough. Just my luck, he asked me! I never really felt comfortable criticizing someone’s work in front of them. Maybe it’s a Singaporean thing since from young we are trained to put our finger on our lips and not to talk or express our views. Luckily, Ben also felt that the Pradip’s story was good enough and had not much room for improvement.

After we shared our stories, we were given a break to continue on our Aristotle presentation. Ben and I had already finished our presentation last week itself so we were just looking through the slides. Being a very paranoid and self-conscious person, I was making sure that all our slides were perfect. I leant a lot from the presentations although they were a bit boring. Taking down the notes was bit of a hassle because everyone was presenting really fast and since my laptop was being used for most of the presentations, I did not take down most of it. Thank god, we exchanged our PowerPoint presentations after class. The assignment for the week was to people watch! Yay! That’s my favourite thing to do! Now, I have an excuse to watch people! Haha. Ok, I better post my people watching assignment!

I found week two’s lesson to be a bit more relaxing. I was glad that there were no more stand around in a circle games anymore. Each of us was paired up with someone and we had to choose one of their openers to write our own story. I was paired with Vinod and since all of his openers were really good, I had a hard time choosing one. Finally I chose this opener, “Valerie lifts an eyebrow as she receives a call in the middle of Twilight.” We were only given twenty miinutes to come up with a story. Here is my story:

Valerie lifts an eyebrow as she receives a call in the middle of Twilight. Her heart sinks and her hands turn cold and clammy. She stands there for a moment not knowing what to do as tears trickle down her cheeks. Valerie feels as if a cloud of gloom had encircled the whole Earth. She takes a deep breadth and rushes to her room and looks at her family photograph. She slowly shakes her head causing her brown untangled hair to whip against her face. Valerie knows that her father loves her very much but she is not able to accept him again. Frigid air brushes her cheeks as she begins to think about her relationship with her father. She knows that she is wrong and she has to accept him back into her life but something was stopping her. Is it the way he treats her or is there something else, she begins to wonder. A million thoughts fill her head. The word “pain” was reverberating in her mind. Valerie knows that it is only fear that had gradually escalated into hatred. She runs to her father’s room and locks herself inside. Her hands tremble as she picks the phone with much hesitation. She feels her heart pounding as she slowly dials the number.

I feel that I could have done a much better job if we had to write the story in past tense. Whenever I write in present tense I can never truly focus on the story, I become more concerned with the tenses than the story. I feel I didn’t do justice to the opener.I actually became blank after writing the first sentence. The great thing about the opener I chose was that it was not very specific, meaning the story could be about anything. The Dominic wearing a hula girl outfit opener was rather specific and it definelty sounds like a comedy but Vinod’s opener was different. The opener could be that of a comedy, thriller or even horror. I felt that his opener would suit a emotional story so I created a story about a girl who recieves a call from her father who used to ill treat her when she was a child and now who wants to come back into her life. I didn’t give the story a proper ending as I wanted the audience to wonder if she would have called her father or not. Its mainly about the emtional dilemma Valerie faces after her father calls.

After that, some of us were chosen to read our stories to the class. All of their stories were very well written and I especially liked Colin’s story. It was descriptive and had the correct tenses. After listening to some of their stories, Mr.Ryan asked us if we knew who was the first person to tell a story. I thought it would be someone like a tribal village head or something like that but it is actually Aristotle, a greek philosopher. Everyone was paried up with someone and my pair was Ben. We had to answer a few questions about Aristotle and we have to present it in the next class. We learnt alot of stuff about him through the research. He has even written a book called “Poetics” and I guess the book is very useful for storytelling. I also learnt about greek tragedies and how famous they are. We will learn more about Aristotle in the next lesson. Well, thats about it. Lesson 2 was enjoyable!