Friday, May 15, 2009
The Art of Kaypo-ing (Or Not)
Really, the formal word for it is "interviewing", but that's how I feel about it in general. :P
I wanna write about yesterday, when I went about interviewing buskers. They're all really interesting people. There was this duo and their guitar broke, so one of them asked me to stick my hand in and try putting a wire through a hole at the other end of the guitar, but my hands not long or thin enough, so in the end I couldn't help them much.
At any one time there are like 4 buskers on Bourke Street, I hadn't really given them much notice at all. since buskers are to Melbourne like ham is to cheese. If you just sit along Bourke street during the afternoons you can hear guitar music, piano music, weird-ass music that's not really music, people doing portraits and drawings, and even saxophones. O_o I didn't interview some people, for practical reasons. Like I couldn't very well go up to that man standing on a barrel covered in flowers, face paint and hula-hooping like there's no tomorrow. (Seriously, he was like hula-hooping for 2 hours straight, I swear, no opportunity to talk to him at all)
And no, I didn't interview that weird not-really-music guy because he looked a bit dodgy. But don't tell him I said that. ;P
It's also quite harrowing and rushed, because you're interviewing them in-between their busking and I felt bad keeping them from actually busking and may be earning some gold coins. And sometimes it was just a practice of patience because I had to wait til they finished playing a piece, then some random person will talk to them (ahh, missed my chance!) and then they'd start playing another piece, and I'm just sitting there going "C'mon c'mon I'm freezing!". But hey, that's part of the fun too.
Then again, I really shouldn't mention anyone else, cuz my article hasn't been handed in yet.
So tell you what, I'll rewind until Wednesday, which was a super stressful day, all in all.
On Wednesday, Writing Journalism tute was rather scary for me because I still hadn't thought of a topic for my feature story. So I was sitting there listening to other people talk about their ideas and their interviews and I was going "OMG sh** I'd better start soon." and hoping fervently my tutor didn't go around listening to our ideas individually because I would have NOTHING. LOL, thank goodness we didn't have time for that.
Carried both mine and Yuqi's lunch to her house after that, which was a balancing act in itself. I was supposed to be presenting during Administrative Law that day, so I borrowed some of her stick-on notes to mark pages and cases. A bit scary to know that you'll be called on to answer questions in class. But then again I was stressing about my feature story, so admin took second stage.
Rather depressingly, I found out I failed my seminar response assignment. >.< Should've collected the damn thing after class, cuz during class I got so depressed and worried I couldn't concentrate. GRAHHHH.
It got better after that though. I think.
My aunt messaged me about this dinner we were going to have at Box Hill with the relatives, so that meant I could leave my Property class 15min early. I managed to squish myself onto the full-to-the-brim tram and made it to Melbourne Central in 10min, hooray! By then I'd already missed the Lilydale train so I took the Belgrave express.
And I gained a whole insight into why people in Melbourne are constantly so disgruntled with trains. It wasn't air-conditioned, it was old, creaky, cranking, the seats were uncomfortable and it felt like I was in some old tin can with crumpled sides. At least the ride was smoother than on trams, that's all I can say in defense of such an ancient contraption that should have been scrapped long ago.
Since it was an express, it stopped at Richmond, skipped all stations and stopped at Camberwell, then skipped all stations and then stopped at Box Hill, so it was quicker that I thought it'd be. I hopped off and arrived at Fu Long restaurant only to realise no one was there yet. HAHA, quite embarassing, I barged into the restaurant and looked up and down the tables but no one had arrived. XP
Turned out my aunt told me the wrong time. The dinner was set for 7pm but she told me 6.30pm. LOL. I arrived at 6.40pm and thought I was already late, oh well.
The food was ok. I don't know why my aunt likes Fu Long so much, the seafood and stuff wasn't even that great. The crab was good, but not awesome. The steamed fish was great though. :) Not alot of people went for the fish, so my aunt ended up lumping this whole stash of fish onto my plate, including the fish cheeks (which are the bestest part of a fish). So yay! Not too thrilled about crab though, I'm a seafood person but I'm not a crab person. I don't mind it, but I won't go gaga over it. Unlike prawns. XD
After dinner, we all headed back to our house, and my uncle had this semi-family-reunion. It was quite cool. He'd asked all his siblings to contribute stuff about their childhood and compiled it into a booklet and distributed it to them. When I read about their childhood, like the swimming around in long kangs, playing with firecrackers, rowing sampans into town, buying their favourite mee for 15cents, eating 20 mandarins at one go and hoarding precious soda drinks under their beds, I thought it was all just so cool. Most people my age don't have such kampung-like childhood memories.
O_O OMG. Most of my childhood memories involve HDB flats. HOW SAD.
How typically Singaporean. :P
I also had this peculiar urge today to buy a container full of strawberry-flavoured Hello Panda.
Oops, gtg for yet another relatives' dinner thingy. See you guys soon! <3
XOXO
...is what I said. Savvy?
4:44 pm
friends
June 2006