Significant post 1: CNY party @ HCI

On the 27th of February, a Chinese New Year party was held at our school. The celebration is specially for students from HCI who are not citizens of Singapore or living at Singapore, which means they live in HCI boarding school. I am one of them who are unable to go home that time to celebrate Chinese New Year with friends and family. On that day, we sec2 Malaysians were required to sing the Chinese New Year songs; they are '大地回春' and '恭喜恭喜'.

Before that I tried very hard to memorise the lyrics for the songs, and at last I successfully memorised them. I have been to this party before last year, but the only thing special is that I am able to perform, which was singing the Chinese songs. I am able to experience the feeling of performers behind the stage, feeling nervous, while the audience are watching the performance happily. This is my first time being the performer.

The party starts at 10:00 am, but we performers have to arrive at 8:00 am to prepare everything and do the last rehearsal to ensure a good show. There are audiences from many different countries, they are students from Malaysia, China, Vietnam and Indonesia. Most of them stay in the boarding school, but because the others are PR of Singapore, they do not stay in the boarding school.

There are a lot of fun and interesting performances such as wushu, dances, drama, lucky draws, singing of the Chinese New Year song and quizzes on the history of CNY. There were also lucky draw where you can win hampers back home with a lot of finger food inside. There were also fun games where you win prizes home. The students from China had a great advantage because they know the most about Chinese New Year among all, and they celebrate it traditionally. There are groups divided according to the arrangements of seats. We received an ang pao from a teacher after our performance.

After the performance, it is not the end of the story. There was still buffet lunch for us. But before that, we did the traditional Chinese ritual to wish for something to come true, which is '捞鱼生'. It is believed that the higher you lift the stuff in it, the higher the chance of your wish coming true. It is nice as there are raw salmons which I always aim for. After that only we can have out delicious buffet meal.

I think this time I am able to fully know the feelings of being the audience and the performer at the party which I think is meaningful as I get to appreciate the performers as they worked very hard to go on stage. I hope there will be another CNY party next year.