reflections on the switch in CCA (bells to CO)

I clicked the 'pictures' folder of my laptop, and this was what I saw

My gosh!!! Anyway, they were playing with my 0.5MP webcam and you have just seen the results...


CCA
When I was still with the handbell ensemble in secondary school, I must admit that there was a certain level of pride in me... proud of the ensemble, definitely, but add a little more and you may just get what I mean.

The Gold with Honours award last year went to three schools. That's 3/8, which is freaking !@*$U#$YD#. Sure, our alumni ringers were unhappy, we were unhappy.. We wanted to be the only school with the award. We wanted to pwn all the other schools. A hint of complacency, perhaps?

Naturally, that award made us one of the more favored performing arts group in the school. It was evident - we had many opportunities to perform for internal events, we were always being praised by students and teachers alike. Maybe it really was the quality of our music, maybe it has been a tradition of the school, for handbells to be so active in performing...

Imagine the change when I switched over to the Chinese orchestra when I joined this college.

ACCO, in my opinion, takes the backseat in the performing arts scene in the college. The reason's quite obvious, what with other performing giants like the choir and band, both having gone international and clinched top awards. (I'm not saying that they don't deserve the attention. they do)

We rarely perform internally, what more externally? This is a drastic change for me, from being so occupied with preparing for performances and the performances themselves, to almost nothing. I mean, apart from the CNY concert (what's CNY like without Chinese music?), our own concert and CIP performances (it's rare), do we actually get other chances to perform? I don't think so.

Being in this CCA has taught me to erode pride and instead, to tone down and be humble... From being in the frontline to being chucked away at the back, I know that things don't always go the way I want. Someone or some group has to make the sacrifice eventually, and it has to be our orchestra.

This is one (hard) lesson on humility.