Once again,
I’m blogging some super expired post…HAHA! This fantastic emcee lobang was graciously
offered to me by NTU’s CoE staff on the 22nd of March 2012. Haha. Oh,
for the non-NTU students, CoE stands for College of Engineering :D
Yeash, you didn't read the blog post title wrongly...I emceed for the College of Engineering Freshman Orientation 2012 :D
Yes, they
sent out an email to EVERY engineering student asking them to audition for this
post in the month of March. Since this invitation to audition was sent to the WHOLE
engineering school, I was kinda hesitant to go for the audition initially.
Half of me was
thinking “There are at least 200+ engineering students in NTU and at least a
third of them would be better than me. If I don’t get it I’d have wasted that
few hours of my life…”
The other
half of me was telling me “No harm trying! What makes you think you won’t make
it? You don’t try, you never know! And the pay is $14/hour!!”
Well, from
hindsight, the second half of me won the battle. LOL. It usually almost always
wins the battlefield of my mind. Haha!
The
explorer, “just-whack” philosophy of mine usually wins. I mean, we’ve got only
1 life to live right? Hesitate and think too much and you’ll lose out. Try will
die meh? Haha.
Yup, On the
22nd of March, I marched down to the CoE conference room and
auditioned! :D Upon arriving the front desk, the staff passed me a script to
practice reading.
10 minutes
later, they called me into the room to show them what I’ve got :D Haha!
When I
opened the door…I was kinda shocked. I thought it was gonna be a light-hearted audition
with only like 2-3 people. I was utterly wrong.
I felt like
I was auditioning in American Idol! There were like 6 people sitting down with
tables in front of them and the empty space was mine to take and use to impress
them! HAHA!
I got over
the initial shock and greeted them all with a wideeee smile and a “Good
Afternoon!” J
Which wasn’t well reciprocated by them … -.-“ HAHA!
Ok, to fast
the story forward, about a week later, I received a call DURING TUTORIAL (my
ringtone woke everyone up…LOL). The call was from Tricia, one of the more
friendly “judges” during the audition.
“Hi this is Tricia calling from the office of the College of Engineering, and I’m glad to let you know that we've selected you to be our male emcee! J”
“AWWW
YEAHHH!” with my fist in the air and feet off the ground was my intended reply. But what came out
was “Oh, that’s great! Thanks! J” HAHA!
Yup, next
thing I knew, I received a Facebook friend request and an email from “Dhanashree
Shelgaonkar”. I thought it was some NTU student spamming some lost and found
email to all students or something…But after reading the subject of the email,
I realized, SHE IS MY EMCEE PARTNER!!
My first
thought was “Whooaaattt? I have an Indian emcee partner??” LOL! I’ve never
emceed with an Indian before. In poly, I emceed with a really funny Malay guy…and
for friend’s weddings and church events, my emcee partners are always someone I
can ethnically relate to. Haha!
Anyway, I
must say, Dhana is an AWESOME emcee. She was the president of her JC's toastmaster's club! Haha! Wowww.
When I first met up with her to plan our
script I was like “Whoa…this is the Bollywood modern Indian” HAHAHA! Here’s a
picture of us :D Haha
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| Dhana & I :) |
She's totally the modern Bollywood Indian right?? Haha. Told ya. LOL! She has an outstanding command of english...not just spoken, but written as seen through our email exchanges. Haha.
If you’re
wondering where this picture was taken, it was taken in NTU’s Nanyang
Auditorium artiste’s dressing room! :D Haha!
Yup, on
that day itself, 8th August (A DAY AFTER MY BIRTHDAY :D HAHA!) before the event started, we had A LOT OF SPARE TIME so we
were like exploring the backstage of the auditorium. IT IS HUGEEE!
Here's another picture of the awesomely classy artiste’s room…Haha. Taken like
30minutes before the actual event started.
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| Me in the Nanyang Auditorium's Artiste's Room :D |
Yup, that's my Facebook display picture...HAHA! And YES, they have a PIANO in the artiste's room! I guess it's for singers to do their vocal warm up and all. But here I am, playing and posing for the camera. Haha!
Oh and here's another photo of us before we entered the auditorium :D
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| Me & Dhana in Nanyang Auditorium :D |
We were the second pair of emcees to take the stage. The CoE freshman orientation was split into 2 parts...the first half is emceed by another pair of emcees and the second half (after lunch) is Dhana & I :D
That's why during the first half one of my freshies Jason Yong, line-messenger-ed me "Eh Jonavan, I thought you are the emcee?" HAHAHA!
Anyway, for the second half, we took the stage by storm and emceed like a breeze. Haha! Both of us didn't have stage fright thanks to our many rehearsals and I guess our mutual support for each other kept us calm throughout :D Haha!
In fact, while on stage, when there was video rolling or a speaker talking, I was busy trying to look for my ODAC FOOT freshies! LOL!
Some of the freshies in my OG - DOMA! :D - that are attending this CoE Freshman Orientation 2012 are Rachel, Vernon, Jason Yong, Ryan Koh and Joshua Koh.
They all knew me during orientation camp...So, to them, I was that "crazy-funny-LOL senior" that got everyone hyper. HAHA!
So I told them I was emceeing for this event they were like "Whoa Jonavan, you sure you can emcee for formal event like this?? Later you go up do backside tear cheer how?" HAHAHAHAHA!
Yes, my favourite line "backside tear!" was so contagious that we all made it into a cheer. LOL LOL LOL! It was a really crude cheer that was impromptu-ly invented by us due to the widespread use of my catch phrase "backside tear!" LOL!
Anyway, here's a picture of Dhana and I at the rostrum :D
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| Dhana & I at our emcee rostrum :D |
And of course, not forgetting our PRECIOUS emcee script that kept our flow of speech fluent in front of about 500+ NTU engineering freshman and their parents.
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| Our emcee script!! :) |
Yup, we had a blast! We clocked about 16 hours of rehearsal and actual emcee-ing time if I remembered correctly :D That means we earned around $224? I can't remember, but the money was TOTALLY worth it.
I got to meet and chat with the Dean of the College of Engineering Professor Janie Fouke and got to know some of the staff governing the administrative works in the CoE :D
Tricia was telling us "we may get you guys to emcee again :D" Once again, my intended reply was "OH YEAH!!" with my fist in the hair and feet off the ground...HAHA! BUT, once again, what came out was "that'll be great! :)" HAHA!
Yup, to end yet another successful and fruitful emcee lobang that I had, here's a self-portrait of MYSELF! :D HAHAHAHA!
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| ME! :D |
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