Wrapping up CAS - Final reflection

Creativity

I decided to undertake a new challenge this year by starting a completely different activity: nail art. It has certainly helped me to develop new skills in terms of mastering paintbrush strokes on small areas and perfecting nail polish application techniques. It also gave me the opportunity to develop new skillswhen I designed my own spa in terms of drawing and editing my own logo and coming up with a structureof the building that would be most attractive to clients. I was able to engage with issues of global importance in my debate (refer http://malindies.blogspot.com/2011/02/nail-art-course-i-think-im-being.html) when I addressed how the daily use of chemicals can seriously harm users if not handled responsibly.

Action

In the badminton after school activity, I was able to develop new skills with the aid of the coach, Mr. Nimal. I personally felt that I have gained a better understanding of how to move around court in the quickest way thanks to improved footwork. At the same time I was able to increase my awareness of areas of growth because I realized that I need to improve on my backhand because it does not seem to come naturally during matches.

Service (and creativity)

Since I was a leader in the ‘Hope for Kids’ Cancer Hospital service project that organized a major concert this year, I had plenty of opportunities to plan and initiate activities. These include the voice workshop, the tech run and the rehearsal. They also allowed me to work collaboratively with others who not only included the people in the project but the performers as well. At times in was simply too much work but I stayed committed and persevered with our plans until we got everything, from the sound to the posters to the program, sorted out. There were times when we had to consider the ethical implications of our actions because we could not visit the hospital at all during the period. I felt rather guilty for putting the kids second but we had to consider the long term benefits we can make possible with our funds. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay on to see this happen because I had to pass on leadership to the younger members.

New leaders

Chris and I have been leaders for a year now and it’s time to hand over responsibility to the younger members. We had a discussion with Ms. Tanuja, considering all the existing members. Some aspects we took into account were enthusiasm, commitment, leadership skills and age (they had to be in Grade 9 or older). We also had to make sure that the two leaders will be able to get along with each other to prevent problems when it comes to decision making. Finally, we decided on Upandha (Grade 9) and Sandushi (Grade 11) because we felt that they were the most suitable.

They were ecstatic when they found out! J

Versus Cancer Video

Showtime!

At first we were worried that we wouldn’t be able to sell our tickets. What we should have worried about was running out of tickets. This is exactly what happened! The turnout was so huge that all the vehicles created a block outside the auditorium: this news really didn’t make me feel any less nervous particularly since this was the first time I was a MC. The teachers had run out of tickets and had to write out chits instead to let everyone in! Thankfully, Mr. Rana had expanded the auditorium’s capacity by manipulating the seating arrangements so (almost) everyone got a seat.

One concern was that The Revelations choir did not find enough mics to perform as expected but they thankfully managed to make do with what we had. We also had to make some alterations to our initial program (The Revelations requested to go first and some dancers wanted to go on a bit earlier as well) but there were no significant deviations from the printed program. The transitions between one performance to another took some time, resulting in the concert going on for 3 hours, over the limit we had of 2 hours.

But we pulled it off! The audience responded very positively to the show as the performers were indeed very talented. The diversity of what we had to offer was said to be an unique feature of our concert that made it so enjoyable coupled with the knowledge that all funds go towards a good cause. Our t-shirts were extremely popular, Chris and I wore them while we were MC’ing as a form of subtle advertising, although the pledge forms were not.

Personally, I felt extremely proud when I was leaving that auditorium, knowing what I’d manage to accomplish with my team and being showered with positive feedback. Starting off as just us 5 girls, I think we managed to set a standard to our school, bring it out of its bubble and show everyone what we’re capable of.

And for the record,

We earned a grand total of Rs. 250,000 J

Rehearsal

Due to the lack of time, we wound up having to schedule our only rehearsal on the day of the concert itself! We all showed up bright and early but almost all the other performers failed to do so…resulting in unnecessary delays. Pri (backstage) had to continuously communicate with Saba and Mo (lights) to let them know when the performers are going onstage. In addition to this, the spotlight had to be focused on the MCs (me and Chris) every time we went on to introduce the next performance which took some adjustments. We had quite a fright because one of the two spotlights had blown but we managed with just one all the same. Problems concerning the sound arose as well especially when the drums were being played for the larger bands so that had to be attended to by Mr. Rana. Overall, the whole run through didn’t go as smoothly as I would’ve liked although we were glad to have had the opportunity to identify and attempt to fix the major faults.

Pre-concert pressure

To say that there were a lot of preparatory work that had to be done in the few days leading up to the concert would be a tremendous understatement. Here’s a concise list that summarizes the small tasks that gradually built up:

• · Making sure our sponsors’ posters got put up in the auditorium – this was mostly Mr. Rana’s job.
• · Collecting the printouts of Natalie’s photos and putting them on display for people to see as they enter.

• · Finalizing the lineup; this was a lot more difficult than anticipated because we had to make sure that the peaks and troughs of the concert came at precisely the right intervals, balancing the soft with loud, the songs with dances, the Western with Eastern performances.
• · Designing and printing out programs for the concert as well as the invitations for the invitees done by me and Dylan respectively.

• · Getting Pesta, our canteen, to donate snack parcels for the performers. They generously provided us with 50 packets comprising of short eats, cake and a drink in return for selling food during the break.
• · Assigning ticket sellers (teachers), t-shirt sellers (Upandha) and pledge form handlers (Emily and Ms. Shameela).
• · Putting aside reserved tickets, mostly for the performers’ friends and families, in clearly labeled envelopes.
• Editing Priyanka’s MC script (done by Ms. Fernando) and practicing it. Turns out it’s going to be me and Chris!

Making progress in badminton!

Our coach, Mr. de Silva, took me under his wing when he noticed that my footwork was not as quick as it needed to me. We did a range of very tiring drills where he showed me how to step towards the net in the most efficient way, left and right. He then started shooting shuttlecocks near both corners near the net alternatively at first and then randomly which kept me on my toes.

In the next lesson, he did the same thing but going away from the net to the further corners. After I had gotten used to the new steps, he combined all four of them and had me running back and forth on the court. It was absolutely exhausting but I felt like I was getting somewhere. I also learnt that, since I’m left-handed, my left foot should always follow my left arm, especially when hitting the shuttlecock. This is especially useful when playing away from the net and allowed me to use my weight as well as arm strength.

My primary objective is to focus on my backhand because I had noticed that I kept missing a lot of easy near shots as I was not fast enough. I’ll also have to continue the drills with Mr. de Silva when I start again next semester to keep my footwork and stamina level in check.

Nail art course: designing my own spa!

To run a nail art business, you’d need a carefully arranged spa. This was our next surprising assignment: designing one!

Our list of requirements included:

• · A client consultation sheet
• · A list of services with their prices
• · A sketch of the spa plan

• · A spa profile
• · The spa name and logo

Jani said that the name of the spa must relate to our identity so I chose ‘Swanflower’ as it is an alias to my name Malindie (meaning flower) Hansika (meaning swan). It has a lot of hard work and I had to get a friend’s help with editing the logo design, which I sketched myself, but in the end I was very proud of myself. Never thought I had it in myself to design a spa!

Lights? Check. Sound? Check. Performers? Performers?!?

Now comes all the technical details. A tech run was essential to ensure that all participants got precisely the right atmosphere for their performance. Saba and Mo agreed to control the lights with the help of Mr. Rana the auditorium manager so we called everyone over on Saturday to get everything sorted out. The majority of the performers were able to come but it was quite frustrating when you leave a task incomplete for the rest of them. Upandha came along armed with her laptop to show us the video she created which we planned to show the audience before the show. It served two roles: to spread awareness of cancer and to inform the viewers what exactly Hope for Kids is. She had done a wonderful job but we felt that it needed a few tweaks for it to be perfect and Tara helped her out with those adjustments.

Nail art course: I think I’m being hypocritical…

There were three others who were taking the same course and one day Jani split us into two teams of two and announced that we’re going to have a debate! Our topic was whether the constant exposure to the chemicals found in nail art spas is hazardous to our health. My teamed ended up having to argue for the topic so I had to go and do some research on how nail polish and other cosmetics can be harmful. I actually made some shocking discoveries. For example, one source contained a lengthy list of all illnesses that can arise due to overexposure to cosmetics and how nail artists are liable to suffer from them.

On the day of the debate, I came armed with my points only to find that my partner hasn’t showed up! Jani insisted that we continue without her anyway so I had to defend my side of the argument on my own. The opposing team put up quite a fight although even they were shocked when I revealed how potentially harmful these cosmetics can be. Jani eventually had to intervened, saying that there’s nothing to worry about as long as the users know how to handle them correctly. This included maintaining a clean workstation, putting on base coats, using face masks to cover the mouth and nose when filing and avoiding buying products with harmful constituents such as DBP. Knowing these points would undoubtedly be useful if any one of us is planning to pursue this stream professionally in order to defend the market.

Voice workshop

Ms. Grant, our drama teacher, who also has invaluable singing experience, agreed to give the singers some tips before the big day. Around 8 participants showed up and Christina and I stayed as well to make sure things ran smoothly. And we might have tried (and failed!) to join the vocalizing with the rest. There were also two 6^th grade girls who wanted to audition and sang ‘Girl put you records on’. They were adorable but they just weren’t loud enough to perform in an auditorium that can hold over 400 people! Overall, we felt that the workshop managed to help the singers gain confidence as well as creating a sense of unity among the them since we needed to promote the notion that all of us were acting together for this cause.

Day 1 Badminton

After a year’s break, I was eager to start playing badminton again after school. I was first introduced to the sport six years ago and I continued playing for five years but took a year’s break. In the first session we were introduced to the two captains who made us do a few warm up drills and stretches before commencing the matches. I had to have my grip corrected while I was playing by a captain so I felt that I was already taking some steps towards improvement on my first day! Since I didn’t want to participate in any competitions, just learn the sport, I played a few casual matches with another girl as well as a doubles match with the boys. Now I need to make sure I clarify all the rules of the game because it became obvious that I had forgotten some of them!

Nail art course: picking up the brush!

Now that I know how to put on nail polish, it’s now time to actually do some art! I bought a book filled with different nail drawings from Jani’s stock and started off nice and easy. At first I thought I did a good job but Jani’s extremely critical. She said my stroke is too stiff and I have to be more relaxed, sure enough I tried the same nail again, taking her advice and it turned out to be a lot better!

After a couple of classes of practicing with the paints, Jani started a new topic: water marblisation. I had to bring in a bowl for the class beforehand so I was rather curious about how it can possibly relate to nail art. We both applied nail polish on fake nails the usual way, using specifically a light color and filled the bowl up with water. Darker colored nail polish were dropped onto the surface and twirled around to form a pattern using a nail tool. Dip the nail in and that pattern fixes itself onto it! There were a few blotches where there were bubbles on the water surface but Jani artfully covered them up with a few beads and a glossy top coat. It looked so simple! Only it wasn’t… I had a couple of disasters but after some practice I managed to master the technique quite well. I couldn’t imagine doing it on a real fingernail… I’d use up a whole bottle of nail polish remover to erase away my mistakes!

Musing over coffee

The time had come for us to have a proper meeting to put all our ideas together and add the final touches to the proceedings. The team met up at Coffee Bean, Colombo to talk things over. One of the major issues we had was deciding on the design for the Hope for Kids t-shirts that we were planning on selling at the concert. Suraaj, one of our friends who specializes in design, had come up with various designs and all we had to do was pick the one we liked. Sounds easy doesn’t it? We ended up having a lengthy argument on which design looked better depending on what we believed the majority of potential buyers would look for. Finally we had a vote to settle the dispute diplomatically, allowing Chris to hand over the final design to the t-shirt printers, a friend of her father’s. Pri and Thish teamed off to write the script for the MC’s while Chris, Tara and I jotted down a list of everyone that had to be thanked and invited to attend the concert. This included our principal, headmistress, sponsors, Suraaj and Natalie.

T-shirt designs

Front

Back

Capturing the moment

There’re always times when you realize the value of having contacts and this was one of them. Chris’ former classmate’s elder sister is a freelance photographer and she agreed to take some photographs of the children for our publicity! After some complicating arrangements, we took Natalie, the photographer, over to the hospital. To our dismay, the door to the playroom was locked and we had no idea who had the key! Not wanting to waste our or Natalie’s time, we asked some of the kids to come down anyway and she managed to take some beautiful shots at the swings just outside. We had to ask Mr. Mohan to print them out but we felt so guilty about exploiting his kindness that we insisted that we’ll pay for these.

Nail art course: the basics

I’ve been using nail polish ever since I discovered it years ago but I never realized that there’s actually a standard way of applying it! Janindu, my teacher, started off with an even more basic beginning that I imagined, first demonstrating, with a plastic nail mounted on a stick, how to buff the nail, sanitize it with a spray, put on a base coat for protection (apparently nail polish contains nitroglycerine, a chemical used in explosives!), put on two layers of polish and finally the clear top coat for that final shine.

Didn’t draw anything but she taught me how to use an ‘orange stick’ which is basically just a splint that’s used to pick up small decorative objects such as beads. She demonstrated how to fix glitter, beads and stickers onto nails and then let me have a go too. Personally I found my first try a bit overdone...I guess I went overboard in my interest. Can’t wait to actually start painting though!

Posters all over Colombo!

Ms. Tanuja gave us some brilliant news! One of her friends, Mr. Mohan, who owns a printing firm, has very generously agreed to print out all poster and tickets for us. It was an offer we couldn’t possibly afford to decline especially since sponsors weren’t confirmed at this point. Now all we had to do was design the ticket and poster and send it over to him to get printed. We asked for 500 tickets in books of 25 and 80 posters. Since we were running out of time, we used the poster Dylan initially designed for the auditions to give us a head start. By this time, Ms. Dihara from the administration has managed to finalize our sponsorships so we were able to put in their logos as well. We had Mobitel as our main sponsor, who managed to cover our sound cost completely, and Yes FM, a radio station, as our media sponsor.

The posters arrived the following Saturday so Ms. Tanuja, Christina, Priyanka, Tara and I, aided with four participants from outside OSC who volunteered to help, met us that morning to go stick them up. Ms. Shameela, who is in charge of service activities, got us a van to transport us around Colombo. We first went to a nearby Go Kart place, which only opened at 4 in the afternoon, so we Pri and Tara agreed to go to Jungle Juice nearby while we headed off to Waters Edge. Ms. Tanuja, Chritina and I spoke to the manager and convinced her to not only stick up posters but also sell some tickets. Pleased with our achievements, we went to Odel, a popular store in Colombo, where we all split up to cover more ground. I stayed at Odel, Christina went to Budz, a restaurant nearby, Pri headed off to CoCo Verandah and Ms. Tanuja took the van with Tara to go to CR&FC grounds. Odel refused to sell tickets unless we let them earn a 10% profit from what they sell so we had to back out because we didn’t want to give away what we earned. However, we did manage to stick some posters up and Ms. Tanuja came back saying that we could also sell tickets the next day at Jazz, which is a monthly social gathering at CR&FC grounds.

Next we went to Galleface where the best hotels were, dropping off Pri and Tara at Barefoot and Christina at McDonalds. Ms. Tanuja and I went to Cinnamon Grand to ask if we could put some posters there and they agreed to, taking some away..we never saw them put them up though! Crescat is a shopping centre right next to the hotel, so we spent some time asking some shops to put the posters up while we were waiting for the others.

Thinking we’d done enough for the day, we headed back to school, having stayed out at least 2 hours more than we expected. Since the next day was Jazz, Chris managed to go and publicize the event handing out photocopied brochures with the help of some friends. From a stroke of luck, she bumped into a lady who worked for Sunday Time, a newspaper, who said she’d gladly publish online an article on our concert! Now that was certainly worth her time.

The article can be viewed at:

http://www.dailymirror.lk/entertainment/music/6471-fighting-cancer-with-music.html

Auditions at school…

After school started, we could now focus on getting more performers from OSC so group emails were sent out to everyone encouraging them to participate, giving them the details of the Cancer Hospital and what exactly the cause is for. The auditions were arranged for the second Monday and Tuesday into school at the auditorium. We also welcomed any non-OSC participants, who missed out on the first two auditions, to come in during these times as well. Some of the people who turned up were Sadini, who came again to practice her dance onstage, Amit and his band from Gateway school and the OSC band comprising of Brice, James and Maisoon. We had a few requests from other performers who couldn’t come on these dates to have another time arranged so we spontaneously had some informal auditions to suit them. They included Camille singing with Mr. Smith accompanying her on the guitar and the three girls Emily, Anna and Daisy singing ‘Hey Soul Sister’ with Daisy on the piano.

Although the whole purpose of the auditions were to eliminate people, it was nearly impossible to do so because they were all so talented! Emily, Anna and Daisy often kept losing confidence in themselves whenever they made a slight mistake, making faces at each other and making it extremely obvious that they had gone off pitch or forgotten the words. Aside from this, there were no major faults we could detect but we had wisely asked our music teacher to come along as well to give them more professional advice.

The list of participants is growing longer but we still had to get the sponsors finalized because, to our horror, sound was going to cost Rs. 60,000! Add along the printing cost of Rs. 20,000 for acquiring all the posters and tickets and we got ourselves a grand total of Rs. 80,000 as costs! Will this really be as efficient as we want it to be..?