Hello!

I am about to post a wordy essay about, what else, SYF. haha i just wanted to share with you all what i learnt in OBS and hmm i hope you all will read it and learn from it as i did :D

"There's something about OBS that stays with you for life." The point of going to OBS is to learn from it and apply the lessons learnt in daily life. OBS has taught me a lot and I think what i learnt can really be applied to SYF.

The Three OBS Values
1. Enterprising curiosity: this means to be eager to learn and question the world around us. We can apply this to syf by asking our seniors constantly how to improve ourselves, our sound, and in turn improve the band. At the same time question ourselves, are we working hard enough? what are our weaknesses and how can we improve on them.
2. Undefeatable spirit: sometimes we feel that we can't play, can't pitch, can't tongue and all that. But does that put us down and give up on that GWH goal? No, our spirit is undefeatable, we will keep that fire burning in us, the passion lives on within each and every one of us. With this spirit, half the battle is won.
3. Tenacity in pursuit: Tenacity means resilience. When one band prac doesn't go so well for us, don't whine and cry and give up there, move on. There's no point realising our mistakes if we don't improve on them. For example, maybe we can't tongue those semiquavers clearly and quickly enough. This is where tenacity comes in, we keep on trying and practising, who cares if they sound like one semibreve at first. If at first you don't succeed, try try again. Keep practising, don't give up. Little by little, one walks far. As long as we keep the spirit going and try our best to practise, we will get there one day.

The first day I was at obs, my instructor told us to put our left hands on our knees, and raise our right hands up as far as we could. Try it! :D Then he told us to give a thumbs up sign with our left hand once we felt that we had raised our highest. After that, he told us to raise our right hands just 1 to 2cm more and then we could put our left hand down. Upon hearing this, most of us actually raised our hands a bit further and put our left hands down. Then, our instructor said, "You see, you all have discounted yourselves. When i told you to raise your hands further up most of you could do it." Discounting oneself means to "look down" on yourself. This activity has clearly shown that even though we thought that that was our max, we could actually be stretched further, and we have discounted ourselves. Thus, we cannot discount ourselves, our playing, our section, the band. We must believe that we can do it, because we can! Only we can help ourselves in believing that we can get that GWH. We may think that "aiya, cannot lah. we are like that. our max alr! we try very hard alr!" but no, in actual fact our potential is boundless, it is up to us to decide where our maximum point is.

On the last day, my instructor gave us another activity. We were told to think of a goal in which whatever we learnt at obs could be applied in. Then, we had to do this [see picture below].











The red thing is the mat which the rest of the group would be holding for you. The yellow thing is a bell, which signifies our goal. The brown square thing is a platform which we would have to jump from. The aim is to jump and fly to the bell and hit it. Hitting it represents accomplishing our goal. Before beginning the activity, our instructor told us to eye the bell, focus on it, fill our eyes and minds with it as if we ached for the goal so much that it seemed as if we wanted to eat the bell. So i went up to the platform and thought "SYF GWH!" and flewwww. i watched the bell carefully and i hit the bell! As we watched some groupmates who failed to hit the bell the first time, our instructor explained that their eyes left the bell the split second that they jumped off the platform. This taught me the importance of focus. When you really want to achieve a goal, you really need to focus. Like really fill your whole life with the goal. During band pracs, think of nothing but singing your heart out in hymn or the various rhythms that come together to become overture 2. Put all your attention to band during pracs and really eat, breathe, live band for this remaining month. Never distract yourself, not even for that split second, for that could be the deciding factor. Focus on that GWH and aim for nothing less. Don't discount yourself and think "aiya, so far, cannot reach the bell one!", as we thought when we first saw the challenge. When we really eyed the bell and flew, we realised that it wasn't so bad and we could do it.

Lala very lengthy post heh. Hopefully your eyes aren't cross-eyed yet from squinting at the screen :X I hope my post helped :D

Lovelovelove, rie (:

&loveTROMBONES; 11:22 pm