Out Of Order, How Fitting Indeed...

I'm forced to dub our recent school play, Out Of Order, EpIc fAiL!! Though I think I'd do well to explain the events leading up to it as well.

First off Mr Johnson told the biggest whopper of the month, claiming that tickets were flying off the shelves. They weren't. I managed to buy one for Friday, on the day itself.

Okay, maybe I was just tired and grumpy after my final competitive match for the school against St Andrews (Lost 0-12) having being hit twice in the head, one after the prop on the other side came in sideways in the scrum, the other when my own player kneed me in the face during another scrum. It was a nostalgic event, but thats a story for another post.

Anyway, rushing back for the act, I reached school just in time at 7, still under the impression that it started at 7. It started at 8. I need to read my tickets more often... Spent the hour waiting for Bryant and Shen Shin to arrive hanging out with Reuben and Max, and any other prefect on carpark duty. Managed to get Reuben to dance for me, one of the few things that went right that night. He pwns anyone on Step Up 2. Sam refused to go, said he could have gone LANning for 7 and a half hours with the 15 dollars from the tickets. How wise of him.

Once they'd arrived, we headed to the PAC and let Jin and Shen Shin argue out where to sit. As we filed into a row somewhere along the back, Jia Lei came along, though at least he had taken my advice on changing back to school uniform. The orange shirt he had borrowed to wear with the school pants just looked wrong. Coming from a fashion barbarian like me, yeah, it was that bad.

Of course, no one really relished the idea of sitting next to him, given his penchant for whining at just about everything. Shen Shin had been squeezed out to the outermost seat of our group, so he ended up next to him. While I'm not very fond of Jia Lei myself, the rate at which Shen Shin was openly suaning him was so bad, I was sure there was something in the Human Rights Charter against it. Even an idiot like Jia Lei has to be treated with some respect Comrade Communist.

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Shen Shin : Hey, if we threw Jia Lei's bag down, he'd be forced to run down and get it while we pang sei him.

(Stony silence)
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Keep in mind, Jia Lei is right next to him. Bryant had to bluntly tell him to give it a rest before he quit it. Even I felt sorry for Jia Lei. Though I did find another line in his long tirade against Mr Strawberry deserving of being a Literature or English question so commonly asked in our school.

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Shen Shin : If we dao (To ignore) Jia Lei completely, he might realize he isn't wanted here.
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Ferrousy!! Oh the ferrousy!!

Then along came Wayne (Who will now conveniently forget that I owe him 2 bucks), wearing a jacket over his PE uniform, then Jem, who I unsuccessfully tried to steal a Crunchie bar off. If I had known the dress code was this slack, I wouldn't have bothered going home after the match to change...

Anyway, the play started, opening up with the soundtrack from Soulja Boy I think, and numerous other soundtracks Sam Chou helpfully named, but I forgot. Somewhere along the thing, there was a guy named Sky... And a Filipino scholar with a drunk dad... And an invisible girlfriend along the way...

See, thats the problem. They kept jumping from one character's life to another, it was hard keeping track of it all. Worse still, for some reason, they made the audience laugh at really inappropriate moments. There was a bit somewhere where a dad was chewing his son out in Hokkien, but after the "Wo si ni lao pei!" (I am your father) bit, the entire audience was roaring with laughter. Admittedly, I joined them, the Hokkien version of Star Wars coming to mind. Lost lucidity somewhere around the 25 minute, regaining it only when Jem spoke to me.

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(Son flings dad to the floor)

Jem : Hey Cheng Heng, can you see who's the ho in that relationship??
Me : Not really, but you mah ho!

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Its an inside joke. Bryant says its immature, but he's a shining beacon of maturity and responsibility next to me, so I guess its moderate.

Yeah, anyway, back on topic. Storyline was super garbled. None of the events really flowed in a visible sequence. You have one guy getting wasted at the Ministry of Sound, popping drugs, but coming back perfectly A-OK to steal his best friend's girlfriend. Who is invisible for some reason. Probably because CHIJ doesn't want to collaborate with us anymore, so we got no female actresses. Its not because me and Zach John sabotaged the last time they did so during the Taming Game two years ago. The only major thing we did was screw over the curtain controls so they closed really slowly. I think.

Yeah, anyway, back to the invisible characters. At first I had no idea why the hell the guy was reciting poetry to empty air. It was only when he asked the void in front of him for her phone number did I realize what was supposed to be there. It's kinda freaky and wrong to watch a guy trying to put his arms around empty air and try and get fresh with it. Then there was another Indian character that was talking to an empty chair about how it had failed as a father in Tamil, which had the whole audience laughing again. We pretty much laughed at all the non-English language bits.

Then, all of a sudden, when one of the guys is about to commit suicide, the thing ends. My first thought was "Thats it?!!?!". My second was " F%^&ing scammers!!" I think Mr J was trying to do damage control when he came up to the stage to ask how the audience thought the play was, and passed out survey forms, but it was ePIc FaIl as well, given how it even elicited a "I WANT MY MONEY BACK!!" from a few guys in the crowd when he asked how good we thought the play was.

While filling survey forms with uniform line in the "Strongly disagree" column, Shen Shin asked out of the blue to change seat with me so he could be next to Bryant.

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Shen Shin : Cheng Heng, swap place with me
Me : What for....
Shen Shin : Because I want to be next to Bryant
Me : Whats in in for me...
Shen Shin : Jem makes for more interesting conversation for you.
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Whether I did it subconsciously to piss him off, or whether I really was too tired to think, but instead of letting move swap seats with me, I moved into the empty seat next to Bryant.

Dammit, I think Shen Shin has a thing for him. Remember here and now, if Shen Shin turns out to be one of the "Out Loud and Proud" guys, I was the first to figure out. Seriously Shen Shin, if you're reading this, you got to do things in a less obsessive way, cause you are sending all the REALLY wrong signals here. Unless they are right signals he wishes to convey, then in that case they are still REALLY wrong, because even if the wrong signals he is sending are right, that still makes it wrong because...because...

Ah son of a Lahore, I confused myself. Again. The point is, Out Of Order was suitably named, and all the poor guys who brought their girlfriends along, my heart goes out to you, you poor men... Kevin got off easy though, from what he told me. And no, I shall not comment whether his girlfriend is "tappable" Sam Loh.

I can't think of a better ending...

Light bulb growing trees!!!