MRC Camp

Hello! The last 3 days have been hell but then it was memorable. MRC camp finally ended just now. It was quite meaningful to me but i ended up really lost. Don't really know how and why i am lost by yea, im just really displaced.

First day was just full of test for me. LOADS of break which is like the most boring part of the camp. The test are quite challenging but i managed to figured it out for most of them. So my first test was outdoor system setup. I was given a 2hour period to settle this outdoor thingy but i managed to complete it within 40mins. Wei Liang was that booths operator. When i stepped into the classroom for the outdoor system, i already noticed something really wrong. THERE WAS NO AIR CON! So i ran to the distribution box, realised it was all down, then fling them all back up. Good thing the aircon came back up. Laid wires until very nice when suddenly i realise i am missing one XLR cable. Wei Liang said that what i need is already given. After some thinking, then i realise that im suppose to parallel the speakers outputs. Readjusted the wirings, then started to connect everything up. When it came to powering on, no power. Grabed a testpen and started opening the power extension cord. Started with the plug and omg! the wiring is out. Put it back then went to the extension side the opened it up. OMG! Its out too! No wonder no power. So setted up everything then i had like 1 hour 20mins of extra time. The bad thing is my next period is break -.- So total boredom until my next period, lunch. Had some food which i cant remember is what. But heck, at least after lunch i have something to do again.

My next period was a test in hall. It was chapel setup test. Managed to set everything up but i took quite some time. Then went up to the cage and i was timed to fix back the video section of the cage. That took me like 15-20 mins i guess and all the stupid freaking BNC to RCA changers are all spoilt. Then was the light mixer. Set it up in like less than a minute. They remved the DMX512 head from the wall point, unscrew the monitor, remove the power plug and plug in the other end of the DMX512 to another port on the video mixer. Programmed it and voila done. Then long long break again-_-

After that was dinner dinner we had err can remember food too but anyway after dinner was my LT test. Hao Ting was testing me and there were 2 other people following me, Ivan and Brandon. First up was Ivan. HT's first question was whether he knew how to turn on the lights in LT4. It was really very funny when he wanted to setup the LT system in the dark. He had some difficulty setting up everything so HT asked Brandon to go help him. After Ivan finished, it was Brandon's turn. He was good and managed to set everything up. Then i thought it was my turn but NO~~~ , It was Ivan's turn again. Made me so gan jiong. This time round, HT challenged him to a time limit and he made it within 5 mins. Then after Ivan's turn, HT asked Brandon to help Ivan dismantle and screw up the LT system. Then HT asked me "Zhen Ning, how long do you think you need to set up the LT system?" Obviously i could not say like i need longer so i also said 5 mins. BUT THE SYSTEM WAS SCREWED MORE THAN ALL OF THEIR SYSTEMS LA. Then i had to work in the dark. Only light source was HT's handphone with this camera light. It was really looking with my hands in the end. Good thing is i still managed to finish everything in 5 mins.

After LT, i went to the outdoor system room to take a look at Shermaine's progress with the outdoor system. I would say that although she did not really perform well, she is already trying her best. I was locked out of that room after awhile because Wei Liang was uncomfortable with me around cause maybe i would leak info to her.

So after that it was shoer time. Went to the sports complex to bathe and then went back and sleep. Gave Babi chong my sleeping bag to sleep on and i slept on someone else opened up sleeping bag. My tail bone hurt like nonsense while i was sleeping and i was experiencing cramps and such while sleeping. Did not really slept well. And the air con was like so cold that i had to go and turn it off halfway through the night. Sometime around midnight, this group of people took torch light and shine aroudn the room and they were like whispering "XLR cable la" then i was like "wah lao ehh"

At 5am, TADA, the lights were turned on and WL made all of us wake up and assemble outside MR room. We were going to play treasure hunt? Not sure what game but it was this game where u must find clues which will lead u on to the next clue. My group started off with this clue, "where little mermaid lives". At once we went over to the sunken gallery. walked around that area but found no clue. Then went up to the pool deck and found one clue but it was not the right clue that we were suppose to find. But anw we just took it. Then we were like stuck. I walked around the sunken gallery scrutinising every speck of dust and FINALLY, found this stack of paper pasted onto the wall. Grabbed it and went on to the next clue. We got stuck at the 3rd clue. It said "BACKside attack". We went to the hall, to the back gate to everywhere we can think of but found nothing. So in the end we decided to skip it since we found other clues without even finding their previous clues. Half way through, all of the teams got real frustrated and started to share info and clues. We wandered around to the various venues we exchanged with the other groups and finally, we managed to find all the clues except for the back side attack one.
The game was stopped halfway cause it was getting late and we were suppose to eat breakfast already. For breakfast, we got Nasi Lemak. It tasted like heavenly stuff. Wait everything tastes heavenly when you are hungry. So after this was my theory test. we had to sit in that room for 3 hours. I was Piaing through everything at full speed but in the end still cannot finish. Towards the end, the remaining people in the room started to talk and just don't care about the papers at all. It was quite funny.

Lunch was fried noodles. The serving was seriously so little and i was not full. But no choice. Then came the video lesson. We had to come up with a 1 min short clip of Rock AC withint 4 hours. At first i thought, hmm should be quite easy. But then once i started to do, its like ehhh WAH SO HARD AHH! The funny thing was Jeffrey. He was sitting beside me at the G5 when Poof went the screen. WTH! JEFFREY!!!! WHY U MAKE THE G5 TURN OFF!!! The best part was we didn't save it-_- But nevermind, HaoTing came back to turn it on and in no time, Jeffrey made it turn off again. % !@! !$ But anw, we got it done just in time. Quite satisfied with it but zzz, videoing really SUCKS big time.

Then had a short short break then dinner. We got hor fun for dinner which was quite bad because it has all dried up. Almost wanted to add hot water to it but decided that im too lazy.

After dinner, we had games in the hall. We were splitted into 2 teams. The game was such that one of us was blind folded and the person up there has to guide them through a maze. Was quite difficult for me especially when it came to my turn to be blindfolded. I actaully lost balance and fell-_-. So sorry guys. Had a debrief after the game then we got back our test papers. I was the top scorer with a score of 87%. Or was it 82%. hmm cant remember. But anw, quite happy with my marks (:

We shifted the base venue to 2.13 to sleep. I was just really tired that i slept within like 30mins after we reached the room. Everyone was still so high and stuff and they were playing card games and using their laptops. At around 4am, BOOM THE LIGHTS WENT ON AGAIN. Reuben and Hao Ting came in and made us all go to the hall. We were given this team challenge to setup chapel within 3mins. The first time we did it, we took 30 mins because of all the screw ups of the mic. Packed the thing in like 10 mins. Wah all of us were like zombies in action. So zombified. Had to keep redoing and redoing and redoing but this time we planned everything. Cause we got 17 people, all of us grabbed one mic and did it. Along the way, we changed tactics from time to time and soon our timing got better and better. We had once where we actually did it in 2 mins and 53 seconds. Quite fast i must say. The hall was very hot while we were doing it and i think i developed slight rashes. Quite itchy and pain.

Lunch came and we were treated to good food this time. Nasi Brani and ice mocha. Enjoyed it real much. But after lunch we continued doing the chappel setup. All in all, we did chappel for like 22 times. Enough to last for the next term.

After that, we were asked to pack up the cabinet and after that we had to do fun-o-rama setup. The fun-o-rama setup was kind of large scaled cause it spreaded throughout the school. Once we got everything setted up, we tested it. At first there was no sound on one of the horns so i had to like run around the whole school to hear every horn. Trust me its tougher than runing 2.4km. Strange. everything was connected properly but why was there no sound? I ran back to room 3.6 which was where our amps were. Tried and tried but no sound. Then i flicked a switch and WOW! GOT SOUND AND SO LOUD! haha! We did not turn on the amp thats why. Ran down to ask Reuben to check. As Reuben went around the school to check, Zhong Xian was like talking crap into the horn. Like conversation with someone then somemore so loud. Quite funny. After the checks, we packed up and ZZZZZZ coil the super duper long cables that are flying around the school.

MRC camp was declared over after the Fun-o-rama thingy and some briefing. Stayed back to eat dinner with them and 2 seniors came back to visit us. stayed on till like 10pm then left school. Took bus home with Shu Ting and when i got home i was so freaking tired that i felt like just going to sleep directly. Its really that tiring.

Hello! I just donated blood Its rather meaningful actually. So at first when i entered the hub with my consent form and IC, i had to go through a check by a nurse to see if they can find my blood vessels. Bernard and me were lucky as we were guys and the nurses only had to look at the vessels from the outside and we were ready for the donation. Jovia, Sam and Jiang Fan dropped out halfway for various reason. Then we had to fill up this form which was asking about our health status. They were like asking when did i last corpulate. Well answer is NO...Never ever before. Admin stuff later was going through a medical officer which we had to wait like real long. I think bernard, me and soemin waited for like 45mins before we could see the medical officer. Finally it was my turn to see the medical officer. Walked behind the screen and tests were carried out. The guy who was checking my health status circled this AIDS thingy and said that it needed 12months for the AIDS virus to act up. Then he cancelled my no answer and circled yes for me. I was like "huh? i didn't have sex and never used drugs before?" Next was testing for HB (which i don't know what is that). The nurse used some prickly little mechanism and turned it and shoot at my finger. Felt a short sharp pain and i saw blood. A tube was used to absorb the blood then the nurse dropped the blood in the tube into this blue solution. Not very sure what was she testing for, but anyway, the fun/scary part was next.

I went into the station for donating of blood. The nurse sat me beside this very friendly J2 girl who was also donating blood. It was her second time already and she was very friendly and kept comforting me. Obviously i was SUPER NERVOUS! The nurse came and started doing the necessary stuff. she took like dunno how many tubes and then this bag for the blood and gave me iron tablets. Itstarted off with her labelling the tubes, which she was very quick at, then she injected me with this anesthetic which really hurt alot. Then she took out this BIG needle which was connected to tubes which led to the bag. I was like WOAH! SO BIG?!?! She pushed the needle slowly into my body. It felt really weird. The early entry part is just like feeling nothing. Then as the needle makes its way in, it starts to feel as if some weird thing is crawling around inside you. But thanks to the anesthetic, it did not felt very bad.

I started to exercise my hand and very soon the whole bag was filled. Another nurse came to end the process which included the withdrawal of the needle. Amazingly, i felt nothing at all during the withdrawal. I was even wondering if has the needle been taken out of my body. Sat there for around 5 mins while applying pressure to this cloth which was above my insertion area. Then this man came to bandage my wound and i was ready to go. Felt a little giddy at first but after awhile, i was feeling fine already. Hope that this pack of blood would save someone's life.

Hello again! Guess what? Im FINALLY soldering at home again!!! Yeps. Feels real good to use back my own soldering iron and i really got to admit, it is way lot better than MR's soldering iron. So this time what did i solder? Err a circuit. Yea its a circuit that i sort of modified from another circuit. Its a audio amp.

Schematic:

Then i began planning how am i going to put the components [sorry for the bad picture, my phone's camera really suck ): ]

So then after planning, I took everything out from my drawer

And started soldering according to my plan

See all the black holes, they are markings i made to tell me what goes where.

Lets play spot the difference, see if can u spot the difference

In case you are wondering why are there only like resistors and a 8pin socket for the opamp, its because the circuit has no caps and the mosfet and transistors are yet to be installed cause i need them to be on a heatsink which needs to be drilled. Unfortunately, i have no drill-_- Anyone willing to lend me a drill? A benchpress would be better (:

Hello! This week was seriously very very fun! Its the last week of exams and next week there is not exams, except for chinese-_- YAY!!! And the week after next would be holidays which is already "reserved" for studying for terms.

Yesterday, there was Passion AC. Setup was almost the same as Rock AC just that the on stage work isn't as bad as Rock AC. Okay actually the on stage work is almost non-existent. We just need to help CF set up their things right and then its ready! The stage monitors were run through the mixer before going to the stage so that the monitors were controlled by us.

I did videoing and the camera stand i got was some crappy crap crap one. The pan mechanism was "okay" but the tilting part of the mechanism is like very "SMOOTH". It jerks alot whenever i want to shift it and its just super hard to get that nice angle i want to take cause i can barely control it. But anyway just did it lor. Took videos of the singers facial expressions, the drummer's expression, pianist expression, guitarist expression, computer girl's expression and the audience expression. For the starting part of Passion AC, there was no lights shining at the audience so i could not take the audience's expression. Tried turning this night shot plus function but still too dark. In the end, it was like 1 and a half tape full of the performers and pastors expression. Only until halfway through then the lights came on. Then YAY! Can take the people's facial expression.

Towards the end of the whole Passion AC, the performers started performing again then i saw the back lights go on and off and on and off in some rhythm. I was wondering if it was pre programmed or not so i pass the camera to Colin and ran to the cage, okay im very mean. Then i realised that it was just Shermaine pressing it but not bad leh at least can catch the tempo. HAHA I TOOK OVER THE LIGHTING MIXER!!!! WOOTS! It was seriously like playing O2JAM but its LIVE!!!! Had so much fun with it and trying to do some impromptu stuff like changing the lighting tempo and the pattern of the way the lights light up. This song, Take It All, CAME!!!! YAY!!!! Its Sam's favourite song and i knew the song well, cause when she was around she would play it like again and again AND AGAIN for the whole of morning pre assembly-_- BUT, cause i knew this song, I could like make the lighting effects so much better la! I loved this song especially the part that went "take take take it all, take take take it all" I made the lights like blink at some tempo with the song. Wah i seriously love doing the colour lights, its really so much fun especially when the audience is so high. Good thing is i did not get scolded for operating the lights like that for me myself was worried that i would spoil it. I was pressing so fast that i think sometimes i made the light turn on and off at a frequency of 2-3Hz or so? But well im very honoured to be able to do the lights at the last part.

YAY! Im 17 today! Haha. Thank you Firedrake. Thanks for celebrating my brithday. I really thought that u guys won't remember my birthday but well, im so wrong. Its always so touching to know that you guys are always around for each other.

So how was my birthday? Quite touching i must say. Early in the morning, there was Samantha and Ryan's SMS in my phone wishing me a happy birthday. Aww, don't they seem like a couple? Haha. After that, when i reached school, nothing was much different from usual until halfway through chapel, oh and anyway, i miss the drums :(, Clement SMSed me wishing me happy birthday. Then i started thinking, hmm maybe not so little people dun know and remember my birthday afterall. Later on, i went to back stage and started talking with Nyssa (I didn't spell it wrong this time round (: ), Christiana and PK. They robbed me of my wallet and ransacked it! The first thing they took out was the EZ-Link card. Then wow! They wished me happy birthday. So nice of them! Then after that i got SMS from Sophiana, Jasmine and Jade. Thanks alot everyone (:

Oh then it was NAFA... The test that i predict i would fail for i think 2 more years. I jumped 245 for SBJ which is a freking 1 cm from an A, got 10.2 which is like 0.1 second from an A then got 40cm for sit and reach which is a C, then got 44 for sit up which is an A and got a U for my pull up-_-. FAIL. Finito.

Met up with the firedrakers. COOL STUFF! They bought me a cake!!!!! SO nice la! Aiya i seriously don't what to say and how to thank them. Just so nice of them. Then they were singing the birthday song so loudly, until i super paiseh. But its really nice of them la.

Well a few more hours to go before its gone, so off i go (:

damn weird. the blogger isn't working the right way. but i think still can post.

So RockAC is finnally over with all that hectic stuff to plan and organise and setup and bla bla bla. YAY! Its finally over. I was on backstage duty (AKA "Sai Kang" Warriors) yesterday for rock AC. It was kind of time pressing especially for the very very first contestant. We had to setup everything which included the drum set, bass amps, guitar amps EVERYTHING in under 1 minute. Well we had the help of he councilors to help us shift all the heavy stuff like the HEAVYWEIGHT bass amp. Its like 60kg.! So fortunately our task is to just lay wires and plug everything into the amps and mics. Amazingly, all of us managed to set everything up in like less than half a minute!?!? Wonderful isn't it, but if not for the council people, i doubt we can do it in such a short amount of time. So after this, it was less tough for us already cause the following bands did not have much variations from the initial setup. OH! the first band. They had this crazy drummer. Trance like i would say when he drums. Totally out of the world. I think he whacked one of the mics while he played half way and it shifted it. He was like yelling at us the mic while he was drumming and all of us were like, err what should we do? But in the end Wei Liang went up on stage to adjust it. Then came the Maksim wannabe. He is real good in my honest opinion. He played Nostradamus and Kolibre. AND DANG, Stage monitors had no sound for the 1st and 2nd half of the song. HAHA all of us at the back stage was like yelling into the walkie talkie, "TURN ON THE STAGE MONITOR!!!!!" Only until like halfway through Kolibre then TA DANG! got sound. I felt really sad for the pianist cause he was slightly off tempo for Kolibre cause he could not listen to the backing track, but well he got LOADS of praises from the judges. Good for him (:

Okay i got to go for now shall write more on RockAC a little later.

RockAC
It's your stage.

hello! quite some time since my last post already. Its finally friday again and it feels so good to know that it is a friday. This week has not been as busy as the others. Don't know why but perhaps its because im starting to get used to it already.

Im so looking forward to Rock AC and Passion AC. They are events that i crave to do because of all the technical stuff that MRC has to settle. Okay fine i don't sound right, but anw, there is a rehersal tomorrow and lets see what happens. The plan that we got is quite "big" in a sense that there are 3 projector screens that will be used during he event. Its like the the hall is not so big? To me the main item i would be looking out for would be the drum duet.

Had a good encounter with KSL today. Actually he is quite a nice person, quite funny too! I helped him tape people talking, okay more like i helped him interview people using the camera. The interview was on what we thought would be a ideal college and classroom. Some of the comments i heard are simply wonderful and i really hope that the teachers would at least consider them?

I stayed back late today till like 8 then i left the MR room. I was watching this super vulgur video in the room when suddenly the VP just popped out form no where. IT WAS SO SCARY! He was like, "playing games again ahh". Lucky he did not hear any vulgurities when he came in. So he talked a little then left the room. Really lucky that he did not hear anything that he should not hear.