A dose of culture

Before I start the main subject of this post, I would just like to announce a few events that occurred in the void between today's and the previous post. I had intended to write up another post entitled 'The opiate of the people' but that-like an unfortunately large number of good ideas-didn't take off, and now I can't really remember the exact words which were going through my mind; I have a vague memory of it being something about television. But enough of that. Great events have come to pass: the successful putting up of my school play, and the plenty of memories it has spawned; and.....err. Well, not much else. After school play I must confess that life has become rather dull and boring. Of course, there is one more thing. So far, I have kept it covertly beneath my shirt on the internet, though most of my acquaintances aboveground know of it; the subject of this post: The Singapore trip.

Some time ago, the school counsellor approached our class to guide our unprotected minds away from the dark side and towards "productive" opportunities. This included Harvard Model United Nations, Melbourne Trinity College Science Summer School and, most importantly, Sunburst Youth Camp, a completely sponsored youth gathering of students from 14-17 Asian countries. A delegation of  8 people are sent from each country as representatives to Singapore where there will be a medley of activities unrelate to culture and coincidentally related to publicity exercises. The culture related activities are these: a stall will be set up by each delegation with a very wide theme (eg- culture, heritage) within which they have to try and "show what their country is"; a performance of something unique to each country, mostly a dance of some sort or the other; and a formal dinner where everyone gathers in a dining hall with everyone else dressed in their country's fabulous and unique attire.

These, perhaps excluding the formal dinner, are all farces. Or at least that is what I strongly suspect. I shall give reason later on.

From what we've been told, I can say with confidence that the real cultural exchange and learning will be during the noncultural parts of the camp. On arrival all the delegations will be split up into groups, such that no two people from the same country are in the same group. Thus, this mini-melting pot will partake in ridiculously enjoyable and stimulating activities together. Also, each person will be sharing a room with two people not in their group or their country. Living together for an outrageously hectic and active week should form some connection between the people

The only unfortunate part of this is preparation; for months the mothers of the children attending (excluding mine own, they shall henceforth be known as the Mothers) have been working themselves into a craze. We have ridiculous costumes for the dance performance (black dhoti with gold border; koti, maroon and black with 10 kgs of small mirrors glued onto various places; the piece de resistance, a poisonous green kurta with a waistcoat stitched onto it which is a shade of blue seldom seen outside of aliens cheap sci-fi flicks). And we are setting up a small mountain of kitsch to represent India at our stall. It really is undescribable. No, really. words cannot capture the vileness of the cheap mirror things and the load on loaad of synthetic flowers. I talk no more.

We leave on the 6th, brave knights in search of the Holy Grail.