Scary Examinations

Well, the scary examinations were so scary (hey, didn't I just used the adjective 'scary'? Who cares? It truly was and will always be scary. No quantity of 'scary's could over-emphasise that)

Almost Late
It all started with a nice bus trip to the building opposite fu-nan centre. It was about 3:15 p.m. The best part about such bus rides at such a time is that there would be plenty of seats on a long journey, which in turn results in a sleep induction phenomenen. When I awoke, the time was about 3:50 at beach road and I needed to be there BY 4:15 or earlier. I prayed for a cab. No cab. So I started running over the place in search for one. Still no empty cabs. Horror of horrors... there was a person opposite the road trying to flag down a cab. Suddenly, a cab came. To cut the whole story short (although it seemed like a long paragraph already. Oops), I reached the location at 4:10, only to know that I'll be in the examination room within 5 minutes.

During The Examination
Scales were first. First scale was in D major, followed by Ab major. Nice. Then the nightmare begins... F# major a third apart was ok. Then... F minor a 6th apart. I think on both tries I couldn't 'return' (ie. I could only play the scale up and not down) This is when the adrenaline starts to kick in and my feet started to shake.

Then the pieces came. For some reason I managed to calm down (In my mind, that is. Why only the mind? Read on =) ). So I started with my pieces. The playing was surprisingly close (about 90%) to the usual standard at home. For this I thank God =) During the pieces, my legs were trembling. That took some concentration. I was thinking, hey, I'm not stressed. My mind's not panicky. In fact, I know exactly what to play. Hey leggies, why are you shaking? Then I tried not to let them tremble somehow but to no avail (it's not like I could take my hands off to press onto them you know).

Then came sight reading. Well, the key was in Ab. And considering that I NEVER practiced from young sight reading, and I was taught/given/whatever-you-call-it the impression that it's a last minute thing, and my sight reading books were the most well-maintained books among all the music books I ever had (in short, clean)... etc. Well, I'm expecting a single digit/20 as usual. This is because that's what I've been getting all these years. Moreover, I know that the piece that was given was a CLASSICAL, MAJOR piece but when I played it, it kinda sounded like a modern (aka 20th century) piece. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, don't worry about it. It's nothing much (OK, it IS something but it doesn't affect you in any way, happy?). Man, the examiner must be super patient because he was still smiling to me and he said 'thank you' (which I believed was more of a formality) after listening to a 3-5 minutes classical-turned-modern piece of about 5 lines in length.

Then came aural. This was pretty evil. Singing by hearing was without any piano accompaniment to smoke my way through. He made my smoke grenades obsolete. Then came sight singing... I think my timing was a little off at the end, but I did hit the correct notes. Or at least I want to think so. As for deciphering of chords, it seemed he played a first inversion but he emphasised on the 5th note on the left hand. I think I said it was the 2nd inversion although my music sense told me it's the first. What a conflict. After that was the commenting of the piece he played. I was talking halfway when he prompted me for the period of the piece. Hey, there was MORE that I could say, though the thoughts refused to come any faster than the rate stuff was processed in my head in that deep freeze-cum-super quiet room (without any sound waves to vibrate some air molecules and kick out the constant 'eeeeee' sound). Sigh... but the good news out of all these is that I do not have that scary feeling of impending failure that would linger through the months till I got the expected dreaded results. =)

The Aftermath
After everything was over, I was pretty stunned. Met my aunt some distance outside the music studio. I never knew that she worked there. Hmmm, after that I just tagged along with my music teacher as she did some shopping. By then, my mind was pretty blank. So I just tagged along before meeting my friends for dinner. The experience was bad enough for me to tell myself that it's all over even after half an hour later. Scary stuff.

Thought: What a day! Scary, scary, scary =/ As what Audrey mentioned... I would rather give a public speech on why examinations are scary than to be stuck in a room with an examiner. What's with the constant 'eeeeeeeeeeeeee' sound that dominates and sets the atmosphere?