On 9th July 2008, there was an article in the Singapore Straits Times which read Raffles schools complete unprecedented sweep of 6 swimming division titles.

Maybe we can now put up this headline: Raffles schools complete unprecedented sweep of 3... silvers.

RIMB, RGSSB, and RJCSB all got Silver for SIBF.

Silver.

82%.

SILVER.

Okay, I will be completely honest.

You see, at about 10:40 PM thereabouts tonight (yeah, the SIBF people lagged), the whole Sec 4 batch (gathered in front of their computers in a MSN convo) received reliable information through a source in the Republic Polytechnic Cultural Center (namely the J2s who stayed back) that both the Raffles Institution Military Band and the Raffles Girls' School Symphonic Band had received a silver award, with a scoreline of 82.00%, thereby ending up in a JOINT position for Division I.

I took a screenshot, to preserve that moment...




YEAH!

See, to be honest, I was ecstatic.

That was my very first, most true reaction.

Oh, and here's a screenshot from sgbandfusion.com with the results:




Thus, for Division I, in order of score...

(1) Philharmonic Youth Winds --- Gold, 93.43
(2) Republic Polytechnic Wind Symphony --- Silver, 83.14
(joint3) Raffles Institution Military Band --- Silver, 82.00
(joint3) Raffles Girls' School Symphonic Band --- Silver, 82.00
(4) Orchid Park Wind Orchestra --- Silver, 80.57
(5) Sembawang Symphonic Winds --- Bronze, 78.71
(6) Ngee Ann Polytechnic Concert Band --- Bronze, 77.71
(7) Tampines Wind Ensemble --- Bronze, 74.43
(8) NIE Youth Symphonic Band --- Bronze, 74.14

About an hour has passed since then... now I have a little more time to think of what we've done. Given the way we played... given the TERRIBLE ACOUSTICS of the center... we are extremely fortunate to have gotten a silver.

Technically, its an SYF gold, because the SIBF silver is 80%, while the SYF gold is also 80%, and seeing that SIBF is stricter than SYF...

Never mind that.

Dance Celebration was horrible, IMO, at least for the beginning. I thought the woodwinds did the run up okay, then I was like "wth? no brasses?!?!?!" but it turns out due to the TERRIBLE ACOUSTICS the woodwinds could hardly hear the brasses, and vice versa... resulting in an overall imbalance. At Figure J, you could hardly hear the trumpets...

I thought Merry Widow was better than Dance, excluding the flutes tuning at Figure 12, the disordering of the pages in my file, and that stupid solo. Won't comment much... but it wasn't great either.

After it all, a lot of us were expecting a bronze or a CoPper.

So this is like a dream come true.

Sort of.

Anyway, I'm really happy now... regardless...

Labels: band