Apathetic Avenger

ACJC Council Elections (Part One)

During these past two weeks, ACJC has been swept up into this frenzied rage. For two weeks, the entire canteen/canteen walkway/candeck/void deck was plastered with colorful posters, each poster featuring the smiling faces of a handful of ACJC students with various numbers that don't mean anything somewhere on the fliers as well. Said students were also seen throughout this entire period of time with very gaudy and very noticeable neon green badges pinned near to their school crests. Each badge bearing the name, class, and random-number-used-to-differentiate-them-from-the-others.

I have been meaning to talk about Council Elections and the Week Of Campaigning, however, I've been busy. I would talk about how JC life sucks, the trivial difficulties and obstacles of my life, and the reasons my existence has completely lost its meaning, but I don't want to become a Javier. I've also seemed to have somewhat lost my ability to form rational thought and to suitably express my feelings regarding various happenings.

But I digress. (As I always seem to do) So anyway, today's post is about Council Elections. However, I am going to borrow a page from Javier's book, and cheat. Meaning, I'm going to include lots of pretty pictures so as to distract people from the woeful lack of other content. So, let us proceed.

Credit of all photos goes to my Sony Ericsson K610im.

We shall begin with a pointless picture.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

This sign is seen by the 1000-odd students who utilize our country's MRT system to get to school everyday. For those of you who do not fully understand the point my photo is trying to make, perhaps you should let me explain. I am not a professional photographer, so this quick snapshot isn't everything that it could've been. I was also surrounded by many other students, so I did not want to draw unnecessary attention to myself by stopping in the middle of the path taken to school, in the process disrupting the flow of movement, to take a picture of a stupid signpost.

Anyway, the "WALK THIS WAY" signpost is pointing towards the right, directing the unaware commuter to walk on the footpath, instead of walking on the road. I must admit, the idea of walking with cars is somewhat appealing, and it has crossed my mind several times before. I tried to include in the photo the rush of oncoming traffic for added effect, but alas, by the time I snapped the picture, the car had stopped moving.

So thank you, thoughtful construction worker, for putting up that very informative signpost. Perhaps the Singapore government would consider creating a nationwide campaign, alerting the public to the importance of walking of sidewalks instead of the road. Since we are Uniquely Singapore (tm), we must of course, create a stupid acronym for this campaign. I suggest Walk NORMAL (Walk Not On Roads, Men And Ladies!) Perhaps someone could come up with a radio jingle or TV ad to accompany my slogan, something similar to the highly acclaimed "Sars is the virus, that I just want to minus!" advertisements of 2001. With I.T. and various other technologies, using the different forms of media, it is very possible for us to succeed in our task of teaching the multi-cultural and multi-racial peoples of Singapore the importance of not walking on the roads!

Walk NORMAL.

More pointless pictures.

Oh, I feel the spirit of creativity and artistic expression flowing through the very core of my soul! These pictures that I've taken do seem very artistic, do they not? The first one conveys a sense of gracefulness and smooth flowing movement. Either that, or lightsabres. The second one seems like some sort of design created by a professional. Oh, I am so proud of myself.

How did I create these works of art? I can teach you. First you take your mobile phone. Find a smooth surface, such as the top of a stack of paper. Take a picture, then quickly spin your phone. The lousier your camera, the better the effect.

This is what students do when boredom has set in.

I am really long-winded, am I not? Back on topic!

Campaigning Week

Two weeks ago, campaigning for Student Councilors began. Meaning, all the hopeful nominees try and become as well known as they possibly can, so that they can fulfill their hopes and dreams. All of them put up posters, but some went to even greater lengths, with varying levels of success, from zero to none.

I recall several Council hopefuls sticking plastic boxes to the sides of our void deck tables, with little stars printed with their names stapled onto straws. I have no idea why they thought anyone would be compelled to take the stars, unless of course, they dream of become fairies or Harry Potter. Here are the things that I'm talking about.

As you can see, the heartless students of ACJC have come up with another use for their boxes. Convenient trash cans. Now we don't even have to walk the 8 steps necessary to get to the nearest bin. Our spirit of inventiveness is astounding.

Other people came up with more practical solutions.

I tried to blur out the numbers, (hey, no free publicity here) but I now realize that one can still read the names and numbers to a certain extent. I must admit, the tissue boxes were a success. However, they only succeeded in killing more trees and providing us with free tissue paper in our times of need. Here is an action shot, modeled by my friend.

No one particularly cared who provided the boxes of tissue. No one thought, "Hey, xxx was so courteous, providing me with free tissue papers, hence I shall vote for him/her!". Most people probably went "Alright! Free stuff!". I recall one of my friends taking and entire tissue box, putting it in his bag, and using it for himself and our class. After all, it's good to share.

Those weren't the only tactics that the wannabe-Councilors resorted to. Stickers with their personal information were stuck everywhere, from bags to shirts, and, on rare occasions, near the zippers of pants. Little ice cream sticks were scattered about the grounds of the Campaign zone. Some even stuck stickers on the tops of bottles of drinks sold by the canteen vendors, or on the plastic wrappers of sandwiches and other tidbits.

Towards the end of the week, all of the nominees started handing out free candy, in a final attempt to garner attention. Once again, this didn't really have the impact they had imagined. After all, all of them were handing out free candy, so they weren't really outstanding. If a group of them didn't even give any away, people probably wouldn't even notice.

Once again, the effect of the sudden generosity of the 50-odd Council hopefuls wasn't really to expectation. I think they expected people to take the candy, see who had given out the candy, and vote for them to become councilors. However, I just don't see how giving away free candy can really lead to people thinking you deserve to be a Student Councilor, but that's just my personal opinion. The situation that usual occurred was that a person would take the candy, ignore the little sticker pasted on it, open it up, eat it, and throw the wrapper into the nearest bin, or little fairy wand box.

So ends part one of my post. I will talk about the actual elections and my opinion on them some other time. I was going to talk about it in this post, but this post is already quite lengthy.

Labels: Musings

Blogged @ 12:23 AM