Recently I have been writing essays for xen and one of which is about my journey n xen. This essay that I wrote is truely what I feel about the school and I shall publish it here...

"The year 2010 is almost the fourth year that I am with ACTFA. I remembered the first time I stepped into this school, I was a secondary student. And now, I am already waiting for my admission in to university. Time really flies and so has the amount of progress that ACTFA made over this period of time. I am one person who saw its growth over the years.

Climbing up the creaky wooden flight of stairs for my very first hip-hop class in a shop-house in Chinatown, Pagoda Street, ACTFA used to be known as Xenbar. The place compared to today’s location in Bukit Merah is two worlds apart. From the point of view of a parent, I think if you were to see the school in Chinatown, you will not even considering signing up your child for any dance classes there. The layout of the school was more mature where you have shady lights and elaborated decorated interior that creates a mood for couples and lovers to chill out.

Upon stepping into the entrance on a warm Saturday afternoon, the first thing I saw was a lady dancing some sort of dance with another guy. Moreover, I recalled seeing another man sitting along the stairways shouting and telling them what to do. Yes! The lady is our principle dancer in ACTFA, Yanqing and the man instructing them is Justin.

From there, my journey in ACTFA officially starts. I took on hip-hop classes on a weekly basis and would usually come in about two hours earlier to do my own self-practice as I was hooked to dancing.

Soon, Yanqing asked me to join the school’s salsa classes held at night. This school offers basic and intermediate salsa every night all these years. Their tradition never changed. Thus, everyone is able to make it to dance no matter how busy they are. Upon being exposed to salsa, I finally realized what Yanqing was dancing on my first day in ACTFA.

At that time, salsa was not as hyped up compared to today. And this school is one of those which found a niche in this scene and try to expand the salsa scene in Singapore. Indeed, ACTFA has achieved that as most of the students that it has trained are recognised in the salsa scene and are frequently sought after to social dance during salsa events.

I remembered the first few lessons of salsa, I wore a sport shoe to dance. I was a tat too clumsy and I felt slightly uncomfortable embracing a guy and dancing with a partner. However, in a few sessions, I got addicted to this dance and carried on signing up for their intermediate classes. Intermediate classes are always more interesting as they teach us on the different variations in salsa. In fact, the amount of moves you can think of is endless. People can always come up with new variations that are impressive and probably making them their signature moves.

What ACTFA could offer me did not end here. The school pushes for all their students to perform in their annual salsa congress to give them the exposure of standing on the stage. I feel that this helps me boost my self-confidence and stage presence. Be it dancing or in school, I am able to use this skill and apply it to my everyday life. My very first performance item was in Kallang theatre, doing a hip-hop routine. That very first experience standing on stage dancing was satisfying and scary. It was satisfying because I can never imagine myself standing on the stage dancing and it was scary for Kallang theatre is a huge space and the crowd watching us was pretty big.

Subsequently, ACTFA shifted to Bukit Merah Central with a studio space that is more than twice the size of the one in Chinatown.

Initially, the whole area was a mess with no mirrors installed on the walls and we had to dance on dusty cement floors that were not lined with parquet. Over time, the whole school transformed into one that is furnished with chairs and tables, a proper counter for students’ registration, equipped with numerous fans and air-conditioners and the mirrors and floor properly set up.

ACTFA also developed its line of products such as costumes for ladies and shoes for both males and females. Furthermore, students of the school are guaranteed progress in their dance caliber for the school provides a series of programs catered to the different standards of dancers. From the most elementary dancers to professional artists, ACTFA has a syllabus for each of them to improve from where they are.

Phew! The journey in this school has been an exhilarating one. I wonder what other things I can expect of ACTFA in the near future… "

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Presently I am in the office typing this blog entry. Since I have nothing much to do now I might as well hone my writing skills.

After the end of this month, I have worked in my company for exactly four months already. Thus I kind of have a feel of the culture and the working style of the people here.

Since I am working in a department where staff turnover rate is really high as well as the number of temporary staff like me is rather great, this place is filled with a rather significant number of young people of my age. To be more specific, there are more guys than girls. The ratio is like 4 guys is to 1 girl. The gender count is really unbalanced.

As such, I am able to make some interesting observations of these guys who are hitting 21years of age this year:

Firstly, these guys will ALWAYS dressed in jeans and no others. Well, ya lah, jeans is the easiest bottom to match with any shirt. How convenient.

Secondly, these guys use vulgarities like it's nothing. Though the do not really sprout them so much but when they actually say it, it is not due to some big issue. But as one of their passing statement. So when the f*** word comes out, I have to pretend that it is nothing when I feel kind of weird as I am not used to such modes of conversing.

Finally, one really really sick thing that MOST of these guys do (I said most so it does not mean absolute) is to go on fb and look at their friends-friends, friends-friends-friends pictures especially girls and compare who is more "choi". After that they would see which universities they are in. So naturally these guys with a placing in one of the three Us will hope that those girls are actually studying in the school that they are going.

Well, that is my observation for those temps in our office...

Aside from work, of course I have some time for myself to wonder about life's mysteries.

I think that life is really cruel to some poor souls. Yes it is true the survival of the fittest applies to those in the wild and to us man. But by degrading oneself to the level where you start backstabbing people around you without them knowing is horrid. These people will soon get their retribution. We shall see. I look forward to this day.

It is not that I am being mean, but people without the qualities that are required for a certain task should not even take a chance to be with the class of people. That is my noble advice to those silly, gullible, dumb and delusionised folks out there.

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Ms Buffa's back again. Ever since the last time I blogged, two significant things happened. One was the recent Scarlet Night in xenbar which was held to reunite the old xen peeps. In my opinion, it was not that successful as I didn't actually see more than half of the people back then. Take it with a pinch of salt, it is just an opinion. And of course we did our super girly hip-hop item that we did for the Sambawang countdown and Nanyang CC. But this time the costumes were slightly different than usual. It was cargo pants and random colours that we each agreed to wear. However, the overall effect was surprisingly nice.

The video of that night's performance has been uploaded on YouTube and you can find it at the left-hand side of this blog site. NOTE: Just ignore the DAMN SUPER DUPER LAME comment by MS DAWN who uploaded the video saying that Dionne just did a crab walk while dancing bottle-pop. _ _ "

The second event worth mentioning was "RELOADED" party in Union Square. I think last night was the official opening of the club though I have been to the new one twice which were weeks and months ago. So I don't know how reloaded this is.

We did our Beggin choreography that we did for the SBDC in Jurong Point. But this time the cool thing morphed into a line dance thing. Sadly, Ms buffa was not in the mood to do any cam-whoring so thou shall not be able to see those laughable costumes we were in.

During our dry-run which was on the same day as the performance, yq's foul mood plus our lack of standard in the dance made the whole rehearsing process a black event. We were undecided on our costumes and our moves were not as sharp as at our peak which was weeks ago only that we almost wanted to back out of the performance.

Nevertheless, the item was rather a success when the crowd cheered profusely after it ended. And people came up to us and congratulated us on the impressive display. Initially, I was apprehensive about us doing this different-from-the-rest routine. Others were doing their thing (SALSA) and were "WOW" be it the costumes or the choreography.

After the item, social danced abit before I managed to catch the last train home. At least the ride was not that boring since I was with Steven all the way to pioneer. Cool...someone who lived as far as me.

As of now, everything has sort of come to a rest. My next agendas lined up would be to quickly start and finish up my driving plus more friends-gathering in the coming weekend.

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The bachata video is up on youtube and here it is:



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Woo...i slept my very first 9 hours since I don't know how long. Had a lazy evening yesterday after an early dinner and fell asleep on my brother's bed. The 9 hours were rather significant since I haven't been yawning this morning till now.

We the fact that I haven't been blogging for a rather long time was that I was busy preparing for the bachata competition which occurred last Saturday at Zouk. When I was there for the dry run in the afternoon, I got to see Zouk in its "daylight" form. To be honest, the place is horrendous. I wonder how clean it is if u put the tables or wall under the microscope. There were glass shards on the dance floor which were potential dangers to all the competitors who were gliding, sliding, rolling or any other moves that had to interact with the floor.

The competition starts about 8pm and proceeded on smoothly. This year's standard was really high, we were able to determine the champions during the dry run. And conclude that to win a BACHATA competition, one do not need to even do bachata. As long as one has enough cool lifts, tricks and dips that wow the audience, you will automatically be crowned the champions.

One interesting fact: There is a couple that did a lady gaga remixed into bachata song and surprisingly this couple are siblings. haha... I might consider asking my brother to partner me in a few years time if he successful grows taller.

Anyway, the video is uploaded on facebook and you can go view it there.

Wee...

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