Garden Gala 2009 - From Disaster to Spectacular!

It was 9th May 2009. It was a historical day in Russia. It was Victory Day. But I wasn't so interested with the street parade - its the same thing every year. Basically no changes at all. It looks like ghosts from the past came back to haunt Lenin Street again.

Oh well - I had a bigger thing to look forward to for today. Garden Gala 2009 (GG09) . Being an annual event, basically it has to be BIG. It has to. This "stereotypical" adjective - being applied to the annual GG certainly put some nasty strain on my nerves and patience. Not to mention the absurd amount of time and energy that has to be poured onto its preparation.

Woke up at 8.24 a.m. this morning. Dang - overslept my alarm. That was my first reaction looking at the phone screen. Lol - Lady GaGa didn't manage to wake me up this morning. Neither did Kyu Sakamoto. (p/s: Lady Gaga's Just Dance is my wake up alarm at 7.30 a.m. Kyu Sakamoto's Sukiyaki comes later at 7.45 a.m. :)

I immediately brought myself out of bed and walked straight to my laptop. Sigh - unfinished business awaits. The drama recording was not completely edited. Need to get it done fast. Snap-snap. Then there I was, editing the recording frame by frame, diligently. Next thing I knew when I looked at the clock it was about 9.30 a.m. OOPS - forgot. I promised Fr. Peter (from now on I'll refer to him as FP - as we all affectionately call him) that I would come at 9 a.m. to decorate the garden. Then the horrible truth sank in - I HAD TO DECORATE THE GARDEN TOO. Then for a split second I thought that if I could have any super-power, I'd pick self-duplication. Then I could juggle everything without problems. But that was just a figment of my imagination.

In the end I got at the gardens only at 11.45 a.m. I thought that FP would be really ticked off because he was expecting me at about 9, but luckily he wasn't there yet when I arrived. What a sigh of relief! Just when I wanted to - no, this isn't happening. FP was here ALREADY. Just that he was "hiding" in one of the rooms of the parish house. OKAY - ignore FP. GG starts at 12 pm. That means I have exactly 15 - no, 13 minutes (...thanks to FP, he took away 2 minutes of my precious time.) to work miracles on the whole garden. OKAY, here goes.

[ABOUT 45 MINUTES LATER]

Okay - maybe I went past the time be a large margin - who cares. GG was delayed eventually. It was raining (NO NO NO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO~) So we had to shift the "Garden Gala" into the parish house. Then it became "House Gala". So we ate first while waiting for the sun to come out. And indeed it came out :)

Food for GG'09: Spaghetti, Potato Wedges, Grilled Chicken Wings, Date Pritters, Coleslaw, and Foo-foo (traditional African dish)

GARDEN GALA BEGINS!

Just after the sun came out. Everyone scatters around the garden as preparations were made.

The show kicked off with a stand-up comedy act by Godwin. Funny-much I guess, judging from the amount of laughter generated by the public. Then came the time to distribute the KreativeBandz.

Audience listening attentively to Godwin. Serious looking? Well, maybe he haven't got to the funny part yet LOL.

(The story behind KreativeBandz: They are actually 3 strings of red, blue and green tied together to make a plaited wristband. But its easier said than done. Mary Ann, Rafael and I - the 3 stooges - were given the daunting task to make 80 of these plaited wristbands. But we only started at about 10.30 p.m. and we had to finish by tomorrow morning. And we were very tired at that time, being just after practice for the GG performance and cleaning up the gardens earlier. Rafael fell asleep in the process LOL. So we decided to just tie these 3 strings together and distribute them tomorrow to everyone - asking them to do whatever they like with those things. Kononnya with a gift for the most creative idea for that thing. Thus the name KreativeBandz haha.)

This year's GG door gift: KreativeBandz. Brought to you by Mary Anne, Rafael and Yours Truly.

FYI out of those 80 KreativeBandz - 6 were marked with burnt ends (thanks to Rafael for that really "great" idea hahaha - which we had to agree after he accidentally burnt one of those KreativeBandz.) So those lucky 6 who got the burnt ones had to join the drama cast for the "Close To You" dance. Really funny moment.

"Caught Up in Love". That was the name of our drama this year. Its about a girl who is NEARLY perfect (...during the event, I described the girl as a PERFECT girl so Fr. Peter was saying "Perfect? Perfect?" Then I had to say "NEARLY perfect father, nearly." Then he smiled incessantly.) who found love, not one but two of them. So basically she had to choose between them. Actually, the audience were responsible for the ending of the story. By voting of hands, the audience wanted the girl to end up being with her best friend - instead of being with the exchange student whom she initially fell in love with. I think everyone enjoyed the story - I hope.

A part of the drama cast (L to R) : Rafael, Mary Ann, Christina, Mitchel, and Yours Truly.

After that, comes the performance from the graduating seniors this summer. They made their rendition of "We Will Rock You" which entertained everyone, as everyone clapped together with them. Then they were presented with their mock graduation hats in their mock graduation ceremony. Aww - touching moment.

Graduating seniors with FP. I can't wait for my graduation.

Then there was the May Babies' Birthday Bash. All those who were born in the month of May were wished with the warmest birthday wishes. And the chocolate hazelnut cake was to die for :) Happy birthday guys!

May babies (Felix, Mitchel, Abraham, Kingsley, Roberto) - not including FP and Mary Ann.

And that was the end of our GG. We had more activities planned - but due to the rain taking away 2 hours of our time, we had to cut it short - but hey, I still think this GG'09 rocked!

Group photo in the garden.

Kudos to everyone!

The Annual GG Picture - at the Garden Entrance with the Banner! Smile everyone!

Yours Truly, "The Devil Inside of Me" played by Maksim Markusevich in the drama "Caught Up In Love"