Saturday, February 27, 2016 "Recognizing All On Me."

Saturday, February 27, 2016
Week: 28
Songs to Remember: Drip Drop - Taemin

        I am really tired, heh,. It feels like there's lead weight on my body. Probably because I spent most of the day standing, which ain't always a bad thing.

        Alright so I woke up at 9:00 AM. Just kidding, I woke up at 10:00 AM, went on my PC, ate breakfast, packed my stuff, all that, went to the other High school which took around, 15 minutes. Got there at around 12:00 AM, I thought I would have to do some searching to get to the theater or where we'd be meeting but uh, there were others there (we were all wearing our KDT shirts to identify eachother and allowed access in) who got there the same time as me, I just went down the hall with them and bam, there we all were.

        Waited for a bit 'till our KDT coordinator got here, then others started showing up one by one. It wasn't all of us though, there were about, 5 people or so that didn't come, maybe give or take 5. These people either didn't want to come and perform with us, or were busy, which is understandable. And so, since we were missing members and the stage was believed to be going to be pretty small, we had to reorganize, we-do our formations to accommodate all that.

        Took around 2 hours or so, until we got to use the stage to practice, which was only for like, 30 minutes at most. The charity dinner coordinator person told us that we were allowed the full stage, so, that was nice I guess, heh. We modified our dances to find that we can use the whole stage (instead of just like the curved arch-front of it). To be honest we barely got enough run-throughs today, I mean, we do remember the moves and timing and stuff, but formations is another thing. Spoiler alert, luckily we did pull it off. Our changing room, or like, the place we were to hang out and place our stuff at, was very cramped. Why? Because the boy's dressing room is currently not for use due to prop storage, so we all had to go into the girl's side.

        Now even though there were some harsh stories about bad shit that happened at past performances at this school it was fine for the guys to stay in the girl's dressing room 'cause apparently the rest of the guys in KDT are gay. Or homosexual, whichever you prefer. Ever since that one dude that my buddies and I trolled left to pursue his own solo dancing stuff (like for VSA), I'm the only straight guy here.

        I know it's not something to be like "WOAH" about, it's more of like "Oh, didn't notice that 'till now." Don't mean to make it offensive or sound douchey oranything, just something to point out. Anyways, since there were so many of us, we had to setup at a different room, which was located down this hallway and to this storage-like room. Was room-y though.

        We hung out there for a bit, started doing hair and makeup, taking pictures, you know. And uh, the "guys" were sent out to get food, including me. More people came as well 'cause they wanted to, heh. There was this small place next to the school which sold milk tea (which is apparently considered bad by most of the KDT members), cajun fries, regular fries, calamari stuff, onion rings, other drinks, you get what I mean. We ordered for the people who wanted food, took around a half hour or so in terms of waiting, but we finally got it, made it back, and essentially just chilled for a couple more hours.

        By this time it was around 4:00 PM or something. 4:30 PM, uhhh, I have no idea what I did for all that time. I watched people do makeup, hair, draw on their PC, play some OSU, eat, take pictures. I fortunately had enough battery in my phone to read some Reddit posts and message my buddies on Discord. At around 5:00 PM, we started changing into our outfits. For the most part, everyone the same thing as they did at Lunar Show.

        We took pictures, played this really, really bootleg K-Pop version of Heads Up, where instead of people or objects, you have names of K-Pop songs instead. Didn't know a game like that existed, heh/ We then went outside to take some group pictures, it was pretty dark and there wasn't that great of lighting, so we had to use our phone lights to brighten the area up. We took pictures of all of us, and then by classes (seniors, juniors, etc). People were surprised to find out "Oh, I didn't know he was a junior," etc. I perceived this one guy in KDT to be a senior, until I found out he was junior, and only now did I really find out, that he's actually a sophomore. I know, pretty fucking crazy, heh. He hangs out with the KDT seniors a lot so I thought he was a senior himself.

        It was around 6:00 PM, we were finalizing our dances and formations, all in all, thankfully we didn't have too much trouble with it all. Soon comes our turn to get ready to be on deck, we huddle up, the KDT coordinator/president motivates us, tells us to have fun, you know, you know. We go to the steps, my heart's fucking beating like crazy, even though I've done this before, I know the dances, but uh, still, fucking scary, heh.

        We got up on stage, I danced, we did our thing, you all know how it goes, heh. Pretty good, pretty good. Production value of the whole thing could've been better (by that I mean, sound quality for our track mix was kinda shit, they didn't give us a full announcement before they opened the curtains so we were caught a bit off-guard, and they didn't close the curtains fully after we ended our performance. You know how awkward it was to pretend to fall on the ground and lie there for like 10 whole seconds before the curtains fully closed?).

        During the performance, after i finished my part, which was the beginning 2 dances, I was staying on the left side of the curtains. I was pretty focused on performing, didn't really pay attention to anything else. This girl, whom I assumed was an MC, was like "Hey, you're Drew right?" Took me a second, like a literal second for my mind to pull the images and voice from my memory, to realize it was Jn, one of my elementary school buddies. To be honest, looking back, she was more of like, a classmate, a well-known classmate, but we didn't hang out during recess or anything like that. We were both in band though, and both of us played the flute.

        I was like "Oh hey, uh, Jn!" And she's like "How you been" and all that, you know. She pulls this memory that she remembers and was like "Omg remember when you liked Sl?" and I played along and was like "Haha, oh yeah, don't mention that again." She talks to her buddy MC, "You know Sl right? No? Oh, then you don't know who we're talking about. Oh and uh, this is Drew, we went to elementary school together, we both played the flute." "Nice to meet you Drew, I'm *insert name I forgot here*." "Hey, nice to meet you too."

        It was nice meeting at least one person from the past, like a uh, cameo appearance, and it was nice that someone like that recognized me, before I recognized them, heh. Anyways, after the performance, we went outside, went back to our setup room, and uh, took pictures or whatever again. The actual charity dinner didn't end 'till 9:00 AM, and we finished by 8:00 AM, We were allowed to leave if we wanted to, or we could stay and join in to dance at the charity dinner. One of us were called to ask if we wanted to join the dance but a majority of us said no, with one of the guys comparing it to a middle school dance where the guys stand on one side and the girls on the other, heh.

        We waited 'till our rides arrived, some people left immediately, some people were waiting on their rides, and the people who were waiting on their rides, like me, were sitting in the room, and listening to this one girl's story about this guy (who is in my English class and got a 100% on that one test) and how he's so "dense" and she's upset after being reminded/seeing on her phone in this group chat that he removed his and her's nicknames, that it ruined the good mood she had after all this and performing.

        Yeah, very hard to wrap your head around all that and what the fuck's going, heh, but she seemed genuinely upset about it and I've experienced what she's experienced before, I think, or something in the ballpark, so I know that it's not easy to explain, especially with the blend of emotions. There were some gossip stories, I was just there, sitting in the group, listening, heh, until my dad got here and I went home. The group chat was filled with over 200 notifications during my games of League with my buddies went I got home, filled with stuff like even more upcoming performances like the upcoming pep rally, a collab performance with another dance group who share similar styles, along with practices for those, aaand, squeezing in our dances for the VSA show.

        There were comments about the performance we did, a lot good, but brought up some bad stories/ past experiences. When they performed last year during the VSA show at this specific High school, there were some performers who talked trash about our members, low-key saying it to think that they wouldn't be heard, and uh, even going as far as a dude trying to take pics of a member changing. He got caught, he didn't take the pics, but he tried to.

        So yeah, not that great of a school to be honest, heh. But that's all in the past. Umm, so yeah. Played some League games with my buddies as I got home, started working on this post at like, 1:30 AM, it's 2:29 AM right now. Holy shit do I need sleep. Alrighty, what a day, I'll see you, tomorrow. See ya.