Wet-weather importance

The new year is well under way, and I have yet to post anything on blogger... This seems so weird don't you think?
Anyway, the main reason why I haven't been posting is because I got owned by the amount of work I need to do with the start of the new year and also the orientation that has just ended recently.

Talking about orientation...

(I've decided not to go into a day-by-day analysis of what happened, although I might do that if I manage to clear my homework before my memory during this period of time becomes fuzzy)

It defeats the purpose of my blog somewhat if I go into a day-by-day analysis anyway, so ... too bad.

Have you ever planned events?
Events that are fun and you want it to happen?
And then...

While I was helping out during orientation, I couldn't help but notice about the very significant lack of wet-weather planning. It seems as though the organisers of the event thought that the weather will always be on their side and that it wouldn't rain during the orientation at all. I think that this is a highly optimistic view and that it should not be the case when planning an event at such a major scale where it concerns the impression that they make on the new students in our school.

To quote an example of some of their "wet-weather" program:
They were having mass dance at the track. This is an open-air area. Other then the fact that most people who are learning their mass dances there get roasted most of the time, it is also susceptible to rain. Of course, PA is once again unaware of any other alternative programs should the weather turn bad, so I asked one of the councillors about the wet-weather program. I was shocked by the reply...

"What happens if it rains here at the track??"
"Oh, [Insert name] says: "We continue dancing""
comments: Erm... I'll keep all my equipments now, you can continue dancing.

You get the idea don't you. Just to make a point here, it will NOT be only my equipments that will disappear, I'm sure that the rest of the J1s will DISAPPEAR too. Of course, there is always the "chase everyone back and force them to dance" method, but lets just say that it isn't very appropriate don't you think?

Planning for a wet-weather program is a very important part of planning for an outdoor event. Seriously, you will not be able to know what is the weather going to do to you on the day itself. Besides, we have been doing project work for the whole of last year, councils been doing "project work" for at least 6 months already. Surely you would have learned something from project work even if you had been lagging around and not doing much to help your group...?

Just planning for the wet-weather however is not enough. Similar to what I have mentioned above, the wet-weather program that has been planned must also be feasible to occur. A wet-weather program that involves people dancing in the rain so as to have "more enjoyment" isn't exactly going to work out properly and it'll probably send some angry parents to the school at a very short notice. (I'm looking forward to the June parent teacher meeting, its always an annual affair where war is executed) Even when you do have a wet-weather program planned, please make sure that it is feasible and that it can be executed.

We all learned that in project work already, so why now? Why do we continue to make this sort of mistakes in the process of planning for our events? One of the aims of project work was to make us more able to do this sort of stuff. Then I would like to question if project work has indeed helped us at all when coming to this sort of events if we continue seeing this pieces of planning that are not complete at all?

Alright, this has already became a question of the purpose of project work...
Of course, I won't say that orientation was a flop. Sure, it has its good and bad points in planning, as do almost all other events. The important point here is that we learn from our mistakes and do not repeat them so that we can make our next event a better one. Overall, orientation was a exciting and happy affair (my teacher aren't exactly happy) and we got to have lots of fun, lots of jokes and meanwhile, attracting lots of J1s to our CCA.

Hopefully, most of those juniors will be staying in the CCA and become an active member of that CCA, then we'll have less worries when we depart from them in June.
Of course, June is a bit faraway from now...

Or.. is it?

Discmon