Edo’s Log • えどのログ

The Orientation Week Massacre

Currently listening to “Lions” from leaked sources ~
Currently filled with old rage

She's just a friend. Really! Not lying!

This post is months late. But, it’s better late than never. It’s about the orientation.

Most of the orientation committees agreed that this year’s orientation week was to date, the most horrible ever. I know that every year we keep on saying that it got suckier by years but, this one was an epic disaster.

Horrible HiComms, horrible management, horrible decisions and horrible horrible horrible executions.

Orientation Committee Application

I shall start with the Orientation Committee application. It was “very” controversial, really. What’s so controversial about it? “The Application Form”. Here’s a snapshot of the application form:

Bits of the Application Form

You can ignore the rest of the form because it was very normal.. and relevant. The only controversial about the form is at the last part when you’re about to sign the form.

Yes, they actually asks you ‘how many times you pray in a day’ and ‘how many times to went to the surau/mosque’. When I saw it, I went ‘What the fuck?’ naturally. It doesn’t take to be a smart guy to judge that the question was completely irrelevant to Orientation Committee application. Seriously, what the fuck they had in mind when they wrote that? I know what are they trying to achieve but stating it here would mean suicide. Obviously, we know what are they trying to achieve.

The point is, the question is completely BAD. Just, BAD. Not only it affected the Muslims, but also it greatly affected the non-Muslim. Not few, but a lot of my friends were talking about it and gets the earliest hints that this year orientation is going to suck big time.

Why would you ask someone how many times did they prey in the form? Are they trying to stereotype that non-religious individuals are not qualified to be a good candidate? Are they going to kick out non-religious individuals? How about those good individuals with good behaviour but not religious? If it doesn’t matter, why put the question there? Just for show? It’s irrelevant then.

Why not just put how many times do you eat per day? Or do you have any cute sisters?

That alone, indirectly, made everyone assume that the SRC is under Usrah’s hidden control. Added with the fact that the president of SRC was the president Usrah last time, it fuels more speculation. It might not be the case ( which I really wanted to believe ), but things are hinting that it could be true.

The effect was, a lot of good non-religious individual refuse to join. Not only that, some non-muslims refuse to join too, assuming that the orientation is going to suck. Result, a lot of new inexperienced committee were approved.

Me? Obviously I didn’t join although I wanted badly to be part of the committee. I did send in my application, but I sent it late.

Edo

So, what was I? I’m not part of the Orientation Committee. I’m not part of Student Publication Board anymore. So, what was I? Well. A PHOTOGRAPHER!

Not Cam Whore . Really .

I’m a photographer that give photographs to SPB. Yeah, technically I’m freelancing for SPB. Well, I can’t go around taking pictures without being attached to any legal group, and I DO wanna walk around taking pictures.

What do I do? Taking pictures of course. Me and my trusty D80 equiped with the standard 18-135mm lens. It’s common sense for photographers to wear comfortable outfit. For me, I wear my “strictly” GACC related tshirts, brown cargo pants and shoes. The GACC shirt is just for promo purposes >:D. Yes, I’m extremely comfortable wearing it.

Unlike their OFFICIAL photographer… who needs to wear formal at times.

Orientation Committee Tags

Let’s touch the tags first. The design suck. Horribly. The excuse was, it’s was done last minute. It’s not a big deal you might say. But it really killed the OC’s morale. Would you walk around with a horribly designed tag? The design of the tag doesn’t fully fulfill the tag’s purpose : identification. The tag was designed without the committees name on it. A tag, without a name, only division. Here’s how the tag looks like… with the committees wearing em:

If you think the design looks OK, then you have extremely horrible design taste. Previous design was generally accepted by other because although it wasn’t that nice according to my taste, but it was good enough for other. But, this year design was BAD.

So, few people were EXTREMELY not happy with and end up looking for freelancers to save their day. That.. would be me. Red started this initiative. One of the red mobiles designed their own Red group tags. Then the rest followed. Yellow group approached me first. The next day, Blue group… AND the whole FOOD division.

Vicky with his Yellow Group 1 tag

The Yellows want their tags to be “intimidating”. The blue wants something that represents “wolf” and the food division.. err.. I just gave em some random brown design. How long does it take to design each divisions tag with personalized names on each different tags? 30 minutes per division. Yep, it doesn’t take that long to design. They were extremely surprised the short amount of time I took to design it.

Of course, for cool purposes, I designed my OWN tag!

PHEAR ME!

Too bad I’m not anywhere close to “intimidation”

PHEAR ME please

So yeah. That’s the tag story. Let’s move on.

Orientation Week

Bad.

Horrible.

Terrible.

Disaster.

Well it’s not THAT terrible. At least the freshies had fun.. well, the remaining freshies I mean. A lot went back home and skipped orientation because IT SUCKS.

The management was messy and sluggish. They left most of the OCs blur at times, did not brief contingency plans, confused with what’s going on and all. Not a few, but a lot was complaining that the management was horrible in various issues. Some of the previous year issues were fixed, BUT it’s still horrible. Also, they fond of doing things at last minute. And they ASSUMED a lot. They ASSUMED this and that. They were too overconfident and optimistic.

Few mobile OCs weren’t qualified to be mobile OCs and they were quite a lot of venue OCs who over qualified to be mobile OCs. They were few groups that I’ve visited and they were zombies. Few mobile OCs don’t know what to do and seek for my advice ( since I was a Mobile OC previous year )

It's not like there's a lot of my pictures...

Their official photographer are lazy BUMPS except Khaled, the Arab Saudi guy. This is what I observed: Walk around slowly, pan across to look for “something”, take camera to eye level, snap, lepak around for awhile, snap more, bla bla bla bla… nothing exciting. They’re just… some guy with a camera. While I had to RUN HERE and RUN THERE chasing after good shots. Whether my shots were good or not, I had the initiative to get good shots.

There were a lot of flops all over the place but mostly it’s old problems, so I’m too lazy to talk about it.

There were a few “interesting” issues too but, due to it’s controversial nature I can’t reveal it here. Although I badly wanna state it here. *ehem*of course you can IM me online*ehem*

Orientation Night Nightmare

Oh. This is “the MOST” interesting part of the orientation: The Orientation Night. It’s controversial alright, but I don’t give a shit about it when it comes to this part. Where should I start?

I shall start with what’s ‘Orientation Night’ is all about. In short, Orientation Night is an event where the freshies gather in the main hall sitting on the floor and make noise. There will be drama performance by each team and their team will cheer for them. Basically, it’s a the most fun night ever in your entire campus life. Seriously. Not exaggerating, you can ask most of the seniors. In fact, I can say this is MMU’s pride where other universities most probably have “fun” restrictions.

So, how do SRC this plan to butcher this exciting night?

By placing chairs.

Yes. By placing fucking chairs in the fucking main hall so the freshies will sit on the fucking chairs instead of the fucking floor. What the fuck is wrong with them, seriously.

Let’s go through history a bit. During my year back in 2004, there were 4 emcees representing each 4 groups. The next year, it was reduced to 2 emcees in order to make sure the “hype” in under control. The next year, noisy cheers were banned to ensure the “hype” is even more under control. The next year, they banned noisy props. And this year.. THEY BANNED THE FUCKING FLOOR.

Imagine a Metalica concert with EVERYONE sitting on CHAIRS! That’s just FUCKED UP.

Ok, let’s hear the excuse. According to them, they wanted to put in chairs for safety purposes. They said last year one of the STAD officer’s hand was stepped on. This, can prevent it from happen.

RIGHT!

Of course. There was a rebellion from the senior OC. Of course, SRC ignored their rebellion can continued with their fucked up plans. I dare say that the only ones who were content with the idea was SRC ( and some of them were not OCs before ). In the background, they were plans to boycott the chair setup ( which leads to the extremely delayed plans but because of that, the SRC hicomms had to help with the setup ).

They didn’t just put in chairs, there’s SEX SEGREGATION too! What the fuck? Really, what the fuck.

2007. Dangerous.

2008. Safe.

So, that’s terrible enough but they can make it even worse: the lame semi-formal opening. Usually, the show starts with “wazzup everyone. are you ready to make some noise. yeah” or something liddat. This year, things were COMPLETELY different.

NOISE NOISE NOISE

It starts… with National Anthem. I don’t know the itinerary of the opening and when they ask us to sing the song, I was like.. WTF. Plus, we don’t have the song in the computer so they ask us to sing without the song. And then, they ask us to sing our university anthem, which is quite awkward because usually we sing it at the VERY LAST of the event.

Our university anthem is EPIC, unlike other lame university anthem. If you never heard of it, you can click here to download it. It’s that good that it can make few freshies literally cry. It’s very… touching.

Ok, fine. Negaraku and university anthem first. I felt a bit too formal for an event that should be extremely happening but.. fine. I can’t imagine GACC or Comic Fiesta starts with Negaraku. Then… things became VERY VERY.. VERY awkward. Too awkward that I was literally speechless for nearly one minute.
.
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“Doa recital”.

CAN YOU FREAKING IMAGINE HOW FREAKING AWKWARD THE SCENE WAS!? Imagine a hall full with people with face paints all over their skins, intimidating banners, goat horns ( made with paper, whole red team OC wearing it ), capes, bandana and all those happening stuffs…. AND Doa recital.

Controversial or not, don’t deny COMMON SENSE. Where’s their FUCKING COMMON SENSE!? They really really really think doa recital was REALLY REALLY necessary? If I was immortal, I would say “What the fuck?” out loud. Unfortunately, I’m not only mortal, pathetically weak too.

From that moment onwards.. the OCs pushed their limits to make the night as exciting as possible. Of course, at the end of the day the freshies were happy but the seniors? They were extremely not happy at all. Me? I hated it. If I had brain cancer and scheduled to die on the next day, I would take the microphone and say out “this orientation night is RUBBISH and FUCKING LAME”. But of course, I was very healthy.

Post Mortem

Since I was around a lot, they invited SPB to join the post mortem. They wanted us to take photographs but I intended to BASH SRC CRANIUMS OPEN. They were smart, the SRC super top hicomms didn’t come but they send small fart representative to take all the shit.

I can’t reveal the content of the post mortem of course, but it was horribly done. It wasn’t satisfying AT ALL. Sigh.

Overall, this year’s Orientation Week suck scrotum.

You can check out my last year orientation post here and here.