Fucking Up

So let me get a few people straight with you or else you will be terribly confused.
Mr. Ben: jazz band coordinator
Tivy: vocalist and friend
Mr. Mark: extremely big and multi-talented music teacher
Mr. Tama: extremely skilled music teacher
NIST Jazz Band: not really a jazz band at all.
Mr. Julian, Mr. Watts, Mr. Paul, Mr. Leslie, Ms. Hodgson: very important people.
Mr. Leslie's son: slightly less important, but still quite important nevertheless.

Let the story begin.

Mr. Ben went and told the admin that Tivy and I are "very consummate performers", so they wanted us to perform for the 1st NIST Golf Tournament at some seemingly random, remote golf club. We didn't want to do it, because the other guys (Pon, Keith, Ken) couldn't go due to mock exams, but Mr. Mark stepped in with his huge presence and said "We'd REALLY REALLY appreciate it if you guys did it".
So we said okay, what the hell...it's just a golf thing. And nobody will be paying attention anyway.
And we couldn't practice that often because we were busy etc.
Anyway, the bus ride took around 1 hour and we arrived at the biggest, poshest, and motherfucking hi-so-est golf club i'd ever seen. Amata something. It was built in a Spanish style and the bathrooms were beyond confusing. There was this room that had "El Nino" on it. And I tried to look for 'La Nina' but NOOOOOO. It was called "Ladies' Locker". All of the corridors were a warm fuzzy orange colour and there were fountains and the steps had mosaics on them and there arches everywhere. Like a wannabe replica of La Alhambra I suppose. Anyway, it was posh and that is pretty much all you need to know.

Now Tivy and I were freaking out because Ms. Jaemi was a different Ms. Jaemi from the Ms. Jaemi last Friday. The Ms. Jaemi last Friday was chill. And the Ms. Jaemi at La Alhambra Pequena was a tall woman with a strict face who seemed to hate us more than was necessary.
We ate in around 10 minutes, changed in the toilet, lamented the fact that we didn't have a camera to camwhore with in the gorgeous place...and went back.
And we also freaked a bit more because Tivy had lost her iPod earlier that day, and not only did she have 7,000 songs on it, THE LYRICS WERE ON THERE. So NO LYRICS. And we had not practiced for around a week due to my SEASAC tryouts/training and 4 tests in 2 days and my Mark Redlich English homework pile.

So we got there and they told us "oh the monitor is broken, so you won't be getting any feedback. Now for a pianist who plays by ear (me) that means "you're fucked" so basically the only thing running through my head was "you're fucked pitchaya you're so fucked and you're SO fucked in front of all the admin and mr hodgkinson who hates you enough already oh god you are fucked."

....And it started, and we proceeded to make the worst mistakes ever. i don't even want to mention them but i will say that i played many wrong chords and cut one song in half and tivy forgot the lyrics to desperado when this guy was singing along. painful. and she couldn't hear me and i couldn't hear her. at least mr tama got something wrong as well. i wanted to crawl into a hole and die. the amp was in the back of the room and i couldn't hear jack shit, and tivy couldn't hear jack shit, and the audience probably heard jack shit.

i could tell mr. watts and ms. jaemi hated it with a deep burning passion. but mr julian had the good grace to put on a happy smile on his face and tell us we were fine. thank goodness it wasn't one of those things were everybody was listening, and thank goodness the food was good and tehre was an amusing little golf slide show going on. And finally, thank goodness the audience did not have Mr. Tama's godlike musical ears or they would have all walked out right there and then.

I wanted to die. But no, that wasn't enough. Dying wasn't enough. I had to burn in hell too.

After the show, a guy I had previously took to be a random Indian man who was exceptionally good at golf came up and proceeded to rapidly tell us were excellent and very well done he loved it and appreciated it very much.

It gets worse.

"I am the founding member of NIST and -" and then my brain went fuzzy and we both descended into paranoia where the Amata Golf Club was dystopia and the founding member of NIST heard us play our worst ever performance.

the ride home was pretty much dismal.

surasak (music technician) laughed his fucking ass off.

needless to say, that was the first and will be the last time we ever perform in front of the school board.