Jointly reported by:
Tan Qi Xuan Sr1A
Grace Low Shing Wei Sr2ScA
During the Chinese Lunar New Year holidays, Kuen Cheng High School Co-Curricular Department held the Spring Festival Cultural Week. One of the most anticipated activities, which was the Singing Competition, was held on 12th of February via Zoom video platform. We were honored to interview the two committee members of the event, Ooi Qian Qian and Jackson Yeoh. The following are the contents of the interview:
1. Why did you organize the Chinese Lunar New Year Singing Competition? When did the preparation of the event start?
We were recommended by our teacher to organize this event. We just followed the template given by our teacher in the preparation of the singing competition. The contestants were required to wear red shirts and sing new year songs to ring in the new year. We took one month to prepare for this event.
2. Do you prefer the Chinese Lunar New Year Singing Competition to be held online or face-to-face?
We prefer it to be held online. By that, we could avoid unexpected situations that might occur during the face-to-face competition. Moreover, the contestants were given more time to prepare for the competition and thus, they could perform even better. Nevertheless, the Chinese Lunar New Year atmosphere is still maintained.
3. What difficulties did you face during the preparation of the event?
Since the contest was publicized later than the other Chinese Lunar New Year events, we faced issues advertising the competition as no one was aware of a new programme. Thus, having enough participants became a concern for the two of us. Fortunately it was solved as we managed to invite friends to participate or to watch the competition and spread the words through them.
4. Did the event meet your expectations?
Absolutely! We were pleasantly surprised by the number of attendees once the event came to show, as we were expecting only a small amount of guests. The competition’s popularity had exceeded our expectations when there were more than 30 applications submitted, and we were ultimately astounded to see a whopping 300 audiences in the Zoom meeting room when the finale rolled around.
5. What valuable lessons did you receive from this event?
Jackson Yeoh: I would say that my video editing skills improved after being in charge of compiling the participants’ recordings and the emcees’ announcements into one video for the finale, albeit it is tough to be the only one doing the editing work, it was a useful experience in the end.
Ooi Qian Qian: While preparing for the event, I mostly learnt about the importance of effective communication skills between the teachers and my partner in order to arrange an event successfully.
6. What are your thoughts on the event?
We’re really grateful for the people who turned up at the event and participated in voting for the Popularity Award. We encourage other students to also contribute to the event from behind the scenes next year in order to present a bigger, better programme, and for future participants to get creative and come up with new ideas and interesting performances for the next Chinese Lunar New Year Singing Competition.
