The Overreaction Of An Understatement

The weekend is over. We're back in school, and already I'm looking forward to the Easter break. Now, officially, we only have at the most five weeks of lessons time left. Including next term. How amazing does that sound? Five weeks and A' Levels over and done with. No more 3,000-worders to be done three hours before the lesson. Of course I haven't mentioned the exams. And the 10,000-worders (probably more) in Uni. But from what I've heard, there aren't too many lectures for the English course. I've heard something as ridiculous as two lectures a week, which would just be amazing.

So how was my weekend, that's the question everyone asked me today. Of course I only greeted it with the polite response of 'it was good. How was yours?' and then not actually bothering to hear how the person's weekend went.

But if I bothered to answer your question properly, it would be an extended version of that. This is how it would go.

'It was good, thanks. I went to London, stayed in Brunei Hall. Went to see Pill, which is always a treat. This time we didn't intentionally get lost anywhere in London, but it was fun nonetheless. It was great. Then there was the ICUBS Brunei Night, which, to be honest, was complete balls.'

I'd take a short pause and then,

'The acting was poor, the jokes were recycled garbage that failed to be funny after the second time being told. The standards were close to that of a high school production. Not much better, really. Probably the only few good bits were the dancing, especially the modern dance. The traditional dance was a bit messy and out of sync. The sound editing was horrible. The stage management, the lights, it was amateur. I mean, I've seen much better performed, much funnier and more professional plays written and directed by high school 16-year-olds.'

'I'm pretty sure they worked hard at it. And I appreciate that. But...'

'It was overacted... Poorly. The diction was unclear at times, and the plot was absolute nonsense.'

And then I would remark on how mean of me to say that, but I wouldn't apologise because I'm allowed to criticise, aren't I?

I went to that because I thought it would be good seeing a theatrical performance by Bruneians. I'm not saying that all Bruneian productions are automatically bad. I've seen some pretty good ones. But I expect better from a bunch of Uni students. Much better.

Signing out

Over and out