After one very crazy weekend of layout design, yesterday was the usual deadline day of craziness. I'm usually a pretty calm person, but I always find myself to be extremely cranky and short-tempered in the moments leading up to our printing deadline, because, according to the scientist, like her I am also very meticulous and I can't seem to let tiny little flaws here and there pass. I have to fix it. I apologise to anyone I snapped at yesterday. I mean I don't think I did, but when you're crazy in the 'heat of the moment' (and by this I mean the final moments in the newsroom just a few hours before you go to print, where you start being all sweaty and fidgety), you're not really aware of how you sound like. So I apologise.
Anyway, yesterday was different because it was the last time that we would all be in the newsroom together all stressed out and sleep-deprived. Next week would be finals, and after that it would be THE END. I didn't realise this until much later when things started to calm down a bit yesterday, but it was kind of sad to think about. I mean believe me, I wouldn't want to go through that sort of student-run newspaper craziness ever again, but it was sad to think about it anyway. It's kind of like work or school. No matter how many times you say you hate the place and can't wait to get out, the last day will always be sad at some point, at least for a while. This might be stopping me from leaving home and checking out schools in another country in a way. Only it's a bit different, because I'm not ready to let go of some things here. Not now. Not yet.
But enough on that. At around 7.30pm last night, when we were done doing some final changes, we were kicked out of the newsroom by the tech guys who wanted to close up the place and go home. Thomas suggested that we all go out to dinner, and since it was late he offered to give me a ride home afterwards. That was awfully nice. When we got onto the courtyard, it was funny how different the campus looked at night, almost deserted except for the hospitality school kids running the restaurant and kitchen. It was kind of nice, because it was the first time we were all together there at night. The hat guy was there too.
Thomas drove us to Station 1 in ss15. Actually he wanted to take us to this cheap place that sold curry noodles, but I hadn't eaten at all since 9am and the idea of noodles didn't seem very appetising, even if they were cheap. So we went to Station 1 instead across the road, which was a lot more expensive but nicer (I forgot I didn't have any money on me, so that hat guy had to pay for me first!). I think we stayed there for hours. After we finished eating we ordered dessert, and even after that we just kept talking and talking all the way till past 10pm. It was like as if were taking that moment to finally, actually talk about things non-school related. Excluding the hat guy, even though we see each other all the time, I don't think we've ever talked that much or that long before about football (Thomas and the hat guy anyway, with me chiming in here and there to talk about Brazil and their rhythm.) and old-school cartoons. Before that in the newsroom, we were singing the Captain Planet theme song, because we were trying to come up with a catchy front page teaser for an article I wrote about going green and it came up. I remember we briefly touched on the fact that all the Planeteers had cool rings except the last guy with Heart, which we all thought was lame, but Thomas said it was also 'necessary'. And later at Station 1 we were still talking about old cartoons we loved, and the Doraemon cartoon and comic books. That was funny.
On Thursday, when we come back for our post-mortem, and I erase that white board clean for the final time, I'm going to have to make sure I won't cry. You know, if the post-mortem doesn't turn out to be a big dramatic blowout from a certain person on the team I do not wish to name.
Yesterday the hat guy and I also had our last class together, only I think I was too worried about the paper to notice it. And now I'm just realising that we might not ever share a class together anymore, or go to the same school. It is all very sad and scary at the same time.
Oh now I'm kind of regretting not taking any nice pictures. I can never be spontaneous, can I? The last time I had a bout of spontaneity was when I went to that concert right after sports day, and even then I stank like a cab driver's arm pit! So it's not exactly a good memory.
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