House Night @ Camp5

For as long as most of us can recall, it has been a long standing slightly unorthodox - but that’s if you aren’t a ktj-ian of course - tradition for the foremost Saturday of a term to be without fail, elected as House Night, a phrase most strangers aren’t acquainted with, and yet it is the utter contradiction when it comes to us. That Saturday morning itself, palpable anticipation would be lingering in every crevice and corner of our school. Whispered intricate schemes of elaborate plans, unravelled like lullabies in the wind and this semester was clearly no exception.
Deferring not much from the aforementioned custom, at fifteen minutes to two in the afternoon, all of us Irinians boarded the two specifically rented buses off to One Utama, a well known shopping complex conveniently situated in the neighbouring state.
Upon arrival, we were primarily permitted a whole three hours to roam around it in quest of new purchases of our own choice, be it groceries, a new outfit or anything that suited our fancy. And at seven, after hungrily digested our respective dinners, the lot of us were taken to Camp5, a renowned indoor rock climbing gym, for all the intents and purposes of team spirit building and cooperation promoting.
Immediately and effectively, we were divided into four teams, in face of four separate challenges. Activities of such that consisted of us supporting, and I do mean literally, our teammates as they clung to a rock embedded wall and crawled sideways, somewhat akin to a crab, us heaving with all our might to raise one lucky individual up a safety harness, navigating each blindfolded other over a minefield of rocks and lastly, needless to say, the actual rock climbing itself.

 
Undeniably, it was a day well spent forging new bonds with the new intakes of this academic year and reinforcing the ones that have been withstanding for so long. Words of encouragement to one another flew freely from our lips and gales of laughter resounded throughout the day. And that is what Irinah prides itself for, is it not? Our fierce sense of camaraderie that binds us together and gets us by.

Irinah Dynamite, Don’t Mess with Dynamite!

House Singing 2012

Despite several laughable technical difficulties and minor hindrances, House Singing - a night of severe nerves and pre-performance jitters - proceeded smoothly, a no defer from the traditional past eight years, akin to how a gasp of warm breath diffuses into the air in a exhaling sigh. The aforementioned event is somewhat of a long standing institution in KTJ, namely the boarding school I attend and thus it is an occurrence of immense furor, evidenced by the daily practice that spanned out for an arduous duration of a fortnight. For each of the houses have their respective opportunities to blow the judges away. Us being with a certain mandatory vivacity, a trademark of Irinah - big smiles, girls! Show me your pearly whites!

Nadzimuddin, namely the first boarding house to be bestowed upon the honour of having the first opportunity to astound the audience performed with gusto, an appealing version that included the renowned king of pop’s famous Man in the Mirror as well as Glee’s catchy Lovin’ Touchin’ and Squeezin’/Any Way You Want It.
Next in line was Naquiah boy’s rendition of We’re Here For A Good Time that elicited a collective sigh of “awww” that resounded around the auditorium. Naqyuiddin however executed a choreographed mash up of Pokemon and Matchbox’s How Far We’ve Come while Imran’s Disney medley lead us by the hand back to the magical nation of childish notions and pixie dust. Nadza’s upbeat portrayal of Uptown Girl was in all romantic categorizations, a classic performance complete with starched white shirts and pressed black slacks. Succeeding that were the girls of Naquiah, grasping at torches amidst the pitch black, crooning a haunting ballad of Fix You originally sung by Coldplay. And Candyrman was performed with pizzazz by Alia. We Irinians came next and we rendered another brialliantly flawless, Glee-like performance with the Jackson 5’s I want you back and ABC. The wondrous night came to a muted end with Jawahir entertaining the crowd with a blended mix up of We Are Young and Dance With Me Tonight.

But ultimately, all of the suspense, uncompensated hours of sleep, vigorous voice projections in harmonization and incessant repeats of similar dance steps were worth while as for the seventh time in eight years, Irinah has come out Champion once more, evading a much dreaded downfall.

IRINAH DYNAMITE DON'T MESS WITH DYNAMITE!

  

And when the results were announced, there came a massive uproar of relief from us, the uniformly clad in black shorts and plain white tees bunch. Almost sobbing in jollification we stumbled upon the stage, to collect our trophy as well as to execute our very own customized Irinah cheer, complete with relatively corny moves. Embraces ringed with sheer jubilation were also passed out in a rapid deliverance. In that moment, with the spotlight highlighting our tearful rejoice, we were golden, golden, I swear we were golden.