Asians Invade Christmas Banquet

Wen Chi Chen

As Christmas draws near, the students’ much-anticipated Christmas Banquet finally arrived and was held at Paradise on Friday, 11^th December 2015. And while we often hear about it from a student’s perspective, few people actually know what happens behind the curtains...

At the start of November, the Student Council members began to let their creative juices flow and the CB preparation started. The hotel was already booked since the start of the year, and it was time to somehow connect all the various ideas together and select a theme for this year’s CB. Hoping to bring something new and fun to this year’s banquet, we as a StuCo team, decided to try something radically different and upbeat. And so we thought: what’s more upbeat than a bit of flashmob and Korean-pop (K-pop) to start off the night?

With K-pop expert, Peter Lee (12), as this year’s Public Relations manager, StuCo had no trouble finding the perfect song to start off the night. And so, as the “Okey-Dokey” Korean song began to haunt every StuCo members in their sleep, we began practicing for the flashmob every Saturday during our CB workdays from 10am to noon. The flashmob moves came from a YouTube clip that Peter Lee and I saw online, and after a bit of modification we were able to teach it to the entire “mobster” crew.

Hoping to bring a bit of humour to the theme, Home Alone, we decided to have our own version of this movie and called it, “Home Alone: Asian Invasion.” And as the event drew nearer and nearer, so did the stress level. As the leader of a completely student-lead organization, staying on top of everything became an increasingly hard thing. With finals drawing near and final unit tests that teachers had crammed into the last week of regular school days, waking up at before the crack of dawn to organize and prepare for CB became a regular routine. Unlike studying for exams, there is no textbook to reference to when one needs help with organizing an event or leading a group of people. Instead, it required a lot of patience, tenacity, and will.

And as the event finally rolled around, it was one hectic day for everyone on the Student Council. Fortunately, as the event began at 6:30pm, the endless hours of preparation paid off, and the event went smoothly.

After the event, Peter Lee noted, “As the PR and host of CB 2015, I think StuCo made CB 2015 a night to remember. Our innovative attempt of using a flashmob was successful, and rumor has it that CB this year was the best one yet.”

And...we also broke the clean-up time from last year. In a bit over an hour, we cleaned up the ballroom, carried the items back to school, and presented the Home Alone poster to Hudson McManus (11), who shall be leaving StuCo next year (see below).