Monday, December 11, 2006

The unexpected

The majority arrived at 0830 in the morning and headed off to room 5.03 for the final rehearsal of the presentation. As usual, some were very late, some were very early. Typical Malaysian time. The final preparations were made as we did warming up to project our voices out as far as we could; rehearsed at the auditorium (where we were going to sing); put on a Santa hat, preparing the candles and the ladies applying make up. Even we guys have to put on a sort of grape-fruit-taste-gloss which is tasteless when you use your tongue to lick it, that’s what I did out of curiosity as it smell nice. Silly me.

Few moments before we entered the auditorium to sing to all the Swinburne staffs, there were many people rushing down the stairs in a fast pace, asking all those who were still there to evacuate the building as it had caught fire. It was chaos for a moment and finally everyone evacuated safely, none was hurt or scalded with burns. Apparently the top floor of Swinburne caught fire, burning almost everything out. The view from the ground floor was this; 3 different colors of smoke, blackish-gray, pale yellow and ghostly white. Firemen came after a short while to put out the fire but somehow it was in vain, even the ambulance came for some unknown reasons. After another short while, another fire engine came to control the fire, only then did the fire stop spreading out.

















Luckily they did not smile and take a picture like this while the campus is under fire like this picture.

Some of the staffs requested us to sing to them outside the campus, which was a very weird request to me as we usually sang indoors. In the end we had an outdoor singing for the 1st time and it turned out well. Then we headed off to Cili Padi to have our lunch. The food there was quite good and the price was reasonable, we stayed there for almost 2 hours while the rain poured heavily. Finally we headed back to Swinburne to collect our stuffs left behind during the fire outrage. One would assume that it was night time in Swinburne if not for the emergency lights and the pale light shining in from outside.

The cause of the fire is unknown yet.
The damage of the fire is a pitch-black atmosphere in the campus (no more lights).
The result of the fire is a 1 week onwards holiday until further notice (which means no study info assessment).

So, is the fire outbreak actually good or bad?

Edit: Forgot to include the title.

2 comments:

NSDS3HvLDjJd said...

Oh well, the fire only delayed the inevitable... my worries are on the Open Day.

Wei Liang said...

Oh ya, I totally forgot about the open day... I wonder how are they going to organize it with the current condition of Swinburne, it was so dark and many areas were given limited access...