Nation Band Competition or what we call the NBC is taken place same year as the syf outdoor. this year, it is the 2nd time they had NBC first NBC was held during 2006. back in 2006 i joined NBC in my secondary school back than it was a close call as we barely got a silver our score was 70.1%. the award r giving as such :gold with distinction >85.00%, gold 80.00%-84.99%, silver 70.00%-79.99%, bronze 60.00%-69.99%, Certificate Of Participation 50.00%-59.99% , certificate of merit <49.99%.

this year's judging was not really that strict as most band got silver and up.. no band got bronze or below.. we took months to prepare for this event. 3 months before the event, our conductor say only 5 members from my section is needed when there are 7 of us.. so my section leader's first idea was 2 take only the seniors as there are 4 seniors and 3 juniors. but after awhile he asked me to play as well.. so that make me the only junior in my section to perform. at first i did not really want to as i know the other 2 juniors are better than me... but still i was choosen.. so this makes me work extra harder as i dint want to fail the 2 other juniors and my seniors expectation..

about 1 month before the competition some of us was not really very confident about our band n said we could not make it.. but our conductor,Mr Eric Watson, encouraged us and even when we made mistakes on our playing he corrected us patiently.

finally the big day has arrived.. all of us was so nervous.. before we go up on stage to perform we had to go into the "tuning room" where we tune our instrument n do last minute warm up and some practice.. we were only given 10 min to be in there... when we waited outside for the band before us to leave the room, we heard them play. all our jaws dropped.. thier playing was so nice.. and we started to panic... my senior who was standing beside me was like "OH MY GOD!!" so i calmed her down by saying "just imagine you are listening to the recording of the song". so after they left we went in sat down and done our warm up and all.. so we went 2 the backstage to prepare 2 go on stage.. the moment i step out of the backstage my heart sunk.. i was so nervous that i could not even play properly... but however i recovered along the way... i just cant overcome stage fright.. but we were happy about our performance.. some of us left the stage crying while others looking happy n laughing along the way...

we got back to school packed our instrument and went back to watch the remaining bands to perform and FINALLY... the results... the first 3 bands before us all got gold.. and when its our turn... they announced "Institude Of Technical Education................ With a score of 79.17%.. SILVER!" we burst our in screams... while other bands gave us the look like telling us "you guys only got silver yet you guys scream so loud..." that was the feeling i got from thier looks.. but we were happy... we were less than 1% away from gold and yet it was the first time ITE concert band took part in a competition. we were happy yet sad at the same time actually.. as we were so close to what we wanted.. yet we could not get it.. but overall we were happy and we aim to do better for our year end concert.

This was the certificate we got.