Annabelle Low, GMBA Class of 2018

On December 16, 2016, the Room of Requirement at the WenJin Hotel transformed into a grand ballroom as first-year GMBA students, clad in resplendent gowns and debonair suits, descended upon the Chengfu Road establishment.

The annual affair is a hallmark of the GMBA experience. Organized by the class committee, our winter gala celebrated our survival of an intensive first semester and provided an excuse to let loose before our impending exams, courtesy of the class fund. The gala provided a precious opportunity for our classmates to see each other as never before. Thousands of photos were taken; an equal number of eloquent compliments were given. For those who could not attend, the gala was also livestreamed.

Our golden hosts, Ben Wu, Peipei Qiu, Chenggang Liu, and Yalei Zhang, welcomed the class with a video retrospective of the first semester. The video featured over 800 photos, painstakingly compiled and set to music by Julie Sun, Zhengyu Hu and Jiayi Leong. The atmosphere briefly swelled with emotion as the class reminisced about all the things we had gone through together.

As a nod to the Christmas many of us would not be able to celebrate in our usual way this year, the class committee organized a Secret Santa gift exchange, where each person was assigned a classmate at random to give a gift to. The gifts were placed under the Christmas tree. During dinner, Santa Sunghak and his tuxedo-ed elf Hiroki Tsutsumi distributed the presents to their rightful recipients, much to everyone’s delight. Clearly, everyone was on Santa’s “nice” list.

GMBA Secret Santa Sunghak and an unsuspecting recipient celebrate the Christmas gift-giving merriment (bottom), while a couple of GMBA elves share a dance to themselves (top).

For a couple of weeks prior to the gala, we had been stealing time out of our packed schedules to learn how to waltz, with dance classes even taking place at 10:00 PM in the Shunde Lobby. Following dinner, the time came to exercise our newly acquired dancing skills. The waltzing couples cut an elegant sight as they whisked around the dance floor.

The program resumed with our resident divas, Hugo Yan and Niklas Friese, taking to the stage with a rousing rendition of Maroon 5’s popular hit Sugar, which triggered an impromptu rave around the podium. A simple game followed, where childhood photos of random students were flashed on screen and the audience had to guess who each person was. Some of these proved quite challenging!

More restrained participants toast the imminent conclusion of a battle-tested but victorious semester together.

The evening closed with a WeChat sticker contest. Throughout the semester, we had been steadily sneaking photos of each other and turning them into customized WeChat stickers. Some of these stickers ended up gaining traction and becoming fairly mainstream in our conversations with each other. In this contest, people enthusiastically voted online for their favorite stickers, with Peng Wang taking top honors for the swaggiest sticker, Kim Chun Ho receiving recognition for his multi-purpose “Time To Drink” sticker, and Xuefeng Mu for the best use of the power of the moon.