Posted at 07 Dec 2:43 pm. 0 comments
Finally entered No Black Tie.
This is a great achievement because in the three or so times we’ve attempted to visit it in the past, we just couldn’t figure out how to open the door.
(Total. Utter. Complete. Fail.)
Inside there were wooden chairs arranged around tables in front of a small stage, an amazing deep-fried soft shell crab, a few glasses of 10-year old Dow’s, and a saxophonist with magic fingers and his band.
Would go again.
(Now we know how the door works.)
Posted at 29 Sep 3:25 am. 0 comments
From the start, there was only one act I really wanted to see. I was there mostly because of Sexybum. “We’ve never been to a local concert together, baby,” he crooned, and turned on the pleading puppy-dog eyes. I never stood a chance.
So I got tickets for Catz and her beau and we all trotted off together. We lost them early on in the crowd so we circled round to the back where it was less crowded and sweaty, where we could cuddle without missing too much of the action. Of the entire lineup I have a soft spot only for Reshmonuu, but he was just finishing up as we reached the surf beach.
It must be said that MC Hotdog was a very pleasant surprise – his first few songs, though in Mandarin, had awfully catchy, engaging tunes to them. We cheered him until for some ungodly reason he started rapping about two tigers (?) to a nursery rhyme tune.
Why, indeed.
DJ HaZe must have royally pissed off the backstage crew pre-show. I couldn’t tell you if he was good or not because the sound was so soft, it was more like background music than a full-on rave set. It also had floodlights on full blast all throughout the entire set. You couldn’t look at him. You couldn’t hear him. If a DJ plays a set in a theme park and is invisible and inaudible, did he really play?
The main event came on at 10.30pm. We cheered loudly and wildly until we realized we couldn’t see a thing over the frantically waving hands and so made our way round to where we could at least stare at the camera’s projections on large white cloth screens.
And yes, they were pretty good even if they seemed exhausted after their punishing flight schedule. They seemed accustomed to a more engaged audience – so sorrylah, we all very shy-shy one. Will.i.am barely sang. Taboo was in tune, on the beat, sharp moves, but Sexybum dismissed him as eye candy, probably because the girls were going wild for him. Fergie looked good, but seemed unable to master the technical aspects of singing into a microphone, at least for the first third of it. She was briefly off key too but got her act together before the halfway point. Apl.de.ap carried the show. He sang most of it, DJed brilliantly for a spell, and was generally the show’s main man.
The sound people needed a seeing-to. I’d bet good money Fergie’s mike issues weren’t all her fault. The sound quality was so bad that once they stopped to ask if everyone at the back could hear them. And the cameraman seemed unable to grasp the basic guideline of “Focus on the singer.” As a result, for half of Big Girls Don’t Cry we were treated to a closeup of the guitarist’s guitar, and throughout the concert he continued to focus on everybody else walking about the stage BUT the person who happened to be singing. Highly infuriating.
And oh, yeah, it was Arthur’s Day after all so I should mention Guinness, but the line for the alcohol was so long, and the drinking area so tiny, we didn’t bother even though we could have done with a refreshing draught.
Posted at 30 Jul 3:29 pm. 0 comments
In my day, when someone had a cold you gave them vitamin C, warm chicken soup and a box of tissues and sent them to their room to sleep it off. Before the week’s end they’d be better. Sometimes a particularly nasty case dragged on another week, but if it did – so what?
“Your mother’s been ill for what, three days now?” my dad said when he called up. “Take her to the hospital.”
“It’s not H1N1,” I retorted, reading between the lines.
“How do you know?”
“She’s only got a runny nose, for starters.”
“There you go, talking like you know it all. Doctors can’t even tell if it’s H1N1 or not and there you go like you know everything.”
My dad: well-respected and feared by many, but he has his really dim moments.
He tried to dissuade me from going to Sarawak too when I was on Day 4 of a cough that Mum had taken five days to recover from (and promptly passed on to me). “It could be H1N1, how would you know? It could turn into pneumonia.”
I touched down in Sarawak the next day, experienced instant recovery and proceeded to run in the rain, hike, club, drink, dance and scream myself hoarse at the Rainforest World Music Festival.
Speaking of which, three perfectly healthy friends of mine actually pulled out of Rainforest last minute, forfeiting their air tickets and paid accommodation in a move that still makes me sigh when I think about it, even though I vowed to be understanding. The rest of us had great fun. We’d have had more fun if everybody had been present, but c’est la swine flu paranoia.
Dear H1N1-phobic persons, please go out and get some perspective. The grip on reality comes free.
