YKLS Rocks: Highlights

Our director, Ian, always tells us to remember how we feel and treasure the memories of the moments during the production and there were definitely some good ones when we joined back this year:

The best memory we have? When both groups finally get to view what each has done in terms of choreography and arrangement for the Sing-Off songs. For Mr Brightside, Kathleen started flirting with all men, and the shocking reveal that Justin was her beau had our jaw dropping.

Other stuff...

During the twice weekly rehearsals, it was split to have the directors work with Rockabye Baby on Monday and Undecided on Wednesdays. Except due to time constraints, the other group usually heads upstairs to rehearse and figure choreography. Or in one case for Undecided, to sit down, chitchat and eat salted egg yolk fish skin snacks.

When Ui Li first joined in rehearsals to play the piano (after the second half group songs were nearly finalised), the Undecideds were sitting near the piano. Except we weren't really sitting, a bunch of us (especially Serene) were up and jumping and rocking to Viva La Vida and Mr Brightside.

Rachael's initial rock band name!

Dressing room burns by Tristan:
Simon Chong: Tristan, how do you say, "Welcome to the YKLS 15th Anniversary concert?"
Tristan: We say it in English.
Simon: NO. NOOOOO.

- and another time when Justin came in with a wet plastic bag -

Us: But why is the bag wet?
Justin: I washed it because it was sticky with banana sap earlier. The bag's still good, so...
Us: Ah, going to reuse the bag la.
Tristan: Why, Justin? Are you in financial trouble?

Hmmm again as in earlier productions, we take a fair bit of photos and videos early on in the year (although mainly to be used for promoting on social media), but come actual showtime to the end we sort of fatigue out and so don't really have much behind-the-scenes photos during bump-in/post-show or even cast party. While during these time we'll see loads by other members.

The rock songs chosen by Serene and Justin to be played pre-concert during the group rituals - just like how in prior productions the sound tech would play pop songs and Lex would even do choreography as it it was a Zumba class.

'Passing the energy' this year not as Morse code crazy as it was during Illuminations! Phew.

4,204,800 Minutes

All right. 2016 and it's time to recap the last year, however this time we don't have the convenience of checking back our Instagram what we've done every day as we kinda stopped the 'photo a day' thing (maybe we ought to start that back again this year, and do away with the editing the photo to place text in...).

But then again we've upgraded our iCloud account for the 200GB storage plan (one of the best things we've done, no more worries about our photos and videos hogging all the space on our iPhone), so that means we have all our photos on our iDevices for easy referencing!

2015 was a pretty great year - we felt as if there were more things happening. We made new friends and caught up with some very old friends, had lots of fun and games, got careless, got sloshed, got super busy (there were quite a number of near-overnights in the office)...

• Upgraded to the iPhone 6 Plus. Stocks went out crazy fast then compared to the iPhone 6S Plus!
• The Chief brought us to Genting to celebrate our birthday, complete with the Genting Behind The Scenes Tour. Quick fun getaway!
• Boardgames galore, in terms of playing and purchasing! We bought Power Grid Deluxe, the Street Fighter Deck-Building Game, Dead of Winter, and 504 (which until now we've yet to bring out to see play!). Printed our own copy of the very beautiful PnP Dune: The Dice Game by Heiko Günther. Got to try a good number of games thanks to wingedman and meetups with our regular group at All Aboard, YCA and even McDonald's BU!
• And on the digital side of boardgaming, we've started playing multiplayer Ascension with nejustmo and hckerl. Honestly we find deckbuilding games to be better as a digital game - no need for shuffling and tabulating scores.
• Experimented taking protein powder. Limited by lactose intolerance. Too bad it gets kinda jelak drinking it, making it hard to take every day.
• After a couple of years with no broadband and cable tv (read: Astro) at Chateau le Chief, we finally signed up for Maxis Fibre Internet with Astro B.yond IPTV! Now instead of watching Chinese serial DVDs the Chief records Astro tv shows and movies for later viewing (we have almost used up the hard drive at one point).
• Bought Monster Hunter 4 from Kyo, who had a launch event at Tropicana City Mall. Went with the Chief and lad (although only lad and us plays), got our copies, bunked a while at Starbucks for a quick session. Biggest 3DS timesink of the year.
• Bought a new Mac Mini and iPad Mini 3 just before GST was implemented. The iPad Mini 3 replaced our iPad 2 and was definitely lighter to carry around, but at times we sorta wondered if we ought to have gotten a MacBook instead...there are times when we still lug our first Mac Mini around from one place to another (and quite glad that it's actually easy to lug a Mac Mini around to use in other places provided there's a monitor there to plug it into!).
• Bought the new Apple TV. Not really necessary, and heh we've not yet started gaming properly on it.
• Another trip to Bangkok! It has been three years since our last trip, and this trip we decided to end with a nice dinner at Sirocco @ Lebua. Awesome experience.
• And there was the day trip to Malacca as well! The last time we were there was possibly for savante's Christmas party eight years ago!
• Got our Pebble Time! No regrets here as we had no problem adjusting to wearing back a watch (especially one we have no problem sweating with and wearing into the shower), plus honestly the long battery life is a winner. We're also happy to have backed it on Kickstarter as it was cheaper (also before the exchange rate made things less enticing), hence we got one for the Chief too!
• Got a wax gun (pretty much like a glue gun) that definitely sped up the process of our card-sending! No more breathing in smoky fumes from a wax stick!
• Worked more on our calligraphy (not much improvement though), and finally found flexible nibs for copperplate handwriting!
• After half a year of not seriously joining the choir (our reason then was less of wanting to take a break and more of worrying that the performance date would clash with work), we joined for the Illuminations concert and the Illusion opening! It helped that this year's production had no choreography making it easier to join at a late time. We weren't interested in joining earlier for Danny Elfman's Music from the Films of Tim Burton and started our break by joining the Christmas concert only as part of the audience. This year? Still on the ropes.
• Sailor Moon Crystal ended. This reboot makes us cry sometimes due to the quality. Sigh.
• Terry Pratchett's 'The Shepherd's Crown' was released and devastated us.
• Went for Bon Jovi's concert! Exhilarating!
• Couple of weddings. Lad tied the knot, and we got to take another 'Il Divo' photo (although everyone's older and, if not wiser, then wider). Memorable in that us guys were not involved in the gatecrashing, and that during the wedding dinner there were lucky draws to keep the guests entertained. Fun! Then there was Zherrie's wedding, which was definitely a YKLS wedding with lots of singing and performing. Initially we meant to only sing Seasons of Love with the ensemble, then mubbles asked us to duet A Whole New World with her and that started the whole shiok sendiri fest (especially during Yaya's It's All Coming Back To Me Now).
• Managed to surprise the Chief with a slightly stressful birthday celebration as well as with a magic show dinner!
• Experienced our first fun run. Good to know we managed to finish it within a decent time.
• Got ourself a pair of Sketchers Go Walk 3 to replace our 9-year-old Off-Road Crocs. Truth be told our Crocs have been in need of replacing for years, considering how the treads have all worn bald making it a hazard on wet surfaces, but we've not found a suitable replacement till recently.
• Had a Christmas party at Chateau le Chief again after taking a break last year!

And that's just recapping from photos we have on our iPhone.

3,679,200 Minutes

It's 2015! Time really flies near the end of the year, and honestly we really felt the final quarter of 2014 just zip past.

Last year we tried something new, following the footsteps of marsyparsy (who's done this for 2 years now) and alakzen (who only tried it for 2013 and decided it was enough) and post a photo a day on Instagram. Except we weren't satisfied with just posting a photo and using the caption to state the date, we had to find extra work for ourself by:

1. Editing the photo to place text, specifically a hashtag and the day;

2. Publishing first on Tumblr;

3. Getting the Tumblr link, then only publishing on Instagram.

Thank goodness for IFTT and Instagram having the option to post directly to Facebook, otherwise we would have given up sooner or later with all that trouble we found ourself.

So, for 2014, we've captured a moment every day in pictures. Most days were mundane, some days couldn't be captured in just a photo. But the idea there was just to jot down: here, look, today was an experience, don't forget it, don't let the day just go by. Blogging used to be how we kept our memories of what happened (well, this blog has survived up to now) and is probably still one of our best repositories of what we've done. Facebook? Endless scrolling and scrutinising posts if we ever wanted to find something from years past - it's great for the present, not the past (unless you've specifically made a photo album of it). Instagram would be slightly easier provided you've used an unique hashtag to categorise your own photos, and thumbnails are easier to scan compared to blog titles.

Currently we are writing using a Bluetooth keyboard paired to our iPad, which means it isn't easy linking words to events that happened (we guess in this case linking to our Tumblr posts) like we used to do (three years ago). But it would still be good to list down highlights for the year (we'll just update this post later once we refer back to our photos):

To start, we'd stayed on with the Young KL Singers for the third year (since joining back in 2012 for the 10th anniversary production), with the start of the year seeing us perform 2013's production, YKLS.Period, in PenangPac in January, before starting our new production: Incantations. Boardgaming made its way back with a higher frequency when the occasional Fridays saw some members of YKLS coming to YCA for the occasional gaming session. In more choir-related happenings, a bunch of us got together to sing an a capella version of Everything Is Awesome from The Lego Movie. A bunch of us got into the Shake 'n Take craze. Performed and experienced the Yayasan Sime Darby Arts Festival at KLPac, which was a great eye-opener. Followed a bunch of choirmates to the Henessey Artistry event. YKLS then performed in DPAC before heading up to PenangPac a few weeks later to perform, which was an awesome experience with more members driving up this time (and it being a more intensive food trip)! To round up the choir year, we managed to join all the carolling sessions this year at 1 Utama.

We decided to start watching Doctor Who, starting from Series 5, working our way to Series 7 before going back to Series 1-4 to tide us over while we waited for Series 8. Then started Being Human after that, both the BBC and US remake (although only for the first couple of seasons in both cases. Sailor Moon Crystal finally started showing much to our excitment. The Hobbit trilogy finishes and we're left feeling it would have been better off as a two-parter instead.

Chinese New Year this time we experienced our first pun choi. It's been agreed among the TTDIans that birthdays should now be just a makan celebration without the stressful part of pooling and getting presents, and while we managed to avoid celebrating with the January babies (on account on being sick), we celebrated a belated version with the March babies instead. As for the Chief's birthday, we were slightly slow at planning it but managed to pull it off starting with a joint celebration with the TTDIan's, then a quiet date at Way Modern Chinois trying out their truffle roast duck, and pulling off a surprise party with the guys (featuring lots of spinach). There were also a couple of weddings, leaving only a handful of collegemates and schoolmates that haven't tied the knot (and speeches warning said folks that the hengdais are no longer as young and active as they used to be so don't take too long). More friends are also now proud parents although this year we couldn't make it for the full moon celebrations. The Chief also brought us along to attend the gala dinner event of A Journey Through Time.

Played Diablo III (again, only as far as the storyline was concerned). Attended the Professor Layton vs Pheonix Wright launch at Berjaya Times Square. Dropped our portable hard drive containing our iTunes media, and lost most of our recent music and videos (thank goodness our photos were backed up to the laptop instead). Got our first Mac Mini and started moving over to the Mac. Bought not just one, but two Logitech bluetooth keyboards (they are so worth it). Won a Lenovo Yoga tablet running Android OS. Finally found Ultra Street Fighter 4 on sale on Steam.

Made a couple more trips to Penang and a number of trips to Singapore! Finally made full use of our Universal Studios Singapore season pass before it expired. Also, experienced Guangzhou for the first time and once again walked for hours due to excellent weather.

Finally ended the year on a quieter note as we didn't have a Christmas party this year (due to a hectic December), and a simple New Year's Eve with friends for dinner and games.

Gosh. We must say that the photo a day project does help in reminding us of the many things that did happen in 2014! Here's hoping there's plenty more in store for 2015!

Everything Is A(cappella)wesome!

So a few of weeks back alakazen proposed the idea to do an a cappella version of "Everything Is Awesome" after he'd watched the movie 'cos he found the music super catchy couldn't get it out of his head thought it was awesome really liked it. A bunch of us at YKLS were ok to do this, alakazen brought in another friend of his for the beatboxing bits and eloneth came up with the a cappella score, and next thing you know we were at YCA rehearsing around four times a week.

Initially alakazen wanted to get it recorded and uploaded to YouTube within a week (get it out early!) but in the end it was decided to would be better if we better prepared before we recorded and uploaded it.

Two weeks and some eight rehearsals and a recording session later, and we've the finished product!

Kudos to eloneth for the arrangement, alakazen for the gung-ho-ness in getting everyone for the project as well as editing the video and Shy Tim for some awesome beatboxing!

Video Games Live In KL!

Ok the first time we heard of Video Games Live was after when we missed the opportunity to go hear Distant Worlds perform in Sporeland. VGL was coming up in Sporeland and we could actually get tickets, but we weren't too sure about it. One thing was because VGL featured music from loads of video games, including games we've not played like Metal Gear Solid, Kingdom Hearts and Halo.

Went to iTunes and found that they have an album out there, and checked the songs. Out of the lot, we were only really inclined to listen to the Civilization IV Medley. We're not really sure how the other songs would sound, and we aren't even sure if the Civ IV Medley would have Baba Yetu in it.

Anyways we skipped the VGL concert in Sporeland as we weren't too sure of the venue they were performing in and moped over the loss of Distant Worlds but got over it...

Then about a month back lad informed us that VGL was coming to KL. Since they were coming here, we made a spontaneous decision to go and immediately bought tickets for lad, esteban (the two most likely to enjoy video games music among the lot heh), and for Chief and us. And every now and then we would get paranoid that we would forget to bring the tickets on the day itself.

Come last Saturday, we drove everyone down to KL, making a dinnerstop at Yellow Cab near Asian Heritage Row for dinner.

So...we couldn't decide what size pizzas to order, and had the waitresses bring out all the pans so we could see just how large a 10" and a 14" pizza would be, and ended up ordering two 14" pizzas to share among the four of us - an anchovy pizza and a mushroom pizza.

Verdict? Rather good, but rather pricey at over RM40 per pizza heh. And these aren't the meaty options with chicken, beef pepperoni and salami and the likes. We've yet to try those. But they were filling, and the four of us were definitely full after that.

Headed straight to KLCC with barely fifteen minutes to spare! Arrived at the Plenary Hall just in time to seat and let the show start.

What can we say about the concert?

Ninty to ninty-five percent fanboy attendance. Rest, fangirls/girlfriends/wives.



The opening had everyone excited. This concert was one where no one sat quiet throughout the performance. Everyone was cheering and clapping at every point of the show! Hearts were plucked at nostalgic 8-bit games coming up on screen with the music supplied by the orchestra, everyone laughed to see Tetris played as the screen slowly filled up with Tetraminos (accompanied by music from the NES version of the game, oh and there was a choir too! They had to shout 'HEY!' at the end of the Tetris piece!), everyone shouted to see old games pop up.

In between performances there were videos from the composers, a Skype conversation with the creator of Pong, and games! One dude was invited on stage to play Space Invaders, he had to wear a t-shirt with the picture of the spaceship and ran left and right about the stage to shoot the incoming alien invaders. He didn't manage to win the top prize, but the goody bag he got had pretty good premiums too! Portable Space Invaders, an Earthworm Jim CD, he got to keep the Space Invaders t-shirt... The fun bit was the orchestra playing the background beat to Space Invaders, which got consecutively faster as the invaders approached closer, and the audience clapped along as well...

It was when the host asked for the winner of the Guitar Hero competition held earlier that we only found out that we missed out a fair bit going on before VGL started that night. Anyways, the winner was invited up on stage where he got to play Guitar Hero: Van Halen. The song? "Jump", accompanied by the host, Tommy Tallarico on electric guitar, the orchestra and the choir (who shouted "Jump!" at every point in the song hahaha). Initially the winner was supposed to play the song on Hard, but the entire audience made him play it on Extreme - which he did quite well!

So there were music from Metal Gear Solid, Mega Man, Kingdom Hearts, Halo (this one we found the music very good even though we've never seen or played the game before), World Of Warcraft (there are more choral pieces than just A Call To Arms!), Sonic The Hedgehog (the choir even sang the "Sega!" bit at the start!), Super Mario, Shadow Of The Colossus, God Of War, a special appearance by Norihiko Hibino (composer for the Metal Gear Solid songs) playing 'Snake Eater' on the sax, and Laura Intravia dressed up as 'Flute Link' playing a medley of Zelda songs, and at the end...

Tommy (host): The company is...Square Enix!
(Audience goes wild.)
Tommy: The composer...Nobuo Uematsu!
(Audience goes wilder, shouts, cheers and whoops.)
Tommy: The game...Final Fantasy!
(Audience claps, cheers, shouts out their favourite series.)

Jack Wall, that is, we think it's Jack, the conductor, raises up one finger. No response from Tommy. Two fingers. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

Tommy: ...SEVEN!
(Can audience go crazier? Apparently so.)
Tommy: THE SONG!
(Tommy and audience in unison, audience in fevered pitch, we too guiltily shouting along.)
Tommy and audience: ONE! WINGED!! ANGEL!!!

Seriously, has there been such fanaticism ever for an orchestra performance? Even for the Lord Of The Rings Symphony everyone was civil. No screaming fanboy singing along to 'The Bridge Of Khazad-Dum' or 'The Black Rider' for that matter. This was a rock band concert kind of audience reception to an orchestral performance.

There's only eight choir members which meant that they couldn't really be heard that strongly but the sound set up was very good. Lyrics from the original One Winged Angel, with music arrangement from the Advent Children movie with electric guitar bits. Absolutely grand.

For their encore performances, they gave us not only one, but TWO encore songs! First was a forum request for Chrono Trigger, which sent lad straight to heaven as he loves the game and wasn't expecting them to perform it. The second? Castlevania, performed by the orchestra, Tommy and Jack on guitars, Norihiko on sax and Laura on flute.

All in all, an awesome performance. Now...merchandise.

When it comes to musicals we would normally get the programme and probably the CD as souvenirs. But for this event, the programme booklet was RM25 for photos from their past concerts, no text, no credits to the National Symphony Orchestra or the VGL Choir or such. It really didn't feel something worth getting. As for the CD, it was the same one as we would find on iTunes, except almost twice as expensive. Somehow we refrained from getting it too. Could have gotten something else since they had other merchandise, like t-shirts, but we walked away with just our tickets and the event leaflet.

Now it turns out that members of the YKLS Chamber Choir were singing as the choir for VGL! This, we did not know as we decided to take a break this year. Met the bunch of them after the show where they let loose some steam over the short period of time they had to learn the songs, the difficulty of some of the scores...talk shop, basically.

Would we have joined as part of the choir instead of the audience if we knew? In this case, we think we best enjoyed the entire thing as audience. The choir couldn't see the screen to see what was showing when songs were playing, so it was hard to make out why the audience were all so hyped up. The energy may be infectious and you'd feel chuffed up for the performance, but the experience just would not be the same.

Plus, asides from Warcraft's 'A Call To Arms', the chanting from the epic-sounding pieces of Halo, FFVII's 'One Winged Angel', we don't think there was much songs we missed singing. Hmmm if they performed 'Baba Yetu' it might be touch-and-go between audience and choir...

For Distant Worlds, if they need choir members, oooh yes count us in straightaway!

So, will we watch this again? Sometime in the future, yeah!

Carpark Calamities

So, we've decided. This year we're going to take a break from the choir, even tho' this year the Young KL Singers will also be taking things easy and will not be working on producing a show. While it may sound ok to actually continue on with the choir this year because of that, we still think it's time we gave it a break and give priority to other things that have given way the last couple of years, like making sure we don't have any rehearsals causing us to rush off or miss our friend's birthday parties or being able to go for Monday's Combat consistently again.

We might be itchy and end up joining the YKLS for gigs. Who knows. We love the experience with the choir after all.

Speaking of Combat, gym this year started with us heading to Curve for Combat! After sporadic attendance for two years, we shall be able to get back to a regular schedule! About halfway into today's class, what with FCI doing four tracks in a row and us shouting ourself hoarse by track 3 our throat was killing us when we headed to the water fountain to get a drink before plunging back into class. Rather tired after Combat, (and still as sweaty, no change there).

And as we were leaving the car park at E @ The Curve (still better remembered as Cineleisure to us) we got trapped.

Everything was proceeding smoothly with us paying at the Autopay, heading to the car, driving up to the barrier, and as we slotted in our token and prepared to drive out, the barrier didn't budge. So we pressed the intercom button and waited for assistance. The speaker blares out a ringing tone as if we just called for help using a phone.

And then it switched to the engage tone you get when no one picks up.

After almost 10 minutes of repeated stabbing and no one answering, we were losing our temper and decided to head to the office instead. Let some other poor bugger try the machine and see if he gets stuck. All the better if he does too, that way we can have a line of irate people wanting the car park management to resolve matters.

Only...the office was empty too. Hence the unanswered intercom calls.

Our temper wasn't getting any better and it didn't help when we tried the landline number written on the poster suspecting that the phone in the office would start ringing (it didn't, instead we got through to the fax instead) and that, sitting right there just behind the counter on the table for all to see, was a walkie-talkie. We were thinking whoever who's supposed to be manning the office couldn't be responsible enough to even take the walkie-talkie along.

After about 5 minutes we headed upstairs to the information counter, but seeing how it's already after 10pm no one was there. Headed back downstairs to further seethe.

After waiting in front of empty office for another 10 minutes, we see a guard on a bike, waiting outside the door to the carpark looking in at us. Who knows when he appeared there and why he has not dump bike aside and ask us why we were waiting there.

Anyways patrolman got onto walkie-talkie and managed to get office attendant who was upstairs "getting reports". Attendant makes his way downstairs and was very meek, and soon we were on our way home.

Am considering writing nasty letter although think would not get any concessions like free parking for entire year.

Tonight The Super Trouper Lights Are Going To Find Me

When we carol in the concourse area of KLCC for a gig between the Young Choral Academy Singers (called so instead of the Young KL Singers because it comprised of many different choirs) and the brass ensemble from the Malaysian Young Philharmonic Orchestra (MYPO, or was it supposed to be the MPYO, goodness cannot remember).

And we were not expecting a crowd to gather and watch actually! We wonder - considering how we would stop to watch if we were part of the audience in the first place. But to have people taking videos? The pressure is on to make sure that 1) we sing loud enough to be heard over the brass band, 2) we project our voices out so that we could be heard by people upstairs, and 3) we look out more at the audience rather than at our scores.

During the sound balance check where we sang 'Deck The Halls', it was a tad obvious that we didn't hit the required volume in (1), and after 'Deck The Halls' we happen to see Earl Grey on the first floor and sign-languaged asking if we could be heard, to which he negatived our (2), and judging from the number of times we had to snatch glances at the carol lyrics we hope people don't record us failing (3).

Still, the audience are appreciative enough to applaud after each song, and our stint was a fairly short stint that took half an hour or so that we were done by 7pm! This was in a way good for us, as we still needed to go Christmas shopping. Stress.

By the time we've breezed through KLCC and Amcorp Mall we've nailed our sis' and bro-in-law's Christmas present, bringing the list down to almost complete with only dad's present to keep looking for! And we observe that in our Christmas shopping today we spent more than we did in our entire Sporeland trip (not including the accomodation charges and cab fees, but in terms of just spending on stuff alone)!

When I'm On The Stage Tonight

Hmmm there was that one Sunday afternoon when we were on stage during World Choir Day. A very odd World Choir Day, that, as all attending choirs were Chinese, and the entire thing was conducted in Mandarin. Even the YKLS Chamber Choir members that could attend were only the Chinese!

The venue, as we were informed, was (we have to look this up again as it doesn't quite roll off the tongue) the Pusat Perkembangan Ajaran Dewi Kuan Yin Malaysia. Already with such a venue we started wondering just exactly what kind of 'World Choir Day' was this World Choir Day. But, we thought that maybe the organizers decided on the venue due to financial issues (like the Pusat Perkembangan Ajaran Dewi Kuan Yin Malaysia, pant pant, offered the use of their place or something) so we didn't comment much.

Not until we arrived at the place and saw the welcoming commitee of Chinese teens all a-smilin' and lined up on both sides of the entrance in a long line. Something about the way that they stood flanking the stairs and entrance made us want to walk around the building to the back entrance, but we decided to take the front way in the end.

And true enough, all of them started bowing as we walked past, saying "Welcome!" in cheery Mandarin much to our embarassment.

If we were going there as audience we wouldn't have batted an eyelid but we thought since we were going there to perform as part of our musical director's talk, this was a bit too much.

If that didn't confirm how things were going to be for the day, the moment the first fler came on stage and open his mouth, we knew the ching chong ching chong words were going to go through one ear and out the other.

And another thing, we were also probably the youngest choir attending. Looking at the other choir members, it may be that we would automatically call them 'aunty' or 'uncle' by default.

Ok, so we are evil. Well, that was World Choir Day for us then.

And tonight we be heading up a different stage! Although...we don't think calling the KTM Night Train down to Sporeland a stagecoach is appropriate, heh. Now to settle the paranoia of packing everything!

And Suddenly It's Gonna Be

...that we still have another couple of gigs or so for the choir. And after all our talks about freedom from rehearsals and all that, we're still in the choir?

So what happened was that we received an email from our choir assistant director that our choir director will be giving a talk on Malaysian choral music on World Choir Day, and we thought, "There's a World Choir Day?" Still, we ended up saying yes because it didn't look to take up too much time.

And then she sent another email regarding a carolling session, which we initially thought to decline as we would have to take leave to attend and all that, but looking at the dire straits that our finance is at the moment, we just might go for it after all in hopes of getting paid.

We know leaving the choir won't be easy. Wonder how next year will be!

All I Do Is Eat And Sleep And Sing

Actually that should be all we did was eat and sleep and sing and work. Bump-in week just before actual shows meant we all had to be in Actor's Studio Lot 10 by 6.30pm every day (initially bump-in time was 6pm but the parking rates would have bankrupted all the members), get dressed, rehearse songs and dance, have our dinner, and on performance days, get ready for the show after that.

And after the rehearsal/performance, it was to the gym for a quick shower before going for a quick supper (or just changing out of our costumes and heading to sup with friends who came for the show), then heading home to zonk out.

Now that it's all over (freedom, hurrah!), we can get back to doing other stuff!

Like going for BodyCombat and shouting our head off! And other cardio classes in gym!

We've already started with BodyJam last week when Junior told us about the All-Stars BodyJam class that was on on Thursday, where we danced to relatively new releases of Jam for one and a half hours. Interestingly, the only track which we really enjoyed? 'Rich Girl' from BJ34. It's currently BJ50 now.

GOODNESS WE'RE STILL HANGING ON TO TRACKS FROM OVER THREE YEARS AGO! BODYJAM 34 WAS IN THIRD QUARTER 2005!

And not to mention we've got movies to catch up with! Now that there's no more Wednesday evening rehearsals we've already done Astro Boy last Wed when the Chief won free preview tickets, and this week there be some chinese movie and Ninja Assassin to watch!

Speaking of movies, finally we get to chill out on Friday night with the guys for a dvd night! And our choice of movie? Paranormal Activity. After hearing a fair bit about it we thought it would be something good, but it turns out that the copy we got had the toned-down ending, as lad informs us today that there's another version with a bigger thrill factor.

Blair Witch is still far better. Perhaps if lad gets the alternative ending copy of Paranormal Activity we'll all watch it again.

And best yet was having quality time with the Chief for the weekend where we take it easy!

Happiness is tasting the freedom you never knew you lost, even when it is doing something you enjoy.

I Was Sick And Tired Of Everything

Well there were some members who were definitely sick, and after each rehearsal everyone was tired.

With the rainy season here again and it raining almost every day, there's been a bug going around again and a few people have been sniffling and hacking, especially audible after we've run through some songs and were waiting for feedback from our musical director or director or choreographer.

One bunch of members who are sick include members of the Red Myvi (Shuku, Louie [oh cannot resist using his first name!] and Carrie), as from one member getting sick soon all three of them were sniffling, hacking and such like, Shuku has gone from singing alto to bass overnight.

We could not resist using the term, 'An incubus of viral plague,' when refering to the Red Myvi.

Even us! So far all we've felt was a slight soreness in our throat when straining to project our voice to the end of the theatre.

Other than that, everyone's been doing their best, such that after every rehearsal at the Actor's Studio everybody goes home tired. Singing can be very tiring!

And today, it begins! This year's performance! Rhythmic Roots at The Actor's Studio Lot 10! If you ever wonder how music from the various ethnicities and cultures from the Asian countries sound like, drop by to find out!

We can almost taste the freedom after that!

Our Rhythmic Roots

We think we'll just put up the ad for Young KL Singer's upcoming performance as it is for now.

Great Eastern
presents

The Young KL Singers
in
Rhythmic Roots
celebrating the cultural and musical heritage that is Malaysia.

Last year, we explored the development of jazz. This year, we are exploring our cultural roots.

As in years past, The Young KL Singers (YKLS) will once more be staging another exciting upcoming production entitled “Rhythmic Roots”, from 12th to 15th November 2009, in the Actors Studio, LOT 10.

Our group of 30 passionate, music-loving performers enters its 11th production since its inception in 2002, after achieving outstanding success in previous shows including the sold-out performances of “Simply Andrew Lloyd Webber” and “Breaking It Down!”. Two of our performances, “Through the Barricades” and “Move It!”, have won the Kakiseni Audience Choice Award in the Boh Cameronian Arts Awards in 2003 and 2007 respectively. In all 10 productions, the choir has performed a wide repertoire of music, ranging from Broadway musical pieces by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Rogers and Hammerstein, to the colourful rhythms and rhymes of jazz. After many years of primarily Western repertoire however, The YKLS were inspired to discover our own roots by looking to the music originating within the multiracial cultures of Malaysia and other Asian countries. This became the impetus for this year’s production, aptly entitled “Rhythmic Roots”.

“Rhythmic Roots” is a journey through the various ethnicities and cultures of Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, China and India, and our indispensable contributions to our own cultural heritage. Baba and Nyonya folk songs, Malay and Indian traditional pieces, and songs tracing the development of Chinese culture in Malaysia from its mainland China origins are some of the highlights that will definitely be heard in this upcoming production. It will be directed by Joe Hasham, a multi-award winning director, actor and writer and his involvement in “Rhythmic Roots” is something that the YKLS is very excited about!

One thing that makes this production unique amongst all other past YKLS productions is that for the first time, all four co-founders of the choir are working together. “Rhythmic Roots” is truly a very special show which emphasizes the importance of origins – where we come from, who we are, and the many, many influences and cultures which have shaped Malaysia’s musical heritage into what it is today. This is definitely something not to be missed.

Songs that would be sung during the show:
Aeyaya Balano Sakh-Kah-D (Konkani/Indian)
Yuet Kwong Kwong (Chinese Cantonese)
Gai Bintang (Indonesian Madurese)
Pok Pok Alimpako (Philipino Maranao)
Janger (Indonesian)
Modern Youngters (Chinese Hokkien)
Soleram (Indonesian)
Lolo Re Babu (Konkani/Indian)
Loy Kra Tong (Thai)
Wau Bulan (Malaysian)
Kami (Malaysian)
Bua Kaaw (Thai)
Sin Sin Si Batu Manikam (Indonesian Tapanuli)

happening at:
The Actors Studio@Lot 10
12 - 14 Nov@9pm
Charity Matinée: 14 Nov@3pm
15 Nov@3pm

tickets:
rm43 (centre seat) rm 33 (side seat)
call/walk in: TAS@Lot 10 box office - 03 2142 2009 03 22143 2009
walk in only: klpac box office@Sentul Park, Axcess@Head Office(Jln Semangat), 1 Utama, Alamanda Putrajaya

artistic and music director - Susanna Saw San San
choreographer - Lakshman Balakrishnan
assistant music director - Tracy Wong Wei Wen
producer - Denise Kong Hsu-Pei
director - Joe Hasham

LUCKY DRAW:
4 prizes to be won at every show*
(Victoria Station dining vouchers and Nescafé Gold hampers)
*excluding charity matinee


title sponsor
Great Eastern

supported by
Zanders, Creative Clicks, Victoria Station, Nescafé Gold, HSBC in the Arts and The Actors Studio Teater Rakyat.

http://www.theactorsstudio.com.my/

Goodness we've less than a month to go!

Back On Top!

Now last weekend the Actor's Studio opened at Lot 10, with an Opening Gala performance on Saturday night and a Mixed Bill of performances on Sunday afternoon (plus more this whole week actually). Very quickly now, there was a drum circle bit at the start to entertain the folks while they had drinks out on the rooftops before coming inside the Actor's Studio, the Hands Percussion played drums, the Young KL Singers sang a couple of songs, a Butoh dance by the Nyoba Kan dance company, Douglas Lim had everyone laughing, a Short + Sweet Malay play of non-epic proportions, a dance by Michael Voon and other people not from the dance genre, more songs from the KLPac Sinfonietta's String Ensemble and baritone Eddie Chin, and to round it all up an Indian classical dance by Ramli Ibrahim and Guna.

The first thing of note: quite a number of performances (especially when it comes to dance) have people showing off their abs. And they've got great abs. Like the butoh danceer, although even if you click for a close up it's probably not so clear from this pic.

Check below for a vid of the drum circle - members from YKLS and Actor's Studio each took a musical instrument, and played a steady tempo creating an awesome sound! Then when everyone was ready the drum circle procession began - led by a butoh dancer from Nyoba Kan, the drum circle players and some belly dancers whom we cannot credit because we have no idea who they were.



Taking videos played merry hell with our iXus in two ways. Memory space and battery life. Memory space because we've never really fiddled with the different settings when it comes to video taking, thus a 5 minute video like this actually took up 600MB. Thankfully we'd Windows Movie Maker to help shrink it down with little compensation in terms of resolution. Have yet to play about with iMovie...because we still don't own a Mac.

And by the time the butoh dancers were performing our iXus started shutting down and telling us to change the battery pack. Thankfully after a while we could turn it on again and take more photos and videos, and the rest of the time we took photos with our L'Amour instead.

Maybe not buff abs from the members of the Hands Percussion, but their costume got us curious. As the Chief points out to us, normally for drummers they wear sleeveless costumes.

Dato Faridah and Joe. Host and hostess and the people behind the Actor's Studio.

And the man who helped keep the Actor's Studio going after they left Bangsar Shopping Centre - Tan Sri Francis Yeoh.

Then we have Douglas Lim on stage for laughter. He also points out to the folks that the stage is a Hanamichi thrust stage, which is something like a fashion runway stage. This allows for the audience to be right up close to the performance. Okay, so Douglas Lim doesn't show much skin for his performance.

The short Malay play, Adiwijaya's 'Allah' performed by Abdul Qahar Aqilah and Tuan Faisal Azmy. It was in Malay, using vocab that's even a bit out of our depth (but yes we would understand even a statement like, "Puki hanya tahu terima jantan saja!") but after watching it three times we get the whole picture. The first time watching it, the ending was definitely a shocker!

Okay, so the two of them don't reveal much skin either.



Michael Voon's Diaries '09 had dancers who aren't dancers by profession (we think). First time watching everyone we had the impression that they were all martial artists. Energetic performance. We were impressed that Michael could dance with so much energy that you'd never know he had a motor accident and was limping noticiably just last year when he directed YKLS's Breakin' It Down!

Oh and for the other dancers. Maybe it's because they aren't from a dance background, save gal Joey, who we think does ballet, their abs are more like what you'd see on guys the gym with their 6-pack potato buns.

Sutra Dance Theatre with Ramli Ibrahim and Guna. Their moves were very strong yet graceful. And Ramli Ibrahim was definitely still in shape, and his abs were similar to that of the butoh dancer from the drum circle procession!



And that wraps up the performances for the weekend! There's still some shows going on this week (free!) for those interested in checking the place out!

Our 30 Minutes Of Californian Celebrityhood

And it happened on a Sunday. And after the Mixed Bill performances for the opening of the new Actor's Studio @ Lot 10 too!

It all started with a rumble, and we knew our time had come. We had better get ready before the doors open and catch us unprepared!

Sigh. We still don't know if it was lunch. First the Chief had the urge to go then us, but at different times. The Chief went before rehearsals, just as we arrived at Lot 10 and for us as we were done and was about to head to Pavilion for a snack.

Anyways, with Celebrity Fitness (previously California Fitness) just next to the Actor's Studio at the rooftops of Lot 10 (the layout may lead to some humourous moments, where people looking for the Actor's Studio might just wander around and end up looking through the glass into California Fitness' yoga studio) we considered our options.

We could use the toilets in the Actor's Studio. They're still relatively new and clean, the booths in the public-access toilets are quite spacious, or we could use the smaller toilets in the changing room. And there are shower cubicles too, only we did not bring along the necessities like soap and a towel.

Then there is the nice toilet in Starhill, with soft ambient lights, an attendant to pump water for you to wash your hands, and scented candles.

Or if not Starhill, then those in Marriott or Westin. Hotel toilets pass the Janvier Hygiene Standard when it comes to public toilets...well, most hotel toilets.

But we decided on using the gym toilets because: it's an opportunity to have a look inside California/Celebrity Fitness Lot 10 branch, plus we could take a quick shower to cool off after our show.

And so we strode in, got ourself towels and headed into the men's locker room. Our valuables were already with the Chief, as the lockers have no lock and require members to bring their own strong padlock, so all we had to do stuff our clothes and shoes inside a locker, and we would only be in trouble if someone did decide to swipe our clothes.

Interestingly there is no changing room. There is definitely much more lockers than we expected, and it's a large and spacious locker room. It's interesting how the shoe lockers can double up as seats.

Once we've relieved ourself it was time for a shower. And here we get to see the shower stalls with shower curtains as only described to us before. Well well. On the upside, we like that it's spacious and the tiling is nice. There's the familiar plastic soap/shampoo/face wash dispenser, although in the stall we chose the labels were unfortunately missing so we had no idea what we were using.

But the curtains! It definitely only fitted with a hint of a slight peekable gap at either side. And no way to fasten it on either side too! On the side of the stall were only a small hook to hang your towel, and that is outside the stall so we'd to hope no one had the naughty intention to steal that while we were showering.

Or feign innocence and yank the curtains open while we were showering, pretending that the stall was not in use.

Hmmm. Should we wash our hair? Perhaps not. We don't have our hair gel or clay with us.

Done with our shower! Time to dry off and change back into our clothes. We reach for our towel and...yes, it's still there. We dry off, and head back to our locker. Our clothes are still there. Great. We dress up, put on our socks and shoes and...

...drat, we forgot our towel card. Got to take off our shoes and socks, and head back into the shower stalls. Thankfully no one has entered it so we could get our card and head back to our locker. Drying our feet and heading to use the hairdryers we notice the hair gel and hand lotion dispensers and thought, drat, we could have washed our hair after all.

Returning the towels to the towel counter we headed out to find the Chief, get our stuff and head on for yu tiao in soya milk.

And so ends our 30 minutes of Californian Celebrityhood.

Janvier Soldat And The Training Regimen

So now our timetable's getting more packed whatwith three YKLS rehearsals a week at KLPac. Our gym schedule has been juggled from it's usual Monday slot onto a more fixed Tuesdays, Thursdays and/or Fridays, and Sundays, although this means that every day's spent out till late without often going home early for dinners or even for a night spent home doing nothing. Unless we needed to head home to pack for the gym, and end up napping a while before heading to the gym and then it ends up too late because we'd slept for over 2 hours...

Not to mention, if so happens if anything pops up, it'll be our gym time that we have to forgo.

Interestingly this year with a different director, a choreographer, and someone to teach us breathing exercises to boot for the upcoming YKLS production, we're bound to have some form of workout every week!

On our gym days, we'll be mucking about at the resistance machines and the free weights. We're cutting down a lot on our cardio classes (FCI has already complained that we don't go for his classes any more) but interestingly enough we don't seem to be missing much of BodyJam nowadays too...we attribute it to the fact that the choreography isn't as fun as a couple of years back. And it's rather a relief to be able to work out anytime without having to beat the jam just to make it in time for classes too.

And on rehearsal days...we're brutally abused by our choreographer who makes us all do Yoga stretching exercises.

We're definitely past our prime for Yoga. Our hamstrings, they scream like a violin in untrained hands.

So it looks like we'll be looking at a timetable like such:

Mon: Yoga
Tues: Gym
Wed: Yoga
Thurs: Gym
Fri: Optional Gym time
Sat: Yoga
Sun: Gym

We Are One

We were eating brunch with the Chief at a coffeeshop when we leaned forward and beckoned to whisper something into the Chief's ear...

The Chief, wondering if we wanted to tell a secret or point out surreptitiously of someone doing something ghastly like picking nose while eating using hands, leaned forward to listen...

We whispered...

"I came from the dreamtime, from the dusty red soil plains..."

...and we got slit eyes and a light scowl (you know, where you'd use the (-_-) emoticon) before the Chief continued eating.

See, we've all been practising for KLPac's Australia Month, where we're singing with the KLPac Sinfonietta (or now known as the KLPac Orchestra) for In The Style Of Down Under! When we first got our scores and listened to the song, it soon became rather evident that we all were more patriotic as Australian than Bolehlanders. For one, the Australian Medley comprising of 'I Am Australian' and 'I Still Call Australia Home' are definitely much more tuneful and catchier. Watch the Qantas ad that made it popular, we're singing something similar.





So we're working once more with a conductor, and this time the KLPac Orchestra's conductor is a total opposite of our LotR Symphony conductor. A very friendly fellow, and easy to follow his conducting (admittedly we think all conductors have to sorta do some mental brake, and switch gears to make sure they gesticulate enough for us all to understand too).

As for the KLPac Orchestra, well, it's always a pleasure to be able to listen to an orchestra up close, and more than once. Up close like our seats behind the orchestra, those are good - you get to really hear each section not only as they play the melody, but also as they accompany the melody. And you get to listen to it every day, so you can (if you like) focus on the horns on one day, the strings on another...it's a great experience.

So of course we all had dress codes. The orchestra members are all donned in coats and all, while us choir members made do with all black - with a touch of satin.

Of course, even though it's just a scarf/sash, the possibilities to dress up with it is endless...

One question we get asked normally by friends is, "Eh, you all got get paid or not?" For this event? We do get dinner every day before our performance at night (although why they get us chillified fried rice or spicy noodles together with fried chicken to kill our throats we have no idea), and all of us were given a couple of tickets for the Gala Night Opening to give to others. We do hope that there's programme books and other whatnots too but that's probably on the last day itself. We also had payment on our Gala Night!

Pale ale...

...and white wine courtesy of the Australian High Commision.

In Dreams

Unlike our YKLS performance, this time we only did three (four, if you count the open rehearsal) shows. But each show turned out to be much more exhausting compared to our YKLS performance, even when all that we did was sit, stand, and sing.

Preparation for the performance was tight, as we only had less than four months to do so whatwith having to learn our parts, work on pronunciation (since we're singing in not only Sindarin, but also Quenya, a bit of Adunaic, Black Speech, Khuzdul and Old English), know our standing and sitting cues, work on timing, intonation, identify cues for when to prepare to sing, dress rehearsals, and then the week of the performance itself there was to be the rehearsal with the conductor and with the orchestra.

And since this is the first time we're working with an orchestra to boot, it's a whole new experience.

Obvious signs men don't use lipgloss.

For our dress code we'd the satin attire to wear, and were also required to put on coloured lip gloss so that we all don't look like pale white faces.

Forced to get a stick, after a couple of applications this is how the tip looked like.

Then we thought, ah heck it, it's not like we'll be using it much.

The orchestra conductor is indeed a very scary figure.
And there's differences between our choir conductor and the orchestra conductor. For the main thing, the orchestra conductor actually pays more attention to the orchestra members compared to the choir, or, focuses on different music parts at different sections. We watched as he kept shifting focus from directing trumpets to give a more militaristic feel to getting the timpani to beat in five strong BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM rather than a gradually louder boomBoomBoomBOOMBOOM to getting the flutist to play more playfully or the strings to really play out of tune to...sigh.

So we learns that the conductor does more than keep the tempo for a piece, he also gives the piece direction and flow. This meant that even though the tempo for a section is marked as fast, he'd slow down here and there to give the piece stronger emphasis.

Why scary? Because when it's not to his liking, the conductor will give a very very black look.

It also didn't help that we didn't understand the way he conducted tempo initially - and was generally out of sync quite a fair bit during our rehearsal.

There's probably never many rehearsals for/with the orchestra.
Because as professional paid musicians they are able to sight-read. All it may take is just a couple of go-throughs to get the feel of the entire symphony while the rest of us not-musically-trained people have to make do with listening to the soundtrack or the symphony recording. And all this while our rehearsals were done with piano reduction (we'd Tracy play, what would require an entire orchestra, on piano).

So we'll say that we haven't got our fill of listening to the orchestra play the entire symphony - even though we got to listen to them play five times, while others could only come for the show once.

This is The Lord Of The Rings Symphony, not Soundtrack.
Which everyone will of course compare to because 'it sounds exactly the same as the soundtrack!'. There's a certain difference in emphasis or emotions here - for The Seduction Of The Ring the conductor tells the Children's Choir to feel very sad, or the ladies that, "From this point you have found your 'Elberethgheel', and then from this point you must sing sad, for you have lost your 'Elberethgheel'."

Many Meetings - The Passing Of The Elves

The entire phrase for that bit actually goes "A Elbereth Gilthoniel".

Soloist parts were suppose to sing it as it is printed on the score, and not follow the soundtrack version. Only once we understood that the conductor controls the overall pulse of the piece and that the tempo does not strictly follow the score, then we understood why it's important for the soloist to follow what's written on the score and not improvise.

Also, the symphony doesn't have all the instruments (and musicians skilled enough to use them) that was used for the movie soundtrack. Minor changes were required, and thus we had a taste of a slightly different version from what we know.

When you sing loud, the orchestra plays louder.
And from the beginning of rehearsals we were told this already. Then we'll have to sing louder. Then they play louder. Or so we were told.

Thankfully in our case the symphony was made so that for most of the choir parts the orchestra was muted.

Durin's Song & The Balrog

And when it came for the men to shine in Movement II, the orchestra made us give more volume and energy then when we sounded in rehearsals. That, and the conductor glared and told us, "Men...the orcs have bitten your heads off, and I am the orcs."

Orchestra music never sounded so clear.
One thing is because we were sitting behind the trumpets section. But we could hear each section much more clearly than from the soundtrack. From the timpani banging out a strong beat, to the percussionist giving a continual crescendo-decrescendo beat in Gollum's Song to the celeste beating a playful tune in Regarding Hobbits, to the trumpets playing out of tune for when Isengard sieges Helm's Deep in The Hornburg...to our favourite - listening to the strings play in Into The West.

Which brings us to the final point...

We had the best seat during the whole performances.
Oh yes. Our only complain about our seat is that we couldn't see the screen overhead showing scenes of Alan Lee's sketches throughout the performances.

And we can still hear the music in our head. We're definitely glad to have been part of this.

Into The West

And so we've done an open rehearsal and the first evening for The Lord Of The Ring Symphony. And it doesn't fail that, each time we come to near the end we gets a tad touched.

It's somewhat like how l'agneau orange puts it (more cut-paste again here!):

l'agneau orange: so we watches lotr AGAIN over the weekend
3 and 2
with commentary this time (yes our nerdiness is overwhelming)
pippin n merry were funny as expected
wat we din expect was theoden being funny
Janvier: oh we hasn't done commentry for 3 yet
and we still hasn't own 2
l'agneau orange: we does em backwards
if we does 3 last it;ll be too sad
so in 3
there were close up shots of legolas riding
Janvier: too sad???
l'agneau orange: and pippin was like "whos that? hes beautiful"
Janvier: hahaha
l'agneau orange: merry agress
then shot to aragorn
"ahhhh and hes beautiful too"
Janvier: hahahaha
l'agneau orange: "but in a scary way"
haha
Janvier: lol
l'agneau orange: and miranda otto was just gushing abt vigo mortensen :P
she was like "theres me looking at a blue screen here....theres nothing out there so i wanst looking at gorgeous aragorn"
and saying how the muddier he is the better he looks :P
oh oh and there was this part when theoden and aragorn were really close together talking
and theoden says for one shot viggo kisses the tip of his nose
lol
theoden aka bernard hill says
the next day a make up girlpasses him a note and asks him to pass that to viggo
the note says "if you kiss me on the nose i'll be yours forever"
hahhahahah

Well we don't watch the trilogy backwards but we started finding the music for the Grey Haven bits to be a bit touching now. Partly 'cos we hum along to the music where elves leave Middle-Earth to sail to the west (and there's the feeling that things are coming to an end). Speaking of things coming to an end, when we do reach the final bit where the soloist sings 'Into The West', it does capture that sense that, it's now finally at the end of the journey, you can rest (the guitar and violin strumming greatly set the mood)...

And yes, after every exhausting two and a half hours, the prospect of rest is very enticing...

Lay down
Your sweet and weary head
Night is falling
You have come to journey’s end
Sleep now
Dream—of the ones who came before
They are calling
From across a distant shore...

Weekend Warehouses, Choir Camwhoring & Farming Fanatics

Interestingly ever since we've introduced Chief to shoppingnsales for updates, it seems as if there's been some warehouse sale to check out every week or so! So just last weekend it was DKSH's Warehouse Stock Clearance, and the Chief saw a few things of interest from the list of things on sale, one of them being a...Morgan DVD player that can record stuff (or so it says) going for RM100. No, we don't see anything that says it's Blu-Ray compatible or has HD output.

Seeing that the Chief needed to work on Saturday morning, we volunteered to go over in the morning, take a look at the stuff and probably try to hold onto a DVD player till the Chief arrives around noon. Well it'll mean that we would need a wake up call, but once we've a wake up call we'd be heading over to check out the warehouse sale too. Judging from the list of things out for clearance, we don't think we would be buying much for ourself. Not till we start becoming a homemaker.

Come Saturday morning and we get our wake up call, and made good time to DKSH. Found the stuff, picked up a Rubbermaid tupperware for Aidan and a icepack for drinks while browsing around, then decided to just buy the DVD player because we can't reserve it. You know how it is lah: don't buy, then later everyone else buys and no more stock. Buy, then next thing you know Chief says don't want.

We decided to make things easy with a third option: Buy, if Chief doesn't want (or by the time Chief comes to buy it there's no more stock), bundle as Christmas present.

So we got the stuff from DKSH, headed back to TTDI for breakfast, headed to pick the Chief up to go back to the DKSH warehouse sale so the Chief could check out what else was there, then after that it was to iKea to walk a bit, then we sent the Chief back to the workplace and we were off home. Needed to get ready for a gig the YKLS had at the JW Marriott.

The YKLS had a gig to perform for (if we're not wrong) the French Chamber of Commerce's annual dinner, and so some 26 of us were there to perform pieces from our Breakin' It Down performance. So there we were at Marriott by 5.30pm, only to rehearse at 7ish for our performance at 10.30pm. What did we do to while away the time?

See, while Yin2 was having her hair done, she wanted before and after pictures. So she got us to go grab her camera and start snapping away. Point-and-click digicam in hand and a roomful of camwhores, we got rather out of control...

Started off with taking a photo of Yin2 while having her hair done...

Then the camwhoring began after we started taking solo shots of everyone. When it came to Adrienz, it went on to photos by the door and corner photos...then everyone started getting into the picture, us included (hey we want our bit of fun too!).

Then we went on to product placement. With us photographing using Yin2's camera, and joeRY giving artistic direction to Adrienz the model holding Datin's Gucci bag.

Then there was more dynamic takes.

Sectional group shots. Here be tenors.

Then when we were thirsty, it was out to get some drinks (once all the French guests were in the dining hall). Even then there's photos.

Well at the end of the night we had a surprise celebration for our Music Director, S4 as it was her birthday that day. Was a bit of a job trying to convince her that the organizers wanted us waiting backstage first - members had to sing songs from past productions or something to keep her entertained. When a few of us got the champagne and cupcakes ready we heard someone give a starting key, and then we'd walked in with the cupcakes and everyone burst out into the birthday song - English, Malay, Mandarin and Cantonese, but no French because no one knew the lyrics.

Come Sunday the Chief had other appointments so we decided to do lunch at Mages and meet up with members of the Agricola Association. Ever since we had our orientation meeting courtesy of psike and Ryan the Sunday before, we knew we would need to attend a few more meetings to understand the Agricola culture. Ryan told us that we were likely to lose focus halfway through Agricola, which may be quite true (unless we have time to memorize all the phases, Minor Improvements, Major Improvements, Occupations whatnot).

Our initial thoughts after our first time? It's Farming Caylus.

With three people the flow is different. Then later on Uncle Tan, Wong and his friend KeeSeong (we think) joined psike and us for one more round. And oh goodness farming was so much more difficult. Different options to take and resources were so scarce! Still needed to make food to feed the family, expand the hut for more rooms, rear sheep and other livestock, sow grain and vegetables, sprog more family members...

We'll be back for more next time we suppose!

Sunday ended with a dinner meeting at Treats Cafe before heading to 'Vin's for DVD Nite. Beer and Wanted. Farfetched but fun.

Shoes Everlasting

The thing about this year's YKLS performance was that there was more showmanship compared to the one we watched last year. Michael's choreography had us moving lots especially for In The Mood and Mack The Knife. But choreography wasn't the only thing - there was the attire to take into account.

Now while we understand the importance of attire (and uniformity of everybody's attire), it was a bit of a sticking point where we needed to buy new pants and shoes. Would have thought that we would be able to find something that would match whatever criteria in our wardrobe, but when we were told white pants and light-coloured shoes...

We've only one pair of white pants, a linen pair from Giordano that we wear for casual use (and thankfully it was suitable enough) but knowing that it might not be able to withstand five sweaty performances we knew we had to get a spare pair of white pants. And as for our shoes, well, we were told that our Reebok cross-trainers were too dark (due to plenty of black areas).

OK, so our shoe collection is rather limited. One pair Crocs, two pairs of leathers, our Reebok cross-trainers, these be all we own and wear. Yes yes our gym shoes also be our casual shoes. Thankfully for all that we sweat we don't suffer sweaty feet and so our shoes never give us any problems. The main reason we've never bought any more shoes?

The shoe cupboards were all full. Serious. Oh well there weren't any nice cheap shoes that caught our eye as a 'must get' too.

Still. For the sake of the production, we'd to get new togs. And for getting new togs to match the production attire, comes the question: do we get something cheap that will do just for the production, or do we pay more for something that we would wear even after the production? You know how it is.

So we began searching at The Curve. Manage to get ourselves a pair of white pants from Orlando after walking around Curve, Cineleisure and Ikano about three times. The pants were comfortable and suitable for work or casual wear. The cheap, single-use alternative? A pair of white jeans we saw in FOS, which looked suitable until we tried them on. Low rise, skinny jeans are not us.

Shoes, however, weren't so easy. Seeing that we needed light-coloured shoes, we decided to go canvas. And asides from Bata and Crocs, all we ever found within those three malls were sports shoes. We were seriously contemplating the Bata school shoes at one point. But then we were suggested to try Sungei Wang for shoes, as some other members were also getting their shoes there.

We were a tad apprehensive. Sungei Wang is okay so long as we hide in the arcades or stay for a short while just to search for video games. But over four hours, having to hunt for shoes? Luckily we think all the lalas and ahbengs either have left to haunt Times Square, or maybe we were too concentrated on finding that perfect pair of canvas shoes, but we didn't have too much of an overdose of lalabengness. Mild rash maybe, no anaphylaxis.

And we found our shoes. Yay us.

Oh well there was that bit of undecisiveness between this pair and another slightly cheaper Converse ones (which didn't have the size for the colour we found suitable), and the Chief had to tolerate our running back and forth between the two different stores while we decide. And the Chief already knows us well enough that, from the first time we set our eyes on the Everlasts those will be the shoes we were getting. The rest of the day spent walking to different shoe shops was just filler.

Amazing that the Chief, accurate on the prediction, could still be so patient as to follow us as we browsed shop after shop for hours. Then again, we're talking about someone who made 56 missed calls in order to wake us up (shy and still dare bring up this topic). Don't think that would ever happen again tho', that amount of missed calls.

So anyways, now we'll have to make sure that new pants and shoes see a fair bit of use now that the production is done!