Saturday, July 26, 2008
concert '08
AT LONG LAST. Alright so it's been nearly a week since concert, but the entire day's been appearing and reappearing so vividly in my mind day after day it sometimes freaks me out. Suppose almost everyone else in CO's experiencing the same strong concert withdrawals. :)I expect that this will be a sort of recount of what happened during concert peppered with (by my standards) emoness.
Uh. Where to start?
Oh yeah. The big day.
20july2008;
Finished off daji and chuiguan's notes about half an hour before I left for school. Was close to laughing when koh told me how she got stranded at the school gate. That's what you get from being too early [: Lol. All thirty-odd CO people plus lulaoshi were frantically packing stuff and checking instruments, it was pretty hectic. I love the wonderful mike in the KS Chee, it wasn't off so ginteng yuyue and I were doing nonsense stuff there for a bit. Was using yuyue's sms-flooded phone when we got a super urgent call from simei telling me to bring along stace's chuida shirt from the storeroom. Well done koh for remembering to retrieve the shirt much earlier than baomoomoo did. : D
Yuyue and I think we have some sort of mild obssessive compulsive disorder 'cause we kept checking our bags before leaving for VCH. By the time we finished loading and unloading the whole lot of instruments and bottled water a couple of us were so sian that we couldn't speak. =_= and uh simei jiaqian and I came up with a weird rhyme inspired by the sec1 backstage helpers' sec1 orientation shirt:
aspire to inspire, inspire to perspire, perspire to respire, respire to transpire, TRANSPIRE TO SPIRE AHAHAHAHA.
And the rest of the day was probably the best moments I had with shengsuo ever. How we made ourselves so comfortable in our very own dressing room, sleeping on the dressing table, sleeping UNDER the dressing table, locking each other out, randomly losing bags, shoes, socks and even shaopians, and MASS CHANGING. We all lunched right at the top of the outdoor spiral staircase at VCH, where we all screamed because of one hairy black pigeon that probably wanted to stay with us if we hadn't screamed so much. All I know was that I didn't really enjoy the food (except the coke I shared with wenting) 'cause it had a bloody oily fried chicken wing, and more so because I was already a bundle of nerves by then. But I wasn't hungry though. Most of us weren't.
Rehearsals commenced straight after lunch, everyone was scrambling back to the dressing room to mass change into our CO costume. People were screaming "eh I can't find the zip!" and "eh I haven't even taken off my shirt!" and mine- "eh I think I wear wrong side already." After that we grabbed our instruments and rushed out. And when I settled up at the highest platform with the rest of shengsuo, I just couldn't help but feel so much emotions just rushing out left right and center. It's like, at last, after dreaming of it for nearly three years, I'm up there, we're all up there, pretty much ready to give it our best shot. Honestly the rehearsals almost made me cry because they frightened me, it may have been because I'm SL and I just felt I had to be responsible for anything that went wrong- including the dreaded freaking pitch problem. But to be very frank, suona's pitch was completely off, it wasn't up to normal standards and it certainly drove me crazy. Dingding was super worried I think, because he went over to check our pitch and went to fix anqi's gaosuo and shaopian. Zhongsuo was quite off too. Probably all of us were very, very, very nervous. But I think pitch is the one thing that could kill me. Molou was good though, everything went just fine.
MASS CHANGING part two began when we all had to change into chuida shirts for jiang jun ling. I must emphasize that NOBODY SAW ANYTHING THAT SHOULDN'T BE SEEN, despite sunying's suggestive proclamations- "I can see you!". But that was coz she was standing at the mirror and she must've seen faint silhouettes of changing shengsuo-ers in the dark. Anqi wore her shirt the wrong way. Heehee. After changing we went to join the long queue at the makeup station (i.e. the backstage corridor). Cassandra's pro mum and all her pro assistants came over to help, and they really did a good job on everyone even though the makeup was abit thick for my liking. The hair was totally beehive. Xianyue and diyinbu people filed into the concert hall looking like super glamorous hairspray actresses. :) While we were queuing up esther was freaking us out with her random hello kitty-ness, yuyue and I were playing our favourite haidai in the awfully cheena way. And then we met laobao, jiali and fiona! :D who came back early to look see and help with MAKEUP.
Chuida rehearsal was fine, but the lining up and taifeng were totally nonexistent, except probably for a couple of people and yingting and limrei the two young strong lead players! Wanglaoshi called off our victory screech (more like a victory call) at the end, which totally pissed me and koh off alot. But anyway.
While the rest of chuiguan went off to do makeup I got kidnapped by three undercover makeup artists. Seriously I had no idea yall were that good at makeup. Kinda felt like I was undergoing surgery without anaesthesia, with fiona and laobao trying to figure out what to do with my very uncooperative eyes, boss doing blusher for me and jiali the makeup consultant who thankfully did not join in the undercover makeup surgery. And baomeili at the side laughing manically. :D uh. Honestly they did a very, very, very, very good job, they managed to transform my kangkong eyeshadow into something quite nice, with two shades of green (: The downside: my mum now goes "you better learn how to put on your own makeup for FAM huh, see, people only one year two years older than you can do makeup so well already." Right. But the undercover makeup surgery was super fun though. dear crazy seniors. hahah :D
Just less than an hour to go before concert, and everyone was either camwhoring or getting scared. I've never seen shengsuo so nervous and yet determined at the same time before. Suona people were blowing away, brenda anqi and claire were memorizing jiang jun ling, etc. Just twenty minutes before concert my hands were going all clammy, didn't eat any of the snacks 'coz I just wasn't in the mood. Grrrrrrr nerves. somehow I thought it was even worse than last year's piano exam. And then concert began.
Seeing so many many many people staring at us was kind of cool, because when those chairs were empty the whole auditorium seemed so much smaller. I couldn't find mum dad yiying and leng but I saw all the seniors sitting upstairs. I liked our tajike and qinwang very much, overall and in terms of pitch it was SO MUCH BETTER than usual. Can't believe I didn't screw the uber high gaosuo part, when wls was going to cue us I blew as well as I could, half expecting the first note to squeak and die off, but it didn't. Koh's dizi solos were pretty pretty good too. Brenda and jiaqian sounded incredibly wonderful for their zhongsuo solos in qinwang and tianshan, it was almost too good to be true. Well done you two :) Jiangjunling was much better too, and although there were a few slight screwups here and there, it didn't matter much because we did great overall. And zheng lao shi approved of our victory call, he kind of liked it too, so we did it loud and proud at the end. :) HOI! The rest of the dazu songs were great too, hongloumeng and tianshan especially. Molou suddenly sounded great, and before it started I heard a "GO BAO MOO MOO" and uh something that some people shouted which I shall not say here >: ) ____ to the max. *giggles* Those 160 bars of idleness during molou made me ponder alot... and then it was almost our turn to play, after the gaohu part. All I remember was my heart thumping so hard, and that brenda, jiaqian, wenting, xinyi, anqi and I were all tapping our feet to keep time and we felt the whole platform shaking like crazy. But we did great in the end, which is probably one of rgco's biggest accomplishments for concert. Well concert's sort of an accomplishment in itself innit?
The encore songs. Juhuatai and tajike. Kinda screwed one or two notes in the ttk-added zhongsuo solo, but I guess it's an improvement, considering the part got added the day before. zhengchaoji laoshi is the best. The ultimate conductor. Hm. (: Tajike was so unexpected, if ttk didn't mouth the words "tajike" to the whole orchestra, we'd probably be going HUH. And it just occurred to me when I was playing halfway that it'd be the very last song we'd be playing together with the rest of the whole CO.......... and then it'd be byebye CO for all the secfours. Which is very, very sad. ):
I think concert '08 was the best concert we've done ever. Okay so I'm not in much place to say that since this is the second of two concerts I've done with rgco, but who cares, because for me, and for probably alot of people, it's gotta be the best ever. BEST TO THE MAX.
After concert was over yuyue and I were doing cleanup and all that, and while waiting for the bus to come we both realised how much we're gonna miss rgco. When we all first came in we were (uh...) dejected, wondering why the blazes we got into CO just to play some weird, uncool, loud (and in yuyue's case, troublesome) instruments. We didn't start out looking forward to CO every day. And now it's been some three to four years, and we've come so far from where we started out. Somehow during those tiring June pracs and the hellish APCG we wished for concert to end so we could concentrate on our studies, but looking back, we've had so much fun and built so many strong friendships and gotten to know so many wonderful people, it's just hard to wish CO would ever end. It was just really sad, especially thinking about everything we've done as a section especially, both of us just stared at each other and cried 'coz we'd genuinely miss each and every single part of CO. Even the practices.
And personally I'm so full of regret I didn't get into CO in sec one. Sometimes one year of ignorance makes you feel really left out within the batch at first, there are things they know that you don't, or will take very much longer to realise. And that was the most socially insecure period of my life, not knowing, but trying. Most of the secfours say that secone was kind of a stoning year because the seniors and teachers were pretty much focusing on SYF, but that one year could've made a whole big difference. It still has I guess. Missing that one year made me treasure just that single place in CO, being a part of it, no matter how loud or sucky the instrument is. It's easy to learn to love something, and I really do love suona so much now no matter what people say. It's a matter of how you want to play it. :) Missing that single year made me want to find out more, to want to catch up and feel like I'm part of the others too, and not someone singled out as "oh the one who came in sec two". And that whole year is probably one of the biggest reasons why I love rgco so much- after ages and ages of wanting to get in so badly, after pleading and pleading incessantly with lulaoshi, asking willette to ask her xianyue seniors if I could get a place in the middle of the year, getting a big scolding by the CCA teachers, or even uh (i was terrible in sec1) ponning my previous CCA to the point of notoriety, I guess I just felt so relieved and all, I treasure CO alot more than I would have.
The whole process of practising for concert took such a long time, and so much heart pain and tears and getting pissed off and all, but it was definitely worth it. I'm gonna miss everything- the saikang, collecting money (maybe not), doing programme booklet with bao, going insane during pracs and inventing all sorts of rubbish with wenting and jiaqian during dazu, and most of all the people. I'm sorry I don't exactly know dizi on the whole as well as I should, but shengsuo really is the most bonded bunch ever. We didn't exactly have a sort of barrier between each other because we were juniors or seniors, and with equally crazy and charismatic people like ginteng it's kind of hard to not get along with anyone. I LOVE CHUIGUAN/SHENGSUO :D
And now my little escapade's gone. CO was once my escapade, a sort of way for me to get rid of the stress from studying and have real fun and do the stuff I really enjoy. It's so difficult to stop those images of CO flashing in my head, but I suppose I have to snap out of it and start getting into mugger mode again, for the sake of my grades. Who needs math when you have chuiguan!
Uh and finally, thanks to every single person who came to give support- mum, dad, yiying, leng, baofang (for the smses!), relatives, and gourmet! and valsoh, xinqi, lory, shiying, chuashimin, elaine, xinwei, bong, boon, celine, the whole bunch of coolz hcico people! i don't know who came but i saw songsim wenhao xingzhi nigel dewei zhengrui and limyang :D
and of course lah, the rgco people!
thankyou concert comm for all the yahoogroups and sms spamming, and weeks and months of planning and saikang!
thankyou nina dorcas and willette the design people for entertaining our fussy requirements for programme booklet's design!
thankyou koh and kexin for doing up a wonderful script!
thankyou BAOMEILI/BAOMOOMOO/SIMEI for the great times (and getting pissed and depressed and high and going on crack and getting lost at bendemeer road and opening champagne) we had just doing up the programme booklet!
thankyou seniors ahh for coming down to watch us and support us and help with makeup even though you guys are super super busy. esp laobao for the spastic smses and jiali for all the advice (and being very nice about the subway money i still owe you) and good old boss for uh alot alot alot of things i cannot put into words 'coz it'd take forever :D
thankyou juniors for being so sporting and joining our fun when we get overly high! and for being cooperative. heehee.
thankyou shengsuo for keeping the fun alive.
thankyou koh for being a superb efficient ASL (and also to yixin and stacey and yingbao for helping to bully your dear baomoomoo)
thankyou rgco and rgco chuiguan/chuida for EVERYTHING.
good times. <3>
Octeopus rambled on and on and on, on
3:09 PM.
