Avalon

Aftermath

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Returned after 5 days... the bus trips that lasted for about 8-10 full hours in and out of Malaysia were almost unbearable, basically just eat, sleep and toilet breaks.

Completed "Angels and Demons" and discovered the references to the GP readings on Science and morality. Liked the detailed elucidation made on the background of Vatican City and all those historical facts that were the major ingredients in the book. Heard that Dan Brown spent one year per book researching for information. Impeccable genius indeed!

The highlights of the trip boils down to the feeling of being in each other's company. A bit more choir bonding, by and large. The things that have made an impression in this trip would be the hotels and the schools there.

First on hotels. KL Royale Bintang was quite well-facilitated, except me and Aaron were like staying in a room at the far end from the rest on our floor, which makes late-night parties highly unaccessible.

The Penang hotel was like atrocious, with rumours that there were shady characters lurking on some of the floors. These were later proven to be true especially after witnessing different people entering and leaving the room that was directly opposite mine. After a bit of obvious observation (people just keep streaming in and out of the room in pairs, erm get it?) we reached the conclusion that the room was probably used for prostitution. That information obviously made us quite disconcerted but well, they are just doing their own business.

Next on shopping. Guess I must have some feud with the shopping amenities in Malaysia because I always recall not buying much. The last time I went to Trengganu back during Secondary Two, I was like buying things for my sister because I just couldn't find anything suitable for myself. Oh something worth mentioning would be that Choir people do take a liking for "Bodyglove", a brand of clothes that bears a suspicious resemblance to "Billabong" but is only available in Malaysia. So eventually everyone got infected and almost half the coach were proud owners of Bodyglove items. Haha. Got a shirt from there too. We went to a number of shopping malls and street markets, but I figured out that the goods sold in malls are roughly the same price as that in Singapore after the translation. The night markets reminds me of Taiwan and the choir girls were so funny. Afraid their possessions might be stolen or snatched, they sort of got us guys to sandwich them between us and in the end we played choo-choo-train. Erpz. But then I guess it was one of the rare opportunities that choir guys get to display chivalry. Haha. Now aint that insulting?

We paid Penang Heng Yee Secondary School a visit during our short stay over there. They were the ones who have invited us over for the choral exchange programme. I must say the students there are very humble and modest but the principal was like pretty long-winded. Then it was serious business on the second last night of the trip. We had our public concert and the news of our arrival had been featured in the local newspaper! Wow! That sure added a bundle of stress on me as emcee of the whole thing. Hope the script I had drafted out was good enough. But from the approving nods of the few VIPs sitting in the first row, I think I got my answer. Haha. But most important of all, I think we definitely rocked the hall! Although audience response was lukewarm at the start, we came to the consensus that we shall just enjoy ourselves and don't bother ourselves with their reactions. After all, it was quite evident that they only appreciated our Chinese songs. So when the tenor solos blasted 八骏赞, I could see the front row audience FINALLY showing some display of interest and they even shouted for encore just for that song... Erpz we sang till we almost died! The hall itself had dry acoustics and as though that was not challenging enough, our voices almost got eaten up by the crowd and some of us were losing our voices too. Fortunately we pulled through... as usual, in all modesty.

Oh an interesting note to add on. We travelled with Nanyang Girls Choir too because they were substituting CHS as the guest performers. We didn't really interact with them anyway (I mean there wasn't a real need was there?) except the few ex-NY choristers who were like having family reunions with their juniors. But to ZQ, they are quite nice. Haha.

Still have medical checkup tomorrow and heard it's dead long... The dread of cooping myself up in some government estate doing questionaire... Oh well....

Envoy of the Stars @ 10:08 PM
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