Today we take a break from food as a side quest to talk about Hweecat's involvement in the Raffles Alumni Chinese Orchestra (RACO) Beautiful Sunday concert at the Esplanade.
About a month or more ago, Hweecat received an invitation from her JC's alumni CO group to be part of the free concert that is what happened two days ago. She enquired about the repertoire and found it interesting. In particular, the opportunity to perform at the Durian Shell Theatre (Esplanade) was not to be taken for granted.
No thanks to this commitment, like pageant in Hall or university, Hweecat's personal and social life was greatly affected. Besides the obvious time commitment, the practice sessions were at everyone's favourite time of Saturday mornings and afternoons, which is especially precious to us because we have a weekly gathering of friends for dragon hunting game (Dungeons & Dragons). The logistics especially in the last one week were also tiring both for Hweecat and for her faithful cat, that is, me.
Most particularly, Cat spent the whole of Friday night and Saturday afternoon doing nothing much except to give my Hweecat the maximum support. This involved not having any activity on these two time slots that are normally good as gold.
The morning rush today was also not to be underestimated. As Hweecat needs to fall in at 9.30am, I was there at the same time and I have to find something to do for the next four hours. I decided to start with breakfast at Toast Box, whereon I glanced across to Coffee Bean and happened to spot a very pretty girl in a white dress. A year ago I would totally have approached her to try and strike a conversation. Today however I was far more concerned with getting my nasi lemak and wondering whether Hweecat will have her lunch sorted out. Assuming her to be some full time actress or singer, I moved on with my food.
I went to the library after breakfast. To be exact, I improvised a LAN shop in the library and started playing all my favourite video games. How ironic that I was so engrossed in them that I forgot the time, and left myself with no time for lunch and only a tea and toilet break. So much for whining about the injustice of being forced to arrive four hours early.
The line to enter the concert hall was already one concourse long by the time I joined. Still, the wait was long and honestly boring, not least because the Esplanade has no reception for phones and therefore I could not do my own work.
As the performers filed in eventually, I looked keenly like a cat sitting like a vase for a pretty girl in a long maxi dress. Eventually I saw her, flanked to the left, right and front by two erhu style instruments and to the back by a grand piano. A grand piano? In a CO setting?
The concert started with the first three arrangements being not bad at all. The music was professionally arranged and most particularly they were not the mundane type of CO songs.
The climax of the concert was when a soloist was to enter to sing a long medley. To my surprise, the soloist was someone I have met earlier in the day, for she was the white dress girl I saw at Coffee Bean in the morning.
A year ago I would have immediately after the concert attempted to approach her to strike a conversation with the readily available topic of "I saw you earlier today." Today however I rushed out straight after the concert to look for my Hweecat, though strangely she too happened to be right next to my Hweecat when I did find her.
Having greeted a few of Hweecat's old friends and after a little bit of cocktail post reception, Hweecat and I being anti-social cats for the right reasons, decided to head straight for dinner. I then just realized that the Esplanade is directly accessible to our favourite sushi place - Sushi Express.
My comments about the concert as a whole: WELL DONE.
1. A good attempt to popularize Chinese Orchestra.
2. CO has a name for being overly traditional in a lot of bad ways but the RJ alumni has certainly done a very good job in changing this image. After all, what do you expect from RJ people?
3. The songs are well arranged not just in terms of the methods of musical logic but also the choice of instruments and the balance of sound.
4. There was appropriate use of pageant charisma. The performers of the front line including my Hweecat, it was clear they took special effort to dress up, and look good yet appropriate. They looked like musicians, not something sleazy, which people often could not tell the difference.
5. The choice of songs really makes me on hindsight think that the people who I invited but chose to not make it a priority, really missed out a lot.
After the concert, we went to write our first wish ball. Here's our wishes:
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