Thursday, December 07, 2006
hehe. this morning i woke up at 7am. since i was still in sleeping mode, i went to bathe first before i prac. at that time, i was super nervous. but after i prac, i feel more secured. until when i see those gd luck msgs again, i started to feel nervous. lol. but after a while, i calmed down again.
at about 10.15, i went downstairs and boarded the taxi that i booked in advance. when i reached city hall mrt station, i waited shijun for about 15min. while standing over there, many people looked at me weirdly, probably because of the way i was dressed. i found myself weird too. finally he arrived. i think we looked very weird as we walked together cos he's super tall and im super short. that's a drastic difference. walking along the city link to esplanade tunnel seemed like walking towards hell. the tunnel was so cold and quiet. it made us even nervous. luckily we chatted and kind of laughed about craps, so we were not that nervous. however, we saw limyang going up the escalator when we were about to go down. he said he had finished his performance already. then we were like ... omg! it's gonna be our turn soon.
when we reached our holding room, we saw zhengwei, jiawei and her fren and a guy called junru. the guy looked rather cold, but quite pro. haha. he played effortlessly. Not only shijun and I felt that he looks a bit like Moses, a few more people felt the same way too! But I know many think that Moses is cuter than him. LOL! at first, jiawei, shijun and i played qinqiang together. somewhere near the end, shijun gave me some comments. then he said i might stand a chance to get into finals. that really boosted up my confidence level. haha! after some practising, we started chatting. haha. when i got to know from jeanette that after intermission is the eighth contestant, i began to get nervous once again, so i went to the toilet. then shijun said he also wants to go, so he's gonna go with me. jiawei and her fren thought it sounded wrong so they gave him a weird look. haha! at first i thought it sounded wrong too but i realised that both there's only one toilet for both genders in the room, so there's not problem with sharing the same toilet (there're cubicles inside lah!).
Very soon, it was my turn next. As I walked towards the stage, the person-in-charge gave me instructions like you have to bow blah blah blah... That time i was so nervous that I didnt pay attention to what she was saying. When I finally realised that she was talking to me, I had to ask her to repeat the whole thing again. haha! Before me was Limqing. As I sat on the chair near the stage door, I heard her play and used my left hand to play with her, just to warm up my hand in case it gets tensed. FINALLY, it's my turn. as you know this is my first erhu individual competition in my life, and also my first time entering the recital studio, i didnt know that there're many echoes in the room. when i played the first few notes, i felt that my 32 has yin1 tou2, 3 also has yin tou, but my 1 sounded quite weak, asi f there's no yin tou! and there was so many echoes that you dont know which is your true sound lah! fortunately i managed to get over with it. but dont know why, just when my ying3 zi was about to end, my right hand started to tremble. I dont know whether I was nervous or what, but I was less nervous on stage compared to waiting for my turn at backstage. So at the jian1 jian1 xiao1 shi1 part, if you listen very carefully, you can hear that my right hand was trembling. haha! Mic said that it added effects to it. haha! My first 'paragraph' was pretty fine. My kuai ban was cmi as per normal. But i think it has improved already, i mean my high soh is more zhun3 alrdy. haha! Among so many times of qinqiang that i've played, i've truely concentrated twice only. One of the two times was this morning's performance. Unfortunately it didnt sustain till the last. When I realised that my song was ending, my soul kind of lit up. I began to lose concentration and had that feeling of wanting to finish it asap. So i think my last part wasnt as good bah. When it came to my last note, it was just like a bang on my head, waking me up from qinqiang, and telling me that it's going to end! i suddenly got so happy that i forgotten to stop for a few seconds before standing up to bow. I BOUNCED off my seat and bowed right after I finished. Only when I stood up halfway then I remembered about that. haha! ok. but it was too late. thank you limqing for waiting for me that time. haah! after i packed up my things, the both of us left the backstage and headed to the audience seats. On our way, there was a booth near the entrance. It was citibank i think. they prepared big white balls for people to write their new year wishes on it. We thought it was rather fun, so we wrote our wishes. Then as we continued walking, we saw peiqian and a few of her frens. Limqing said hi to her, but she replied hi in a awkward tone, probably because she doesnt know us. So limqing said oops, i dont think she knows us right after their hi-ing. She said it so loudly that peiqian and company heard it, so all of us laughed. Lol! It was so funny lah! As it was going to be lunch break soon, we were not allowed to go in and watch, so we had to watch from the tv outside.
For lunch, Mic, nette and i went to marina square's kfc. From esplanade till there, I kept asking questions about how i did. They said i did pretty well, but i was still so paranoid that i bombarded them with loads of questions. After lunch, we rushed back to continue watching. oh! before i continue, i would like to thank limqing's mother for helping me return my pass! haa!
From the performances that i've seen, I can see that there're at least three different instructors' students participating in this competition. Other than zls's , I felt that the other version is QUITE nice, but a bit too draggy. The other one is slightly better, but the students playedthe old version of qinqiang, which was different from the scores that nac sent to us. And it was a serious mistake cos my notes were different. During the intermission before wanhua's performance, the three of us took a long time to write our new yr wishes that i were late by a few seconds. in other words, if we reached a few seconds earlier, we wouldnt have been locked outside. Having no choice, we could only watch wanhua play from the tv outside. She played pretty well. She fang4 de2 kai1. haha! Zls was also outside then, he took out his hp and recorded a video from the tv of her performance. Then wanhua came out and joined us. After a while, she saw her fren, James, who was also one of the contestant. He's very funny. He went to the wrong entrance. He thought the entrance to the audience seat was the right entrance to report to. As we were not allowed to bring our instruments into the studio, he was being called upon to leave his erhu outside before he could enter the studio. He was so shocked lah! Cos he thought why he couldnt bring in his erhu when he's going to compete. Lol! Luckily wanhua came to his rescue and brought him to the right place to report. Haha! Btw, he has super long fingers! When he was playing juai4 ban3, his whole body was very still except for his left fingers. So it looked as if his fingers were a flapping flag (cos his fingers were super long and he didnt have to lift his fingers high or far to reach notes). OH! Besides, he's also super tall!! Guess what?! When he sits down with an erhu, HE IS TALLER THAN THE ERHU! NO KIDDING OK! well, the next performance that impressed me was jessica's. Though her kuai4 zi4 was super fast, her yin1 was still very zhun3, yin se + yin zhun + gan qing all very gd, indeed a PRO! haha! i bet she'll get top three. As the competition got near to the end, wanhua's stomach began to groan. Her first groan was SUPER LOUD. Lol! After a few groans, it became Yiqing's stomach's turn to groan. LOL! They took turns to groan lah! SO FUNNY!
Finally, the competition came to an end and the results were out. The finalists are Lim Yang, Kwuan Boon, Jun Ru, Lim Qing, Keng Yang, Dian Wen, Gloria, Wan Hua, Hong Xuan, Zhi Wen, Cai Feng and Jessica! OH! Btw, im contestant no. 10 lah. When the emcee wanted to announce no. 18, she said (in chinese),"shi2 ....... ba1 hao4!" WAH! Both jeanette and I were shocked for that split second lah! haha!
so afterall i didnt get in. though i was a bit disappointed at first, im fine alrdy. cos this is my first time joining an erhu individual competition, now that i know the competition better, im sure i'll do better the next time! moreover i still have 2 more chances to join erhu YOUTH category. haha! LAST BUT NOT LEAST, thanks to all the people who have been encouraging and supporting me! (: To people who are in finals: MUST JIAYOU OKAY! (:
11:35 PM
Till we meet again..
