I am just going to say this once,

http://mcyf12.tumblr.com/

the end

well hello to whoever bothers to read this site.

first, i must announce that the death of this site is imminent. Probably by 2011.

second, i did another concert, at bedok. yea, weird place. but we had U-KISS. some really popular korean boyband that you will go "U who?" in 1-2 years time.

and the last thing.... i am going to Hong Kong for the rest of 2010.

i am going there to do laser. That's right, laser.

no, i did not suddenly learn how to use them. I am going to learn how to use laser in HK.

no, its not a training course. it's a pitch for Andy Lau's concert. I might even go on tour with him next year if all goes well.

yes, it means i have to figure out how to use the program in 2 weeks, although an ang mo will come down and do the basic set-up and training for 9 days.

I been sitting thru the dvd tutorial to prepare myself, man, i pity the fellow who had to create it. Every breathe he took was a sigh of boredom. (in case u missed it, i am showing my brilliant command of english again here. 'sigh of boredom', see how u could replace it with 'sign'? but coz i was using the word 'breathe' earlier, it gives the word an extra twist? and if u read it out loud, hear how it rhythms.... okok, its 5.25am, i am sorry.)

What i am trying to say is that watching the dvd was like watching paint dry. although i did learn a lot of useful stuff.

anyway, whatever it is, i will be gone for a really really stressful time. hope i can have fun still, like the fun kind of stress, where u kinda know everything will be ok. instead of the 'everyone is shouting at you coz they sense that it's not going to happen' kind of stress.

o ya, i quit the lighting ministry.

that's it. the greatest eulogy you will ever hear. 9 years of being in it and i can't even be assed to talk about my leaving. that about sums up everything. i am not even happy or sad about it, feel indifference. and that make it extra sad in a way i guess.

(short prediction time - chc lighting will be given over to external party to manage - long term or short term, i dunno. - in the next 5 years.)

so yea, its a week of ending a lot of stuff i guess. here's hoping for bigger and better beginnings.

"It's weird...you know the end of something great is coming, but you want to hold on, just for one more second...just so it can hurt a little more"

Jan Denise

Lights

harlo blog,

i am here to just unload a bit of the excitement of the last week.

I just did a concert.

A real concert. Not those half-past six, non-professional-standard rubbish that schools and churches like to do .

Held at the Singapore Indoor Stadium (SIS), it was a masterful performance by the veteran singer Sammi Cheng.

Everyone from the age of 25-40 knows who she is and has heard her songs before, having seen her up close and personal, i must say she really is a great performer.

She's 38 this year and yet she belts out songs and moves to dance that can match the energy level of any 20 year old pop star.

I wasn't the main programmer of course, that was mr Javier Tan. He was the lighting engineer for the show, and is another big-name lighting designer in the events/concert world.

i learned a lot from observing and working with him.

First of all, i have to say, it's really not easy to do a concert, it's damn exhausting. we worked 16 hrs first day, then 36hrs non-stop after that.

The concentration and mental strength really got to be there. You simply can't slow down, everything moves at a million miles an hour when you are sitting in the programmer seat. No one gives you any slack, everyone expects you to know exactly what you're doing.

I was more than a little stressed by mr Javier.

Although he controlled all the movers on the main rig, i still had 51 movers out on the audience truss, all the generics on stage, hazers, LED pars, a star cloth, three mirror-balls and two lasers to take care of.

He would spend hours programming one song, turn to me, show it to me once. Give me like 5 mins to program the cues, show it to me again, and expects me to know the cue points, then move on.

That's it. I had three chances to see each song. Once to mark cue, once to create cue, third time to practice. Then i didn't see it again till the full dress. Then it was show. I kept thinking to myself that Javier either had a lot of confidence in me, or he was insane.

having to work non-stop for 36 hours, at this kind breakneck speed, almost freaked me out. And i should mention that he wasn't very patient. If i didn't get it right the first time we tried the cues, he got slightly upset. he either think i am some kind of veteran programmer or i am a whizkid. Or maybe he's just used to working with capable people. I don't know. I felt damn stressed.

I guess i understand that we were working under an extremely tight schedule, but i really thought this was madness.

On the other hand, I do like working under pressure. That immense sense of pressure, where no one can help you, where you have to deliver, where you know thousands of people and dozens of really important people are watching you, where it's your career on the line, excites me to no end. i love to be in that situation, it's like drugs to me. Put me under pressure, and i will deliver, no way was i going to mess up at all.

At the end of the day, the concert went really well. I had like one or two wrong cues that was obvious, but that was it. The rest was just tiny little things that i think even Javier didn't notice. The even more important part was that I contributed in many ways. Like pushing up the appropriate lights in unrehearsed situation. Having innovative solution (the mirrorballs motor was on steroids, so javier had said, just don't use them. i came up with this cue that let it spin, stop, spin, stop. We used it in the show.)

I think I gave a good showing of myself, and proved that I can mix it at the top. I definitely didn't felt out of depth. In fact, i felt i belonged. It's the biggest and most stressful shows that excites me. Not sitting in a 500 seater theatre and doing shows that no one gives an ass about. I want the big concerts, the shows that newspaper report on, the names that anyone and everyone will know about.

On a side note, I also thoroughly enjoyed Sammi's performance. She has so many great songs, and is so energetic. And she is a very devoted Christian too. I think 1/5 of her songs were Christian songs. I was thinking, this is the real cultural mandate man, not the silly chest puffing nonsense the church ppl like to do. She felt genuine, just being who she was on stage. A real artist, a real entertainer, doing what she does best, and by just being herself, shows Christ to the world.

I am really glad she is not affliated to chc in anyway to be honest. It shows me that God is bigger and more real than just one church. That the gospel works even away from this one bunch of people. And that's the way it should be, not ALL the christian artist or entertainer should be from chc. It's Jesus Christ we worship, not freaking chc. (Yea, yea, i know it's my own church... I still don't like the way we do things.)

O ya, Her male BV was great too. An amazing vocalist. A Singaporean. I felt proud of him.

To end off, i think it's been a fruitful year, I have done F1, Sammi Cheng, NDR and a whole host of things. I really believe that I will be able to continue to push on to greater things, and it's only November, the year's not over yet.

I just finished reading Stevie G's autobiograghy, which was released in 2006. The one thing that i took away from the book was how incredibly hungry for success he was, and still is. How much he believed that he belonged on the world's biggest stage. I can completely empathise. It's this unquenchable desire to succeed, this insane drive inside of you, it's so strong that it almost hurts.

I don't talk about lighting much these days anymore. But the passion is still firmly there. It's never dimmed. I just been busy working on it.

I am hungry for more. I sincerely believe that I belong at the very top in lighting. Whether it be theatre or concert. I believe i will get there. And i will do anything and everything possible to ge there. Lighting is my obsession, and i will rise to the pinnacle of it.