How hope crumbles!

first paper is next wednesday at API... where that is, i have no clue but i'm supposing it'll be the best looking building in um... since API stands for Akademi Pengajian Islam... hint hint

well, what's been happening for the past month? basically, YV'07!!! i've been designing and designing and designing publicity material for Young Visionaries 2007, half of which did not materialize in the end due to financial constraints... terrible... i just feel terrible... not about my designs but rather about the whole concert big hoo-haa thing... personally i think we bit off more than we could handle! the idea of the whole thing now seems absurd in hindsight. organising a full blown concert in 2 months and all of us green horns in that kind of events management? wttw had at least 6 months of preparation and their target was the exhibition and cultural night. we had 2 months to plan the carnival and charity concert and also take care of the weekly programs for the orphanages! personally i feel that we all lost the main focus of YV in all the hustle and bustle of planning this elaborate event...

i really can't believe that 70% of the time and our plans were dependent on the false hope of a sponsor (a major telecommunication company). time and time again i stressed on the development of a backup plan... but NOOO... we're still hoping on xxXxx to back us!!! and when desperate times called for desperate measures... still, they looked down on quite established local indie bands (which they the OCs might have never heard of... but believe me that these bands are leaps and bounds better than some of our performers!!!).

i know that i've never organized anything close to a concert let alone a stage performance, but i've heard so much from LK for more than 5 years about band performances and the equipments etc... hell, i even became roadie carrying guitars and effects pedals!!! and so i offered some advice like thinking of where to rent mics, mic stands, drums and guitar amps from and holding an audition to see the suitability of the band's materials... to the former, the response was "i'm sure that the musicians will bring their instruments" and the latter was just ignored... so to those who know the current situation of local indie bands, i rest my case.

time for promotion... ok, i admit that i did not approach many people in the faculties, but i did my fair share during the college roadshows... besides i am the one who stayed up till 5 a.m. everday just to rush the redesigning of our flyers etc!!! and to make my day, some "so-called-volunteers" start making snide remarks about how we run our roadshow!!! if you're so bloody clever, then why don't you get off your fat brown-nosing ass and actually help out like what volunteers are supposed to do! if not, just shut your gap and stop posing as a noble volunteer!!! honestly, i'd rather have no volunteers than have this kind of NATO idiot! but just for the record, there were really really sweet and helpful volunteers... in fact the rest were really great... Hari was so helpful and supportive!!! only about one or two posers strutting their stuff instead of helping out... and interestingly, i found an SMKS9 junior in AIESEC! i can't believe we were in choir together!!! such a sweeet cute girl! i think she's the only ex-SMKS9er that i've come across in UM!!! perhaps there are others... but i don't know them

so comes the big day! rush here rush there... ML and i carrying the heavy VIP armchairs (the ones with wood carving and padded upholstery) with FC and Jasper... volunteer A looking on and hollering "eh, where were you all har?", not lifting a hand! i really wanted to answer back, "we were riding in a next-to-condemned lorry rounding UM for the umpteenth time looking for the VIP furnitures! being sent back and forth between stores and rumah universiti... and then the 4 of us (2 guys and 2 girls) lugging the 4 darn chairs and 2 tables down a slippery flight of stairs and hoisting it into the lorry!" i really despise people who simply shoot their mouths without knowing the current situation! like Mr. JP used to say, "don't thought, think!" to people who make excuses like "i thought ar..."

the concert night... technical problems... again volunteer A was partly responsible for that... but of course the severity of the whole let down was also contributed by the dissappearing act of our dear OC member... and it is so dissappointing to state that some of our own OCs lacked committment on this night... the night where every helping hand was so important in its success... i really don't know how some people can promise the sky and not even deliver the earth/soil (whatever)... nothing, totally nothing... our opening ceremony power point presentation which was delegated to someone more than a month before... end up cutting and pasting my slides from the publicity materials (that i did in one night, mind you!)... so, unwittingly i have done someone else's job! How Grreat!

but by far, the worse part was seeing the audience flee the horrible performance by our very own UM band, Marionexxes!!! (Please voice out those words with over-exaggerated sarcasm!!!) because that's what they think of themselves (the best band in the woooooorrldddd!!!) GOODNESS, these people need a REALITY CHECK!!! i'm sorry but i have nothing but snide remarks when i think of them! they text us offering to play for free (to help the children yada yada yada...) and then after they chase away our crowd and eat up all our VIP food, they expect us to pay them RM100! do we need to spell it out for them (not like they'd even understand then...) C-H-A-R-I-T-Y concert!!! we started out with ZERO for capital and ALL our other performers (which are more established than them) Juwita Suwito, Karen Kong, FasyLive, Borange, Flirting with Sleep, James Loh... didn't require any payment! even our MCs Jules from fly fm and shamser sidhu did it for the sake of charity! these UM people try to be so arty farty by playing the chinese instrument erhu (which was more than not out of tune) and claiming to have a new zealand didgeridoo player (which turned out was a malay guy born in NZ)... Have they no cow sense? Do they not have any receptors for embarrasment? THIS really tops my list of UNBELIEVABLE events that's happened to me in my life so far! I'm still dumbfounded by all this... my brain can't accept that there is such imbecility in this world! and in an institute of higher learning... a place for supposedly intellectual thinking and appreciation of the power of knowledge!!! i hope that this is the only case of such detritus mindset in UM or any other universities in the world!

you know, i've vented this dumbfounded-totally-speechless feeling so many times to so many people but i still can't shake it off! I am totally undoubtedly spooked out with this experience! things just get worse and worse... i've never thought it possible... but seems like it is!

well, let me now dwell on the better part of the concert! Juwita Suwito was incredible... she was so sweet not to get upset because the band that shall not be named chased away her audience (she was the headliner and hence the last performer!)... she obliged us with an extra song too... joked with us, autographed our cds, bags, shirt etc. and she came for the sound check and actually did a sound check! (unlike the other ppl!) sheesh... i should've went for calvary church's fund-raising dinner for CCC... she performed there too...

karen kong was really cute and she sings well in live as in her cd! quite hard to find that quality in malaysian artists... even the veterens aren't as well prepared... to me, she was really sweet and CUTE! that epitomizes her!

i really liked FasyLive... they were really tight... timing and rhythm changes were all there and precise! albeit a little technical problem with the bass amp (which is our fault la)... their solos were really impressive! drummer had his double pedal and all... bass solo whoa!!! although they were quite loud, they had a tune goin! part of the reason they sounded good was because they brought their own sound engineer! i think that could've been their smartes move and i put my hats off to them for being so well prepared and just so.... chun!!!