i'm back

Happy boxing day (=

haha i've finally decided to blog aftr so long...zzz. the hols have been very very tiring, but at least i've got more rest time in the last 2 weeks.

Let's start with the choir trip.

We went to Prague and Czesky Krumlov in Czech Republic, Vienna in Austria, and Bratislava in Slovakia. It was a rather stressful trip, but at the same time very enjoyable too.

We met at Terminal 1 on the 29th of Nov, and came back 12 days later on the 12th of Dec. Besides us, RGS, CJC, and two other local choirs went too. The good thing was that our trip was only 2.5K. Not saying that it was very cheap, but extremely reasonable. (= RGS had paid nearly 3.4K!!

So well, we finally left good old Singapore and headed for Dubai, where we would rest for about 5 hours before taking another 6+ hour flight to Vienna. My internal clock was screwed up by the time we reached there. I had absolutely no idea of the time (haha cuz i slept too much) in Singapore, Dubai, and Europe. Well, didn't really care much. Anyway, Air Emarites is very good! The food is nice, the seats are comfy, and scramble dash gives you an adrenaline rush. Haha, since when were in-flight games that much enjoyable?! And louis' brain and fingers work super fast, he got like 8 out of the top 10 overall (imba!).

Got out of the airport and followed the bus driver to the bus. The weather there was not as bad as I expected. In fact, it was super cooling and nice! If only Singapore could have this kind of weather. It's so much different from an aircon room back home. So we sat on the bus, which took us all the way to prague. And all of us never realised how dark the sky could be at 4pm there. It was like late at nite....probably like now when the clock hit 5.30pm.

Anyway, we finally reached the hotel after a long journey...and well, it was dinner (which didn't exactly taste that nice). The soup was very salty, and the rice seemed so different. But well, it was still edible, and I would soon get used to it (every bowl of soup I drank was super salty!). So well, practice at night, which was not as bad as I thought it would be. We sang okay...practice wasn't too long, and it was sleeping time by then (I think it was around 11pm).

1st Dec, Friday. Today would be CJC's and RGS' competition. We were to support CJC in the small group category, and also view some other choirs. Most were not too fantastic, although the small group of 8 ladies were good. But I did think CJC did better. Their soloists are really pro! Haha, heard that they got diploma in voice. No wonder...Anyway, more practice would follow, and we all did seem rather confident because we were singing up to standard (or at least almost there). Oh yah, and there was this Polish choir which we called the old people's choir for obvious reasons. Haha, they were damn funny la. Next time I'll try to upload their song and u all hear it for yourself. But they did enjoy themselves (=

Saturday, the big day. We got up, and warmed up all that, and had one more last prac before the competition. We were all set and ready to go, and so we went onto the stage. It was tough, to stand there with all the lights so glaring, and with the judges and audience keeping so silent it seemed so intimidating. Gosh, it was hard to concentrate. In addition to that, the acoustics were vastly different from any other place that most of us have sung at. So well, we didn't think it was too great, and most of us walked off the stage being disappointed. We messed up the easiest songs, the ones which we had done well so many times before this competition (like 3 months+, some extending to 3 years). This night would also be the results night, and most of us knew we had failed, it was a subpar performance.

Still, we had fun at dinner. Linan and his steak, which is smaller than my clenched fist, cost 330 dollars (Czech money), equivalent to almost 24 sing. Accompanying it was a meagre serving of potatoes. Still, he claimed it was damn nice (= Me and jong shared a pizza (30 cm which is huge!) for only half the price, plus an iced lemon tea. It came in this really nice bottle, and so we took it out into the chilly night to cool the drink, and it became extremely nice to drink! So well, we crapped a lot as usual, and two other groups (from RV) were there too at the same place. After dinner, we finally went back...I was more or less prepared to hear that we got silver.

The closing party/awarding ceremony was held in this huge place called the National House Smichov. And it was really quite dim there. Anyway, there were many many other choirs (63 in total). They had a jazz performance at first, which got slightly boring after a while...but still quite nice la. Haha, and all the choirs kept doing kallang waves, which is quite cool (= Also, there was this other choir behind us, and there was this guy with a girl lying on his lap. They were talking to each other, and suddenly..the guy was like "sexy bomboms" in this very very funny accent, and all of us started bursting out laughing. Yishu just couldn't stop, he kept whispering to us about them. LOL. So well, the results finally were announced. We had gotten a gold, but yet, there were still tears and dejected looks. It was very weird, because every other choir was cheering when their results were announced, and we were (probably) the most stone choir, sadly. Haha, we were damn bad la. Never clap for other choirs..only clap for singapore choirs. Haiz...anyway, RGS, CJC, and the Singer's vocal ensemble all achieved better results than us. They got other awards apart from gold. The final singapore choir got a silver. It was a sad sad night, and there were those who couldn't stop being so upset. We did not achieve what we had expected to achieve. So yeah, we all went back and had debrief (I didn't pay attention :P), and then it was lights out.

btw, so sorry stacey if I replied late! My phone was off most of the time, or rather, the conductor didn't allow us to switch it on -.- and also congrats (= haha u ppl did really well.

The next day, we left our hotel to move closer to the city centre, where we would have a two day tour. It was okay la, sightseeing and stuff. Learnt a lot, like the powder tower, the cathedrals, the astronomical tower, different techniques used to design buildings in different eras (baroque, roccocco etc...) blahblahblah. We had transferred to this hotel called the hotel city centre, and it was this really small building stuffed along a street. The arrangement of the rooms were very weird...and our room was on the 6th and top floor, the only group on that level. In addition to that, our room was at the next building, so we had to walk to the 5th story and cross over to the next building and go up, and then all the way down the long corridor to our room. Besides that, the hotel had this security feature: the lights could sense motion and would light up on its own. So it was rather freaky la! Especially when we went back to the room late at night. Haha, even manly was quite scared! And he was really funny. By the way, manly = gaby tan! I dun want to be so bad la....so i'll just leave out the gaby manly story ;P

The next day was about the same. We cross the Charles' bridge to the old town to visit the St. Vitus Cathedral. It was this really huge and imposing building, which gargoyles all over and spiky tops. And it was dark brown/grey/black. Lol, even my sister said she was quite startled when she saw the pics I took of it (I'll upload my pics sometime soon!). So it was another rather tiring day of sightseeing...accompanied with practice. Haiz, the practices didn't seem that good...toh was angry (as usual I suppose) with everything and so on. Yeah, but we were quite used to it already. Oh yes, if you do go to a supermarket there, you can find this 2 litre bottle of "cola". It costs 35 cents sing, but it tastes nothing like cola. lol, at least we didn't waste our money. And Fanta there tastes absolutely great! In such cold weather, it was extremely nice to drink!!! So sad singapore no fanta. Haha, kialiang and weiren are crazy over it. Also on this day, Jong's nose bled, and he claims it was not because of the hot wine we drank. lol...

The next day, we departed prague for Cesky Krumlov, a small city in Czech. It is this really beautiful city, which I will elaborate on later. Anyway, when we reached there, the description of our hotel in our tour booklet never seemed like anything which we experienced. It was called Hotal Vltava, and supposedly it should be surrounded by beautiful meadows and a forest. We could only find a carpark and grass around it. Haha, anyway, the trout there tastes deeee-licious! It is really fresh and savoury, but must be careful of the manymany bones in it. Still, we had a wonderful lunch. Thnx to manly, bobo, and yisheng for trying it with me! So well, I didn't follow the group out for sightseeing because we could see the same things the next day..and I was feeling kinda tired. So a handful of us stayed back at the hotel to rest while the rest went out. Watched this cool show on MTV (and it's in English!!!) called pimp my ride. They transformed this car which was totally wrecked into a very nice car with all the gadgets like extending hammocks that came out from the back of the car etc. Aftr that I slept, until it was time to assemble downstairs with the rest of the group to have dinner. After that was practice again. Still wasn't that great. Guess we hadn't exactly got back on track yet...or maybe we were just tired, I don't know. Either way, we couldn't concentrate that much because in the next room, there were many many men watching television, and they were shouting and smoking (must be like soccer match) throughout the whole nite. Worse still, both rooms were connected, so we could hear them, AND smell the smoke. ===> unproductive practice.

The next day was 6th Dec, wednesday. Arghs, too tired liao, guess i'll continue some other time. sry! gna conk off liao. byebye