I dragged my luggages to the gathering point in Changi Airport terminal to meet up with the rest of the members who were travelling together with me. And yes, you did not read wrongly. I did bring more than 1 luggage with me. It may sound exaggerating, but 1 luggage is simply not enough for my costumes. I may not be playing lead roles, but I have got a few costume changes. Furthurmore, the shoes that I wore on stage already took up one-third of the luggage already, while my costumes easily filled up the other two-third. I was lucky that Art was helping me bring my headgear, which she would sharing with me on stage. Hence, I had to bring another smaller luggage for my personal clothes. I need more luggage spaces too, as I had forseen that I would be buying a lot of things over in Taiwan.
Everyone present appeared very excited about this whole Taiwan performance, the first time ever since our maiden trip in 1990. I was looking forward to the trip, but I did not feel the same like the rest. I was more worried than happy, because the other two "rival" troupes were of much higher standards and quality than us, and what grounds do we have, to perform alongside them on the same platform? Though our troupe leader had maintained that the Taiwanese counterparts will give us some leeways due to us being only amatuers, but I think elsewise; when you're on stage, there's no such thing called "professional artiste" or "amatuer performer"!
We boarded the plane at about 1 something in the afternoon, and reached Taipei at around 6 in the evening. It was raining heavily as predicted by the weather forecast. This was the second time I visited Taipei, and during my previous trip, it was raining heavily too when I arrived! We were originally scheduled to check in to our hotel and have a good rest for that night, but halfway through our journey, our leader called up and wanted Art, Juanjuan and me to go to the theatre straight away to take a look at how Tang Meiyun staged their show. Apparently she was greatly shocked by how good their performance were, and how much we paled in comparison. We were amused by her decision, as all our props and lighting design works had already been finalised and nothing else could be improvised already. Anyway, there was a massive jam on the highway to the hotel, so we decided not to go. We would not be allowed to enter the premise if we were to arrive after the show started anyway.
We arrived at our hotel, Santos Hotel, at around 8.30pm. I was arranged to share the room with our cellist musician. He was eager to check out the facilities in the hotel room, while I wasn't particularly interested (give me a guesthouse anytime, and I'll more more than happy already!). I was, however, more interested to "inspect" what TV channels they offer. I switched through channels after channels, and finally settled on one which airred Jacky Wu's variety show. Frankly speaking, his brand of comedy wasn't my cup of tea, and in fact, I didn't really like him either. However, since there wasn't anything better to watch on TV on a Saturday evening, I guessed it would be better to stick to just that. The variety show was funny alright, until a segment whereby the invited guests had to play a game in which they were not supposed to laugh or giggle under any circumstances. In this particular segment, one of the challenges posed was a Shandong-accented man tried to teach the invited guests sing a song. The lyrics to the song consisted of phrases which were actually twisted from Hokkien vulgarities, and none of the guests could maintain calmness throughout. I would be a hypocrite if I were to say it wasn't funny. However, this kind of crude humour was too much for me, especially for a programme on prime timeslot, and I wonder how come such things do not get censored in any way at all.
After the programme ended, my cellist room-mate asked me if I wanted to go take a walk outside. I thought it was a good idea, since the night was still young, and most probably I would not have the time to do that again, until we were done with our performance. It turned out, however, to be a bad idea. The neighbourhood shops had started to close, except for the convenience stores. Our hotel wasn't in the shopping district, so there wasn't anything particularly interesting to look at, and after a short while we just headed back to our hotel.
Back in our hotel, I was browsing through the TV channels again. There wasn't nothing of much interest to me, except for some channels showing live coverage of the anti-Chen Shuibian movement, which just started on the same day. I watched the coverage for a short while, before feeling tired and hence decided to retire to bed.
Everyone present appeared very excited about this whole Taiwan performance, the first time ever since our maiden trip in 1990. I was looking forward to the trip, but I did not feel the same like the rest. I was more worried than happy, because the other two "rival" troupes were of much higher standards and quality than us, and what grounds do we have, to perform alongside them on the same platform? Though our troupe leader had maintained that the Taiwanese counterparts will give us some leeways due to us being only amatuers, but I think elsewise; when you're on stage, there's no such thing called "professional artiste" or "amatuer performer"!We boarded the plane at about 1 something in the afternoon, and reached Taipei at around 6 in the evening. It was raining heavily as predicted by the weather forecast. This was the second time I visited Taipei, and during my previous trip, it was raining heavily too when I arrived! We were originally scheduled to check in to our hotel and have a good rest for that night, but halfway through our journey, our leader called up and wanted Art, Juanjuan and me to go to the theatre straight away to take a look at how Tang Meiyun staged their show. Apparently she was greatly shocked by how good their performance were, and how much we paled in comparison. We were amused by her decision, as all our props and lighting design works had already been finalised and nothing else could be improvised already. Anyway, there was a massive jam on the highway to the hotel, so we decided not to go. We would not be allowed to enter the premise if we were to arrive after the show started anyway.
We arrived at our hotel, Santos Hotel, at around 8.30pm. I was arranged to share the room with our cellist musician. He was eager to check out the facilities in the hotel room, while I wasn't particularly interested (give me a guesthouse anytime, and I'll more more than happy already!). I was, however, more interested to "inspect" what TV channels they offer. I switched through channels after channels, and finally settled on one which airred Jacky Wu's variety show. Frankly speaking, his brand of comedy wasn't my cup of tea, and in fact, I didn't really like him either. However, since there wasn't anything better to watch on TV on a Saturday evening, I guessed it would be better to stick to just that. The variety show was funny alright, until a segment whereby the invited guests had to play a game in which they were not supposed to laugh or giggle under any circumstances. In this particular segment, one of the challenges posed was a Shandong-accented man tried to teach the invited guests sing a song. The lyrics to the song consisted of phrases which were actually twisted from Hokkien vulgarities, and none of the guests could maintain calmness throughout. I would be a hypocrite if I were to say it wasn't funny. However, this kind of crude humour was too much for me, especially for a programme on prime timeslot, and I wonder how come such things do not get censored in any way at all.After the programme ended, my cellist room-mate asked me if I wanted to go take a walk outside. I thought it was a good idea, since the night was still young, and most probably I would not have the time to do that again, until we were done with our performance. It turned out, however, to be a bad idea. The neighbourhood shops had started to close, except for the convenience stores. Our hotel wasn't in the shopping district, so there wasn't anything particularly interesting to look at, and after a short while we just headed back to our hotel.
Back in our hotel, I was browsing through the TV channels again. There wasn't nothing of much interest to me, except for some channels showing live coverage of the anti-Chen Shuibian movement, which just started on the same day. I watched the coverage for a short while, before feeling tired and hence decided to retire to bed.
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