Wednesday, December 19, 2007
This is my December (Part 1?)
It's the end of the year, everyone! Now, what's a man to do during the holidays besides getting himself knee-deep in activities and other related stuff?Since the 1st of December, I've been caroling almost everyday for a little extra income on the side; and when I mean little, I really do mean little. That's the reason I'm calling this another one of those activities of mine instead of a real job.
Anyway, the Young KL Singers have been hitting two venues this holiday season, namely 1 Utama and Pavilion. 1 Utama's cool because we only perform a half-hour session at 8.30pm every Monday to Thursday (come catch us if you like). Despite the karaoke mics and mediocre sound system, it's not too bad a place to be gigging. Plus they have an uber-cool toy castle theme going on in the new wing, too:
Line formation
All the toy soldiers actually move!On the other hand, our caroling gig in Pavilion is done busking-style. This means that we have to walk from our holding room on the 7th floor to wherever it was that the management required us to go, all the while singing an a capella song set on loop mode.
So we walked...
And walked...
...until we arrive at the place, sometimes on the other end of the shopping complex and several storeys down. Furthermore, without the aid of mics and by virtue of Pavilion's high ceilings, we really had to belt out those songs in order to be heard. And then we had to walk back to the holding room, once again singing a capella. Needless to say, we tire ourselves out like mad over there.
And we do that for two half-hour sessions on Fridays (6.30pm and 7.30pm) and three on Saturdays and Sundays (4.30pm, 5.30pm and 6.30pm). I tell you, it's a friggin' exhausting affair, caroling at Pavilion.
Thankfully, I'm skipping caroling this Saturday. But as they say, out of the frying pan, into the fire; I'm needed at another event as an emcee, namely the Subang Jaya Buddhist Association Youth Section 15th Anniversary Concert: The Night of Wonders (aka SJBA YS 15 NOW).
Yes, it's a mouthful that I probably will have to repeat many times throughout the night. But it's for a good cause, and I bet my spit won't go to waste. I'll tell you guys how it goes once the weekend rolls by. Until then, feel free to drop by 1 Utama or Pavilion to listen to some Christmas carols.
Pointless Fact of the Day:
A friend of mine gave me this book called "World's Best Trivia" by Oliver Roydhouse. Well, it isn't exactly by him, but it's just a collection of trivia from around the world. Initially, I thought that it'd be a treasure trove of pointless facts for this column, but when I started seeing entries that have been disproven i.e. not facts per se (e.g. "A duck's quack doesn't echo") and stuff that are so outright useless (as opposed to just being pointless like most of my entries, e.g. "Joe Davis, former world snooker champion, only had one good eye"), I began to have my doubts.
However, there are several gems in that 287-page volume. Here's one, along with a little of my own research: Did you know that the song "Happy birthday to you" is actually copyrighted until 2016? This means that it's technically illegal to sing it without paying royalties to the song's composers. In fact, it was part of a public relations debacle in 1996 when someone decided to sue the American Girl Scouts for singing songs around the campfire.
