Prepped for Prague

Samsara is coming to a head--ZHENG! The week running up to the Prague Dance Festival has been full of preparations. Last Sunday, Zaini conducted an improvisation/imitation exercise. I realized how I still was incredibly unfamiliar with the vocabulary of this particular genre of movement. But it was a very enjoyable and enlightening time, and I wished Zaini had done more of it earlier, especially with him leading the improvisation. Our first couple of costume trials were tragedies for me. By the third, I had basically learnt to live with the tragedy and minimize it to the best of my ability. Even during the run before tech class on Saturday, I hear my costume ripping. A tassel all but falls off, and so I tear away the remainder still hanging on. At the first costume trial, I got a 'You look like a ghost' from Zaini, which prompted multiple tanning sessions. My skin is stubbornly white, so each session is necessarily lengthy. A final session today would have perfected my tan, I think, but I couldn't fit such an activity into my schedule (see below). Steph and I are tasked with publicity for this trip. Thankfully we have David to design the printed stuff. We just plague him with our compositions and corrections. I've had to go through piles of concert photos to pick out pretty shots, and have had to crisscross the downtown area in search of souvenirs. Rehearsals slowed down this past week, and were reduced to a few runs. A couple of nights we had time after to trot down to The Daily Scoop at Sunset Way for ice-cream (Jen: 'Ice-cream!'). It is yet another winning dessert, joining both the snow ice at PoMo I had with Yvonne, and the divine Bakerzin cakes at Sharon's birthday (Sharon: 'You had Sweet Pleasure in my room!' Koustav: o_O).

Lucky encounter
I met Michelle Rose on Sunday, after passing Amanda my thumb drive at Park Mall for her to transfer photos into, after the gathering at Zaini's place, after meeting the rest late at Golden Mile Complex, after replying David's email when I woke up. Replying David's emails has been my morning ritual for a few days. It's been a lot of back-and-forth just editing the text on the brochure and the postcard, and I realize I could have saved him a lot of trouble by sending him edited chunks of text for him to copy-and-paste, rather than listing the changes to be made. Anyway, I'm dragging Michelle along while I buy my necessities, including toothpaste and toothbrush from Muji which to her are as extravagant as a Calvin Klein door-stopper. Thanks to her, I decided against the entire list of souvenirs I had scouted for on Friday from the shops Michele had recommended. The stuff were good-quality, but I didn't find anything I really liked, and I could definitely find cheaper stuff elsewhere. We ended up in Lucky Plaza, and came upon Lucky Gift Shop, a very crammed establishment where the owners are a Chinese couple with such strange, garbled Chinese accents that it took me some time before I realized they were speaking Mandarin. Their stuff was reasonably priced, and after checking out some of the other shops, I decided on buying their box sets of three tall shot glasses with metallic decoration at the base. In comparison, one other shop sold a single short shot glass for nearly the same price as the Lucky set of three, which was also buy-two-boxes-get-one-glass-free. I thought it was such a steal. I told Lucky Lady I wanted ten boxes, and a shopper next to me sarcastically commented, 'Tsk tsk tsk... wa... he want ten...'. But there was not enough stock. I had to come back the next day.

After accompanying Michelle for a little more shopping (I felt bad for the dreary time at Lucky Plaza), I ended up late in reaching Expo. Only Jen had reached though (but apparently because her phone was dying, so no points for her either). Everyone else was late, some were even late for the concert, all of which left me quite frantic and frustrated for a while. The Big Groove was great. I loved Danz People's item. It went by a little too quickly, but Xiao's slow segment was memorable and nicely blocked, and Ahmad's choreo was pulled off successfully, I thought. O Crew's item was pretty good. I liked the pre-intermission segment especially. Gin stuck out, as usual, most of the time desirably, sometimes undesirably. Fredy was livin' it up on stage. I loved Allegra's performance, strong and steady, and a perfect balance of caring for and heck-caring the audience. SD Crew from Hong Kong was a big surprise for me. An all-guy crew which doesn't shy away from sexy moves, while staying completely masculine. My favourite kind of dancing. Funky Ziggy were amazing. Only three girls, pretty repetitive choreography, but so much fun to watch, especially the Gin dance-a-like. 5+5 showed that China excels at whatever it puts its mind to. The 2000% musicality soloist-in-white gave one of the most memorable performances of the concert. Yet of all the crews, Cool Mint probably stole the show. Even though they came on right at the start, and their item was quite short, no one could forget them. At curtain call, they crouched obediently in front of where we were sitting, and we got a close-up view of their very voosh hairdoes. A couple of them were so adorably small. Jen was busy trying to check if they had six-packs.

Yesterday, I went back to Park Mall to get my thumb drive back from Amanda. She called to say she forgot about our meeting me, and had rushed straight for ballet. She gave me directions to find her, but I decided to collect the souvenirs before coming back. At the Lucky Shop, Lucky Lady said the merchandise had not arrived, and called the delivery man a couple of times to hurry him. Eventually, Lucky Lady said the man could not arrive so soon because of traffic. I left my number, and went to meet Amanda. I recalled only half of the directions she gave me, still I managed to find my way to Fort Canning Centre, which is where she takes ballet classes with SBA thrice a week. The place is nice and secluded. The second storey is where the dance studios are, cooled only by wall fans. As I walked past, the ballerinas looked at me like I was an alien. Amanda's teacher reminded me so much of E-Chiing, in the way she carried herself, the way she explained movement, the way she guided her students, the way she gave feedback, the way she demonstrated the steps--snappy, clean. It brought back fond memories. After watching Amanda's class for a while, a Malay lady (whom I later learnt was the administrator) gently chased me away saying male friends weren't allowed around.

Amanda came downstairs when her class ended, and we talked for quite some time. Apparently her foot injury is pretty bad, and she has to bear it through at least two years plus more of ballet. By the time I left, it was pretty dark, and the toad choir was out in force. I made my way in the dreadful drizzle to South Asia Computer at Funan, where I learnt that LightScribe can only be applied on LightScribe discs. I couldn't find LightScribe CD-Rs, but I was desperately curious to try out my laptop's LightScribe ability, and the DVD+Rs weren't too expensive, so I got those instead.

Playing scramble
Tonight is the flight to Prague, and today I woke up scrambling. I hastily scanned (or whatever is the aural equivalent of visual scanning) through one last batch of songs, tried uploading but found MediaFire all jammed up, and had to try a few times at zSHARE because none of my files appeared at first after using the multiple-upload function. I ironed both the Alfama and Samsara costumes, and was considerably faster at it than the last time. The white pants refused to stay pressed though; after a couple of rounds on it I gave up. I glued the fallen tassel back onto its panel, then stuffed the costumes into the Daiso garment bags. The way I've handled them since has probably undone half of the ironing.

I didn't think printing the disc labels by LightScribe would be so slow. The print turned out pretty nice, but could be nicer if it were darker, and darker would take even longer. I'm about halfway through printing labels alone right now and... if each label takes half-an-hour and I have nine left to print, I guess I can't make it on time. I have to bring the laptop along, at least to the airport.

Lucky Lady called me up around noon and to my great relief announced that the correct goods had arrived. I cabbed to NUS to buy folders from the Co-op for the press kits. The folders are quite ugly, they probably won't match the brochures or the DVDs, but there was no time left to think. I grabbed them and went, trusting in the counting ability of sensible-looking salesgirl. I was wrong. I only realized that I was given one too few when I was back in the cab, on the way to Lucky Plaza. I collected the beautifully brand-new souvenirs from Lucky Lady, and I was sure she would have given in had I bargained, after all the trouble she put me through. But I couldn't, partly because it was already a very good exchange, and partly because I liked the Lucky Couple. I realize I didn't get a receipt, which may be bad news for my bank account. I was about to head to Chinatown when I realized I could have just got my ethnic costume from where I was. While looking around, I bumped into Dan and Rachel, which was a pleasant surprise. I'll be seeing them on the flight tonight again, where they will be with the SMU contingent.

I've got my passport, my wet tissues, got my face successfully masked (and un-masked, not to worry), unsuccessfully pore-packed, got the VIP souvenirs (*ing heavy), DVDs for the press kit (almost), folders (one short of twenty), jackets, chargers, batteries, adaptors, camera, Insight Guide to Prague, Czech in 60 Minutes, Monocle Issue 25, got my Pigeon Babies (no animals were harmed), make-up remover, ethnic top, got my Black Eyed Peas lyrics (for busking choreo), my itineraries, got my thermometers, costumes ironed and wrapped up in a bunch (who does this?), hair spray, hair clay, bag washed, shoes unwashed, Bounty distributed, blog updated. All set!