Thursday, April 30, 2009

@ the Esplanade

CATS:
I feel that there was something lacking to make it really good, like the vague character development of Grizabella. She’s ultimately the ‘chosen one’, and not much has been depicted here except for her trademark song 'Memory'. I do like the portrayal of Growltiger/Asparagus/Gus as it is more thorough. To be fair however, the focus here is ultimately the Jellicle cats, unlike the focal character development of the main protagonist of the Empress Dowager in the play “Forbidden City: Portrait of an Empress” or Kim in "Miss Saigon". It'll be best if you read the entire synopsis and characters (especially their wacky names) before you watch CATS performance.



Overall, it has been an enjoyable experience watching the cast being 'meow-like' - from the smoothing of their 'fur' with and licking of their 'paws'; and laughing at the Elvis-like persona of Rum Tum Tugger as well as the funny antics of Gus and Griddlebone.

Spectacular art-piece always fill the Esplanade's atrium. This is the latest one called "You shine like gold in the air of summer" by Simponi from Indonesia. It has been quite awhile since I enjoyed a walk by the river behind the E. with K. It was a quite a perfect timing as it was not crowded like it always seems to be and the place is filled with a wave of serenity that I didn't sense before.

CATS

This was placed on the armrest of my seat in the theater.


AUDIENCE SURVEY

Country of residence:

· Singapore (Local resident)

o Singapore (Expatriate/ Foreign student)

o Other country: (Please specify)_______

1. When did you first hear about CATS?

o 6 months to a year ago

· 3 to 6 months ago

o 1 to 3 months ago

o Less than a month ago

2. How did you find out about CATS? (You may tick more than one option)

o TV commercials

o Radio commercials

o Collateral Materials

o Banners

o Internet

o Newspaper advertisements

o Magazine advertisements

· Festival brochures and leaflets

o Newspaper articles

· Colleagues, friends & relatives

o Others (Please specify):________

3. What are your regular sources of information for arts events in Singapore? (Tick as many as applicable)

o Local newspapers

o Direct mailers

· Event brochures

· Word-of-mouth

· Colleagues/friends

o Radio:__________

o TV:____________

o Travel fairs

· Internet (Please specify website address) sistic.com.sg

o International newspapers (Please specify)_________

· Magazines (Please specify) Arts Beat, I.S.


4. Where did you purchase your tickets for this show?

o SISTIC hotline

o SISTIC Website

· SISTIC authorized agents [Wisma Atria @ Orchard]

o Travel Agents

o Others (Pls specify):__________________________


5. What ticket prices did you buy? $143 How many? 2


6. When did you buy your tickets?

o Less than 7 days before the performance

o 1 to 4 weeks before

· More than 4 weeks before

7. What are the factors that influence you to purchase a ticket for a show?

o Affordability

· Reputation of the show

· Interest in a specific production

o Media review

o Persuasion by colleagues & friends

o Word-of-mouth


8. How would you rate the overall standard of this production?

o Excellent

· Good

o Fair

o Poor


9. Which of the following arts events did you attend in the past 12 months?

o Theatre

o Musical

o Opera

o Dance

o Classical concert

o Rock/Pop concert

· Arts Festival

· Arts fair/arts auction


10. Which of the following musicals would you go and see?

· Aida

· Chicago

· Dirty Dancing

o Fiddler on the Roof

· Evita

o Miss Saigon [watched it several years ago]

· Les Misérables

o Jekyll and Hyde

· Jesus Christ Superstar

o Wicked


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And this is what I filled in after the performance at home..


Sunday, April 26, 2009

short updates

  • Countdown to CATS: 17 hours 33 minutes!
  • Can't wait to catch The Soloist, a film based on a true story. Click here to go to its official site.
  • The results for tuberculosis tests are out. They're negative :)

Friday, April 24, 2009

Maureen Dowd


Maureen Dowd has gone a long way from being a journalist who dished out articles only to face the prospect of being 'cut off' due to limited space in Time at a time where female reporters were not highly regarded.

Now more than 20 years later, this journalist-turned-columnist whom Tom Plate described as "an exceptional talent", writes the Op-ed page for The New York Times. Whether she's the "villain of journalism" as labeled by her critics or a hard-hitting capable reporter? You judge for yourself.

I personally love this opinion piece titled 'Dinosaur at the Gate" written by her. You may say that the tone is rather subjective by journalism standards, but what's the use of an opinion article when everything sounds so neutral like a hard-news piece?
Read about it at here.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

worrying

My sister's father-in-law was recently diagnosed with tuberculosis. It was a relief that it's still in the first stage, but how can one truly be relieved when it's still a case of having a serious illness?

As her in-laws live with her, along with her two young kids - Chloe, 1 and Brandon, 3, she is worried about everyone in the family, especially since it is a contagious.

I heard that the nurse there told her it will be extra hard if a child suffers from it, as it will spread from the lungs to as far as the brain. The whole family went for a check-up today and the results will only be out on Saturday.

Worry.

It's hard not to worry. The more one cares about someone, the more she/he will worry. And I'm a constant worrying machine, one that churns out one worry about this problem to the next worry about another problem.

I'm worried about them. I worry about my parents' state of health. My brother who basically hates studying and lives in his own world. K. and my friends' individual problems. Financial burdens. My own baggage inclusive of other crazy difficulties I encountered.

It's frustrating how you can be so helpless at many problems that all you can do is worry. I can only try my best to do the little things that might make them better.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

going gaga over mustangs

Let's face it. Everyone has at least one dream car. I myself have, shamelessly, two dream cars, all of which are the icons of the American muscle.

No. 1 - the Shelby Cobra Snake GT500 '08 edition, complete with 725 horsepower (Woo Hoo!).

Read about it here.


Above: Black stripes over the red base is gorgeous, the color combination in Kelly's MV above is whistle-blowing too.
Bottom: I'm crazy over this bumblebee's color combination as well



No. 2 - the vintage 1967 Shelby GT350 in black with white cobra stripes. Classic!


It's a pity Singapore does not allow these cars to be sold here, which is why I can only look at its pictures. Not that I can afford them now though, that is why they're my 'dream' cars!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

uniqlo's Jap CM



Juri (shorter hair) & Meisa (long hair) look real cute in this UNIQLO commercial. I have not stepped into the newly-opened outlet here in Tampines One. Will I be able to play with the rows of neatly-folded clothes over there too? :p

Thursday, April 9, 2009

I'm glad I became a bookworm - Part II

Recently, I came across this poem in which I told myself a long time ago, that if I ever have any children in the future, I will read and enforce the values and meanings of it to them. For so many years, I had forgotten about it until I rediscovered it once again in another form of medium.

Many years back when I was in primary school, my house was swarmed from years of subscribing to Readers' Digest. Even after my dad stopped the subscription and no one seemed to read them anymore, I was set on keeping all four-years' worth of them.

Maybe it was because I felt that it would be such waste to throw them away just like that. Maybe they had seemed so easy to read for a small girl who just learned to love to read. Whichever it was, I practically plowed through them all and came across this article about Rudyard Kipling.

It would seem like a short profile on this brilliant British writer now, as compared to my perception of it from reading it then. The journalist who wrote this piece talked about Kipling's works and focused on the death of his son, John Kipling, who died before him in the war. He or she (I can't remember) managed to depict John as a boy who was the pride and joy of his father to the brave young man he turned out to be in such a moving way that I was tearing by the time I finished the article.

However, the one climatic part which caused me to break down completely is this poem by Kipling, inserted at the back of the article. Even though he wrote it before John's death, the timeliness of reading it after completing the story brought another tidal wave-like of emotions swept inside me.

If

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!


In a funny twist of thoughts now, I feel that I myself as an adult now, should look up to this instead of what I had thought when I was a child. Yes, it may seem tacky or outdated for one to do that.

But, in this world where many of the good of the past are forgotten and we are so engrossed and disillusioned with what we see on the surface now, this is one of the timeless 'good' that we can always remember and savor, along with your very own classics.

Hope you know or realize them by now, be it the taste of the rice your deceased grandmother used to cook for you; or the look of your loved one's face when he/she smiles at you.

I'm glad I became a bookworm - Part I

My first storybook was the 3-in-1 compilation of Enid Blyton's Famous Five. I remember the scenario of how I got this book that's heavier than my dictionary then. I was in a bookstore with my dad, who was looking for some stationery.

I was six, the age when most children love to follow wherever their parents go; as well as a regular girl (ok, maybe a hyperactive one) who loves to play hopscotch, five-stones, 'catching' with my cousins, and watch cartoons instead of read.

Ten minutes since I stepped into the bookstore, my attention span wavered. I looked around and spotted the section where all the storybooks for my age were placed and walked away from my dad towards it. One of the books placed on the 'Top-sellers' bookrack was this really thick and heavy-looking book that looked more like a dictionary than a storybook. Thanks to the illustrations on the cover, I could identify it just as what it is.

I hurried over to my dad, who was already queuing up at the cashier, and pleaded for him to buy me this book that I had not even read its sypnosis just because I thought that it will be nice to be portrayed as this intellectual kid that read an ultra-thick book. Trust me, I've no idea where this notion came from. I must be real vain and image-conscious then as compared to the person I'm now.

Being the ever doting father that he always is, he never even hesitated or looked at its price or read its summary and bought it for me. And I was such a wonderful daughter for putting it aside on the corner of the second row of the bookshelf, which is on top of my study table for a whole year without reading a single word. It was only when I tidied my table that I picked it up again.

I felt guilty instantly for not reading it as the book must be very expensive (to the seven-year-old me who was convinced that this is considered a form of luxury) and how could I not read it at all when I was the one who asked my dad to get it in the first place!

So I started reading it. I realized after reading that it was actually three stories combined into one book instead of just one, and that reading itself could be this exciting. I have a knack for visualizing the details I read and thus had no difficulty transporting into the adventures of Famous Five and get lost there.

My mom, who saw that I had developed this love in reading, bought me more of Famous Five. I grew from it to Sweet Valley and Nancy Drew; then Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen's novels, and have since proceeded to the variety of mangas and novels I read now.

I love to explore the plots that the authors built up in a painstakingly-detailed manner, the humor and wit of their words, and the swirl of emotions I feel whenever my whole being gets devoured into this exciting realm the authors have created. But most of all, I love how they can make me smile and laugh when I'm downright depressed.

I'm glad I became a bookworm.