The first reading of the script for the musical was carried out today. I arranged a few tables in the middle of a room and put chairs and garden benches (for some reason there were garden benches in the second floor room) around it. The director brought snacks like potato chips, dips and blueberries and everyone sat around and discussed the play in comfort. Opps! Did I say everybody? Actually, no. I was sitting on a dinghy wooden platform covered in muck and sand in a little dusty corner of the room beside the CD player. My job was to press the play tracks from the musical that had been recorded earlier. It would have been a respectable job and a good reason for a member of the production team to sit in a sandy corner if the were more than 3 tracks (averaging 2.5 minutes each) that had to be played over the space of 4 hours. You have to respect the effort that goes into making sure that everyone feels they are a valued member of the team.

After the reading session, my stage manager asked me to join them at the table. Then, the director asked for comments from "anybody, anybody at all". He glanced pointedly in my direction once. Don't you think it would have been kinder to just continue to ignore a person who has been in a corner from which the readings and discussion of the past 4 hours sounded muffled and unclear rather than to expect intelligent and relevant comment from them? I made a mental note to call The Book of World Records people that a new record for tactlessness had just been set.

I have decided to be nice and politely ignore the production team except for the stage manager who is at least nice to me. She thanks me for making photocopies of scripts and scores (more about photocopies later). As for the cast, I have decided to be politely nice to them because most of them remember my name and occassionally acknowledge my existence. Smart actors are never. NEVER nasty to crew. It isn't healthy. As everyone should know, Happy, Valued Crew = Safe Props and Food.

As promised a paragraph ago, I will tell you more about photocopies. My job for the past few days has consisted of making photocopies, and rearranging furniture. The detailed breakdown is as follows: Photocopying-97.3%, Moving Furniture-2.8%. This isn't stange when you think about how the script is 93 pages not including music scores. Copies of scripts and scores are constantly being updated which means new copies have to be made for everyone involved (aprox. 15). Fortunately, the highly advanced photocopier in the office takes a mere 10 minutes to scan 33 pages and 5 minutes to produce 33 printed pages (Scanning and printing are not the same. The advanced machine has to scan first, then print. Only low-end copiers scan and print simultaneously). So, let's do a little maths (not too much, please)

The script is 93 pages long. It takes 5 mins to scan 33 pages.
Therefore, it is necessary to scan the script in 3 sections.
5X3=15
It takes 15 mins to scan the script.

It takes 3 mins to print 33 pages. 1 copy of the script has to be printed in 3 sections.
3X3=9
It takes 9 mins to print 1 copy of the script.

Since the machine has an amazingly huge memory that is able to store 33 pages at a time, (wow! 1.44mb is just so amazing by today's standards!) an infinite number of copies can be made from just one scan.
Let's stick to 15 copies for now.

15X9=135

It takes 135 mins to print 15 copies.

Don't forget scanning time!

135+15=150

It takes 150 mins to make 15 copies of the script.

150/60=2.5

It takes 2.5 hours to make 15 copies of the script.//

Wow! Modern technology simply blows your mind doesn't it? I mean, the average photocopier of yesterday (literally 24hrs ago) could only manage about 30-40 pages per minute and here I am, privelledged enough to be able to use one that blazes away at lightning speed!

What with all the photocopying, stapling and paper clipping, crew work is definitely not for idiots. Don't even dream of applying for a job as a crew member unless you meet the minimum requirement of a Masters in Phyics and Computer Engineering.

I almost forgot to mention(how could I?) that the stage manager let me off early today at 5pm. I was initially told to stay til 8pm. See how much I am pampered. Strangely, before she let me off, she asked around if anybody needed any photocopies of anything. When they said no, she said I could go off. I wonder if the two events were connected in anyway.

Why am I so sacastic?
I dont know, I'm only a rocket scientist for goodness sake! Ask someone else, ok?

Why do I do crew work?
I'm smart. I know what I want in life. I desire only to hold a lowly-paid, physically-demanding job, to be completely ignored and for my contributions to be unacknowledged.

Song Change!

We were supposed to have a 31/03 class gathering/dinner on Sunday night but it got cancelled in the end because a lot of people couldn't make it. Then, in the afternoon, Xinying called me up and asked me to go out with her because she was trying to avoid people. So, we had a class gathering of 2 people. We dined at Swensens. Soup and ice cream. Nice XY decided to join me on my no-need-to-chew diet. Then I tried to pay by Nets but the card didn't work because the stupid bank was retarded in activating it. Stupid bank. Now I owe XY $14.

Today (tuesday) I started work on the new play. We had the rehearsal in a little room with a clavinova (piano-like thing) and the cast sang the songs. The male lead has a broadway kind of voice which is rather nice. haven't heard the female lead yet. So the rehearsal was just one guy playing the clavinova and a bunch of other people singing. Maybe the people at this theatre company will prove to be nicer than those at the last one I worked with. Nobody has abused me yet. Oh yah, must write about this lame guy. Lame guys are everywhere if you pay attention. This lame guy is part of the ensemble/chorus for the play. The singing instructor told him that he would be Tenor2. She said, " you are T2" Then he asked, " spider?" I didn't get it at first either. haha "Ti-Too"..spider haha. get it? sorry if you don't speak hokkien/teochew.

The nice thing about this theatre company is that it is so near my parents' office. Just down the road in fact. So transport won't be a problem.

On the way home, driving in steven's car, I looked out of the window and saw a small, little grey car. Pasted on the back window in big, white letters were the words: DON'T BULLY SMALL CAR. Shit man! help me! help me! Lame people are everywhere!!!

I went to the dentist expecting to get my wisdom teeth plucked out and what happened? what happened? I got braces put on! bloody hell.. Cos the dentist said that if I got the wisdom teeth plucked out, I would be "down" for at least a week. this sucks. i hate the braces cos i can't chew my food properly. from now on, i've decided to survive on water, fruit shakes and soup. ARGH! laugh LL, laugh! I can't bite you but I can still whack you. When I eat, or try to eat, I swear and curse like nobody's business. this sucks. Luckily, my dentist said he would try to rearrange the teeth in 3 months, before I go overseas to study. Well, for his own good health, he'd better! I can't stop thinking about all the violent things I would like to do to him. poor guy, he was just doing his job. Alright, I better stop ranting and raving like a pitiful bastard of a sod who just had metal stuck onto teeth. There are more important things in life. Fuck! My teeth hurt.

Liling got the teaching scholarship! But it's not the one that will sponser overseas studies. I hope she gets that one and goes overseas for university. Oh, just realised that if that happens, The Family will be so scattered. Oh well, then we can form an international organisation.

Ok, feel misearble and I'm going to sleep as much as I can. Enjoy the irritating song. I'm grumpy and I don't care if it's a sucky song.

I've just accepted a low-paying theatre job. The commitment will be from 24 May to 10 June. That's about 7 weeks! and the pay is $1200. So, I have to catch up with friends before 24 may when I disappear behind the curtains into the dark backstage of the theatre. my one consolation is that this theatre company is located in a more central area than the last one so at least travelling won't be such a nightmare. I'm an idiot I know.

I watched Mother Courage by stAJeworks (ajc drama) today. It was very good. Personally, I thought it was a much better production than the "professional" one I just finished working on. Mickey Tan and Minnie Tay were there too (P and VP of AJ as known to students). Then, I had dinner with the drama crowd and juniors. We were out quite late and Steven kept calling to nag and grumble and scold me. I wonder why. When I reached home at 2.45am last night, he didn't say a word. Maybe it was because I brought back $1200 last night and not tonight. I'm so bitter and cynical. I'm much too young to be like that.

Doggy says I'm throwing away a double honours for a mere degree. I really don't know. What is are Honours anyway. What's the difference. Does it mean it's a more difficult course or what?

I've changed the music. (if you maybe turn on the speakers and if you maybe care)

yesterday night was bump out night. this refers to the packing up of all props, costume, lights etc from the theatre and taking it all back to the theatre company's place and unpacking everything and putting them back in their respective storage areas. bloody hell. I reached home at 2.45am. And i had to eat "dinner" at 2am at this coffeeshop place where there were lots of really ugly hookers. yucks. i almost puked out my food when the hooker gangs made their entrances.
Urgh! let's not dwell on distasteful subjects. Think of nice, happy things. Like my paycheque! My happy paycheque. I'll use it to pay for some of my expenses when I go overseas to study.
And now, life can go back to normal. I'll regrow some brain cells and start wearing blue clothes again. All black was too depressing and hot. And I can also meet friends again. Life is good once again.

The archaeology department of york emailed me yesterday and asked me to reply telling them why I want to study archaeology and what atracts me about the subect. ( in case you don't know, I was accepted for Politics with Economics but changed my mind and now want to do Archaeology). i wrote something like a mini essay. wonder what made me do it? about 500 words. and I ended it with this corny lines (I share them with you but you must not laugh or giggle)

"I dreamed of finding ancient monuments and of unearthing dinosaur bones... Also, I like to dig"

immediately after i clicked on the "send" button, I whacked my forehead and said,"oh shit! why did I write that corny conclusion! dammit." Wonder what made me do it. was I too tired? Was I rusty at writing essays? Or was it a reflection of the true me? The subconscious lame ol' corny self that had been repressed for too long? We can only speculate...

Then, a few hours ago, I received an email from the uni:

"The admissions tutors have agreed to change you course from joint
Honours degree course LL12 Economics and Politics (Equal) to single
subject Archaeology (V400)"

Corniness. It works.

But am I making the right choice? And what's an Honours degree course anyway. why are some course honours degree courses and not others. Am I giving up fame, fortune and an Honours degree for dino bones?
Please, somebody, tell me. I have no zoinking idea what I am doing. I might be zoinking up my life for all I know.

Very excited! tomorrow is friday! closing night of the show. i'll be getting my first paycheck. and end to working nights will also be good. one of the other backstage people told me that action theatre is looking for crew for a musical production in june. according to her, the pay is shit and the hours are worse. but musical sounds interesting. should I? but then it will mean that i'll be stuck in rehearsals for some time. the experience with rehearsals for this current production wasn't nice at all. especially the morning when XY called me out for breakfast and i was so tired i couldn't talk properly on the phone much less drag myself out of bed. why am i doing theatre? maybe i'm just stupid.

Confusius say,"Man who stands on toilet is high on pot"

haha new skin! new skin! lalalalalala! erm.. blog sking i mean. not my skin.
also, there's music! i've been trying to get music on my blog for a long time. hope it's sucessful this time. can you hear music? it's playing glomy sunday sung by sarah brightman (low quality version). this song had a reputation as a suicide song. people used to like to play it as they committed suicide or leave suicide note quotiong the lyrics. hope this doesn't get you too depressed. if it does, tell me. i will change it to a happier song.

I'm enjoying this long break from work a lot. No show yesterday and no show today. i'll be going back to work on wednesday and even then, there will only be a night show, no matinee, so i'll report for work at 6 pm. life is good. and it appears that there won't be show on thursday either and on friday, there will be only a night show. one good thing about working in theatre, yoy can check newspaper adverts to see which days you have to work. Life! says that tckets are available for tomorrow 8pm and Friday 8pm. anyway, Life!'s young reporter seems to absoloutely love the play. there was another article about it in today's paper. I remember that particular reporter as a young guy who scribled away feverishly at his notepad when he attended a preview of the show on one of the rehearsal days. looked like an eager beaver to me. reviews have been good so far but audiences each night have been small. matinees see about 25-30 people and night shows see about 50-70. that's not much for a medium size theatre like Jubilee Hall. But small audiences are good for crew. each mistake gets amplified by less and the lack of people sitting the the front rows greatly reduces the risk that we might be seen by the audience.
I'm very happy. After Friday's closing nigght performancem it'll be bump out and paycheck and off i'll go back to wearing my usual blue clothes instead of the top to toe black i've been sporting since the show started running.

Hello everybody! I've been really busy with the show recently and had no time to blog. but now that the show has officially opened, i'll be more free. this may sound strage but in theatre, rehearsals are a hundred times busier than the actual run of the show. everything is already set and things are no longer changing all the time. so this blog will give you all the highlights of the last few days. Please read on.

THE PEOPLE
We have 6 actors in the show. All of them are very good at their jobs but some are nicer to work with than others. one actor is very prone to trouble (no names mentioned due to obvious reasons). there is a grey cap that belongs to him which is being used as part of his costume. on full dress rehearsal night, he decided to take the cap out for a walk. so, poor costume mistress thought the cap had disappeared and we ran all over the place loking for him. and then, during the run, i was backstage kneeling down doing stuff when he came and tripped over me. almost killed me. tonight, on opening night, 15 mins before the theatre doors were opened, he informed me of a costume change. i was like, what the...! he wanted black shoes and please tell me how do you get black leather shoes in fifteen minutes when you are in a theatre in raffles hotel standing by for the opeing night show? luckily, one of the other actors wore black shoes tonight and lent them to him. also, he likes to go for walks. i think he is claustrophobic. so, everytime we need him, we have to run around looking for him. it's so tiring.. I'm afraid that having a group of people all dressed in black running around a hotel shouting for an actor won't do the tourism industry any good. every day he comes up with something new. i'm worried about tomorrow.

then again, most of the actors are very very nice. on full dress rehearsal night, the thai actress gave each of the crew either a bookmark of a keychain from thailand. very nice. and tonight on gala night, 2 of the singaporean actresses also gave the crew little gifts. I have to say that the three singaporean actresses in this play are so wonderful to work with. from the crew point of view, a good actoris one who doesn't have a diva attitude, respects the rules (costumes in proper places, props in proper places, strictly no taking props and costumes out for walks and always being where you are supposed to be) And as a bonus, they are very appreciative of the work we backstage people. it is always pleasant when actors say a silent thank you when you pass them props and costumes backstage.

the crew people are also a good bunch to work with. we are the gossipers of the theatre and we do it in style. there is this system called Cans which is a one-ear earphone and an attached mic for each crew member. through it, everybody can talk t everybody. this makes it easy for stage left to gossip with stage right to chit chat with control room to talk cock with mutimedia control station. actually, the purpose of the system is for the stage manager to give cues. see how technology is abused.

THE SCANDALS
the director and the playwright have been nicknamed Bert and Ernie by the crew, after the the Sesame Street characters. Read what internet forums say aobut Bert and Ernie to understand why.

THE MEDIA
so far, the media people seem to absolutely love this play. there was a huge article in the straits times LIFE! paper the other day. front page photo and half page article. very favorable review. And just now, at the post show reception at Chijmes, I overheard a BBC guy talking to "Ernie". he thought it was fantastic and talked about how he loved the multimedia and how the comic relief moments were very masterfully incorporated in a way that didn't make it seem like the play was making fun of disaster victims. he just went on and on about how he really liked it. coming from the notoriously hard-to-please british press, it's good. very good.

a few days before, on press preview day, a fat ang moh photographer barged backstage (stage left) where I was stationed and started snapping away. I immediately asked the stage manager through Cans whether he was allowed to be there and she said no. so i tried to be polite and told him that i needed to space to move props. he stepped to one side and continued snapping away. i moved my prop. then i said that he had to leave. and he continued snapping. and i said that stage manager said he had to leave. and he asked what's the problem? i'll go and speak to her. and he left and i shut the door tight behind his ass. he didn't return. after the run, i asked to stage manager if he had gone to talk to her. she said no. ahhh... the coward.

THE SHOW
It was opening night tonight and although the audience was small, they really liked the show. I'm very happy. especially when i overheard the conversation between Ernie and the BBC guy (refer to above story). this is what theatre is all about. create a different reality on stage and making it such that the audience goes home thinking that it was fantastic and worth every cent and more. i confess that i personally don't really like the show but as long as the audience likes it, it's fine with me. me goal as a member of the crew to to be invisible and efficient. crew prepares the ingredients, lights the fire and puts on the cauldron and flips the spell book to the right page so that actors can cast the spell. haha what a weird metaphor. excuse me, i'm high on sugar.

ME
i had 2 desserts for dinner. black porridge and ice kacang. the sugar high made me hyperactive and happy. at the post show reception, everyone was drinking alcohol while i was drinking Sprite. so i got even higher on sugar and was laughing at everything and nothing and they thought i was high and speculated that the two cups of sprite were actually vodka. haha funny... i don't do alcoholic drinks. sugar can give you a better kick without rotting your liver.

ahhh.. when the audience applauded.. it made up for all the crap that i had to endure, the late nights, the dusty storerooms, the not being able to meet with LL and XY for breakfast because i was so, so tired, the everything.

so remember, next time you watch a show, be it theatre or dance or what ever. clap very loudly. the actors can see you claapping and they can feel good. but if you don't clap loud, backstage crew won't be able to hear you and they will be very sad

tomorrow, i plan to eat a block of chocolate for dinner. i'll probably be so high that i'll be bouncing off the walls.