...goes the weasel

Sunday, August 10, 2008

The Fourth One

Second day of Singfest08. Got up bright and early, only to be told that we had to man the carpark booth. Dammit. But I suppose somebody had to do it. And so, me and Qaiser plodded along to the carpark, set up a barrier, and attempted to explain to drivers that only cars with a pass, or were elites going over to the ballet school picking their kids up/going to the country club. The carpark in question was actually the carpark for the artists enterance only. Unfortunately, somebody forgot to tell the audience that the carpark was going to be closed, and we were thus given the highly unenviable task of telling Singaporeans that there was to be no parking in that particular carpark. Lucky us. Basically, we just asked the drivers of their destination, and that would sorta give us a brief idea of if they would be allowed to enter the carpark of not. And of course, as with all traffic diversions, we caused a major jam. But hey, we weren't exactly to be blamed, we were just doing our job. Which was a pretty boring one. Except of the few highly pompous men who insisted on going up to the country club despite us telling them that there was a huge bottleneck just up ahead. Well, whatever floated their boats, I hope they were happy with their decision. On second thought, maybe not. I hope they were cursing on the way up, regretting that they didn't listen to the two kids at the foot of the slope, and rethinking their policy of not allowing their baby little girls who just finished ballet lessons to walk down the bloody slope, which would take all of 10 mins. And its bloody downhill! Grrr.

Second half of the day was slightly more interesting, though. Managed to go into the backstage area a la the first day, but had to stand around this time, as the emergency exit fiasco had already been solved, by simply tying the fence up with the mustafa-style cable tie. So all we had to was to check for people with the right passes. Which was impossible to do at night. Which resulted in me just simply standing around, allowing for more pics to be taken compared to the first day. Brilliance. However, I also had the secondary job of sitting at the back, trying to prevent stragglers from climbing over the fence and into the Singfest08 grounds. A pretty redundant job, as the problem would be solved by making the fence just about 2m tall. Nobody with a right mind would attempt to climb over that. Unless he was Yao Ming. But then again, nobody can really tell how much of right mind those mats are in. So me and Qaiser took turns guarding the back fence and the ramp to the backstage. And all access passes were required for the guy manning the back fence. It was just a simple piece of laminated paper, but we were oh so happy to get out hands on it.

Overall, the second day was kinda more boring than the first, given that we were getting berated for doing our jobs properly. But then again, I got mistaken by Alicia Keys' bouncer for being an actual security guard, so I had to prevent people from walking around Keys' path to the backstage. Made me feel kinda important. Got to see all the bigger stars for the second day, including the Pussycat Dolls and Keys herself, but didn't manage to get pics of them, just too much security all around. They had a permanent entourage of people just following them around, much like moons of a planet rotate on a permanent axis around the planets. Okay, I'd have to be really bored to make that kinda comparison. And I am.

by wc at 1:25 AM |