...goes the weasel

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

The Third One

Worked at singfest08 over the weekend. It was absolutely brilliant. Got to see all the stars at backstage. Basically, I had to stand around to check the tags of the people who were walking around the area behind the stage, because not everybody had a tag which allowed them to. Of course, I ended up with really sore feet just standing around. Job also involved lots of running about, just doing random stuff.

First day, met up with Jason, Nick and Qaiser to rush off to fort canning. Fastest way was obviously to take a mrt. Too bad then, that we underestimated the distance from dhoby gaught mrt station to fort canning. It was torturous. Ended up climbing up the hill, right to where the enterance was last year, only to find that particular enterance closed. -.- Anyway we went round the whole place, and saw another bunch of people wearing black. Kinda assumed that they were gonna do the usher thing, just like us. Turns out that the area this year was only about twice of the area that they had used up last year. Walked in circles around the sprawlling fort. By the time we found James, I felt like I just ran 2.4 in 10 mins. And then some. It was HOT. And I was wearing a black shirt. Not the best combi ever, unless you're trying to do some experiment involving the human secretion of liquids in order to keep the body within normal temperatures. My shirt was almost dripping with sweat.

Anyway, we quickly gathered around. The four of us were just standing around, when this guy came around the us and quickly assumed responsibility of us. Turns out he was going to be our supervisor. He actually told us his name, but for convenience sake, I decided to simply name him 'boss'. Several reasons for doing so, but the main one was that his name was some chinese name, just like mine, and I didn't manage to catch it too quickly, so labeling him 'boss' seemed to work well enough. He was also quite a noob, and didn't quite know what to do as well, he simply told us that we were gonna be stationed at the artists' area. =D My wish just came true. Then, he disappeared. Just as we were discussing the availability of another black shirt since we were gonna work for two days straight, boss appeared, and asked us for our sizes. Turns out that there was going to be tshirts for us to wear, identifying ourselves as officials. Soon after getting his required info, he stealthily blended into the crowd again.

After a while, we got out shirts, apparently sponsered by levi's but the material felt really cheap, and the printing even cheaper. Best of all, it was still black. The one redeeming point, however, was the words 'singfest08 security' proudly, and cheaply, enblazoned on the back. Those words on the back of the shirt were almost worth the torture of wearing black on such of hot day, under direct sunlight.

So we were assigned our spaces to station ourselves at, Nic and Jason were stationed at the far end of the backstage, right under a tree, where it was cool and calm. Lucky bastards. Qaiser and me, on the other hand, were stationed at the artists' enterance, where the lack of a raintree nearby became increasingly evident as the hour hand approached the number 12. The bench was just out of reach of the rather sparse shade provided by the tree nearby. We ended up sitting on the grass, enjoy some form of shade.

The hours slowly trickled, just as the humidity of my shirt increased. The first act got up on stage. Then, almost out of bordom, my stomach started growling. Then, Qaiser told me he was hungry. But the catering from Kriston's was purely for the artists only. Out of the blue, almost by the will of god, the Kriston guys wearing absolutely ridiculous uniforms, might I add, laid down a bunch of plastic giant plates right beside the Primesafe Security guys. Being absolutely top guys, they signaled us over, and inside each piece of blue moulded plastic, was a little piece of heaven. There was a platter of extremely sinful cheesecakes that simply melted in your mouth, not in your hands. That wasn't all, there were also steamed mussels topped with cheese, and tempura prawns. Utter brilliance.

Rejuvinated by that little picnic of ours, we started doing our job properly again. New Found Glory and Melee soon came up, then a bunch of groupies appeared at the emergency exit, which also led to backstage. Very quickly, spine-chilling screams rang out.

'RICHAAAAAAAAAARRRRDD!!!!!!'
'I LOOOOOOVVVVEEE YYYOOOOUUU!!!!!'
'OMG, MY LIFE IS OVER NOW!'

We were both extremely freaked out. The uncle calmly sitting behind, on the bench, gave us a knowing look and without a twinge of embarassment, turned to the groupies, and simply replied 'i love you too.' And thus, the groupie handling begun.

That's not to say that there weren't others with some kind of neurologial power hanging out at the emergency exit as well. There was one bunch of 15 year old girls who were there with their absolute nutcase of a friend. The nutcase wanted us to tell one of the lostprophets that she absolutely 'loved him, and wants to marry him', despite the rather obvious snag that she was merely 15. Kids nowadays are so interesting. Anyway, we had a pretty decent chat with her other friends, one of whom was horribly hot. But of course, there's the pretty obvious snag that she's 15.

So as the night wound down, I rushed forwards to take some pics of the bands performing. Got there was still some space on the side of the stage, so I rushed in, and snapped pics of Melee, lostprophets, New Found Glory, and Simple Plan. Anyway, when Simple Plan got off stage, I asked Pierre for a pic of the guys. He said 'yeah, shoot'. I turned around, and signaled Jason to come over to help me take a pic. He, as usual, was stoning. I had to shout his name rather audibly for a few times before he finally walked over. Then, I turned over, only to see Simple Plan walking away. They never even stopped walking. Oh well, I think they were in a rush anyways.

Whne it was time for the audience to leave, there were a bunch of people who wanted to leave via the emergency exit. Turns out, there are many people who do not realise what exactly constitutes an 'emergency'. For them, an emergency was when they needed to leave. For the organiser, though, an emergancy refers to a fire breaking out, a riot, or maybe, just maybe, Selamat bombing the place. Extremely drama moment then, as they demanded to be let through the exit. We decided to let the organiser defuse the situation. There was a pregnant woman that was there as well, and her argument to be let through was that the long walk to the main enterance and then back to the carpark would result in her having a miscarriage. Well, that's a nice arguement. Main flaw though, was that if she was so liable to having a miscarraige, what in the world was she doing at a rock concert? Surely the jumping around wasn't going to be good for the kid. Or, what if, horror of horrors, some punk got overly excited and nudged her? The organiser had a long chat with them, insisting that they were not to be let through the exit, Then, she took out the ultimate weapon. She turned on the waterworks. She bawled her eyes out, almost just like her kid would in the future. The (presumably) husband simply started patting her on the back. Luckily, the organiser was also female, so the tears had absolutely no effect on her. That was brilliant. After a while, they decided their attempt was futile, and meekly left.

Worst thing of the day, though, was that I lost my all blacks shirt. Yes, the very same shirt that I bought for 60 bucks, and had wore only twice. My extremely sweaty shirt that I had left on the bench. All of us lost our black shirts that we wore there. Damn losers took our shirts. Idiots. The banglas couldn't have been the ones who accidently cleaned it up, because the bunch of bottles were still on the bench, and neatly arranged. Assholes.

Second day of Singfest08 coming up soon. Meanwhile, I'll leave you guys with an interesting thing one of the 15 year olds said while the other groupies were busy proclaiming their love for the artists.

'I don't love you, but I like your music!'
How true.

by wc at 11:02 PM |