张惠妹 ─ 《掉了》

Favorite song from Zhang Hui Mei/A-Mit’s latest album A-Mit~

作词∶吴青峰　作曲∶吴青峰

心疼的玫瑰半夜还开著
找不到匆匆掉落的花蕊
回到现场却已来不及
等待任何回音都不可得

微弱的风筝冬天里飘著
回不去手中缠线的那个
没有蓝天又何必去飞怎么适合

*
黑色笑靥掉了雪白眼泪掉了
该出现的所有表情瞬间掉了
瞳孔没有颜色 结了冰的长河
回忆是最可怕的敌人

故事情节掉了　主角对白掉了
该属于剧中的对脚戏也掉了
胸口没有快乐　断了翅的白鸽
不枯萎的藉口全掉了
*

曾经唱过的歌　分享过的笑声
在心中不断拉扯
想念不能承认　偷偷擦去泪痕
冬天过了还是会很冷

What did we do to our first Asian Youth Games?

At least from the design point of view. Been watching Mediacorp’s broadcast of the Games and I can’t help but shout out in pain everytime I see the AYG broadcasts. First the official games logo:

Very uninspiring~ Very unrepresentative of Singapore except for the stars. And I don’t understand the brush stroke effect that they apply to the blue star and the green ball. Complicates the logo further and the effect does not translate well when the logo scales down to smaller sizes. And the official text didn’t explain the significance of the red sun and the green ball. Queer~ Alrighty, here’s the official text from the organizer:

The highly vibrant and energised star symbol is a unique combination of two overlapping and complimentary starbursts. This visual closeness of two stars that merge into one reflects the strong ties that have bonded over the years amongst the Asian countries for this international sporting event.

The star also symbolises the excellence each participating sportsman and sportswoman brings, and we salute their sportsmanship with a blue-green athlete embedded within the star symbol. A synergy of dynamic colour palette highlights the diverse participating Asian nations that come together in celebration of youth, sports and friendship.

Next is the mascot, Frasia.

The mascot looks rather decent in drawing but does not translate well into the real life form. It looks hideous~ His golden mane had a great reduction in fluff and volume. One other complain that I have about the mascot is that it has no visual relation to the games logo other than the logo on the t-shirt that it is wearing.

Moving on, the games icons…

Once again, the game icon designs have nothing in relation to the games logo. And what’s with using a sail boat to represent sailing? No consistency at all… Oh, and football looked like athletics. And diving looked like gymnastics. Yeah, you get my drift~

Am a little worried about the standard of the games and how the first Youth Olympics will turn out. Here’s hoping that the organizers learn and document down the lessons they’ve learnt and improve the standards of the games.

Mr. Broken Mandarin

Hey all! This is your friendly and funny Fen guest blogging on NZJ space! Woo!

First i have to say that Nzj was deeply affected (Editor/nzj: Where got~!?) that the first show was cancelled! we still hung around for quite a bit even after they said “yi jing qu xiao le” several times… We both left disappointed but i suddenly remembered that our flight was late in the afternoon and after consulting with Nzj for a bit we managed to confirm that our flight was indeed in the afternoon and we could still catch the 10am show on the following day! Yays!

The plan was to rush down by cab by 930am, watch the show which starts at 10am till abt hopefully 11.30am then rush back by cab to the apartment get our luggage and rush to the aiport by 12.30pm to catch our plane at 1.30pm!

So to comment on this event, my main contribution was to get me, nzj and my aunt (who currently resides in Spain) to get into the performance venue! which i did! Mwahahaha!

We got there abt 30mins before the performance was set to start but there was a huge group of dance students crowding around the door already! As i peeked in, saw that most of the seats were taken except for the first two rows. There was a lady at the door who seemed to be the one in charge of the performance and she was telling the students to let the teachers in first… all said in chinese and too fast for me to understand so Nzj promptly translated to me.

After a quick consultation with Nzj, we decided that i will use my very proficient english and “very good” mandarin to help us get in! So i started questioning the girls at the door in english, getting them confused and getting their eyeballs big…then i started to talk to the lady in charge also. She didn’t understand me at all and ignored me! Urghs! And still said to let the teachers in first.

So i changed tactic and started speaking my “very good” mandarin to her! “Err dui bu qi wo men shi mao li qiu si, xi ban ya he xin jia bo lai de, xiang kan ni men de yan chu, shang ci lai le ke shi mei you biao yan! suo yi wo men jin tian you xia lai le, wo men ke yi jin qu kan ma?” She looked super stunned and started murmuring to herself, then she started saying, still murmuring “na wo ying gai rang ni men xian jin qu ba”! YES! Victory! Mwahahaha! And true enough we were let in before all the young punks outside the door and led to the VIP seats! Hoo Hoo!

Oh forgot to say in between she mistook my aunt for one of the teachers there! haha! Maybe we all looked too hip and happening among them! haha.. So then we got very good seats to enjoy the perf! the only perks we didn’t get to enjoy was the free mineral water offered to the teachers in front…damnz….

During the performance i keep looking at the time scared that they will overrun and we will miss our flight! I keep mumbling that they should hurry up and get the exercises done with and proceed on with the dance items!!! All the while i will mumble, Nzj will give me dirty looks…Yucks! (nzj: ???!!! What dirty looks?!) Totally in no hurry to catch the plane… Fortunately the solos were quite short and i could enjoy the rest of the performance in peace.

Anyway enjoy the short clips that we managed to illegally video down!

Fen

结业课展示

Posts of my trip will be location-/venue-based rather than the usual chronological order. This allows me to collate activities spanned across several days and list the most exciting/happening ones on top. Just like this one below.

As a Chinese Dance dancer, one must visit 北京舞蹈学院 a.k.a. Beijing Dance Academy if one is in Beijing. Otherwise the trip will be totally wasted. Mothership of Chinese Dance that produced all the Ding Hongs and Zhou Leis lei~!

So Fen and myself went down excitedly to the academy, and we saw this poster…

Wow… Graduation exhibition for dancers who took the performance profession in the classical dance faculty?! This is a performance not to be missed~!!! (Especially after our failed attempts to search for dance performances in both Shanghai and Beijing.) There were two performance timings. We went down to the first one only to be told that the performance was cancelled due to the absence of the pianist. We went down again at 10am for the second run (which happened to be our flight day too) only to find out that the venue was already full.

Cue Fen’s broken Mandarin (more on this in a separate guest post). We, one from Mauritius, one from Singapore and one from Spain, were finally seated on VIP seats.

The exhibition was fantastic. I was very 激动 during the last item, the 特殊技巧组合. I was totally mentally prepared to miss the flight to watch the performance in whole. 原来基本公也可以很好看～

Okay… Here we go. Be prepared for a whole chunk of dance below.

第一部分、基训课教材

• This was the opening to the exhibition. And was followed by 舞姿辗转组合.
• The girl in the front row and has bandage on her left hand is one of the best dancers. Her face emotes constantly, and was nicknamed “emo girl”.

• This was taken over various sections: 控制、踢腿、旋转、翻身、跳跃。
• The guy at the front of the triangle right at the beginning of the video is one of the best dancers.
• 0:18 – When can I ever do this 控腿 and change from 勾脚 to 蹦脚? ;(
• 0:33 – Aiya~ How can their 控腿 be so high even when they change from 后腿 to 前腿? ;(
• 0:41 – Looking upwards is one of the new directions that I noticed them doing which I rarely do…
• 1:25 – Notice them looking upwards again?
• 2:33 – There was a minor mishap where the dancers’ hands hit. That was the moment when one of the teachers attempted to stop us from filming the exhibition. Erm… Should have more confidence in the standard of her dancers right? That minor accident didn’t affect the standard of the performance lei~
• 2:57 – It was a long while later when I thought the exhibition was too nice to not record down the moves. And so I activated my camera and resumed video taking…

第二部分、个人组合展示

• Emo girl’s solo~! It’s a pity that my camera couldn’t capture her facial expressions clearly.
• 1:50 – Impressive~! But no beauty at all lei~

• The only thing I remembered about this dance is that the dancer had a different finger expression for each move she had. She was practically dancing with her entire body.

• Fen captured this video.
• The most zai male dancer~! Very sharp dancer with extremely good technique and core control. *Drool*
• 0:57 – SUPERB MOVE~!!!
• 1:19 –  Did a freeze frame of his front split jump and it looked horribly good. *Jealous*

• Fen captured this video.
• 1:06 – He did the superb move too. Just not as superb as the most zai male dancer.

第三部分、特殊技巧组合

My translation for Fen for this section was “Special Skills Exhibition”. I thought they were going to show some unique skills like maybe the ability of their tongue to touch their elbow. (No… Don’t start trying that now…) Little did I know…

• 0:34 – This is the second most zai male dancer~
• 0:54 – Once again, the dancer had different finger expressions for each turn. Quite a huge vocabulary that we seem to be missing…
• 1:43 – The constantly low spinning move is nice~!
• 2:26 – The most zai male dancer returns to show off all the variations you can do while doing turns! Whoo~!
• 2:36 – The guy flipping around the circumference has his hands touching the floor. Quite a unique move~
• 3:25 – I was really that close to tearing at this moment and my hands were trembling…
• 3:34 – A very Ding Hong move~

Whoa~ That’s all. It’s a pity that these video is only 30% of the whole exhibition. Must go Beijing Dance Academy and crash any of their class performance ok!!!

Event One After BJ-SH-HZ-HK Trip

First tHing that we did after we cAme back from our two-week triP was none other than celebrating Mr. Fen’s twenty-eighth birthday. So 巧 that it’s his birthday the very next day and the master mind Ms Yuen had it Planned out the moment our plane touched down. She informed Laval and Christalle to buy a cake (a verY last minute request I think), she requested me be the mole and update her of Fen’s activities in the house, and she even got Laval to ferry her from her place to Fen’s. *Cough* Si BeI bossy… *Cough*

To pRevent The surprise party from losing tHe surprise element, Huizhi actually sneaked into the house (anD then into the toilet to blow balloons) while LAval shooed Fen back into his room and chatted with him about random stuffs, just to keep Fen in the room. Christalle then helped Laval in distracting Fen by trYing to converse about the China trip. So meanwhile, Huizhi was doing the following in the toilet~!

Happy birthday~! We’ve got a surprise for you… It’s some

I was trying to suppress my laughter When I received hEr SMS that she was blowing balloons in the toilet and I popped over to help her with one. I realize that it‘s been so long since I’Ve blown a balloon. Hur hur~

Once sufficient balloons werE blown, it was time to quickly decorate the living room with whatever we’ve Got. All the while with Mr. Fen “entertained” by Christalle.

Once all the preparations were done, Fen was invited ouT of the room and out there wAs everyone there to celebrate his birthday. Heh~ Oh, and it happened that May 28th was ChriStina’s birthday (she’s the German hoUsemate by the way). So we 顺便 had a belated celebRation for her too. More random Photos below~

Funny thing was ChRistina’s boyfrIend(?) was there but Fen waS the one who seemed to be cutting a wedding cake with hEr. Hahaha…

The cake was a tIramisu from [unknown] and iT was nice~! We then had a quick screening of the photos and some gorgeous videos that we took during our trip. Through the random small chats, we realized that Christina‘s boyfriend haS dOne ballrooM dancing for seventeen(?) yEars~!!! Wow… Fen then invited him to crash our choreography sessions to have a taste of 水袖. The next few sessions might be fun~

Read on… Note: Protected link ahead~