Enchanting Vienna

For the second time in 10 years (first was back in 2002), the world renowned Vienna Boys Choir was in Sabah, courtesy of Rotary Club Kota Kinabalu who spent literally two full years in order to make this rare event to happen. Besides bringing one of the world’s best to Sabah, one of the main objectives were to raise funds for the dialysis project that the Rotary Club is organizing, more particularly the International Polio Plus, avoidable blindness as well as the community gravity water project. (Excerpted from Daily Express, our local dailies). 

The Vienna Boys’ Choir, originated more than half a century ago, sang exclusively for the court, at mass, at private concerts and functions and on state occasions in Vienna until the 1920s. Due to insufficient funding after the end of the monarchy, the Vienna Boys Choir was privatized in 1921 and started to give concerts outside of the chapel which immediately turned out to be a great success. Since the 1920s, the choir has collected all kinds of different music styles on its travels (via). The inarguably the oldest and best known boys' choir in the world and was on stage here in Kota Kinabalu on the 29^th and 30^th October 2011 at Sutera harbor Resort and Chancellor Hall (UMS), respectively. We opted for our tickets on the latter. It feels so good to be able to go back to the uni again :). Tickets were ranging from RM250, RM100 and RM50 for the show in UMS. 

The boys are selected from all over the world, China, Australia, Singapore, Japan, Europe, Germany as well as Canada with a total of 25 boys aged between 9 and 13, turning to 10 and 14 based in Vienna in a boarding school. Today, there are around 100 choristers between the ages of 10 to 14 which are divided into four touring choirs. The four touring choirs (by the name Bruckner, Haydan, Mozart and Schubert) are performing around 300 concerts every year. They visit virtually all European countries, and they are frequent guests in Asia, Australia and the Americas. The choir's repertoire includes everything from medieval over classical to contemporary and experimental music as well as children’s operas.

One thing that captured my attention (excerpted from the daily) on a press conference between Daily Express and the boy’s choir 32 years old conductor was that; at the boys’ age as young as 9 (to 13) as a touring group at the same time studying in a boarding school, when do they actually go to school? According to Kerem (the conductor), there were 3 semester in a year whereby the first one is the touring semester. The second and third one will be from January to March, and April to June respectively. They go to school in the morning for four hours and two hours of rehearsal, mid break, lunch break and resume with schooling from 2.30pm to 6pm before dinner and leisure time.

He added, since the boys will be touring 2-3 months in a year, by singing for all big presidents and prime ministers, holding press conferences worldwide, speaking to waiters asking for a fork, meeting fans singing for autographs and taking pictures are also a form of education, which I couldn’t agree more :).

Throughout the performances, photographs and video-taping were strictly prohibited and everyone as far as I can see seemed to adhere to the regulations. Thus, I was a little disappointed that time as I was practically geared up with all-formatted memory cards, summing to a total of 25 GB from both DSLR and compact in all but I didn't muster up enough courage to whip out my camera at all :P.

The night started promptly at 2000hr sharp with a short customary speech by the Rotarian representative and brief introduction about Vienna Boys Choir by the conductor. The choir, which went by the theme "Enchanting Vienna" making a debut with Ach, Lieb, ich muss dich lassen (My darling, I must leave you). The performances promptly followed on and lasted for about an hour or so before taking a short intermission before resuming with the second half of the program. Most of the songs were presented in French and Italian. Thanks to the booklet we were asked to buy for RM2 each (in buy one free one basis), which comprised a complete compilations of the songs presented along with English translation. Throughout the performance, there were barely any pause or brief introduction between each songs, thus we could hardly trace where which song were we in until the 10^th song which was carried out in English with a frequent repetition of ‘Moses, Moses’, which was also its title :P

Since there were two empty seats on my left, a brother in Christ who was about the age of the boss, also a close friend of ours who came for the performance alone joined us during the interval and was seated next to me through the second half. I finally whipped out my camera thinking that I have someone big whom I can count-on covering me on the sideway when I start snapping and video-ing away. Funny thing was that the first sentence he asked was ‘why are you guys bringing so many cameras?’ (little did we know that photography were prohibited earlier) and the sentence he repeatedly mentioned was ‘don’t put on your flash’ and went on ‘else, we’ll both be caught’. LOL. So, I kept it minimal with the aid of the shawl I brought along :P. 

The choir infixed a couple of Chinese songs by the title “Bang Chhun-hong” (Longing for the spring breeze) in Taiwanese Hokkien and “Xiang Jia Le” in Mandarin. The crowd was very much livened up when the choir ended up the performance with a famous local song, Gunung Kinabalu; which was not included in their repertoire earlier. We were told that the songs were practiced in a mere span of two days. Audiences were clapping along in glee and started to sing along. We were allowed to have our photos taken with the choristers but we gave that a miss because we didn’t want to be caught in the post-performance congestion (both traffic and human) :P

Personally, I was very impressed with the all the boys that they manage to memorize what seemed to me to be a rather long speech with very minimal referring to the notes (only for a few number of songs). Not to mention, am utterly amazed with the angelic voices they had. They seriously deserved a pat on their back for putting up a really good show and it was an enchanting Viennese evening indeed :)

Registering August

Where have the first week of August gone to? I barely had time to register it was here before it flew by. I was caught with a nasty cold on Monday evening, I guessed it was among my worst experience ever. The house and car were fumigated with nasty viruses. Worse, I have to carry a leaking nose and sore throat to work for the whole week. Oh yes, did I mention that I am already working? Well, I am not sure if I can actually regard myself as working or spending the holidays wisely and I’ll talk more about it someday :).

Somehow, I am glad that at least, I did two things that made me feel good inside out. First, I managed to proofread 5 chapters for a friend’s thesis on solar car in 2 days, a future technology baby everyone will want to own one someday. I am so glad that I managed to get it done while trying to juggle a balance between work and quality sleep :). 

Secondly, I managed to spring clean my wardrobe. Finally after so much of procrastination, I am finally letting go cloths which I didn’t see the need to wear any of those which had been occupying the wardrobe space for dunno-how-long. Some were totally new, some have been worn less than 2 times. I'll just have packed them aside, and my mom will take care of the rest (i.e whom to give, where to send) and she has the name of recipients in mind beforehand :).

They are back :)

A good friend of mine commented that I have not been updating my blog as frequent as I used to (amI?) :). Perhaps, my posts are getting a little less cheong-hei (i.e long winded) these days. Getmy key word? Less, which implies I am still quite cheong-hei :). So, here's a little in-detail but trivial post which I would most probably give it a miss during my uni days. Since I have the time now, I'll just give it a go lah :D.

After many many moons(coming to one month), I have finally gotten back T-shirtswhich I sent for alteration lastSaturday. In fact, I came to know about T-shirt alteration only in the recentyears. But start sending my tee for alteration since last year, when I foundthe tee shirt sold during the Statewide Fellowship was too big for me. A sisterin Christ offered me to do the alteration for me. She did not want to chargeme, and I have ever received her sweet gesture for a couple of times before this where she insisted.

But for the sake for long term service and courtesy wise, I was adamant to pay her. It was only RM5 per piece which is very reasonable and my highlight hereis that she has very neat handwork, that is what matter most. That also explain why I don't mind waiting, as she was a busy tailor. Ever since, I started sending my tees (only those typical activities tee or those that unisex tee that only comes in big S, M, L sizes) for alteration. What I needed to do is only to attach a tee of the size I wanted my other tees to be, the other day I sent along my Padini S size ladies tee, and they turned out exactly the same cutting :).

Can you spot the Mickey Mouse cartoon print on the cabinet? That was our wardrobe when we were kids and the three of us have one each and they are still sitting at the corner of our rooms. Quite space consuming and not very practical these days but they are classical! :)

Looking at the tee, I quickly google up for Japan latest updates. Apparently, the city is recuperating and coping well, but the after shock effect is still very much felt. Please do not stop praying for Japan and a little prayer goes a long way:).

Charity Tee: To Japanese with love

This is a backdated post as I have just received the tee from the boss last Thursday during his visit. On one afternoon of March 2011, we were all shocked about an earthquake and tsunami happening at Japan with an 8.9 earthquake on the richter scale and a massive tsunami was sweeping into Sendai. It was really shocking and saddening. Though rescue workers continue their frantic search, Japan's death toll is already expected to exceed 10,000 (via here).

Today, although Japan is in its midst of recovering from the virtual nightmare, the government's Reconstruction Design Council has proposed a set of steps for rebuilding areas clobbered by the Great East Japan Earthquake, but it left unanswered where money needed to implement them will come from (via here).

Almost the whole world is taking part in giving a little hand to the Japanese, and I am impressed that even kids as young as kindergarten age are exposed to the values of lending a hand and sharing sorrows. They made their move in contributing pre-loved books and toys for the children in Japan at such a tender age.

As for our side, if you have been following my previous cyber-home, you will know that the boss is a craver for all-things-Japanese. I am glad that he and the kaki-s (buddies sharing a common interest in scale modeling and collectible figures) shared the same mind in purchasing the charity tee organized by Red Monkey Company based in Hong Kong. I didn't know that I have my share too until he brought over the tee for me the other day ;).

With RMC's non-profit making aim this round, all the moneys paid will be contributed to the Red Cross for the Japanese orphan victim. You can see the boss and his kaki-s basking in their new tee here ;).

The graphic on the tee were designed by two Japanese Children; Kurata Rakuyo (5 years old) and Kurata Narumi (6 years old) whilst the slogan ひとりじゃないよ (Read: hitori janai yo) with the meaning ‘you are not alone’ were created by Kurata Mihoko. These three young kids wanted to highlight the plea as the kids are waiting for the parents to collect them but unfortunately their parents are no longer around. For this design, they were released in April 2011 and sold for HKD 201.63 each :).

The boss has his in black whilst mine was white. The boss had over-estimated my size and ordered a M size for me and I have sent mine for alteration along with another souvenir tee which I have gotten from him for quite sometime ago ;P.