Tour de Europe! (11/6)

Before I start this entry, I'm very excited to announce that you can watch video from my blog! AGAIN! (That is, if you missed it a year ago) Just look for the pictures with the huge "PLAY" button in the middle. Click on the button, let the video load, and enjoy the show!

Ok, back to the story. It was D-day. All our practices, all the loss of sleep, all the arguments had finally lead to this day. Needless to say, appetite was absent in the dinning room. We did an early warm-up cos our conductor needed to bring another choir to their competition first. We changed into our ethnic costumes, and took the tram to the Palacky University for our first category: Folk Music. Oh, my solo, my solo...

As we were waiting in our holding room for our turn to sing, we thought it would be interesting to hear the other choirs sing first, so we sneaked into the competition hall through the back door and sat with the audience when the adjudicators took their tea break. Our conductor looked through the choir sequence and muttered to us, "If X choir went up now, we'd be in deep shit..." As he was saying this, the MC announced, "Our next choir is X choir. They'll be singing..." We stared at each other. Silence. Shock. Realization. Get out right now!

We hauled our asses out of the hall immediately through the back door. Our turn was immediately after X choir, so we should stand by at stage left. The problem is, there's no direct passage from the back door to stage left! The only way to get there is to go downstairs, walk across the compound, then go upstairs again to stage left. It's more than a 5-min walk, and X choir was already singing on stage! Imagine our panic! Then our conductor came to us, assuring us that we had gotten permission to enter from the back door. That calmed us down a bit, but it was almost surely a disaster!

It's show time, baby! It's my turn to sing the solo, and I felt strangely calm. It's as if all the load had been taken off my shoulders, even before I sang! Anyway, I did sing, and I could tell from my conductor and the audience's response that I actually managed to KICK ASS. Whoa!

After that, we quickly changed into our suits and gowns, then took the tram again to Reduta Dum theatre for our final trial: Open Mixed Superior. There're less than 10 choirs participating in this category, and the set piece was difficult as hell. When it's our turn to sing, we held nothing back. There's so much emotion coming from us that our 10 mins on stage seemed forever! Things were certainly looking good for us. The question is: how good can we get?

That answer would be answered very soon, as we were told to go to the town square for the results. When we got there, guess who's already rocking the stage? It's none other than The Beatles! Or at least, that's what they THINK they are. Anyway, the crowd just lapped it up and cheered madly.

At last, the moment of truth. Before we knew it, our conductor's other choir scored a Gold! And then, it's our turn. The results for Folk music category, which our rival choir also joined, was slowly announced. For those of us who kept count, there's only 2 choirs left - us and our rival! "... at 99 points, Gold medal for *dramatic pause*..."

I swear some of our hearts stopped beating at that moment.

... it turned out to be our rival! We cheered and hopped! The other choirs that saw us were confused as we're not the 99 point choir. But we're too happy cos we know we scored AT LEAST 99 points! But we totally didn't expect the otherwise...

"The winner at 100 points, The Vocal Consort, Singapoo!"

Oh MAN, am I overwhelmed! My solo and choreography actually bagged us the 100 points Gold! I screamed and screamed until I started sobbing, and then I screamed some more! Hugs and handshakes were aplenty... but hold on to your panties! There's still one more category to go!

Boy oh boy, was that a freaking long wait! Apparently our category, being the most prestigious of all, would be announced LAST. So we waited, and we waited, and then came the Whooper of shock. We scored... another 100 points! We're category winner again! And we're the only Singapore choir to have ever achieved 100 points in a Superior category! Euphoria! Ecstasy! Somebody please bring out the straight jackets, cos we're all going CRAZY!!!

With this kind of results, we were naturally a finalist for the Grand Finals, along with 6 other choirs. We sang our hearts out, and we won the 3rd position together with another choir! WOOHOO!

This day, I lived the best moments of my life thus far. Now there's reason to celebrate and get wild! In fact, the organizers actually gave us coupons to redeem drinks from the hotel bar (read: alcohol!). There's even a disco party in the ball room! It was, for the lack of a more bombastic word, AWESOME!

ps: Remember to check out the photos and videos!