Drumfest 2008 and a big headache to rush my forms for the HDB loan..

(Apologies to Boon for putting incorrect statements on the blog. I'm fully aware who bears the cost of Drumfest, and I assume SF pple should know as well.)

Its 4.15 pm in the afternoon and I feel like I've already worked for hours when in actual fact I've only worked for a little over 2.5 hours or so? I just feel so lethargic and exhuasted, my muscles are a little aching, and the air condition is rather warm today (I suppose i should be happy that its not freezing cold anymore).

But anyway I had a great weekend at the drumfest 2008, starting with the gig on friday.

had dinner with millie n yanqin then went for a gig with only 6 pple at Hotel Intercontinental at around 9 plus at night. wasn't too bad, but definitely wasn't good either. mistakes made by almost everyone. haiz. but that was just the beginning of the super hectic weekend.

after the gig, went home to get the car to drive to airport to fetch the rockstar guys, Rafeal, Nate morton, Cory, and Storm Large. (i got a hug from storm, and oh man, she is tall and has that rocker chick attitude man!) they were really friendly and nice, but had a hell of a lot of equipment to transport, boon's RUSH and my WISH (which is a 6 seater with a boot) was barely enough for the band, plus the drivers and chaperone (Ian).

no wait, before fetching them i think Ian and i went to fetch Johny Rabb n chris paterson (sp?) the lesser known drummers but i think johnny was really nice n accommodating. i did talk to them a bit about the food in singapore n got their craving for local delights. hahaha! chilli crab anyone? apparently that was too spicy for them, hehz. that was pretty uneventful, but thank goodness i didn't pick up virgil donati, everyone says he's a little weird or eccentric, and come on , to practice drums for 5 hours in a row without any rest eventhough you're jetlag? its either ultra disciplined or downright nuts. hahaha...

anyway after fetching those 2 guys to the hotel, we went to studio to help shift things, that took about 1.5 hours or so, until around 3.45 am or so, then went over to Ian's house to take a bath n a short half hour nap, then at 5.15 am we checked the flight schedule and to our horror, Rock Star pple had landed about an hour earlier than expected! needless to say, we rushed to the airport and met them at about 5. 40 am with Boon.

oh yeah Ian's house is quite big, n the sofa is really soft.. hahaha! i think i knocked myself out on the couch while he was typing stuff on his laptop. poor guy. but then agian, half an hour of sleep didn't make much of a difference.

after sending them to the hotel, we went to fort canning to help out move stuff again, then went to buy breakfast for the pple, and i got to fetch the American idol pple with Sy Smith and Teddy Campbell, along with julia, so that was kinda cool! they weren't as friendly as the Rockstar pple, but then again, i was to zonked out n zombified to talk much anyway. haha..

after that the rest of the day was spent fetching artistes up and down from the concert venue to the hotel, n buying food n other stuff for them inbetween journeys. oh man, by the time the AI pple ended their set and I drove them back, i was on the brink of collasping.

oh yeah, n i did fall asleep at one red light while fetching the AI band back from their sound check in the afternoon! haha! i think they didn't really mind though. they were just laughing about it. =p

thankfully on sunday i managed to catch about 7 hours of sleep cos rockstar pple cancelled their sound check which was supposed to be at 10 in the morning, so i only needed to pick them up with Liting at about 12.30 pm. it was hilarious the way Rafeal was so obviously hitting on liting! "oh looks like there's no more space in the car.. liting will have to sit on someone's lap." and even nate got into the act!

nate: "are you coming to tonight's party?"
LT: "oh i don't think so i've got to get up early for work tml.. haha"
nate: (after a look that said you-gotta-be-kidding) "let me try this again. are you coming to tonight's party?" (ends with a super funny smile)

oh n i can't believe storm large is 39! man! in the photos she looks early 20s, in real life she doesn't have any wrinkles, wears tight leather pants and barely looks 30! amazing! n i thought americans age more quickly than asians. =p oh yeah n her vocal class was quite funny as well, she was more interested in talking about singapore than any vocal points. her first time giving a vocal class i think, n whatever she shared was pretty basic knowledge for any wanabe singer. oh except for the gaggling the throat with smashed panadols or baking soda. i think that's not a good way to deal with a bad throat before you sing, n it will get more damaged after that, but i guess that's a last resort.

sunday passed by pretty much in a daze, and oh yes, i forgot to mention the crazy speed at which we played crazy army! oh man, Ian forgot n gave the flightphesy BPM instead, everyone was shocked but we still played on, sounded alittle messy, but i guess its ok. flightphesy was good! i felt the vibes, the grooving was great, n FHW, all i can say is i never knew it would be tiring playing the snare part for FHW! i think i used a speed which was too high as well, Ian and everyone else was clearly super exhuasted at the end of it! hahaha... but i think the crowd liked us, we certainly opened the drumfest with a big loud bang!

sunday was more relaxed than saturday, but tempers flared and sales were not as well. actually there's a lot of negative things i can say about the drumfest, but i prefer not to mention the unpleasantness as this wil probably be the last time boon organises the drumfest. i don't blame him, after making huge losses for 2 years running, even if i had the cash to keep it going, i would throw in the towel and call it a day. n worse, to have partners n workers who aren't helping you effectively n do things arbitrarily (ahem, a certain black Mos burger) n sadly SF members who aren't helping out whole-heartedly (they know who they are) or didn't even turn up to help at all.

but on the whole i would say i enjoyed myself. i think Irenus was truly very amused at my girlfriend's comments to me n the incredulous look on my face when she makes unbelievable remarks. haoshan was also being very accommodating n professional in her job, n lynette (i never knew who she was until drumfest itself!) did quite a good PR job, the AI pple were on the news n Sy Smith herself commented that lynette was very good n had many connections with the media.

but seriously, at the end of sonofas' show, there were so few pple left, i think only about 30 or 40 pple in the audience bothered to stay so late, n the SF pple needed to go home to rest for work today. its just unthinkable to stay back to load things n transport heavy stuff around, n still have energy left for the next day at work. i mean school, o k lah, can always sleep in class or even pontang sch, but working adults can't just randomly take off from work.

which brings me to my last point, me taking half day urgent leave off to settle the HDB loan forms. joan was super annoyed at the number of forms n the documents which we needed to get before we could submit the forms. n to be completely honest, i just take the half day so i could catch 1-2 hours more of sleep, rather than to settle the forms, but it turns out the time was really tight for application for the HDB loans n other forms, so we had no choice but to rush to TPY Hub to get a queue number to submit the form. thank God my boss seemed to understand that i needed to settle the things, n i won't take urgent leave for no good reason.

like i said earlier to joan, i've got totally no strength or mood to work today, i just dragged my feet to office cos i know my boss will freak out if i take a whole day off, n i'll just get hell of a scolding tml. so i'm just here today to chill, reply a few emails, n answer phone calls. Sigh. Lawyering may bring in the bucks, but with added stress, responsibility n work load. i think i will only practice for a maximum of maybe 20 years before i get really fed up with this kind of job n lifestyle.