Author: Wilfrid

Categories
Fiction

The Alignment Ingress By Thomas Greanias: A Worthy Read?

The first novella from the augmented reality game Ingress.

This may not be a popular post among the Ingress community because those who are playing this augmented reality game and have read the novella seems to love it.  However, just because everyone seems to love Nolan’s Batman series doesn’t mean that there aren’t common voices within that have a different opinion.  Here are a few observations for sharing if you are curious to know if The Alignment Ingress is your cup of tea.

First of all, let me say that I am a huge fan of Ingress and its communities.  I have spent many walking hours playing the game.  I enjoy reading books that are spawned from a game, like the novels from World of Warcraft.  Reading The Alignment Ingress, I would expect to have a better clarity on the lore and the characters involved.  I enjoy reading mysterious and code solving types of novels like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol.  This novella has a promising start with a picture of Queen of Sheba and a celestial map of Virgo – both appear to match each other perfectly.  There is a treasure to be discovered.  The Alignment Ingress has a fair amount of military weaponry jargon, which I am OK with as I have once ground through Tom Clancy’s mightily thick books.  But here lies the challenge, this novella is short.  Packing all these ingredients in and making it an entertaining read is no easy feat.

There are two main characters in this novella: Conrad Yeats and Hank Johnson who seek ancient treasure and truth.  Conrad Yeats is a known character from the author’s previous books.  So if you have not read any of Greanias’s books in the past, you probably would find it a little bit hard to relate to some of the characters because character development in this novella is scarce.  There are Ingress related explanations dotted throughout the book – which is good for those who play the game more than following the lore in Ingress website.  What I find missing is how the dots connect to each other.  Yes, I now know what exotic matter is, even chaotic matter that is not yet live in the game.  ADA, the female voice from the game.  Various organizations.  And portals of course.  But how do all these really link to each other?  More importantly, what is the Shapers and the real agendas of different entities?  The novella doesn’t say.  Out of nowhere, the two factions – Resistance and Enlightened – are mentioned.  But why such division from the start?  Who are leading the factions?  How do the characters in this novella relate to these factions?  It doesn’t say either.

On the puzzle solving bits, the beginning was promising.  I was anticipating a Da Vinci Code-like journey.  Throughout the mid section of the book, more insights mixed with Biblical events are thrown in.  It is only till the very end when the solution is revealed.  It is a great ending no doubt despite a lack of depth.  However, I wish I was able to solve the mystery alongside with the narration as the plot progresses like Dan Brown’s books.

There is a fair bit of technical jargon with regards to drones and explosive that lost me for a moment.  Not because I have no interest in the topic.  This novella does not have the luxury of the length of Tom Clancy’s books that explain the parts in great details.  But I enjoy seeing how modern day gadgets like Nexus devices and the social media site Google+ are being mentioned.  There seems to be a tinny bit of romance too.  I guess only those who follow the author’s previous books may be able to relate.

All in all, maybe I am expecting too much, The Alignment Ingress is still a pretty good read for the most hardcore fans.  Ironically, I seem to enjoy reading a link from the novella that leads to a chapter from another up-coming book by Felicia Hajra-Lee called An Exotic Matter the most.  There is a fair bit of suspense and an interesting character development within.  I am curious about what that may turn out.

The Alignment Ingress comes in two digital versions (as far as I know).  I bought the Kindle version.  On a hindsight, if I were to have a Nexus tabulate, the Google Book version would have been a better choice.  Because the novella contains links to external sites and that don’t open well in Kindle PaperWhite, I have to toggle between reading on a Kindle and on a PC so as to dive into these extra bits of the story.

Categories
Book Reviews Fiction

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time By Yasutaka Tsutsui

A Japanese novelette

First, a couple of interesting points about this book and the author.  The title story was written between 1965 to 1966 and was translated into English on 2011.  This English version has two stories: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and The Stuff That Nightmares Are Made Of.  Just over 200 pages in length, this Japanese science fiction is a quick read.  Yasutaka Tsutsui is also the author of Paprika, which was made into a film.  I remember liking that film a lot.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is fast pace and entertaining.  One day, fifteen-year-old schoolgirl Kazuko has discovered by accident that she is capable of time travel.  Leaping back and forth in time, Kazuko is trying to convince her friends this new found superpower of hers.  To Kazuko, the ability to leapt through time is more of a problem that has be solved rather than an opportunity to be exploited.  As a part-science-fiction-part-drama-and-romance, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time doesn’t dwell too deep onto the technical details.  The story has also elegantly avoided the topic of temporal paradox.  All in all, I was glued to the story from the first page.  My only disappointment is that the story has ended too soon.  It has a beautiful ending, don’t get me wrong.  I just wish the story would last longer.

Then, there is this odd piece called The Stuff That Nightmares Are Made Of.  While the two stories do not seem to relate to each other, it does have this common theme of erasing memory.  Masako has certain phobias that have been haunting her since young.  And she discovers that not only she has this problem, the people around her too.  Like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, the author is taking the readers a journey of mystery and discovery.  The Stuff That Nightmares Are Made Of does not seem to have the magic like the titled story does.  It is a good albeit short read nonetheless.

Categories
Diary

Weekly Diary Summary EP01 – From Google+ Posts

It is happening, however much I wished to deny or defy it.  Google+ is becoming my preferred blogging platform.  The level of engagement and the quality of discussion over there is phenomenon.  In my decades of blogging, I have not seen something quite like that.  Not that I am hugely popular in Google+.  There is something special about this social networking platform.  It is so open, yet I feel so much more comfortable interacting with friends and strangers who most have a real name and a real face against them and are truly passionate about the topics of their interests.  Looking back, deleting my accounts from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn in one go and focus on one single social platform is probably one happy decision I have made.  Best is relative.  To the least, I am not stressed over multiple platforms feeling the need to cater for the audience from different channels.  One is all I need, for now.

Apr 21, weekly summary of G+ posts.

Enjoying the current platform is one thing.  I have seen online services come and go.  The only thing invariant is the website I host.  Perhaps it is worthwhile to write a weekly diary summary in here for my future reference while self-reflecting on the things I have done over the week.

One evening, I was watching Formula One on TV.  I opened an apple cider from the refrigerator.  And I posted a random picture on G+ as well as in one of the Google Messenger group chats.  Interestingly, those who love to drink cider really know cider.  They can recognize the drink I was having and talk about the cider that they prefer.  Another evening, closed to midnight, I met up with a Canadian whom I have come to know over Ingress.  To wrap up the day, we had two cans of cider because we have once talked about cider over online chat.  I can’t remember what I drank.  It wasn’t as sweet as Somersby.  But it did have a certain ‘kick’ to it.  My knowledge on cider is limited.  Back in UK, the only beer I knew was lager, bitter, and cider.  I was not aware of any sub-categorization beyond that.

Talking about Ingress, this week has been an exciting week for this augmented reality game.  I popped by East Coast Park and took photographs of the surroundings using my mobile phone.  That trip was purely for portal submission and strictly speaking, not playing the game.  It is an aspect that allows players to expand the game universe.  The next day, I ventured into a park near my office that I did not even know of its existence, if not for my passion to discovery and submit Ingress portals.  It was an adventure of its own.  Perhaps, more rewarding so was that one particular portal submission has gained the recognition from Ingress.  In return, Ingress has given me with an activation code and I can use it to recruit one friend into the game.  Sweet.

More about Ingress, there was a huge operation involving agents from Singapore and Malaysia physically shuttling across the borders of Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia in order to paint a large part of our countries green.  That was one inspiring operation.

My few-week-old niece Lydia is growing up steadily. I wish I could spend more time with her.  But, her three years senior sister Bethany has been getting all my attention, whenever I pay them a visit.  Totally understandable.  My dad, on the other hand, is actively posting photographs onto Google+.  Some dated back to the time when I was still a little boy.  I guess my 78-year-old dad is wasting no time to catch up.

Categories
Book Reviews Non-Fiction

Drucker: A Life In Pictures By Rick Wartzman

Drucker

Whenever I show this book to my friends around me, looking at the book title, the first reaction would often be, “Who is Drucker?  Could it be Peter Drucker?”

Indeed.  This is a photo book on the life of Peter Drucker.  Drucker was an Austrian-born American whose writings contributed to the foundations of the modern business corporation.  To quote from the author:

Drucker discerned some of the major trends and events of the twentieth century before almost anyone else spotted them: the Hitler-Stalin pack, Japan’s impending rise to economic power, the shift from manufacturing to knowledge work, the increasing importance of the service factor, the fall of the Soviet Union. “Peter Drucker’s eyeballs,” Harvard University’s Rosabeth Moss Kanter once marveled, “must contain crystal balls.”

Drucker: A Life in Pictures has done a good job in painting a picture of who Drucker was.  He was a teacher and was used to give lectures in universities.  He was a management consultant, worked with Jack Welch of GE and Donald Keough of Coca-Cola as well as other other large corporations like P&G.  He was a counsel for the government and had corresponded with the White House.  He was an adviser to the social-sector.  His wife and he took a deep interest in Japan after their first visit.  His books have been published in more then 40 languages.  Druker has played a role in educating the world on the development of management.  In his mind, he was always a writer and his legacy is his writing.  Of the 39 books of his, two-thirds of these books were written after he had reached his mid-sixties.

Interviewer: If you describe your occupation, would it be “writer”?

Peter Drucker: I always say I write.

Interviewer: What, then, has inspired your books more than anything?

PD: The same thing that inspires tuberculosis.  This is a serious, degenerative, compulsive disorder and addiction.

Interviewer: An addiction to writing?

PD: To writing, yes.

Drucker: A Life in Pictures is perhaps one of the more unique books I have reviewed.  While written by Rick Wartzman – executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University, the photographs are by Anne Fishbein, curated by Bridget Lawlor.  A majority of graphic content comes from letters and memos, certificates and handwritten notes – all of which reveal a personal insight on one aspect of Drucker that may be less familiar to the readers.  At the beginning of each chapter, there is a brief interview, which further illustrates a personal side of Drucker.  Reading through the book is like  journeying through a museum in my own pace.  A recommended read for those who wish to know more about Peter Drucker.

Hardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (January 15, 2013)
ISBN-10: 0071700463
ISBN-13: 978-0071700467

Categories
Fantasy & Sci-fi Movie Reviews Romance

Warm Bodies – A Highly Anticipated Zombie Romance

A zombie romance story.

Ever since I have watched the trailer of this movie, quite some time back, I have always been wanting to catch Warm Bodies on a big screen.  Cynthia and my buddy TK’s response to my overwhelming enthusiasm has been lukewarm.  Until they have watched the show with me.  They love it.

I am unsure why the global fascination on zombies and the undeads.  Online games like World of Warcraft have them.  They have been the prime targets in many shooter games.  Even in Call of Duty and Saint Rows 3 whereby I don’t see how zombies get into the stories, but they are there.  As though in our mind, the apocalypse happening in the future would turn many of us into the rotting zombies.  Dead, but not quite dead.

Warm Bodies in essence is a story about a zombie named R and a human girl called Julie.  And R has a friend called M.  Do the names like Romeo, Montague, and Juliet ring a bell?  It seems that Shakespeare would continue to inspire, all the way to the apocalypse and beyond.

This story is interesting because it is told from the perspective of a zombie.  R narrates most of the plot.  The way he sees things, the first time he falls in love and somehow manages to suppress his hunger for Julie’s brain.  Zombies eat human brains for the memories within, and to feel human again for a short while.  There seems to be a constant yearning for the zombies to feel human.  Indeed, this love between R and Julie has triggered an effect to the zombie community and turning them warm.  Hence the film’s title, Warm Bodies.

The relationship between zombies and human is slightly more complicated than us versus them.  Zombies that have given up hope to feel human again turn into skeletons.  In this three-way relationship, zombies emerge as the protagonists while flaws from the human and the skeleton such as apathy and distrust would leave the audience something to think about.

The morale of the story if I may add would be such.  Healing between groups of different people – be it as rich and poor, healthy and disabled, different religions and non-believers, and different cultures – would start with acceptance and love.  Change is possible.  Casting away prejudice and fear so as to see things from a different perspective.  Realizing that the very thing you fear about the other one could well be the same thing the other one too fear of.  And perhaps, we are not that different after all.

Categories
Diary Memorable Events

My Niece Baby Lydia

The ward at the medical center has a similar layout to the one we have visited three years ago, when my niece Bethany was born.  Yesterday – March 30th – my mother, my wife, and I drove to the same center, as we did in 2010.  I was not rushing in, as I did before.  Partly because I had a terrible backache.  Also partly because we knew what to expect.  My sister was admitted to the medical center in a Saturday morning.  Two and a half hours later, Lydia was born.  Lydia did not take as long as Bethany did.  I read somewhere that the second one may come out relatively faster than the first one.  Who knows?  Maybe my sister is getting the hang of childbirth.  Maybe the third one may pop out even faster.

She is Lydia

My first reaction in Chinese when I saw Lydia was: She is made from the same cookie cutter!  Figuratively speaking, this means Lydia looks the same as Bethany as a toddler.  I beat everyone to the usual discussion of which part of the baby resemble to which parent.  Freshly delivered from the womb, Lydia looks the same as Bethany.  Period.  That drew a lot of debates – not unexpectedly so – between Benny the proud father, Lora my beloved sister, my mother, my wife, and soon, the in-law side of the family.  I even took out a picture of Bethany taken when she was very young.  Only time will tell if I am a genius or I am missing the details.

I am not entirely sure how my sister feels to have another girl.  To me, that is extraordinary.  Two daughters in one go.  Sure, while it is less likely I would be drinking beer with my nieces and watching Formula One on TV, I can relate to girls better.  I can’t wait to bring them out for shopping, with their daddy’s credit cards.

Cynthia was especially curious how the three-year-old Bethany would react when she first met Lydia.  I reckon Bethany must have some level of understanding that a baby once inside her mother’s tummy is now sleeping peacefully by her mother’s bed.  Bethany was calm as her parents made the introduction.  When her grandparents tried to ask her questions, Bethany quieted them with a gesture signaling them that her sister was sleeping.  I was touched by the whole scene.  So young, and she has this sense of responsibility.  We whispered to each other, not wanting to upset Bethany, which is better for Lydia I reckon.  All the while, little Bethany sat on her mother’s bed quietly looking at her sister Lydia.  Given any other days, Bethany would have been running around and making laughter.  This level discipline suddenly struck me as an exhibition of growing up.

I noticed that in the ward, everyone was looking at Lydia, smiling at her.  How would little Bethany feel now that she may no longer be the sole center of attention?  I took out my mother’s tablet and signaled Bethany to come to the far end of the room.  Her father gave his blessing and we were playing her favorite pinball game, which I have installed for this very occasion that I have anticipated.

Avid readers may have followed my observation on Bethany and our pinball game.  New to our previous encounters, Bethany now has this awareness of losing.  A ball going down the drain is no good.  Now she gets it.  She would get all tensed up when she lost, holding fists and getting frustrated.  But when she managed to hit the bell at the top of the machine, she would smile and said slowly: This is … FUN!

Normally, I praise Google’s effort in evolving the Android platform.  In the new Nexus design, there is no physical buttons on the front of the device.  Instead, the three buttons – back, menu, and running applications – have become part of the touchscreen at the bottom.  This has given me tons of headache when Bethany now keeps on hitting those virtual buttons by mistake.  The game would suddenly disappear and she would get a shock every time that happened.  I would need to tell her that it is OK and show her how to return to the game.

And that happened every 20 seconds or so.

I am thinking, would Lydia grow up to like playing pinball and racing games like her sister?  Or would she have a whole new different personality?  Just one day before Bethany was born, my sister was playing racing game on my computer.  Now I wish I had instill some video gaming excitement to Lydia days before she was born.

Categories
Animation Foreign Movie Reviews

Chico And Rita – A Spanish Animation Film Of Love And Music

A Spanish animation film

The 8th Spanish Film Festival in Singapore is ending soon.  See if you can catch Chico & Rita (2010) at The Arts House today.  Admission is free on a first come basis.

Chico & Rita is a Spanish animated feature-length film.  The first that was nominated for the Oscar.  The artwork is beautiful.  Each frame could well be made into a wall painting.  The soundtrack throughout the film is equally beautiful, especially for the jazz music lover.  Set in Cuba, a pianist called Chico meets a singer called Rita.  And they have fallen in love.  However, circumstances seem to often get into their way.  Chico & Rita is a journey of love and music from Cuba’s Havana to New York and Las Vegas in a span of five decades.  Due to the rich history behind Chico & Rita and the fact that many of Havana’s pre-revolutionary buildings had decayed, the filmmakers have looked into the photograph archive in order to recreate the era and the mood.

This story is rather dark.  So is the mood.  Perhaps it is the pain the gives forth such beautiful music and inspires such exquisite artwork.

The drawing of Chico & Rita is exquisite.

Categories
Drama Foreign Movie Reviews

Tapas And The 8th Spanish Film Festival Here In Singapore

Tapas (2005) A Spanish Film

Cynthia and I were invited for the opening of the 8th Spanish Film Festival at The Arts House Singapore.  Before the main movie Tapas (2005), a 18 minutes short animation called Tadeo Jones (2007) was played.  Now that I have watched the animation.  It does sound like a reference to the Western version of Indiana Jones.

The main character Tadeo was at home when from his window, he saw a cute dog being thrown into a garage by a delivery man, together with boxes after boxes of mysterious packages.  Feeling the urge to save the dog, Tadeo ventured into the house and discovered a bizarre cult in the mist of an animal sacrificial ritual set in a quasi-Egyptian backdrop.  Not the sort of top quality animation as you would expect from a Hollywood movie of the same era.  The story is entertaining nonetheless.

Tapas (2005) is a mix of characters with individual plots that intertwined with one another.  In a Barcelona suburb, a wife of a self-centered restaurant owner cannot take his husband’s unrealistic demand anymore and has decided to quit being a chef.  And quit being his wife while she is at it.  Meanwhile, a Chinese chef who knows kung fu is happy to take up the job vacancy (and the abuse).  He is in Spain because he wants to be with his love.  A lady who sells chickpeas – among other cooking ingredients – has been in a separation for two years and now being in a cyber relationship with a man from Argentina.  Two young teenagers work at the same supermarket.  One of them is obsessed with Bruce Lee and girls of different nationalities while the other one has fallen in love with the chickpea lady.  Finally, there is an old couple with the woman selling drugs to the young and the man dying of lung cancer.

This film is raw, as in, there is little attractive about the characters and their living conditions.  Yet, it feels so real.  Ordinary people going about with their ordinary life dealing with real life challenges while learning from them.  Of all the sub-plots, I enjoy the story of the old couple the best.  It is heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time.

The 8th Spanish Film Festival is starting from now till the end of the month.  Every day at 19.30.  Admission is free and the location is at The Arts House.  Check out their website for further information.

8th Spanish Film Festival in Singapore

Categories
Diary

Learning Trail With Children At Bishan Ang Mo Kio Park

As a keen supporter of corporate volunteering program, when the learning trail activity with children from low income families was announced, I quickly signed up for it.  Turns out, only 6 of us have put our names down.  Unlike the one we did for the elderly, this activity was intense.  And it involved quite a bit of reading up and preparation as well.

Bishan AMK Park with the Children

By the time our chartered bus has rolled into the neighborhood, immediately, I saw kids and teenagers jumping up and down eager to attend our learning trail event.  Once they entered the bus, one by one they have started screaming!  Really loudly so.  I was slightly intimately by them.  I did a quick headcount.  Around 20 of time.  All screaming at the same time as they dashed into the bus looking for a seat.  Aged between 8 to 18, these kids were active.  Hyperactive.

Soon, we found out that these wonderful kids were from four Malay families.  Beyond Social Services has organized this event and our organization has participated.  Their target groups are low income families.  Families that may have a single parent, or from teenage mothers.  The kids may not have sufficient parental care because their parents need to work, and at times night shift.  Some kids may be delinquencies and Beyond Social Services‘s role would be to facilitate the parental ownership of the issue.  Beyond Social Services also engages volunteers to provide tuition to the kids, as well as regular activities such as soccer for the boys and dancing for the girls.  Our role today was to bring them out for a half day trip and raise the awareness of water conservation.  Play some games that were relevant to the theme.  Hand out gifts to everyone.  Basically, have a fun time.  By the time the event has ended, I was exhausted.  But it was a heartwarming and fulfilling experience.

Click here to view the photo album of today’s event.

As mentioned previously, Bishan-AMK Park has recently been renovated.  The old concrete canal has been converted into a natural river.  It is part of our government’s Active, Beautiful, Clean Waters (ABC Waters) initiative to transform Singapore’s drains, canals, and reservoirs into beautiful and clean streams, rivers and lakes for recreation and community bonding.

Singapore is a small country.  We have been relying on Malaysia – our neighbor – for water supply under two bilateral agreements.  One expired in 2011 and the second one will expire in 2061.  With the completion of the Marina, Punggol, and Serangoon reservoirs (which brings the number of reservoirs in Singapore to a total of 17), the water catchment area has been increased from half to two-thirds of Singapore’s land surface.  We have plan to boost water catchment area to 90% by 2060.

Then we have NEWater, which is a high-grade reclaimed water produced from treated used water that is further purified using advanced membrane technologies and ultra-violet disinfection.  Our NEWater plants is now meeting 30% of the nation’s water needs.  By 2060, we intend to push this to 50%.

Singapore has one of the Asia’s largest seawater reverse-osmosis plant.  Producing 30 million gallons of desalinated water a day, it is currently meeting 10% of our nation’s water needs.  By 2060, the plan is to ramp up the desalination capacity by 10 times in meeting at least 30% of our water demand.

Today, our per capita domestic consumption is 154 liters a day.  Water conservation programs are important.  We can never have enough water if we do not treasure what we have and use water wisely.  Here are some of the ideas that may help lowering the consumption to 140 liters by 2030.

  • Monitor your water bills.
  • Take shorter showers and turn off the tap while soaping.
  • Use a mug when brushing your teeth.
  • Check and repair leaks promptly.
  • Install water saving devices such as thimbles.
  • Use water-efficient devices.
  • Cut down your shower time to 5 minutes.

It's a beautiful park!

Categories
Concert

Tiffany Alvord Live In Singapore – A Strange But Interesting Aftertaste

Poster of Tiffany Alvord live in Singapore.

Frankly speaking, I had no idea what to expect.  Tiffany Alvord‘s music lives inside YouTube.  The production quality of her music videos is professional.  I don’t YouTube often.  But I enjoy celebrity artists like Tiffany who push out good stuffs regularly.  Close to 1.3 million subscribers is quite a milestone.  Bear in mind that she does not seem to have the backing of the traditional music industry.  So, viewers stay onto her – I would suppose – because her cover music interpretation is good, and she has a personality to back it up.

But what about a Tiffany Alvord concert?

After I bought a pair of tickets, my brother-in-law Eric who is also into YouTube music artists asked a very valid question, “Can she sing live?”

I had no idea.  Unlike another YouTube artist Bri or Kina Grannis whom I have heard them recorded live, I don’t recall Tiffany demonstrating her vocal ability without all the fancy processing tools.  Also, I was thinking.  Just how many of us in a tiny country like Singapore have heard of Tiffany Alvord, willing to fork out some money and time and watch her concert?

Turns out she has amassed quite a sizable fan base here.  Amazing.

Tiffany's concert was held in Singapore Conference Hall.

I took a picture of the stage before the show started.

The venue was Singapore Conference Hall.  Quite an unusual place for a pop concert.  More like an auditorium and it is located in the heart of central business district.  By my calculation, there is a seating capacity of 1,000.  Mostly filled.  Mostly teenagers.  The sound system is okay.  A young girl named Natalie Hiong opened the show.  Previously worked as an investment banker in UK, she is now pursuing her music career in Singapore.  She has the look, not too sure about the voice.  Or perhaps the monitor speakers setup was not right and she couldn’t hear herself.  In any case, it is hard to stand in between the audience and the main artist.  I lost focus after her first song.

When Tiffany emerged from the backstage, the crowd was somewhat lukewarm.  There was no live band.  She sang using a prerecorded music track, which was like a karaoke.  Very strange.  She sang OK, a bit of pitch problem here and there.  As the crowd got warmer, she got more relaxed.  The concert came alive when finally, a band arrived at the stage.  By the look of it, these were young local session artists.  The band was OK, certainly much better than having the soundtrack played in the beginning.  It is quite obvious that the 20 years old Tiffany is new to performance.  The band is new to her music too.  Together, they played a mix of her original music and her cover ones.  I didn’t see much connection between Tiffany and the band though.  Maybe the band was added in the last minute.  No idea.

At one point of her concert, Tiffany has invited someone called Marcus onto the stage for one song.  Apparently, he flew in from Europe, has helped in the design of her tour T-shirts.  That was neat.  The things she does to her fans with her singing and him sitting at a stool.  After Marcus returned to his seat, Tiffany realized that she has lost her guitar pick and she did not carry any extra.  So she asked the guitarist behind for a spare one.  One guy at the front row offered her a guitar pick and she has decided to use the one from her fan instead.  That was sweet.

And there was an intermission!  Amazing.  An intermission for a pop concert is definitely a first for Cynthia and I.  According to Tiffany, last evening was the longest performance for her.  Almost a two-hour show, that is pretty respectable.  Quite a few Western International stars only perform a one-hour long concert.  Then more singing using a prerecorded soundtrack.  One time, the sound engineer played the wrong track  that came with the vocal.  Oops.  She stopped and restarted.  Still the wrong one.  Uh oh.  Awkward.  She asked the crowd if it was OK for her to sing acoustic with her playing the guitar.  Of course that was OK.  Take 3 here we went.  Tiffany is not a guitar player.  But personally, I enjoy her singing with her acoustic guitar (not exactly hers as she has left her guitar in California, strangely so).  Much livelier that way.  Her song “Possibility” could have been a disaster, with the stop’s-and-go’s due to technical problems.  She managed to turn that around.  That impromptu acoustic version could easily be my favorite performance of the evening.

Then the band came out.  And then midway Tiffany switched back to karaoke mode with the band still on stage.  That was odd.  After a few more songs, she has finally dropped the karaoke for the remaining show.  The entire concert was filled with a lot of I-love-you’s from the audience.  A lot of I-love-you-too’s from Tiffany.  Her cover version of Taylor Swift’s We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together is probably the highlight of the concert.  Glad You Came was the last song of the set.  Or so she said.

But you know how concerts are like.  The audience are supposed to scream for encore.  And then the artist would return to the stage and perform another number or two.  When Tiffany and the band dived into the backstage, the venue was still dimmed signalling a high possibility that there was more.  All of a sudden, the few feeble scream of encore was drown by a series of loud stomping sound from left to right, towards the exit.  Singaporean audience was storming out of the venue like packs of zebras in Africa sensing a tiger nearby.  These people were in such an urgency as though they were running for their lives!  What’s up?!

Cynthia caught the band peeping from the backstage to see if they should make a return.  By then, more than three-quarter of the crowd has gone or were making a hasty exit.  The organizer has then decided to turn up the light and announce the end of the concert.  That was really odd, especially when you are new to Singapore.

Here in Singapore, we are known for two things.  Impatience and queue loving.  The whole crowd has migrated from the concert hall to the main lobby within minutes, queuing up and waiting for – I suppose – meet the artist session.  That got me thinking. Do the majority care about the music?  Or more about meeting the person behind YouTube?  Now, I would never know if my favorite Tiffany’s cover of Payphone – the video that got me subscribed to her – was indeed on the encore list.

Boy, don't we love to queue or what?

Very uniquely Singapore, people rather queue up to meet Tiffany after the show than to wait for an encore.

An interesting experience no doubt.  I am hoping that artists promoting their works without the music industry support can make it in this business.  Clearly, the music industry plays a role in promoting the music and making the live performance more polished and professional.  As I was watching Tiffany Alvord on stage, I could not help but to think of all the cover bands in the region that play in local pubs and even Hard Rock Cafe.  They can do cover songs so much better.  If only they have entered into the game of YouTube as well.

Maybe that was why I was wishing for a glass of beer as I watched Tiffany Alvord on stage.