I believe 除此之外

30 April 2005
My audition timing was 12pm, but I had reached Mediacorp at 11am. The heat of the weather did nothing to subside the anxiousness. However, I know that I had begun to know of myself and my standards after the previous singing contest. I found a simple yet beautiful song that I can confidently project. Continuous repetition of the song "I Believe" in my head had made the waiting time short. When the reception opened at 12pm, I was, surprising, the first in the queue, before it lengthened to form a snake.

Soon, we were led to a waiting hall. We were told to wait after collecting our numbers. When nothing else occupied my mind, the anticipation only grows stronger and unstable. Every breath I took were deep ones to soothe the racing heartbeat. So were the ones beside me, I could hear and feel them well. The hundred over potential candidtates in the hall were mostly quiet. Soon in groups of 10, we were led to the corridor outside a room. I was the first in my my group. Entering the brightly lit room, I stood uncomfortably in front of the mic stand to intoduce myself to the 3 judges. The song went smoothly until the chorus when I stumbled on the lyrics, yet again. The judges, who seemed impressed initially, cut me after my error. That's it, I thought. The judges went on to comment about me, my outfit, everything but how I fared in the sing.

Judge: "you dress like ah-beng, and look like one."
me: (surprised and amused) "is it my goatie?"
Judge: "no. That's pretty fine. It's your hair. Get it straightened."
me: (surprised and amused, and smiled)
Judge: "no, don't smile. Your smile don't look nice. It's your teeth. Get it straighted when you have the time. You can go for the "cool" style, something like Louis Koo."
me: "I will for the teeth if I have the money." (smiled without showing teeth) "Thanks"
Judge: "now look at the light"

The green light lit.

I walked out of the room to be applauded by the other 9 untested fellows. Chen Wenchong came forward with a camera man for a brief interview. Afterwhich he advised, "shave it (goatie) off. I'm serious. Audiences wouldn't like it. Do you trust me? Shave it off."

2 out of the 10 in my group passed the first round. The other is a clean looking 26 year old chap who look and sound like Guan Liang. We had a short chat and eventually shared a cab out. We were the 600 out of the 4000.


7 May 2005
The 2nd round at IMM building. I only managed to steal a peek at of the stage after much squeezing amongst the crowd. Most contestants had fantanstic voices albeit, only to me or some audiences perhaps. The judges never hesitated to press the bell to cut it off most of the time, probably due to the cruel fact that they had been and have to audition some 300 guys for the whole bloody day. I was among the last batch to go in.

From the few that sucessfully made it into the third round, I drew observations that the judges paid great attention to the stage appeal and confidence, followed by the voice quality and the looks. Some really wonderful did not made it in, some managed to impress with looks that can kill, some tried to pull stunts like somersault and backflip (yes, he got in).


I chose to perform 除此之外. I had difficulty finding a right place to really practise it for the past week. I did not dare to project at home in fear of disturbing the neighbours. As a result, I only muttered and rewind the song non-stop in my mind whilst on the desk during office hours.

The judges pressed the bell the moment I reached the chorus. Unlike most contestants, there was no comments at all. A short "thank you" and I passed the mic before going down stage to meet host Jeff Wong with a smile. It was a fast yet long moment, and I was satisfied with myself. This puny and short experience point gained is surely a precious one. I shall carry on to source for places or events to perform.

Maybe I should have heeded Chen Wenchong's advice to shave it off. The other chap who passed the first round with me from the same group was one of the 20 odd contestants out of the 300 on that day. I am waiting to see him performing from the screen soon. Disregarding the fact that he still owed me the cab fare, I will vote for him.