No Time to Fall Asleep

There are places that I feel very much at home because of the place itself and the people who know me well. Yesterday I met ex manager of Projectshopbloodbros shop in Jakarta at Takashimaya. I met her last year in the shop in Paragon. We had hilarious chat for I wanted to apply if the company has any vacant. I was envious of her job because she works wearing black thong sandals as uniform! Wow! This morning I met the hotel boy who I have known since my first stay years ago and likes to chat with me happily. We laughed a lot. Like in Penestanan in Ubud, or in many places in Ubud, it’s the people that make the place felt special.

So I hopped from theatre to theatre today. I didn’t want to waste the trip so I made time to watch the Phantom of the Opera – a well known music by Andrew Llyod Webber. I always tried to catch his world tour wherever close to home. I believed I got the last single seat available when I called the ticket box last week. I had no choice; I didn’t even have idea where this last seat would be. It turned out to be in pretty good location though. It’s in the second of four balconies. I just regretted not to bring far-sight glasses that I only wear in large theater so then I could see details better.

I arrived the theatre about two hours earlier. I wasn’t familiar with the big durian building – the Esplanade Theatre – and I needed to have a bite. I had a good book with me though, I didn’t mind waiting. Collecting ticket was done under four minutes and I had fruit salad with dark chocolate discs plus hot chocolate in a chocolate resto. The salad was fresh and very nice; it gave me vitamin I needed :-) I read and checked out shops to kill time.

The show was good as I expected. It made me goose bumps because of the music and stage settings. And I hated that I was quite sleepy during the show. I hadn’t a good night sleep last night. Something lingering in mind that I could not sleep well. I awoke many times and stayed awake for sometimes before back to sleep again. Glad that I had a very nice morning that I forgot about the lack of sleep :-)

So I spent almost three hours in the theatre. When I was off, MKO had been waiting for me in her place to go to other show. We – MKO, SM, CAR, and me – had dinner before squeezed ourselves in a taxi. Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts theatre was not far from MKO place. Another friend had waited there. Actually, their mutual friend directed a short play in the event called Short & Sweet Singapore Festival that claims to be "the biggest little play festival in the world". The festival runs two weekends showing top 20 and 20 wild cards. We are asked to vote the best performance of 10 plays we watch in an evening.

We had anticipated to be sleepy that we agreed to shove each other if started to fall asleep. We were wrong. We had no time to even wink! The plays were so good and each lasted ten minutes only; changed the stage setting only took a minute or two; and on again to next interesting dynamic play (20 minutes intermission after 5 plays).

The first play was super hilarious. It was a very promising good start! We didn’t expect Singaporean could express their ideas by knocking down the cultural barrier. The plays talked about sex sandwich, hard sex, cigarettes (that they don’t do much in public), being fat, cold relationships between a couple, women’s mammogram session,… The issues are common issues that made us easy to see ourselves in life play. And I was surprised to find some of the plays using Singlish (Singapore-English) while in the morning I saw a big banner of Singapore’s campaign on urging people in Singapore, Malaysia, and Batam to use good English. The campaign slogan is Be understood.

All were hilarious good. Of 10 plays, only 2 we thought were not so special. Not bad but not special either. I voted for their friend of course. His play showed 4 young women dressed in black party outfit with a cigarette in hand and talked alternately about the passion of smoking. It’s witty. Some plays were really special because the actors could make a very smooth turn-taking, no mistake, no delay,… They must have practiced the play very well because often involving long and complicated sentences. I admired their ability to remember the lines. Well, young people should be able to do that :-)

My day is ended nicely. A bit tired but loaded myself with cultural stuff has refreshed me in a way. The good news is… I haven’t had time to shop!! I refrained myself from checking out clothing, shoes/sandals, and bags. Enough. Even I didn’t find any book I really wanted. I have a bit too many of unread books at home. No time to...

Photo of the show's notice.