Ayumi Hamasaki!

Noticed the subject of the day ends with an exclamation mark instead of a normal full-stop? The Ayumi Hamasaki concert today absolutely rocked big time! I mean, I’ve been to quite a few concerts but none of them was even close to Ayu’s concert today. It’s like, it was a real concert where Ayu was outstanding from the word go. She was really singing at her best, and you could really see that she made a real effort in the performance. Furthermore, she spent so much time singing, it made the 2-hour concert really worth the money. Considering that she’s been in the scene for 9 years, the concert was obviously short because if she had sung all of her released songs, I probably would still be sitting in the Coliseum now!

To be honest it’s very difficult to describe how good the concert was because there were so many good things about the concert. The entire concert was very professionally done, from Ayu’s singing and costumes to the dancers, from the band to the stage design, and even the folks who were shining the spotlights were real professional. Another lesson that we can learn from the Japanese – doing things with pride.

There was something funny that happened to me during the concert – as I was waving my lightstick and dancing around, a guy tapped my shoulder. I turned around and it turned out to be the lighting guy – apparently I was too tall for the seat that I’m at, and I was actually in the way of the spotlight! Initially I thought at the place that I was in, I really don’t think the people on the stage would be affected by whatever hindrance that I could be making – but then again, it’s a once in a lifetime show, so I don’t think I would want to make my name that way! The highlight of this incident was that the lighting guy was talking to me all the way in Japanese! Thank God I managed to understand what he was saying!

I couldn’t get my hands on any of the concert merchandise because they were sold out the moment they were on sale, but buying some of Ayu’s old albums were definitely a pretty good consolation. I mean, where can you still find Ayu’s first album “A Song for XX”?

I don’t think I would ever go to a better concert in Hong Kong, and I think any concert I go to after this one by Ayu would probably be nowhere near as good as this. Thank God I was there.

One Week.

Sorry for not updating for the entire week – apparently I have quite a lot of things to do and the end result is that I totally forgot about updating this little journal. So perhaps I would do a quick roundup for the whole week right now.

2 Apr 07: Monday
The only highlight of the day was when one of my kids was complaining to me about not knowing how to do an exercise when I have taught over and over again about the steps. What bothered me was that I gave them so many opportunities to ask questions and they chose to sit and keep quiet, and then when the time came for them to do exercises they just made those noises about not knowing how to do them. I suddenly realise patience is indeed a virtue, especially in this line.

3 Apr 07: Tuesday
A typically day in school – conducted my 4-hour class again in the afternoon. Besides that 4 hours, I also spent quite a bit of time working the exam papers for this semester. Apparently setting an exam paper isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do, as I constantly have to consider if the kids were going to flip when they see the questions. I also have to take note if the things in the exam are taught (or going to be taught in the next couple of weeks)… and it definitely wasn’t fun when the deadline to submit the exam paper was the next day! In the end, I left school at about 7.45 at night. But I didn’t go home directly – I headed to Sham Shui Po and gotten myself a new gadget – the Nintendo DS Lite!

4 Apr 07: Wednesday
The start of the Easter Holidays, and I decided that the time has come for me to make a suit. So I headed to Tsim Sha Tsui where all those tailors apparently loved to reside in. The suit cost me about $1500, and while I know this is probably money that I have to spend sooner and later, I still felt that it was a little steep. Oh well, this is Hong Kong, and that was Tsim Sha Tsui after all.

5 Apr 07: Thursday
Headed back to Tsim Sha Tsui as the tailor arranged for me to do a fitting on my suit. Of course the whole suit wasn’t done yet, but the skeleton was there. The tailor made some minor adjustments and told me to go back on Saturday (which is, erm, today) to do another fitting and see if there’s more adjustments to be done then. Spent the afternoon at home playing on my NDS with my sister (who has also gotten a set of NDS with me).

6 Apr 07: Friday
Breakfast, work, lunch, nap, work, dinner, work until now. Basically I spent the whole day working on ASP.NET and some database programming. Now you would ask why on earth would I want to be doing that – I was actually preparing the exercise for the my HD kids in a couple of weeks’ time. Of course being the teacher I have to prepare not just the questions and tasks, but also the solution for the kids’ reference later. It was tiring, but I think it was kinda fun. At least now I can say I really know how to make something on ASP.NET.

I need some sleep now, after facing my laptop for almost the entire day. I mean, besides those times that I was either eating or sleeping, I was staring at the laptop. I think sore eyes would strike again soon. Furthermore, with the weather suddenly turning cold this week, I think the flu bug would be appearing soon as well.

And I’ve got an Ayumi Hamasaki concert to look forward to later!

Database.

I spent the whole day working at home. I was working on ASP.NET and databases – MySQL and Access to be exact. Normally I wouldn’t be so hardworking to work on a Sunday, but I realised that I need to really know much more than what I normally do in order to teach the kids better.

As such, it was a long day battling with programming codes on my MacBook – and suddenly I realise how much I appreciate having Windows on my MacBook.

I only have to work for 2 days this week because of the Easter holidays, so after Monday and Tuesday I would have a week of holidays which is good for me to recuperate. But after that week of holidays, I’ll have to slug it out until the end of semester – June to be exact – without the luxury of this kind of week-long holidays.

Back to work tomorrow – hope everything would turn out to be OK.

Concert.

I went for Janice’s concert at the Hong Kong Coliseum this evening and for a music event, I don’t think I can complain much because Janice really can sing. She’s got a great voice to start with and her performance was top-notch. But as a concert, I don’t think satisfied would be the word I’ll choose to describe the concert because the whole thing felt as if a massive karaoke session, just that there was only one singer (or two, if you include Jill who appeared as a guest) in the whole show. In other concerts you would have a group of people who would do the backup voices to the artist, but there wasn’t any in Janice’s concert this evening. Also, probably because this was Janice’s first concert, she doesn’t seem to know how to react or conduct herself in the concert, so there were a few points in time that the concert actually felt boring. Thank God Janice has got a great voice to compensate for all these apparent shortcomings – at least I don’t have to endure to some Hong Kong artists who can’t sing and yet are churning out concerts like nobody’s business.

I even got a few good pictures of Janice during the concert!

Well those pictures weren’t really taken by me – I got them outside the Coliseum at the end of the concert (for $30 I got an A3 picture, a couple of smaller ones and a CD of about 40 pictures – and that was a decent deal). But then I didn’t leave empty-handed as far as taking pictures are concerned. I know my camera was not equipped to take pictures in the dark, so this was the best effort that I made:

At least I can see Janice in the picture – but this only made me feel more hard done by because if I had a better camera, I would have gotten a lot of better shots, considering that when Janice was at her nearest point to me, she was just about 10 metres away! Another reason to get a new camera then.

Next week I’ll be at the Hong Kong Coliseum again for Ayumi Hamasaki’s concert! Certainly looking forward to it!