April 10, 2013

Liblog: Terrific Taiwan 2

Now, where were we? Ah yes, I remember.

It came to the first concert day, and everyone was well rested before the first performance of the tour. We’d all recovered from any travelling aches or hungers, but just to be sure we’d give the best performance we could, we spent most of that day resting in our rooms, and watching Madagascar 3 together. Brilliant movie, well I think anyways. We would’ve gone outside and done something peaceful, like the cinema; however the weather held us back.

The well-rested period had past, and we took our coach a short journey to the concert hall. We were shocked; never before had we seen such an interestingly designed venue, in an amazing Chinese style. It was really cool how the concert hall was almost identical to the theatre house, and the view of all the monuments around the square really was quite a sight. We hadn’t even seen the stage yet. 

Time passes, and a sound-check later we’re resting in the changing rooms. A light snack and we were ready to perform, and I'm glad to say our first concert ever in Taiwan was great. One of the highlights was of course our version of the song ‘Moon’; in which we conquered the challenge of singing a full song in Mandarin.

It was quite a challenge to learn; Mandarin has lots of different ways to pronounce the words, so we had to watch a version sung before to get the idea. After a YouTube click, we’d get the English phonetic spelling. It would take far too long to learn from the Chinese symbols. Then comes the melody, staging, and like a good soufflĂ© it was baked to perfection.

On stage, it was amazing to get such a huge reaction from the fans and people watching. From the very mysterious ‘ah’ opening, to Michael Ustynovych-Repa’s sweet final lines, it was a great experience. Of course, some of us had sung different language songs before in the Philippines and Japan; but this occasion was clearly very special to the Taiwanese fans. The English Translation was very interesting to hear, as well as the story behind why the moon is so special.


Throughout the tour, we were going to do 7 shows. The second was the day after the first on the Wednesday, same venue, and same time. It was pretty much a same day sort of thing, but on that day we saw the changing of guards in the Shrine to the Martyrs. The sun was beaming down, the birds were calling to their mum's, and so we decided to go have a look at the beautiful Chinese monument. It was interesting; we spent most of the time arguing at how they kept their eyelids open for so long. Matthew Madine had a go, and was pretty good at it.

That's the end of part 2. See you in a bit.