A Night to Remember

During my internship in Pelita 2 from February to March 2013, I was being 'set up' by the secondary school principal to perform in Cap Go Meh show (Cap Go Meh celebration falls on the 15th of first month on lunar calender). And it was not just a performance. The principal would play a traditional instrument of China called 古筝 (guzheng), also known as Kecapi, one of the staff would play keyboard, and I would sing. Yes baby, SING. I have to remind you that I am a remarkable singer... in the bathroom, where the singer is me and the audience is also me. No complaint so far.

When the principal asked me to perform, I was like, "Hell NO..!" There is no way I would sing in front of the school board, fellow teachers and students along with their parents. But he is a good persuader, so I said I would try to rehearse. In the end, it was not a trial, it was a confirmed performance, and there was nothing I could do to turn back.

On the big day, I kept telling myself to think, "Oh come on, it's not a big deal, you've been through a lot of public speaking competitions before, nothing to be embarass of..". But still, it's SINGING! So I pulled myself together and gave 100% effort to finish the task. Thank God, that day went well, no audience threw any empty bottles or "woo.." us. I nailed it.

If you think after that day I became a great singer, like suddenly found out Beyonce's voice which all along has been trapped inside of me, you've gone too far. It's a NO.. But as the old saying says, "The more you avoid something, the more you're gonna face it". Next thing I know, I gotta sing in public again, only this time, I was willing to perform.

It happened last May, when our department's student council held an annual singing competition and my roommate, Peipei, was the contact person for registration of foreign students. Peipei is definitely not a performer type. I mean, she dances and has a great voice, but singing competition in public...? Well, I don't think so.. So I kept teasing her, saying that we should gather with Santi and join this competition as a group. We knew already we're definitely not gonna through to the final round, but let's just have some fun before graduation, et cetera,et cetera...

To spice things up, we decided to mix the song of Indonesian and western, we chose "Rahasia Perempuan" and "Single Ladies", and we also would dance a little bit. Many people started to think we got depressed because of the thesis deffence. That might be right, but actually we just wanted to create unforgettable moments before we go back to Jakarta. And we never expected to get through to the final 16. So when the person in charge of the show called Peipei the next two days after the elimination day and informed her we got through to the final, I was like "WHAT..!!!" But strangely, I felt excited at the same time, we got another chance to make a crazier performance and this time we seriously arranged it.

After series of mix and match thingy, we finally decided three songs we prepared for the final. We knew we wouldn't be able to go through to the 10 finalists, but at least we wanted to have fun while singing. We chose a mix of "Hanya Memuji" and "Just the Way You Are" for the first round, "We Are Young" for the second round, and "Sempurna" for the finale. We put in some choreography into the songs and hopefully the audience would enjoy it.

The first round was okay, but in the second round, we need to compete one on one and we totally forgot the choreography. Our friends also said later that we didn't pick the right song, and because of the time limitation of 1'30 minutes given by the committee, we seemed like singing without a climax. It was just not enough to beat our competitor.

We didn't mind with the result and it didn't stop us from having fun. We spent the rest of the competition being the background dancers.. Hahahahaaa.. We kept apppearing during our fellow friends' performances and just put some illustration for the song. That was a terrific night to remember.

Until now, we still laugh when we remember those moments and we really did create something memorable. I never regret of joining that competition and thankful for the principal who trapped me in the first place. You'll never know if you never try, right..?

Here are some pictures of the competition.

  

 

Here is the link to our video of the first round.