dian xin, dian xin

national day weekend was a blast! saturday was study group, youth service, teochew porridge @ kovan and chng's residence for the evening. sunday was insightful sunday school, encouraging sermon (refer to previous entry), youth carnival @ east coast park, pizza dinner @ jon's with shan. monday was recording @ church in the morning, snooped off to han's @ hougang mall for lunch and riddles, vic's place for an afternoon of tuition, n.day parade and singapore idol, then slumber party till 2am before we bonked off to bed. woke up today a little dazed from the lack of sleep and left with jon after a brekkie of french toast and tea (courtesy of "iron chef" vic and her assistant, cy.)


taken @ east coast park on 8 august


taken @ vic's place on 9-10 august



we had a spur-of-the-moment situation today. wanted to hop off in the evening for dinner and a movie (and not forgetting, it's gelare tuesday!). scoured the papers and realised that there was nothing nice at the cinema. glanced over to the "what's happening" on the Life! paper and saw that dim sum dollies were still showing! i had thought of watching it, but shan told me yesterday that miri and joy were watching it yesterday. (and somehow she mentioned that yesterday was the last day. i was bummed out!)

when i saw it today, i had the strong urge to watch it. and since there weren't anything nice at the movies, jon suggested we catch this evening's show. went to the sistic website and saw that it was almost sold out! couldn't make a booking online because it was already 5.30pm (booking had to be before 2pm on the day of the show), i called them up to check. apparently, only the $40 tickets had twin seats left (the rest were all single seats). so we quickly grabbed the tickets and headed for the esplanade for the 8pm show. (talk about spur of the moment!)

the show was hilarious! tan kheng hwa described it best in her producer's message, "...an all original show put up by singaporeans, for singaporeans, about singaporeans." glen goei said in his director's message, "...an originally written musical cabaret show, is the ideal platform to celebrate all things singapore. appearing in bite-size pieces, strung together with great humour, catchy song and dance... the dim sum dollies poke fun, inject laughter, bring tears, and most important of all, remind us of the things we take for granted, and the real reason why we are indeed, uniquely singaporean."

every scene was a snip-off our daily lives and experiences from being singaporean. my personal favourites were "nip tuck sucks" (*sings* nip, tuck, stitch, slice, cut and lift!), tai tais on parade (them wanting to become the Opposition Tai Tais to take over the government), parking pontianak (this scene was powerful! how they poked fun at parking attendants with the malay accents) and singapore girl (i thought the song was really nice).

was really tempted to buy the soundtrack because selena tan, pam oei and emma yong sound so good together. even jon was captured by their harmony. and the songs (despite some with not-so-right morals) were quite interesting and well-composed and written. should i, or shouldn't i? and their talents were literally oozing out of them. they can sing, they can dance, they can act, they can write lyrics (that's selena), and they have great stage presence! wow! i'm completely impressed and bought over! singapore really has great drama talent... just that it's limited so it's always the same talented people who are in the best local plays. let's not forget about beefcakes, their 8-men accompanying dancers who can also sing...

by the way, for the $80 we paid, apart from the programme, we got to bring home 2 singapore flags. perhaps they thought that after all the jabbing they did, it was time to redeem themselves by singing n.day songs (complete with singapore flag and all)...

for those who enjoy satirical plays, especially within the singaporean context, and can spare some extra cash and time, go catch it at the esplanade by this saturday! worth every cent!