Temporary Closure Of Takeshi's
After these few months of intense attacks on Singapore's very own Takeshi's Castle (many times the contestants "self-pay" for their own supper after the attempt), Takeshi's Castle is "unofficially" closed until further notice. Our castle owner has left the sunny island of Sinapore for the wintry UK for further studies (phd... mind you!)... Can imagine the course to be phd in Castle Defense. Compulsory modules include: CD1101-Moat Management, CD1102-Arrow Shooting, CD1103-Hot Oil Preparation!Anyway, its going to be three long years.... so no more majong at Takeshi's. I hope we'll find alternative venues! I feel a bit bad that I didn't send him off... but the flight is at an unearthly time of 2am!...no transport! Anyway X... if you see this, I'll like to say... good luck and have fun!
Farewell X! 
Here is a photo of some of us on our convocation day! Don't know when we can all meet up again...
I Met My Dream girl In Novena Square!
I met my dream girl in Novena!
I have been meaning to write this but I have been too busy fiddling with my radio.blog… On the fateful day of 6th September, I met my dream girl! ~…
This happened innocently enough… I was still doing my usual routine working in iras and went for lunch as usual with Vincent. Unfortunately for that day, some vendors were selling stuff in the recreation club (5th floor), resulting in most armchairs being shifted away in the main area… and I could not go there for a short nap after my quick lunch! -_-
In the end, Vincent and I decided to break away with our usual lunch routine and go walk around in Novena Square. We were in luck! Right there on the second floor of the shopping mall, we saw some mediacorp stars filming some variety show! I don’t know what show it is (never watch much TV), but the hosts are Chew Chor Meng and Pei Fen (super cute)! One of the guest stars was the cute Priscelia Chan! …the other guy was Zzen Zhang. Everyone was in school uniform for the show.
*Sported in Novena Square! From left:Priscelia(kawaii!), female contestant, Peifen(kawii!!), Chor Meng, male contestant, Zzen*I have to say my dream girl is not Priscelia Chan but Pei Fen!!! After all, I listen to Pei Fen a lot on Yes 93.3FM. She actually sounds sweet and interesting in the radio… and now she has the looks also!! She was also one of the cheerleaders supporting Kelly Poon in the Channel U Superstars Grand Finals (she looked so cute in red then!) Wished I had a better phone camera… the better photo was courtesy of Vincent... Pei Fen is SOOO CUTE!!
*Cute Peifen in Superstars Grand Finals!*
Not Everything Comes Free
Oh my god... I have spent one whole night configuring my radioblog but I failed... For your introduction, this radioblog is meant to be like a music player that can play many songs that you can host on the web.
Firstly, you would need a host... and a host that supports php. DO NOT ask me what is php... because I know nuts about it... However, I just surfed around the radioblog forums and got to www.siteburg.com which supposedly is one of those 'free' hosts.
Anyway the setting up of the radioblog is simple enough... the only problem is the hosting part. When I put my radioblog (to link to siteburg, which hosts my songs), i did not get my player loaded! On the other hand, pop-up ads appeared... prawn pop-ups also... virus pop-ups... what the fishes!
I think I am defeated for today. The only consolation is that default player which links to the original radioblog site works. So the player still play some songs (not my songs... I don't even know where they came from!). If you want some free music while reading my blog please feel free to play around with my radioblog player. Still, it looks cool... only that it doesn't play songs that I like! Even my background music is not working today... oh well... like I said, nothing comes free.
All Things Kelly
Well I am not a 'fanatic' kind of a fan... I mean I just like her the best in Channel U Superstars. Writing about Superstars does made me research quite a bit on the show... I went to forums and fansites and realised there are really a LOT of people out there who liked the show a lot and are die-hard fans of some of the contestants. I guess I would recommend some of the better sites out there!
1) Channel U Superstars official forum
This is the official forum... here you get the most traffic on news, discussions on Superstars and you can even find many downloads of video clips and mp3s of the contestants' performances. I myself downloaded a lot of video clips in this forum! There's a lot of flaming threads here though... there's some Weilian-bashing here and people replying angrily to that... anyway just read those more constructive threads haha! Check out the "Quaterfinalists Songs And Videos Here" and "Videos of the performances" threads... a lot of nice mp3s and video files of the performances!
2) Kelly Poon's Yahoo Group This is the Kelly's Fan Club (KFC) Yahoo Group site. I joined this particular group because the membership is really high (4240 last count). There is a lot of discussion on Kelly here and links to many more Kelly fansites out there. Fans of Kelly... start here! The links section offers a lot of mp3s of all the performances during the quaterfinals, semifinals and finals... really good stuff! You need to join this yahoogroup to explore the site though and it only takes a minute. Joining this yahoogroup does not mean you are a member of the fan club... if you want to join as an official member you have to follow the instructions in the site. (I didn't join because they charge money for that -_-)3) Novalt's Kelly FansiteThis is a really well-designed website! You can find many information on Kelly here and there are also links to video downloads of her performances. The coolest thing about this site is the radioblog which contains all of her performances in Superstars! I really liked it and is currently learning to set up a radioblog in my site also.That's all for now... anyone got anything to add can leave a comment here! Anyway good luck to JY and Kelly for being signed by Universal... we will be waiting for the albums anxiously!
Takeshi's Castle Finally Breached
I remembered when I was in Secondary 2.. I used to love to watch the chinese-dubbed Japanese game show Takeshi's Castle. This show is showed in the afternoon on channel 8 every Satruday. Takeshi's Castle is guarded by Count Takeshi and his henchman (bad guys) and is attacked by General Lee (good guy). In each show, General Lee gets 100 'volunteers' together to attack the castle. The participants have to pass all the challenges to get the chance to storm Takeshi's Castle. Each round the numbers of volunteers is dramatically cut down in size as they are eliminated. A final few volunteers then make it to the Final Showdown get to shoot-out with Count Takeshi in vehicles mounted with water guns. It is very very difficult to win the final round and the castle is only breached a few times (maybe once or twice per year?)
*The painful attack on Takeshi's Castle (usually the whole army got eliminated)*
Anyway playing majong at X's house felt very much like taking part in Takeshi's Castle. I lost so many times and X won so many times that I really believed that to win in this house is really like climbing some huge mountain in the Himalayas. So I went in on Friday expecting to be one of the 'eliminated'. Suprisingly, my luck was pretty good that day! On the other hand, X's luck seems very unlike his usual... =P. Anyway, to cut a long story short I finally broke my run of defeats and won at his house! The 'Takeshi Castle' is breached haha! We went to our usual mamak shop in Clementi after the game and had a very nice 'free' supper (courtesy of Court X and his henceman Alvin). I hope this will start my run of good luck haha!
Channel U Superstars Grand Finals!
Last Thursday (1st Sept) was the exciting Grand Finals of the Channel U Superstars! The Grand Finals was held in the Singapore Indoor Stadium. Somehow, this compeition seemed much bigger than the Singapore Idols… maybe this is the R.E.A.L. Singapore Idols haha! As Channel U Superstars reached the finale, we saw many really talented singers got eliminated… such as Junyang (nice voice, nice singing but bad luck with the sore throat) , Sin Huey (super good technique and beautiful singing but not enough popularity) and Derrick (super yandao, super cute!!!). The Grand Finals was a battle of the sexes and the two finalists are Tan Weilian and Kelly Poon. They were tagged as the battle of the male vs the female, the 'Shen Qing' vs the 'Re Qing'.
The Grand Finals result outcome was based on 30% cd single sales and 70% sms/telephone voting on the actual day. For the cd single results which had been concluded earlier, the winner was Weilian, who sold 12,239 copies compared to Kelly's 11,319 copies (my feeble attempt to support Kelly by buying one cd did not help her…. sad~ ). Each of the finalists had to sing a total of five songs. This time, the judges were only allowed to give comments of each performance and choose the better singer of each round but cannot directly affect the final results.
*the five judges: Fang Zhonghua, Li Feihui, Ye Peifen, Xu Huanliang and Li Weisong*
The Grand Finals was organized in a concert format and opened with all contestants from the earlier rounds performing. Then it proceeded to the 1st song by Weilian ('Nan Ren Hai Yang' by Zhou Chuan Xiong). He sang with his usual nasal vocals and was very moving in emoting the song. Kelly went with a fast song for her opening song ('Yan Se' by Coco Lee). Her singing was a bit off but she made up with her showmanship and her massive Afro wig! I feel that the first round was a bit of a tie… Weilian scored with his better singing while Kelly got the crowd going with a catchy fast song, prancing around the stage. Kelly won this round in the judges' opinion 3-2! Yay!
The second round was the acapella section. Both the finalists were required to perform an acapella song aided by 5 backup singers from the eliminated contestants of the same sex (they were allowed to choose the backups). Weilian took on 'Wo Zhen De Shou Shang Le' by Jacky Cheung… one of my favorite songs and he did not disappoint! He sang really well and the back up vocals was superb! (Derrick and Junyang were among the backups man… power!!!). Kelly chose 'Sha Tan' (Tanya Chua's version)…. the beginning part was quite off-tempo… her main weakness… and the back up 5 girls (including Sin Huey) who kept singing, "Pa La Pa La", were really too loud and not nice… Kelly only did reasonably ok for the second half of the song when the pianist came in with the music. I think the girls' version of acapella suffered from a lack of bass and sounded too shrill for my liking and of course suffered from Kelly's tempo problems. I think this round belongs to Weilian with his great singing and his 5 backup singers, the majority of the judges also felt the same for this round and gave it to Weilian 4-1!
After the second round, the show went back to the quarterfinalists performing some group numbers. And we have our show-stealer… the solo performances by Junyang and Sin Huey and later a duet!!! Junyang sang a wonderful 'Guardian Angel' and Sin Huey sang 'Gan Xie Ni Yong Xin Ai Wo' by Peng Lin. Firstly, she looked fabulous in her purple gown… however she was a bit off pitch for the first part of the song before the music came in… the second half of the song was totally great!! Of the T.H.E. show-stealer was the duet by the two ('Wu Ding' by Jay Chou and Landy Wen)… they sang really good… were natural… and had a lot of stage presence! I think this song put a smile on all the viewers and brought the stadium crowd to a high! (my whole family enjoyed this song the most!)
*The show-stealers: Junyang and Sin Huey!*The third round was the duet section with J.J.Lin as the partner. (all J.J.'s originals) Weilian sang 'Yi Qian Nian Yi Hou' which was quite bad in my opinion because J.J totally took the song on his own and Weilian sounded like a fan who got the honor of sharing a sing-along with J.J.. Kelly did better with 'Mu Nai Yi' due to her better handling of the R & B style, better back up when J.J. sang the main vocals and more synergy in the duet. I think this was arguably her best round and the judges unanimously voted for her. They also sang a 3-man duet ('Bei Feng Chui Guo De Xia Tian') (for this song J.J.'s voice totally ate them up...)
The fourth round had each of them singing an original composition by the judges. Weilian sang a song composed by Li Feihui with lyrics by Xu Huanliang ('Liao Jie')… and he sang it in his usual style… which was already getting boring for me at this stage of the show and he didn't even meet his usual standards (he said he was tired). Kelly sang 'On My Way' with the music composed by Lee Weisong who wanted her to shine with her stage persona with the song and she met all his expectations! Her costume was nice, the dance and the singing were all up to par… LWS was so excited when it came to him to say his comments! This round went to Kelly in my opinion also and the judges gave it to her 4-1!
*Weilian and Kelly in their fourth round costume! Kelly look so cute!!!*The fifth and final song was a self-chosen song. Weilian chose another typical song again… I forgot the song name already (they all sound so similar… I will try to recall *edit: it's 'Qi Shi Ni Bu Dong Wo De Xin' by Tong An Ge*). I guess my idea of a superstar is one who is versatile in singing and has decent stage presence… Kelly chose Coco Lee's 'Bei Ai De Nu Ren'… her gown was absolutely fabulous!!! She looked like a real superstar for the final song and finally she carried the whole song through quite well! (the high parts are a bit shrill though… not so nice)
After final round, we were treated to a performance by J.J (obviously the best singer… but he is already a superstar!) before going to the results. I was not surprised Weilian won despite the better singer being Kelly.
*Results announced and Weilian won*
He already sold more cds… and I am sure based on pure voting he will surely win… sad but true.
*Li Weisong looking disappointed with the results*
But in the end Kelly won a fan in me! I bought her cd (first cd in 7 years, remember?) and the miser in me even sms once and called twice to support her (total 3 votes haha!). Anyway I shouldn't take the victory away from Weilian… if he is just selling a single 'Gun Dan De Ye Wo Bu Gu Dan'… the single would sell through the roof!!!… but singing the same kind of songs over and over again really bores me. Kelly's makeup was a bit over-the-top for the night… I like her bangs more! I also think JY and SH stole the show! I will probably buy future albums from: Kelly (fan), Sin Huey (best singer), JY (friend and my father likes him). JY made my father learn 'Liu Shui Nian Hua'!!!
*Kelly, runner-up, female finals winner and the WINNER in my heart!*
