Well, sometime on the weekend I found out I had a couple of tickets to the AIM awards. This is apparently the Malaysian equivalent of the Grammy’s in America, though not having ever been to the Grammy’s I really can’t confirm if this is true or not.
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But on the day of the awards (Sunday) Matt (my boyfriend/fiance) had come down with a cold or flu. “Go on without me” he said as he lay dying on the couch. I didn’t want to go by myself. I tried to get a last minute arm-candy replacement, but to no avail.
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I knew there would be a few people there that I knew so eventually I decided to woman up and go on my own. Matt being a nice boy offered to drop me at the awards, on the condition he didn’t have to change out of his pyjamas. I agreed, and then we spent an hour driving round lost, me flattening my phone battery looking up maps, at one stage we accidentally ended up on a motorway that took us right back where we started from. Scary. The distance from our place to PWTC where the awards were held was 6.5kms. If I wasn’t wearing high heels I could have walked there within that amount of time! Though as you will see, I am quite capable of also being lost on foot. Dropped off outside PWTC I looked for the hotel next door where I was to meet my friends. Cue the frantic phone calls… “I don’t know where I am!” I cried. Lost in a giant building, I tried asking some people for directions. Just my luck I couldn’t seem to find anyone who spoke english. De mana ka hotel?” I said, hoping that meant where is the hotel. The reply I didn’t understand, I picked out one word ‘kiri’, which means left. “Kiri?” I asked pointing, the reply included nodding and further instructions which I didn’t understand. Needless to say, with much exasperated traipsing about in high heels and confusing conversations, I never did find the hotel but eventually arranged to meet my friends at the start of the red carpet.
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I was very relieved when Julian and Moe spotted me. A group of us did the red carpet walk of shame together, I was quite proud of myself for not falling over, though I did have the giggles and felt a little silly. I’m no good with cameras at the best of times, and there were a lot of cameras going off in everyones faces. I spotted a couple more friends just ahead of us so was happy to think I wasn’t going to be here all along.
But alas, the allocated seating! I was to sit on my own after all. But thats ok, these things happen. And so… the awards ceremony!
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It began with something said in Malay, possibly regarding the turning of cellphones onto silent, and only going to the toilet during the commercial breaks. Then they had the audience clap several times, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was just practice. Finally something interesting began to happen, and two people came and sang a hilarious operatic song. I could tell it was hilarious by the use of ‘humorous eyebrows’ which naturally transcend all language barriers.
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There were a lot of performances performed, and a lot of awards awarded. I understood half of what was going on, but I didn’t get any of the jokes told by the hosts, which some people said were the best part of the show. However I enjoyed the music a lot, I even enjoyed the synchronised dancing hehe
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My favourite performance of the night was the song Selamat Malam, it not only had guitars in it (in comparison to all the backing track stuff I was very excited about actual Live Instruments) but it also had a violin solo and was generally a pretty rockin yet sad sounding passionate song. Liked it a lot, it was very moving. Not speaking malay it’s cool to realise how music transcends the language barriers (yes just like humorous eyebrows) and you can get an idea of the emotions of the songs without understanding a word.
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I also liked Yunas performance, I don’t know the name of the song sorry. And there was a girl with a Ukulele who sang this cool upbeat song with snatches of english throughout. Sorry I can’t remember the name of that song either. I would do some research if I wasn’t writing this offline because my INTERNET IS NOT WORKINGING!!!
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Oh I feel like a moron now, I just remembered I have a program from the night lying around so I can look it up without even using the internet at all…
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Well, went and found the program but it’s pretty much all in Malay and I think it’s more about the awards than the performances so I’m just as much in the dark as I was 5 minutes ago.
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I think it’s terrible that I can tell you more about getting lost on the way to the awards than I can about the awards themselves, but I guess thats what you get when you’re a dumb blonde trying to follow something in a language she doesn’t understand.
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Anyway I’ve spent today chopping up Nosferatu into songs to send out to ye olde mailing list. Took a while to decide if I was going to just send out the bits with the least mistakes, or send out the whole thing. Eventually decided to send the whole lot warts and all. It’s a live performance, theres supposed to be mistakes in it. They add character and um… make it more REAL.
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And when I’ve fixed my internet, and sent it out, I’m going to upload this little blog, and then NEVER SPEAK OF NOSFERATU AGAIN!
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Thank you and goodnight.
Terima kasih dan selamat malam.
<3 K xxx
p.s. Here are some pictures that I like, totally stole off Julians facebook because I forgot my camera and my phone was practically dead.
Left to Right: Julian Lee, Me, Moe Nasrul and Iz.
). Starbucks isn’t open yet, but their wi-fi is on so yay! I’m waiting for my sister to arrive from the airport, she is visiting Kuala Lumpur from Melbourne and doing some traveling round Asia. Lucky her!
