Bevlyn Khoo

I survive September with the x to the power of n weddings!

Ok, am going to rant a bit here about SOUNDMAN. Pls click on the x button on the top right corner of this window if you are/were a soundman before.

Ok, first of all, I nearly wanted to kill a soundman with my bare hands last Sun at a wedding at xxx hotel ballroom. If you claim you are the soundman, pls make sure you give me good sound. Few near fatal mistakes he made (fatal as in, he could have been killed by me post-show):

1. During the soundcheck everything went well. 1hr later when we were back, wedding started, door was about to be  opened to welcome the couple into the ballroom, I was supposed to sing but was horrified to find my mic was not ON! I was waving my hands to the soundman like ‘Save me!’, but of course, the soundman was so high up in the sound room, and the whole ballroom was SO dark and all eyes on the door, nobody would have known if I had dropped dead from exasperation (except my musicians). I mean, how could you off the mics for the live band when you know the live band is performing LIVE for the march-in song?! My ex used to say - there’s no cure for stupidity and I agree. More to come:

2. Prob #1 was resolved after quickly changing to male singer’s mic. Finally the soundman looked down at me after the march-in and realised that my mic was still not on (No, I did not show him my read-between-the-line fingers –> I only hallucinate when I’m extremely fired up). Then I realised that my mic was softer than male singer’s mic. This needed to be resolved because I did not wish to expend my energy screaming into the mic to match his level, for solos, and most importantly for the balance in vol for duets, and it was just 2 songs into the whole 1.5hr performance. Apparently, the soundman was in the control room - I doubt he can hear the sound balance in the room, so I don’t know why that is the control room, but anyway. While male singer was singing, I stormed into the kitchen and asked for the manager because he was nowhere to be found in the ballroom. Asked manager to pls get the soundman to up MY vol to MATCH the male singer’s vol. Guess what, he upped the male singer’s vol so male singer now sounded even louder. i.e. he confused our mic channels –> Either you were on drugs in the room during soundcheck, or ………honestly, I can’t think of any other reason.

3. Finally he realised the mistake and upp my vol, until REALLY LOUD. Then strangely, he went to decrease male singer’s mic till it’s rather soft for no good reason. I’m like –> wordless in the mind because his behaviour was too bizarre for me to comprehend at any level.

4. I think male singer was also praying hard that I would not self-combust and jeopardise group’s reputation as I was trying very hard to get a grip on myself while communicating to the manager. But really, among the many types of people I really hate, like dishonest/fake/attention-grabbing pigs, unqualified soundmen are equally ranked up there.

Yes, I may not be the best, but I spent so much time crafting the art, what gives you the right to steal what I could deliver with mere incompetence on your side?!

Ok, ranted. Zzzz.

See how Obama rocked here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7639075.stm

Q: Much has been said about the lessons of Vietnam, what do you see as the lessons of Iraq?

McCain: “I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear..that, (clear throat)…you cannot have a failed strategy that will then nearly cause you to lose your conflict.” –> ?? I mean, that sounded more like what a con prophet would say, or what the daily horoscope in the ST would read. WTH!?

I realised I have been such a bore because I work too much :”(

And I’m not sure if it’s the crank that’s getting to me, but these are the things I actually think about, like:

1. Do you look at a person’s left or right eye when you talk to them? Or do you look at both at the same time? I realised I tend to look at either eye when I speak to a person. It’s hard for me to focus on both eyes!

2. How do I tune back my sleeping hours to 1am if I’ve been sleeping at 3am for a long time? I just can’t sleep at 1am, and there’s no motivation to make me wake up really early!

3. Is it me, or are there too many changes happening too fast along orchard road? I walked past a patisserie shop near Shaw today, and I was very pleasantly surprised. GIRLFRIENDS –> NEW PIG-OUT PLACE!

4. Where should I go for holiday in Aug?

5. And, I am still very disturbed by a stupid psychological question Ken asked me on-air on Mon:

Imagine you’ve a mirror in the story “Snow White”. What question (about love) would you ask the mirror?

1. Does the man I love, love me?

2. Am I 幸福 (loosely translated as happy)?

3. Have I made the right choice?

(Choose one quick!!)

Answers first:

This psychological situation tests what you’re really trying to run away in your life right now:

If you choose qn 1, it means you are actually trying to run away from love because you don’t trust the person. You have doubts and hence the love is probably not what you want..

If you choose qn 2, you’re trying to run away from your current situation now because of a state of unhappiness or discomfort you’re in (honestly this is like ‘duh’ to me…)

If you choose qn 3, you’re trying to run away from making choices in your life right now…you’re just not sure and you can’t trust yourself to make the right decisions.

I chose question 1.  Because the others don’t make sense to me. If I’m happy (幸福), surely I would know, so why would I need to ask!? And if I am happy, then I wouldn”t ask question 3, because I know the past choices I’ve made had made me happy. Hence, I would ask question 3 only if I am unhappy. But then, I probably would already know I’ve made the wrong choice, because I feel unhappy. Hence question 1 seems the best question to ask. Because, honestly, how do you know if a man really loves you, or not?

Crap, I can’t believe I took the time to blog this!!!! :”(

Back to work.

I suddenly recalled this awful incident and feel compelled to blog.

I was at the gym last week. I happily walked over to the windows, open them up one by one to let the fresh air come in (you know how the gym sometimes stink after people worked out with air-con on!). Then I felt a splat on my right forearm. I thought it was a leaf, looked down on it, but saw a big, black lizard. I jumped and SCREAMED at the top of my lungs - I couldn’t decide which one I did first. Or maybe I did both at the same time. The poor lizard leapt away for his dear life onto the floor, but I was still in my screaming mode until I felt safe enough to shut up.

OMG. I am so useless.

I felt a like a ball of emotions - I felt like an idiot for screaming like an idiot (thank goodness I didn’t have the opportunity to scare the sh*t out of whoever was in the room cos I was alone). I felt sorry for the lizard for scaring him. I felt very angry at the lizard for scaring me. I felt like hunting him down to make sure he was very far away from me (maybe it’s a she but you know I’m heavily influenced by the french now, they like to use masculine particles to refer to things if not specified). I felt like my forearm was dirty because the lizard was really, black. I felt like going to wash my arm but decided it’s too gu-niang. I felt lazy too. I felt disgusted by myself for being lazy to wash my arm after being ‘tainted’ by a dirty lizard.

So the next thing I did was to distract myself with Jason Mraz on my ipod and just worked it out.

Honestly, Bevlyn.

I am ok with lizards on the streets, on the roads, on the wall, 10cm infront of me, but not ON me! YUCKS!

I was surprised when I received this call a few days ago:

Characters:

1. Auntie-like employee from corporate company whom ALD sang for in April.

2. Me

Auntie: “Ah….you know the cheque ah…Ah I wanna ask you har, if you want to join our GIRO system…..”

*My 1st thought: Har?! U mean the cheque is not even mailed out yet!??! I’ve been waiting for 2 months! I paid my musicians first, and if they had bought food with the payment, would have been removed from their bowels long time ago and perhaps already an extract FROM Newater.*

Auntie continued: “…Ah because you know ah, sometimes the cheques we sent out got lost, and we have to go back and check, so quite troublesome…”

*Irritation level - upped.*

Me: “So how long will the process be if I apply for GIRO? How long will I get the payment in?”

Auntie: “Oh, you have to go to the bank to apply, fill in the form, and let the bank do the check for you…cos we can’t do the check on our side…”

*Irritation level upped more –> 1st time experiencing the infamous Tai-chi stroke commonly known among 9-5 office comrades*

Auntie reiterated:”…Yah so it’s better for you to join our GIRO system…otherwise ah, if we lost the cheque ah…. blah blah blah“

Me: “Sorry, but I really don’t have time to go to the bank, and also we’re an entertainment company, so that time we only performed a one-off, so we don’t perform regularly for your company…Can you just send the cheque to us.”

Auntie: “Yah yah I know…ok, then I send cheque to you, but if the cheque got lost ah, then you have to wait even longer ah……”

Broke out in cold sweat: What if she purposely writes the address wrongly just to irritate the hell out of me?

Me: “Ok, pls send the cheque”

*Verified address twice*

What the hell was she thinking? Sorry but you got the wrong person to #^%)*&)_!!!!

I am soooooooo tired.

I neeeeeeed sleep.

So many thoughts running through my mind these few days.

I’ve realised something about karma. They’re all manifesting to me especially this period, the good ones encouraging me to keep everything simple and pure; the bad ones mocking me not to erm, judge people too fast. …. I guess that’s how we all grow and mature.

***********

I can’t make decisions! I hate choices, sometimes. I hate having to balance the pros and cons, and the worst is my emotions love to dip themselves into the pool of cards. On a small scale, I hate for instance, menus with tooooo many main courses, or drinks, their names sprawled all over the menu all shouting out to you. There are many other things I hate about, now that the album is out, but I guess I should shut up cos they come with it. It’s scary sometimes to see more ugly people at this point in time…Commitment, trust, commitment, trust, commitment, trust. Talk is cheap. When I think about what I want, I may not know what exactly I want. But I certainly know what I do not want.

Anyway, if you think I’m talking in riddles, that’s because I am. Just to get it out of my system.

***********

I am so glad to hear that Monica is coming to Singapore in July. Elle me manque. Finally, I can practise my French on her. Afterall she’s the biggest reason why I learnt French in the first place.

I was invited by My Paper to submit another article after the one that was published on 5 Mar…the deadline was 31 Mar and yes, of course I submitted my ‘draft’ on 31 Mar. To my utter surprise, Esther emailed me at 8.55pm on 1 Apr and told me that they’re taking the ‘draft’ and it would be out the next day i.e. today.

I was like “WHAT!”

It was already 2am when I read her email (after 1003fm). I didn’t even have a chance to contact her lol.

Err..it was only a draft…..

Honestly I can’t work in the news; it’s too much for my heart. I almost thought it might be an April fool’s joke.

Download here.

Btw, my initial title for this article is “Fear? Just paint”.

Will post my original article (pre length-edit) later on..

Edit: To all who have emailed me or left comments for me here, thank you so much for dropping a note. Here is the original:

BTW – Fear? Just paint.

After sending my father off at the airport just the other night, my mum and some relatives decided to grab some food and drinks. I did not know the way to the café then, and it had seemed to be such a long walk. Strangely, I gained a new perspective out of it.

The journey always feels longer when you are travelling towards a destination using a path you have never taken before. All the unfamiliar scenery that passes you by will make you look at them, perhaps a split second more. You will absorb as much as possible whatever that comes your way because you’re wary of danger, of getting lost, or simply the fear of what lies ahead.

However, when you reach the destination, and decide to go back to where you came from, the journey seems shorter, and you may not even pay as much attention to the scenery which you had witnessed earlier. This time round, you may only pay attention to the few landmarks or eye-catching things you had remembered to lead you back.

Life is such, isn’t it?

At times it seems so difficult to move forward because we are simply so scared of what lies ahead. The journey to the unknown is often so much more difficult than a simple act of reflection.

Each time we put in our sweat working it out for what seems like endless days and nights to conquer major exams like ‘A’ or ‘O’ levels or tertiary exams, we only remember a few scenes of mugging at the library or study places, and maybe a tiny weeny bit of hardship upon reflection.

We are all so used to having the government set the paths for us (PSLE, ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels, and the stipulated exams in Polytechnics or Universities), some of us may feel lost when suddenly we have full control of what we can do with our lives. When there are no more goals set by others to reach, some of us lose sight of what we want because we were simply not trained to think about what we really like to pursue in life.

Isn’t it such a wonderful thing to be able to think, choose, and plan (unlike animals or plants in this living Earth)? So why not indulge in this privilege?

We can choose to use black/red/blue/yellow/neon green etc crayons to paint our canvas of life with circles, dots, stripes, patterns or other unique designs to call our own. We are the ones holding the crayon, and we can have colourful lives if we choose to. We know it cannot be with the use of a pencil because actions are not erasable, but that is where it is interesting.

The whole picture is colourful just because you have used many different types of colours - even black (which initially might have been a mistake) could bring out the best of the other colours in the whole picture. We all know the marks left behind by an erased pencil trace are ugly, so don’t adopt the pencil attitude. Don’t leave an eraser for ‘what if’. If you like something, believe in it, choose it, plan for it, do it and make your portrait colourful.

Many years from now, when we have flashbacks on our lives, hopefully we will see streams and streaks of exciting colours to call our own.

…it just takes one song to bring all the tears back, and emotions to a low point.

Maybe that’s why it’s lucky I’m a wedding-singer - I sing all the happy love songs. Sometimes… I don’t know what I want anymore.

Indescripable things have kicked in suddenly after CNY. What do you want from me?

But now, what do I want? What you want, I may not want to give.

At times of vulnerability, confusion spills in. And as usual, I always have to turn to myself first, and, last.

Dependency is a scary thing I don’t ever wish to shelter in my heart again.
But without dependency, can there be trust? What if dependency is water to the seeds of love?