guinea pigs

Recently I've had the strangest gigs ever. The normal gig involves sitting in some dark corner or big space playing background music with a quartet. Last Sunday, what I thought was a 'normal' gig turned out to be a performance in front of a whole hall of what might have been 500-700 people for a combined clan association's Arts Festival thingy at Golden Mile Tower.

But last night's one at Singapore Expo was classic. It was some National Day Appreciation Dinner for those who helped out with the Tampines GRC celebrations. Essentially, we were paid to play three pieces, eat a 10 course dinner, take photos of ourselves and the only 'cost' we might have incurred was listening to some weirdly flawed speeches of one particular minister whom I will refrain from naming lest I cross the OB markers. Also, we were subjected to the constant replay (ad infinitum ad nauseum) to National Songs of all lengths and languages. Some familiar 'favourites' (favourites to whom I really don't know but I suppose there will be people who like them) include Count On Me Singapore with its tempo extremely conducive for waving flags, except that in yesterday's case the only thing that we could possibly wave were chopsticks or our bows. I distinctly remember Kit Chan's 'Home' being played more than once, in different arrangements. And who can possibly forget the very exciting video clips of the parade which was so seamlessly coordinated between the Padang and heartlands? After watching more than thirty years of NDP video clips for Wednesday's Singapore Society Lecture, I couldn't be happier watching a replay of this year's just for kicks.

What struck me most was the minister's speech, where he mentioned about the important role of leadership and organisation, especially in view of the New Orleans crisis.It was something along the lines of

"The leadership helped in the evacuation of New Orleans"

MIght that be the hypothetical situation, or social reality?

An additional noteworthy phrase includes "The Singapore experiment will get better in the future".

That explains why we are all still caught up with the rat-like treadmill pounding. The scientists need more money to improve the size of the cages. Alternatively they can just turn the treadmill into a roulette, and get violent squeaks of protests from the rats.