Jolin Tsai!

It is good to end this two weeks of madness and exhaustion with a bang.  So we were at the Singapore Indoor Stadium, with two of our friends, and we watched Jolin Tsai live.  Quite honestly – and I know a lot of her fans would shake their heads when they read this – I am not very familiar with her music.  People told me that her live performance is good.  And we have two pairs of tickets courtesy of SingTel and Sony Ericsson because we bought two phones from them.  To choose between watching F1 Qualifying and Jolin, I choose Jolin.  To choose between volunteering for the Election Day and Jolin, I also choose Jolin.  Sorry Singapore.  It was a hard decision.

She is good.  She danced and sang, and we were marveled at her energy level.  It was a pop concert and we could not see the band.  Mostly likely, it was a music playback from beginning to end.  Perhaps that was why the crowd seemed lukewarm in the start?  Or maybe in this part of the world, the audiences tend to be more subdued, and less crazy?  She rallied the crowd’s spirit with speeches throughout the show, and she has done a great job.  Cynthia asked what Jolin said.  Jolin was speaking in Mandarin.  And I know Mandarin as good as I know Spanish.  So I made up some stories, with my very limited understanding of Taiwanese Mandarin.  I am a man.  Hearing her spoke has already raised my spirit.  But I guess Cynthia needed the substance within.

On the stage, there was this huge sphere covered with TV panels that at times broadcast various videos, at times broadcast the live performance.  For audiences like us who were seated to the far end of the stadium, that magic sphere beat the two rather tiny TV screens on either side of the stage hands down.  It was functional too.  The middle section could open up like a spaceship, strong beams of light emitting from within (now, that really hurt our eyes), and it shot fireworks to the audiences at the front rows!  Towards the end of the show, Jolin danced underneath the water fountains.  The cameramen must be pretty scared that their equipment would get wet, or a close-up shot of Jolin dancing wet would deem too indecent to the crowd in this part of the world, I do not know.  Only for those at the front rows, the rest of us might have missed at quite a fair bit on climax of the show.

Happy for me, Jolin did some covers for the songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, and Lady Gaga.  And she makes strong fashion statements too.  I shall not quote who said this.  One audience close to me gasped when Jolin emerged on the stage with light on her – in this person’s exact word – boobs.  I beg to differ.  Those two rectangular plates of white light were placed slightly above.  At most, I would say, she has laser lit cleavage.  It was totally cool.

On a side note, I think Singapore Indoor Stadium is in need of a major overhaul.  Or perhaps the entire music scene in Singapore is in need of a major boost.  If you have a chance to visit Hong Kong, watch a concert at the Indoor Stadium over there.  The experience is quite a world apart.  And I am comparing the two with what I see in Singapore today and what I remember in Hong Kong two decades ago.