Hasaam: SUPERBOY?!

Hmm. So I uh, somehow found myself auditioning for this show called "快乐男声: SUPERBOY" on Sunday ... I heard about it at the last minute, and went to support Josh (who blew them away and they automatically decided he should go through!) but after a sort of a joke was misunderstood by one of the Partyworld™ people I found myself filling out the forms and being gawped at considerably.

Highlights? Urm, got nervous. Also it was a warm building. Also I've never stood in front of TV lights before. Bottom line? I sweated and froze up in front of effectively millions of people - we can be sure that footage of me WILL be shown when this episode is broadcast because:

a) there were no other white people anywhere, and I spoke almost entirely in Chinese with them
b) when they asked me to sing a second song, in English perhaps, I froze and couldn't think of one because of nerves. This was of course, hilarious as they took it to mean I couldn't sing in English. Then when I butchered a random song that popped into my head I confirmed their theory, but it was more because in my head I was thinking "FUCK dude you're sweating a lot!" rather than my singing normally being QUITE that bad ...
and c) I got through too. This would have a lot to do with a) in my opinion since b) should really have gotten me kicked outta there right away - and I could see them struggling with it. They pretty much said they weren't impressed by my singing but instead by my interest in their language and culture, it moved them they said and they'd like to reward me with the opportunity to learn more. IF I make it through the next round of elimination, it's a free trip to China for meeee to be on TV more. (Notice that I don't include Josh in that 'if'. I am 100% certain he will go to China and finally start being famous and stuff!)


So this week began with me feeling pretty silly for the terrible singing and wondering why I'd sucked so much. I did have some explanations that SEEMED reasonable - lack of preparation, I'd just been sick, I got nervous cos I'd never been on TV before, blah blah blah - but I couldn't accept them. All of them were silly, I decided! The bottom line is, as Josh kept telling me on the day, I simultaneously try too hard while not opening my throat to actually make sound efficient noise. I soon decided that this could be reworded as "I'm not sure if I can really sing and I don't want someone to think that I can't, or that I'm wasting their time."

OOOOH let the healing begin and stuff!

I came to the aforementioned conclusion because I have noticed the quality of my singing diminishes quite a bit whenever I am aware of the possibility of unsupportive/annoyed people hearing me. I can sing to Josh, Neo, Xia Xue, Daniel, and maybe one or two others. But even placing a recording device in front of me and switching it on seemed to tighten up my throat, even if I didn't feel consciously nervous. Weird, huh?

In the words of the great Barney Stinson, "Whenever I start feeling sick I just stop being sick and be awesome instead." I made a discovery! If I let the frustrated angry little man in my head loose on the sooky one that thinks too much, I get a sensation that goes somewhere along the lines of "fuck you Michael, I know I can sing so bugger off I'm gonna go sing now". This has worked in front of the recording devices, and while knowing that my housemates/their guests/ladyfriends are eating in the next room. So far nobody has complained, but nobody has said anything nice either ... hmm ... oh well, I've noticed an improvement in the recordings of myself. (Also, I suppose this proves that other thing I've long suspected - that people have their own lives which don't always centre on making comments about or even noticing mine at all.)

You see, I have no choice but to actually sing as well as I can next week or whenever it is Round 2 is (we're still waiting for the call). Because I suspect that out of the top 50 in Melbourne, even without nerves, I am probably still ranked #50. They're recruiting in Sydney too, and Malaysia, and the States. They WILL find another white guy, probably one who can sing properly, too. One with a bit of stage presence or whatever. Once that happens, I don't even have a flimsy gimmick to get me by. So I assume I will not be going to China with Josh, but the memory of that awful audition is all I need to spur me on. No way are my 15 minutes of fame going to be all about the fact that I screwed up ONE Ben Folds song that nobody's heard of.


Also, below is one possible song choice that X2 suggested I try. I actually like it quite a bit and even translated it this morning. Hopefully anybody who watches the clip isn't further disappointed by my attempts to emulate it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhBlhQh9fws

春泥歌词

漫天的话语
纷乱落在耳际
你我沉默不回应
牵你的手
你却哭红了眼睛
路途漫长无止尽
多想提起勇气
好好的呵护你
不让你受委屈
苦也愿意
那些痛的记忆
落在春的泥土里
滋养了大地
开出下一个花季
风中你的泪滴
滴滴落在回忆里
让我们取名叫做珍惜

迷雾散尽
一切终于变清晰
爱与痛都成回忆
遗忘过去
繁花灿烂在天际
等待已有了结局
我会提起勇气
好好地呵护你
不让你受委屈
苦也愿意

漫天纷飞的花语
落在春的泥土里
滋养了大地
开出下一个花季
风中你的泪滴
滴滴落在回忆里
让我们取名叫做珍惜

那些痛的记忆
落在春的泥土里
滋养了大地
开出下一个花季
风中你的泪滴
滴滴落在回忆里
让我们取名叫做珍惜
让我们懂得学会珍惜



Spring Soil Lyrics

Endless words
Scatter around our ears
Silent, neither of us respond
I draw you near
Your eyes are red from crying
Our path is long, neverending
I always tryto summonmy courage
To cherish and protect you
I won't let anything bad happen to you
I'll do this through the hard times too
Those painful memories
Fall into the spring soil
To nourish the earth
And they'll blossom next year
Your teardrops in the wind
Rain down into our memory
Let us call this the thing that we treasure

The fog disperses
Finally it all becomes clear
Love and pain both become a memory
Forgetting the past
All theblossoming flowers glitter on the horizon
Waiting for something that's already happened
I will summon my courage
To cherish and protect you
I won't let anything bad happen to you
I'll do this through the hard times too

Sweet words twirl through the whole sky
And fall into the spring soil
To nourish the earth
And they'll blossom next year
Your teardrops in the wind
Rain down into our memory
Let us call this the thing that we treasure

Those painful memories
Fall into the spring soil
To nourish the earth
And they'll blossom next year
Your teardrops in the wind
Rain down into our memory
Let us call this the thing that we treasure
Let us understand how to really treasure this

Brace Yourself For Incoming Hasaam!

It was an action-packed breakfast ...

Well, honestly, that phrase popped into my head while I munched on my muesli and I just wanted to try it out. Nothing exploded, no Jehovah's Ninjas lept from the shadows to kidnap my wife, it was all in all a pretty standard breakfast.

Apologies, that wasn't building to anything either. I'm sure it could be labelled as some sort of clever literary technique, though!

"I'm back!" blogs always tend to go sort of meta, don't they? At least for me, they do. "I haven't been blogging in AGES, I'd like to reflect on WHY THAT IS ... " It has occurred to me that such reflections are not overally INTERESTING and leave me little room for creativity, as my life and imagination tend not to revolve around the fact that I didn't feel like taking a little snapshot of my mind and posting in on the internet for a while. Although, now that I've put it like THAT ...

I used to write GOOD. How do I know this? Cos 6 or 7 years ago when I was in high school (saying THAT makes me feel old) I used to write all the time. Assignment? Write the first thing that pops into your head and fix the grammar. Pissed off? Write a stream of gibberish, sometimes it would even rhyme! Bored? I would just instinctively scribble down whatever popped into my head. Later I could turn it into an essay or a short story for English, whatever.

The key word here being instinctive. I never thought about how unusual it was to write so damn much and to just enjoy it. I never realised how good it was for me psychologically to have such an expressive outlet. Just like the way I never noticed how physically fit I was back when I rode my bike everywhere (also mostly high school). I just did it, it was awesome, and the positive consequences of my actions would just sneak right in there without anybody patting me on the back for it.

What was I getting at? Oh yeah, the quality of my work in high school. I used to casually say it was relatively good - you know, good considering my background, good considering the fact that there were only 5 or 6 people who even CARED about doing really well in my year level, blah blah blah etc. But last month I moved house and yesterday I finally emptied out my old desk drawers and cupboards at my folks house. I saw some of my old work and you know what? It was JUST GOOD. Well thought-out, cohesive, entertaining, and clearly some effort had gone into it. Just as clearly, I had obviously been enjoying myself.


After I got to uni, I was so daunted by the notion of being surrounded by academics who used words just as big as I did that I naturally assumed I'd been a big fish in a small pond all through high school. I quickly forgot the fact that I got 100% for every single English SAC I did in year 12, instead choosing to focus on the aspect of my personality that saw me suffer a completely unexpected panic attack in the exam (for the record, this left me with a 35 raw for English, so that was one helluvan attack I reckon!) ...

I don't understand this habit of mine where I focus so hard on how much I suck. Actually, I don't suck. Not, "I don't suck 'that much'" - as it turns out, based on what I flicked through the other day, I clearly have the capacity to fully kick arse.

So I didn't get insane marks across the board in Japanese but you know what? I'd only MET three or four Japanese people in my entire life at that point and most of what I knew I'd learned over a couple of months reading books from the library. I moved on to straight Japanese manga and proceeded at a very slow but steady pace.

There's no reason I couldn't have just kept going with that, but then I got distracted. I got THINKY about everything. I met all these people who were much better than me, who'd had more experience and blah blah blah and while I was truly in awe of some of them, I don't believe I really drew on them that much for inspiration. No, they became excuses. "I'm not as good as him because I've never been to Japan" eventually became "I won't be any good UNTIL I go to Japan" and I poisoned my self esteem just a little more each time I gave it any thought. Eventually all I knew was the fact that I wasn't very good at stuff. And I stopped enjoying what I was doing, because all I could think about was how I wasn't very good at it.

Looking at my high school work, it almost felt like it had all been written by a completely different person. Of course I'm biased, but I felt like the person who wrote all that was kind of cool in his own strange little way. And he was going places. He did what he loved, he helped who he could and none of it ever held him back because he didn't get distracted easily. Once something was in his mind it would stay there until it was sorted out, simple as that.

This week's revelation was simple: There's absolutely no reason I can't be as straightforward as I used to be.