Choral Aires Concert and Zoo Tycoon

The weather is getting increasingly hotter every passing day. Ugh. Looks like Santa is gonna be making his rounds in probably a red pair of speedos (or maybe a man-thong a la Borat, though I ain't sure that's a sight I wanna see) when he visits north Queensland. Due to the occasional torrent of rain, humidity is also getting to a point where a 5 minute walk out in the afternoon is probably equivalent to sitting in a steam sauna and your sweat glands end up like geysers, turning your whole body into something like a cold glass of water left out in a warm room - just completely slick with perspiration (condensation in the case of the metaphor).

So I had my debut concert appearance two days ago. Pretty neat.

Just to back up a little, the Choral Aires is a choir group under the Townsville Choral Society that performs on Mondays at 9am. That gives one a hint that this group isn't for the working class or those still in school. It's really a group for retirees, and most of them are easily triple my age. Since I'm forced to bum around till the PR gets approved (and this just in: we have our bridging visas, which will allow us to stay beyond the period that's set on the tourist visas until we get an answer for our PR), I figured, why not?

Turns out, me joining was pretty mutually beneficial. My Monday mornings were filled with two hours of music, and they got an extra male voice as well as an accompanist.

At the concert, I was introduced even before the curtain went up as "a special guest all the way from Malaysia" and was given an embarrassing load of praise about what I'd done for the Choral Society. This guy who was the emcee and is the secretary of the Choral Society, Brian, always tells me that the email I sent out inquiring about the Choral Society was a godsend. Good accompanists are rare and expensive here, so I fell right in place in the scheme of things. He even expressed his desire to see me become an Australian citizen. I should've recorded that for immigration haha!

The concert went on and the beautiful thing is, people actually support the arts here in Townsville. I had my initial doubts about the number of audience that would show, but the hall was packed full! All these people who came were probably family, friends and maybe even some who just happened to be told about it. And though the performances themselves were probably not astounding in quality, you could see on the audience's faces that they were thoroughly enjoying every moment of it, mouthing the words to songs they know, or quietly murmuring their approval.

I was quite the multitasker. After every three songs, there'd be a few solos in the program for a change of pace and so the main choir could take a break to rest or to change into their other costumes. There's an upright piano onstage with the choir and the pianist who plays it is an 80 year old woman who has to use a walker to move around. I seriously respect that lady. She looks so frail that the last place you'd expect to see her is tinkling away on the piano, but she has an absolute passion for it, and I believe she's been playing with the Choral Society for years and years. However, when the soloists sing, the piano is situated behind the curtains, so the accompanist has to play on a digital piano offstage in a corner, at level with the audience. That's where I come in.

So here's me singing with the choir for a few songs, then the curtains close and I emerge from between them and play for the soloists, then I wiggle back through, the curtains open and ta-da, I'm back in the choir. That's not all either. I sang a solo that day, and it was a last minute addition. It's called "The Water is Wide", which is a gem of a folksong with a beautiful melody and poignant words. Here are the lyrics, and there are many variations on the verses, but this is the version I sang:

The water is wide, I cannot cross o'er,
And neither have I the wings to fly,
Build me a boat that can carry two,
And both shall row my love and I.

A ship there is and she sails the seas,
She's laden deep, as deep can be,
But not so deep as the love I'm in,
And I know not if I sink or swim.

I leaned my back against a young oak,
Thinking he were a trusty tree,
But first he bended and then he broke,
Thus did my love prove false to me.

O love is handsome and love is kind,
Bright as a jewel when first it's new,
But love grows old and waxes cold,
And fades away like the morning dew.

To me, it's like the ultimate song about losing faith in love and becoming jaded, and there's a whole story encompassed right there in those four verses. The last verse in particular, with the sweet tune carrying those bitter words gives it a potent kick that is can bring tears.

And so it did. A Irish lady who was in the choir came up to me and asked about the song and told me she loved it and it brought tears to her eyes. That's more important to me than "you have a beautiful voice". Music cannot become a transcendant form of communication unless the message it bears can resonate between the singer and the audience. You can have a fantastic natural voice just as you can own a Steinway, and you can become competent and inoffensive with the instrument, but if music becomes an aesthetic listening experience instead of a emotional intercourse, I think it's fallen short of its purpose. Now if only I can figure how to do that while singing in other languages...

And there's more. An old man came looking for me backstage and placed his hands on my shoulders and with a trembling voice he told me "thank you for your smile". At the risk of sounding proud, he said that I lit up the stage with my smile. As a performer, there's a lot of perfunctory compliments, most of which possess a dubious veracity. "Good job" or "Well done" from your fellow performers or the polite applause of the audience. I admit, I'm guilty of it, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. Sometimes however, you get a compliment that is so unabashedly sincere that it even makes you a little uncomfortable. He said quite a few things to me staring me straight in the eye, and I remember being really embarrassed since this was the dressing room and everyone was backstage changing out of their costumes. When he had spoken his last however, there were tears in his eyes, beginning to spill over, and I felt pretty overwhelmed.

That's the thing about singing. Critically, it wasn't technically perfect by far. In front of a panel of judges, they'd probably have things to say about breathing, phrasing, legato and that's fine. But there's something more moving in a mother singing a lullaby, a child singing something made-up to himself, or a lover serenading. I suspect it has to do with emotional investment, irregardless of whether too many breaths are being taken or it's "pitchy".

So anyway, I'm rambling. After that success, there was a Christmas party yesterday! And oh boy... the amount of food... Red Rooster chicken (which looks like Ayamas' roasted chicken), quiches, pies, salads, cold cuts. I'd stuffed myself to an appropriate amount and was engaging in conversation with the ladies around the table I was at when they announced that the sweets were out. Said sweets included tarts, cream puffs, fruit pies, fruits, pudding, cakes, lamingtons (sponge cake (i think) covered in chocolate, sprinkled with coconut shavings) and the piece de resistance, the all-Australian trifle, which if you didn't know, is a sinfully delicious dessert made by placing sponge cake at the bottom of a bowl and heaping custard, jello, and ice cream on top of it. I actually abstained yesterday because I felt guilty already... Sigh.

Conversation with these bunch of folks is always interesting. Before the party, I was speaking to an English guy who moved to Australia and he was recounting his experiences as a RAF statistician posted in Penang like forty years ago. Around the table, the ladies would talk about the history of Townsville, scandalous local gossip and life experiences. I would contribute with tidbits of Malaysian culture, talking about edibles such as chicken feet and congealed pig's blood (with restraint of course) which would make them groan and squirm. Funny though, a few of them actually responded after turning up their noses at chicken feet that they loved to eat pig brains (or was it some other kind of animal?), and even detailed instructions at how to cook it and how it tastes. "Delicate", remarks one and I can't help but laugh inside at the irony.

One man's meat is another man's poison... I love that quote.

It is remarkable that some of these folks have been with the Choral Society for ages. Quite a few have been with it for over forty years. Being about half that in age, it's still quite unfathomable to me.

Okay, I've written way lots. Just something else to add.

Recently, I got an old game I absolutely love. When I was just a little boy, my ambitions were far from glamorous. I wanted to become a zookeeper. I had a few books that were animal encyclopedias and they were the source of my fantasies. I remember running about the house with my brother and I would flip open the book, imagine the whole house was my personal zoo ( I adored Michael Jackson cuz he had a zoo) and designate specific spots in rooms where animals would be held. I'd go, "OK, 1 million radiolarians here!" I always remember talking about the more primitive multicellular organisms cuz they were at the beginning of the book. Then me and my brother, after we've finished assigning animals everywhere, would go on a safari, and we'd feed the animals, and we'd pretend we were them. It's pretty neat how the imagination works as a kid.

When this game came out, it was an instant hit with me: Zoo Tycoon!

I generally suck at micromanagement games. SimCity 4? 4-get it. (random lol!) Zoo Tycoon however offered everything I dreamed of as a kid. You could adopt a whole variety of animals: baboons, elephants, giraffes, lions and tigers and bears and build enclosures for em. Sounds simple? You have to make sure the enclosure's big enough, that it has the appropriate mix of terrain, the right kind of foliage associated with the animal's natural habitat, the right amount of rocks, elevation if the animal's a mountain dweller, the correct kind of shelter, the correct kind of fencing (no chain-link fences or for that matter, trees near fences for chimpanzees or they'll escape and your zoo ratings will plummet) and even the number of animals, as some of them want mates or large herds.

When that's done, you hire zookeepers (one of whom I'll usually name after myself) to look after ur animals.

Obviously it doesn't stop there. Money is a factor and you can't survive on the admittance fee alone. So you build burger stands, pizza stands, ice cream stands, drink stands, cuz guests get hungry and thirsty. But after all that, they wanna use the loo, so you have to build restrooms. And most of them would like eating and drinking sitting down, so that requires picnic tables. When they've seen everything, they wanna take home a souvenir, so you exploit this by having a gift stand. The music major in me finally clicked everything into place and realized that business was simply a profitable exploitation of need.

So you have a decent zoo, and you've got a maintenance worker to clean up the trash and a tour guide to show the folks around and some decent cash flow. You start investing the money in little improvements such as benches (and guests do get tired and cranky), exhibit signs, topiaries, flowerbeds, statues, which make the guests happy. You also invest in research so your staff improve, animal care quality is upped, animal houses (like the aviary or the reptile house) become available and even endangered animals like the panda can be up for adoption.

With ur eye on the profits, u build a restaurant, a full blown gift shop and sell off the gift stand, an animatronics theatre and that's when the real cash starts rolling in. If you'd like to control the flow of cash even better, you can adjust the prices of each money-making building. You give your zoo a makeover, putting in fountains, koi ponds, japanese rock gardens, observation areas. Pretty soon, you've got one hell of a zoo to be reckoned with and you're winning really sweet cash awards.

And just when you think, okay, I've done pretty much everything there is, the two expansion packs: Dinosaur Digs and Marine Mania comes in, each with their own unique challenges (making a disaster-free Jurassic Park for example, or getting a Great White Shark to do tricks for the audience).

I got the Zoo Tycoon Ultimate Collection just a couple weeks ago for AUD$20 and it's keeping me totally entertained. When I'm done (which won't be soon) I'll probably get Zoo Tycoon 2: Ultimate Collection.


And here's a screenshot of the Ice Age zoo I built yesterday.



Dunno if this pic can be made bigger, but at the bottom is the enclosure for the Sabertoothed Cat, to the right, the Wooly Mammoth, the top, the Giant Tortoise, and offscreen on the top left is the enclosure for the Wooly Rhinoceros. Fun stuff! The igloo shaped building's a gift shop, and the building to its left is a Dino Arcade. I started out with $150,000, spent till I had $40,000 and ended the game with $90,000 in eleven months. Pretty sweet. This is a scenario with a time limit and conditions but in a freeform game, it can go on till u've basically run out of space.

Well, I know what I'll be doing this afternoon. :P