Vertical Marathon

I know there're a couple of people who think I must've been insane to pay $14 to climb 43 storeys worth of stairs but it turned out to be a fantastic way to spend the Sunday!

Anyway, I started the entire "adventure" last night when I went to meet Jie Yu at Marina. It was the first time I went there to shop. The last time I visited the place was with my parents' for their anniversary. I was amazed by the fact that there was a wide variety of clothes on sale (when I'm trying very hard to curb my spending. Did I mention that I bought Sun Yan Zi's DVD yesterday as well? Oops.). Also, I had the chance to witness, the first time in my life, a catwalk session.



I happened to be standing at a very lousy position. Second storey and the models were all walking AWAY from me ie I was standing behind the stage. It was kind of interesting to take see such things and then put yourself in the model's (very high-heeled) shoes. The confidence in every step, with a wickedly sexy stare to match and not waver when countless flashes from the bulbs of cameras go off in your face...



... and not blink. It's a glamorous job, but it sure has its difficulties! I was enthralled by the very tall people who walked the walk in designer clothes and all but Jie Yu was bored by it all because he has already attended quite a few before. The novelty factor has worn off for him! We contemplated having dinner at Carls' Junior or Fins the seafood restaurant. In the end we went to Fins because the queue at Carls' Junior was OUTRAGEOUS. I've never ever seen a fast food restaurant in such demand. The food at Fins was good, but their service was outstanding. The atmosphere of the place was also wonderful. Anyway, I got tired of the taste of Fish and Chips after a few mouthfuls, so I don't think I'll be patronising another seafood restaurant (including Fish & Co) for a very long time to come.

The only purchase that was made during this extensive window shopping trip was when Jie Yu bought a new wallet. It wasn't high up on his shopping list, but he bought it nonetheless. He found too many people in his camp 'copying' him and using cardholders as a wallet. His new wallet is quite a steal. It looks like it costs a bomb when it actually didn't! A very good buy.

After that I took the train to Serangoon MRT station to wait for Terence and Daniel whom I thought were on their way back from PS. However, it turned out that they were already at Terence's house and the bad thing is I reached there early and Terence came late to fetch me. Haha... It wasn't that bad, other than the fact that I was kind of sleepy and just sat on the floor, leaned on the wall and shut my eyes to rest. Recently I've been sleeping a lot in public places. Boo. To top it all off, Sern Hong said that he'd be coming late. So to avoid Terence making another trip out to fetch him, we waited 40 freaking minutes at the bus stop for him.



So we couldn't help doing silly things like photo-taking. He unveiled his new camera which was bloody good. He bought it at the IT fair yesterday. Too bad I haven't gotten any photographr from him! We gave Sern Hong a good talking to when he arrived late, but luckily he came up with a lame joke or two to save his ass. After climbing over a gate (SOC!) we managed to reach his house, and it was a very cosy place. I enjoyed myself the few hours that I was there. With Namie Amuro in the background, we chatted, took turns to shower, took more photographs before attempting to sleep together on one bed. It turns out that a queen size bed cannot fit the 4 of us. Well, I'll treat it as experimenting for our up-and-coming Thailand trip! I ended up sleeping on the spare mattress while Terence went to his sister's room when Sern Hong started snoring!

We woke up at 530AM, after only 5 hours or less of sleep. There was a rather mad rush to do our hair, put on our contacts (I'm exaggerating a bit. It's starting to sound like the changing room of America's Next Top Model or something.) and having breakfast. Terence's father drove us to Suntec where we arrived at 630AM. The organisers were already there and we decided to take a photo with the huge National Vertical Marathon backdrop on stage.



We were very awake despite the lack of sleep (which came back to haunt us much later in the day). It we queued up quite early to get our details and it turned out that the bunch of us were going to face the battle together! We did a bit of warm up before going to the holding area at 745AM. There was a bit of hype as we were the first group to enter and there was a mini-opening ceremony.



This is us, fresh before the marathon.

When our detail started to conquer the endless flight of stairs, I must say that I got tired out rather quickly and it was really intense. After 10 storeys I was panting like mad. I knew I was making progress because I didn't STOP, but I kept looking at which storey I was at. No, I actually looked out for the number of every storey, and willing myself to reach the end. It's of course much less torturous than AHM, but when I reached the end, a wave of relief washed over me. It's indescribable. When I saw the rest of them already there, they looked pretty tired out too! However, nothing could stop us from smiling for the camera (which I ran up the stairs with).



We took a hell lot of photos, and I think the organisers were pretty scared of us. We waited a while for Terence to come up and continued our photo whoring in various poses and of course with the number 43 which was on the lift of that storey. Our photo was taken by the organisers so we might get to catch it once they put it up on their website. Cool stuff. We were all crazy and delirious as we took the lift down to the very first storey...



... that we felt the need to commemerate the moment by taking another photo with the lift which showed that we were at the 1st storey. Insane. We waited for a few more the people who turned up a bit later and thus went for the marathon later. It was cool just sitting around and relishing the moment of satisfaction we all felt at having completed it. Daniel was nice enough to help us fill up our certificate which we got with the goody bag with our names. The last 39SCE personnel came in at about 10AM and we managed to take a group photo.



There were like, 4 or more cameras so it was a long while of posing before the all the cameras had their chance to shoot at us! Have to thank the very nice NTU people who helped us take the photos! The guy in the middle is our OC, Cpt Tong. It does strike me as weird when you've got the highest in command, then there's us, who ain't commanders, but there aren't any of those in between the chain (of command). Hmmm.

We went to have breakfast at Carls' Jr (thank goodness I didn't eat it for dinner last night) and it tasted good. The burger was humungous and I could hardly finish the entire thing! I changed into my Vertical Marathon shirt. After that we wanted to go look at the IT fair, but it hadn't opened yet! We then went to this place which was having a sale. I saw an A&F shirt that looked alright (and saw someone wearing it outside, and it looked good) but I couldn't bare to spend any more money already!

We were tired and sleepy and gave up on walking around. In the end we threw ourselves on the floor just outside the 6th storey, where I was supposed to get my new DVD drive. I don't know why, but my mother wants me to buy it. There wasn't much shopping going on when we entered. In fact, we barely got to look at anything much. It was just a process where we got squished around with people (I don't understand why the fuck people bring little kids into these things), trying desperately not to trip over others' shoes etc. However Sern Hong bought some massage chair for his father for $400++ and I got my drive for $79. We were rather big spenders in that sense. After that we went downstairs to take a look at the Creative booth, which was gigantic, just as I expected. I wanted to get the very cute mini-speakers to attach them to my mp3, then remembered that my Zen Micro has seen much better days and I proabably should be saving up my money to bring it for repair real soon. We then went to see Nintendo, where there was a game called Brain-age or something! There were some simple maths questions and you had to challenge yourself to answer them as quickly as possible. The nice salesgirls offered us one to play around with and before long, Terence and Daniel got hooked to the thing and tried to beat each others' timing for completion of those 20 or so questions. If they could finish it in 10 seconds, they'd be eligible to enter a competition to win a Nintendo or something. But in the end we just went off (after quite a few tries). Ooh, and they got interviewed as well.

After that Daniel and Sern Hong went to the ATM to settle some money issues while Terence and I collapsed on the floor. Upon finishing their transaction, Terence and Daniel left for home while Sern Hong and I had lunch at this Chinese restaurant located at the food court place. I liked my Dumpling noodle a lot because there was this faint taste of sweetness... It makes me feel poetic! Like in the midst of the plainness of the soup there're some taste. Like in life, we should learn to appreciate the small and normal things.

Am I making sense?

Anyway, after that he left and I took a walk around Suntec once again, this time dragging my bag and my new drive and the goodie bag from the Vertical Marathon. Exhausted and basically just drifting mindlessly from shop to shop. I did see a few choice products at... that CD shop. All of a sudden I can't remember its name. Err... Tower Records! Yeah. But they were expensive. Time passed quickly and before long it was 330PM! Okay, but when I went out to the Vertical Marathon stage again I was rather surprised to see that another band was performing, so I took the chance to visit the toilet before coming out again to witness the band performing their last song.

The sun was bloody hot. Boo. I was standing at where the staircase ended, coming up from the basement. By luck, some people would exit from there and a gush of cold air would rush up to greet me. For that little bit of comfort, I'm grateful! Anyway, I saw Colin listening to his mp3 player and sipping on this red drink, and it was with much anticipation when I saw King Kong Jane take the stage and do their sound check. I wore my (spoilt) sunglasses because they sun was really... woah.

They kicked off with Beautiful Love which left me in awe of his voice. Seriously. To put it simply, I like the sound of his voice. Arhm, apparently so do the SI judges because he got through the first round!

Okay, the next song was my favourite performance, also partly because it was my favourite song from that set. Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out. I love how disconnected the verse sounds from the chorus. I loved the fact that the band was terrific in building up that atmosphere and anticipation from the verse to the chorus. The music just before "I say don't you know..." gave me the chills. Fucking brilliant. As good, or better than the real thing, and the feeling of hearing it live... ROCKS.

The next song was Retreat, which I wasn't familiar with, but I took a look around and saw...



... the two kids in red dancing vigorously to the song while waiting for the taxi with their parents. Now how cool is that? And so since I took out my camera I decided to get a few shots of Colin and the band.



I was impressed with the use of the mic-stand in the first song, and then thrown aside to give the singer more movemnt during the subsequent songs. And when he just reached out for a drink in between two of the songs, made him seem like a seasoned pro! I wonder if any of them were nervous at all. The last time I remembered seeing someone drink on stage was Mariah singing for Live 8! Haha! After that was a decent rendition of She Will Be Loved, followed by the stomping hit that is Are You Gonna Be My Girl. I liked how the chorus was spoken more than sung, giving the rather overplayed song a fresh perspective. It's cool how Colin was so full of energy on stage, so I bunched up the photos above and made this:



I was amazed at how I loved the last song even though I've never heard it before in my life! And I think I've been converted to a Franz Ferdinand fan! I couldn't get "I want a car / I want a car (yeah) / I want a car / I want a car (yeah)" out of my head as I packed up and was just about to leave.



All in all, an outstanding performance, that I was glad I waited for. I really wanted to stay around to listen to the next set but I'd already been at Suntec for close to 9 hours, and was super shagged. The escalator connecting Suntec to Citylink broke down and it took me 10 minutes to cross the bloody overhead bridge. The train to Woodlands was so crowded that I took to Marina, and fell asleep on a train.

A great way to round up this very long adventure!

PS: There'll be no siggy now that there's an error in the thing. Just got to do without it! Ooh, this is probably the longest entry yet. Took me an entire hour to write, not counting the time I took to get the photos together!