Discus-Throwers and Shot-Putters Part IV

The day of our performance dawns. We wake up bright and early, ok..not that early...I skipped breakfast coz a) the food sucks and b) I'm a pig. Well anyways, we're at our venue to do soundcheck. I originally thought i'd have some time to do some shopping in between soundcheck and the performance but i thought wrong. Drama 2 ensues...when we see that our stage has been stripped bare, exposing the wood beneath. How on earth are we supposed to sit on this?! So we ask the technicians if we can have the flooring back. And they say no. Okayyyy...so I wander around looking for the flooring. I thought if I found something we could use, we could put the flooring on ourselves. I found it but they still wouldn't allow it. Aisha had to call Renata, our L.O and get her to talk to them in Polish. After a long wait, some men finally came in to put the flooring on. And then, all of us had to move our instruments onto the stage.

So come late morning, we're finally good and ready to go...minus our delightful drummer...but we can't wait...so we start rehearsing. This goes on till about 4pm...no more time to shop..its back to the hotel to shower and get ready.

Pre-performance....Joyce and I cab it to the venue....I'm too lazy to walk and it gave me more time to catch a little nap. When we arrive at the synagogue, there are already people milling around outside. Hmm...i'm surprised to be honest. I thought they couldn't care two hoots about our kinda music but hey I'm wrong. I'm so glad to be wrong! About 10 mins to performance time, suddenly the stage light goes out. We find out that there's no electric power. I remember thinking then that someone or something was trying to play a trick on us. You know, make things difficult...but thank heavens for daylight saving, so at 7pm, it was still light outside. We wait for about 10 mins...the organisers keep coming to ask if we can start without power, which means without miking. Last min adjustments to our repertoire and we are good and ready to go...Aisha now has to dance to our opening piece. Our gamelan actually sounds good without the miking! Power came back midway during our set and we walked off the stage after "Baris" to thunderous applause. The TOD trio takes over with "Papyrus" to end the first half of our first performance in Poland with success. Julia and I bop about backstage to the really grooving beat! Getting jiggy with it....Soph has the video...we should seriously post all our videos...really reality tv material. haha.

Second half of our performance is the fusion part. Again, its well-received and at the end, we hd a standing ovation!! I'm so loving Poland at this moment!!! I try to say thank you in Polish...You know, the obligatory part about the foreigner trying to say something in their native language. I sounded horrible but they really liked it! Apparently, the organisers also liked our performance...gone were the bad attitudes and rudeness. In its place was a smiling Marie and a bus waiting to take us back to the hotel.

Renata takes us to a place where we can get some authentic Polish food. Its weird - in Poland, you have to go to a specific restaurant for their authentic cuisine, which is not situated in an accessible area. Rather, you have to go through some alleys and walkways to get to this place. I choose Polish dumplings for dinner. It looks somewhat like our curry puff, but with mashed beef filling. It comes served with a huge dollop of sauerkraut (German??) which is this sour whatchamacallit...i really dunno what that was, but all i can say is it tasted really sour. You know, the appetite-inducing kind.


After dinner, most of us go our separate ways...some go off to take pictures and walk around the city. Joyce, Seow and I go off with the trio and Renata to explore the nightlife. We chance upon some sculptures of animals and we start camwhoring like mad, posing with the animal year we're born in. Yes, Seow and I got the cock...ok rooster. So yes, see the extent of our madness...even the poor bunny wasn't let off.