Sunway Christmas Busking for Charity 2012

29 and 30 December 2012

Around end of November last year, I somehow saw an email newsletter by Sunway Pyramid asking for Charity Buskers for Christmas, while so happen a friend of mine informed me about the same thing, and this is how I decided to just try applying to see if I got accepted to perform. To apply, we were supposed to send in a performance video related to christmas. I put "we" here because at that point of time I feel that a live acoustic performance would be better than a usual karaoke-backing solo performance, live performance is somehow warmer and has more christmas feel~

My first step(and problem) was to find a partner to either play the acoustic guitar or keyboard for me. It's definitely hard as most of my friends were busy towards the end of the year, or they have made plans etc etc. But! I was lucky enough to get an OK from Carlson and together we made a christmas video for event registration:

White Christmas - Soulful Version

White Christmas - Strumming Version

We did it this way: Carlson recorded some clips for his guitar parts, and I matched my voice recording to his guitar and finalized by adding my video clip beside his. I don't think I did a good job at the video because for some reason the video always got blurred after rendering, and this was my first time editing a video so I'm still pretty much blur about it. Carlson recorded two versions of White Christmas, and I ended up doing both because I couldn't decide which is better lol.

It took a week for Carlson for his videos to reach me, and plus another few more days for me to record vocals + video editing. We had to seriously rush for it because it was super near the video submission dateline, and we were busy with our own stuff (exams for me, I forgot what Carlson was busy with that time). After Sunway management saw our video they asked if we could perform for two days instead of one. And we agreed to just die die go for it, just for the sake of youth lol what a thing to say.

Our performance was set at 28 and 29 December 2012, 3.30-3.50pm and 4.00-4.20pm. We haven't got much time for practice because half of the December I was pretty occupied with my exams, and after that Carlson has camps to go, and many other activities as well. Our first meetup/practice was at MidValley, we found a nice cafe that was quiet and open air so we could strum and sing as we like haha. We didn't get to do much that day other than to go through what has to be done and decide on song choice for the event.

Our 2nd practice (which was our final practice =_=) was at Taylor's Lakeside, where we went into an empty classroom to practice. Practice that day was relatively progressing well, but there's still many hickups and stops along the way. Days before the performance we tried practicing through Skype, which I think was epic failure because we cannot play and sing at the same time lol. Meaning when I start singing the guitar sound won't be able to transmit to me, and when he start playing he can't hear me sing haha. Kind of a disaster. But we did discussed what to wear through skype, thinking of what accessories to add to have that christmassy feel.

On the performance day itself, we went Daiso to prep up ourselves, including buying a toy bell lol, safety pins and I can't remember what more. And after lunch we went to find a place for our final preparation.

Carlson took this picture while we were practicing lol

Here are some pictures during our performance:

Day 1: Main Concourse

Day 1 Ground Floor Water Feature Area

Donation box ^^

Day 2 Ground Floor Water Feature Area

We really loved the stage decorations at the Main Concourse, it was definitely one of the most beautiful stage I've performed on. The theme last December was Spanish Antoni Gaudi ceramic mosaics, I felt particularly amazed as I just went Spain for a holiday last July and saw many of Gaudi's work. The people working back stage were really friendly, they helped us a lot with the preparation and set ups, so that we wouldn't have to worry about any of those stuffs.

Overall I think we did an average job, mainly due to the serious lack of meetups, and of course, Carlson's busy schedule. Lots of funny and panic moments when we were on stage but we managed to survive at least lol. It was our first time pairing with each other, and yes I did enjoyed his company. Nevertheless we did have loads of fun performing, and it was kinda touching seeing people gave donations during our performance, we felt like we were contributing something to the society ^^. And of course some of our friends(and my family) who came over to support us for both the days, thank you very much as well.

Fashion wise; For day 1 I decided to be seriously on Christmas mode, so I wore a bright red knitted top, paired with full lace shorts + black leggings, while day 2 I wore something very mori-styled, a new layered green dress my mum bought for me on my birthday ^^. Carlson wore different for both days, but I guess there isn't much difference to be seen from the pictures lol, thats how guys usually wear ==. But he did put on a cute santa pin I bought from a christmas fair, and he is still keeping it now haha.

Our commemorative picture at the end of our performance: