multitasking

we were thrown for one big one by clearsound, when they happily arrived, dropped the equipment on the floor, and walked away. my previous experience with clearsound (from ten+ a cappella concerts working for different groups) is that they arrive, set up with whatever help we can offer, and then they run away. apparently there's a different policy for the rooftop lounge/club singapore? then again, we did get a significantly cheaper package than the one i'm used to... hm...

i haven't done significant setup since, well, grace baptist church, usually relying on the techs to connect all the wires before i go on to tinker with room eq, individual mike checks, balance, tape etc. also i haven't worked with wireless mikes before, let alone 8 of them. so when the boxes hit the floor and i unfurled the 'instruction manual' - 1 large sheet of paper - that they left behind, i realised i would have zero bandwidth to manage anything but sound in the next 2-3 hours. fun times.

thank god for kevin pang - who i was able to just point to, say "fix lights", and he got it done; filip, renhua, garrett and the rest of the cast ("assemble set" - luckily by this point some of them had gotten an idea of how the monster backdrop was supposed to be set up); caleb and the music team, who had to deal with (a) being relocated (b) moving a grand piano across and around the entire lounge (c) cables not long enough (d) a drum set that mysteriously drops out below a certain frequency unless i half-UNplug it from the mixer (e) a dead keyboard; peony and flowers; cynthia and makeup; kenny/guorui/filip/russell/janice (and rest of cast!) who helped me individually at some point or other to run rehearsal in my complete absence; my much-abused stage manager crew (yexiang, nadia, yinwei) - together with some other elite muscles (russell, wee siong) who carried my poles up 25 floors of highrise stairs because they wouldnt fit in the elevator - stripped lights/electric strips from my house - dug a missing key out of a pair of pants that i had thrown around - fiddled with powerpoint for 11 hours - got shouted at me and made to run around all over the place...

thank god for competent, responsible and intelligent singaporeans (and friends of singaporeans) with initiative. if i had a battalion of them dressed in combat fatigues and a shipload of arms and weapons - heck, screw the weapons, just give me one thousand dollars in seed money and some duct tape - i could take and hold west philly against the US army or any other comers for at least 2 weeks.