on a whim yesterday, I decided to take a long bus ride instead of the more efficient train. The bus ride took an hour+ but I didn’t regret my decision. There is something calming about bus rides in the rain… and I love sitting on the top deck.
‘Golden Penda’ trees by the bus stop
the top deck is best for bus ride views
what does it feel like? (just as a duck sightseeing tour bus passes us,) ah yes, it feels like a city tour in my own country without all the extra expense.
the Singapore River. the bus route took me through Orchard Road, the Singapore River, Chinatown, Kampong Bahru and then to Vivocity where I alighted.
so what if a bus ride takes longer? why do we always have to be in such a rush anyway?
Amazing how listening to old songs you have heard as a child brings you right back to those childhood memories! After watching “If there are seasons…” again last night, the old songs start replaying in my head again. Not that I haven’t been listening to them since we last watched the musical in 2009 and bought the soundtrack then. Since then, we have been playing the songs but I have quite forgotten the context to the tunes, so it was nice to re-watch this Singapore musical again.
This musical is one of the few chinese theatre shows i have watched and I remembered being pleasantly surprised the first time when that I knew some of the songs. The musical’s storyline was written to incorporate the well-liked XinYao songs (Singapore chinese folk songs, a local music movement that was popular during the 80s and 90s) by Liang Wern Fook. So these were songs that had unconsciously seeped into us as it forms our local popular culture then. I grew up in the late 90s so there are many songs which I was unfamiliar with… until the musical. When we watched the play last night, the song lyrics were also flashed on the side screens which made me understand the lyrics better for the first time! I was really impressed by the composer and how much thought went into the lyrics, it is like writing poems. And despite some of the chinese lyrics being a bit cheem for the english-speaking me, the meaning is definitely stronger if you understand the chinese. Some clever rhymes and sentimental feelings gets lost when translated to english. I was suddenly glad I understood the mandarin!
For some reason the final song, “Singapore Pie” or ‘新加坡派’ kept reminding me of a music video I used to watch on mediacorp’s channel 8. so i googled and I found the music video! ok, so it wasn’t the same song, but it was similarly upbeat and it is also written by Liang Wern Fook, no wonder i confused the two!
do you remember this?
it was on replay mode on tv in year 2000. the clever lyrics about the joys of watching tv, includes popular local-drama titles. And while the actors are not singers, with them singing, they also throw in their own well-known catch-phrases at that time. it brings back many memories since some of these actors are now no longer in the local tv scene.
ramblings. 