Savadikap!!! (part 2)

Ok let's go on to the 3rd adventurous day in Bangkok .... After having a good sleep over 8 hours grace and i woke up, i took a freaking COLD shower in the wee hours of hte morning .. and we left to the conference area , but just after walking out of our dorm doors towards the pavement , we heard someone screaming and i turned to look there was Martin waving at us from the dorm waiting area asking us to wait for them. Honestly ,they're really nice people ... no wonder Cher mixes with them! hahaah .... not bad ah. After waiting for the men , we walked together to the Cafeteria and had our breakfast together. It was kinda our habitual activity , spending time together doing almost everything ...

After breakfast , we left for the 2nd workshop ... this time from Eugene Pao this guitarist from HK. He seemed to have worked with many famous jazz musicians from all over the world , and produced some great albums .. but i've not seen him play before. His workshop was good , although grace thought it was boring but i actually learnt soem stuffs from listening to his own past experiences of learning jazz from nothing to something. Though it was suppose to be a guitar masterclass , but it ended up like an interview session just getting to know more of this Pao fella. For a self-taught jazz musician , i have to admit HATS OFF to him too. When he mentioned it took him a veyr long time to learn the bebop language , there was this little sigh of relief and comfort telling me "I have to also be patient and not think i'm a slow learner because jazz is just so difficult" . Coincidently , cher thought about this point the same too. After the workshop , Eugene Pao jammed one song with one of their uni student and boy , this little small size boy seemed to play the guitar so well that even his solo lines were pretty up to match with Pao's one. JEALLLOOUUSSS !!!!!!!!! we clapped like crazy for the boy..

After Pao's workshop , we walked out to the side stage and watched some more performances .. this time sitting beside Cher outside the staircase area , i kept sensing something's not right with him. It was his competition day though .. but he seemed to behave a little differently from morning already. When i sat beside him i dare not speak a word to him because everytime i looked at him he looked so moody and cool looking that i dare not say a word. REALLY! Throughout the band's OK NOT TOO BAD performance , all he did was clap a little and move around figgetting here and there on his seat. I started to wonder if it's the competition thing and it definitely was... him making negative remarks and feeling all the competition tension around i can understand how he feels... COMPETITION just gives everyone the same feeling, even if it's such a GENG person like him! after a shortwhile he left to somewhere then there was a gap between me and Martin , so we continued watching .. until halfway i remember turning around and i saw this LAME thing happening.

Martin cutting his finger nails!

WHAT THE HECK man .... i stared at him and made a sarcastic laugh with that gesture of his .. gosh ... after awhile we left for lunch and we ate again at the cafeteria because the Thai House nearby that chee meng brought us to eat the day before was not opened. So after lunch , cher left to do some last minute practising and we all just chill around .. attended one more Piano workshop until it was competition time.

The Piano competition started around 3 30pm local time and there were 10 participants altogether. Most of them were the university students and one or two were already graduates or some outsiders but still all were from Thailand. Except cher.. the only Malaysian and overseas finalist. He was the 9th one to perform , and after watching some very very promising performances by the first few finalist , i was beginning to get goosebumps as well for him. There was a very promising saxaphonist , then the pianist who played for OMAH earlier on, also competed whom i thought would be cher's main competitor , but sadly he spoilt his Anthropology because his solo lines were all too modern sounds that it did not suit the bebop song. Then came Cher , was praying for him to get the songs he wanted , and so he got Anthropology and Triste. Good choices ain't it ? but i don't know if it was the best for him. Anyway his performance was OK , something he did was pretty impressive to me.. but the rest was just not bad. As usual , his "Shadow Hands" was used but not so much really.. but anyway great job and done with. The final contestant was a 21 year old student from the uni who apparently already won the Junior Division the day before (so he's got 50 000 thai baht already!) and because of his age he was eligible to join both categories.

His performance was a killer , really .. Round Midnight according to grace it was beautifully played. He was, according to chee meng this really talented kid some sort of child prodigy thingey in the uni. So.... you'd expect him to get something.. and yes so he did. Won the competition. And won 100 000 thai baht this time. When the results were announced , we were all a little saddened by the fact cher's name was not announce but that's how a competition goes. I SHOULD LEARN FROM THAT. And after the competition we saw cher sitting outside the hall looking really relieved it was over but after the results announcement he looked fine as well .. and he's prepared for this i think , ever since the first day he arrive.

So anyway, after competition it was already almost 7pm. We left the uni to eat dinner and during dinner cher asked if want to consider studying in Mahidol next time. I didn't want to talk much about this in front of EVERYONE so i just answered something simple and stopped. Anyway we came back to the uni around 8pm and by then we already missed Koh Saxman's performance. SO SORRY! Though i promised him earlier i'd watch and i'm suppose to go look for him to collect my signatured CD but i couldn't find him because of cher's competition. Anyway we cotinued on to watch the other performances at night .. and it was just so great to hear another good band called Mansri or something who played similar music to OMAH's one ... and after that was Tiger Okoshi's band .. and the whole set was just fantastic!

The freaking guitarist who rocked the house down was only 23 years old ... all of them from Berklee ... and the drummer , a black afro guy.. he looked really cool with those braided hair .. but i didn't know he was so cool looking until they played their encore song for us up close and personal , done acoustically near the edge of the stage. After the final FUNK rocking song which Tiger made all of us stood up and dance along , we moved towards them and to my surprise the drummer really knows how to dress up. He took his brush sticks and played on the floor and practically anything he could find to bang on,while Tiger took out his small little trumpet and blowed ,while the guirtarist suddenly took out an acoustic guitar and strum and the bassist still remained with his double bass. Was an awesome encore .. up close and personal. GREAT.

After Tiger's set we went back to our dorm and prepared for bed. That was the end of day 3 , and day 2 of the REALLY good conference. The things we decided to do the next day .. was also a good one. ....