OK, put aside thoughtful notions for now as I am in so much over the moon after what I did last Saturday night. I am a dreamy person who dreams a lot. And one of my nasty dreams is to perform on-stage, playing my favorite music instrument, the thing called guitar. And that night really made me headbutting my head to the wall in disbelief, as if I was dreaming. It was KMB’s very own Solte A Alma, rendered from koleq’s 2005 famous soundstage and I was there, on the stage, performing two songs with my band.

We called ourselves the Low Budget, and it meant almost literally as we are one of the few bands who doesn’t have any instrument to play with and we have to borrow them from the music club, who reluctantly granted us to use their pieces. To make things worse, we couldn’t afford to have a drummer and again, music club was so generous by providing us with one.

We performed two songs, Bintang Di Surga from Peter Pan and Stand By Me, song from my all-time favorite band, Oasis.

Note that, KMB’s Solte A Alma maybe a school concert by name, but it is actually a competition, a talentime, a battle of the band. There are three judges, a parody of typical show-based reality tv scene, but there are given no time to comment whatsoever as there are 6 bands competing with 2 songs each. Ah yes, we are the only Year Ones to perform!

At the end of the night, we were proclaimed 1^st runner up and I felt a huge feeling of sheer proud and delight as I noted my nasty dream to be real this time. They say, the Low Budget is a bunch of wannabes who turned out to be good. Ha ha. Anyway, thanks to the Low Budgets, for making it a night I won’t forget.

As always, pictures for your yummies.

Izham on the jeng jeng

Low Budget on-stage

Timothy, Apek, Muhklis posing with the kinkiest bassist on planet

P.S. And all of a sudden, KMB people can be seen lip-synching to Oasis’ tune and people can be seen downloading Bintang Di Surga and transferring the song from one thumbdrive to the others. What an influence!

I haven’t written much about my lover pretty much lately. And now I feel guilty about it. She has gone through lots of things and makes me a very happy man these few months back and I seem to take it for granted and don’t even wish her thanks. I am such a dick. Well, better late than never. Congratulations honey. You proved me wrong, and please, when things get harder, just bear in mind that, I am right here for you, backing you right up. Good luck in your future undertakings. I love you so much, sweetheart. Just make sure you think of me every time you are about to kick PSV and any other club’s ass which stand in our way. Good luck in the quarter final my darling!

Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Tho’ your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone,
You’ll never walk alone.

P.S. We are the only English club to clinch the title 5 times. 5 times. 5 times. 5 times. 5 times. 5 times. European champion. Believe that!

If ever you guys had rambled through the archive of this blog, you might came across the post entitled ‘On MAS Frenzy’, a post in which I tried to picture how terrible the situation of our national airline was at the beginning of 2006, where they hardly earn anything and their worth was seriously tested. And to make things worse, they have a new competitor who enjoys letting money flow into their pocket, and the man behind that successful competitor is the man behind the success of Warner Music (M) Sdn Bhd, an amateur guitarist, Tony Fernandes. Airline and show business, what a totally unrelated liaison. And MAS could only stare enviously. And being a humble citizen who doesn’t even get his driving license yet, I shout of why not MAS capitalize on setting up a low cost carrier airline and follow Qantas’s business model by flying up Jetsar, to take on the handful Virgin Blue.

One year later, this article, published by The Star, really took my blog, and in so doing, myself, to a la la land. And I guess MAS heard my babbling.

P.S. And now that humble citizen is not only at the ending phase of his 2 year P license stint, but also a very skilful man on the wheel, having successfully resilient in squeezing through thick crowd of drivers in the streets of KL and avoiding oodles of potholes in the process.

I’ve been tagged by Aliff Adha. Ouch!

Rules & Regulations:
Each player of this game starts out by giving 6 weird things about themselves. People who get tagged need to write in a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state the rules clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. After you do that, leave them each a comment letting them know you tagged them and to read your blog!

Here's 6 weird things about Izham Ismail

1. I love to read law, history and business books so damn much (Ah-Thong would give me a nod for that). That’s weird for a medical student I guess.
2. When I was 4 years old, I would cry if I lost in a football match.
3. I am Grand Theft Auto series and Winning Eleven addict that of all games produced every year for PS2, I sticked to these two titles since its debut.
4. I eat a lot that I can’t gain weight. I dream of being Takeru Kobayashi, world record holder of hotdog eating.
5. I love women too much and that wouldn’t allow me to have a woman.
6. I don’t smoke. Weird isn’t it? Haha.

Probably it is not too late for me to update with this stuff as IB is not that munificent to allow me to get online almost everyday. Fair enough, let me recap on what called a blissful night of Banting. Yes, it was Musical Festival that was there on the fixture, and we have to be all focus, to the extent of abandoning any other work and assignments and keeping thick revision books untouched for one week to prepare for the big night.

My class combined with other two engineering class (they say medical and engineering students are like oil and water, but soon they find out they we are more like potassium and water, we fused well and even producing a very useful gas, hydrogen). Ok, put aside chemistry for now (Ouch, medical students typicality again). We have to work on The King and I, which need no introduction since there was a 2002 blockbuster film rendered to reiterate its wonderful plot of story of how a humble English teacher made a huge contribution in Thailand’s modernization, and tear down King Mongkut’s egoistic facade to pieces. And I had to play Louis Leonowens, the only son of the teacher, and best of friend of Prince Chulalongkorn, the King’s successor.

Maybe the person I hate the most for the whole is week is the director, Amira. She is the devil of my week as she would certainly rob any of our free time, seeking for practice session and being a good production team, we have to be all OK with it. (My call register was flooded by her call, but often I just let them to be ‘miscall’) But it was all worth it, and working under her ever-enthusiastic sway was a great experience for me. She delegated the task very well, sectioning us into precisely and effective force. Casting, props, costumes, special effects, pamphlets and even tukang pembeli air, she covered it all and deal with it very very well. An to top it all, she was there during the staging and still doing her job, making sure that things are going on as swiftly as planned. My credits to her.

And my pick for our second best production crew is Aliya, the person who made this post tangible. She had a tough time remembering her long-lined script, (unlike me, who only had to remember 2 very very short lines), voice-tuning for the song she has to sing, (unlike me, who just all miming throughout the performance), and practicing the ever-hard fan dancing (unlike me, who just bother to use the fan to kipas kipas myself kepanasan). Ha ha. Anyway, she deserved the credit and I holler of discontent quietly when she didn’t score the Best Actress award. The judges really should bertaubat after this sin they have made. Anyway, she rocks.

And the whole production crew was a brilliant team player. The prop people, costume people, the dancers, the gorgeous flock of singers and every one of us was like Liverpool that night, classic and great stuff. Albeit not to win the grand prize, to clinch 3 out of 7 awards that night was more than enough. Well done M06E, E06C and A06B! Ah yes, some pictures for the dark blog to look a bit colorful.

Louis & Anna's first encounter with the King

Hightlight of the show. The sink of Simon of Legree.

Whole bunch of the crew

Ah yes. That's Anna. Ah yes. And that's Aliya.

P.S. And soon I found out that Louis Leonowens had married to two wives, Caroline Knox, a British and Prang Somkok, a Siamese lady. What a motivation.

I was screaming in ecstasy, and it was a Malaysian sports at its best. But it was not from my darling sport of football, but from a game I can hardly play, badminton (The last time I played badminton was about a month ago when Badminton Club organized a one-day tourney and I participating in doubles, with Adi Azmin, who is an avid basketballer – we brought sports intergration on that day where I was all in my football suit with college jersey on and he was in his basketball suit – at the end, we found ourselves the tournament’s most cheered team albeit we lost our first game straight set).

And it was a humble double tag team who was there to deliver. All England is ours again, after 25 years of silverware draughts from the doubles. The last time we clinched the All England silverware was the time when the Sidek brothers was at their peak of the game. They were all untouched back then. Soon after they announced their day, we struggled to find their successors. Cheah Soon Kit and Yap Kim Hock came close to seek for replacement of the Banting heroes. And they match in quite perfectly during their days, with some medals around their neck each time their ended up a tourney. But for a dreamy Malaysian like me, medals are not enough. We have to secure the pride to go with it, but with a very humble manner. With the emergence of this new hotshot in Koo Kien Keat and Tan Boon Heong, I don’t believe in the world rankings. Anyone standing in their way was crushed to pieces and that makes me all excited that a very humble doubles were not saying a word before and after the game, unlike any others, but let the game do the talking. And to see them coming back home with silverware in their hands, was truly a dream of all Malaysians.

All hail Koo Kien Keat and Tan Boon Heong. Legend has been made.

P.S. And I quietly grabbed my racquet and imitated Tan Boon Heong winning taunt in front of my room’s mirror. Ha ha.