"My superpower is not generating ink."
So, I'd basically been looking forward the the 31st of August since details of the world tour were announced. I mean, it took us 10 FREAKING YEARS to get Backstreet to hold a concert here, and I couldn't believe our luck when Singapore ended up on the Heroes World Tour dates. The keyword here is "believe", because in the end, I couldn't believe that I'd waited 6 hours for a measly 15 minute appearance.
So here's the thing, we hardly knew a thing about what they'd be doing here until about mid-August. Remember the last CFTC? Yeah, run by monkeys working for a Singaporean company. That's the kind of organisational skills that were present also at the Heroes event.
At 10.30am on Friday, alrischa and I arrived at Vivocity. The first thing we saw was this extremely long red carpet laid out from the entrance, leading to the stage.
I was idly thinking about how they were going to walk through the crowds without barricades, which, as you'll see later, should've been the first sign that it was going to be ugly.
Esther had planned on recreating Isaac's eclipse painting on a smaller canvas, which she did in acrylics, and finished in about 3 hours. This was very useful later, when we found out the canvas was light enough to hold up with one hand, stiff enough to stand up on its own, and extremely identifiable in the crowd.
One of the girls we were hanging out with.
Obviously, they were huge Masi Oka fans.
Around 11ish, the girls that we'd been sitting next to started telling everyone that one of the organising crew members had told them earlier that there was going to be only 50 tickets available for the mosh pit, so we got organised into a queue and waited. They were supposed to give the wristbands out at noon, but it took them until 1pm to get sorted and start giving them out. During the wait, we got a lot of people coming up to ask if they could take a picture of us waiting with our signs. Well, the girls we were hanging out with (hereafter known as GWWHOW) had made signs, and Esther had her painting. I was roped into the pictures just because. By the time we'd gotten our wristbands, we were frustrated, hungry, and already tired out from the waiting. Esther and I ended up going to Burger King, bought food and ate it at the mall seating area near the stage. During this time, the crowd was building up. By the time we'd finished our lunch, there were easily 500 people gathered around the stage, which was still barricaded. We spent a horrible 2 hours stuck at the back of the crowd, sweaty and tired and immensely frustrated because no one could tell us when or where we would've been allowed to get nearer the stage.
When we were finally let in around 3pm, the crowd had swelled to at least 800 people (the papers next day said over 1000, but I'm not so sure if Vivocity was really that big). To our dismay, we realised that there was another section nearer to the stage than we were, identifiable by blue wristbands. These were people that had somehow won tickets after upgrading their cable plan with Star (the channel we get Heroes on), and by the time the event started waaaaay past the supposed start time of 3pm, it was obvious that most of them were there only because they got free tickets. This made the fans with the yellow wristbands Very Annoyed.
Photo of the crowds behind me. Sometime in between waiting in the crowd and getting nearer the stage, I met m_i_a_s_m_a with her friend, my wee cousin (the one that goes to York, and is a huge Alias and Heroes fan, and therefore was there for Greg), as well as a text message from starafar asking me where I was.
We got some annoying Channel V VJs (Singapore doesn't even get Channel V! It's only the Philippines and Australia that get them! I'd ditch crappy MTV Asia for Channel V if I had the choice!) that did some crowd warm up. They dug out four extremely lucky people that got a photo opportunity with the cast later, two of whom didn't even know what the hosts were talking about when they were asked to reenact Hiro Nakamura's first triumphant teleportation into Times Square. WTF?! ANYONE who watches Heroes knows this scene. *headdesk*
As expected, the mall didn't have enough barricades for the entire length of the red carpet, so the mall security as well as the cast security teams had to form a circle around Masi, Sendhil, Greg and Ali. Backstreet fans, think the boys trying to get out of the bus at Rio. The section I was in had a tiny section right next to the red carpet, so I squeezed myself in there while alrischa held the fort over where we had plonked our bags.
At that time, all I could see in Sendhil's and Masi's faces was pure fear. The only other time I'd seen an expression of pure "WTF?!"ness on a person was at the TV taping in London I went to with Backstreet, and AJ was very obviously overwhelmed (and probably scared) at the way the crowd was reacting. Greg on the other hand, was clearly excited and very enthusiastic. If I could describe him in one word, it would be "WOO!"
See what I mean?
In the end, they were about 40 minutes late for the appearance, and only hung around for 20 minutes, 15 of which were spent on stage exchanging small talk with the hosts about the reception, and one cute little part where Greg attempted some Singlish. "I'll say this is pretty incredible lah." The other cool part was Greg and Masi beatboxing a bit, which was ADORABLE beyond words, and that pretty much won me over.
Ali was gorgeous, Masi and Sendhil seemed a bit shocked at the number of people around, and Greg was just PURE LOVE. Seriously. 15 minutes, and I had fallen prey to Greg's obvious enthusiasm and excitability. Mostly, I was also very amused at the way Greg kept on putting an arm around Masi to whisper something to him, a la Nick Carter. I know I've posted these two pictures for a comparison before, but let's see it again anyway. :)
Greg also exercised his inner Kevin Richardson by taking pictures of the crowd while on stage, and then going "Would you mind if I take a picture with all you guys?" which, of course, drove the crowd mad.
In the end, it was over all too quickly, and the appearance felt more like promo for the cable network than it was S2 promo. Highly disappointing on the lack of Q&A, and after that I felt deeply, deeply ashamed for the way the crowd mobbed them while they were heading back to their bus. It was serious BSB Around The World Rio flashbacks, albeit on a smaller scale.
The next day, there were three videos on the Official Heroes website from Singapore, one of the four of them at Changi Airport, one at Four Seasons doing the press conference, and one video from Vivocity, wherein you can see Esther's painting, the top of her head, and my face for about a second.
Hong Kong to Changi Airport (in which Masi is HILARIOUS)
Press Conference at Four Seasons (in which Masi and Greg show off their beatboxing)
Mayhem at Vivocity (in which Masi is hilarious yet again, and Greg is a rock star), where you can see just exactly how bad the crowd was.
Conclusion: Crowds NO GOOD BAD BAD BAD, event was horrible in terms of lack of information, and Greg Grunberg is LOVE. No wonder all the Alias fans love him. Also, some googling has turned up some pictures of the event on flickr and various blogs, in which Esther, I, and the GWWHOW were classified as "crazy fans".
So here's the thing, we hardly knew a thing about what they'd be doing here until about mid-August. Remember the last CFTC? Yeah, run by monkeys working for a Singaporean company. That's the kind of organisational skills that were present also at the Heroes event.
At 10.30am on Friday, alrischa and I arrived at Vivocity. The first thing we saw was this extremely long red carpet laid out from the entrance, leading to the stage.
I was idly thinking about how they were going to walk through the crowds without barricades, which, as you'll see later, should've been the first sign that it was going to be ugly.
Esther had planned on recreating Isaac's eclipse painting on a smaller canvas, which she did in acrylics, and finished in about 3 hours. This was very useful later, when we found out the canvas was light enough to hold up with one hand, stiff enough to stand up on its own, and extremely identifiable in the crowd.
One of the girls we were hanging out with.
Obviously, they were huge Masi Oka fans.
Around 11ish, the girls that we'd been sitting next to started telling everyone that one of the organising crew members had told them earlier that there was going to be only 50 tickets available for the mosh pit, so we got organised into a queue and waited. They were supposed to give the wristbands out at noon, but it took them until 1pm to get sorted and start giving them out. During the wait, we got a lot of people coming up to ask if they could take a picture of us waiting with our signs. Well, the girls we were hanging out with (hereafter known as GWWHOW) had made signs, and Esther had her painting. I was roped into the pictures just because. By the time we'd gotten our wristbands, we were frustrated, hungry, and already tired out from the waiting. Esther and I ended up going to Burger King, bought food and ate it at the mall seating area near the stage. During this time, the crowd was building up. By the time we'd finished our lunch, there were easily 500 people gathered around the stage, which was still barricaded. We spent a horrible 2 hours stuck at the back of the crowd, sweaty and tired and immensely frustrated because no one could tell us when or where we would've been allowed to get nearer the stage.
When we were finally let in around 3pm, the crowd had swelled to at least 800 people (the papers next day said over 1000, but I'm not so sure if Vivocity was really that big). To our dismay, we realised that there was another section nearer to the stage than we were, identifiable by blue wristbands. These were people that had somehow won tickets after upgrading their cable plan with Star (the channel we get Heroes on), and by the time the event started waaaaay past the supposed start time of 3pm, it was obvious that most of them were there only because they got free tickets. This made the fans with the yellow wristbands Very Annoyed.
Photo of the crowds behind me. Sometime in between waiting in the crowd and getting nearer the stage, I met m_i_a_s_m_a with her friend, my wee cousin (the one that goes to York, and is a huge Alias and Heroes fan, and therefore was there for Greg), as well as a text message from starafar asking me where I was.
We got some annoying Channel V VJs (Singapore doesn't even get Channel V! It's only the Philippines and Australia that get them! I'd ditch crappy MTV Asia for Channel V if I had the choice!) that did some crowd warm up. They dug out four extremely lucky people that got a photo opportunity with the cast later, two of whom didn't even know what the hosts were talking about when they were asked to reenact Hiro Nakamura's first triumphant teleportation into Times Square. WTF?! ANYONE who watches Heroes knows this scene. *headdesk*
As expected, the mall didn't have enough barricades for the entire length of the red carpet, so the mall security as well as the cast security teams had to form a circle around Masi, Sendhil, Greg and Ali. Backstreet fans, think the boys trying to get out of the bus at Rio. The section I was in had a tiny section right next to the red carpet, so I squeezed myself in there while alrischa held the fort over where we had plonked our bags.
At that time, all I could see in Sendhil's and Masi's faces was pure fear. The only other time I'd seen an expression of pure "WTF?!"ness on a person was at the TV taping in London I went to with Backstreet, and AJ was very obviously overwhelmed (and probably scared) at the way the crowd was reacting. Greg on the other hand, was clearly excited and very enthusiastic. If I could describe him in one word, it would be "WOO!"
See what I mean?
In the end, they were about 40 minutes late for the appearance, and only hung around for 20 minutes, 15 of which were spent on stage exchanging small talk with the hosts about the reception, and one cute little part where Greg attempted some Singlish. "I'll say this is pretty incredible lah." The other cool part was Greg and Masi beatboxing a bit, which was ADORABLE beyond words, and that pretty much won me over.
Ali was gorgeous, Masi and Sendhil seemed a bit shocked at the number of people around, and Greg was just PURE LOVE. Seriously. 15 minutes, and I had fallen prey to Greg's obvious enthusiasm and excitability. Mostly, I was also very amused at the way Greg kept on putting an arm around Masi to whisper something to him, a la Nick Carter. I know I've posted these two pictures for a comparison before, but let's see it again anyway. :)
Greg also exercised his inner Kevin Richardson by taking pictures of the crowd while on stage, and then going "Would you mind if I take a picture with all you guys?" which, of course, drove the crowd mad.
In the end, it was over all too quickly, and the appearance felt more like promo for the cable network than it was S2 promo. Highly disappointing on the lack of Q&A, and after that I felt deeply, deeply ashamed for the way the crowd mobbed them while they were heading back to their bus. It was serious BSB Around The World Rio flashbacks, albeit on a smaller scale.
The next day, there were three videos on the Official Heroes website from Singapore, one of the four of them at Changi Airport, one at Four Seasons doing the press conference, and one video from Vivocity, wherein you can see Esther's painting, the top of her head, and my face for about a second.
Hong Kong to Changi Airport (in which Masi is HILARIOUS)
Click to viewPress Conference at Four Seasons (in which Masi and Greg show off their beatboxing)
Mayhem at Vivocity (in which Masi is hilarious yet again, and Greg is a rock star), where you can see just exactly how bad the crowd was.
Conclusion: Crowds NO GOOD BAD BAD BAD, event was horrible in terms of lack of information, and Greg Grunberg is LOVE. No wonder all the Alias fans love him. Also, some googling has turned up some pictures of the event on flickr and various blogs, in which Esther, I, and the GWWHOW were classified as "crazy fans".