Prelude to the finale

31^st Dec – THE Day

I awoke today realizing that I am finally really on my own (with no more of my sg colleagues around). It was 11am, I had an hour to get ready, made sure I had packed up whatever I needed to, then check out of the hotel.

Hmm… 11am, my boss should be back in Singapore by now. And I would have been too… had I not changed my own return flight. But no more regrets now since I made that fateful call to C (dad’s SQ friend in tpe) to extend my stay by another day.

All I needed to do, was be brave, be independent, be happy and make sure I have enough cash with me till I got on the plane the next day. Plus not get crushed in the much anticipated countdown concert =P.

Before I left Singapore, I contemplated real hard as to whether I should stay on, since my flight had already been pushed back from 30^th to 31^st because of the additional meeting. I couldn’t make myself leave Taipei and miss the countdown which was only hours away. And especially after Shir told me about the auto session that would be taking place as well. If I got onto the flight on the 31^st and came back wondering what it would have been like if I didn’t stay for just one more day, it would have been a new year full of regrets.

I thought hard as to who I could look for in Taipei to attend the events with. Didn’t really know any taiwanese md fans… so the very 1^st one that came to my mind was Linda. Immediately I sent her a mail through ptt and her email as well before I set off that morning for Taipei.

Due to the earthquake, she could only reply me through ptt, of which SH forwarded to me through email instead. Unfortunately, she couldn’t make it to both events that day but from her tone in the mail, I could tell that this was someone I would love to meet some day and just have a nice chat with her. Such a nice person she is =). Hope we have more fate the next time I drop by Taipei.

Resigned to the fact that I was very much at my own defenses now, I did my homework to prepare myself for the big night. I watched the news daily and learnt that the MTR would run on till 3am that day; I checked out an extended MTR map for details on which station would be the best place to take a cab from, to my hostel and of course, I made sure I kept carefully at hand the directions from the city to the hostel.

Checking out of the hotel, I paid a hefty internet and phone bill (not mine though) that cut my cash by more than half. Well.. after I paid, I wondered why I didn’t pay it by card. Anyhow, I just had to draw my money from an atm later that day, otherwise I would probably have to just hibernate my day away.

The hostel wasn’t too tough to find because I was just there the day before. I opened the door carefully, not wanting to wake anyone who might be sleeping. As I entered, I noticed that all the room doors were closed and thinking that I ought be considerate, since all those who were probably staying there were actually guys and it wouldn’t be good to just open the doors to check if anyone was in. Hence, I tucked my luggage around the dining area and turned on the TV (at a very low volume) and started munching into my 飯糰 ﹠蘋果牛奶 (all the while trying to make as little noise as possible).

Being tired from being lack of sleep for so many days, I dozed off on the sofa (wishing I could just go into the room and lie on one of the comfortable beds there). Not able to have a proper sleep, I thus decided to go out shopping earlier than I had planned.

Well, the funny this was… that night when I returned to the hostel at 7pm to dump out whatever I had bought, I realized that everything in that house was left as it was, since I went out earlier on. Then it dawned on me…. That there wasn’t anyone at all in the house, even when I got there in the morning! Gosh… how stupid could I have been.

Knew my Malaysian colleagues were leaving that day, but just wasn’t sure of the time. And I had innocently assumed that my Taiwan boss who stayed there long term, would be there. But why didn’t I think that it was the holidays? And if you had a couple of days of holidays, plus it being the last day of the year, you would choose to return to your own home? Stupid, stupid, stupid…. So much for being considerate haha.

Rewinding back to the afternoon where I went out shopping, I hopped on a cab towards Taipei main station. Had an interesting talk with the driver =)

Ｄriver: 到台北車站坐火車嗎？

Ｍe: 不是，約了朋友到地下街走走 (lie #1)

Driver: 今天人會很多．走走了晚上看跨年嘛．．

Me: 嗯，對啊，湊熱鬧

Driver: 一個女孩子很危陷噢．．有男朋友嘛？叫你男朋友載你回家

Me: ……..

Driver: 如果是我的女朋友，我一定把她送到家門口．所以一定要叫你男朋友送你噢

Me: ……. (冷笑著)

Driver: 其實我也住內湖，可是我晚上就不開車了，要不然可以給你電話．．跨年後打給我，我可以載你回家．

(就這樣，和他聊多後，我終於認不住，說出了這句話．．)

Me: 其實我不是本地人．．我是新加坡人

Driver: 那你男朋友是在新加坡啊？不好意思．． 那晚上一個人回家要小心

Ｍe: 嗯，會和朋友一起去．．(lie #i-don’t-know-what-by-now)

Later he continues chatting with me about Singapore, about how he’s been here before and he has a friend here by the surname of Ng, who is an engineer working in Jurong.

Very soon, we arrived at my destination.

Ｄriver：下次我到新加坡可以找你噢

Me: 好啊，謝謝你．．

(Biggest lie of the day. I said this feeling so fake about it hahaha.. but what else could I say?)

At that instant, I never hesitated about stepping out of the cab and onward to my shopping trip.

I maneuvered my way around the familiar rows of shops doing my long anticipated shopping but it wasn’t very fruitful. But I had a bowl of pretty good 炸漿面 , passed by a more than familiar ‘face’ or should I say a head covered with a big basket, playing a flute and dressed in a traditional Japanese costume (someone Nic, SH and I have come to know as the basker or basket-busker) before I continued on to 西門町.

The MTR station was really crowded even at this time. Queues to buy tickets were snaking through the station, which made me glad I had the stored value card from my previous trip here. There were station staff dressed in lime green vests and holding starwars-like poles located strategically around the station, to make sure everything was in proper order.

Needless to say, 西門町 was also swarmed with people. The famous food places all had snaking queues as well which totally threw me off the idea of even wanting to eat them. Did some shopping and made the convenience store shopping my last stop so that I could get my bottles of more than excellent 祿奶茶，and some food and drinks that I would need for my battle later that night. Before I hopped onto the cab back to the hostel for the 2^nd time, I decided to buy dinner back to eat in the comfort of the house.

Watched TV and surfed for news on the ongoing countdown as I dug into my 蝦仁庚 (which turned out to be a disappointment). It was slightly past 7pm and the countdown show had already started. I called SH as I was getting a little nervous from the fact that time was ticking away to the event that was the reason why I stayed here alone. And nervous from the fact that the news was reporting on how bad the situation was there, with people fainting and all traffic in the area coming to a standstill.

My dad soon dropped me a sms asking me to remember to bring my medicated oil. That reminded me I had to 武壯 myself. Immediately, I went off to pack my bag, filled it with the essentials, including:

-->medicated oil

-->inhaler

-->scarf

-->mineral water

-->lots of tissue paper (for toilet use)

-->food

-->暖包

-->MD CD

9pm soon came, and I didn’t want to wait any longer, just in case the traffic was really bad or the worse case senario was that I would get lost anywhere. The plan, was to take a cab out to 昆陽 station, where I could hop onto the MTR to 市政府.

As I got out of 市政府 station，I tried to follow the crowd hoping that majority would be heading towards the countdown concert. So, around the bend I turned with a huge group of people, but soon, to my worst fears… everyone started to go in various directions….

Some parked themselves where a huge group of others had already gathered, with a good view of 101, in anticipation of the fireworks. But…. I wasn’t there just for the fireworks. I had to find out where the concert was.

I listened intently to the night air… believing that every large scale concert would be noisy enough to hear at a distance if I was close enough to it.

What a confusing environment it was, people sitting everywhere, walking everywhere, people selling lightsticks, people queuing up for md’s auto session….

I wrecked my brains hard trying to recall the exact spot of 市政府 and from there, it all became a matter of following my instinct. As I walked past the Mitsukoshi dept store, I vaguely heard the sound of music blasting through speakers. With a glimmer of hope, I quickly made my way in that direction and spent a good 10minutes wading through and tip-toeing through (trying not to step) a whole parade square of people sitting down. Gives a new meaning again to the phrase ‘路是人走出來的’ for sure…

To my dismay, it turned out to be small side stage with a band playing. At that moment, I made a critical decision to just walk towards the direction of 101. I just couldn’t accept it if I stayed on in Taipei and it turned out I missed md’s countdown show because I couldn’t find the concert stage hahah. That would have been the ultimate disastrous ending to this adventure.

As I got closer to where I believed 市政府 should be, I couldn’t have been happier to hear music and spot the balloons I had seen on TV just a while earlier at the hostel. My footsteps quickened, hoping to squeeze my way into the crowd quickly so that I wouldn’t miss their performance. At the same time, I hopped I could make it in far enough to have a good view as far as possible. It was 10pm by then.

Moving into the enormous crowd of people proved much easier than I imagined it to be. After all, the logic is simple… just go with the flow. Within less than 15 minutes, step by step, avoiding a pool of water where everyone was precariously walking at the edge of, I found my way to the left side of the stage (let me state that it was really far away from the stage. You can judge from the photo below =)) but I positioned myself where I could catch glimpses of the stage, yet be able to view the 2 huge side screens without a problem.

Satisfied with where I was, I didn’t want to move in much further to save myself the trouble of getting out for the auto session after the performance, I began the quiet wait for md to appear on stage.

11pm finally came, my toes were beginning to hurt from being in situ (couldn’t make much movement in that large crowd), but md still didn’t appear. They were apparently stuck in the jam of vehicles and people outside the venue. We later learnt that they stopped at a distance outside and ran for 10minutes, the rest of the way in.

11.30pm… md’s video appeared on screen. The prelude to WAES played aloud to the screaming crowd who were really mostly there to catch md’s performance. Then they came on stage and I desperately tried to call SH, so that I could let him have a chance to listen live. I called, and I called…. Network busy… dead dial tone… and I called.. still nothing. WAES was already almost halfway through.. I decided to give up on calling and start recording instead. Darn! How could I forget to record?

Because the concert was meant to be like a live recording for TV, there were breaks in between songs for commercials and it kinda spoilt the whole continuity and feel of a good band performance. Before they could finish their last song, md had to stop their performance because it was time to prepare the audience for the countdown to 2007.

Local politicians appeared on stage, the crowd cheered for the new mayor and everyone said and waved their hellos to the mayors of other counties who were being networked for a all-taiwan countdown. md was on stage as well ready to countdown with everyone, but what the heck, couldn't really see them anyway haha.

But as this happened, you could see that a lot of the crowd was also started to point their cameras and phones towards 101 on our right hand side, measuring the best way to frame the to-come fireworks display.

Not wanting to lose out, I did the same too and as the clocked ticked away.. it finally came to the last 20seconds when all the lights on 101 blacked out and the crowd screeched knowing it was a sign of the magnificent fireworks to come. 10.. 9..8… the floors of 101 lighted up one by one towards the top floor… and at the count of 0, fireworks of all sorts and vibrant colours shot into the night sky.

I held my phone tightly, hoping to get the best video I could of this once in a lifetime fireworks display that I would never see live again (but stupidly on the plane the next day, I deleted this video….. yes, stupid). But while the fireworks were really beautiful and hypnotizing to a certain extent, it felt a little scary watching such a tall building being engulfed in smoke. It made me quiver a little at that thought, but I prayed that the world would never have to face such destruction again =).

When the last fireworks exploded into the night sky, nobody knew if there was going to be more because it seemed as though everyone still had their cameras pointing towards 101, afraid to miss any possible later fireworks that would surprise us at any time. However, truly… there would be no more haha.

Quickly, I tried to call back to Singapore once again. SH, Nic, Ms Bear… I couldn’t reach anyone at all. As I waited for md to return on stage, I dialed non stop but to no avail.

Soon, the building to our left began its own fireworks display, but compared to the big brother, it didn’t really capture the attention of the crowd. To the sound of these fireworks, md was reintroduced on stage.

As they sang LSC, their last song of the show, the crowd began around me began to move. 2 lines of people formed, trying to make their way out of the venue. One line came from in front of me and the other line to my right. I was literally squashed and trying hard not to be pushed onto the people behind me who were close to the water’s edge just behind all of us.

Still I fought hard to finish listening to LSC and for md to leave the stage before I succumbed to the flow of people moving outwards.

Welcome to 2007 I thought. I'm still in one piece!! =)

No one I could call or wish Happy New Year, no hugs to welcome the new year, but I just had the adventure of my life. Regret? No =)

Next mission, to conquer the auto session =)