2nd Trip to Adelaide

Johanna is attending a 2-week workshop in Adelaide. As I was still trying my luck with jobs in the past few weeks, she was suppose to go to Adelaide on her own.

She flew off on 13 January. On 15 January, I've decided to accept the job offer from AIG Life in Melbourne and will start work on the 29th. Hence I flew to Adelaide on Friday the 18th to join Johanna in Adelaide.

It's probably the last holiday before I get back to work. Life has been great since I stepped out of work since 16 September 2006. We spent the whole weekend watching Australian Open, playing table tennis and pool at our YHA accomodation, strolling along the Rundle Mall (shopping area) and catching Miss Saigon which was showing at the Festival Centre.

The match between Fedex and Tipsarevic was really tense - no one would expect the 49th ranked player to win more than a handful of games. Instead he stretched Federer to the limit and nearly caused the biggest upset. It's probably good for the sport as Federer has been disposing his opponents too easily all this while, too predictable.

Miss Saigon

Miss Saigon is the first musical I've watched in my life - Theatre Royal in London 1999, right before the London performance closed down. I've always wanted to bring Johanna to watch this musical but it was not in London during our stay there last year. We watched Puccini's Madam Butterfly instead, which Miss Saigon was based on. Alain Boublil and Claude Michel Schönberg was inspired by this photo of a woman giving up her child at Saigon airport in the hope of a new life in America, meeting her dad that she has never seen (ex-GI during Vietnam war).



The version we watched is slightly different from the one I've watched in London. According to Wikipedia, this is a scaled down version to suit smaller theatres so that the musical can be shown worldwide. The most notable prop missing is the helicopter, which was replaced by projected 3D video. I thought the "Engineer" - played by Leo Tavarro Valdez, a Philipino, was great.

To me, the best part of Miss Saigon is its potrayal of the undending miseries caused by wars - the poor children conceived in brothels or rape cases, who may never know their fathers.

War isn't over when it ends
Some pictures never leave your mind
They are the faces of the children
The ones we left behind

Phantom of the Opera

Johanna & I watched our second musical last night - Phantom of the Opera. We were a bit disappointed that lastminute.com only informed us last minute (pardon the pun) that they could not offer us the best seats as we have originally purchased. Instead they offered us the next best seats at the Royal Circle which are £5 cheaper each.

Johanna & I made it just on time to Her Majesty's Theatre as she was only allowed to leave work at 6.45pm. We were disappointed that our seats are at the extreme left of the Royal Circle, which restricted our view from one part of the stage.

Having watched the musical once in the same theatre nearly 5 years ago, another time on silver screen and listened to the soundtrack for gazillion times, I am all too familiar with the musical, especially the soundtrack. What impressed me most in my first theatre visit to Phantom was the scene where the Phantom brought Christine to his underground lair on a boat. It looked so real.

Tonight I was a bit disappointed with the vocals, especially of the Phantom and Raoul, especially in the first half. The singing was nowhere near Jean Valjean (John Owen-Jones) of Les Misérables. But the fantastic prop sort of made up for this. For me, Phantom's prop is its greatest strength relative to other big musicals - the Phantom's underground lair, the falling chandelier, the 'transparent' mirror, etc.

Nevertheless, it was still a great night out. Johanna intended to come back again to watch everything in the best seats.

Finally cleared two of my three favourite musicals. Too bad Miss Saigon is not in London at the moment. Perhaps Madam Butterfly could be a good substitute.

Surprise birthday cake & Les Misérables

Birthday Cake

After a hectic week preparing for the group presentation for the Introduction to Strategy & Business module, finally we presented the case study on Ready-to-Eat breakfast industry to the whole class. Phew! Great to be the first group to offload this burden.

I was getting ready to leave the class when Yi Duan and Yee Yung asked me whether I could stay back for a while. I told them I was planning to meet up with Johanna (on half day leave) who should be arriving at Cass pretty soon only to find out to my surprise that they have got me a birthday cake!

I insisted in having only 1 candle... Make it simple

We proceed to the cafe in Cass to celebrate. Johanna arrived just in time to join in. For someone who only got the first proper birthday cake at the age of 17, the past 11 years have been a 180-degree change.

Johanna arrived just in time to celebrate together


My Bank Negara juniors, Yi Duan and Yee Yung


My coursemates who celebrated with me. A big thank you to you all!

Les Misérables

To be frank, I am quite disappointed that I haven't brought Johanna to a musical since our arrival in September. Last week I finally decided that we should make use of 31 January to watch our first one. Since there's a 2-for-1 deal for Les Misérables, it was an easy choice.

Les Misérables is one of my favourite musicals, other than the Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon.

After a Beat the Clock meal at Belgo Centraal in Covent Garden (yes, mussels!), we proceed to Queen's Theatre at Shaftsbury Avenue.

Queen's Theatre is smaller than The Palace Theatre where Les Misérables used to be running. However the I noticed that the cast for Jean Valjean is still the same! I found out today that he (John Owen-Jones) has been voted the greatest Jean Valjean in West End's Les Misérables production. He has also played the phantom in the Phantom of the Opera for nearly 4 years in before rejoining Les Miz. He is also highly regarded as the phantom by reviewers and critics. I totally agree with these opinion as his voice is a world apart from the others.

Johanna, who has read the storyline prior to the show, totally enjoyed the show even though the songs are not new to her since I have been playing the soundtracks on my laptop every now and then.

It has been a happy day for me definitely.