In Continuum.

Met Her By The Water





What do you know? Writing for a school magazine and slaving for them does have it's benefits. So Corinna is the writer for the NUS magazine called Hooked(Do grab a few copies!), and as a writer you got to go to press conferences once in a while I imagine. More often than not, you are probably going to end up interviewing chefs of a major food festival, some big shot entrepreneur from overseas who just invented a silent Velcro at a local convention, or some internet whiz who just invented a bigger, better, faster version of YouTube over at some IT Fest. The fact is, it is unlikely that you are going to interview somebody you are genuinely interested in, save for the lucky Corinna who volunteered to go for the press conference of - who else - Rachael Yamagata.

She was kind enough to have me tag along like a leashed dog for the most part, and I was glad that we had it all figured out the night before. I was almost late for the meeting this morning, squeezing off the MRT train and then dashing up the City Hall escalators like a runaway mad man. I even jay-walked across a busy street in front of the Esplanade and almost tripped when I reached the other side. When I reached there, panting like a REAL dog and drenched from head to toe in my own sweat, I was in a way pleased and in the other, frustrated that we were in fact, the first group of people there. So much for all the running and the life risking businesses.

But it was all worth it, as we made our way into the conference venue in a remote corner of Esplanade. The organizers from the Mosaic Festival greeted us at first, and I thought I was doomed for, barred from the event and will be kicked onto the streets with those menacing looking black heels and the security guards geared with earphones and bear-like arms. But the lady shook our hands and asked us if we would like some refreshments. We smiled and refused it, walked by them and I tried to act normal. The nervous stage was over, and there I was!

I didn't expect myself to be that close to the table though. As contented people, Corinna and myself took our seats on the second row as the journalists from the other papers joined. So the other journalists were armed with microphones, recorders, giant cameras, camcorders, while Corinna and I came with a Canon Ixus 5 Mega-Pixel camera, an iRiver MP3 player, and that's it. I guess we were under-equipped, but before we could complain about it, the double doors to our left opened and out popped a couple of Mosaic crew and Ms. Yamagata herself. Very nice.

The conference was supposed to be two hours, but for some reason - time constrain, the organizer explained, a reason I didn't buy - it shrunk to a pathetic ten minutes, or maybe just a little more than that. A bunch of journalists were there, but only a couple had the chance to ask a question. In total, about six or seven questions were asked and answered in detail, and from the answers we realized that this incredible musician was more than just a singer/songwriter. She felt like a friend sitting on your couch at home with you over a cup of coffee on a beautiful Sunday afternoon(Pun, unintended). I felt at home then, and she was merely three meters away from the both of us. I swear, if we weren't holding our breaths when she came into the room we would've been able to smell her hair or something. Yeah, that close.

The questions covered were mostly rather generic stuff, but not nearly as bad as "What do you think of Singapore?" or "What is your favorite local dish?". I swear, if anybody wasted those precious ten minutes on trivial questions like that, I would have slammed his or her head into the giant speakers on both sides and then throw the body into Marina Bay. But anyway, thank God everybody was smart enough not to ask those, but that doesn't mean it wasn't generic either.

Corinna was fast enough to snap in between questions, and was able to ask her two out of those six or seven answered. She asked something about the songs and lyrics haunting her, and if songwriting is her way of unhinging...something like that. I need to listen to the interview on her iRiver again to remember. But I thought that was one of the more original questions around. Despite stumbling on the letters "NUS", you did well bitch. The red must have caught her attention, despite the attention craving guy in front of us.

So I was mainly the cameraman throughout the conference, snapping pictures away and getting slapped if I stop for more than ten seconds. I'm not sure if you can hear the slapping in the recording, but we'll see about that. About the transcript, I'll try to get it posted and loaded somewhere, perhaps through Denise which I got to know through the biggest Yamagata fansite around. She is the web master, a disgustingly nice person I'd say.

At the end of everything, there were applause and waves, and she proceeded to the back of the venue for an interview with the BIG BOYS, or Straits Times, TODAY, Channel News Asia. It was funny how I wasn't over-the-top excited to see her, and that is actually a good thing. I felt at home with her, so comfortable being with her. I guess it must have been how the lyrics to her songs related to me, and pulled me through the hard times over the years. It made her feel like a friend or your next door neighbor, or your sister of some kind. It was a strange feeling to meet a celebrity and not feel any sort of glamor or superiority at all.

So here are a couple of pictures that I took today. No thanks to the eager photographers in front of me, my angles were rather restricted. But I did manage to take forty odd shots in that ten minutes time frame. That is about once every fifteen seconds. Yeah, I went crazy on the button there. Anyway, enjoy the pictures!(She looks puffed, I wonder what happened).