In the mood for love and Christmas

As I was reminded this afternoon, Christmas is only about 40 days away. After all the pre-Christmas preparations I have done at work and all the hype with the media, I’ve been in a festive mood since last week. Even though the hotel hasn’t officially kicked off with Christmas decorations yet, I have already made decorations out of recyclable materials and hung them all around my department. They are so pretty!!! *gushes* Okay okay, enough self-praise.

At home, I have been blasting Josh Groban Christmas carols. Ah, so nice. I don’t normally listen to him but he’s got fantastic Christmas carols from his Noel album (I first heard them in Nic’s aeroplane car while he was driving me home one night). His versions make Christmas feel very grand, and not cheesy like some other versions of Christmas carols. I really love traditional Christmas carols and quite dislike modern Christmas songs – unless it’s “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” or “All I Want For Christmas Is You” (I’m a big fan of Love Actually – yeah, who would have thought cranky little Cheryl would like such a soppy romance movie?)

It’s strange that I embrace Christmas now. When I was in my teens, I used to detest Christmas. Maybe the fault lay with the unstable raging hormones, but I used to do nasty things to try to ruin Christmas for people. When people played Christmas carols, I would blast Metallica to block out the merrymaking and wallow in misery. Looking back, I was such a Grinch!

But I’ve grown up now. I’ve embraced my faith and the story behind Christmas. I’ve found Jesus. I’ve learnt to be a better person. I’ve learnt to love and to accept love. Most importantly I’m no longer an awkward pimply teenager who had an attitude problem and issues with everyone (now just a few people), hahaha…

Come on, people, gimme some Christmas loving!

Michael Learns To (soft) Rock

Friday was a day full of surprises.

Our GM decided to donate his MLTR concert tickets to HR so that they could give them to one of the staff. HR sent out an email to say whoever got back to them first would get the tickets. Someone got the tickets – but it wasn’t me. Obviously I had no clue what went on since I was out of the office at the time.

When I got back to my desk, I found a note on my desk saying:

“Dear Cheryl, are you free tonight? Uncle Matt would like to date you to go Fort Canning Park.”

I screamed… Because I knew that MLTR would be playing at Fort Canning Park that evening. (By the way, ‘Uncle Matt’ is our graphic designer)

I found out a while later that while I was out, my other colleague had replied to HR saying I (as in me, Cheryl) wanted the tickets because she knows I like MLTR. But she was a few seconds too late. Someone else got the tickets. So she and ‘Uncle Matt’ stormed over to this person’s department and demanded he gave up the tickets to me and ‘Uncle Matt’ (‘cos he likes MLTR too).

We were so excited for the whole time after that. I even literally hopped around the department like an energiser bunny ‘cos I couldn’t stop being excitable.

Well, later on we reached Fort Canning Park, but realised to our dismay that we entered by the wrong area (the cordoned off VIP area) – we looked to the far front and realised that people were starting to stream in. Just then, we caught sight of another colleague (she was in charge of the catering for VIPs) who was wearing a crew member pass. So we called out to her and explained our predicament – and the guards let us through without checking our tickets at all! So we ran all across the field… and managed to get a place right in front of the stage!

In case you were wondering, the music and singing were awesome. Obviously. I had expected lesser, but to my surprise, MLTR seriously rocked… And I mean, they rocked so hard that the speakers, the barricades and even the ground were shaking! They turned out to be more talented musicians than I thought they were. Anyway, my experience at the MLTR would not have been complete without photos (and the boasting rights):-

Click HERE to watch the videos I took at the concert!

Alright, seeing MLTR on stage in concert was one thing. But the better thing is I actually got to be at their press conference (in my hotel’s club lounge) while they were walking past me like nobody’s business (glee!), and they even stood what felt like a hair’s breadth away from me… (well alright, 50cm okay?) I was star struck!

The funny thing about Jascha (lead singer/keyboardist) was that he’s really quiet and stoned in real life, but he’s so cheery and chatty on stage (and he has a paunch)! Mikkel (guitarist) was gorgeous (and chatty) and he had such stunning blue eyes… Oh, and I think he shaved his chest for the concert -  I remember seeing a whole lot of chest hair in their Eternity Tour poster. Kare (drummer) looked serious but he was friendly… And he kept LOOKING at me during the press interview. I felt so awkward.

Our club lounge.

With the interviewer from Razor TV – yes, it was a live video recording!

From left: Kare (drummer), Mikkel (guitarist) and Jascha (lead singer/keyboardist).