Year of the Fire Pig is upon us! Wish everyone a healthy and prosperous new year! For the ladies - marry into a rich, famous family. For the gents - promotions and BIG gambling winnings. :):)
Aside from having dinners with family and friends, and eating lots of festive foods, I managed to catch the CNY-eve show from the folks at Toronto's First Radio (AM770/1540). Got to Pacific Mall at 9pm, to make sure we got the best standing room (only VIPs got seats, aye). The official show didn't start until 10pm, but the Dynasty Music Group was here to entertain with some live music. The band was pretty good. Their lead singer, Noella Choi (蔡瑋瑜), was the winner of 1999 Toronto New Talent Singing awards. With impressive command of her voice, she performed great renditions of My Heart Will Go On, 童話, 風繼續吹 and one of those K-mix of pop songs. The group finished off their show by performing an arrangement of 最好的時光 (The best times), one of the mood melodies from the TVB series 火舞黃沙 (Fire dance, yellow sand). Apparently, Noella WAS the singer for that song in the series. I couldn't remember that particular song from the series when she mentioned it, but memories flooded back as she performed.
Next up were some kids performing Shaolin karate. They were a disgrace to Shaolin arts. Enough said.
The show was sponsored by Telus, so the games they played were all Telus-related. In one event, they had volunteers from the crowd play a verbal form of Pictionary/Charades. One person had to give verbal clues to the other person to guess a certain phrase/term. The first pair got a bunch of Chinese New Year words, but the guy giving the clues was so bad that they only managed 3 correct answers. However, the second pair got totally owned, not by the first team, but by the Telus cell-phone related words that came up. How do you give clues for "Call Display", "Unlimited Calling"?!?
Another event was one of those read-the-paragraph-as-fast-as-possible (急口令) games. Despite asking for volunteers who can read Chinese, some kid managed to get selected to go on stage. After realizing what the game required, he was a good sport and decided to give it a try. He was good to go after a couple quick Chinese lessons on stage. Performance was much laughter fodder for the crowd. :)
The highlights of the show were the singing performances of the AM1540 DJ's. 小麗couldn't sing, but her dancing and arse-wagging brought down the house. 廖主輝 sang 張開眼晴 - very beautiful lyrics for the new year, whether you have good or not so good fortunes. Everyone's favouritest DJ, 劉建民 (aka 阿牛），sang three songs representing different eras of his love experience, much to the joy of the crowd. Everyone couldn't stop making wise-cracks after the fung-shui master said that people of Year of the Cow should match someone from a Year of Chicken. 阿牛, only "find" a chicken, don't "call" a chicken (hooker). Anyways, 阿牛 put on his shades and performed 兩隻蝴蝶 representing his first love at 16. Then he followed up with 你怎麼捨得我難過representing his feelings when his girlfriend complained about his fatness, big head, lack of life goals, etc. and decided to break up. Now at his "old" age, all he can do is cry alone with 淚的小雨. (These oldies took me a while to find!)
After 阿牛's performance, it was time for the countdown. 3...2...1....bang, lots of confetti (too bad no firecrackers) and lion dance ensued. I managed to land a red pocket from the "God of Fortune" after the show, so I'm all SET for this new year now.
Cheers to the Year of the pig!
Labels: Chinese New Year