(Semi-)Conned by Amway

What a night it was yesterday, a full-blown concert of massive proportions that had all of us gripping our seats in sweaty anticipation of the songs to come.

..except that I wished it was entirely true.

Went with Sarah to Khairi’s house at 2.30pm for a kenduri.. I figured it’s more or less about my good ol’ buddy leaving this coming Wednesday for the University of Tennessee at USA on a full scholarship for five huge years, doing engineering (he’s undecided whether to choose electrical or mechanical). Which goes to show what a genius he is (he had straight 10 A1s in his SPM), and I didn’t see him for the longest time ever.

Both Sarah and I didn’t eat much since we’ve already eaten at home prior to attending this kenduri, but to respect the ceremony we ate a little bit of some curry chicken and vege. Sarah and I were also given a tour of his house (since Sarah, being neighbours with him for close to 6 years never stepped her foot into his house).. and his old room apparently had been demolished, and his new room located at an entire different place. It just brought back incongruent memories when we both were once best buddies.

Saw another of our old friend, Ashiff, who looked so different he was barely recognizeable. We chatted for a while till 4pm plus, when both Sarah and I had to leave (and tumpang-ed Ashiff back as well).

Me, Sarah, Ashiff, and the celebrated man Khairi.

The three of us (plus a missing Redzuan) were all best buddies once upon a time. Khairi didn’t change much, his usual humour, attitude, height, etc..

Went to Geok Leng’s house for a while (my first time visiting her house in 10 years of friendship, beating Sarah >_>), picked up Andy, then off we went to the Bukit Jalik Stadium where a traffic jam awaited us. Despite that, we didn’t have to wait long before I chose a parking lot randomly, paid the RM1.50 fee and parked.. Andy paid the two tolls we had to go through on the way here. o_o

[Background: Geok Leng had some free tickets worth about RM40 each to the concert and invited us. =] Apparently it was Amway’s 30th anniversary and they thought it would be appropriate to hold a massive celebration this grand.]

The stadium was exploding with the voice of Daniel Lee, 2nd Malaysian Idol and someone I loathed particularly, that you can even hear him from the outside of the stadium. We reached our Violet gate, and went to find ourselves some seats in time to listen the ending of his rendition of David Tao’s song Ai Heng Jian Dan.

Then Jaclyn came along and delivered three songs, the first being a duet between Daniel and herself (Carrie Underwood’s Inside Your Heaven which sounded so incompatible with Daniel’s slightly inferior voice), the second being Shakira’s Whenever, Wherever which just sounded off due to either her low confidence with that particular song or the mic, and finally, her trademark song Gemilang which was just brilliant.

A short clip of Jac and Daniel’s Inside Your Heaven.

So hor, we thought that wheeeee time to be treated to an extensive repertoire of impressive music which’ll leave us speechless and senseless by the time we reached the entire highlight of the show, Wang Lee Hom.

But nope, some Indian ane and his kahoots appeared and danced three tracks for us (some of which is from their latest album, god knows what). I normally enjoy a wide variety of music but it appears that Indian music is just not my cup of tea.

Apparently 43 thousand strong people attended this event.

So we waited with bated breath for the next lineup.. and waliao, were we in for FOUR hours of direct-selling tips, mega money-making strategies and personality development by like twenty distributors of Amway who were all, by the way, horrendous in their delivery and memorised scripts!!

OH AND NOT TO FORGET, the mama-san, as Geok Leng and some of us liked to call the Malay lady who gyrated to the tempo of the music and a small-time host of the extensive direct-selling mega-hyper-super-duper promo-cum-inspiring-speeches of Amway, who screamed enthusiastically, “AMWAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!” at the end of every of her sentence.

What the fuck.

Oh and Jin Hui and her male cousin who just got back from the UK apparently came as well.

Camwhored out of boredom.

The organisers threw this huge plastic balloon/ball to the audience who were encouraged to throw up to the 2nd tier, but obviously it was too heavy to be able to do so.

I could’ve asked someone to slap me senseless when there was this grand parade across the stadium’s tracks of HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of distributors, with all this glam names like ‘Diamond Distributors’ and ‘Crown Distributors’, you know, to signify how many people you managed to con much you make from this Amway thing.

A look of the stage at night.

When all lights were turned off and all you can see were the sparkling colourful lights that some people brought in.

Because we had like so much free time, we went outside where a throng of pasar malam-related stalls were scattered about inside the gates. Sooo many food and drinks stalls which had jacked up the prices to cash in on massive opportunity without Amway having to give them a crash course on marketing to do so. There were quite a lot of nuggets/fishballs/sausages on a stick (sausages were basi according to GL and Sarah), and other assorted food.

This is the chairman of Amway giving a memorised speech. How do I know that? There were bilingual subtitles wtf. His actions were the same as 95% of other idiots who delivered speeches that night.

Andy and GL.

What else to do lah when you’re trapped in a stadium designed to torture your minds.

I can go on and on about how fucking stupid the speeches were, in various languages such as English, BM, Mandarin and Tamil no less, and how terribly bad they were and made such a fool of themselves that had one of the Malay dudes screaming hoarsely in incomprehensible and incoherent BM. At least three speakers repeated this particular phrase consecutively in their excessively-glorified testimonials about how Amway changed their oh-so-pathethic lives: “Everyday beautiful, wonderful, Sunday!!”

...

It’s so grammatically incorrect and wrong.

It’s like a fucking religious gathering where these brainwashed fools try to get you converted to the almighty business god Amway for chrissakes!

One of the must-quote one-liners from this Cina apek who spoke in the most broken Malay I’ve ever heard (my grandfather could speak better than him, really), was: “Buat Amway tak payah pigi skolah tinggi.”

Damn enlightening wei. They’re like trying to brainwash me before I go for my first day in my business-oriented college. Like, join Amway and in 20 years time without pursuing my tertiary education I’ll be like one of them Crown Distributors who are all rich bastards and give nonsensical speeches in one of their future anniversaries.

The lot of us bored out of our minds.

There were plenty of fireworks being set off.

After considering mass-suicide and impaling the speakers with their microphones, Geok Leng reassured us that Wang Lee Hom will appear (since his scheduled arrival at 10pm was filled with speeches and more speeches), and went as far as saying she’ll buy all of us sushi buffet-style should he not appear. Anyone who says that must be pretty sure of what he/she’s saying.

And, true enough, at 11pm plus mama-san mentioned something about a “famous songwriter/singer” and TADA Alexander Wang Lee Hom appeared in a tiny 2cm frame due to us sitting so bloody far away, and we treated ourselves to the large televisions set up around the stadium instead.

WARNING: SEVEN LEEHOM CLIPS AHEAD
This is especially dedicated to big-time fan Kai Tzin who was unfortunately stuck in Malacca. :/ And sorry that I was videoing the large television most of the time, but if you look at all the videos properly, you can see him in all his 2cm glory. And sorry there wasn’t any video of his hip-hop/RnB/fusion songs since I’m not a fan of them. <_<

This is the beginning of the concert when Leehom first appeared, as you can listen to the screaming fans and the beginning of his serenading repertoire.

Andy was making lots of lame jokes in this video.. coupled with screaming fans you can barely hear him sing in this clip but I love this particular English song that he sang.. almost sure it’s a cover of some song I couldn’t recall which.

His old ‘Julia’ song or something like that was replaced with Amway.. -____-

Some popular old song of his I don’t know the name of…

If you’re planning to skip other videos, at least watch this one - it had my hair standing on ends listening to it at that time (and when re-viewing it on video). Nothing beats a throng of screaming fans vibrating with the chorus.. Forever Love. It’s so fucking lovely.

Another of his old hit song.

Fans singing to the chorus again.. and in this vid you can hear Sarah greatly urging me to send all my pics/vids to her. XD

Somehow after listening to Leehom performing (and I’m not really a big fan, just a casual listener to his songs), the waiting didn’t seem bad after all. He entertained us for about an hour with his rich voice and soulful good looks which apparently had almost Sarah in tears of finally getting to see her idol in ‘real life’, so to speak (despite sitting so far away), and Geok Leng said that he was paid RM700,000 to perform here.. a freaking 700 grand just to sing for an hour. Amway’s bloody rich. =____= Apparently his ‘worth’ is more than Jay Chou seeing that he was American-born thus naturally speak good English. And he performs internationally and is more widely known than Jay.. so yeah his appeal’s there >_> (Sources: Geok Leng and Andy)

The concert finished at nearly 12.30am. Was waiting for Kiss Goodbye.. the famous song that introduced me to Leehom but he never sang it. :(

I must say concerts have this surreal effect on me, partly due to the fact I’m listening and watching my favourite singers live in real life, but in effect is a paradox considering how I’m actually watching these singers through a freaking television due to the location of our seats.

And stepping into the stadium brought back memories again of how Khairi and I went for my first concert ever of Westlife, purchasing the most expensive tickets (can’t remember the price now.. RM150, or RM250? But we had discounts anyway) only to seat so far away from the stage that we had to watch the televisions put up. And another friend, Alina, who paid the same price as us, but somehow landed herself on VIP seatings, sat 2nd row from the front of the stage. -___-

We were truly 12, then.

This is probably my 2nd concert, if you can even consider it as a concert due to how 80% of it was mostly the rubbish that is Amway.

We went to Tanjung after the concert to eat, then immediately went home. Funny since my first day at college was like in a few hours time and I was still out and about.. reached home at about 1.30am.

---

First day of college. Slept at like 3am and woke up at 6.30am, effectively giving me the uncomfortable-ness across my entire body.. what I term as ‘lack of sleep’.

Andy arrived with his sis at 7.30am at my house, and off we went to Metro where a bright future awaits us. When Andy was paying for the parking ticket, he spotted (on his account) Suet Li scratching her leg and shouted “Oii amoi!” at her. Then on walking upwards towards Inti and Asia Cafe, we spotted Wai Hong coming out of his car.

We rested at Asia Cafe for an hour before heading to Metro to explore the grounds and the like. Andy was nervous about the English Placement Test, and so was I.

After scrutinising every newcomer at the concourse from head to toe while making a prediction if said person would be a nerd or not, we went to the Lecture Theatre 3 for our orientation which basically introduced us rules, what-to-dos and what-not-to-dos and what-nots for only about an hour. The next hour had us doing our first ever test on our first ever day. Ugh.

Nothing much to say about the test except that it was divided into three parts: Section A had a ‘fill in the blanks with the most suitable word’ in the passage given, Section B had a ‘check sentences for errors and correct the errors’ and Section C had a 120-word limit essay on ‘My Embarassing Moment’.

Laameeee.

For some reasons unbeknownst to me, I have this acquired dislike for most of the staff members who appear to be most arrogant with their perfectly-manicured English. Ms Evelyn, who was in charge of UFP, when asked about the test and if Andy and I could be in the same class due to transportation concerns (two other sisters asked the same thing before us, as well), skirted around and avoided a proper answer with ‘if we let you two to be in the same class, other people would want it as well, causing an imbalance in three different tutorial groups’, and when pressed on, finally said ‘we can’t say for sure not but we may or may not allow the appeal’. Translated: Lu bagi itu appeal I tengok mood saya lah.

The timetable given to us stated that the three different tutorial groups will be held at completely different days/times. Since I’m gonna tumpang Andy by paying him a certain amount, this is not going to be convenient. Bahhhhhh.

Our entire thing ended at about 12pm after a tour of the college, but both Andy and I stayed back to ask Ms Evelyn said question above, while also seeing Julia’s boyfriend lurking outside the UFP Office since there were quite a number of people inside.

So, we only went off at about 1pm plus to Asia Cafe for our lunch, where we met up with Daniel who came at about 1.40pm. Just hung around, chit-chatted, went to the nearby bookshop to book the photostated books for myself and went to the bus stop to wait for a bus, since Andy’s sis was having her final exams thus needed the car.

Reached home at like 3.30pm, feeling worn out. Tomorrow begins my first lecture on ‘Introduction to Accounting’ which sounds as exciting as watching cockroaches flying around in the nearest monsoon drain. And my so-called orientation only lasted for an hour today, compared to the one week or several days as most of my friends had to go through.

Saw a few acquaintances and friends on my first day, (Ju-lien at Asia Cafe and Pei Chuin at the bus stop).. SS15 is like a hub of old meetings and friends once lost.