i was at novena square today. went there to meet my mother. spent about an hour or so there cos well there wasn't much to do at home anyway.



as usual i headed to W. H. Smith to check out the reads, in particular a few books i've been feeling like getting. when i got there, i couldn't find a decent book anywhere in the place. i mean, well there were books, but they were those on sale kind well cos, they were all on sale. 5 bucks a pop. stuff like unpopular stephen king titles and shit like that. what happened to this bookstore? the rest of the store was filled with children's toys and paraphernalia, magazines, vcds, stationery and to my surprise, snack foods. something's gone very wrong with this place.



anyway after looking at the vcds, i headed downstairs to the ground floor thinking to while some time away wandering around in cold storage looking at the meats or something. but as i headed towards the supermarket, i suddenly caught the strains of a violin and i looked around. there was a string quartet playing in the middle of the mall. so i was drawn to this instead and parked myself against a pillar to dig some classical sounds. the sound was quite bad, you could hardly hear the viola (i hazard a guess) and the cello, so it was like a duet of two violins. and during the first piece, one of the violinist's bow kept hitting the mike positioned above him as he played. didn't think a string quartet would have percussion in it. the sound guy was pretty clueless to what was going on, reminding me of the eternal struggle between school PA goons and aspiring bands who perform at school events. but still it was quite cool and i just hung about listening to them pound out christmas tunes. right in front of them was a charles and keith shoe sale. and it's a pretty surreal sight to see four classical musicians in black serenading office ladies and aunties whilst they scramble over shoe after shoe. it was like a battle between arts and commerce. quite a few people were drawn to the quartet. but i think it's mostly out of the novelty of the event then for the music. some culture to fill up an otherwise mundane lunchtime hour. too bad none of the people drawn were from the sale.



it was quite interesting to hear conversations of the people watching around me too. one auntie said to another in mandarin, "ni de hai zi hai zai xue na ge flute mah?". the other laughed courteously and shook her head and said something in reply ending with, "...mei you shi jian ah!". you don't really need to guess why the kid ain't got time for something as frivolous and unmarketable as a musical instrument. well maybe i'm just being an arts cynic.



another auntie saw her friend and walked up to her with a big smile on her face and said, "this is my favourite song!". the quartet were playing something that was used for some commercial on tv (no it's not from a fucking beer ad. stop whistling.). her friend asked, "what's the name?". she replied, "i don't know! hahaha! i just know it's my favourite song!" after a while they sauntered off to the nearby body shop to find one of their husbands who was there presumably to pick them up (no, not in that way).



(i said stop thinking about the fucking beer ad song.)



at first no one clapped when they finished a piece. but gradually the audience warmed up to them and clapped after every piece they played, you could see the lead violinist, this hotshot looking specky guy with gelled up hair, very virtuoso-like, liked it a lot. though he made this quite valiant attempt at this tricky bit with lots of 16th notes, but he mucked it up something terrible. but at least he played on, and it was a really long bit too. if it were me, i would've just played something simpler but perhaps that would fuck the rest of the quartet's timing up. but it's not like i can play the violin in the first place. i can pluck it like a guitar, but i never tried it with a bow before.



anyway well, that was like the high point of the day. after they finished their performance, i went to check out the notice board to see if they would play again. seems that i somehow managed to stumble upon their only performance for the whole of the christmas season, which is a bit of a bummer. but hey there's a jazz band on for the 19th of Dec. maybe i'll check that out.