TITLE: The Dream Reloaded
DATE: 7 MAR 06 (TUE), 7:30pm to 9:30pm
VENUE: Amphitheater @ Blk 165 Bedok South Road

Dovlyn was upset that the "Dreaming for 1000 years" was marred by quite a number of problems. So she wanted to do it again.

Eric was not really eager as he believes that our team has more important things to do like get money and move house. He made it clear that it was a money losing proposition and the audience size was too small to be worth performing for. Still, it is hard to say no to a begging girl.

OK, so we went into high gear again. Like any big project, there's good news and bad news. Here's the bad news first.

Dovlyn disliked Scene 10 a lot to the extent that she left it out of the previous performance. Eric was not that eager to help with the performance as he needed to put the advertising work first. Fortunately, inspiration came suddenly and Eric found himself writing a totally new scene. This time, it wowed Dovlyn and became her favorite scene. Problem solved. New problem: Dovlyn became obsessed with the script and developed the habit of repeating it verbatim occasionally.

Cleo borrowed a mechanical cat for Dovlyn to perform with. With less than a few days before performance, Dovlyn found that the cat has lost a leg. It can no longer walk. Eric took a look and found it beyond his abilities to repair. We don't know if the cat suffered a fall or someone twisted the leg accidentally, but we know that Cleo was not happy about it. Fortunately, the owner graciously allowed us to continue using his cat. [Hey, who says handicapped cats cannot act?]

Dovlyn was still busy getting ready to perform. Our friend Clara gave her a quick lesson on speech and drama, but Dovlyn's abilities still remain very much unpolished. Eric mentioned that Harjit is the one who needs more training, but well... Fortunately, our friend Greg came to help with a few intensive training sessions. He was so wonderful and fun that Harjit actually began to like coming for rehearsals. Khusoiry was also a great help in training the couple as well as the kids. Both Harjit and Dovlyn improved much.

In the previous performance, Cleo's otherwise good song timing was devastated by a song list that disappeared just when she starts to use the computer. Eric told Dovlyn to reorganize the songs properly to prevent a repeat, but against Eric's recommendations, Dovlyn used an inefficient and ineffective way to do so. The result: hours of late night frustration, and a song list that disappeared the next day when one of the children touched it accidentally.

Eric decided to personally redo the song list properly and make redundant backups of it. There was no chance of it going wrong again, but it was hardly consoling for Dovlyn who saw all her frustrating efforts go down the drain.

That was not all. The portable studio developed a crack during the last performance. We did not pay it any notice, but when it suddenly fell apart in the middle of road en route for a rehearsal, we knew that it was a really serious problem. Eric told Khusoiry that "we scored 'A' in economics but 'F' in engineering". Well, can't expect much from a $50 trolley designed to carry plates and organic garbage.

After an emergency repair, removal of the broken tray and relieving the trolley of some wiring, we thought it will still work. But no, when the trolley was going home, another crack developed. We were faced with the prospect of purchasing a new trolley when we have no money to spare. Fortunately, Dovlyn thought of modifying a spare trolley (which claims to be able to support 200kg) to replace existing trolley base.

Harjit the (newly appointed) chief engineer came over the next morning and he tried using screws to secure the two trolleys as we lacked the necessary bolts and nuts to finish the job properly. Eric recalled that Dovlyn has previously purchased a large amount of tough steel wires. With some adjustments, the trolley was firmly held together with these wires and withstood every attempt to break it apart.

During the rehearsals, Eric pinpointed the previous screen noise and poor sound quality problem to an over-amplified sound signal. Turning down amplifier power should solve the problem. Except that it didn't - the background music now overwhelms the actor's speech on our stage. But if we turned down the sound volume, we can't hear the music from the portable studio.

With the performance only hours away, Eric thought of installing another set of speakers just for the music, but it was hard to find real estate on the portable studio. Time's up - no choice but to move the studio down to set up all equipment. After almost an hour struggling to set up the wires with some volunteers, Eric moved the TV set to the other edge of the trolley. It managed to clear enough space to install the speakers. So far so good - we still have 45 minutes to calibrate the sound system!

But from here on, its mostly good news.

Both Dovlyn and the children loved the performance. They all mentioned that it was the happiest day of their life and they wanted to perform again. Dovlyn was so happy that she cried later at home. [Too much tears :)]

Dovlyn's Dad, sister (Derline) and Derline's boyfriend came to support us again. Derline helped to do some wonderful make-up for the kids. Tracy and a few other friends spent much time and effort to take care of the kids. It all went well.

Eric got to perform thrice. The audience was rather surprised to see an unexpected whirling hurricane of movement.

Eric succeeded in putting contrast between the background music and human speech from the microphones so that people can hear both clearly. Considering that we only used a pair of $30 mics while everyone else uses expensive wireless mics costing at least hundred of dollars, the sound quality was great! There were only minor complains and Eric has plans to greatly improve the sound coverage for the next performance.

The movable trolley which was recycled from the remains of the former portable studio was recycled into an improved dolly system for the camcorder. It is now more stable and easy to move. The old dolly became our still photo camera dolly. Now we can take photos anytime and anywhere we like without worrying about hand shake blurring the photo.

And the great news: Dovlyn managed to find us a house that we can live in for 3 months. We have decided to bet everything we have on the advertising project and just move in by 15 March.

Our new home is really the Land of Twinklekids (as Dovlyn and Cleo puts it). There are no lack of stages to perform in this amazing "theme park". We will keep ypu posted of our new wonderland.