I'm back from Mayday's concert and I must say I'm very impressed by them. Even though I am not a fan by any standards, I have always held a deep respect for the Taiwanese rock band - more than ten years in the industry and still going strong, which of the other boy bands can even come close?

That said, I feel rather disappointed that it turned out to be quite a cheapskate affair. I mean, an outdoor, free standing (literally) concert is fine and dandy with me. But one to queue five hours for? Judging from the actual turnout today, all that rationing of entry tickets is clearly pretentious and unnecessary. Was it a marketing gimmick? Over-optimism on the organiser's part? Or was it just the Singaporean in us asking for it - that we love queueing for anything and everything, even if no queueing is actually necessary? Then again, if the organisers can be laissez faire about it in Taiwan and let the people decide for themselves if they wanted to turn up by selling the album with the actual ticket (instead of the exchange coupon that we have) enclosed, I don't see why it should be done so differently over here. Perhaps such concerts are a novelty here (even though it can't be more garden variety in Taiwan), hence the organisers were expecting that by incentivizing the purchase of the album, a turnout too large for Stadium Green to handle will be drawn, thereby necessitating the rationing. If that's the reason, then maybe Singaporeans aren't that cheapskate after all. Not for me at least. It's a really good album and I would have bought it anyway. And people who don't buy original albums probably still won't, no matter how attractive the carrot is.

On another concert-related note, I have bought the ticket to Yoga Lin's in February and am planning to attend Cheer Chen's in April. And the latter's new album will be out on the 22nd of this month! Happy things to look forward to this semester.

And tomorrow, we swallow the blue pill and return to reality.