Charitable Deeds

When one of my acapella group member asked if I would be available to sing for a time-and-fund raising charity do to raise awareness for Breast Cancer (notice the logo, I think the helpers got the ribbon the wrong way around, the fold should be right over left, but still, not obvious from afar) via a Bachelor Auction thingy jointly organised by the Soroptimist International Club of Petaling Jaya and the UK Women's Alumni Network, I was initially apprehensive in terms of time. And no! I was not one of the "charitable bachelors" as they put it, and my group was asked if we could just do one song "Man In The Mirror" at 3pm, and because it was just ONE song, most of us kind of agreed to it, after all, it was for charity!

Imagine the horror!, when we were told that sound check was at 8am!!! on a Sunday some more!!! and a run through with the 15 bachelors at 8:30am while we sing, and they parade in.

However, they didn't do our sound check until 9:15am, by which time, we were getting grouchy, as we could have slept in longer, AND they only had three mics available for sound check for six of us! What the !#&@*!#!!! But it was ok, we reminded that this was after all, for CHARITY!!! But still, would have liked things to go according to schedule. Noticed that other people rehearsing their various "duties" were also starting to get a bit high strung.

When the time arrived (and we started about 15 minutes later than expected, which was a fairly respectable time delay - I have had other events starting well over an hour or two delay!!!), we sang the specially arranged music by Deke Sharon just for this occasion (which was very well arranged I might add, one of the tighter versions I have heard whilst researching online), and my oh my, the women there literally got excited and screamed aloud when the various bachelors strutted in and did various poses!

Our music gave the beat for the bachelors as they entered for the women's very first glimpse. We joked about adding in an extra beat here and there to trip the bachelors, but that was rather mean! The good thing about live music then is that we could time the beginning and the end, and do a repetition of phrases to suit the duration of the catwalk so to say, and the whole thing lasted just over 3 minutes!

At the end, after all the "happenings" in the morning, it was kind of enjoyable. Despite the various headaches of rehearsals (and we had minimal at that because of time constraints of members), we did fairly well. We sang, we grooved, and it was a joy to see the bachelors enjoying themselves to the beat and the women screaming their heads off, cheering them on, all in the name of charity.

However, I didn't stay for the actual auction, as I had to go off for something else, but think that it would have been great as during the rehearsals, we saw the various bachelors doing "their thing" to get the women to bid and raise funds (their thing being singing, dancing, etc...nothing "fishy" although I heard stories of last year's event when the guys were asked to remove their shirts during the auction itself, etc).

In case you are wondering, the bachelor auction thing is an auction for time and funds. Obviously funds for charity, but also, more importantly, TIME with the bachelors as they do community work. Worthwhile cause I reckon.