MiSaDVentUreS oF RatUGym iN tAiwAN PaRT tWo

The Glamour

We were invited to the Golden Bell Awards 2003, which is a local television awards show. The event was awash with local celebrities but of course their presence (or absence) was completely wasted on most of us. Well I did recognize 2 of them, err…barely..mainly coz they’re really big…I’m thinking “Hey, this guy is like REALLY HUGE isn’t he?” Yup, its, wait for it gurls – Leon Lai and Lee Hom. My oh my, what beautiful male specimens these two are, especially Lee Hom…what a beautiful…err..voice!

Of course the entire event was completely in Mandarin, of which I understood none of, except maybe the ‘thank you’ bits. Despite that, I could feel the excitement all around me and of course, the music was pretty good as well. Music can be appreciated in any language, especially when they are delivered by such beautiful people!

I must say that the most interesting, to say the least, bit of the entire event has got to be the clothes worn by the celebs. I mean, they were rather imaginative! One female celeb looked like she escaped from a chicken coop, feathers and all. One had the remains of an unfortunate animal (or it could be fake) draped across one shoulder. The latest trend amongst the female celebs seems to be skirts that look oh-so-happeningly, what I can only describe as ‘out-of-synch’. Loads of pale satin with gathers where you least expect it. And the women are so thin! I hate them already!

Then there’s this hugely popular female singer, I say huge coz she got quite a reception from the audience, but I’m not sure whether it was because she is an excellent singer or that you could see her underwear throughout her performance! Yeah lo and behold, she had on this sheer red number and it got a mite err….uncomfortable when the spotlight shines just so, that we could see what she had on inside her dress! Funnily enough, though not entirely unexpected, all the photographers that night crawled out of the woodwork merrily snapping away, a star uncovered, in more ways than one! It was quite fun to see the cameraman taking bust shots and long shots of her for television broadcast. Seated in a row of regulators, although no one said anything, there was almost a sigh of sympathy amongst us at the likely ‘scandal’ it would have caused back home! But to the tv cameraman’s credit I don’t think the audiences at home in Taiwan saw what the female singer so proudly wore on her…err..sleeve?

I’ve never seen a bunch of beautiful people in one room before. I mean the clothes, the make-up, the deftly styled, highlighted, teased hair! And my dears, I’m talking about the men! Pin-stripes must be so RIGHT NOW in a big way! And the wider the leg the better! Just when u think, hey, this one looks quite normal, out comes a long knitted red scarf that grandma made last winter. Really quite amazing. Hmm…I wonder if this is what generation gap is all about?

The show went on for about 3 hours, truly a challenge to the bladder, and legs as well. With all the strength our jelly-like legs could muster we walked out of the grand Sun-Yat Sen Memorial Hall, feeling kinda dazed and thinking “Did we just spend the last three hours watching an awards show that we understood none of and knew none of the people who actually won it?” By God, so we did!