HELLO PUNKS / a wild goose chase: the mystery of the mythical ronin gig

hi everyone this is darren tan speaking haha. yes can u believe it, i'm blogging.

oh well my first entry is about hanging out with the Ronin guys! haha. monday night 8 Aug, junhong and i went to the Carnival@marina to catch RONIN. yes we were looking forward to a great anti-national day show. but what we were about to encounter was beyond our imagination.

when we reached at 8.55pm, the stage was massive and this act called The Great Shanghai Escape was performing. as the name suggests, it was lame, and lamer Sporeans were enjoying it... we waited till 9.15 before asking where the hell ronin was. as it turned out there was ANOTHER faraway stage where english bands were performing. well we ran, along the road and across the muddy field, but as it turned out.. it was some lau-pok band performing to empty space. wow. we asked the organisers, "where the hell is ronin?" and they told us to try yet ANOTHER stage nearby.

we started running (again) and as we got closer to this stage, yes..... it indeed was ronin! but the crowd was like 15 people.. no one standing. man. so we went to the front of the stage and head-banged and egged people on to join us. about 4 girls joined in and started jumping like groupies. the show ended 10 minutes after. the ronin guys really appreciated our presence. and they kindly agreed to pose for a picture :-)

after that they told us to accompany em to the earlier stage and we chilled with em, we had free bbq food, beer and maxim! simon kept telling me to gulp the beer down and finish it! Bang told me about himself. he looks really innocent and geeky, but man he's a killer drummer.hah. sean is one of the more serious guys, he went to vj, and only he and Levan quit smoking. the atmosphere was pretty laid-back, with really lao-jiao bands playing tunes like Smoke on the Water, and I Will Survive. they performed another set at 11.30 and we watched the fireworks together, before taking the river taxi to clifford pier. and Levan gave us his number and told us to add him in MSN! cool

oh well the ronin guys are pretty regular guys u'd find on the street. just that they choose to pursue their passion, while most of us do not. they have no airs about them, agreeing to perform even when there's no crowd and delivering 2 kick-ass shows. it really shows their dedication.