We rocked the stadium!

There is always a certain definitive moment in every friendship that captures the very (lame) essence of the bond between the two friends. One will probably remember such moment forever because it makes you wanna crawl under the table and laugh yourself to death.

The definitive moment for Phillip and I was cycling through a padi field in Bali in our alibaba BMX bicycles desperately searching for a provision shop to buy sanitary pads. We were staying in a villa situated in the middle of nowhere when I got my period and our driver is nowhere to be found. Save for the fact that I had tissue stuffed down my pants and we weren’t very good at cycling, it was all very romantic; think Leon Lai and Maggie Cheung in “Tien Mi Mi”. Till this day, we get belly laughs from thinking of that comical moment and imagining how that could have been OUR provincial life together if he is straight and if we have not left our hometown in Johor.

The Toe and I found our definitive moment last Friday at around 9.40pm - at the 14th Air Supply concert in Singapore - when Mr. Russell Hitchcock announced that they are letting folks come right up to the stage area for the last few songs before the concert ends. I reached for Toe’s clammy hands and cried, “Let’s go for it!”

She was taken aback at first, and even did an obligatory show of reluctance (“Want meh?”) but of course that was just a show and she ended up running with me, like the good sidekick that she is, all the way from Row 13E to beyond Row 1A.

That run truly memorialize our friendship. It was like the Amazing Race. You can almost see the sign flashing at the bottom left corner of your TV screen “Dailytoe & Frou Frou, BFF”. We were going all out and even displayed fantastic team-work. While running hand in hand, we were pushing people out of our way. I was shoving old gay boys in my path, and she cleared the way of short screaming Filipino aunties. Like I said, it was a race to the stage and anyone who gets in our way must be eliminated. What’s more, our S$78 ticket is summarily gaining monetary value with every stride we take. One step, $79. Two steps. $80. By the time we reach the front, we were standing within breathing space of the Russells which is worth way more than the most expensive tickets for that show. What a steal!

I must not tell you folks what The Toe and I got up to at the front stage area. But I can, however, tell you what the other crazy Air Supply folks were doing. The gay guy directly in front of me was wailing, jumping up & down and hugging his male mates while swaying to the music. The Malay lady in tudung next to me was howling along to Making Love Out of Nothing At All. There were several short Chinese aunties behind me screaming, “Wo Ai Ni” (“I love you”) when Graham Rusell flashed his chest wings tattoo and “Wo Qiang Ni”(“I miss you”) when Russell Hitchcock announces that they do not know when they will be back in Singapore next.

Other random gem snippets to share:

-- Russell start off the concert by shouting, “Hello Singapore! Are you ready to fall in LUURVE tonight… with the person to your left….. and the person to your right.” The person to my left is a dopey Chinese auntie. The person to my right is Auntie Toe. Sadly, I did not fall in love with either.

-- The duo has definitely grown older (and fatter) and their dressing remains dubious. What has not changed is their voice which is still very powerful and highly-emotional. Several aunties shed tears. The one on my right did, when they sang Goodbye.

-- The sweetest moment was when they told the audience how they started out their career in a tiny pub back in Australia. Back then, they always face an empty audience every night, so it felt very much like rehearsal for them. One of the songs they always 'rehearsed' is Two Less Lonely People (I'm sure they said something about how it wasn't that lonely with each other) and they proceeded to sing that song the way they used to sing it 30 years ago (acappella). The crowd roared!

-- There are ways to dance to soft rock songs.

-- We are the most compliant audience ever. When we are asked to stand, we stand. When we are expected to sit, we sit. Everytime one of the duo points their microphone at the audience and ask us to sing along, we sang out loud unabashedly.

-- Every person in that concert hall knows the lyrics to Making Love Out of Nothing At All. And I mean the full lyrics, not just the chorus.

-- When Graham sang the cover of Power of Love , The Toe went absolutely mad because that is her favorite song of all time. She shimmied along like she never shimmied before. (Seriously, that was quite a sight because I have never seen anyone move to that song before.) To top things off, she even shouted, “YOU DO IT BETTER THAN CELINE DION!”

All in all, that one and half hour concert last Friday night was all a blur to me. Phillip reckons it was the Air Supply’s "power of love" that caused all the furor. Honestly, cheese and unglam screaming aside, I found the concert really sweet because the duo looked really chummy with each other (and their band) and they appeared sincerely happy to be there. They certainly had a real connection with the audience, which is the earmark of every good concert.

And I know that how? Because when I finally stumble out of the concert hall, I realized I lost my voice.

*weak neigh* We rawkz.....

*faints*