Yesterday night was probably one of the most fun night I had since a long long time ago.

Last week, Wei Chi managed to convince Seb and I to watch an annual production by one of her Uni groups. Tickets were bought, and still, both of us had no idea what the thing was about at all. All I knew about it was that it was going to be in Chinese.

There was this Chinese word on the ticket which Seb asked me to read(Seb can't read Chinese), but very embarrassingly, I haven't the faintest idea what it was.

I had some doubts as I knew the group that organized this play was the "Chinese Music Group" of Melbourne Uni. Well, I've never ever seen a play in Chinese. The only form of Chinese performance I've encountered is people singing Chinese songs in school for open days and stuff. Never a play.

Another thing was seeing Wei Chi again. She was my roomate for 2 terms in Wrixon. You can say we were "best roomates" in that house. I can't remember having any disagreement with her. She really is the best roomate you can have. You want to sleep at 9pm, she sleeps at 9pm, you sleep at 3am, she sleeps at 3am.

She was in year 12 at that time, so you have to give her credit for still being able to be so accommodating. The thing is, for some reason, we never met up after we both left that place. So I've not seen her for 2 years now. It was going to be weird. I doubted if we could hold a conversation for more than 5 minutes now.

Met up with Seb for dinner somewhere near Melb U as she had some kind of meeting in there. Then off we went. We got there quite late, and once we entered the hall, we heard Wei Chi calling both our names. After that, it was literally like we had never left Wrixon. Whatever weirdness and akwardness I was worried about was immediately dismissed.

Wei Chi was involved in the production, so she had stuff to do backstage. The show started and it was then I realised it was a musical!! In mandarin!!! I had even more doubts than before. You mean, there's such thing as musicals in CHINESE?!!! But they more than surprised me. I'm happy to say, it was very very good.

It was really quite amazing. 3 hours in total, and everything from script to music was written by those students. The music was incredible. They even had English and Chinese subtitles, which I was glad for. My Chinese understanding ability has reach a point where I can barely listen to stuff and understand what it means.

I tried "improving" *cough cough* by trying to read most of the Chinese subs. Ocassionally I read the English ones to understand better. It kind of worked. As the musical was written in Chinese, you can't really sense the humour in the English translation.

There was always a deeper meaning in the lyrics which was really impressive. The singing was very good as well. There was only a few bits where I didn't quite like the harmony, but besides that, no complains.

I would say the backbone for this whole production was the music. There wasn't too much acting involved. The story was told through the music. Yes, I know it's a musical. But not all musical work out. Sometimes the stuff they sing doesn't connect to the story. And when that happens, I get very annoyed.

It was a job well done. I would give it a 10/10. Well worth my 12 bucks. It's even cheaper than going to the cinema. It might not be the world best musical, but bear in mind, the students performing were not professional performers/singers.

What was really weird was looking through the program and finding out the 'doctor' in the play is a commerce student, the 'street beggar' in the play is a medical student in real life. "That super annoying and idiotic rich guy" is actually a pharmacy student. I couldn't get that around my head.

As it was their closing night, they were all taking pictures on stage. We waited and waited for Wei Chi to come down, untill Seb lost her patience and went up to grab her. Managed to spend another 15 minutes with her. Lots of those on stage were crying by now. Apparently this production had taken them over 8 months. 8 months of hard work had ended.

We plan to meet up this Saturday again, and hopefully it'll work out this time. It was late, so Seb and I headed home.

A saturday night well spent :)