Day 47
We woke up to the pleasant finding that all of our custom suits had been delivered to the hotel desk. On the bad side, this meant even more luggage to carry, but needless to say, we were beyond impressed with how quickly Pinky managed to put these together for us. We headed down to the airport, where we flew to our next stop in Singapore! Our accommodations in Singapore were at Raffles Institution - the high school home of our very own Simon and Jay Hong. We were staying in the student dorms, which were actually quite nice; we were on the 11th floor and had views of the city. We mostly took the rest of the day to relax, though some of us went to nearby mall to find Shake Shack. A strong contingent decided to take an evening trip to the Gardens by the Bay, a really cool landmark in the city. We explored the indoor, glass-domed jungles and enjoyed a surprise musical theater lights show in the trees? Right up the alley of just about every Din. I think they knew we were coming.
Day 48
Well, folks, here it is. The day that the Dins had been eyeing for several months: our most packed day of all of tour with 4 one-hour performances. We got up early in the morning to be brought to the Pathlight School Campus 1 in a bus. Pathlight is the first autism-focused school in Singapore, with whom we’ve been partnering, along with the Central Singapore CDC, for many years now. The Dins received a special tour of the school, which is just a truly incredible achievement. It’s hard to explain without seeing it yourself, but it really is an amazing place. It was an honor to get to perform there again. We started off with a performance for the youngest age group, so we allowed ourselves to be extremely silly and free. At Pathlight Campus 2, we had our next performance, which was for a slightly older age group, though thankfully, it seemed that they loved the show just as much. We then returned to Raffles Institution, which would be the home of our next performance. It got a huge turnout - with loud cheers for Simon - and was one of the silliest gigs we did on all of tour. I guess when you have this many in one day, this is what happens. We found ourselves changing up song intros and improvising on the comedy, and honestly, I was really pleasantly surprised to see a looser, freer, funner performance! Finally, we quickly jetted (figuratively) over to St. Andrew’s Junior College, where we realized that their mascots were the Saints and sang a very special rendition of When The Saints Go Marching In. (At RI, which we realized was their rival school, we did this as “When The Saints Go Marching Out.”) By this point, our fourth performance of the day, we had truly reached our most delirious point. Intros were flying out of pocket left and right, we had a bowtie-tying contest during Sh’boom, audience interaction was more, uh, interactive than ever before, and Mattheus sung Mack the Knife in an Australian accent (in his defense, I surprised him by saying in the song intro that he would do so, and he one-upped me by actually doing it). All in all, this was maybe my favorite day of all of tour, personally, and I know many Dins felt the same. Our sets were truly at their most fun and fresh, if a little unhinged, by the end of it, and I truly felt it made for an incredibly engaging performance for the audience. We greeted audience members afterwards, then returned to Raffles to enjoy a well-deserved night of sleep.
Day 49
It was sad to think we were already at our last day of an incredible stop in Singapore. (By this point in tour, the days were absolutely flying by.) Jay Hong met up with us at Raffles, flying in from China, and he took many of us on a quick tour of the city so we could at least explore a bit in the midst of all this performing. I was also pleased to discover that Raffles has a baseball team. That night, we performed at the A Very Special Walk charity event, a fundraiser to celebrate the 20th birthday of Pathlight. We were honored to have the opportunity to sing in support of such an important cause, and the organizers, including our longtime friend Mayor Denise Phua, were kind enough to give us all carnival tickets so we could enjoy the event like everyone else. We took turns manning a booth in shifts to sign merchandise; in the end, the line ended up being so long that it started wrapping around the event. Needless to say, anytime we weren’t singing, we were manning that table. We sang 3 fun sets for the attendees in what was truly one of the most special nights of all of tour. Afterwards, Jay Hong and family took us out to get some food, and back at Raffles, several of us held a mini-fashion show to show off our suits while admiring the view and reminiscing, knowing that our time on World Tour would be coming to a close soon.
