Black Eyed Peas in KL!!

Today started like most Friday's with me driving to pick up Julia and then heading to netball. After yesterday's frying in the sun, I wasn't too keen on playing but luckily there was a heavy cover of clouds for the first three quarters. As always, we felt good afterwards although we were super sweaty.

After breakfast at the Blue Cow, I dropped Julia off at Ross' office so she could pick up the car from Phil. I came home and showered and then spent a couple of hours finishing off last night's beading projects before Sonja text to see if I wanted to meet her at KLCC for a cup of tea.

I walked over to Dome and we sat chatting and drinking tea before she drove me home. I was exhausted after netball and I hadn't slept too well last night due to the sunburn so I crawled into bed for a nap. Ross got home about 6 and we got changed and headed out to Sunway Lagoon for the Black Eyed Peas concert.

Out at Sunway we found our way to the enterance of the water park where we picked up our tickets and then whet in search of somewhere to eat. We ended up at Go Sushi and had a great meal with a mojito to get us in the party mood.

About 8, we decided to make our way into Sunway Lagoon Theme Park where the concert was being held. We went down and down escalators for ages before coming to the bottom of the park. They had drained the wave pool for tonight's event - pretty cool! On the way down, we stopped and looked at the various displays about the history of Guinness. Tonight's concert was to celebrate 250 years since Guinness was first brewed - commonly known at Arthur's Day (after Arthur Guinness). Around the world in 5 different cities, various concerts were being held over 36 hours with this one being the culmination of Arthur's Day.

We got down to the concert area and walked around to get our bearings. Not much was happening yet so we managed to find our way to the Tavern and had ourselves a drink (funny how they only served Guinness!). We finished our beers and planned to go and find an area to stand. In the end we decided the view from the bar was just fine and we could lean up against the fence rather than standing amongst a ton of people. So we grabbed another beer and watched a few of the warm-up acts.

Most of the acts were pretty shite but one of the local Malaysian singer/ songwriters, Reshmonu, was actually pretty good. About 10.30, the Black Eyed Peas finally came on. The first couple of songs they did were pretty ordinary as I don't think the sound system or microphones were working properly. It seemed that Fergie couldn't hear herself and so the songs sounded really off key. In an effort to fix this, Will.i.am DJed a set of tunes while the technicians obviously worked on the sound. His set was oone of the highlights of the night as he played everything from the latest club hits to MJ classics, Nirvana, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and other grooving tunes. He really had the crowd pumped!

By the time the Peas came back on, they had fixed the sound and the rest of the concert was awesome. Although we were a fair way away from the stage, we could easily see the huge video screens and the sound was great. Whoever was on the video cameras was obviously pretty shite as the video footage was so terrible you had to laugh. Half the time they weren't even showing any band members and then when they were, they were usually showing the one that wasn't singing!

They finished up their concert with the two tracks off their latest album, "Boom, Boom, Pow" and "Tonight's Gonna Be a Good Night". It was awesome and everyone was grooving away. The show finished about midnight and it was followed by a massive fireworks display that lasted about 15 minutes to celebrate the end of Arthur's Day.

We filed out with the masses and managed to find our way to the car and back home pretty easily. We got home about 12.45 and headed to bed after a great night.

It ended up being a really good concert after all the controversy. Initially, the concert was only open to non-Muslims which discriminated against about 50% of the local population. And despite being open only to people over 18 years old, there were rumours that Guinness would not be able to advertise their product let alone sell it at the event. In the end, I guess the government realised that there was no way they could enforce the non-Muslim only policy and it was opened up to everyone with Muslims being warned that they needed to use their best judgment as to whether or not they attended an event sponsored by a beer company. The sign at the front of the Tavern was pretty funny - "This drinking zone is strictly for non-Muslims only" and security guards were checking people's IC cards before they were being allowed in. I assume that they were checking people's race so if you were a Bumaputra you were not allowed into the area however the Chinese and Indian Malays were. The concert really did give an interesting insight into the culture and politics in Malaysia and how much religion influences life here.