Sweet 17

I was a free-lance model, and my agent then, Weng, asked what my interests were, almost as if he was planning something.

“Music.”

I replied instantly. I grew up in a family, where music was one of the ways we communicated, surprisingly. You might be painting in your mind – piano lessons, good schools, tuxedos, and western food. Nah.

It was all but that, I picked up my early music influences from my mother’s Chinese operas, my brother’s love songs he wrote on the guitar, my sister’s karaoke sessions, and mostly from my sessions at church. Music in church has always been memorable – I even sang at church when I was a kid!

Coming back, Weng helped me arrange for a voice test with this guy, Christopher, and gave me his name card. I brought the card home and told my sister about it, she said,

“Go for it!”

And so I did. Christopher met me the next day.

At the studio, he passed me the guitar and told me to sing a song. I sang 2 lines, and strummed 2 chords, before he said stop – almost like what they have been doing recently on American Idol clones on TVs these days – when some poor fella sings unbearably. He told me to return the next day, Yong Bang would be around.

“Was I that bad?”

I thought to myself and headed home, pretty confused. My sister suggested that I find out for myself, simply by returning tomorrow.

And return I did. I met Yong Bang, and upon our first meeting, he wanted to sign me as an artist, to act on idol dramas. I didn’t know how to react to that – firstly, I hated being a model, it was too superficial for me, and now, to act on idol dramas? Kind of along the same lines.

Thank God, Christopher appeared again. He opened and stuck his head through the door to the room we were having a meeting in,

“Have you heard him sing? Or his CD?”

Yes. I had a CD of 1 song demo I did using my brother’s Yamaha keyboard.

Yong Bang heard it and his eyes lit up literally, almost immediately, he turned to me and went,

“A composer artist contract.”

So that’s how it started. I never wanted to be a singer, but by the family I had, the environment I grew up in, the development of my music-making hobby, and eventually a chanced meeting, I got a contract within 3 days from the question,

“What are you interested in?”

I got my answer, maybe we can all start from there.