Hannah’s Year End Concert

To be honest, after our impressions from last year, I wasn’t looking forward to Hannah’s concert this year.  While the kids clearly enjoyed themselves at these events, there are concerns from parents on social media about how costly and logistically challenging are some of these events sometimes for kids to have their five minutes of fame on-stage. Still, when the time of the year came about when the kids at Hannah’s kindergarten started practicing for their individual class skits, we supported her for it. Hannah was clearly enjoying learning the dance and practicing whenever she could at home, and we couldn’t bear for her not to be part of the occasion.

On the overall, this year’s concert at Kallang Theater – we both had our university graduation ceremonies here in the 1990s – was much better organized, and Hannah being just a mite older was already better able to appreciate the nuances of her dance performance. What was even the more interesting was watching our 4 year old daughter interact with her friends and classmates. She seems a pretty popular girl in the class, though we think it’s unlikely at this age for any child not to be well-liked in class LOL, running and leading us about to look for her friends before and after her concert.

Interestingly, there were still kids getting stage-fright and we saw quite a few frozen in fear while the rest of their classmates sashayed away. One was so traumatized that one of the teachers had to go onto stage during the dance routine and calm him down. I felt rather sorry for them. It does bring to mind what Ling mused about; that no matter the misgivings the both of us might have about these concerts, and the extravagant logistics and costs involved, the kids do get the opportunity to be on stage and hopefully learn to build confidence for themselves.

A variety of lenses with the two m4/3 cameras came along for the trip. The ones at home, of us as a family and her with her friends were taken on the E-PL6/17mm; the concert proper with her on-stage was with the E-M5/75-300mm, and almost maximum zoom. We were seated far back behind, and the stage pictures turned up amazing well – even despite shooting at ISO3200.

Last interesting bit. The weather turned from humid to a terrific thunderstorm right after the concert ended at around 1600 hrs. So, we ducked into Kallang Leisure Park next door to have an early dinner, running into many other kindergarten kids and their families and also several more of Hannah’s friends. At one point, one family of Hannah’s classmates shared that the two of them are so close that when Hannah falls sick and doesn’t attend school, their girl would tell her parents herself she doesn’t want to attend school without Hannah being around either LOL.