melodious voices from a tiny town

I was so tired these past a few days. Finishing my duties in office, getting involved in a local event and dealing with my own personal business were only a few things that drained my brain and energy. In connection with the 43rd anniversary of a church named GMIM Efrata II Kakenturan, we arranged a number of events. This year is a bit different. Usually there are 3 main events to run namely sports, games, and music. This time, we only held a music concert, and for this purpose we invited a youth choir from Manado, a neighboring city which is also the capital of North Sulawesi province to present the concert. It is a choir of Engineering Faculty of Sam Ratulangi University. They call themselves Blue Choir for their campus is also called blue campus. I don’t know why they call their campus so, perhaps it is blue painted. According to its spokesman, this choral group won silver medal in Choir Olympic Games 2006 in Xian Men, China. They were scheduled to perform on Saturday 17th, 2007.

Blue Choir

As one of the committees, I got many things to do to succeed this show. One of my tough jobs was to find places to put 50 people up overnight. Luckily, all parishes were willing to help by allowing us using their houses to be temporary inns, and mine was no exemption. Three people stayed at my house, sharing a 4x4 room with me. What a sacrifice I did…! The concert itself was about to start at 7 pm on Saturday 17 but all its members had arrived at 2 o’clock in the morning. Can you imagine that? Two o’clock in the morning…! While everybody was sleeping, I had to take care of their accommodation and took them to the prepared houses. All things had completely done at 3 am and it was becoming my longest night, I guess. I came home and got some sleep. I got up at 7 am to prepare myself to go to office, so sleepy of course but my job comes first. I went to office and tried to finish my duties as many as I could. Right after going home I went to the building where the concert was going to take place, and met with my friends there to do the unfinished works in the matter of the concert. I saw the choir was briefing and doing rehearsal. And finally the time came, the concert ran smoothly. I was so glad for all our effort was worthy. But still, there was something bothered in my mind. Only half of the building capacity was filled with crowds. It might be caused by the weather was raining when the concert was running.

Bitung City Chorale

The summit agenda of GMIM Efrata II’s 43rd anniversary celebration was held the next day, on Sunday, November 18. Aside from church service led by vice mayor of Bitung city Mr. Robert Lahindo, Blue Choir was also prepared to perform but this time they were not alone. There was another choral group to sing as well, this group is called Bitung City Chorale, all its members are working for government of Bitung City. Something interesting happened when these two choirs show off their crooning skill to all people attending the church service. The two teams got different responses. When Blue Choir finished singing their songs, people did not react at all. And that’s the way it should be. Nobody can make noise while a religious service is running. All should be very quiet. But it was slightly different when Bitung City Chorale sang their songs. People were getting out of control. They clapped their hands and made some noise, and all of a sudden the church became extremely boisterous. I myself gave them standing applause although I should say I’m not that interested in choir. I was questioning at the time, why they could sing so awesome that they got such hilarious responses whereas this choir is just an ordinary group who still does not have any reputation compared to Blue Choir. After explained by the choir’s leader, we knew that Bitung City Chorale just won two gold medals in Asian Choir Games 2007 held in Jakarta from 2-10 November 2007. No wonder they could grab the most prestigious position on that international competition, they can sing amazingly melodious.

Indeed, They have given such a pride to all Bitung citizens having a bunch of people like them who already had a world-class achievement. I know I am not the only one who is proud of them and proud of being a citizen of this tiny town as well.